Fine and Andy
Andy Warhol’s greatest artistic creation was Andy Warhol. Despite his staggering output, it’s impossible to look at anything he created and not see his bemused face, his trademark expression of paranoia and bliss caught in the pop of a flashbulb. Though Warhol is most famous for his silkscreens of such pop icons as Elvis and Marilyn Monroe and for such sculptures as Brillo Boxes, his talents splayed across other media, from commercial art (sketching shoes for department store ads) to filmmaking. And it’s the latter genre that may be most unfamiliar to casual Warhol fans.
Electromediascope, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art’s experimental-film series, is devoting three nights to the films Warhol made between 1963 and 1970. Though Empire, Sleep and Blowjob are conspicuously absent, the roster offers a breathtaking look at Warhol’s mood, his time and his fascinating menagerie of hangers-on.
Starting the series on February 2 is Vinyl, a 1965 adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange that predates Stanley Kubrick’s interpretation by six years. Following Vinyl the same night is the California-filmed Sunset. Its soundtrack consists of poetry from Nico, who was a regular at the Factory — Warhol’s aluminum-foil-walled studio — and an original member of the Velvet Underground.
Warhol’s most important film may be 1966’s The Chelsea Girls (screening February 9). Shot through a haze of meth at Manhattan’s infamous Chelsea Hotel, the movie uses a double-screen format of color and black-and-white footage and stars such Warhol pals as Viva and Brigid Berlin. It nearly caused riots among New York’s desperately hip when it opened; no doubt to Warhol’s delight, critic Rex Reed called it “a three-hour cesspool of vulgarity and talentless confusion.”
Concluding the series on February 16 is the double-feature Hedy and The Velvet Underground and Nico. Whereas the latter captures the band rehearsing at the Factory, the former is more of a gag. It stars drag performer Maria Montez as a satiric version of B-movie star Hedy Lamar caught shoplifting, among other indiscretions.
