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New York Post
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Behind the glamorous — and often tragic — lives of Andy Warhol's muses
Earlier this year, Anthology Film Archives in the Lower East Side hosted a screening devoted to Naomi Levine. Touted by some as Andy Warhol's 'first female superstar,' Levine performed in many of the pop artist's early underground movies, like 1963's 'Tarzan and Jane Regained… Sort Of' and 1964's pornographic 'Couch.' Like many of Warhol's actors, she took off her clothes for his camera. Levine didn't care about fame, and never became famous, which is maybe why she doesn't even get a mention in Laurence Leamer's new book, 'Warhol's Muses: The Artists, Misfits, and Superstars Destroyed by the Factory Fame Machine' (G.P. Putnam's Sons, out May 6). She doesn't fit with its thesis. 'Warhol's Muses' is the latest entry in a long line of books and movies about the artist and his band of misfits. Like many, it portrays Warhol as a leech who used and manipulated others for the sake of his art and celebrity. 9 Andy Warhol with members of the Velvet Underground, including one of his most iconic female muses, Nico (to his left). Gerard Malanga But here, Leamer focuses on Warhol's women: the ever-evolving coterie of glamazons who accompanied him to parties, appeared in his films, and 'helped turn the Pittsburgh-born son of Eastern European immigrants into international artist Andy Warhol.' 'They would raise his social cachet dramatically and bring him the publicity and public adulation he so desired,' Leamer writes. Warhol called these women his 'superstars.' They included rebellious heiresses like Edie Sedgwick, bohemian artists like Christa Päffgen, a.k.a . Nico, and gorgeous outsiders like the trans icon Candy Darling. They helped the shy, awkward, gay Warhol meet rich buyers and gave him a sheen of glamour. And then, per Leamer, he cast them aside when they proved no longer useful. In 1964, Warhol was a successful commercial artist. But his 'fine art' — the paintings of Campbell's soup cans and Brillo boxes — wasn't selling, and his movies had barely made a blip. 9 Candy Darling, Andy Warhol, and Sylvia Miles at a premiere at the Rivoli Theater in 1971. Bettmann Archive Then he met Jane Holzer, a 23-year-old socialite living in an Upper East Side mansion with her young real-estate mogul husband, bored out of her mind. Holzer grew up in privilege in Palm Beach, Fla., yet had a defiant streak. When Warhol asked if she would be in one of his movies, she said: 'Sure, anything's better than [being] a Park Avenue housewife.' She made out with two men for 'Kiss.' She brushed her teeth and chewed gum for various 'screen tests.' Fully clothed, she suggestively peeled and ate a banana in 'Couch,' stealing the film from the naked people around her. 9 Andy Warhol with Edie Sedgwick, lighting a cigarette on one of his film sets. Getty Images In the evenings, she accompanied Warhol to party after party. By that fall, she was a bona fide celebrity, her every move documented by the press, who named her 'Baby Jane.' Her fame boosted Warhol's own star power. His art started selling, and he was appearing on the gossip pages, too. After Holzer was deemed passé, Warhol found other 'muses.' Brigid Berlin, the 'rotund and always foulmouthed' daughter of the chairman of Hearst Corporation, who went by the name Brigid Polk, entertained Warhol with anecdotes about her dysfunctional childhood. 9 Noami Levine was one of Warhol's earliest muses, according to sources. Anthology Film Archives 9 Andy Warhol and superstars Candy Darling (left) and Ultra Violet are shown at a press conference n 1971. Bettmann Archive Susan Mary Hoffman, a k a Viva, 'the Lucille Ball of the underground,' injected 'wicked wit and savage intelligence' into his porniest flicks. Isabelle Collin Dufresne, an erudite French girl known by the moniker Ultra Violet, had previously bedded Salvador Dalí, Warhol's idol. Many of these 'superstars,' however, crashed and burned. Warhol's silver studio, dubbed The Factory, attracted all manner of druggies, misfits and hangers-on. They shot up amphetamines so they could stay up all night. They worked for little to no pay, screen-printing designs or debasing themselves as Warhol coolly captured them on film. 9 Edie Sedgwick frolics in the bath in one of Warhol's 'underground' movies. Bettmann Archive 9 Victor Hugo (left), Jane Holzer (rear), and Andy Warhol attended the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute Gala, New York, New York, December 6, 1982. Getty Images Ingrid von Scheven, or Ingrid Superstar — a New Jersey secretary who sometimes turned tricks for money — ended up addicted to heroin after her stint at The Factory. In 1986, at the age of 42, she went out to buy a newspaper and vanished. Most notorious was Edie Sedgwick, the incandescent, damaged heiress who electrified 1960s New York with her silver hair, gamine beauty, and reckless extravagance. Warhol captured her haunting vulnerability on camera, filming her putting on makeup and smoking a cigarette. Leamer doesn't seem to think much of these movies, but they are mesmerizing and moving. She broke Warhol's heart when she went off with Bob Dylan. (She died of a drug overdose in 1971.) 9 'Warhol's Muses: The Artists, Misfits, and Superstars Destroyed by the Factory Fame Machine' is written by Laurence Leamer. By the time the radical feminist Valerie Solanas tried to assassinate Warhol in 1968, Leamer would have us believe that the artist had it coming. And yet, not all of Warhol's 'muses' were victims. Nico — the German model and actress — had tried to launch a singing career for years before Warhol installed her as the frontwoman for noisy art-rockers The Velvet Underground. Her association with the band lasted only one album, but she went on to have an iconic solo career. 9 Author Laurence Leamer focuses on Warhol's women: the ever-evolving coterie of glamazons who accompanied him to parties, appeared in his films. Jacek Gancarz Mary Woronov — an art student when she fell in with the Factory crowd — kicked her drug habit and continued acting in indie films through the 1970s, '80s, and '90s; she's still a painter in Los Angeles. Ultra Violet credited both Dalí and Warhol for her subsequent art career, and exhibited work till her death in 2014. As for Baby Jane, she survived her 15 minutes of fame. She now lives in Palm Beach, surrounded by her collection of Basquiats, Harings, and, yes, Warhols.
San Francisco Chronicle
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Book Review: People who are part of Andy Warhol's life chronicle the legacy of American pop art
There are celebrities whose persona is as famous, if not more so, than their works, or what made them stars in the first place. Andy Warhol, probably the most important artist to emerge from the 1960s American avant-garde, is one example. His nervous face peering beneath a shock of white hair is as signature as his Campbell soup cans. It's clear Warhol wasn't ashamed to tell the world that he should be reckoned with as a human being, accepted for all that he was, including being gay when that was still relatively taboo. Laurence Leamer's well-researched 'Warhol's Muses: The Artists, Misfits and Superstars Destroyed by the Factory Fame Machine' explores the life of Warhol through that perspective. Like Leamer's earlier books, about Truman Capote and Alfred Hitchcock, his latest explores an artist's life through their relationships with women. The opening 'Prologue' begins with Warhol's getting shot by a woman who targets him for basically deranged reasons. And that's just the beginning. In one characteristic segment, Warhol shows up at a gala preview in a tuxedo, except his pants are defiantly splattered with paint. In another, he designs department store windows, one of the first to underline the connection between art and fashion, in an unabashed embrace of 20th century commercialism. 'Warhol is the defining figure of pop art, an artistic movement that burst forth in the early Sixties, taking fine art on a wild roller-coaster ride. In the same way that jazz is the first uniquely American music, so pop art is profoundly American,' a passage in the book reads. Various recognizable names pop up on the pages, flitting in and out of Warhol's life: Salvador Dali, the Velvet Underground, Jean-Michel Basquiat. In 2022, nearly four decades after Warhol's death, his silk-screen portrait of Marilyn Monroe sold for $195 million. Every art fan has been mesmerized by Warhol's psychedelic repetition of flowers, lips and bananas. Warhol seems to inject such everyday items with a greater meaning, or perhaps with zen-like meaninglessness. To be fair to the legacy of Warhol, it may not really matter in the end what kind of person he was. It may have mattered to those who loved him, the characters Leamer chronicles. But as Warhol's art becomes a chapter in history, his reality takes another dimension. He speaks to us, and the world, as Andy Warhol, the artist. His art is a powerful statement on America, whether you ever knew him as a person or not. The characters in his life, even if they are gorgeous and tragic, are mere footnotes. In 1966, Warhol told a young reporter that he preferred to stay a mystery. 'I never have time to think about the real Andy Warhol,' he said.
Associated Press
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Book Review: People who are part of Andy Warhol's life chronicle the legacy of American pop art
There are celebrities whose persona is as famous, if not more so, than their works, or what made them stars in the first place. Andy Warhol, probably the most important artist to emerge from the 1960s American avant-garde, is one example. His nervous face peering beneath a shock of white hair is as signature as his Campbell soup cans. It's clear Warhol wasn't ashamed to tell the world that he should be reckoned with as a human being, accepted for all that he was, including being gay when that was still relatively taboo. Laurence Leamer's well-researched 'Warhol's Muses: The Artists, Misfits and Superstars Destroyed by the Factory Fame Machine' explores the life of Warhol through that perspective. Like Leamer's earlier books, about Truman Capote and Alfred Hitchcock, his latest explores an artist's life through their relationships with women. The opening 'Prologue' begins with Warhol's getting shot by a woman who targets him for basically deranged reasons. And that's just the beginning. In one characteristic segment, Warhol shows up at a gala preview in a tuxedo, except his pants are defiantly splattered with paint. In another, he designs department store windows, one of the first to underline the connection between art and fashion, in an unabashed embrace of 20th century commercialism. 'Warhol is the defining figure of pop art, an artistic movement that burst forth in the early Sixties, taking fine art on a wild roller-coaster ride. In the same way that jazz is the first uniquely American music, so pop art is profoundly American,' a passage in the book reads. Various recognizable names pop up on the pages, flitting in and out of Warhol's life: Salvador Dali, the Velvet Underground, Jean-Michel Basquiat. In 2022, nearly four decades after Warhol's death, his silk-screen portrait of Marilyn Monroe sold for $195 million. Every art fan has been mesmerized by Warhol's psychedelic repetition of flowers, lips and bananas. Warhol seems to inject such everyday items with a greater meaning, or perhaps with zen-like meaninglessness. To be fair to the legacy of Warhol, it may not really matter in the end what kind of person he was. It may have mattered to those who loved him, the characters Leamer chronicles. But as Warhol's art becomes a chapter in history, his reality takes another dimension. He speaks to us, and the world, as Andy Warhol, the artist. His art is a powerful statement on America, whether you ever knew him as a person or not. The characters in his life, even if they are gorgeous and tragic, are mere footnotes. In 1966, Warhol told a young reporter that he preferred to stay a mystery. 'I never have time to think about the real Andy Warhol,' he said. ___ AP book reviews:
The Guardian
16-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Apparently, he had a fist fight with King Charles': the jawdropping life of Luca Prodan, Argentina's punk god
In 1980, a tall, thin man landed in Buenos Aires airport, at the height of Argentina's military dictatorship. His name was Luca Prodan, a Scottish-Italian rocker, and he had just finished the last of his methadone on the flight over. His arrival would soon send shockwaves through Argentina when he started a band called Sumo, acquainted the country with post-punk, and became a national legend who lives on, his music still earning hundreds of millions of streams. 'When I saw Sumo in 1982,' says Prodan's younger brother Andrea, 'I thought, 'This is more than just a band. This is like the Velvet Underground.'' But, despite Prodan's strong ties to Europe and his high-esteem in Argentina, he is barely known outside of the country. That looks set to change – thanks to a forthcoming biopic called Time Fate Love, produced by Birdman co-writer Armando Bo. 'Luca changed music history,' Bo says. 'Here, he's a god.' Prodan was like a grenade thrown into the stuffy Buenos Aires music scene, where musicians tended to wear their hair long and often noodled through adept but derivative jazz fusion or rock. 'People were hungry for change,' says Sumo's first drummer, Stephanie Nuttal. 'And they loved Sumo. It was different. They were ready for it. And they took punk on board – big style.' Fronted by Prodan with his Ian Curtis-like crooning, idiosyncratic stage presence and completely shaven head, Sumo were dizzyingly funky and unbounded, playing not just post-punk but deftly hopping between new wave, reggae and cumbia. But, less than a decade after he arrived, and not long after the fall of the military junta, Prodan died at the age of just 34. He had already led a tumultuous life even before he landed in Argentina, bouncing nomadically around Europe. 'An Italian guy reborn in England and reborn again in Argentina,' says Peter Lanzani, the zeitgeisty Argentinian actor who will play Prodan in the biopic, which he will also direct. Prodan's wealthy parents met in pre-revolutionary China: his mother Cecilia Pollock was heir to Shanghai's main tram company, while his father Mario was a well-known art dealer. In 1943, the two were imprisoned by the Japanese army in the Weixian internment camp before eventually fleeing to Italy, where Prodan was born in 1953. Younger brother Andrea – a musician and actor – says the children lived the high life in Rome, sailing the Mediterranean on the family yacht. But their aristocratic ways also meant that Luca was packed off aged 11 to the prestigious Scottish public school Gordonstoun, where the future King Charles was a pupil at the time. 'My parents wanted us to have a good education,' says Andrea. For Luca, this backfired. 'He was unlucky – Gordonstoun was horrible.' At 17, Luca took up the family talent for escapology – and, according to popular mythology, sold a rifle to fund his getaway, heading back to Italy and sparking an international search by Interpol. 'We had the police looking for him all over Europe for two and a half months,' says the younger Prodan. 'He was a real rebel. Apparently, he had a fist fight with King Charles. I don't know if this is just part of the myth, but I could see it happening.' After Luca was located, he was then conscripted into, and deserted from, the Italian army. 'He was always running away,' Andrea says. So his parents bought him a house in Chiswick, London, hoping he'd settle down. This also backfired: by now it was the punk era and Prodan became addicted to heroin. In 1977, he started his first band, the New Clear Heads, while working the singles section at London's first Virgin Megastore, where, according to Andrea, Luca was fired by Richard Branson for stealing records. It was at this Chiswick house – where fans are campaigning for a blue plaque to commemorate the musician – that Prodan first met Stephanie Nuttal, who had been active in the Manchester post-punk scene with Manicured Noise. When bandmate Steve Walsh left Manchester for London, he encouraged Nuttal to move too. There, she was introduced to Prodan and moved into his place. 'He was flighty,' says Nuttal. She didn't see Prodan often, though he occasionally baffled her colleagues by turning up at her workplace to collect rent from her, so he could buy heroin. Nuttal says she couldn't be in the same room as him when he was shooting up. 'He was tall and well-built but was emaciated and literally yellow,' she says. 'But he had so much creative energy, when he wasn't completely under the influence.' Prodan's addiction worsened when his sister Claudia killed herself. In despair, Prodan overdosed, fell into a coma and was briefly presumed dead. After recovering, he visited the mother of his former Gordonstoun roommate Timmy McKern, a Scottish-Argentine, and saw a photo of the Córdoba hills in Argentina, where his old friend was living with his family. This idyllic postcard, combined with the fact there was very little heroin in the South American country at the time, convinced Prodan to leave for Argentina, where he hoped to get clean. 'He looked at that picture and saw hope in life,' says McKern. But he was in a bad state when he arrived, suffering from withdrawals, fevers, and sleeping all day. The two struggled to make a living on McKern's family farm – they drank instead, and listened to Joy Division LPs that Prodan had brought with him, possibly the only such records in the country. 'Luca said, 'I've studied the Argentine music scene,'' recalls McKern, who would go on to manage Sumo. ''Let's start a band and get some money. It'll be easy.'' With McKern's brother-in-law, Germán Daffunchio, and his friend Alejandro Sokol, they almost had a group – but they needed a drummer. So on a return visit to London to buy instruments, Prodan decided to recruit Nuttal, who was unhappily ticking by in a haberdashery. With four pence in her pocket and a Gretsch snare drum, Nuttal arrived in Argentina, to the horror of her parents, who objected to its military government. The group settled in Hurlingham, the English quarter on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, and rehearsed on McKern's farm in Córdoba, which Prodan called Happy Valley. 'We rehearsed all night because it was cooler,' says Nuttal. 'We got very drunk and when the sun came up, we'd go outside, get into the pool, and go to bed.' This chaotic energy fed into Sumo's early songs. They quickly earned a reputation, performing in Buenos Aires pubs and bars such as Café Einstein, which Andrea describes as 'the place where all the freaks hid from the dictatorship to freak out'. Sign up to Sleeve Notes Get music news, bold reviews and unexpected extras. Every genre, every era, every week after newsletter promotion Life was hard in Argentina. Under the dictatorship, tens of thousands of political opponents were killed in clandestine 'disappearances'. LGBTQ people were jailed and tortured in their masses. Inflation was so severe that products were listed with colour codes rather than price tags, because they could change so drastically from morning to afternoon. 'It was a heavy scene with lots of people disappearing every day,' says McKern. 'Then this guy arrived, Luca, who hadn't lived under that – he was completely free.' Andrea adds: 'Imagine, when he came to Argentina, he was singing in English during one of the most terrible repressions. People were being killed for being suspected of being anti-military. And there's Luca singing anything he wants. He was so weird, the military didn't know what to do with him.' Authorities sometimes detained entire audiences – but, risking their freedom and even their lives, fans turned up to Sumo shows anyway. Once, when the police had arrested everyone and asked who Luca Prodan was, the crowd defiantly burst into cheers, Spartacus-style. Prodan was briefly jailed, writing to McKern from prison: 'He said, 'It's the same as being in Gordonstoun, but they don't ask you to do anything.'' But when the Falklands war kicked off in 1982, Nuttal felt she had to return to the UK. Singing in English was forbidden. Her presence had caused locals to nickname Sumo 'the English band'. The tabloids, she says, published stories about then PM Margaret Thatcher eating babies. 'She may have done,' Nuttal laughs, but it was emblematic of the tension in the country. Nuttal thought she might wait things out in neighbouring Uruguay, but returned to the UK, where she says people treated her like a traitor. She gave up music and becomes emotional when she describes how Argentines still visit her to this day, thanks to her role in their country's music history. 'They won't let go and I don't want them to,' she says, 'but I find it quite extraordinary because I was only there for a short time – I didn't even record anything.' Sokol replaced Nuttal on drums and a bass player and saxophonist were added. The band put out their first record, Corpiños en la Madrugada (Bras At Dawn), in 1983. That same year, the military government fell. But just as Argentina started to open up, Luca was becoming disillusioned with music. He briefly returned to Europe, and visited his brother Andrea in Italy, where he played a small part in a biblical TV drama, Anno Domini, with none other than Ava Gardner. 'I played Britannicus but they made him a jailer,' says Andrea. 'I remember Luca said, 'I came here on holiday and they put me in prison again!'' While Prodan's European influences had given birth to punk rock in Argentina, the continent had changed while he was away. Yuppiedom was taking hold in the UK – and Italy, Prodan thought, was even worse. So he decided to return to Argentina and throw all his energy back into the band. They signed with CBS, now a Sony subsidiary, to release their first proper album in 1985 – Divididos por la Felicidad (Divided By Happiness), a Spanish-language homage to Joy Division. 'All of a sudden, Sumo just exploded,' says Andrea. 'It was amazing.' The band had complete artistic control. They played larger venues and their fame snowballed. Two more records, Llegando los Monos (Here Come the Monkeys) and After Chabon, were released in the following two years. Yet, while Sumo had this artistic freedom and Argentina had regained its liberty, Prodan's alcoholism worsened. He was carrying a bottle of gin with him everywhere. 'We tried to get Luca clean,' says McKern. 'But you always had this feeling that this was going to end. In the beginning, Luca directed everything – all the music. In the final recordings, the band more or less presented him with the music, and asked him to sing on it.' In 1987, Prodan told a radio journalist that he expected to die soon. And just before Christmas, on 22 December, days after what would turn out to be Sumo's final show, Luca was found dead at his home in Buenos Aires' San Telmo neighbourhood, having suffered a heart attack. Sumo split into two bands, Divididos and Las Pelotas (the Bollocks), who became important for Argentina's rock nacional in their own right. 'He was bigger than life,' says Nuttal. Lanzani agrees: 'We hope to get to the soul, the essence of Luca,' he says. He wants the biopic, which is still being filmed, to bring belated international exposure to Prodan. A documentary is also in the works by Italian film-maker and journalist Luca Lancise, to be released next year. But whether or not international awareness grows, Prodan will always be a hero in Argentina. 'In only six years, Argentina accepted him as one of its own,' says Andrea. 'I think about it every day. He had the strength to break into the Argentine myth machine. And he got in there – alongside Maradona and Evita Perón.'
The Guardian
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
John Cale review – 83 years old and still forging deeper underground
John Cale is 83 years old. Live, it would be more than understandable to find a musician of that age in a period of slowing down and winding up, cranking out the hits to please old fans. John Cale is absolutely not doing that. An early outing of Captain Hook, a sprawling avant art-rock deep cut from a 1979 live album, sets the tone for an evening that is less about delivering the obvious and more about showcasing the staggering breadth and depth of his songcraft. Sitting almost permanently behind a keyboard, Cale doesn't give his masterly viola skills an outing tonight, but he sounds in remarkable voice for a man returning after several cancelled shows and four days on doctor-ordered vocal rest. Under a deep red light, Cale and his band play a tense, moody-bordering-on-menacing take on Elvis's Heartbreak Hotel, although the heavy-handed delivery of The Endless Plain of Fortune fares less well, feeling drained of all its subtlety and tenderness. There's a double tribute to Cale's beloved late friend and collaborator Nico, via a groove-locked Moonstruck (Nico's Song) and a deeply textural, atmospheric and moving version of her 1968 track Frozen Warnings, with the immersive sound of a bow scratching against bass strings filling the room like a dense fog. Cale forgoes the predictable once again and ends on Villa Albani, a song from Caribbean Sunset, an album so out of print it's not even officially on streaming: he turns it from a piece of strutting funk-rock into an almost psychedelic jam. The house lights go up and masses of bodies are already out of the door when Cale and co return and those unmistakable piano stabs of the Velvet Underground's I'm Waiting for the Man ring out. As confused audience members pile back in, the band develop it into a wonderfully elongated and grinding version. By the end of its fiery and hypnotic charge, it feels almost unrecognisable from its beginnings. In his ninth decade, Cale remains more interested in forging new paths than retreading the familiar.
