Screening at the Museum of Contemporary Art as part of the exhibit “Andy Warhol/Supernova: Stars, Deaths, and Disasters, 1962-1964,” these four programs focus on early films in which Warhol used a stationary camera, his performers alternatively showing off and withering under his passive-aggressive gaze.
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Couch (1964, 58 min.) consists of 14 unedited camera rolls, each showing the couch in Warhol’s “Factory” from a different angle. The various figures assembled around it form a series of powerfully blocked compositions, their mood overtly erotic: a great many bananas are consumed, one nude woman fails to attract the attention of a guy working on his motorcycle, and almost everyone stares off into the distance with a bored languor that has come to characterize a whole school of fashion photography. In the last third the sex becomes explicit, and the erotic glances of the early scenes give way to the viewer’s voyeuristic participation, one of Warhol’s major subjects.
Also screening: Eat (1963, 39 min.), featuring the work of artist Robert Indiana; Kiss (1964, 58 min.), with Gerard Malanga and Baby Jane Holzer; and Four of Andy Warhol’s Most Beautiful Women (1964, 15 min.), which collects some of Warhol’s fabled “screen tests.” All films screen in the MCA Theater, 220 E. Chicago, and are free with museum admission. For more information call 312-397-4010.
