Preview: Andy Warhol Media Works at Seattle Art Museum
We take you inside ‘Love Fear Pleasure Lust Pain Glamour Death’ before its May 13 opening.
Posted by: Laura Dannen on May 12, 2010 at 11:00AM
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Budding actress Holly Solomon, one of Warhol’s Factory girls, “performs” for the photobooth camera in this 1966 strip. “I wanted to be Brigitte Bardot. I wanted to be Jeanne Monreau, Marilyn Monroe all packed into one,” she once revealed. Photobooth strip courtesy the Andy Warhol Foundation of the Visual Arts, New York.
View Slideshow » Illustration:If you came into the Factory between 1964 and 1966, you might sit for a four-minute screen test with Warhol, says Marisa Sanchez, assistant curator of modern and contemporary art at SAM. Twenty of nearly 450 Screen Tests—essentially, silent black-and-white video portraits of his friends and muses—are projected onto the walls of two separate gallery rooms.
View Slideshow » Illustration:When Edie Sedgwick arrived at the Factory in 1965, she became Warhol’s number one muse: “the woman he couldn’t be,” says Sanchez. Her image never made it onto a Warhol canvas, though—a comment on the type of “celebrity” he deemed worthy for his art. Screen test (16mm) courtesy the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York.
View Slideshow » Illustration:In the exhibit’s Polaroid Gallery is a series of self-portraits, including this “playful” one from 1977— Self-Portrait (Being Choked) —of Warhol simulating being strangled by an unknown aggressor. Courtesy the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh.
View Slideshow » Illustration:Warhol also played with ideas of femininity and identity by posing for a series of Polaroids called Self-Portrait in Drag, including this one from 1981. The person who actually took these photos is unknown. Courtesy the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh.
View Slideshow » Illustration:Warhol satisfied his appetite for immediacy (of process and delivery) with Polaroids. He captures his “superstars,” including Dennis Hopper (pictured, 1977), Edie Sedgwick, Lou Reed of the Velvet Underground, “Baby Jane” Holzer and Jack Smith, in screen tests and photos, stripped of any Hollywood gloss. Courtesy the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York.
View Slideshow » Illustration:At the end of the exhibit, you’re encouraged to pose in the photobooth and add your own “portrait” to the collage on the wall. The quote on the wall? “I don’t think art should be only for the select few, it should be for the mass of American people…” Andy Warhol
We all know Andy Warhol‘s fascination with Marilyn Monroe, Chairman Mao, Campbell’s soup. But some of his lesser known media works—Polaroids, screen tests, photobooth strips—focus on the superstars of his personal life, inside the Factory: writers, musicians, actors, drag queens, poets, and beauties like Edie Sedgwick and Baby Jane Holzer. Warhol, fascinated with the fleeting nature of celebrity, captures his friends and muses with a grittier, stripped-down aesthetic, encouraging them to “be anything they wanted to be” in front of the camera. The images of Love Fear Pleasure Lust Pain Glamour Death are on display at Seattle Art Museum from May 13-September 6, but we got to go inside before the exhibit opened. Take a peek. (Click on the slideshow above.)
Photos by Laura Dannen.
Tags: Visual Art, Seattle Art Museum, Andy Warhol, Slideshow, Preview, Thru Sept 6
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