Glenn Horowitz Bookseller is selling pieces from this dark period of Pop Art history
FATALE FEMINIST: Valerie Solanas, photographed in 1965 by Howard Smith for the Village Voice
Born in New Jersey in 1936, Valerie Jean Solanas became infamous decades later on June 3, 1968, when she pulled out a .32 Beretta and pumped bullets into Andy Warhol and art critic Mario Amaya at the Factory, Warhol’s art studio cum avant-garde playground in Union Square. Both men survived the shooting, but Warhol suffered a ruptured stomach, liver, spleen and lungs and had to wear a surgical corset for the rest of his life. Confessing to the crime hours later, Solanas told a policeman that Warhol “had too much control of my life.” The wannabe writer was infuriated that Warhol had not produced her play, Up Your Ass, instead giving her 25 bucks to appear in his short film I, a Man.
15+ Minutes of Infamy: Solanas on the cover of the Daily News on June 4, 1968
A fringe character who lived on and off the streets, Solanas’ biggest writing endeavor was The SCUM Manifesto which laid out her radical “feminist” mission to eliminate the male sex and establish a utopian society of women. “SCUM” stood for the “Society for Cutting Up Men” and Solanas peddled her mimeographed treatise wherever she could, selling the manifesto for $1 to women and $2 to men on New York sidewalks.
“Fans of Warhol’s world (I mean, does Valerie Solanas really have any “fans”?) can own genuine artifacts from this grisly pop art history.”
Portrayed by Lili Taylor in the 1996 film I Shot Andy Warhol and later by Lena Dunham in the TV series American Horror Story, Solanas, who was often homeless, succumbed to pneumonia in 1988 in a fleabag hotel in San Francisco, 14 months after Warhol died. In 2000, her play Up Your Ass was staged before an audience at the George Coates Theater in San Francisco.
SCUM FOR SALE: Solanas’ manifesto and a letter she wrote to the Village Voice, are on sale at Glenn Horowitz Bookseller
Now, fans of Warhol’s world (I mean, does Valerie Solanas really have any “fans”?) can own genuine artifacts from this grisly piece of pop art history. Rare bookseller Glenn Horowitz is selling “The Robespierre of feminism” – a Solanas collection that includes the 1977 edition of her SCUM Manifesto and recorded interviews with both Solanas and Warhol.
“People sometimes say that the way things happen in movies is unreal,” Warhol said after being shot by Solanas. “But actually it’s the way things happen in life that’s unreal.” – PETER DAVIS
REEL LIFE: Lili Taylor as Solanas in the 1996 film I Shot Andy Warhol
