Product Description
“Now and then, someone would accuse me of being evil,” Andy Warhol confessed, “of letting people destroy themselves while I watched, just so I could film them.” Obsessed with celebrity, the silver-wigged artistic icon created an ever-evolving entourage of stunning women he dubbed his “Superstars”—Baby Jane Holzer, Edie Sedgwick, Nico, Ultra Violet, Viva, Brigid Berlin, Ingrid Superstar, International Velvet, Mary Woronov, and Candy Darling. He gave several of them new names and manipulated their beauty and talent for his art and social status with no regard for their safety, their dignity, or their lives.
In Warhol’s Muses, bestselling biographer Laurence Leamer shines a spotlight on the complex women who inspired and starred in Warhol’s legendary underground films—The Chelsea Girls, The Nude Restaurant, and Blue Movie, among others. Drawn by the siren call of Manhattan life in the sixties, they each left their protected enclaves and ventured to a new world, Warhol’s famed Factory, having no sense that they would never be able to return to their old homes and familiar ways again. Sex was casual, drugs were ubiquitous, parties were wild, and to Warhol, everyone was transient, temporary, and replaceable. It was a dangerous game he played with the women around him, and on a warm June day in 1968, someone entered the Factory and shot him, changing his life forever.
Warhol’s Muses explores the lives of ten endlessly intriguing women, transports us to a turbulent and transformative era, and uncovers the life and work of one of the most legendary artists of all time.
Hardcover; 336 pages
About: Laurence Leamer is a six-time New York Times bestseller author. He has used his career to explore all kinds of lives, from world leaders to coal miners, from movie stars to great artists. His book Capote’s Women was made into the eight-part series Capote vs. the Swans starring Diane Lane and Naomi Watts. His newest book, Warhol’s Muses, has been enthusiastically reviewed. “Leamer shows compassion when recounting the lives of these creative women,” the Washington Post wrote. “In accentuating the humanity of these women who were made — and unmade — by the Factory, Leamer reveals Warhol as a master manipulator who used so many to build his “most enduring creation: himself.” Leamer and his wife Vesna live in Palm Beach, Florida and Washington, D.C
About: Laurence Leamer is a six-time New York Times bestseller author. He has used his career to explore all kinds of lives, from world leaders to coal miners, from movie stars to great artists. His book Capote’s Women was made into the eight-part series Capote vs. the Swans starring Diane Lane and Naomi Watts. His newest book, Warhol’s Muses, has been enthusiastically reviewed. “Leamer shows compassion when recounting the lives of these creative women,” the Washington Post wrote. “In accentuating the humanity of these women who were made — and unmade — by the Factory, Leamer reveals Warhol as a master manipulator who used so many to build his “most enduring creation: himself.” Leamer and his wife Vesna live in Palm Beach, Florida and Washington, D.C
