Larry Leamer on Andy Warhol's Coterie of Female Victims and Whether America's Top-Selling Artist's Work Is Worth their Canvases

I've known Larry Leamer forever thanks to my close friendship with Larry's recently departed, economist extraordinaire, brother -- Edward Leamer. Ed wasn't bowled over by any economist. But he was in awe of Larry, years before Larry became one of our nation's leading biographers. Much of Larry's work focuses on the rich and scandalous. Warhol's Muses certainty meets that bill. The book, which is fresh off the press, is Larry's umpteenth. The list includes Capote’s Women, Madness Under the Royal Palms, Mar-A-Lago -- Inside the Gates of Power, The Kennedy Women, King of the Night -- the Life of Johnny Carson, and, well, here's the now-outdated Wiki list. I copy below Penguin-Random House's careful description of the book. But, as you'll hear in the podcast, Larry raises a darker question than whether Warhol was a deeply evil person. He questions whether the art world fell for the NFT-artist of the day, specifically whether Warhol's oeuvre, including the $195 million The Blue Shot Marilyn, constitutes works of art or the art of self-perpetuating, financial fabrication.

From the jacket of Warhol's Muses by Laurence Leamer

“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."