ANDY WARHOL'S FACTORY
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The bathroom wall at the Factory after being
covered in silver foil by Billy Name.
Graffiti by Binghampton Birdy.
(photo: Stephen Shore)
Gerard Malanga:
"Andy and I spent about 6 weeks looking at spaces. Finally he settled on this one space located between 2nd and 3rd Avenues on 47th Street. It was formally a hat manufacturing company, but had closed shop. Andy was attracted to the space because it didn't appear to be your typical artist's studio, with wood floors and big windows looking out on a grand urban vista. It didn't have that artsy aura. It had, more or less, an anonymous feel to it. you walked into it and you weren't quite sure what it was or what had gone on there previous. Andy kind of liked that." (GM185)
Andy Warhol:
“The Factory was about 50 feet by 100, and it had windows all along 47th Street looking south. It was basically crumbling - the walls especially were in bad shape. I set up my painting area with the workbench near the front by the windows, but I kept most of the light blocked out - that’s the way I like it.” (POP61)
The space at the back of the Factory gradually became Billy Name’s space. (POP61) Billy had done some lighting at Judson Church and had been a waiter at Serendipity.
Andy Warhol:
Billy Name “gave the impression of being generally creative - he dabbled in lights and papers and artists’ materials. In the beginning he just fussed around like the other A-heads, doing all the busy stuff, fooling with mirrors and feathers and beads, taking hours to paint some little thing like the door to a cabinet... and sometimes he was so high he wouldn’t even realize that he’d just painted it.” (POP63)
Billy furnished the Factory with trash he found on the street, including “the huge curved couch that would be photographed so much in the next few years - the hairy red one that we used in so many of our movies - Billy found right out in front of the “Y”. (POP63-64) He was also responsible for covering the crumbling walls and pipes in silver foil, spraying everything with silver paint, “right down to the toilet bowl.” (POP64)
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