From Flaming Star to Setting Sun: Between Painting and Film

In May 1965, Warhol abruptly announced that he was giving up painting to make films. In fact, he had been intensely involved in filmmaking since 1963 and he never gave up painting. For five years, at the height of his career during the 1960s, he worked in both media. Hollywood movies and cinematic techniques infiltrated his paintings; his films were informed by his painting practice. This program delves into the singular relationship between Warhol’s paintings and films. We begin with one of his earliest films, Elvis at Ferus, a movie about paintings that are about the movies, and we end the evening with the unfinished pastoral Sunset, his most painterly film. In between, we look at portraiture: as still life—[the dancer Yvonne Rainer’s] Shoulder; as performance—Freddie [Herko] and Jill [Johnston] Dancing and Mario Banana I—and at the group  portrait, Haircut No. 1, one of Warhol’s most intricate and beautifully lit compositions.

Program

Andy Warhol,
"Elvis at the Ferus", 1963, 16mm, b/w, no sound, 4 min (16 fps)
Shoulder, 1964, 16mm, b/w, no sound, 4:30 min (16fps)
Freddie and Jill Dancing, 1963, 16mm, b/w, no sound, 4:30 min (16fps)
Mario Banana I, 1964, 16mm, b/w, no sound, 4:30 min (16fps)
Haircut No. 1, 1963, 16mm, b/w, no sound, 27 min (16 fps)
Sunset, 1967, 16mm, color, sound, 33 min

Curated by Donna De Salvo & Neil Printz, introduction via zoom

DONNA DE SALVO is senior adjunct curator at the Dia Art Foundation. Formerly deputy director and senior curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, she organized the retrospective, Andy Warhol—From A to B and Back Again (2018). She has curated exhibitions and lectured extensively on Warhol’s work and was adjunct curator for the Andy Warhol Museum. Additionally, she has curated or co-curated presentations of the works of Michael Heizer, Roni Horn, Robert Irwin, Hélio Oiticica, Steve McQueen, and Lawrence Weiner, amongst others, and the thematic exhibitions: Hand Painted Pop: American Art in Transition, 1955–62; Open Systems, Rethinking Art, c. 1970; and America Is Hard to See.

NEIL PRINTZ is the Editor of the Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné: Paintings, Sculptures, and Drawings. He is currently preparing the manuscript for Volume 6: Paintings 1978–1980 and for a companion volume  dedicated to Warhol’s drawings of the 1970s. Printz has lectured and published extensively on Warhol’s work in the United States and Europe, including an essay for the catalogue of ANDY WARHOL EXHIBITS a glittering alternative.