Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties

by Steven Watson

Based on dozens of interviews and previously unpublished material, Factory Made is the most comprehensive account to date of the artistic aura in the 60s. During the period Warhol was producing his most iconic art: Marilyn, Campbell Soup and Brillo boxes, Steven Watson shows how the ever-changing cast of characters at the Silver Factory - an eclectic and eccentric mix of artists, poets, musicians, filmmakers, hustlers and drag queens - interacted...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679423729
• ISBN13: 9780679423720
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: Pantheon Books
• Length: 512 Pages
• Weight: 2.49 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 7.7" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

couldn't put it down - - excellent book

wow... what amazing people, and what an amazing book! i finished it in two days, that's how easy and addicting it is to read. very detailed, and full of great pictures. i closed the book wishing that i could be there, somehow, at the factory in the sixties; i felt like i had bonded with Edie, Billy, Brigid, Candy, Jackie, Holly, Nico... it is a profoundly sad and haunting book, considering how the majority of these people are dead from liver failure, cancer, overdose, suicide. i will definitely read it again and again.

Behind every man ...

... lies the Factory regulars. Watson tells the stories of each of the Silver Factory regulars in parallel, with attention to detail and balance. No shortage of talent and no shortage of self-destructiveness in this group. Focusing on the sixties seems wise because Warhol accomplished little outside of the sixties. Not focusing on Warhol seems wise because such a gifted group has usually been neglected. This quality of research and of writing are rare. And, if the draft ever comes back, you can learn from this book several good ways to be rejected.

Factory Made Well

Many books and articles have been written about Andy Warhol, The Factory, The Silver Sixties and Andy's Superstars but, this book is the only one that takes a comprehensive look at all of the elements of that era that could only happen in the Sixties. I initially got this book because I'm a huge fan of Edie Sedgwick (after having read the AMAZING Edie: An American Biography) and love to find new info and pictures of her. This book didn't shed any new light on Edie (except for the fact she had an affair with the Velvet's John Cale). In fact, I was surprised that the author took alot of info from Edie's biography verbatim. Other than that slight oversight, I cannot get enough of this book. Watson did an amazing job of chronicling the lives of the (many) Superstars Andy "created" and stuck in front of the camera to "say nothing". As much as Andy and his ilk wanted to "say nothing", just their existence said so much and is still being talked about today. Waston also did a superb job of capturing the whys and hows of The Factory, even going so far as to have side notes of the Factory's lingo and quotes from Superstars and other artists. One quote that struck me and sums up is this book was given by John Richardson. He stated, "Although Andy Warhol's famous movies are among the most boring ever made, this book about them is endless fascinating". FM is filled with trivia and candid photos (some of them, never before seen) of that weird and special time at the Factory (the most productive and artistic in my opinion). If you're a fan of Edie, Andy or any of the superstars, this book is a MUST have! You will endlessly re-read the text and pour over the pictures time and again.

Andy's Choice

I admit to being a Warhol fanatic since the 1960s -- so I have read a ton of stuff about Andy. What makes Steven Watson's book so pivitol is his vantage point. He is standing right at the highpoint in Warhol's life and career and can measure the rise (while understanding the slide). It's hard to define the process in which ideas are germinated but Watson makes it clear that Warhol's life and it's social context was a test tube. It was his selection of co-workers, friends, arts folk, and so on that became the ingredients for his "big bang" (the icons of Campbells Soup, Marilyn, Elvis, Jackie, etc.) It wasn't an accident but intuition that allowed him to passively permit things to happen. And everyone feed off each other. For a while, when no one really understood what was happening, it was exciting. It wasn't until the balance was disrupted and Warhol was shot that things became self-conscious and contrived. Although this is a scholarly work it is clear that Watson relishes the intrique and relationships that made it all happen. It's his enthusiasm which keeps you enthralled in the search. Clearly Warhol's desperate need for fame led him into deep waters but he quietly became the playful innovator who kept reinventing himself -- until he unwittingly started to take it for granted.

Warhol was Flesh and Blood

To anyone interested in the creative zeitgeist of 1960s New York, Steven Watson's FACTORY MADE is a must read.Feelings about Andy Warhol's art aside, Steven Watson's reportorial history may leave younger readers slightly incredulous that so much trail blazing could have been happening then, and older readers will have their memories jarred with recognition of times they lived through. As I read I frequently found myself going,"Ah ha!"--it was as though little pieces came together page by page to put the puzzle of the period into a broad picture that also clarified bits of this reader's own life. I saw Warhol's first show at the Ferris Gallery in Westwood in 1962. I found myself in a restaurant called Max's Kansas City in June of 1966 (an unforgetable experience for a green 21-year-old). I saw Andy Warhol and what must have been the Velvet Underground entourage sitting in an open-air cafe doing nothing--just hanging out in West LA (Watson explains why). My sister-in-law was a nurse at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara. She treated this "complete crazy" named Edie Sedgewick. Had I heard of her? She kept talking about Andy Warhol.At first I thought, "Oh, no! Another book on Andy Warhol." Well, as far as I'm concerned this is THE book on Andy Warhol. It is much better than good. For the first time the super-famous Sixties artist is shown as a real-life person. Watson's writing is amazingly descriptive, deducing people's thinking and social interaction from original interview material. The writing style is amazingly fresh and fun, yet serious at the same time. Everything else I've read on Warhol has kept in place the shroud of his own calculated mystique--a mirage of mystery, contradiction, celebrity, and passivity. Watson's text clears that all away. Hey! Andy was flesh and blood after all. Now THAT is a great accomplishment, and I suspect a first in the Warhol literature.A period of only eight years (to 1968) is dealt with which amplifies the concept of the brevity of artistic "periods" with their volcanic creativity. I found myself referring to the personality "map" at the book's beginning again and again for orientation and clarity. This map/chart is actually very important for structural reasons. Watson has always been deeply interested in the social-creative dynamic with it's accompanying synchronicity that mysteriously brings creative people together before they're "famous." He's dealt with this question quite literally in his books and has expressed it by measuring people's physical proximity to each other. Thus, each year, each month that is chronicled in FACTORY MADE is a kind of maping of the characters' actual location and emotional/mental journey with relation to each of the others--almost like watching blips on a radar screen.I found myself looking for one or two characters I liked best in the Silver Factory group. I found them, and they didn't include Warhol. At a deep level Watson's book reveals Warhol's genius at collaboration, and ho