Warhol’s ‘Live Portraits’

The Moscow Museum of Modern Art is presenting an exhibition of "Live Portraits" dedicated to the 80^th anniversary of Andy Warhol (1929—1987), the most well known American avant-garde painter, a producer, a club king, a superstar of the underground of the 60s and the 70s, an outstanding figure in the XX century world culture.

The name of Andy Warhol is associated not only with the famous portrait of Marylene Monro, the Campbell’s soup can or full-length films. Warhol was always expanding the area of his creative activities; he was constantly searching for the new. In the course of his career, he made his way from an advertisement illustrator to a radically brave innovator, from a cinematographer to a portrait painter, from an observer to a world-renowned person.

Andy Warhol worked at the Factory, a scandalously known studio located in 47^th Street in New York. It looked more like a crowded club than a quiet atelier. It was there that he experimented on video-portraits, making about five hundred black and white silent films he called screen tests. He had started making video-portraits before the very word "video art" appeared. Models and artists, actors and singers, writers and poets, Warhol’s numerous and various friends became the characters of the screen tests. 47^th Street in New York. It looked more like a crowded club than a quiet atelier. It was there that he experimented on video-portraits, making about five hundred black and white silent films he called screen tests. He had started making video-portraits before the very word "video art" appeared. Models and artists, actors and singers, writers and poets, Warhol’s numerous and various friends became the characters of the screen tests.

The visitors will have a chance of seeing the portrait of Dennis Hopper (an actor and producer who shot a cult film Easy Rider with his close friends, Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson starring). They can see Edie Sedgwick (an actress and a woman of fashion), Jane Holzer (an actress and a model), Nico (a singer and a photo-model who performed several songs for the first album of the group The Velvet Underground Warhol was a producer of), Ed Sanders (a poet and publicist), and portraits of other no less attractive members of American artistic circles of the 60s.

Twenty years the screen tests were kept in the archives of the MOMA (The Museum of Modern Art in New York). Later they were made into video-films with the frequency of sixteen pictures per second (as Andy Warhol had planned) and in 2003 they were displayed at the exhibition Andy Warhol: Screen Tests in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In the recent five years the exhibition Live Portraits has toured round North America and Western Europe.

The best samples of the screen tests were taken to Moscow and exhibited in the show rooms of the State Museum of Modern Art of the Russian Academy of Arts in Gogol Boulevard. The black and white portraits are constantly displayed on flat screens or projected onto the walls. The live images talk to the visitors: they smile, or tempt you, or wink at you or even lick their lips. Dali upside down, a girl with tears running down her cheeks, a blond cleaning her teeth, all of them arouse a special interest. The portrait of a couple, a man and a woman, kissing in ecstasy which then changes into the portrait of two kissing men attracts the largest crowds. Gogol Boulevard. The black and white portraits are constantly displayed on flat screens or projected onto the walls. The live images talk to the visitors: they smile, or tempt you, or wink at you or even lick their lips. Dali upside down, a girl with tears running down her cheeks, a blond cleaning her teeth, all of them arouse a special interest. The portrait of a couple, a man and a woman, kissing in ecstasy which then changes into the portrait of two kissing men attracts the largest crowds.

You can admire the Empire State Building, the famous American skyscraper. The original film lasts eight hours. It has been reduced to a forty-minute film, specially for the Live Portraits project. In complete silence of a dark room the viewer sees nothing but the top of the Empire illuminated from beneath. Though the spire of the building became a symbol of New York long ago it is hard to recognize, shown this way.

The play of light and shadow, the complete black and white... everything is simple and brilliant! The exhibition will last until the 8^th of February 2009.

Close 1

Close 2

Close 3

Close 4

Close 5

Close 6

Close 7

Close 8

Close 9

Close 10

Close 11

Close 12

Close 13