It’s just as well that I can’t afford to collect Andy Warhol. One piece just doesn’t do it. You can fill half of Paris’s Grand Palais with portraits and a museum in Pittsburgh with assorted pieces and still not see the same piece twice.
Or you can stay closer to home: love fear pleasure lust pain glamour death opened yesterday at SAM. It’s a smart, focused selection of Warhol pieces curated by Marisa Sánchez.
She steers away from the overly familiar and focuses on Warhol’s non-paintings—photobooth strips, Polaroids, sewn portraits, screen tests—and non-iconic subjects. No Marilyns, no soup cans, no neon-cow wallpaper.
Warhol’s genius—or was it just a knack?—was taking a simple set of rules and milking them for all they were worth. He repeated ideas the way Letterman repeates punchlines, and was just as successful at making lightning strike the same place twice, three times, four times, or more, long after you’d think that spot had no spark left in it.
A case in point is the highlight of the show: twenty of Warhol’s Screen Tests. The idea behind the Screen Tests was simple: Sit someone in front of a nondescript background and film them for three minutes. Just sitting there. Doing not much. Project the films at 16 frames per second so they last four and a half minutes.
The first time I saw any Screen Tests was last year at SAM, when Dean & Britta played their collection of songs composed for 13 Most Beautiful. “Most beautiful” was an apt title, and not just because Jane Holzer brings the hubba hubba. The Screen Tests are some of the loveliest films I’ve seen, but it’s maddeningly hard trying to pin down why, because for the most part nothing happens. But nothing makes me feel more like L.B. Jeffries, James Stewart’s character in Rear Window, and at their best they give Warhol’s subjects a moment where they’re as lovely as Grace Kelly’s entrance in that film.
(When Ann Buchanan cries in hers, it’s a major event. SAM’s publicity materials for the show claim that Buchanan was so “emotionally invested in the process that she begins to cry,” but in person Sánchez promoted the more common theory: Buchanan didn’t blink, so her eyes watered.)
For this show, the Screen Tests fill two rooms, each with five running at a time. Edie Sedgwick and Dennis Hopper. Lou Reed and Sterling Morrison. Holly Solomon and Ethel Scull. They’re projected at giant size, but it suits them; the film grain and stark lighting add to the allure. It’s the best way to see Screen Tests this side of YouTube. SAM turns them into the church of staring at beautiful people trying to act naturally. Linger. Watch.
Other highlights include some of the photobooth photos of Ethel Scull that Warhol used in his first commissioned portrait, Ethel Scull 36 Times; Polaroid “self portraits” (no one knows who actually pushed the button on the camera) of Andy in drag; another Polaroid of Keith Haring embracing his partner Juan Dubose; and a sewn portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat, with the same photo printed at six different light levels.
The show also resists the urge to overread Warhol, whose best work seemed to spring from the thought that “gee, that’s pretty,” and ask the question “Will it sell?” Sánchez said she selected pieces that reflected Warhol’s love of ephemerality, and the show doesn’t promote him as a deep thinker.
(There are exceptions: The placard next to a Polaroid of Howdy Doody, one of his American Heroes series, mentions that photographing a marionette suggests “Warhol’s belief that things are not always as they appear.” Incisive analysis. Wouldn’t it be more noteworthy if Warhol believed things were always as they appear?)
The final room of love fear pleasure blood sugar sex magick contains a photo booth and a chance for you to get interactive: Get your picture taken ($4, credit cards only) and leave one on the Warhol quote wall. You can visit Facebook and tag yourself so that we can make the obligatory comment about Warhol’s influence on social networking.
Which works out—it’s Andy’s world, and (apologies to Sinatra) we just live in it.
(Note: To get to the Warhol exhibit you’ve got to go through Kurt. If you, like everyone who contributed to the exhibit, really like Kurt Cobain, you should go. If you, like me, don’t find that particular rock tragedy inherently more compelling than Lennon or Tupac or Buddy Holly, you’ll probably like a few of the pieces but find the exhibition unilluminating, a highbrow spin on the Cobain T-shirts you can buy in a gazillion places online or in malls. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s mostly art for the converted.)
(And on a final note: Chelsea Girls is coming to town! Friday, May 21 at 7:30pm in the Plestcheeff Auditorium. As with the rest of the best of Warhol, Chelsea Girls was notorious, motivated by his urge not to waste anything, and hugely profitable. I can’t wait.)
