The Factory
The Factory was Andy Warhol's New York studio from 1963 to 1969. The first Factory was located on the fifth floor at 231 East 47th Street, New York. The rent was only about one hundred dollars a year.
Famed for its groundbreaking parties, the Factory was the hip hangout for artsy types, amphetamine users, and the Warhol superstars. This is where Warhol would make his silkscreens. It was covered with tin foil and metallic paint, with silver balloons frequently drifting around the ceiling. Aside from his two-dimensional art, Andy also used to the Factory to make shoes, films, comissions, sculptures and just about everything else that the Warhol name could be attatched to and sold. His first comissions consisted of a single lithograph of the person for $25,000, with additional panels in other colors for $5,000 each. He later made that $20,000.
The Factory became a meeting place of artists and musicians such as Lou Reed, Truman Capote and Mick Jagger. Warhol became the manager of Reed's influential New York rock band The Velvet Underground in 1965, and designed the famous cover for The Velvet Underground & Nico, the band's debut album. The album cover consisted of a plastic yellow bananna that the listener could actually peel off and underneath was a pink peeled banana.
Similarly for Jagger, Warhol designed the album cover for the Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers. The well endowed male crotch on the front was one of the Factory regulars. Warhol took shots of several friends and kept the identity of the chosen crotch a secret, although many spectulate that it was Joe Dallesandro. The photograph contained an unzippable fly. Both album covers are widely regarded as some of the greatest album art of all time.
Warhol included the Velvet Underground in the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, a mix of art rock, Warhol films and belly dancers. They used the Factory as a place to rehearse.
Also part of 'the scene' at the factory were Holly Woodlawn, Jackie Curtis, and Candy Darling. As an artist, Andy Warhol frequently used these girls and others in his films, plays, and on-goings. While drag queens and transsexuals had previously been viewed by society as just depressing weirdos, Andy Warhol made them sexual radicals.
Because of the constant drug use and the presence of sexually liberal artists and radicals, drugged orgies were a frequent happening at the Factory. Warhol would often arrange three or four friends on a couch that they had in the middle of the Factory, and film them having sex. Above is a still from one of such films, entitled Couch.