Andy Warhol: 12 Screen Tests / Little Red Book

Andy Warhol: 12 Screen Tests

Between 1964 and 1966, Andy Warhol filmed hundreds of visitors to his studio, the Factory, using a stationary Bolex camera. The visitors—who included famous actors, writers, artists, musicians, and personalities, as well as unknowns—were instructed to sit still for the entire length of a hundred-foot roll of 16mm film, a duration of nearly three minutes, resulting in a "living portrait" on film.

Although these short films are called "screen tests," referencing the Hollywood practice of auditioning actors by filming them, none of Warhol's Screen Tests appear to have been used as auditions for his feature-length films. Instead, Warhol treated the Screen Tests as an end product in themselves. He sequenced them and projected them in slow motion, as they are shown here.

Andy Warhol: Little Red Book #178

Andy Warhol (1928–87) was a leading figure in pop art, best known today for his iconic Campbell's Soup paintings and his portrait of Marilyn Monroe. Throughout the 1970s, Warhol documented his activities and social milieu using a Polaroid camera. When he died in 1987, he left behind nearly 40,000 Polaroids, many of which he had sequenced and filed in red Holson Polaroid albums.

These albums are called Little Red Books, a reference to the appearance of the albums and possibly also to Mao Zedong's Little Red Book. The snapshots and portraits contained in the Little Red Books demonstrate the range of Warhol's aesthetic interests, as well as his compulsive desire to collect and organize. The present exhibition includes all nineteen Polaroids from Warhol's Little Red Book #178, dated June 1970.

Little Red Book #178 comprises nineteen Polaroids of friends and celebrities, many of whom were involved in the production of Warhol's film L'Amour (1973), which was filmed in Paris in September 1970. L'Amour was written and directed by Warhol and Paul Morrissey. The film starred Warhol superstars Jane Forth and Donna Jordan, French actor Max Delys, and American actor Michael Sklar; the cast also included Peter Greenlaw and fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld.

Little Red Book #178 was gifted to the Frye Art Museum by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Andy Warhol: Little Red Book #178 is organized by the Frye Art Museum. The exhibition is funded by the Frye Foundation with the generous support of Frye Art Museum members and donors. Seasonal support is provided by Seattle Office of Arts & Culture and ArtsFund.