Andy Warhol by Geoff Nicholson

Author:Geoff Nicholson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 2001-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Warhol’s movies do indeed seem to be simultaneously the genuine article yet also a send-up of the whole idea of experimental film. Certain strategies that other film-makers took very seriously become wry jokes in Warhol’s work.

However, the term parody suggests a level of sustained engagement that is far more studied than anything Warhol ever attempted. What he did bring to a frequently over-earnest and high-minded group was a coolness, a glamour – even if a frequently tawdry sort – and a deadpan sense of humour.

Between 1963 and 1968 Warhol made many hundreds of films, although in this context we might well ask exactly what constitutes a film, or at least a finished work. Certain ‘films’ consisted simply of unedited reels of footage, shown exactly as they had been returned from the lab. Others were amalgams, put together from largely unrelated footage. Films were cannibalized, reels were removed from apparently completed works and then made to stand alone or inserted into entirely different works.

One might also ask in what sense Warhol was the ‘maker’ of some of these films. Often his creative input consisted of little more than turning on the camera and then walking away. Be that as it may, the results are uniquely his. Anyone can turn on a camera, but turning on a camera doesn’t guarantee making a Warhol (or even a Warholesque) movie.

One reason for the high number of films is that a great many of them were three-minute ‘screen tests’. When Warhol first bought his movie camera, anyone entering the Factory was made to sit down and confront the camera while a roll of film passed through it. Later these short films were put into compilations such as 13 Most Beautiful Boys and 13 Most Beautiful Women (both 1964-65), and 50 Fantastics and 50 Personalities (1964-66). Subjects include Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Dennis Hopper, Baby Jane Holzer, Ivy Nicholson and Edie Segdwick.

These are some of Warhol’s most appealing and yet rigorous works, and it must be said that Gerard Malanga is generally credited as their co-creator. There is no soundtrack. The camera is fixed on a tripod, the subject is framed head and shoulders, the lighting is harsh, the image is grainy black and white. There is a beauty to these films but it is not of the comforting sort. They manage to be both casual yet formal.

These films look better and better as time goes by and they certainly reinforce Warhol’s claims as a great portraitist. Although neither camera nor subject are in the ordinary sense ‘doing’ anything, an act of revelation nevertheless frequently occurs. The camera’s steady gaze reveals the subject, forces the subject to reveal him or herself in a way that many more engaged forms of film-making might not.

The most appealing results come when the sitters remain still and blank. If they try to do too much, try too hard to put on a show, the camera manages to expose them. Baby Jane Holzer, for example, is a beautiful woman but on screen she always seems to be posing and pouting for the camera.

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