Collaboration as Social Exchange: Screen Tests/A Diary by Gerard Malanga and Andy Warhol Author(s): Reva Wolf Reviewed work(s): Source: Art Journal, Vol. 52, No. 4, Interactions between Artists and Writers (Winter, 1993), pp. 59-66 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/777625 . Accessed: 23/02/2012 13:06 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. College Art Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Art Journal. http://www.jstor.org Collaborationas Social Exchange ScreenTests/A Diary by GerardMalanga and Andy Warhol RevaWolf T he friends are foreverinvolved in the 'familyphoto,"' photographcomes from a moving image (bringing to mind a line by the poet GerardMalanga, who was a close Gertrude Stein's comparison of her literary "portraits"to associate of Andy Warholduring the 1960s, alludes cinema, in which "one second was never the same as the to the dynamic connectionsthat exist between portraitsand second before or after").4Conceptually, the moving-picture social interaction. Understoodin this broad sense, the line portraits correspond nicely to the "diary" format of the would be a fitting epigraph to the book of 1967 in which it poems, as both are meant to signify records of particular appears,Screen Tests/A Diary, a collaborationby Warholand momentsin time.5 59 Malanga that consists of a collection of stills from film The design of Screen Tests/ADiary is apparentlyby portraits,or "screen tests," each with a poem on the facing Warhol,6and in its original conception, the connectionbe- page by Malanga(fig. 1). Inclusionin this compendium,like tween film and poetry was to have operatedcompositionally being in the "familyphoto," is a person'sdeclaration of social as well as metaphorically.To underscorethe origin of the affiliation. images in film footage, they were to have been printed on The strata of processes involved in the productionof acetate, ratherthan on the semitransparentvellum-type pa- Screen Tests/ADiary were in themselvesstatements of social per that, as a compromise,was actuallyused; the poemswere affiliation.These processes begin with Warholand his asso- to have been positioned underneaththe sheets of acetate.7 ciates' filming of the screen tests, and include their selection This collagelike layout, in which Malanga'swords were to of the screen-test stills that wouldfigure in the book and even appear across the faces of those to whom they are written, their acquisition of legal rights to reproducethe images. In would have served as an apt visual metaphorfor Malanga's this instance, collaborationought to be regardedas a series tendencyto absorbothers into his own identity,in his poems of social interactions,in which public and professionalaffairs as well as in life. tend to be inseparable from personal and sexual relation- One of the most readily discernible ways this absorp- ships. And these social exchanges not only affect the out- tionoccurs in Malanga'spoetry is in referencesnot only to the come of the book, but also parallel its content. ostensible subjects of his poems, but also to Benedetta By providinga sense of the social complexitiesinvolved Barzini (fig. 2), with whomhe remainedobsessively in love in this collaboration,we can begin to take a fresh lookat what followinga brief relationshipthat ended shortlybefore many the roles of Warhol'sassociates were, and to consider how of the verses were composed in August 1966; Screen Tests/A misconceptionsabout the social elementof his workhave led Diary is dedicatedto Barzini. FacingJohn Ashbery's portrait to the omission of Screen Tests/ADiary and other, similar (fig. 3), for example, are the lines, "Butthe Italian / collec- projectsfrom both the literatureon Warholand studies of the tionsfor Fall are notable,"alluding to Barzini'sthen success- history of collaborationbetween poets and visual artists in ful career as a fashion model. the twentiethcentury.' But the first line of this same poem-"What had you The fifty-four stills of Screen Tests/ADiary-which been thinking about"-does concernAshbery; it is the first picture actors and poets, socialites and thieves, models, line of Ashbery'sown poem "TheTennis CourtOath."8 This consumers of amphetamine, painters, filmmakers, and brings us to a second, rather curious device employedby musicians2-are frame enlargementsfrom short black-and- Malangain his literaryabsorption of others: appropriation. white silent-film portraitsmade between 1964 and 1966 by Such self-conscious copying has multiple significations in Warholwith the assistance of Malangaand/or Billy Linich, Malanga'sverses: it is a verbal parallel to Warhol'swell- also known as Billy Name, who lived at the Factory.3 Each knowntechnique of appropriatingexisting visual imagery;it still consists of one or two entire frames from the film footage, is a way to flatterthe poet being copied-which, in the case and part of either one or two additional frames. The idea of Ashbery, operates dually, since Ashbery himself relied behind such cropping is to provide visual evidence that the heavilyon appropriation.9This flattery,in turn, is a meansof ART JOURNAL Isthe firstmovementof thewill powertoward keeping a secret an effectof grace or simplyafree, autonomoushuman act andwhyis there analogy betweentwo typesof being complexwhen we do not know whatthe meaning of ourlanguage is? Whatare the relationships between the swapped destinies? Whatlight does theuse of thediary text reveals the crucial ideas, andthe loss of heavenin lifeis authentic. Therain becomes rain again. Thefriends are forever involved in the"family photo." 8/28/66 60 29 FIG. 1 GerardMalanga and AndyWarhol, "Billy Linich," Screen Tests/A Diary, No. 29 (NewYork: Kulchur Press, 19671 91516 x 7V4inches (page). seeking the approvalof a literary model, and throughap- proval,of getting workpublished.10 Such appropriationis also a formof theft, or of denying another'sprivacy. To take anotherexample, the line "Today notmuch happened," which is foundin six of the poems, was, accordingto Malanga'srecollection, copied froman entryin the diary of a former girlfriend, Debbie Caen, who also figures in ScreenTests/A Diary (wherethe routinethefts of the amphetamineculture to which she belongedare alludedto by the poet-"the illegal / transactions,the hot/ bicycles stored in the hall"). Appropriationhere, aside fromposing problems of aesthetic judgment, signifies an unstable social environ- ment, in that it implies a lack of trust, and an unstable artistic identity, in that it suggests a struggle in finding a "voice"of one's own. A blatant and constant stream of self-referenceruns throughthe poems, announcedimmediately by the cover of ScreenTests/A Diary (fig. 4). The frontcover consists of a still froma colorscreen test of Malanga.Here, throughthe poet's rathercocky gaze, his vanity is made to speak foritself. The same image is found on the back cover, but printed in FIG. 2 BillyName, Benedetta Barzini posing for a portraitfilm at the Factory, 1966, photograph,14 x 912 inches. WINTER1993 What had you been thinkingabout the boy wrotein his diary notebookfor no one to read. You misunderstoodhow itrisnot possibleto breatheunder water.I worry,sometimes. But the Italian collectionsfor Fall are notable for some of the newestcoats in Europe you missed and I thought it was not Spring to decidethe sharp edge of the cloudburstcoming over the hill. Somehowyour fears are justifiedin the detailsturned inside out of the dreamof the friends who will notrstay behindthe wind blowingacross your face. 8222166 61 2 FIG. 3 GerardMalanga and AndyWarhol, "John Ashbery," Screen Tests/A Diary, No. 2 (NewYork: Kulchur Press, 1967), 915A6 x 7V4inches (page). negative. Warholfrequently used the photographicnegative the artcritic RobertPincus-Witten of his experienceof sitting iconographically,as a symbol of death, fromthe mid-1970s for his screen test: "I remember,Gerry Malanga and Andy on, in variantsof the traditionalvanitas theme that seems to were there, and Andy would say things like, 'Isn'tthis won- havealready been in his mind here.11It certainly is a suitable derful!Isn't he terrific!He's doing it!' As if one is really doing motif for the back cover-or the close of the book, which somethingwonderful by simply remainingstatic and unmov- might be understood as the end of the author'stemporal ing before the lens, but the hype was very, very exciting."'3 existence. Similarly, the white dots that traverse part of The power of flattery largely explains why Warholand his Malanga'sface on both frontand back covers can be viewed associates succeeded in getting several hundredindividuals as markersof time, forthese dotswere createdby the perfora- to sit for screen-test films. tions at eitherthe beginning or end of a standardreel of film A person'swillingness to sit fora screen test is a formof (and were a routine aesthetic and conceptual feature of vanity, but is also part of the collaborative process that Warhol'searly films, beginning in 1963). determinedthe contentof ScreenTests/A Diary. Indeed, it is a While some