A few months back I caught a live performance of new music by Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips (of Luna) set to thirteen of Andy Warhol's most mesmerizing Screen Tests, a series of black and white film portraits he shot between 1964 and 1966 using a stationary 16mm Bolex camera.
Warhol would film these two minute portraits whenever a visitor to the Factory seemed to him to have "star quality." He captured over 500 tests in two years, and this collection highlights thirteen of the most compelling and well known, most of which went almost entirely unseen until after Warhol's death in 1987.
Many of Warhol's subjects had already attained a certain level of notoriety at the time of filming, but even his anonymous subjects are totally captivating on screen; watching them feels at once like a deeply intimate act and intensely aesthetic experience. Warhol would often light his subjects from one side, creating a Greek statue-like effect across their faces, creating them somewhere between individual and icon. For me the most compelling of these is the screen test of a man named Richard Rheem, whose expression stays relentlessly neutral for the entire duration, a feat against which the rest of the subjects' reactions must be compared and which makes you realize that when Warhol said "screen test," he meant it.
Warhol filmed the screen tests at 24 frames per second but slowed them down to 16
frames per second for playback, a quality that makes Dean &
Britta's languorous music a particularly good match and demonstrates the power of film to reveal character, for each subject's slowed down gestures and microexpressions seem to reveal his or her thoughts. Nico seems the most conscious of the camera's powers. She meets its gaze only fleetingly and is unable to refrain from moving through a model's catalog of poses, while Edie Sedgwick stares directly into the lens, displaying a fascinating mix of vulnerability and worldliness. Many of the subjects rely on little rituals and props to carry them through. Paul America chews gum. Lou Reed drinks a Coke. Jane Holzer brushes her teeth. Ingrid Superstar compulsively touches her nose. Only a few of us are able, it seems, to sit still for this kind of scrutiny.
The Andy Warhol Museum and Plexifilm recently released a DVD version of the films set to Dean & Britta's original songs (as well as a few covers). The title is borrowed from Warhol's original anthology of early screen tests, called "The Thirteen Most Beautiful Boys." The music is gorgeous and the DVD packaging is fancy-- slipcovered and hardbound. It's also available on iTunes.
Comments