Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties

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.

About the Author :
Steven Watson is a cultural historian and documentary filmmaker. His other books include Strange Bedfellows, The Harlem Renaissance, The Birth of the Beat Generation, and Prepare for Saints- Gertrude Stein, Virgil Thomson, and the Mainstreaming of American Modernism. He lives in New York City.

Review :
“Steven Watson has written the best imaginable book on the Sixties of Andy Warhol’s Silver Factory, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, and the appropriation by mainstream culture of the underground avant-garde. Based on the testimony of those who were part of it, those who were not there can now know exactly what it was like, without having to pay the price of having to live through it. And since the end of the Silver Factory coincides with the near-fatal attempt on Warhol’s life in 1968, the book has the narrative drive of an unfolding tragedy. The research is impeccable, the spirit of the book is open and sympathetic, and the writing is as witty as it is clear. A marvelous achievement.” —Arthur C. Danto “Factory Made, an encyclopedic act of cultural memory, is as wide-angled, as sympathetic, as polyphonic, and as entertaining an account of Warhol’s 1960s as we’re likely to get. Watson’s emphasis on collaborative artistic practices offers an eye-opening antidote to the usual Andy-centered approach.” —Wayne Koestenbaum “Although Andy Warhol’s famous movies are among the most boring ever made, this book about them is endlessly fascinating.” —John Richardson “Steven Watson's history of Andy Warhol’s Silver Factory years is a riveting mosaic that captures a moment in the New York art world when cultural change was accelerating at the speed of light. The book sustains an atmosphere of tremendous suspense as, one after another, Warhol’s ‘superstars’ are born, flash, and burn out, and the wild party peopled with speed freaks, drag queens, and exhibitionists spins out of control. In casting a wide cultural net this entertaining history encompasses Pop Art, experimental film, and the birth of the Play-House of the Ridiculous, connecting these movements and making sense of it all in a way that no other book has done. Factory Made is a masterly achievement.” —Stephen Holden