Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties [Hardcover]

Steven Watson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 21, 2003

Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties is a fascinating look at the avant-garde group that came together—from 1964 to 1968—as Andy Warhol’s Silver Factory, a cast that included Lou Reed, Nico, Edie Sedgwick, Gerard Malanga, Paul Morrissey, Joe Dallesandro, Billy Name, Candy Darling, Baby Jane Holzer, Brigid Berlin, Ultra Violet, and Viva. Steven Watson follows their diverse lives from childhood through their Factory years. He shows how this ever-changing mix of artists and poets, musicians and filmmakers, drag queens, society figures, and fashion models, all interacted at the Factory to create more than 500 films, the Velvet Underground, paintings and sculpture, and thousands of photographs.

Between 1961 and 1964 Warhol produced his most iconic art: the Flower paintings, the Marilyns, the Campbell’s Soup Can paintings, and the Brillo Boxes. But it was his films—Sleep, Kiss, Empire, The Chelsea Girls, and Vinyl—that constituted his most prolific output in the mid-1960s, and with this book Watson points up the important and little-known interaction of the Factory with the New York avant-garde film world. Watson sets his story in the context of the revolutionary milieu of 1960s New York: the opening of Paul Young’s Paraphernalia, Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball, Max’s Kansas City, and the Beautiful People Party at the Factory, among many other events.

Interspersed throughout are Watson’s trademark sociogram, more than 130 black-and-white
photographs—some never before seen—and many sidebars of quotes and slang that help define the Warholian world. With Factory Made, Watson has focused on a moment that transformed the art and style of a generation.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With this new chronicle of Warhol's Factory years, independent scholar Watson makes a fresh pass at the already heavily picked-apart Warhol corpus. By focusing on more marginal personalities rather than the Factory's silver-haired figurehead, Watson provides an agreeable, if far from groundbreaking, addition to the already long shelf of Warholiana. Billy Name, Lou Reed, Nico, Joe Dallesandro, Brigid Berlin and others receive more than their 15 minutes here; many even have their childhood biographies written up as partially expxlanatory of future exlpoits. The main focus is on the Silver Factory period, stretching from roughly 1960 to 1968, when Warhol was shot by enraged hanger-on Valerie Solanas. As with his books Strange Bedfellows (on early modernism) and The Birth of the Beat Generation, Watson brings in historical background and multiple cross-cultural references (along with myriad b&w photos and illustrations), but he is often outpaced here by Warhol's own Popism or Wayne Koestenbaum's Andy Warhol. Still, it's nice to have deep background on all the Factory players in one place, and the book's margins are peppered with appealing lists, definitions and piquant quotes by everybody from Truman Capote to Diana Vreeland and Allan Midgette, an actor who, with the artist's approval, impersonated Warhol at his lectures, and later said, "The Sixties happened, and Andy took credit."
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Watson has been exploring the dynamics of avant-garde circles, or "constellations" of creative people, in a series of generously illustrated volumes that deftly combine vivid biographical, sociological, and aesthetic commentary, including Prepare for Saints (1999). In his latest scintillating mosaic, he charts the coalescence and violent disintegration of Andy Warhol's infamous and enormously influential Silver Factory, an "arena for collaborative experimentation" that drew drag queens, musicians, filmmakers, fashion models, speed freaks, poets, and would-be actors like dizzy moths to a flame. From 1964 through 1968, a former Manhattan hat factory served as a feverishly productive and indulgently sleazy art, music, and film studio and ultra-hip hangout. Watson's scanning of the difficult childhoods of the Factory's core group establishes the intense psychological quests that underlie Warhol's highly controversial films, the Velvet Underground, and the rest of the art that miraculously emerged from this amphetamine-stoked crucible. With a cast of dozens of extreme individuals and shrewd assessment of the Factory's radical output, Watson's many-faceted chronicle illuminates one of art's riskiest and most sardonic and eviscerating movements. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; 1 edition (October 21, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679423729
• ISBN-13: 978-0679423720
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 1.8 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #309,794 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Factory Made Well, June 1, 2005

By 

DivingIntheBlue (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties (Hardcover)

Many books and articles have been written about Andy Warhol, The Factory, The Silver Sixties and Andy's Superstars but, this book is the only one that takes a comprehensive look at all of the elements of that era that could only happen in the Sixties. I initially got this book because I'm a huge fan of Edie Sedgwick (after having read the AMAZING Edie: An American Biography) and love to find new info and pictures of her. This book didn't shed any new light on Edie (except for the fact she had an affair with the Velvet's John Cale). In fact, I was surprised that the author took alot of info from Edie's biography verbatim. Other than that slight oversight, I cannot get enough of this book. Watson did an amazing job of chronicling the lives of the (many) Superstars Andy "created" and stuck in front of the camera to "say nothing". As much as Andy and his ilk wanted to "say nothing", just their existence said so much and is still being talked about today. Waston also did a superb job of capturing the whys and hows of The Factory, even going so far as to have side notes of the Factory's lingo and quotes from Superstars and other artists. One quote that struck me and sums up is this book was given by John Richardson. He stated, "Although Andy Warhol's famous movies are among the most boring ever made, this book about them is endless fascinating". FM is filled with trivia and candid photos (some of them, never before seen) of that weird and special time at the Factory (the most productive and artistic in my opinion). If you're a fan of Edie, Andy or any of the superstars, this book is a MUST have! You will endlessly re-read the text and pour over the pictures time and again.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Black Sheep Rising, December 1, 2003

By 

J. E. Barnes - See all my reviews

This review is from: Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties (Hardcover)

Steven Watson's Factory Made (2003) is an absorbing account of Andy Warhol's 1960s, the pop artist's most innovative and product period. The book is largely a social history, and while all facets of Warhol's work are covered in detail, the focus is squarely on Warhol himself and the continually changing cast of characters whom the artist took under his wing and looked to for "inspiration." Factory Made also deftly demonstrates how Warhol evolved from an obscure and personally awkward fashion illustrator to one of that decade's most famous and influential cultural icons. While the ambitious, celebrity - seeking Warhol was an exception, Watson also explores the odd paradox by which perennial anti - establishment outsiders contrarily desire nothing greater than to position themselves firmly at the apex of the commercial cultural establishment they ostensibly abhor.

Watson takes an unbiased look at the lives of the nascent poets, dancers, writers, actors, filmmakers, and dreamers - who were also often amphetamine addicts, junkies, male prostitutes, flagrant homosexuals, transvestites, political radicals, or strident individualists - that Warhol brought temporarily to fame. Watson follows Warhol's "superstars" on their largely tragic course from childhood, self discovery, and social rejection to brief notoriety, momentary creative fulfillment, and graphic self destruction.

Factory Made begs the question of whether Warhol exploited the Factory crowd or merely provided them with the abundant opportunities they openly craved. By the book's end, it is clear that the major Factory figures assisted, consciously and otherwise, in both the creation and solidification of the Factory as an avant - garde social space and in defining Warhol's artistic sensibilities. However, the participants were also personally culpable, to varying degrees, for the reckless mayhem and disregard for human limitation ominously and continually present at the periphery of Factory life.

As if declaring hard factional evidence against generalized sunny Rousseauism, the biographies of the Factory's key figures frequently suggest the brutal nihilism of a Jean Genet or Paul Bowles novel: a beautiful young woman loses permanent control over her motor functions due to prolonged drug abuse; the Factory's young photographer locks himself inside an on - premise bathroom for 18 months, speaking to himself in two distinctly different voices, while business as usual carries on around him outside; a talented dancer commits suicide by leaping grandly out a 5 - story apartment window as a friend watches; maggots crawl over the rotting corpse of a minor, but historically important, Factory figure. A somewhat vacant personality himself, Warhol carelessly entertained himself with the company of fragile, unstable, and disintegrating young men and women. This continued for years, until the imbalanced Valerie Solanas charged into the Factory and shot Warhol in the stomach, an act which left the artist clinically dead for six minutes and physically and mentally scarred for the balance of his life.

For those Factory habitues who survived the "Warhol Sixties" and their "Fifteen Minutes of Fame" (a term coined by Warhol), the future was grim. Many remained drug addicted and died penniless at a relatively young age; Eric Emerson's body was found along the side of a road, and Ingrid Superstar, who inexplicably gets little coverage, went out for a pack of cigarettes at the age of 42 and was never seen again. Warhol, by then a multimillionaire, was able to move on and away from the detritus of the Sixties, enjoying prestige and celebrity the world over. However, healthy adaptations to society, sustained careers, or monetary security were rare among his former prodigies and intimates.

Collectively, Warhol and his favored cohorts helped to irrevocably turn the tide of American culture, for better or for worse. Factory Made provides some answers to the mystery of how this takeover was achieved, and what the human cost was for those who participated.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Warhol was Flesh and Blood, November 25, 2003

By 

David Maxim (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties (Hardcover)

To anyone interested in the creative zeitgeist of 1960s New York, Steven Watson's FACTORY MADE is a must read.
Feelings about Andy Warhol's art aside, Steven Watson's reportorial history may leave younger readers slightly incredulous that so much trail blazing could have been happening then, and older readers will have their memories jarred with recognition of times they lived through. As I read I frequently found myself going,"Ah ha!"--it was as though little pieces came together page by page to put the puzzle of the period into a broad picture that also clarified bits of this reader's own life. I saw Warhol's first show at the Ferris Gallery in Westwood in 1962. I found myself in a restaurant called Max's Kansas City in June of 1966 (an unforgetable experience for a green 21-year-old). I saw Andy Warhol and what must have been the Velvet Underground entourage sitting in an open-air cafe doing nothing--just hanging out in West LA (Watson explains why). My sister-in-law was a nurse at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara. She treated this "complete crazy" named Edie Sedgewick. Had I heard of her? She kept talking about Andy Warhol.
At first I thought, "Oh, no! Another book on Andy Warhol." Well, as far as I'm concerned this is THE book on Andy Warhol. It is much better than good. For the first time the super-famous Sixties artist is shown as a real-life person. Watson's writing is amazingly descriptive, deducing people's thinking and social interaction from original interview material. The writing style is amazingly fresh and fun, yet serious at the same time. Everything else I've read on Warhol has kept in place the shroud of his own calculated mystique--a mirage of mystery, contradiction, celebrity, and passivity. Watson's text clears that all away. Hey! Andy was flesh and blood after all. Now THAT is a great accomplishment, and I suspect a first in the Warhol literature.
A period of only eight years (to 1968) is dealt with which amplifies the concept of the brevity of artistic "periods" with their volcanic creativity. I found myself referring to the personality "map" at the book's beginning again and again for orientation and clarity. This map/chart is actually very important for structural reasons. Watson has always been deeply interested in the social-creative dynamic with it's accompanying synchronicity that mysteriously brings creative people together before they're "famous." He's dealt with this question quite literally in his books and has expressed it by measuring people's physical proximity to each other. Thus, each year, each month that is chronicled in FACTORY MADE is a kind of maping of the characters' actual location and emotional/mental journey with relation to each of the others--almost like watching blips on a radar screen.
I found myself looking for one or two characters I liked best in the Silver Factory group. I found them, and they didn't include Warhol. At a deep level Watson's book reveals Warhol's genius at collaboration, and how much he relied on other creative minds to nurture his own. Watson gives credit to other members of the Factory when it's due. At the deepest level this book deals with the topic of the potential that lies simply in meeting people. And to realize that this potential is out there for each of us every day is something we should never forget.