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Isabelle Collin Dufresne

French-American artist and author (1935–2014) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Isabelle Collin Dufresne
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Isabelle Collin Dufresne (6 September 1935 – 14 June 2014), known professionally as Ultra Violet, was a French-American artist, actress, and writer.[1][2] Before becoming a Warhol superstar and appearing in several of his underground films, she studied and worked with surrealist artist Salvador Dalí.

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Early life and education

Isabelle Collin Dufresne was brought up in a strict religious upper-middle-class family,[3] but she rebelled at an early age.[2] She was a student at a local Catholic Sacred Hearts Convent. "The nuns seemed to believe I was possessed by a demon," she said.[4]

Dufresne disliked being at the convent so she was offered the option of leaving and traveling to America when she was seventeen years old.[4] She lived with an older sister in New York City.[2][5]

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Career

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After working at the French Embassy in New York, she returned to Europe and stayed with surrealist painter Salvador Dalí for a year and a half.[4]

Dufresne met Salvador Dalí in 1954, and became his "muse", pupil, studio assistant, and lover in both Port Lligat, Spain, and in New York City.[2][6] Later, she would recall, "I realized that I was 'surreal', which I never knew until I met Dalí."[7] Dalí helped her get a part in Pablo Picasso's play Desire Caught by the Tail, which was presented in 1967 in St. Tropez, France.[8]

Andy Warhol and the Factory

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Bob Stanley, Ultra Violet, Andy Warhol, Paul Bianchini at the Bianchini Gallery in New York, 1965.

Through her friendship with Dalí, she met pop artist Andy Warhol.[9] In his memoir Popism, Warhol recalled:

I'd met her one day in '65 when she walked into the Factory in a pink Chanel suit and bought a big Flowers painting that was still wet for five hundred dollars. Her name was Isabelle Collin-Dufresne then and she hadn't dyed her hair purple yet. She had expensive clothes and a penthouse on Fifth Avenue, and she drove a Lincoln that was the same as the presidential one. She was past a certain age, but she was still beautiful; she looked a lot like Vivien Leigh.[10]

Soon she became one of many Warhol superstars part of the Factory scene and appeared in many of his films.[7] She selected her stage name "Ultra Violet" out of a book.[9] I chose Ultra Violet because it is the most erotic color. It is the color of sexual organs … Violet is the last color of the rainbow; and ultra violet is beyond that. It is … I don't know … closer to God."[4] Ultra Violet attended the 1967 Cannes Film Festival with Warhol to screen Chelsea Girls, but the film was not shown.[11] "The festival authorities explained that the film was too long, there were technical problems, there was no time."[11]

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Ultra Violet at a celebration of the Warhol Factory (2007)

Ultra Violet and fellow Warhol superstar Taylor Mead starred in John Chamberlain's The Secret Life of Hernando Cortez (1969), filmed in Mexico.[12]

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".[13]

In the early 1970s, she drifted away from the Factory scene, taking a lower profile and working independently on her own art.[14]

Later career

She had bit roles in the films Midnight Cowboy (1969), Maidstone (1970), and The Phynx (1970).[4] She also appeared in the 1971 film Taking Off directed by Miloš Forman.[15] She would eventually appear in more than 20 films, not counting numerous documentaries made at the Factory.[2]

In 1988, Ultra Violet published her autobiography, Famous for 15 Minutes: My Years with Andy Warhol. This autobiography was edited extensively and partially translated from French to English by her New York penthouse roommate Natalie Durkee. After a review of the book in The New York Times,[3] it was published worldwide, eventually in 17 languages. After a book tour, she returned to France; in 1990 she opened a studio in Nice and wrote another book detailing her own ideas about art, L'Ultratique. She lived and worked as an artist in New York City,[7] and also maintained a studio in Nice for the rest of her life.[16]

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Apocalypse 2000, Ultraviolet (1999)

In 2000, she was featured in Message to Andy Warhol, a "concept art documentary" by Laurent Foissac.[citation needed]

On 10 April 2005, she joined a panel discussion "Reminiscences of Dalí: A Conversation with Friends of the Artist" as part of a symposium "The Dalí Renaissance" for a major retrospective show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.[17] Her conversation with another former Dalí protégée, French singer/actress Amanda Lear, is recorded in the 236-page exhibition catalog, The Dalí Renaissance: New Perspectives on His Life and Art after 1940.[18]

In 2006, she had a solo show at Stefan Stux Gallery in Chelsea, Manhattan.[19][20] In 2007 she gave a retrospective lecture at the New York Institute of Technology.[citation needed]

In 2011, filmmaker David Henry Gerson released Ultra Violet for Sixteen Minutes, a short documentary showing her perspectives on fame, art, religion, and her current artistic practice.[21] The film was acquired into the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, and was quoted as the final line in her NY Times obituary where they quoted her line in the film: “As you come closer to your true nature, you are more fulfilled.”[22]

In 2011, she was featured in a brief article about the surviving former Warhol "Superstars".[23] Regarding her famous past and her artwork today, she has said, "People always want to know about the past, but I'm much more interested in tomorrow".[24] In 2011, she exhibited a series of artworks as her personal memorial of the September 11 attacks, which were displayed in the exhibit Memorial IX XI at Queensborough Community College.[25]

In a 2012 interview, she said, "I'm a New Yorker, I'm an American, and I'm an artist. Because of those three things, I had to do something about 9/11, and the question was what to do, which is not simple."[1]

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Ultra Violet with her artwork memorializing the 9/11 attacks (2008)

She gave her last[when?] TV interview for the German documentary about obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), Wie ich lernte, die Zahlen zu lieben (How I Learned to Love the Numbers), by Oliver Sechting and Max Taubert.[citation needed]

In 2014, she exhibited in four different solo and group shows, in New York and in Nice.[26]

Her last exhibition at the Dillon Gallery in Manhattan, Ultra Violet: The Studio Recreated, closed three weeks before her death.[15] It included paintings, sculptures, photographs, films, and neon art.[2] Three of her sculptures are in the permanent collection of the 9/11 Museum.[5]

On 12 August 2014, independent record label Refinersfire released a posthumous limited edition 2-disc collection of original music and private conversations of Ultra Violet and Andy Warhol. The music was recorded in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and features cover performances of "La vie en Rose", "Mojo Queen", and the original songs "Famous for Fifteen Minutes" and "Moon Rock". Ultra Violet also had recorded private telephone conversations between herself and Andy Warhol, which feature topics such as police harassment, their films, the business of art, the RFK assassination, and Valerie Solanas and her attempt on Warhol's life.[27]

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Death

Dufresne died on 14 June 2014, in New York City at the age of 78, from cancer.[6][28] She had never married.[5] Dufresne was survived by two sisters.[6] She is buried in Saint-Égrève near Grenoble.[2]

Personal life

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Ultra Violet in her New York City studio (2012)

In the 1960s, Dufresne began to follow the progressive American Pop Art scene, including Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and James Rosenquist. 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.[3][13]

In later reminiscences, she would name John Chamberlain, Edward Ruscha, Rudolf Nureyev, Miloš Forman among her past lovers.[2][6]

In 1973, a near-death experience with an ulcerated colon[5] and a bout with depression launched Ultra Violet on a spiritual quest, culminating in her baptism in 1981. For the rest of her life, she was a practicing member of the Mormon Church.[2][13][16] She also became involved in charity work, saying "I am learning, the hard way, that life is about service".[29]

In 1994, the New Yorker magazine published a brief article describing a dream she had had on the night Andy Warhol died in 1987. She did not even know that he was in the hospital at that time, and was shocked to hear a report on the radio the next morning.[30]

She lived and worked in New York City and also had a studio in Nice, France.

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Books

  • Famous for 15 Minutes: My Years with Andy Warhol. Photography by Sam Falk. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 1988. ISBN 978-0-15-130201-7.
  • Andy Warhol: Superstar (in German). Bergisch Gladbach, Germany: Bastei Lübbe. 1991. ISBN 978-3-404-61205-5.
  • L'Ultratique (in French). Lodève, France: Imprimerie des Beaux-Arts. 1991. ISBN 9782908811162.

Filmography

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See also

References

External links

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