1968

The year 1968 marked a sharp division in Andy Warhol’s life and work: after a shooting that nearly killed him, he returned to a changing Factory scene and resumed contact with friends and collaborators. The move to Union Square, the making of Paul Morrissey’s film Flesh, and the different responses of people around the studio gave the year both a sense of renewal and an awareness of how much had changed.

A year shaped by recovery

Warhol was shot in June 1968 and, three months later, was still recovering when the narrator first met him in the autumn. During that recovery, he had heard doctors believe he was gone before they revived him. The experience shaped his reunions with friends: as they came to see how he was, his expression seemed to register astonishment that he had survived to meet them again.

In the summer, while Warhol was at home recovering, Paul Morrissey made Flesh, his own feature-length film after assisting on Warhol’s Factory movies. Its lead was Joe Dallesandro, playing a male hustler trying to raise money for his girlfriend’s abortion. The film began a long commercial run at the Garrick Theater in the autumn, extending the Factory’s filmmaking into a public theatrical setting while Warhol was still recovering.

The Factory at Union Square

The Factory had moved in the spring from its original silvered loft on East 47th Street to a white-and-mirrored loft occupying the sixth floor of 33 Union Square West. Warhol valued the neighborhood’s park and the view of the Con Edison tower, whose illuminated clock was a constant landmark. The studio was also close to Max’s Kansas City, where artists, fashion figures, musicians, and underground filmmakers gathered and watched one another’s social fortunes unfold.

The new loft became a working base for the feature-length 16mm films that were the Factory’s major activity from 1968 to 1972; the films were intended for enlargement to 35mm commercial release. Jed Johnson, who had arrived from Sacramento with his twin brother Jay, first stripped paint from the loft’s window frames and built shelves for film cans. He also taught himself editing on the Factory’s Moviola, practicing with reels of San Diego Surf and Lonesome Cowboys, films Warhol had made on a trip to Arizona and California shortly before he was shot.

Reunions and departures

Friends who had not seen Warhol since before the shooting returned to the Union Square loft, among them Viva, Ondine, Nico, Lou Reed, and other members of The Velvet Underground. They asked how he was feeling; he generally reassured them. Brigid Berlin also came by, recording accounts of recent conversations and events for Warhol, who paid her for the material. These visits made the studio a place of renewed social contact as well as film work.

Not everyone resumed the Factory’s daytime life. Billy Name, who had shaped the earlier Factory’s silver look, withdrew into the darkroom he had set up at the back of the new loft. Over the course of late 1968 and early 1969, he became increasingly nocturnal, emerging only after others had left; food containers were the only sign to colleagues that he was still there. His eventual departure came later, after more than a year of this isolation. The contrast between returning friends and Name’s retreat gives 1968’s Factory a divided character: a scene gathering itself again around Warhol, even as one of its defining figures slipped out of view.