How Edie Sedgwick became Andy Warhol’s biggest victim
Andy Warhol has always been a tricky figure to pin down. Some love him, reading a whole world of meaning into his pop art creations. Others believe him to be vapid and meaningless. Some even went so far as to try and kill him, as Valerie Solanas’ hatred of the artist boiled over into violence. But it’s Warhol’s mean streak that is rarely spoken about. Under the surface of bananas and Coca-Cola bottles, there appeared to be a severe cruelty that was often pointed directly at his closest friends. Edie Sedgwick, his original superstar muse, seemed to get it worse of all.
Sedgwick and Warhol appeared like a friendship match made in heaven. When they met in 1965, Andy Warhol was just starting to creep into the big time. His soup cans and Marilyn’s had begun to take the art world by storm, and Warhol revelled in his new celebrity as he started gathering up the in-crowd we’d come to know as his Factory.
Edie Sedgwick was a rich girl, new to New York and on the hunt for fun. A member of the historic Sedgwick family from Massachusetts, her childhood home was wealthy but traumatic as Sedgwick faced abuse from her father and then was sectioned in a mental health hospital when she tried to speak out about it. To put it plainly, Sedgwick had precisely the kind of wealth Warhol wanted and exactly the kind of dark backstory he could use. In his book, The Philosophy Of Andy Warhol, he writes of the meeting: “I could see that she had more problems than anybody I’d ever met, so beautiful but so sick. I was really intrigued.”
Warhol’s attraction to darkness is well documented. Peer beyond his pop artwork, and you’ll find twisted paintings of violence, horrifying headlines, and the same images of death made over and over. In his multimedia work, Warhol appears as a kind of puppeteer. His books are made up of recorded conversations with friends in various states of sobriety and sanity. Throughout them, you hear flashes of cruelty as Warhol coaxes them into sharing deep-held secrets. In his films, Warhol’s voice often comes through isolated from behind the camera, positioning his friends in perverse situations. He seemed to have a thing for getting his friends intoxicated and then filming or recording them, seemingly finding some way to exploit their vulnerability. And as his friendship with Sedgwick started to dwindle, as she drifted away from the crowd, her role in Warhol’s work became increasingly twisted.
Before, Sedgwick stood out as Warhol’s original muse. She was the first of the crowd that would be called his ‘superstars’, later including Nico, Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis and more. Sedgwick was actually an artist herself, having studied sculpture in school, so was always keen to be around Warhol and his artists. She would go on to play a major role in Warhol’s career in the mid-1960s; she danced in the centre of the all-male cast of Vinyl, she would join Warhol for TV interviews to speak for him, and she accompanied him everywhere he went. In the end, she was his leading lady in ten movies, but like all of Warhol’s collaborators, he didn’t pay her a penny.
There’s a pattern in Warhol’s crowd of rich people being brought into the fold, becoming addicted to the drugs that were so openly passed around the scene, and then being kicked out. Warhol appeared to love his muses, but the relationships always appeared to be transactional. Warhol viewed his life and art as a business, and so his muses were things he could use in their totality. That became evident with the downfall of Sedgwick, whom he seemed to use and abuse to an extreme.
It started gently with his 1965 film Poor Little Rich Girl. The film is totally obsessed with Sedgwick, simply following her through a day in her life with nothing too personal or private to be filmed. We see Sedgwick getting dressed and taking drugs, and finally, we see her in bed. The film culminates in an uncomfortable scene with Sedgwick lying on her bed while her friend, Chuck Wein, questions her on her spending habits, and particularly how she spent all of her inheritance in six months, revealing that Sedgwick was bankrupt.
From the title to the content, Poor Little Rich Girl is a barely veiled mockery of Sedgwick that feels designed to embarrass her. It clearly wasn’t cruel enough for Warhol as only a few months later, as Sedgwick’s addiction was worsening, he filmed her for Beauty No.2, a film so exploitative that it’s painful to watch.
Similar to Poor Little Rich Girl, Beauty No.2 sees Edie Sedgwick lying on her bed. But this time, she’s even more intoxicated and fellow Factory member Gino Piserchio has been positioned next to her. From behind the camera, Wein and Warhol’s instructions and questions become increasingly chilling as they taunt Sedgwick. Instructing Piserchio to touch her more and more as they turn their line of questioning to her father’s abuse, it ends when Sedgwick becomes so distressed she throws an ashtray at the Wein.
What forced the step up in cruelty? Some say it was Sedgwick’s relationship with Bob Dylan that caused Warhol to lash out in jealousy. In his own words, Warhol writes that Sedgwick “drifted away from us after she started seeing a singer-musician who can only be described as The Definitive Pop Star—possibly of all time—who was then fast gaining recognition on both sides of the Atlantic as the thinking man’s Elvis Presley.”
Warhol and Dylan’s rivalry is well documented, leaving Sedgwick to be caught in the crossfire and increasingly victimised by the artist, who seemed determined to break her down. By the end of 1966, Warhol and Sedgwick’s short, sharp friendship ended explosively. Sedgwick was outed from the Factory scene, left with no money, a crippling drug addiction and now no support network. Warhol delivered the final blow to Sedgwick as he told her about Dylan’s marriage, finding out that he’d tied the knot with Sara Lownds behind her back. In the biopic Factory Girl, this moment is devastating, revealing Sedgwick to be completely broken down by Warhol and then left out in the cold as he moved on to a new shiny thing: Nico. To rub salt in the wound, Nico was Bob Dylan’s ex-girlfriend.
In one of their final arguments, as Sedgwick walked away from Warhol, he’s reported to have said, “Do you think Edie will let us film her when she commits suicide?”
In 1972, Sedgwick would find a small way to tell her side of the story in the movie Ciao! Manhattan. Using audio clips of Sedgwick detailing her time as part of the Factory scene, she delivers a damning report of the falsity of Warhol, the drug addiction she was facing, and the exploitation she suffered. It would’ve seemed like Sedgwick was finally free, but on November 16th, 1971, she overdosed and died aged 28.
You would think that after the death of his close friend, Andy Warhol would have something nice to say about his Edie Sedgwick. Instead, in 1975, his book The Philosophy Of Andy Warhol only digs the knife in further as he dedicates a chapter to the story of “taxi”, a “wonderful, beautiful blank” that stands in for Sedgwick. Writing about her “selfishness”, her hoarding of drugs, and recounting her life and addiction with nothing but coldness – even after death, Sedgwick remained nothing but a toy Warhol couldn’t resist but play with. The closest thing he gets to any kind of feeling is writing simply, “I missed having her around.”