Customer Reviews

Famous for 15 Minutes: My Years With Andy Warhol

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Ultra Violet's writing style is so pleasing.

I still have the 1988 hardcover.

She doesn't miss a speck of detail as she writes about her rebellious childhood in France as though she was eleven again.

Her descriptions of Andy Warhol and his crowd is very descriptive and well written. Although she may mention some of their flaws, she does so lovingly, appreciatively and sweetly.

She then details a problem in her health, which was miraculously cured without medical intervention and in this state of health she revisits her family in France, returning to a suspicious welcome by family members.

You've got to read it .maybe several times.

The photos are great too, and so are her summaries of what's happened to all of the Warhol crowd at the end of the book.

Five stars isn't enough !

I loved this book it is a must have for any true Andy fan

Thought the book was a terrrific read some 6 years ago after meeting Ultra and getting to know her personally. She will make a return to NYC in October 2000, about the same time that her book is being optioned for movie rights. I will guarantee that she will open up more for the movie script -- I just know it! Watch out world Ultra is back.

When I began reading this I knew very little about Andy Warhol, and I am sure I have a lot to learn about this man, his art and it's impact on art history. Ultra Violet seems to paint an honest portrait of life at 'The Factory', with Warhol. I found it a very interesting read and I found it a worthy introduction into a world I knew little about; Andy's art scene in the 60's and 70's.

Even though I did read the disclaimer at the beginning of the book stating: all conversations are reconstructed and are not intended, nor shall they be construed, as verbatim quotes......I at times had a problem with Ultra Violets stories. Of course this is the type of book that we read inviting name dropping, at times though I do not know what to believe, such as the part that her and some friends were on the way to pick up Janis Joplin to attend a show and they found her dead in her room. This may be true however it seemed like the worst kind of name dropping ever......tacky, tacky, tacky. I think she was fortunate in meeting so many exciting people and I understand when you associate with great artists they at times give you paintings or sell paintings below dealer price..., but perhaps she should hold on to those memories and valuable pieces of art for a rainy day cause her 15 minutes seem to be over a long time ago.

You've got to give Ultra her props for the humorously self-deprecating title. On the other hand, it may be the only thing about the book that IS self-deprecating. On page three, she's there telling us, "I was Warhol's superstar,"--not "one of MANY Warhol superstars." The thing that was fun about the Warhol superstars was that they really WEREN'T superstars by almost anyone else's definition. The fact was that almost anyone who appealed to Andy on some level could walk into the Factory and be declared a "superstar" (and earn their 15 minutes of fame). It was all a kind of ironic iconicism, and there was plenty of room for a renegade upper class Frenchwoman with attitude. But it's also probably true that had she never happened along, Andy and the Factory would have been none the poorer for it. Whatever her eccentricities and/or charms, Ultra was not THE Superstar of the Warhol stable.

It may not be completely fair, but I tend to lump the Superstars into one of two categories: those who were creative in their own right and didn interesting work either concurrently or subsequently to their days with Warhol OR those who were mainly scenemakers and hangers-on. Musicians like Lou Reed, John Cale and, yes, Nico may have hung out at the Factory, but they went on to produce work that was distinctly their own. Their involvement in Pop Art projects was mainly tangential and did not ultimately define them. You could make a similar claim for filmmaker Paul Morrissey, who went on to do a substantial body of work under his own name (although his Pop sensibility never quite left him).

Isabelle Collin Dufresne (aka Ultra Violet) does not make much of a case for herself as an independent artist in this book. She pretty much portrays herself as a muse and/or companion to major artworld figures like Dali and Warhol. And she is a lifelong rebel--except when she gets fretful and repentant about all that rebeliousness--but actually, it wasn't til I checked out her website that I saw that she's done some pretty interesting pieces of her own. I wonder why she couldn't talk about her OWN muse a little more in this book, her own creative process. (I'm actually not sure if UV was producing actual work during her Warhol period, so that may be something of a moot point, but it would be interesting nonetheless to learn why she might have contented herself to be no more than an artworld hanger-on in those days).

There are some claims (and APPARENT claims) made in the book that are clearly untrue and unfortunate. Several reviewers have noted that it is highly doubtful, for instance, that there's even a grain of truth in her claim that she was among those who discovered Janis Joplin's dead body on Oct. 4, 1970 (the date is correct, in any event). Fans of the late blues-rock legend know that her body was discovered after she failed to show up for a scheduled recording session and her producer Paul Rothchild became concerned. She was also not in her "apartment" but in the Landmark Motor Hotel in LA at the time. By all accounts, she was discovered by her friend and road manager John Cooke. Obvious lies like this do nothing to enhance Ultra's credibility. Indeed they make you wonder about the truthiness of the whole book.

When I speak of "apparent" claims, I mean certain passages that imply that Ultra Violet played a bigger role in Andy's life than was the case, without her actually coming out and saying so. She devotes a few pages to an early encounter with Warhol in which she points to the Campbell Soup cans neatly arrayed on a luncheonette counter and suggests that he paint them. If you think that she's claiming to have inspired Warhol's classic and most famous Pop Art series, you're probably right. EXCEPT she does acknowledge that he had already done his Del Monte peaches can and (modestly?) admits that his "own momentum" would soon lead him to soup cans, Coca-Cola bottles, dollar bills and postage stamps, with or without my prompting." But of course, her "prompting" didn't hurt, and she was, at the very least, prescient.

FAMOUS FOR 15 MINUTES is not an especially well-written book. Of course, Ultra Violet is not a native speaker of English, although no one who reads the book is expecting a stylistic masterpiece. Some mistakes she makes are kind of cute, like when she nicknames the Velvet Underground, "the Velvet." The group was commonly referred to (by friends and in the press) as "the Velvets," and I'd be at a loss myself to explain to a foreign speaker why the latter form is preferable (especially since the group's actual name is a collective noun phrase, and not a true plural...still you can't imagine any English speaker coming up with the appellation "The Velvet." Sounds kind of dumb. Her editor should have caught that, and probably should have caught the actual factual error the the band CHANGED their name to "The Exploding Plastic Inevitable Plus Nico." Sorry, Izzy, the EPI was the name of the entire multimedia EVENT. The band was never anything other than the Velvet Underground.

You could still be an insider of sorts and make factual errors, I suppose, especially of a crazy, ever-shifting scene like Warhol's late 60s Factory. It may not pay to dwell on the mistakes, the distortions and the apparent lies too much. All that detail can get in the way of the story. Sketchy--and inaccurate--as it often is, FAMOUS FOR 15 MINUTES does manage to tell a pretty good story.

Ultra seems to have written entire chapters based upon some one-line mention of her in the newspaper. She tosses off "My picture was in all the papers" with such a nonchalant casualness but its end result turns out to be the opposite: she is a media junkie who craves attention. She does admit this several times in the book. Ultra is redundant and repeats things over and over for the reader. On one page she tells us that Ingrid Superstar's real first name is Irma and later on she tells us that it's really Ingrid. Ultra has an amazing ability to transcribe phonetic Slovak. I copied three passages from the book in which Ultra hears Andy's mother talking and then "writes it down later, phonetically". More likely Ultra made up these quotes (see the disclaimer at the beginning of the book) as she was writing the book, then had someone translate them for her into Slovak. Does she expect the reader to believe she actually transcribed phonetic Slovak, a language that when she hears it she doesn't even know what it is? (see p. 172). And then that she "remembered" all those foreign sounds and wrote them down "later"? And how the Hell can Ultra transcribe "incomprehensible syllables"--in Slovak no less?

[Highlighted excerpt from page 172]:

Andy's mother is there, crying, "Moje diet'a je mrtvé, zabili moje diet'a, oh my God, blázni, my baby je mrtvé," mixing English with Slovak. I am told by someone who knows the latter. "Moja laska je mrtvá, moj milovaný syn odisiel, on bol najlepsi, moj Andy, moj drahý." or so it sounds to me.

[Highlighted excerpt from page 176]:

...I cook for moje sladké srdce." That's the way it sounds to me. I write it down later, phonetically.

...and she lapses into incomprehensible syllables: "Srdce moje, môj genius, ja milujem svoje diet'a, ja nemôzen, bez neho."

But what is no doubt the most unbelievable passage in the whole book is this supposed "recurring dream" Ultra says she had had about Andy. Read it. You'll flip.

[Entire page 221]:

In a recurring dream I see a headline: "Ultra Violet X-Rays Andy Warhol." At Joe's insistence, I have been x-rayed repeatedly in recent months as the doctors search my body, instead of my soul, for the malady that is consuming me. In my dream, I become the technician who orders Andy onto a table cold as a morgue slab, which tilts him head down, almost to the floor. Then I focus the probing eye of the machine on his vital organs, dart to safety outside the door, and return to say, "Now, turn, please, just a little to your right..."
Later, when I hold the x-ray film up to the light of truth, what do I see?
I find a human-inhuman hologram of a man with a yellow flickering light on his forehead, like a third eye. On close examination, it proves to be a Polaroid camera embedded in his brow. There is dense printed circuitry from his eyes to his ears to his hands. In his inner ear is a library of microcassettes. His tongue is missing, but there is a coin slot in his mouth.
Surprisingly, a heart-shaped valentine is pinned to his right chest. Handwritten across it in blood-red letters: "I love you, Mother."
A fiery track--starting at his abdomen, continuing to his chest, on to the left lung, then the esophagus, liver, stomach, spleen, on to his right lung and out his side--puzzles me. Then I recognize the path of the bullet that nearly killed him.
The gallbladder blinks off and on. I'm not sure, but I think I detect the word "Help."
The genitals don't show.
The limbs are normal except for the nuts and bolts that rivet them to his skeleton.
An infinite inventory of numbers is imprinted on his skin. The digits go on and on: birth certificate number, telephone numbers, charge accounts, bank accounts, insurance policies, zip codes, social security and internal revenue numbers, real estate registry numbers, passports, license plates, club memberships, many more.

It is so outrageous there is no need to comment upon it. It is absolute malarkey. I get the idea that Ultra used the Andy Warhol Diaries for most of the information in her book. I learned nothing new, other than that Ultra is trying to cash in on a relationship she had with Andy Warhol many years ago, a relationship padded to seem like a close friendship when more likely it was a distant acquaintanceship. And the revelation that *she* discovered Janis (not "Janice", as she spells it) Joplin's lifeless body? Give me a freakin' break.

This was an entertaining read. I am fascinated by the Factory crowd and especially Andy, so I found it insightful to get another perspective. If you want a broader perspective read Factory Made by Steven Watson, or Popism by Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett which also gives you the added humor.
Famous for Fifteen is better read as a follow up to the others. I find Ultra Violet fascinating, although perhaps a tad bit bitter about her experience with Andy. I understand that many people feel Andy is responsible for the downfall of Edie Sedgwick. But we have to remember this was the 60's and interventions and rehabs were not as common as today. People accepted drug use as part of a the counter culture without fully understanding the disastrous effects. Yes I believe Andy Warhol was
a narcissus. And he was probably a bit autistic. But he was not a movie agent or a drug counselor. He was an artist. He reflecting society unto itself. He should be remembered as the amazing artist that he was and leave it at that.

I have re-read this book many times, & must admit that, even though I enjoyed it immensely, it must be approached as fiction. Ms. Violet (Real name, Isabelle Collin Dufresne) tells many stories, most of which are more than likely outrageously exaggerated, if not blatantly un-true. It's not that I think she intentionally lied, I feel she truly believes all these events actually happened as she tells them. And that can be entertaining, in a ditzy kind of way... the facts be [ignored]! Truth may be stranger than fiction, but embellishment sometimes reveals more, if you read between the lines. And, with all the drugs and round the clock lifestyle that Ultra and the Gang lived, it's not surprising that her brain got a little damp in the process. While her fame barely lasted 15 minutes, she is a good example of Warhols "Superstars", all of whom had little if any talent or experience, that not being their goal. Instant fame, with none of the work involved, was their goal. And their movies, while being a mesmerizing document of those personalities and that time, in and of themselves are perfectly awful. Her book also has the undercurrent of sour -grapes resentment that I almost always detect in books about those associated with Warhol. All this aside, I still found this interestingly styled book an informative and fun read of that crazy time with Andy and his caravan of misfits, each of whom vied for that fifteen minutes.

I got the feeling that ultra wasnt as pure as she claims to be, every one of the superstars was doing tons of drugs ..but not ultra, she was soooooo pure and caring but at the same time dating married men, she puts down anyone who was competition toher, it could of been alot better if she would of opened up more and not been so uptight! I want to know the dirt, not just whom she knew and what money she had, the only positive thing was the pictures!