Andy Warhol Screen Tests: The Films of Andy Warhol, Catalogue Raisonné, Volume One

Osterweil, Ara.

The Moving Image, Volume 7, Number 1, Spring 2007, pp. 100-103 (Review)

Published by University of Minnesota Press DOI: 10.1353/mov.2007.0026

For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mov/summary/v007/7.1osterweil.html

Access Provided by McGill University Libraries at 01/17/12 8:17PM GMT REVIEWS 100

seems so close to each detail he loses per- 1963 and 1968, their existence as both cultural spective on the whole. One aspect absent from artifacts and aesthetic objects has been more this chapter (and most of the book) is humor. mythical than meaningful. Not only were most The author appreciates that the films are funny of Warhol’s films rarely screened in his lifetime but is not successful in communicating it. and almost never commercially, but in 1970 the Tunes for ’Toons is a good introduction to artist hoisted them out of circulation and pitched the work of composers in the animation units of them into deeper obscurity, where they re- the major Hollywood studios. It makes excellent mained, unseen and dust-laden, until the artist’s use of black-and-white illustrations, with prep- death in 1987. aratory sketches and frame-enlargements pro- Whatever doubts still linger concerning viding vivid support for the author’s arguments. Warhol’s status as the most prolific filmmaker Not every chapter is equally successful, but of the twentieth century will certainly be ex- each offers valuable information based on an punged by the long-awaited publication of the impressive array of source material. first volume of Callie Angell’s extensive cata- logue raisonné of Warhol’s screen tests. As adjunct curator of the Andy Warhol Film Project at the Whitney Museum and consultant to MoMA on its ongoing and often painstaking preser- vation of Warhol’s films, Angell is more knowl- edgeable about Warhol’s cinema than anyone around the globe has ever been—including, perhaps, Warhol himself. In this splendid, image-saturated volume, Angell combines the precision of a master archivist with the lucid, insightful prose of a cultural critic without, how- ever, submerging Warhol’s films within a par- ticular interpretative agenda. Between 1964 and 1966, Warhol created more than four hundred black-and-white mov- ing image portraits or “Screen Tests” of lumi- naries, celebrities, and wannabes from the art, literary, music, dance, film, and modeling Andy Warhol Screen Tests: worlds. Originally dubbed “stillies” by Warhol for their subjects’ uncanny lack of movement The Films of Andy Warhol, in a moving picture medium, these approxi- Catalogue Raisonné, mately three-minute, 16mm silent films were Volume One by Callie Angell first inspired by Warhol’s discovery of a New Harry N. Abrams, 2006 York Police Department brochure that contained mug shots of the Thirteen Most Wanted crimi- Ara Osterweil nals. Ever anxious to eroticize the illicit, Warhol derived an idea for a series of portrait films Very few people still associate Andy Warhol called the Thirteen Most Beautiful Boys, which solely with his silk screens of Campbells soup would combine the artist’s obsession with col- cans, Coca-Cola bottles, Elvis Presley, and Mar- lection and classification with his emerging fas- ilyn Monroe. However, of the many proverbial cination with duration. Over the course of two hats Warhol wore atop his infamous silver wig— years, far more than thirteen portraits were as advertiser, pop artist, self-styled media icon, made, and not solely of boys. In the catalogue, stargazer, starmaker, writer, band manager, Angell accounts for 472 portraits of 189 indi- magazine guru, collector—his role as filmmaker viduals with a collective running time of over has been most underestimated. In spite of the thirty-two hours. fact that Warhol created hundreds of innova- By 1966, these films came to be known tive experimental and narrative films between as “screen tests” in spite of the fact that they REVIEWS 101

were not used to determine the subject’s desir- Angell’s lucid essays paint more complete bio- ability for future film projects. Being asked to graphical portraits of each subject than the pose for Warhol’s camera often flattered visi- screen tests themselves, which included neither tors to the Factory with the lure of fame and the person’s name or any other data. Indeed, glamour, as well as the possibility of screen each of Angell’s mini-bios are so thorough immortality, but submitting to Warhol’s sado- regarding the lives and loves of each subject masochistic rules tended toward the unbear- that they threaten to demystify the rumors that able. In addition to mandating the conventions Warhol himself loved to promulgate about his that applied to official portraits like passport own artistic practice. photos—the camera should not move, the back- In an academic community in which War- ground should be as plain as possible, and the hol’s films remain more talked about than seen, subject should be well lit and centered—Warhol the value of Angell’s fastidiousness is immeas- added a few requirements that were nearly urable. Much contemporary criticism still con- unthinkable in a moving picture format. Before tains conspicuous factual errors about Warhol’s walking away from his Bolex camera and allow- cinema that undoubtedly will be rectified by ing the subject to endure the camera’s in- the research Angell has done. Of the many reve- tractable gaze, Warhol instructed his sitters to lations contained in this volume, one of the refrain from any kind of movement whatsoever, most salient is Angell’s identification of the sup- including talking, smiling, and even blinking. posedly “anonymous” star of Warhol’s porno- As can be expected, only a handful of graphically titled film Blow Job (1964). In spite individuals managed to acquiesce to Warhol’s of the fact that the film restricts its immobile physiologically unfeasible decrees. Indeed, frame to the face of a young man as he presum- many of the most evocative portraits are of ably receives fellatio offscreen, Blow Job has those conscientious objectors who conspicu- become a pivotal text in the reevaluation of ously rebelled against Warhol’s attempt to dis- Warhol as pornographer by queer theorists and cipline and punish them: underground actress avant-garde film historians. As Angell points Beverly Grant, who entangles herself in her out, though Warhol himself claimed to never serpentine hair in homage to the histrionics of remember the name of the good-looking kid silent film stars; Pop artist James Rosenquist, who “happened to be hanging around the Fac- who spins around on a swivel chair for the en- tory that day,” “DeVerne Bookwalter”—the tire time, refusing to be pinned down by a rival name of the aspiring actor from Warhol’s home painter; or society upstart Baby Jane Holzer, state of Pennsylvania who also died in 1987— who sensuously brushes her teeth in the most was marked on the canister in the artist’s seductive of the many orally fixated screen tests own hand. depicted in Angell’s book. For the few subjects For anyone who has struggled to sketch who managed to not even blink—like the be- even a few branches oftheir own familytree, atific Ann Buchanan, whose physically uncon- Angell’s detailed descriptions of each subject’s trollable tears make her resemble a weeping identity is astounding. As it turns out, it took icon or Maria Falconetti’s profoundly expres- more than a village—Greenwich Village that sive Joan of Arc—the still images captured in is—to raise Warhol’s brainchild from the ashes the catalogue cannot come close to the unique of history. In her acknowledgments, Angell lists experience of watching the exquisite conflict hundreds of Warhol scholars, collectors, critics, between voluntary and involuntary motion un- historians, curators, friends, and associates furl on the human visage. who assisted in what may the greatest who- Inevitably, looking at the stills in the cata- dunit (or whowasit) of contemporary art history. logue raisonné is not the same as actually (Bookwalter was actually recognized in 1994 watching the screen tests, which were recorded when the film was screened at the Warhol at twenty-four frames per second but deliber- Museum in Pittsburgh by a fellow alumnus of ately projected at silent speed to achieve a Edinboro State College.) Although the majority kind of otherworldly slow-motion languor. Never- of subjects have been identified, there are still theless, what the catalogue lacks in spectator- a few individuals whose known identity extends ial effect, it compensates for in information. no further than their first name; their relative REVIEWS 102

anonymity invites us to peruse their faces as of notable figures like Salvador Dalí, Marchel purely physiognomic objects. Throughout her Duchamp, Susan Sontag, Allen Ginsberg, and search, Angell periodically placed ads in The Bob Dylan, to his inclusion of unknown aspi- New Yorker, in which photos of the remaining rants who evidentially “gave good face,” Warhol unknowns were presented in much the same emerges as the greatest chronicler of his time. way as the “Wanted” ads that first inspired Though most of his subjects are highly pedi- Warhol. greed art-world or society dignitaries, Warhol’s Angell’s resourcefulness as an archivist who’s who is an incomplete time capsule, which leaves nothing to be desired. In her meticulous makes it all the more interesting to decipher distinction between the material properties of its idiosyncrasies. In true Warholian fashion, the each screen test as a physical object and its lowbrow and highbrow collide as heiresses min- screening characteristics (reel length vs. run- gle with hustlers. Even more suggestive than ning time), she demonstrates her grasp of the these serendipitous juxtapositions, however, dual nature of the film “object.” By paying are Warhol’s telling omissions. Perhaps the careful attention to the often subtle details of most interesting ethnographic category is War- the film’s actual physical condition—by noting hol’s inclusion of artists’ wives, such as Julie the scratch marks on the celluloid, discerning Judd, Susanne De Maria, and Clarice Rivers, the handwriting on the canister, or distinguish- and the simultaneous exclusion of their more ing between splices and in-camera edits—An- famous husbands Donald, Walter, and Larry. gell is able to decipher the otherwise impercep- Coming from a man who ironically referred to tible histories of each screen test’s production, his tape recorder as his wife, there was clearly exhibition, and, in some cases, evaluation by more to Warhol’s decision than the desire to different Factory personnel. confirm the old adage that “behind every good In addition to Angell’s elegant introductory man lies a better woman.” essay and the detailed notes on each screen Warhol was perennially intrigued by por- test, this first volume of the catalogue includes traiture, as evidenced by his decision to paint a number of other valuable features. Angell de- the mug shots of the Thirteen Most Wanted votes an entire chapter to the 107 screen tests Men as his commissioned contribution to the Warhol made during the fall of 1964 of his then- 1964 World’s Fair (before being forced by the boyfriend Philip Fagan, as well as a chapter to authorities to paint over them!) and the photo- the Conceptual Compilations of the screen tests, booth portraits Warhol often used as the basis including the Thirteen Most Beautiful Boys and of his silk screens. However, from the scope of Girls series, and Warhol’s collection of Fifty the screen tests, it is clear that the largest con- Fantastics and Fifty Personalities. There is also tribution Warhol made to the genre of portrait a section that explores the use of the screen making was in the medium of film, rather than tests as background reels to many of the multi- within the two-dimensional still images for media events that Warhol staged, including live which he is currently more famous. Not only performances of the Velvet Underground (aka did Warhol extend portraiture to the cinema the Exploding Plastic Inevitable) and readings but in doing so he shifted the focus of portrait of Gerard Malanga’s poetry (aka Screen Test making from the finished product to the all- Poems). too-revealing process involved in composing For the nonarchival audience, the cata- oneself before the camera and the anticipated logue raisonné still possesses inestimable viewer. By transposing the formal idioms of one charms. Regardless of the reader’s particular medium (still photography) to another (motion interest in experimental cinema, the wide spec- pictures), Warhol created hybrid objects—part trum of Warhol’s ethnographic gaze, as well as living sculpture, part photograph, part movie— the beauty of the screen tests’ presentation in that were able to access the otherwise hid- the catalogue, makes this book a must-have den psychological, physiological, and emotional for anyone interested in the counterculture of truths of subjectivity. the sixties. From his multiple tests of mercurial In time, Angell’s scrupulously catalogued, society darling Edie Sedgwick and 1964 “Girl delightfully readable, and aesthetically engross- of the Year” Baby Jane Holzer, to his portraits ing study of Warhol’s contribution to cinema REVIEWS 103

may provoke as profound a reconsideration than going to an archival trove. You’ve no within film studies as the “discovery” of the appointment, dust, or fear of fingertip oil. Two early motion studies of Etienne Jules Marey or hundred dollars arranges your personal Kubrick of Oscar Micheaux’s response to the incendiary tour, if you have not been invited to the estate, race politics of D. W. Griffith. Like these earlier or have not seen the exhibit that has already finds, Angell’s book allows us to see the history traveled more than the director, running through of cinema differently by sketching alternative July 2004 in Frankfurt, April 2005 in Berlin, paradigms of film production and spectator- January 2006 in Melbourne, and January 2007 ship. The second volume, which will be devoted in Ghent, and is scheduled to open later in 2007 to the rest of Warhol’s cinema, is bound to com- in Rome, before being housed in the archive’s plete the picture. new repository in the University of the Arts, London. You could body surf on The Stanley Kubrick Archives. You can also pore over its gorgeously mounted contents, considering the fittest ways to present Kubrick’s, or other film directors’, trove of moviemaking materials. Part One of the book consists of beauti- fully reproduced stills. In its publicity, the pub- lisher Taschen claims that this design creates a completely “nonverbal experience,” echoing Kubrick’s intention for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The approach seems appropriate be- cause Kubrick began his career as a photog- rapher, and the frame enlargements show he The Stanley Kubrick retained an exemplary eye. The images evoke Archives Edited by the flow of the films and their striking se- quences, such as Humbert Humbert in Lolita Alison Castle (1962) taking a celebratory drink in his bath, Taschen, 2005 and Alex undergoing the “Ludovico Treatment,” with his eyelids pinned open in A Clockwork Gabriel M. Paletz Orange (1971). However, stills alone fail fully to You, lucky cineaste, have been chosen to reveal the artist by imitating his intentions. see the archives of elusive filmmaker Stanley The method cannot convey the original music Kubrick. You sail across the sea in deference choices or emblematic camera movements, to the director’s reluctance to fly. One of his which are also nonverbal elements that make associates takes you the roundabout way to Kubrick’s movies powerful cinema. To excise the English countryside in St. Albans, and the words also handicaps the images. One longs Kubrick estate in Childwick Bury. Four electric to hear, or at least to be reminded of, the way gates open, and you stroll around the grounds the nymphet Lolita, the Teutonic Dr. Strangelove, to rooms, more rooms, and portable cabins full the computer Hal, the young punk Alex, the of boxes, whose contents Kubrick devoted his narrator of Barry Lyndon, the crazed Jack Tor- life to organizing. Sliding—not lifting—off a rance, and Gunnery Sargeant Hartman speak. specially designed top, you start to rifle through Their idiomatic voices prove what the writer the secrets of the auteur. Michael Herr called Kubrick’s “faith” in literary Or, in a less mythical adventure, you buy mise-en-scène (526). this 411 x 300mm book: this glossy volume of While unfolding a wonderful wealth of 544 pages and twelve pounds, succulent and materials, The Stanley Kubrick Archives is also cumbersome as a Thanksgiving turkey, a port- not a critical study. As Part One demonstrates, folio of an archive in its own box, with a handle the book takes an honorary approach to a keen for portability. Leafing through it, with differ- and irreverent creator. Part Two, titled “The Cre- ent colored tabs marking each film, is easier ative Process...,” consistsofsummaryessays,