Andy Warhol declared that everyone gets 15 minutes of fame. For some women drawn into the artist’s spotlight, that 15 minutes never ended, as they became forever tethered to his legacy.
In Warhol’s Muses: The Artists, Misfits, and Superstars Destroyed by the Factory Fame Machine, veteran journalist and biographer Laurence Leamer turns the Pittsburgh-born pop art icon inside out — not through another examination of his paintings or Factory escapades, but through the women who were his collaborators and, sometimes, casualties. The book takes a fresh and often sobering look at Warhol by focusing on five central muses: women who glittered in his orbit, and were, in turn, reshaped or shattered by it.
“I didn’t want to write another biography that focused on Warhol himself,” Leamer tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “This was a unique way of looking at him. When you understand the women in his life, the ‘60s look different. Warhol looks different.”
The Warhol of Warhol’s Muses is not the often mythologized enigmatic art-world savant, but a duplicitous figure; charming, calculating, and many times cruel. Leamer doesn’t shy away from the darker truths: Warhol paid his collaborators poorly, treated fame like currency, and discarded people once their novelty wore off. “He paid them in proximity,” Leamer says. “Being near him was the compensation.”
While Warhol’s orbit was famously crowded, the book’s featured muses — each compelling, chaotic, and, at times, tragic — were essential to how Warhol constructed his myth. Edie Sedgwick, Brigid Berlin, and others were not merely background players at the Factory; they were the art, the performance. And they were the fallout. Leamer didn’t consider many alternatives — “these were the important ones,” he insists.
These women came from all walks of life, some from old money, others from obscurity. All were vital to Warhol’s image-making machine. “Warhol didn’t just create art,” Leamer says. “He manufactured celebrity, and these women were both his materials and his muses.”
That transactional relationship, where charisma was used for loyalty and attention was used for self-worth, powered the Factory (Warhol’s studio) and created a feedback loop of exploitation disguised as avant-garde liberation. The Factory was sold as a haven for outcasts and creatives, but as Warhol’s Muses reveals, it was also a place riddled with addiction, manipulation, and emotional wreckage. Leamer balances these tensions with unflinching clarity. “It was a sick place in some ways,” he says. “Everyone was on amphetamines, desperate to be close to him. It was the age of amphetamine, not LSD or marijuana, like people think.”
Leamer’s research led him deep into the archives of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, where he was allowed limited access to the artist’s vast collection of audio tape recordings Warhol obsessively made throughout his life. “There are over 400 tapes, mostly unused,” Leamer says. “I had to sign papers, take no notes, and pay a thousand dollars just to access a sliver.”
Despite the hurdles, he managed to unearth transcripts that gave him a clearer picture of the muses’ lives and Warhol’s controlling, voyeuristic tendencies. “He barely spoke. He just recorded everything. He let others talk. It was eerie.”
Despite all this, Leamer does not see Warhol as a villain, but as a cynic who recognized and profited from a new era. “He was a prophet of celebrity culture,” Leamer says. “But he also understood its emptiness.”
Warhol’s birthplace also plays a key role in the story. Though Warhol spent most of his life trying to distance himself from Pittsburgh, even lying about where he was born, Leamer sees the city’s influence. “He was embarrassed by his roots,” he says. “But Pittsburgh gave him everything. He was a true son of the city, whether he liked it or not.”
What makes Warhol’s Muses so compelling isn’t just what it reveals about Warhol, but what it restores to the women, lifting them from the footnotes of the artist’s life story. They were artists, heiresses, and seekers. Some wanted to be free, others famous, but they all got tangled in Warhol’s machinery.
“The idea of being a star was everything,” Leamer says. “And Warhol offered that. But if everyone’s a star, then no one is.”
The book leaves readers with a haunting question: how much of yourself are you willing to give up just to be seen?
“I hope this book pushes us toward a higher truth,” Leamer says. “The definitive Warhol biography won’t come until those tapes are fully released. But this is a start. These women deserve to be remembered … not just as muses, but as people who lived, created, and paid a price.”
As the muses fade and Warhol’s image grows ever more commercialized, Leamer’s book urges us to remember that behind the glossy surface of pop art are real people, often forgotten, used, and silenced.
This article appears in May 7-13, 2025.
