“Factory Girl” is a 2006 film about the complicated relationship between 1960s fashion diva Edie Sedgwick and iconic American artist Andy Warhol. The liberated and free atmosphere in which the characters of the film live, however, is also shown as superficial, insubstantial, and potentially dangerous. Throughout the film, Edie gradually turns from a naive and bright heroine into an outcast in the bohemian circles of artists and musicians, while drugs and free love leave her emotionally crushed, with a lost identity. The film not only attempts to portray the riotous 1960s in American artistic circles but also serves as a warning of the extremes and dangers of bohemian society.
I first heard about Andy Warhol because he collaborated with popular rock musicians of the 1960s. His covers were extremely provocative for their time, focusing on symbols of male sexuality. Warhol, a Polish-American artist, was most active in the 1960s but produced photographic portraits, prints, and collages over the next two decades. The specificity of Warhol’s technique is in the artist’s focus on innovative printing techniques to create a picture. The artist used hand-painted stencils and later photo projections to outline the image using silkscreen printing. This method made it possible to reproduce paintings and images, which is why Warhol’s creative studio was called the Factory.
Warhol gained popularity in the US in the 1960s, creating works in the pop art genre. The essence of the genre was to create art for the mass consumer, emphatically superficial but attractive and capable of being perceived as a criticism of the culture of consumerism. Warhol reworked images of everyday American culture that dominate the mass perception – from cans of tomato soup to multi-colored oversaturated portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Mao Zedong. His work has an amazing resilience, replicating itself in pop culture and fashion design to this day.
Mostly the film focuses on the less popular mediums chosen by Warhol for self-expression. “Factory Girl” is replete with episodes in which Andy makes his amateur movie. As his character says, the purpose of filming is to produce a bad picture, which is a good artistic gesture and an artistic task in itself. Warhol uses cameras of poor quality, full of artifacts, and defocusing when aiming at an object. The characters are caricatures of masculine stereotypes, while the plots are almost non-existent and are absolute conventions. Warhol also liked to take uncomfortable interviews with celebrities on camera. The film depicts an unsuccessful attempt to embarrass musician Bob Dylan, who in turn retorts to Andy with unheard-of impudence. How Warhol photographs or produces his many masterpieces is not covered in the film.
Scenes of artistic training in this film are practically absent due to the need to emphasize the liberal amateurism of the Factory movement. Warhol appreciates otherness and the manifestation of individuality that is not subject to standard classification. Andy does not prepare Edie and does not make an artist out of her – all their artistic interaction takes place in the format of a frivolous friendship with a hint of intimacy. The principle of patronage in the art scene in New York is decisive for the life of each of the artists passing through the Factory. Warhol’s attitude to art is transmitted to the people around him, and his patronage is relevant only as long as he is interested in a person. His frivolity and indifference are expressed in the fact that Edie becomes an outcast and is in no way able to realize herself after falling into Andy’s disgrace.
The art market represents a bohemian gathering of wealthy and carefree people in the film. The New York public is rather superficial and hedonistic, appreciating art as an accompaniment to a frivolous lifestyle. In one of the scenes, Edie tells Warhol that his work could be appreciated in Paris, which speaks of the low aesthetic level of the New York art scene. This superficiality is also expressed in criticism – people are more interested in journalistic gossip and the appearance of Edie Sedgwick than in the actual content of the art they produce. Speaking about freedom of expression in the film, its dual side should be noted. Artistic attitudes turn out to be intentionally superficial – Warhol does not express a desire for full-fledged aesthetics but rather emphasizes its emptiness. That is why the film is replete with vulgarities to emphasize the cynicism of Warhol’s attitude towards art and its recipients. The public demands scandals and headlines, while the art of the Factory inhabitants turns out to be nothing more than a label to distract from the emptiness of these members of high society.
The film presents Andy Warhol as an extremely vulnerable person, seeking to protect himself from his complexes with the help of his art and attitude to the world. This seems to be a fairly accurate depiction of an artist who often asserted himself at the expense of other people, becoming cold with those who longed to get to know him. However, the film fails to emphasize that Warhol’s superficiality is a critique of Western society, showing him as an artist capitalizing on modern culture, but not subverting it.
Nevertheless, I liked the film, as it brilliantly portrays the 1960s era of a bohemian lifestyle with rock music and drugs, full of flashy designer suits and perfectly styled hair. The film left a favorable impression due to its ambitiousness, and the desire to immerse the viewer in a place and an era. Special mention deserves the performance of Sienna Miller, who embodied the tragedy of a young girl who is digested and spat out by this consumerist hedonistic lifestyle.