POPism. The Warhol’s Sixties

In POPism: The Warhol Sixties, the artist and his friend, Pat Hackett, look back at Warhol’s work and the people around him in the years 1960–1969. Many of the anecdotes concern Factory regulars: rock and film stars Dennis Hopper, Liza Minnelli, Judy Garland, Mick Jagger, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, and Nico; authors William Burroughs, Tennessee Williams, and Allen Ginsberg; dancers Rudolf Nureyev, Merce Cunningham, and Fred Herko; independent filmmakers and actors Jonas Mekas, Taylor Mead, Jane Holzer, and Edie Sedgwick; party people like Candy Darling, Ondine, Duchess, Paul America, and other quasi-celebrities who came to be known as Warhol superstars. The book also touches on Warhol’s early career, his use of screen printing, his first solo exhibitions at Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles and Stable Gallery in New York, and his Super 8 films.

Warhol kept his distance from the femmes and drag queens, Hollywood divas and heroin addicts, transsexuals and girls in flowery dresses, who passed through The Factory. “A lot of people thought that it was me everyone at The Factory was hanging around, that I was some kind of big attraction that everyone came to see, but that’s absolutely backward: it was me who was hanging around everyone else. I just paid the rent, and the crowds came simply because the door was open.”