October 30, 2008

From Fifteen Minutes to Forever

Freeze Framing the Girl on Fire

“I would like to turn the world on, just for a moment … just for a moment,” so spoke Andy
Warhol’s brightest burning – and arguably quickest dimming – Superstar, the girl on fire, the
Poor Little Rich Girl, Edie Sedgwick.

When Andy Warhol introduced Sedgwick to his factory in 1965, he thought he was turning the
camera on for her first screen test. Four minutes and one reel later it was obvious that Edie
turned his world on – and sparked the creative flame propelling Warhol into pop history.

The iconic enigma embodied the Silver Sixties right down to her silver locks. Sedgwick’s
turbulent tale from the psychiatric ward Silver Hill to the underground Manhattan silver screen is
that of pop culture legend. Edie was an heiress to the Sedgwick fortune, American aristocratic
royalty. Her ancestors helped found and legislate Massachusetts, invented the elevator, edited the
Atlantic Monthly, founded the Groton School, and led the first Black regiment to go into combat
in the American Civil War. Edie, though, burned the Sedgwick name into modern American
history by leading the trailblazing band of “Youthquakers” in the revolutionary 1960s.

While she said she felt “Andy was throwing America back in its face,” Edie herself became the
face of the Pop America Andy helped create. The heiress to traditional American aristocratic
royalty became the protagonist dictating the modern American celebrity royalty tale. Sedgwick
was unlimited in her beyond-just-pop breadth and depth of impact. To rock legend Patti Smith,
“She was such a strong image that I thought, ‘That's it.’ It represented everything to me, radiating
intelligence, speed, being connected with the moment.”

She was the culmination of cultures, new and old, the collision marking creation. Celebrity
milliner Stephen Jones signified Sedgwick’s undeniable cultural foothold, “Iconic society
women had always been demure and elegant. Sedgwick was downtown not uptown, active not
passive, sunglasses not ball gowns. Her look was a mixture of sweet and sour; an angelic face
distorted with bleached hair and disfiguring make-up. You could call her the first punk.” Even
still, Edie’s metaphysical je ne sais quais broke through the façade; she attracted, infatuated, and
captivated anyone and everyone within her reach – leaving them spellbound.

Her joie de vivre and style influenced contemporaries and followers alike. Grandmother to
modern “celebutantes” – think Mary Kate, Ashley, Lindsay, and Paris –; colleague and comrade
to Salvador Dali, Truman Capote, Allen Ginsberg, and Robert Kennedy; and muse to Bob Dylan,
Betsey Johnson, and Andy Warhol. Edie encapsulates modern American history beyond mere
correspondence. She embodies the culture in theory and practice. The original “Queen of the
New York Underground” first coined the Warholian “15 minutes” term years before the Pop Art
deity himself. Sedgwick lived her art. As the first true performance artist of modern pop culture,
life and art did not imitate one another; rather they were one in the same.
The eternal high of life, drugs, and fame fueled Sedgwick through the Sixties at a lightning speed
– her rise glorious; her demise beautifully catastrophic. Edie split from the factory in 1966 and
ventured off to California in pursuit of Hollywood fame, but never again rose to her Warholian
prominence. Even still, Sedgwick never regretted a moment. Even without the cameras she
continued to live her masterpiece, actualizing the conception that it is the vibrant dark colors
which give depth to the light.

Living every day as if it was the last, the night before her death in November of 1971 Edie had a
palm reader analyze her lines. The reader looked up from Sedgwick’s broken lifeline, mouth
agape, to which Edie serenely replied, “It’s okay – I know.” Her palm destined that she would
not live past 30. At 28, Edie passed away in her sleep due to an acute barbiturate overdose.
Sedgwick was a notorious insomniac in life; only in death does it appear she ever slowed down
to rest. As Vogue impresario Diana Vreeland said, “She was after life and sometimes life doesn't
come fast enough.”

There never will be another Edith Minturn Sedgwick. Though her story is modern folklore, her
own 15 minutes have stretched to generations as she continues to inspire fashion designers,
cultural vultures, historians, artists, and authors alike.

“Edie danced to her own tune, and I imagine this is what inspired Warhol and Dylan as much as
it did me. She created her own identity,” designer John Galliano once said; “she may have only
had 15 minutes of fame, but her style and image influenced a whole generation, ” and beyond.

Forever setting the world on fire, the girl in perpetual motion could not be stopped and her time
never stood still – until now. In the first-ever authorized DVD of Andy Warhol’s films, Sedgwick
and 12 other characters from Warhol’s infamous Factory are suspended on screen. 13 screen
tests, featuring Lou Reed, Dennis Hopper, “Baby” Jane Holzer, and Nico, are put to a newly
commissioned original soundtrack from Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips in 13 Most Beautiful
… Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests.

A moment is all Edie Sedgwick wanted from the world; a moment to see her and a moment for
which she could have the world see itself through her eyes. More than three decades after her
death, the world is given its first true chance to do what few in life could, but those who did
always remember: look into Edie’s eyes, be turned on for a moment, and have it feel like forever.

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