WARHOLIAN IDOL.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe great stars,\u201d said Andy Warhol, \u201care the ones who are doing something you can watch every second, even if it\u2019s just a movement inside their eyes,\u201d as reported by Sarah Boxer in The New York Times.\u00a0 Back in the \u201860s\u2014between \u201864 and \u201866 to be exact\u2014Warhol shot some 500, black-and-white, 16 mm screen tests of artists, musicians, actors, writers, filmmakers, models, curators, celebrities and hangers-on…at the Factory, his silver-walled studio on East 47th Street in Manhattan.\u201d<\/p>\n
Each filming lasted three minutes, but Warhol played them back in four, with the intent of exposing \u201cthe mechanics of discomposure and charisma.\u201d Baby Jane Holzer tries to unwrap a stick of Wrigley\u2019s gum with her tongue, eventually uses her fingers, and then her eyes glint as she chews. John Palmer barely moves, is cool, handsome, but boring, Boxer concludes. Mama
\nCass Elliott is not beautiful, but she is changeable, and so, compelling.\u00a0 Dennis Hopper: \u201cOne eye is lighter than the other, almost transparent…He smiles, he looks down. A worry furrows his brow…He blinks a lot, turns to the right, looks up, then to the left.\u201d He sings to himself, then stops, looks troubled, then starts humming a new song.<\/p>\nWarhol apparently used these films in a variety of ways, often showing them at parties or using them as backdrops for poetry readings. Some of the screen tests were used in his 1964 films, Batman, and Dracula. He was also apparently trying to create \u201c\u2018a catalog of human heads,\u2019 a typology of charisma in the tradition of 19th-century police mug shots.\u201d Perhaps most intriguing, it\u2019s said that he had in mind a product, that he \u201choped to create and sell the screen tests as \u2018living portrait boxes,\u2019 tabletop boxes in which individual film loops would be projected.\u201d The takeaway, says Boxer, is that the typography of charisma \u201chas nothing to do with handsomeness, histrionics, coolness, slimness, trying or giving up….(It) is as elusive as the typology of criminality.\u201d If you\u2019d like to check this out for yourself, a selection of 28 of the Warhol portraits are now \u201cbeing shown continuously on six screens at the Museum of Modern Art, Queens.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n