New York social and artistic circles In 1953, Dufrense moved to New York City to live with her sister Catherine, then a student at the
Convent of the Sacred Heart. After briefly working at the French Embassy and later for the French cultural counselor, she became immersed in the city's social and cultural life, attending gallery openings, receptions, and society events. Financially supported in part by her sister and a small inheritance, she cultivated a distinctive personal style and quickly gained attention within elite social circles, appearing in publications such as
Town & Country and
The New York Times. An avid interest in art, developed during her youth in France, shaped her social and professional trajectory. She frequented galleries and museums, forming connections with leading artists including
Barnett Newman,
Willem de Kooning,
Joan Miró,
Marcel Duchamp,
Man Ray, and
Max Ernst. By the late 1950s, she was traveling between New York and Paris, where she began dealing art, buying and reselling works for profit. During this time, she got involved with the
April in Paris Ball, the Botticelli Ball,
Parke-Bernet openings, the
Museum of Modern Art, the
Guggenheim, the
Whitney Museum in New York. In 1959, she met painter
John Graham, who became her lover and further deepened her engagement with modern art. In 1960, she was introduced to surrealist painter
Salvador Dalí in New York; the two formed a close personal relationship. She moved into his suite at the Regis Hotel and become his "
muse", pupil, studio assistant, and lover, traveling with him to Europe. Later, she would recall, "I realized that I was 'surreal', which I never knew until I met Dalí." 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.
Andy Warhol and the Factory , Paul Bianchini at the Bianchini Gallery in New York, 1965. Through her relationship with Dalí, she met Pop artist
Andy Warhol. In his memoir
Popism, Warhol recalled the first time he met her: 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.Soon she became one of many
Warhol superstars part of the Factory scene and appeared in many of his films. While Warhol was hospitalized after a
near-fatal shooting, Ultra Violet and a few other Factory members appeared in
John Schlesinger's
Midnight Cowboy (1969). Ultra Violet and fellow Warhol superstar
Taylor Mead starred in
John Chamberlain's
The Secret Life of Hernando Cortez (1969), filmed in Mexico. That same year, Ultra Violet was cast in the
MGM film
The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart (1970), which reportedly was intended to feature Warhol in his commercial film debut alongside his superstars
Joe Dallesandro and
Gerard Malanga. In the end, however,
Candy Darling was the only Factory member to appear, making a brief cameo. 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 early 1970s, she drifted away from the Factory scene, taking a lower profile and working independently on her own art.
Later career She had bit roles in the films
Midnight Cowboy (1969),
Maidstone (1970), and
The Phynx (1970). She would eventually appear in more than 20 films, not counting numerous documentaries made at the Factory. 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. In 2000, she was featured in
Message to Andy Warhol, a "concept art documentary" by Laurent Foissac. 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. 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. In 2006, she had a solo show at Stefan
Stux Gallery in
Chelsea, Manhattan. In 2007 she gave a retrospective lecture at the
New York Institute of Technology. (2007)|leftIn 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. 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.” In 2011, she was featured in a brief article about the surviving former Warhol "Superstars". 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". 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. 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." She gave her last 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. In 2014, she exhibited in four different solo and group shows, in New York and in Nice. Her last exhibition at the Dillon Gallery in Manhattan,
Ultra Violet: The Studio Recreated, closed three weeks before her death. 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. == Death ==