While Andy Warhol remains among the art world’s most celebrated superstars, best-selling biographer Laurence Leamer in his latest book uncovers the decidedly dark side of Warhol’s rise to ‘60s fame.

It was Warhol’s scandalous relationships with 10 privileged women he anointed as his “superstars,” most famously with doomed “It Girl” Edie Sedgwick, that secured his popstar status.

Leamer’s “Warhol’s Muses: The Artists, Misfits, and Superstars Destroyed by the Factory Fame Machine” follows his best-selling biographies on the Kennedys, “Capote’s Women” (televised as Ryan Murphy’s F/X’s anthology series, “Feud: Capote vs The Swans”) and “Hitchcock’s Blondes.”

Warhol, Leamer learned, needed wealthy socialites if he was to reach his goal of becoming a global brand. These women gladly went downtown from their Upper East Side perches for a bit of notoriety with the bewigged painter at his dingy Factory where sex, drugs and nudity were routine.

As Warhol re-invented his socialites as “superstars,” he moved on to another level. “He saw it as a mutual exploitation of each of their status.”

Among his superstars: the heiress Baby Jane Holzer, Nico, the blonde lead singer of the Velvet Underground, Viva, who was featured in the Oscar-winning “Midnight Cowboy,” amphetamine addict Brigid Berlin, doomed trans actress Candy Darling and Valerie Solanas, whose attempted assassination of Warhol ushered in a new era for the artist who famously predicted, “In the future everyone is going to be famous for 15 minutes.”

The outlandish stories that Leamer, 83, unleashed were, he revealed, “written” by Andy himself.

“There are multiple materials to research, because some of these are obscure women. What made it easy was that, beginning in 1966, he taped everybody.

“If he was sitting with you having a chat, he’d be taping you. He tapes everyone from when he gets up in the morning. Tapes everybody.”

Leamer amassed 1,500 transcript pages from Warhol’s private recordings. “And no, he never shows anybody what he’s doing.

“That’s a measure of how truly calculating this guy was. He was calculating every moment of his life. To come from nothing and to rise where he did! He really was business.

“In terms of celebrity, I realized he’s a creature of the ‘60s as much as he is a creator. The book starts at that Factory party in 1964. He has big politicians, the social elite there. Five years ago, nobody would have come up that elevator to the studio.

“But suddenly the establishment was breaking down. The young people were kind of bored with that life. They’re willing to take chances they wouldn’t have taken before — and that’s why they show up at this place.

“He’s basically nobody. But it changes. He uses the socially prominent women and turns around and he becomes one of the great celebrities of the 20th century.”

“Warhol’s Muses: The Artists, Misfits, and Superstars Destroyed by the Factory Fame Machine” is on sale May 6