Isabelle Collin Dufresne, aka Ultra Violet, who was one of Warhol’s superstars, died early Saturday at a Manhattan hospital. She later condemned her former Factory drug use, free sex and became a Morman. She worked as an artist up until her death and just had an exhibit at the Dillon Gallery in Manhattan this spring, “Ultra Violet: The Studio Recreated,” that closed just three weeks ago. Collin Dufresne was in her late 20s when she met Andy Warhol while having tea at the St. Regis Hotel with Salvador Dalí, who was a lover and an early mentor. She made her debut in Warhol’s “The Life of Juanita Castro,” an improvised black-and-white political comedy. As Ultra Violet, she appeared in seventeen films, not counting numerous documentaries made later about the the Factory. In Famous for 15 Minutes: My Years With Andy Warhol, Ultra Violet’s 1988 memoir, she wrote about her return to religion after a nervous and physical breakdown. And she denounced the person she had been during the Warhol years as an “unleashed exhibitionist chasing headlines.” In a 2011 interview with USA Today, she said;
“I mean, it was an exciting era in that there was a cultural revolution going on. I think we are constantly in some kind of a flux.”
She could be a serious interview subject, as when in David Henry Gerson’s 2011 documentary, Ultra Violet for Sixteen Minutes, she announced,
“As you come closer to your true nature, you are more fulfilled.”
But she could also jab back. At an arts festival in Bridgehampton in 2010, she and her longtime Factory friend, the late Taylor Mead, were confronted by a young interviewer who had no idea who they were and asked them, “Whose work do you like?” and “Why are you here?” Ultra Violet said, as though she were back in the Factory days;
“I like my own work. We are here because we are world-famous.”
Ultra Violet, Self Port Rait, 2014, 25 x 25″
Ultra Violet’s final exhibit was at the Dillon Gallery, May 2014
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