page_title: Isabelle Collin Dufresne
section_title: Warhol and "The Factory"
hierarchical_section_title: Isabelle Collin Dufresne / Warhol and "The Factory"
caption_attribution_description: Ultra Violet (Isabelle Collin Dufresne).
context_page_description: Isabelle Collin Dufresne was a French-American artist, author, and both a colleague of Andy Warhol and one of the pop artist's so-called superstars. Earlier in her career, she worked for and studied with surrealist artist Salvador Dalí. Dufresne lived and worked in New York City, and also had a studio in Nice, France.
context_section_description: In 1963, Dalí introduced Dufresne to Andy Warhol, and soon she moved into the orbit of his unorthodox studio, "The Factory". In 1964 she selected the stage name "Ultra Violet" at Warhol's suggestion, because it was her preferred fashion — her hair color at the time was often violet or lilac. She became one of many "superstars" in Warhol's Factory, and played multiple roles in over a dozen films between 1965 and 1974.
  In 1967 Ultra Violet played a part (with, among others, Taylor Mead) in the surrealistic play Desire Caught by the Tail by Pablo Picasso when it was set for the first time in France at a festival in Saint-Tropez. She would eventually appear in more than 20 films, not counting numerous documentaries made at the Factory.
  At various points in her career she would meet numerous celebrities, including John Graham, John Chamberlain, Edward Ruscha, Rudolf Nureyev, Miloš Forman, Howard Hughes, Richard Nixon, Aristotle Onassis, Maria Callas, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Marc Chagall, Bob Dylan, John Lennon and Yoko Ono. In later reminiscences, she would name Ruscha, Nureyev, and Forman among her past lovers.
  In 1969, she was "dethroned" as Warhol's primary muse by Viva, a more recent discovery.
  Although a full participant in activities at the Factory, she generally avoided the heavy drug usage prevalent at the time, saying that her body reacted badly to drugs. She had tried smoking as a rebellious teen, had gotten very sick as a result, and resolved to abstain from drug usage. She would later observe, "If I had lived like all those young people, I would be dead today".
  In the 1980s, she gradually drifted away from the Factory scene, taking a lower profile and working independently on her own art.  In her autobiography, published the year after Warhol's unexpected demise in 1987, she chronicled the activities of many Warhol superstars, including several untimely deaths during and after the Factory years.
caption: Ultra Violet at a celebration of the Warhol Factory, 2007
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