From the toot-filled Studio 54 era to Andy’s demise, day by day by Dictaphone… in his own inimitable words. Here are some reflections from a day in 1978, “The big news from the past two days is the mass suicide in Guyana of a cult led by somebody named Jim Jones. It’s costing the U.S. government $8 million to remove all the bodies and bring them back. They put cyanide in grape-flavored Kool-Aid. [laughs] Just think, if they’d used Campbell’s Soups I’d be so famous, I’d be on every news show, everyone would be asking about me. But Kool-Aid was always a hippie thing.”

Publisher: Warner
Paperback: 807 pages
Illustrated

“This book celebrates his art of a more private nature, and for the first time gathers together in one volume his little-known represenations of the naked human body as paintings, prints and drawings. It includes a group of ‘pretty’ nudes from the ‘50s, where sex organs are depicted as a desirable commodity, not unlike his advertising illustrations for shoes; the ‘Torso Series’ from the ‘70s based on Polaroids; some large drawings from the ‘70s and ‘80s; and a series of prints, ‘Sex Parts,’ from 1978.”

Publisher: Overlook
Hardback: 100 pages
Illustrated

Exhibition catalog of Warhol’s early, violent silk-screens: car crashes, plane wrecks, electric chairs, skulls, etc.

Publisher: Menil Collection
Paperback: 135 pages
Illustrated

This little volume, which proves that less is more, is a reprint of a book originally published in 1971, before the diaries and tell-all biographies and while Warhol’s mystique was still firmly intact. It predates the time when Warhol got assimilated into straight society and started doing the portraits, endorsements and general wearing out of his welcome as an innovator. Here was a time when the world was so enthralled with Warhol that a passage like “Warhol has begun to move the camera, speech is becoming more regular, what we are accustomed to hearing, though the layers of satiric and politicosexual meaning are strongly in evidence” carried a sense of revelation about the man and his work. When it came out, this book was the last word on Warhol and remained so for years. It probably had as much to do with shaping the public’s perception of Warhol the artist as anything that he did himself. As Andy is quoted as saying to the author: “Oh, I just love your book, it’s so great, Peter. You’ve got to sign my copy, it’s so fabulous! SA

Publisher: Da Capo
Paperback: 159 pages
Illustrated

Andy gives his thoughts on art, beauty, philosophy, money, sex—and death: “I don’t believe in it, because you’re not around to know that it’s happened. I can’t say anything about it because I’m not prepared for it.”

Publisher: Harcourt Brace
Paperback: 241 pages

Andy swished. Andy painted cocks. Andy camped. Andy made Blow Job. Andy wore wigs. Andy was fabulous. Back in the ‘60s, the straight world wondered, “Is he queer?’’ (Stupid question.) These days, they’re afraid to ask. “With few exceptions, most considerations of Warhol have ‘degayed’ him,” say the editors of this series of essays. “Despite the fact that many people ‘knew’ that Warhol was gay, hardly anyone, at least in the world of criticism and theory, will speak of it.” Warhol’s “straight” ascension into the fine art pantheon is halted here, for good reason. “To ignore Warhol’s queerness is to miss what is most valuable, interesting, sexy and political about his life and work.” GR

Publisher: Duke University
Paperback: 280 pages
Illustrated

Andy’s semibiographical statement on the Pop aesthetic/philosophy of the ‘60s—with Edie, the Factory, the Velvet Underground, his early film experiments, his superstars, Valerie Solanas, media preoccupations and more—written in his patented, detached, absurdist style.

Publisher: Harcourt Brace
Paperback: 310 pages
Illustrated

“Photographer Billy Name was a close friend of Andy Warhol and a trusted player in the creation of Warhol’s artistic environment during the mid-1960s. Name’s still photos of Warhol and his entourage, shot at the Factory in New York City, capture the essence of an era—its look, its drama, its moments of introspection—as well as the full roster of Warhol’s acquaintances… This first book-length treatment of Name’s work provides a peerless introduction to Warhol and his intimate circle.”

Publisher: Prestel-Verlag
Paperback: 127 pages
Illustrated

“I don’t really feel all these people with me every day at the Factory are just hanging around me, I’m more hanging around them… I like being a vacuum; it leaves me alone to work… anybody who comes by here is welcome, it’s just that we’re trying to do some work here.”—Andy Warhol
How is it that looking at pictures of some of the most utterly bored-looking people in the history of recorded time never itself seems to get boring? What was it about the crushing ennui of the denizens of Andy Warhol’s Factory that remains so damn compelling today? Perhaps it’s because the sense of passive detachment, smart-assed irony and fun-tinged alienation captured by photographer Stephen Shore’s lens was so shockingly new at the time, so incredibly vital, that it was, and remains, positively electric. Shore’s remarkable collection of photographs taken at the Factory between 1965 and 1967, along with writer Lynne Tillman’s interviews with many of the surviving participants, provide a delicious voyeur’s-eye view of what was undoubtedly one of the seminal breeding pools of postwar American pop culture, a scene which forged the look and attitude of so much that would come after. They’re all here in gorgeous black and white—Andy, Gerard Malanga, the Velvets, Billy Name, Ondine, Nico, Edie Sedgwick, Ingrid Superstar, Ultra Violet and Paul Morrissey. AD

Publisher: Thunder's Mouth
Paperback: 176 pages
Illustrated