Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures - MoMA Exhibition, NYC

Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures
MoMA, Museum of Modern Art, NYC December 19, 2010 - March 21, 2011

Among ANDY WARHOL’s cinematic oeuvre, the black and white silent films are the most daring and experimental in their selection of subject and theme, psychological acuity, rhythmic pacing, and sheer beauty of form. Although these films were originally shot at sound-film speed (24 frames per second), Warhol specified that prints be projected at a slower speed of 16 frames per second, a rate used in the projection of silent films from the 1890s through the 1920s.

Image: ANDY WARHOL. Screen Test: Lucinda Childs, 1964. 16mm film (black and white, silent). 4 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.

 ANDY WARHOL. Kiss, 1963-1964. 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.

For this exhibition, a selection of Warhol’s films made in 1963-1966 has been transferred from 16mm film to DVD at the speed of 16 frames per second, and projected onto screens and monitors in a gallery setting. Thus it is again possible to see the works as Warhol intended, and to appreciate the ways in which he challenged and provoked both subject and viewer in his manipulation of moving images. 

ANDY WARHOL. Screen Test: Salvador Dalí, 1966 

16mm film (black and white, silent). 4 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. In the film the image is upside down.

ANDY WARHOL: MOTION PICTURES  AN EXHIBITION ON THE ROAD (2003-2011…)

This exhibition originated at MoMA as Andy Warhol: Screen Tests shown at MoMA QNS from May 1 to September 1, 2003. With the addition of Andy Warhol’s silent films, the show debuted as Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin (May 8 - August 8, 2004), and was also presented at Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro (April 26 - June 26, 2005); Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (June 16 - August 14, 2005); Malba-Colección Costantini, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (September 23 - November 21, 2005); the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (December 18, 2008 - February 9, 2009); and the Galerie Rudolfinum in Prague (January 29 - April 5, 2009). It is organized by Klaus Biesenbach, Director of MoMA PS1 and MoMA’s Chief Curator at Large.

ANDY WARHOL. Screen Test: Lou Reed, 1966

16mm film (black and white, silent). 4 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.

MoMA - The Museum of Modern Art – New York At The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Gallery, sixth floor
www.moma.org

Lou Reed, Romanticism - Photo Exhibition @ Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

New Photographs by Lou Reed

Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

December 18, 2009 - January 9, 2010

  © LOU REED / Steven Kasher Gallery

 

Steven Kasher Gallery (New York) presents an exhibition of NEW PHOTOGRAPHS BY LOU REED accompanying the publication of his book, ROMANTICISM (Edition 7L/Steidl, 2009). The book and exhibition feature stunning black and white and color images of landscapes and architectural motifs, shot on the artist’s travels to Scotland, Denmark, Big Sur and elsewhere. The photographs are taken with a specially altered digital camera, which gives them an aura of strangeness, or otherworldliness.  They have a timeless quality but are simultaneously very modern, like Reed himself. They are surprisingly small in scale, making these striking natural images personal, portable, and intimate.

First with his group, The Velvet Underground, and then as a solo artist, Lou Reed has been making innovations in music since the 1960s. His name has become synonymous with the New York avant-garde, and with the city itself.  With his photography, Reed has been moving out of New York, while his first collection featured portraits of the city, this new one focuses on more pastoral settings.

This collection of photographs takes its name from the 18th and 19th century art movement that sought a return to the emotion, beauty, and unknowability of the natural as a counterpoint to industrial era’s emphasis on technological development and the pursuit of rational knowledge. Reed’s images recall this impulse: they focus on the aesthetic and the sublime; the splendor of a single tree against a cloudy Scottish sky, suffused with light. There is, however, also something uncanny and eerie about some of the photographs; the absence of human figures, a road leading over a bridge into a dense, shadowy forest. Reed has recently adapted the poet and writer Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven, the supernatural is a theme that underwrites much of his recent work. Perhaps, like the Romantics, Reed is commenting on another Industrial Revolution — the rapid developments of globalization are once again placing the natural into both literal and metaphoric danger — the beauty of his landscapes takes on a more urgent meaning.

Lou Reed says of his work:

          “I love photography. I love digital. I love digital. It’s what I’d always wished for. Being in the camera and experiencing the astonishing accomplishment of the creations of life sparked through the beauty of the detailed startling power of the glass lens. A new German lens brings a mist to me. The colors and light I come to see through the beauty of the camera. A love that lasts forever is the love of the lens of sharpness – of spirit warmth and depth and feeling. It makes my body pour emotion into the heartbeat of the world. A great trade and exchange. I think of the camera as my soul. Much like a guitar. My lovely Alpa has rosewood grips. What more could you need?”

Lou Reed has been working in multiple media for over thirty years. Along with his band, The Velvet Underground, he was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. He has acted in and composed music for a number of films, and is the recipient of the Chevalier Commander of Arts and Letters from the French government. He is the author of Pass thru Fire: The Collected Lyrics and the play The Raven. Reed acted as guest art director for the Winter 2008/2009 issue of Francis Coppolla’s Zeotrope Magazine. His previous books of photography, both published with Steidl, are Lou Reed’s New York and Emotion in Action. Lou Reed’s latest work The Raven, published by Le Seuil, is a reworking in play form of some works of Edgar Allan Poe, illuminated by the graphic artist Lorenzo Mattotti.

Steven Kasher Gallery is located at 521 W. 23rd St. New York, NY 10011.

Lou Reed: Romanticism one-day exhibition was on view on December 17 and continue in back gallery from December 18 through January 9, 2010.
 
Other post on Wanafoto about Steven Kasher Gallery’s Exhibitions: Tracey Moffatt, Love and Adventures