Dorothy Podber (September 15, 1932 – February 9, 2008) was an American performance artist. Born in

the Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

to a mother who had tried repeatedly to abort her, and to a father who worked for the

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

mobster

Dutch Schultz Dutch Schultz (born Arthur Simon Flegenheimer; August 6, 1901October 24, 1935) was an American mobster. Based in New York City in the 1920s and 1930s, he made his fortune in organized crime-related activities, including bootlegging and the n ...

, Podber was later remembered as a disruptive influence by classmates from West Walton High School. A wild child of the

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

art scene in the 1950s and 1960s, she helped to run the Nonagon Gallery, which showed the work of a young

Yoko Ono Yoko Ono ( ; ja, 小野洋子, Ono Yōko, usually spelled in katakana ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking. Ono grew up i ...

and was known for jazz concerts by such performers as Charles Mingus. However, her greatest fame—and notoriety—came from her work as a muse and collaborator with more prominent artists. On one occasion in 1964 she visited The Factory,

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the Art movement, visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore th ...

's studio, and put a bullet through a stack of his silk-screen paintings of

Marilyn Monroe Marilyn Monroe (; born Norma Jeane Mortenson; 1 June 1926 4 August 1962) was an American actress. Famous for playing comedic " blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s, as wel ...

, after which she was banned from the studio. These four paintings were thereafter called '' The Shot Marilyns'', and two are among the most expensive paintings ever sold. Podber revelled in her bad-girl reputation. In an interview in 2006, she said:

I've been bad all my life. Playing dirty tricks on people is my specialty.

When funds were low, she found unorthodox ways of making money, engaging in businesses as diverse as dispatching maids to doctors' offices in an attempt to gain access to their drug cabinets, and running an illegal abortion referral service. She did paperwork for

B'nai Brith B'nai B'rith International (, from he, בְּנֵי בְּרִית, translit=b'né brit, lit=Children of the Covenant) is a Jewish service organization. B'nai B'rith states that it is committed to the security and continuity of the Jewish peop ...

long enough to pick their safe and use its contents on her own check-counterfeiting machine. Her attitude to these enterprises bordered on indifference. "I never worked much," she reputedly said.''New York Times'' obit on Podber
/ref> She was married three times, and had numerous casual liaisons. Her last husband was Lester Schwartz, a bisexual, who had a long-term relationship with actor/director

Julian Beck Julian Beck (May 31, 1925 – September 14, 1985) was an American actor, stage director, poet, and painter. He is best known for co-founding and directing The Living Theatre, as well as his role as Reverend Henry Kane, the malevolent preacher ...

. Schwartz died in 1986. Podber cited bisexuality as something she and Schwartz had in common. One boyfriend was a banker with whom she would have sexual intercourse only on the banknote-strewn floor of his firm's vault. She had no children by any of her partners. She died in her

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

apartment on February 9, 2008, from natural causes, aged 75.

References

Sources

* Livingstone, Marco (ed.), ''Pop Art: An International Perspective'', The Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1991, * Stokstad, Marilyn, ''Art History'', 1995, Prentice Hall, Inc., and Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, * Vogel, Carol (1998)
''The New York Times'': INSIDE ART; Perhaps Shot, Perhaps Not.
Retrieved January 4, 2008. * Warhol, Andy and Pat Hackett, ''Popism: The Warhol Sixties'', Harcourt Books, 1980, * Watson, Steven, ''Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties'', Pantheon Books, 2003.

External links

Dorothy Podber obit

{{DEFAULTSORT:Podber, Dorothy 1932 births 2008 deaths American female criminals 20th-century American Jews American performance artists Bisexual artists Bisexual women American LGBT artists LGBT Jews Artists from New York City Muses 21st-century American Jews 20th-century LGBT people 21st-century LGBT people