POPISM

The book reads like a novel, a social history of the rarest kind, written by someone who helped shape the events he describes. Warhol (1928-1987) was a painter, graphic artist, filmmaker including the famous Chelsea Girls. Here are paintings, movies, fashions and music and the superstars and relationships that made up the scene at his Manhattan loft, the Factory. A cultural storm swept through the 1960s - Pop Art, psychedelia, Bob Dylan, underground filmmaking - and at its centre sat a bemused young artist with silver hair named Andy Warhol. Andy knew everybody from the cultural commissioner of New York to drug-driven drag queens, and everybody knew Andy. His studio, the Factory, was the place - where he created large canvases of soup cans and Pop icons and Marilyn Monroe that defined Pop Art. Everyone from Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground to Edie Sedgwick could be found there and where Warhol himself could observe the comings and goings of the avant-garde. 392pp, Penguin paperback with 16 pages of photos including the most striking drag queen ever named Candy Darling.