Dorothy Podber

Who was Dorothy Podber?

Dorothy Podber was an American performance artist.

Born in the Bronx to a mother who had tried repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, to abort her, and to a father who worked for the Jewish mobster Dutch Schultz, Podber was later remembered as a disruptive influence by classmates from West Walton High School.

A wild child of the New York art scene in the 1950s and 1960s, she helped to run the Nonagon Gallery, which showed the work of a young Yoko Ono 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, she turned up at Andy Warhol's studio and put a bullet through a stack of his silk-screen paintings of Marilyn Monroe, after which she was banned from the studio. These four paintings, thereafter, were called The Shot Marilyns. 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."