August 2023
Andy Warhol
Silver Screen
Andy Warhol, Ethel Scull (detail), 1963, silkscreen ink and spray paint on linen, 83 1/4 x 134 1/2 inches, © 2023 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever
Warhol scholar and Gagosian director Jessica Beck discusses the artist’s work and a special exhibition of three iconic silver paintings from 1963.
Andy Warhol was born in Pittsburgh in 1928 and died in New York in 1987. Collections include the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Musée d’Art Contemporain, Marseille, France; Tate, London; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museo Jumex, Mexico City; and Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul. Warhol’s work has been the subject of exhibitions in museums and galleries throughout the world, including retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1989) and Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin (2001–02, traveled to Tate Modern, London, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2002). Recent exhibitions include From A to B and Back Again, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2018–19); Tate Modern, London (2020); and Revelation, Brooklyn Museum, New York (2021–22). Warhol made sixty experimental films, as well as the television programs Andy Warhol’s TV (1982) and Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes (1986), and was the founding publisher of Interview magazine.
Interview by Dan Golden
I’d love to start our conversation by learning about your background and particular connection to Andy Warhol’s work.
My interest in Warhol started when I was a teenager. I grew up outside of Pittsburgh and would make weekend visits to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and spend time watching his films from the 1960s. Because of this introduction to his film, I’ve always been interested in the deeper layers and overlaps between mediums in his practice.
In his paintings, Warhol maintains an incredible balance between colors. His paintings are vibrant but never garish. In his films, this balance translates to a very subtle and distinctive use of light and shadow. So many of his 1960s films have a softness to them. Warhol was notable for showing his films at silent speed, which slowed them down and suspended his images. This style stood in contrast to the erratic pace of many underground films at the time, specifically those of his friend and collaborator Jack Smith, whose Normal Love and Flaming Creatures are iconic films from this era. Warhol collaborated with Smith in 1963 and, in fact, used Smith’s camera to make the first films, which he shot in Lyme, Connecticut, the same summer that Smith filmed Normal Love. Warhol’s films entice the viewer, and his camera work activates a certain desire from the viewer. At times, there is also a sense of attraction and repulsion in the films. The brilliance of a film like BlowJob is that Warhol never shows the act of the film. He asks the viewer to do all of the work! I could go on at length about the beauty and complexity of his film work, but we should talk about this show: Andy Warhol Silver Screen, which shows the moment that Warhol starts thinking and working as both a painter and a filmmaker during the summer of 1963.
Installation view, Andy Warhol Silver Screen, June 1—August 31, 2023, Gagosian Paris
What initially drew you to Warhol’s work? What are some layers/things you’ve uncovered over time that keep you interested in Warhol?
Warhol’s career was so extensive that I am continuously learning new things about his practice. What I love most about the work is that you can experience it from different perspectives. Foremost, there is the initial aesthetic experience. Warhol was amazing with color and composition. But there are also deeper, political ideas at work in his practice. His lived experience as both a Catholic and a gay man provide a depth to the work that I find complex and rich. I’ve written extensively about these ideas in my writing on his Last Supper paintings. Understanding this tension helps us see how Warhol often took risks throughout his career. In the 1950s, a period when homosexuality was policed throughout New York City, Warhol was showing intimate, queer drawings of young men for his exhibition of drawings, Studies for a Boy Book at the Bodley Gallery in 1956. In the 1980s, he was engaging in politics with collaborative works with Basquiat and diving deeply into the tension between his Catholic roots and the targeting of homosexuals by the media during the 1980s AIDS crisis in works like Last Supper Be a Somebody with a Body. There is a complexity to the work that keeps it relevant, which is also true with his investigation into advertising and Hollywood.
In his paintings and portraits, Warhol exposed the underbelly of advertising, consumerism, and fame and revealed how these industries use societal ideals (beauty, youth, physical fitness, etc.) to sell products from women’s lingerie to the American dream. Hollywood has a deep investment in selling and manufacturing the American dream and has been churning out celebrities, or avatars of these ideals, since its inception. In his work, Warhol shows the moments when the Hollywood veneer cracks. You can see this in his painting Silver Liz, which is featured in this exhibition. The double registration of the silk screen over her eyes calls attention to her gaze while challenging the viewer to search for the person behind the Hollywood persona.
Andy Warhol, Silver Liz [Studio Type], 1963, silkscreen ink and spray paint on linen, 40 x 40 inches, © 2023 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever
Can you share some thoughts about the short period between 1962 (when Warhol showed his Campbell Soup cans at Ferus Gallery) and 1963, when he exhibited his first large-scale silver paintings?
Warhol was so prolific that one could write an entire book about a single year. I will try not to do that here! But so much happened between 1962 and 1963. Warhol made enormous strides professionally and personally. He went from showing his paintings in the department store windows at Bonwit Teller to having solo exhibitions with Irving Blum at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles and Elanor Ward at the Stable Gallery in New York. His summer exhibition of Campbell’s Soups created a media buzz that put him on the map. By November, he was showing his earliest screen-printed portraits of Marilyn Monroe with handpainted works like Do It Yourself (Sailboats) and Dance Diagram.
When 1963 hit, Warhol began one of his most celebrated bodies of work, the Death and Disaster paintings, while also working on a series of silver paintings, Silver Liz and Silver Elvis, for a second at the Ferus Gallery. During the same month that he’s executing these works, he’s also painting Tunafish Disaster and his first commissioned portrait of collector Ethel Scull. In the spring, he picked up the camera for the first time and started making his earliest films. One can see the influence of the 16mm filmstrip in the paintings in this exhibition. In the Ethel Scull portrait, for instance, the photobooth strips are kept intact, echoing the movement and motion of filmstrips. In Silver Liz, the double registration of the silkscreen across her eyes creates a flicker effect.
Warhol spent this time expanding his social network, too. In September, he took his first cross-country road trip to Los Angeles for the opening of a second show with Blum of his Silver Elvis and Silver Liz paintings—a perfect pairing for Hollywood. When he arrived in LA, he was fêted by Denis Hopper, who threw him a party of friends and fellow movie stars such as Troy Donahue, whom Warhol had made paintings of in 1962. It was as if his fantasies were all coming true! He also attended the opening of Walter Hopps’s Duchamp retrospective at the Pasadena Art Museum, and he even filmed his first feature-length movie, Tarzan and Jane Regained. . .Sort of with Taylor Mead and Dennis Hopper. He took advantage of every minute of this trip to Hollywood.
This moment was one of transition and transformation from the naive “Raggedy Andy,” trying to find his place in New York City, to the working Adman, to Andy Warhol, the Pop artist, the underground filmmaker, and the avatar of cool. What happened the following year in 1964 is legendary—the Silver Factory, the endless production of films, paintings, and sculpture, the social happenings with poets, dancers, musicians and celebrities populating his studio—and marked the beginning of a new era for Warhol.
“This exhibition is intimate, consisting of three paintings, and yet unpacks so many facets of Warhol’s practice: his focus on fame, his new interest in filmmaking, the darker perspective that often presented of the media’s fascination with celebrity and death, and the ways he blended the mediums of painting and film.”
Please share a bit about this specific exhibition at Gagosian Paris.
This exhibition, Andy Warhol Silver Screen, is intimate, consisting of three paintings, and yet unpacks so many facets of Warhol’s practice during the summer of 1963: his focus on fame, his new interest in filmmaking, the darker perspective that often presented of the media’s fascination with celebrity and death, and the ways he blended the mediums of painting and film.
What I find most special about this show is that these three works are quite rare within Wahrol’s practice. Many people may be familiar with Warhol’s Silver Liz paintings that were shown at the Ferus Gallery, which involved multiple layers of color with her blue eyeshadow, pink lips, and peachy complexion. But Warhol made just ten of these monochrome screens of black silkscreen ink over silver ground.
The Ethel Scull painting is another example of an exceptional work. Many people may be familiar with the final commission that he made, Ethel Scull 36 Times (1963), which is owned by the Whitney Museum of American Art and is a modular painting made up of small, colorful canvases, but Warhol made just two silver paintings with her portrait. Viewers also get to see how Warhol worked on multiple projects and engaged varied subjects at once during this period. For instance, one of his Tunafish Disaster paintings was cut from the same sheet of canvas as one of his Silver Liz paintings.
The show provides a window into an important early moment in Warhol’s career and offers the public the opportunity to see how he is experimenting and refining his signature style.
Andy Warhol, Tunafish Disaster, 1963, silkscreen ink and spray paint on linen, 41 x 22 inches, © 2023 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever
Can you talk a bit about Warhol’s relationship with Ethel Scull?
Ethel Scull was a socialite and collector of contemporary art. She and her husband, Robert Scull, amassed one of the most significant collections of Pop and Minimalist art, but they were also known for their lavish parties. This, I’m sure, attracted Warhol to the Sculls. What I find fascinating about Scull is that she was interested in Warhol at a moment when his place within the gallery world was still being defined. In many ways, she was taking a risk on a young, burgeoning artist who was on the cusp of a defining moment in his career. Over the summer of 1963, there was no Silver Factory for Warhol to invite Scull to sit for her portrait. At the time, Warhol was working from a leaky firehouse. The story of Warhol taking Scull to the 42nd Street photo booths to capture her portrait is charming, but it was also a clear strategy on Warhol’s part. Since he didn’t have a glamorous studio to host Scull, he provided her with a playful and youthful experience in the photo booth, where she could perform in front of the camera. The photo booth strips offered Warhol an abundance of content and a multitude of poses and frames. In the end, the portraits that he painted of Scull are dynamic and animated but also capture her personal aspirations for fame. Warhol transformed her into a star.
Andy Warhol, Ethel Scull, 1963, silkscreen ink and spray paint on linen, 83 1/4 x 134 1/2 inches, © 2023 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever
Where do you place Warhol in terms of significance to art in the twentieth century?
Often, Warhol is discussed in terms of fame, beauty, glamor, wealth, and the American dream. There have been so many exhibitions that speak to these themes. But for me, his work is about challenging and critiquing these ideals. This is why we’re still talking about this work: because we live with these same ideals. In his celebrity portraits of the early 1960s, Marilyn Monroe, Jaqueline Kennedy, and Elizabeth Taylor, he focused on all of these women when their images were circulating in the media during times of crisis or death. For Monroe, Warhol created her portrait after her suicide. For Kennedy, it was after the assassination of JFK, and for Taylor, it was after her near-death illness during the filming of Cleopatra. What Warhol exposed so clearly during this period was the interconnections between media attention and disaster. He also exposed the Hollywood machine—a machine that transforms people into products, i.e., Norma Jean Mortensen into Marilyn Monroe – uses up a star during their lifetime and exploits their death in the media after they are gone. We live with this same machine, but now, with social media, it operates on a much larger scale, which is why we continue to engage with Warhol’s work. The Silver Liz, for instance, is at once a glamorous portrait of a starlet and a window into the tension between personhood and stardom.
Andy Warhol Silver Screen, June 1—August 31, 2023, Gagosian Paris
What’s something about Warhol that people might be surprised to learn?
I’m really interested right now in the friendship that Warhol and Basquiat shared in the 1980s and how important Basquiat was to reigniting Warhol’s late career and encouraging him to return to hand painting. One fact that I came across recently while researching their friendship for an essay on their collaborations is that over the summer of 1968, both were in the hospital recovering from near-death experiences. While Warhol was recovering from his near-fatal shooting on June 3, 1968, Basquiat was just leaving the hospital after spending the month recovering from surgery. In May 1968, Basquiat, eight years old at the time, was hit by a car while playing ball in the street and rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery to have his spleen removed. Both artists shared this traumatic moment just weeks apart. Fifteen years later, after an introduction by Bruno Bischofberger, they became collaborators and friends and produced hundreds of paintings together. They shared a very special bond. It’s interesting to me that just a few weeks apart and a few miles from each other in 1968, they both almost lost their lives.
Andy Warhol
Silver Screen
Gagosian Paris
June 1—August 31, 2023
Jessica Beck portrait by Abby Warhola
Jessica Beck, a director at Gagosian Beverly Hills, is a curator, Warhol scholar, art historian, writer, and lecturer. Formerly chief curator of the Andy Warhol Museum, she organized numerous exhibitions of Warhol’s work there, including Andy Warhol: My Perfect Body (2016–17) and Marisol and Warhol Take New York (2021–22). Beck has published widely on Warhol, including the exhibition catalog accompanying Basquiat x Warhol. Painting 4 Hands at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2023), and was a featured expert in the Netflix documentary series The Andy Warhol Diaries (2022).