Designer of the Month: Andy Warhol

Week 3: The Factory, Film and Video

People's fantasies are what give them problems. If you don't have fantasies you wouldn't have problems because you'd just take whatever was there. But then you wouldn't have romance, because romance if finding your fantasy in people who don't have it. A friend of mine always says, 'Women love me for the man I'm not.'[1]

Andy Warhol, Kiss (film still), 1963–64. 16mm film (black and white, silent). 54 min. at 16fps. © 2010 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved. Film still courtesy of The Andy Warhol Museum. Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans (1962), which caused a sensation in the art world, marked the true start to Warhol's celebrity.[2] According to The Andy Warhol Foundation, When asked about the impulse to paint Campbell’s soup cans, Warhol replied, 'I wanted to paint nothing. I was looking for something that was the essence of nothing, and that was it'. The humble soup cans would soon take their place among the Marilyn Monroes, Dollar Signs, Disasters, and Coca Cola Bottles as essential, exemplary works of contemporary art."[3] Of course, Warhol needed a space to create these works. At the beginning of 1963, he took a sublet in an old firehouse on East 87th Street as his studio, but by November, he'd already received word that the building had to be vacated.[4] Warhol's next loft, a 50 ft. x 100 ft. space at 231 East 47th Street that he named the Factory, was to become the location synonymous with not only Warhol, but an entire way of life.[5] As Warhol describes the silver-draped space and of his fellow artist essential Factory figure, Billy Name:

Billy was a good trasher; he furnished the whole Factory from things he found on the street, The huge curved couch that would be photographed so much in the next few years - the hairy red one that we used in so many of our movies - Billy found right out in front of the 'Y'...He covered the crumbling walls and pipes in different grades of silver foil - regular tinfoil in some areas, and a higher grade of Mylar in others. He bought cans of silver paint and sprayed everything with it, right down to the toilet bowl.[6]

Andy Warhol, Empire (film still), 1964. 16mm film, black and white, silent, 8 hours 5 minutes at 16 frames per second. The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. © The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute, all rights reserved.

I loved working when I worked at commercial art and they told you what to do and how to do it and all you had to do was correct it and they'd say yes or no. The hard thing is when you have to dream up the tasteless things to do on your own. When I think about what sort of person I would most like to have on a retainer, I think it would be a boss. A boss who could tell me what to do, because that makes everything easy when you're working.[7]

1963 was also the year that Warhol purchased his first camera and began making films, with the Factory, its many supporters, followers, artists, and stars, and even the city itself, serving as their locations, actors and subject matter. While truly experimental at the time, Warhol's early films, including Sleep (1963), Blow Job (1964), Empire (1963), and Kiss (1963-64), are now considered avant-garde cinema classics.[8] As the Museum of Modern Art describes of Warhol's early work, and Empire, in particular:

Warhol conceived a new relationship of the viewer to film in Empire and other early works, which are silent, explore perception, and establish a new sense of cinematic time. With their disengagement, lack of editing, and lengthy nonevents, these films were intended to be part of a larger environment. They also parody the goals of his avant-garde contemporaries who sought to convey the human psyche through film or used the medium as metaphor[9] 

Andy Warhol, Screen Test: Jane Holzer (film still), 1964. 16mm film, black and white, four minutes. Collection of The Andy Warhol Museum, Founding Collection, Contribution the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. © 2006 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, All rights reserved.

Warhol's later films were equally revered. What his Campbell's Soup Cans were to painting, Warhol's Screen Tests (1963-66) would be to film. Lasting only the length of a roll of film, each of these 500 4-minute films captures a range of both famous and anonymous visitors to the Factory, including including poet Allen Ginsberg, actor Dennis Hopper, artist Salvador Dali, and actress and model Jane Holzer (above), among others, with the standard formula of both subject and camera remaining almost motionless for the duration of the film, resulting in a "living portrait."[10] Warhol's Screen Tests were famous for the diversity of people captured in them and for their groundbreaking simplicity and for creating a cadre of "Superstars" from his friends and followers.[11] Notoriety from the film world itself soon followed with the dual-screen, pseudo-documentary Chelsea Girls (1966), which boasted sold-out screenings and  accolades from the public, including art critic David Bourdon, who wrote, “word around town was underground cinema had finally found its Sound of Music in Chelsea Girls.”[12]


[1] Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B & Back Again), (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1928), 55.

[2] The Warhol Museum online, "About Andy: Biography," http://www.warhol.org/collection/aboutandy/biography/, (accessed August 13, 2012).

[3] The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts online, "Warhol's Legacy: Andy Warhol Biography," http://www.warholfoundation.org/legacy/biography.html, (accessed August 13, 2012).

[4] Andy Warhol, "1960-1963," POPism: The Warhol '60s, ed. Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett, (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 25, 61.

[5] Ibid., 61. 

[6] Ibid., 63-4.

[7] Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B & Back Again), (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1928), 96.

[8] The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts online, "Warhol's Legacy: Andy Warhol Biography," http://www.warholfoundation.org/legacy/biography.html, (accessed August 14, 2012).

[9] The Museum of Modern Art online, "The Collection," excerpt from MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 240, http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=89507 (accessed August 14, 2012).

[10]  The Warhol Museum online, "Screen Tests," http://edu.warhol.org/aract_screentest.html, (accessed August 14, 2012).

[11] Ibid.

[12] The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts online, "Warhol's Legacy: Andy Warhol Biography," http://www.warholfoundation.org/legacy/biography.html, (accessed August 14, 2012).