Among Warhol's cinematic oeuvre, the black-and-white silent films are the most daring and experimental in their selection of subject and theme, psychological acuity, rhythmic pacing, and sheer beauty of form. Although these films were originally shot at sound-film speed (twenty-four frames per second), Warhol specified that prints be projected at a slower speed of sixteen frames per second, a rate used in the projection of silent films from the 1890s through the 1920s. For this exhibition, a selection of Warhol's films made between 1963 and 1966 has been transferred from 16mm film to DVD at the speed of sixteen frames per second, and projected onto screens and monitors in a gallery setting. Thus it is again possible to see the works as Warhol intended, and to appreciate the ways in which he challenged and provoked both subject and viewer in his manipulation of moving images.

Featured Works:

Included in the exhibition are such Warhol "Superstars" as Edie Sedgwick, Nico, and Baby Jane Holzer; poet Allen Ginsberg; musician Lou Reed; actor Dennis Hopper; author Susan Sontag; and collector Ethel Scull, among others. Other early films included in the exhibition are Sleep (1963), Eat (1963), Blow Job (1963), and Kiss (1963-64). Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures is organized by Klaus Biesenbach, Chief Curator at Large, The Museum of Modern Art, and Director, MoMA PS1. This exhibition is organized in collaboration with The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.

Twelve Screen Tests in this exhibition are projected on the gallery walls at large scale and within frames, some measuring seven feet high and nearly nine feet wide. An excerpt of Sleep is shown as a large-scale projection at the entrance to the exhibition, with Eat and Blow Job shown on either side of that projection; Kiss is shown at the rear of the gallery in a 50-seat movie theater created for the exhibition; and Sleep and Empire (1964), in their full durations, will be shown in this theater at specially announced times. A Screen Test of Ethel Scull will be shown outside the exhibition entrance in its original 16mm format.

In the summer of 1963, following his painted portraits of American icons like Marilyn Monroe, Warhol began experimenting with the creation of time-based portraits using film. With his first movie camera-a silent 16mm black-and-white Bolex-Warhol filmed Sleep, featuring poet and performance artist John Giorno. The film is composed of various shots of Giorno sleeping looped together into five and a half hours of non-action. The film Kiss consists of pieced-together, slowly moving images of different couples kissing, which was shot over the span of several months. This vocabulary of expanded duration and minimal content culminated with Empire, an eight-hour filmic portrait of the Empire State Building.

From early 1964 to November 1966, Warhol experimented with the filmed portrait in an extensive series of nearly 500 works-the "Screen Tests." Photographed at The Factory (Warhol's studio in New York City from 1962 to 1968) on 16mm black-and-white film stock at the standar sound speed of 24 frames per second (fps), the portraits were intended to be projected at 16 fps, the speed of earlier silent films. The result is an unusual slowness and fluidity of pace, a rhythm gently at odds with the large-scale close-ups nearly abstracted by stark light and shadow. Warhol's first subjects were asked to emulate a photograph by not moving or speaking. While some individuals were invited to "perform" a Screen Test, others were captured spontaneously.

Program information:

Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures

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