THE  FACTORY

            Dream place of Mr.ANDY WARHOL and his MUSES.

The Factory was Andy Warhol's original New York City studio from 1962 to 1968, although his later studios were known as The Factory as well. The Factory was located on the fifth floor at 231 East 47th Street, in Midtown Manhattan. The rent was "only about one hundred dollars a year". The building no longer exists.

                                    

   JUST LIKE IN PARADISE

The Factory was the hip hangout for artsy types, amphetamine users, and the Warhol superstars. It was famed for its groundbreaking parties. In the studio, Warhol's workers would make silkscreens and lithographs. In 1968, Andy moved the Factory to the sixth floor of the Decker Building, 33 Union Square West, near Max's Kansas City, a club Warhol and his entourage would frequently visit.

Speaking in 2002, John Cale said "It wasn't called the Factory for nothing. It was where the assembly line for the silkscreens happened. While one person was making a silkscreen, somebody else would be filming a screen test. Every day something new."

By the time Warhol had become famous, he was working day and night on his paintings. To create his art, Warhol used silkscreens so that he could mass-produce images the way capitalist corporations mass produce consumer goods. In order to continue working the way he did, he assembled a menagerie of adult film performers, drag queens, socialites, drug addicts, musicians, and free-thinkers that became known as the Warhol Superstars, to help him. These "art-workers" helped him create his paintings, starred in his films, and basically developed the atmosphere for which the Factory became legendary.

       IT' ALL ABOUT SEX; DRUGS AND ROCK N ROLL

The Factory became a meeting place of artists and musicians such as Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Truman Capote and Mick Jagger. Other, less frequent visitors included Salvador Dalí and Allen Ginsberg. Warhol collaborated with Reed's influential New York rock band The Velvet Underground in 1965, and designed the famous cover for The Velvet Underground & Nico, the band's debut album. The album cover consisted of a plastic yellow banana that the listener could actually peel off to reveal a flesh-hued version of the banana. Warhol also designed the album cover for The Rolling Stones' album Sticky Fingers.

Andy Warhol commented on mainstream America through his art while disregarding its strict social views. Nudity, graphic sexuality, drug use, same-sex relations and transgender characters appear in some form in almost all of his work filmed at the Silver Factory. Considered socially unacceptable, even appalling at the time, theaters showing his underground films were sometimes raided and the staff arrested for obscenity.

However, by making the films, Warhol created a sexually lenient environment at the Factory for the happenings that they staged, such as fake drag weddings, porn theater rentals, and vulgar plays. A large amount of free love took place in the scene, as sexuality in the 1960s was becoming more open. Sex was practically a must for anyone hanging around, and was encouraged by Warhol, who used footage of sexual acts between his friends in his work.

Also part of 'the scene' at the factory were famous drag queens such as Holly Woodlawn and Jackie Curtis, and the transgendered Candy Darling. As an artist, Andy Warhol frequently used these women and other sexual non-conformists in his films, plays, and on-goings.

Because of the constant drug use and the presence of sexually liberal artists and radicals, drugged orgies were a frequent happening at the Factory. Andy met Ondine at an orgy in 1962.

                                                 PARTIES WERE INCLUDING....

Friends of Warhol and superstars who hung around the Factory include Edie Sedgwick, Gerard Malanga, Ondine, Ivy Nicholson, Ingrid Superstar, Anita Pallenberg, Nico, The Velvet Underground (Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison, Maureen Tucker, and John Cale), Johnny Conflict, Candy Darling, Jeremiah Newton, Jim Morrison, Jackie Curtis, Gage Henrich, Frank Holliday, Holly Woodlawn, Viva, Billy Name, Rotten Rita, Freddie Herko, Mario Montez, Brian Jones, Mick Jagger,Noelle Wolf, Joe Dallesandro, Naomi Levine, Joe Dro, Paul Morrissey, Stephen Shore, Betsey Johnson, Truman Capote, Becky D, Fernando Arrabal, Taylor Mead, Mary Woronov, Ronnie Cutrone, Jane Forth, Lenny Dahl, Neke Carson, Baby Jane Holzer, Ultra Violet, Brigid Polk, Rickpat F, Paul America, Penny Arcade, Bobby Driscoll, Herbert Muschamp Peter Gramlique, and John Giorno, Brigid Berlin, Danny Williams, Chuck Wein, William Burroughs, Ulli Lommel, although there were many other visitors as well.

                           I hope you like this crazy world of Andy Warhol's art just like I.

                                                                               Nikki <3