Tuning in to Ultra Violet

September 6 was the birthday of Ultra Violet (Isabelle Collin Dufresne, 1935-2014).

Dufresne was a French debutante who fell into Salvador Dali’s orbit immediately after graduating college. She was his assistant, pupil, and lover for about a decade before switching horses to Andy Warhol, becoming one of his Factory Superstars from roughly 1963 to 1969. Much like Edie Sedgwick, she brought the energy of a society girl to parties even when the proceedings were way-out or even tawdry. Unlike Edie, and most of the other Factory people, she didn’t ruin her life with drugs. She took the screen name Ultra Violet in reference to the fact that her hair was often dyed purple. Her films with Warhol included The Life of Juanita Castro (1965, written by Ronald Tavel), I a Man (1967), and **** (1967, a.k.a. “Four Stars”). She was also on a play by Picasso called Desire Caught By the Tail, which was filmed in 1967, and John Chamberlain’sThe Secret Life of Hernando Cortez (1969), which co-starred Taylor Mead and is distinctly in the Warhol/ Jack Smith vein.

In 1969, Ultra Violet and Warhol parted ways. Ultra Violet went on to have a very busy period as an actress for about four years, appearing in small roles in feature films, some of which were pretty legit. You can see her in Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Phynx (1970), Win Chamberlain’s Brand X (1970), Michel Auder’s Cleopatra (1970, starring Viva, her successor at the Factory), the X-rated Dinah East (1970, this time as star), Milos Forman’sTaking Off (1971), Simon King of the Witches (1971), The Telephone Book (1971, as “Whip Woman), the Israel Horovitz-penned Believe In Me (1971), Savages (1972, written by Michael O’Donoghue, directed by James Ivory), Curse of the Headless Horseman (1972, top billed), and Bad Charleston Charlie (1973).

At around this time, she had a sort of crisis. She had a near death experience in 1973 which caused her to reflect on her life. And after all, she had started out as a serious artist and now she found herself doing low budget horror movies of debatable worth. With the exception of a cameo in An Unmarried Woman (1978) she returned to her art. Also: in 1981 she converted to Mormonism! I don’t judge, a close relative of mine did the same, but you must admit it’s an unexpected thing to do for a French Catholic artist who appeared in movies, some of which verged on pornography. But I will say this: if you’re looking for rules and order and something to you from spinning out of control, the Church of LDS is not the worst place to look. She reportedly stayed in it for the rest of her days.

Warhol died in 1987, and Ultra Violet wasted no time dining out on her past thereafter. She wrote the book Famous for 15 Minutes: My Years with Andy Warhol (1988) and appeared in the documentaries Message to Andy Warhol (2000), Andy Warhol’s Factory People (2007), and Ultra Violet for Sixteen Minutes (2011).

In 2011 she created several artworks in observance of the 10th anniversary of September 11; read about that here.

Sadly, just as she was working on a retrospective exhibition in 2014, the cancer that first plagued her 40 years earlier returned to finish the job.