13 Most Beautiful...Songs forAndy Warhol's Screen Tests

Tue 2nd Mar, 2010 in Gig Reviews

A little background first of all. Andy Warhol is revered as one of the great contemporary artists of our time. He is immortalised in his offering to the world: Pop Art. This isn’t an art review though, so if you don’t already know about Andy Warhol, look him up; he was truly fascinating. One of his famous undertakings was a collection of screen tests, of which he compiled about 300. He was particularly interested in capturing beauty, and he seemed to see the beauty in everyone he associated with. This show, Thirteen Most Beautiful… Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, is a compilation of screen tests from several of his collections, and borrows its name from Warhol’s Thirteen most beautiful women and Thirteen Most Beautiful Boys projects. The Andy Warhol Museum commissioned Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips (Britta & Dean), formerly of Luna, to undertake this project, to create the perfect aural accompaniment to this visual work of art.

Britta & Dean were unmemorable; not the music (far from it), or the event, but the actual performance: it was not about the band, who played in almost darkness, it was about the films, and they certainly succeeded in what they came to do.

Richard Rheem
The first beautiful film was the handsome Richard Rheem, who was a one-time lover of Warhol. The Richard Rheem Theme has an air of expectancy about it, and it fit well as the beginning piece. It is a pretty uneventful screen test, though it seems to be the most edited piece; with the picture going in and out of focus and zoom, and towards the end it looks like it has been slowed down so significantly that you can see every frame. Rheem appears almost without emotion.

Anne Buchanan
This piece was absolutely striking. Buchanan remains almost perfectly still for the entirety of her film; never blinking, never looking anywhere but directly at you. After a minute or so, it became noticable that she had tears streaming down her face. Whether this was from not blinking, or some intense emotion is unclear, but as you stare at the tears rolling down her face and her barely twitching lips and cheeks, you perceive a whole range of feelings; hope, intense sadness, innocence lost, and joy. At first, the music kind of resembles a one of those Yamaha home organ demo beats, but the music overlaying it takes you with her, through all the emotions apparent on her face.

Paul America (Paul Johnson)
We were introduced to Paul with some back story; a film star, he was once the lover of another feature of this show, Eddie Sedgwick, who threw him out of their apartment for his jealousy and control issues. During the filming of his last movie, Ciao Manhattan, he drove from the set and disappeared. It was later discovered that he had been on his way to Indiana, but on the way was imprisoned on drug charges. His screen test was not an eerily still contemplative work like Anne Buchanan’s, but a vision of a vivacious, good-humoured, good looking man, that seemed to be hiding something a little deeper. His screen test was accompanied by a perfectly complimentary acoustic folk tune that seems it was written expressly for this film; Teenage Lighting. The words begin with “I got pills that make me cranky, I got pills that make me cry, I have crooked information, tiny nightmares in the sky”. Seems to capture the character in his back-story, it then moves into cheeky suggestions about putting your hand in his pants and laying you head on his pillow, while he cracks a smile and maybe even a laugh, before attempting to suppress it again.

Eddie Sedgwick
Eddie is beautiful. The music echoes the thought. It don’t rain in Beverley Hills, by Jack Early and Sweden fit the film phenomenally well; as if it was written whilst watching her. Of all the screen tests, Eddie showed the largest range of unconscious emotion; she begins looking beautiful and unsure, then amused, but as the song progresses, she starts to look bewildered and scared and completely unsure of herself; her big eyes making her look like a deer in the headlights.

Billy Name (Billy Linich)
Billy was Warhol’s lighting guy and photographer, who used to throw “rent parties” where he would invite people around for a party and they would pay him to cut their hair. It was Billy who decorated Warhol’s Factory with silver paint and foil; and he lived there for a time, apparently in a cupboard. His screen test is accompanied by Silver Factory Theme -a western sounding song with a jangling tambourine intimating studded boots, and guitar with a heavy, wavering tremolo. This is teamed up with a marching drum beat. His film has a black background, and he appears almost unmoving, looking every inch cool and in control; head tilted to the side, with dark sunglasses and wafts of cigarette smoke (although you never actually see him smoke). It captured a certain mysteriousness and creativity about this man that left you wanting to know more.

International Velvet (Susan Bottomly)
Susan was a 17 year old model, and not much else. Her film was the least interesting of them all; it was very dark, and all you could see was one side of her face. She kept her face so still, with very little reflected light, that it was almost impossible to detect any emotion; Maybe this was the desired effect: to capture the blank, vapid stare of so many models. The track written for her, International Velvet Theme, was beautiful; a heavy vibrato and ethereal sounds reminiscent of French electo-pop duo Air, with the honest, unpretentious vocals of Wareham. The lyrics hinted a sense of mystery and awe at the figure on screen. The music leant something special to this piece that alone would have lacked the intrigue of the others.

Denis Hopper
This film was matched with Luna’s Herringbone Tweed. There is a guitar melody in the song that sounds a lot like Planet Funk’s Chase the Sun, but with a meaty, swaggering groove. His screen test begins, eyes closed; looking troubled, confused and concerned. By the end of the film, a smile of acceptance crosses his face, and then a small chuckle; like he’s just worked something out; he appears to have made peace with whatever inner turmoil he was struggling with.

Mary Woronov
Woronov was an actress and Velvet Underground dancer; her several works include Death Race 2000, Rock’n’Roll Highschool and Charlie’s Angels. Her theme music, I found it not so was a poem by Chris Porpora a.k.a Cheval Sombre, set to pretty music, with Dean’s haunting, sombre vocals that seemed to be calling out an invitation to escape it all. Her image is beautiful, proud and seductive, but at one point, she can’t help by smile a little, and you can see a different person shine through.

Nico
Beautiful Nico’s screen test sees her constantly moving, reading a magazine, chewing on a fingernail as she looks off into the distance. She looks a little conscious of performing before the camera, but, as with so many of these films, mid way through, she seems unable to hide her true emotional state; she appears a bit impatient, maybe sad or bored; deep in thought. The film is accompanied by a gorgeous version of Dylan’s I’ll Keep it With Mine performed by Britta. This song was apparently written for Nico, so was the obvious choice for her theme. It was interesting to see how well the music matched up with her movements and emotions, even though it was not written for the film.

Freddy Herko
We were introduced to Freddy with a back-story about his severe amphetamine dependency and sad demise: homeless, he went to a friend’s house for a bath, whereupon they played Mozart’s Coronation Mass. Being an accomplished pianist and dancer, this happened to be Herko’s favourite song. He got out of the bath and danced, naked throughout the apartment, all the way to the window of the fifth floor apartment, where he leapt out and fell to his death. This film is dark and brooding; highlighting his gaunt cheeks and strong brow. Incandescent innocent was written for this film and involves a moody guitar and bass-line overlaid with a whimsical melody; creating a melancholy feel. Herko is not always in the centre of the film; either he, or the camera move so that at times you see his muscular arm, holding a cigarette, or his chest, or just a sliver of the side of his face. Freddy can not sit still.

Ingrid Superstar (Von Scheven)
Ingrid disappeared in the 80s; after leaving her false teeth in the sink and going out for cigarettes. The music is the most up-tempo and happy of all the tunes. Ingrid looks carefree and happy and funny. She spends a lot of time with her hands on her face, mostly covering her mouth. Towards the end of her film though, Ingrid looks like some dark emotion has come over her, and the happy music seems to get more involved, then it stops just short of the film end, juxtaposing her end position with the beginning of the film.

Lou Reed
Reed spends the entirety of his screen test wearing dark shades and drinking Coca Cola… looking for all the world like he’s filming an advertisement. Towards the end though, he almost looks as if he is making out with the bottle, lingering his lips on the mouth of the bottle suggestively, and interestingly, he turns the bottle around so you can see the word “Coke” instead of “Coca Cola”; maybe this was a joke about loving cocaine, or maybe that’s reading too far into it. Britta and Dean chose to use one of Reed’s own compositions for his screen test, The Velvet Underground song, Not a Young Man Anymore.

Baby Jane Holzer
This was my personal favourite of all the screen tests. The image and the music were both beautiful. It shows Holzer brushing her teeth. Now, brushing your teeth is probably the most un-sexy thing you can watch a person do, but somehow she manages to make it sexy; staring at you with her huge beautiful eyes and brushing her mane of blond hair off her face as she rhythmically brushes; a tiny bit of white foam collecting around her mouth. The accompanying song, Knives from Bavaria, sung by Britta Phillips is delicate and cute, but with eerie undertones and evocative vocals “…divide me in two. Drink me and drown me, I like you; I do. I’m orange. I’m orange. I’m orange. I’m blue.”

The show seemed to be over much too fast, but maybe that’s the mark of a great night: the lingering need to experience more.