{"id":3929,"date":"2019-01-29T13:41:52","date_gmt":"2019-01-29T18:41:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/?page_id=3929"},"modified":"2021-08-20T17:29:18","modified_gmt":"2021-08-20T22:29:18","slug":"the-black-hole-of-the-camera","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/books\/the-black-hole-of-the-camera\/","title":{"rendered":"The Black Hole of the Camera"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Description:<\/h2>\n

Andy Warhol, one of the twentieth century\u2019s major visual artists, was a prolific filmmaker who made hundreds of films, many of them\u2014Sleep, Empire, Blow Job, The Chelsea Girls,<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Blue Movie<\/em>\u2014seminal but misunderstood contributions to the history of American cinema. In the first comprehensive study of Warhol\u2019s films, J.J. Murphy provides a detailed survey and analysis. He discusses Warhol\u2019s early films, sound portraits, involvement with multimedia (including The Velvet Underground), and sexploitation films, as well as the more commercial works he produced for Paul Morrissey in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Murphy\u2019s close readings of the films illuminate Warhol\u2019s brilliant collaborations with writers, performers, other artists, and filmmakers. The book further demonstrates how Warhol\u2019s use of the camera transformed the events being filmed and how his own unique brand of psychodrama created dramatic tension within the works.<\/p>\n

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\"J. J. Murphy has been researching and teaching the films of Andy Warhol for years, and today\u2013literally, today\u2013his monograph\u00a0The Black Hole of the Camera: The Films of Andy Warhol<\/em>\u00a0comes out from the University of California Press. This is the most comprehensive, in-depth study of Warhol\u2019s filmmaking that has ever been published, and of course a must-have for anyone interested in experimental film or the American art scene.<\/p>\n

The ideas are fresh, especially the explorations of Warhol\u2019s debt to psychodrama. At the same time,\u00a0The Black Hole of the Camera<\/em>\u00a0clears away many misconceptions about Warhol (no,\u00a0Sleep<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Empire<\/em>\u00a0are not single-shot films) while also offering detailed information about and analysis of little-known stunners like\u00a0Outer and Inner Space<\/em>. There are several pages of color frames, which remind you that Warhol was as good at color as Tashlin was. JJ maintains a remarkable blog on independent cinema and is a leading figure in the Screenwriting Research Network.\"<\/p>\n

\u2014 David Bordwell,\u00a0Observations on film art<\/a><\/em>, (April 2012).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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\"Forget everything you think you know about Andy Warhol.<\/p>\n

With the brilliant new book\u00a0The Black Hole of the Camera: The Films of Andy Warhol<\/em>, author J.J. Murphy obviously focuses in on the artist\u2019s filmmaking career. However, Murphy may just be the first writer to integrate movies such as\u00a0Couch<\/em>,\u00a0Eat<\/em>,\u00a0Empire<\/em>,\u00a0Lonesome Cowboys<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0The Chelsea Girls<\/em>\u00a0into the totality of Warhol\u2019s artistic pursuits, i.e. silk screening, painting, filmmaking, videomaking, tape recording and photography.<\/p>\n

This is, unbelievably, the first time in cinema scholarship such an endeavor has ever been undertaken. That may seem like a shame, particularly given Warhol\u2019s enormous filmic output and his stature as one of the most important artists of the 20th century. Yet, it\u2019s clear it\u2019s been worth the wait for such an astute writer and Warhol film fan like Murphy to finally tackle the topic.<\/p>\n

Previously, one of the problems with an in-depth analysis of most of Warhol\u2019s films is that they were taken out of circulation almost immediately after they completed their screening runs. Therefore, most writing on them had to be based solely on\u2014sometimes faulty\u2014memories of those screenings and through generic descriptions of the films\u2019 typically bland sounding set-ups, e.g. the film\u00a0Haircut<\/em>\u00a0usually being described just as being about a man receiving a haircut.<\/p>\n

Luckily, though, through recent preservation efforts, Murphy has been able to analyze Warhol\u2019s prodigious film output directly, putting the lie to all previous conceptions about them. Reading through\u00a0The Black Hole of the Camera<\/em>, one will either be jealous of Murphy\u2019s opportunity to study these films so closely or will consider him a candidate for sainthood for sitting through the entire eight hours of a single shot of the Empire State Building (Empire<\/em>), five hours of a man sleeping (Sleep<\/em>), a half-hour of a man eating a mushroom (Eat<\/em>) and more.<\/p>\n

Yet, by doing so, Murphy at last puts the lie to the long held assumption that to make these films Warhol simply turned on his camera and walked away until the last of the film roll passed through it. Just as he did with his book analyzing atypical screenplay structures,\u00a0Me and You and Memento and Fargo: How Independent Screenplays Work<\/em>, Murphy continues to prove to be extremely adept and insightful in zeroing in on a challenging film\u2019s hidden nuances that reveal its true intention at audience interaction.<\/p>\n

When he was alive, Warhol constantly strove to misdirect his audience\u2019s perception of his work, particularly by claiming that everything he did existed completely on a surface visual level and that there was no depth to anything he did, which is, of course, total bullshit. Warhol\u2019s greatest artistic achievement is perhaps what could be considered the lifelong performance art piece of never publicly cracking the image that he was nothing more than a superficial visualist. Not once during his entire career did he ever break down and confess to\u2014nor even hint at\u2014what all of his pursuits might actually mean taken as a whole.<\/p>\n

Therefore his dabbling in different mediums is usually treated separately by those who analyze his work as if none of it is connected. Also, when it comes specifically to Warhol\u2019s filmmaking career, it is typically analyzed as separate and disconnected periods. First, there are his static, pre-structuralist conceptual films such as\u00a0Empire<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Eat<\/em>. Then, there\u2019s his psychodrama period, such as his only semi-mainstream hit\u00a0The Chelsea Girls<\/em>. Then, there\u2019s his sexploitation films, such as\u00a0Lonesome Cowboys<\/em>. And, lastly, there are the Warhol 'produced' and Paul Morrisey directed films like\u00a0Trash<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Heat<\/em>.<\/p>\n

However, Murphy very successfully argues that there was a very deliberate evolution to Warhol\u2019s filmmaking styles that can be discussed as a unified whole, as well as be integrated with the rest of his artistic career.<\/p>\n

Warhol was, of course, obsessed with the idea of the 'Superstar,' a person who is so inherently interesting that the viewer becomes fascinated with him or her just for being in front of the camera. His early films, then, would focus on just such an 'interesting' person, as well as play with audience expectations as to what defines 'interesting' behavior in a movie.<\/p>\n

One of Warhol\u2019s earliest films is\u00a0Sleep<\/em>, which as Murphy points out, is usually erroneously described as a single shot of a man sleeping. However, what Murphy actually finds is a film composed of 22 different shots that were filmed over a period of several weeks and edited in a deliberate visual arc that lends it an errant sort of plot. Since mainstream films gloss over the act of sleeping so that actors can presumably do more interesting things on screen, Warhol chooses to instead over-emphasize this mundane daily activity in one five hour\u2013plus film starring his then-lover John Giorno. Plus, by filming this behavior 22 different ways, Warhol intends for the viewer to focus on not only the film\u2019s subject, but the changes in the actual film projection, just in the same way he intended for viewers to pick up on the minute differences between his repetitive screen printing portraits.<\/p>\n

In encouraging us to completely rethink Warhol, Murphy\u2019s real strength is the way he\u2019s able to make these films sound so alive and vibrant. Previous writers have perhaps followed Warhol\u2019s lead in considering them as non\u2013engaging objects, more interesting as conceptual pieces not to be actually viewed and studied. But in acutely describing their sometimes near-imperceptible changes in film processing, framing, actor arrangement and more, Murphy is able to make Warhol\u2019s films sound as exciting as any big budget CGi spectacle. The only shame comes in the fact that most of these films are impossible to come across for intrigued viewers.<\/p>\n

As Warhol\u2019s filmmaking interests and practices evolved and became more complex, moving into the realms of psychodrama and sexploitation, so does\u00a0The Black Hole of the Camera<\/em>\u00a0become more engrossing.<\/p>\n

Also, the collaborative nature of Warhol\u2019s working processes always brings up the thorny issue of artistic authorship. Yet, again, Murphy is able to clearly and cleanly define the artist\u2019s authorial vision even when he was working with scenarist Ronald Tavel, instigator Chuck Wein and director Paul Morrissey.<\/p>\n

Murphy gets his cues from both watching the actual films as well as through scholarly research, digging up articles and interviews to prove Warhol\u2019s active engagement with his subjects. For example, Murphy has uncovered an obscure radio interview with witnesses to the production of the 1968 sexploitation film\u00a0Bike Boy<\/em>\u00a0that proves Warhol was an active director while, on this particular project, collaborator Paul Morrissey was in charge of certain technical elements, such as placement of the lighting. This especially contradicts more recent statements from Morrissey who, over the years, has claimed more and more credit for his involvement.<\/p>\n

The Black Hole of the Camera<\/em>\u00a0is a thoroughly engaging and exciting read, but thoroughly jam-packed with revelatory details and descriptions. Murphy, who was inspired in his own filmmaking career by watching Warhol\u2019s films, shares his unbridled enthusiasm in the best ways that a true scholar and a devoted fan can. Like the ways Warhol\u2019s films inspired Murphy, his book should serve as an inspiration to both future generations of filmmakers and to other scholars to reevaluate the contribution that Warhol made to the independent and underground film scene of the 1960s.\"<\/p>\n

\u2014 Mike Everleth,\u00a0Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film<\/a><\/em>, (June 2012).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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What is the last great book you read? Or what are you currently reading?<\/em><\/p>\n

\"I just finished the book on the Barefoot Bandit. The true story of Colton Harris-Moore. Remember him? And another one that I really liked, it's a really smart book about the Warhol films.\u00a0The Black Hole of the Camera<\/em>\u00a0by J.J. Murphy.\"<\/p>\n

\u2014 John Waters,\u00a0Broward Palm Beach New Times Interview<\/a><\/em>, (July 2012).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Mandy Merck evaluates a surprising study of a US icon's visionary, sometimes cosmic, cinema:<\/p>\n

\"Before he produced the better-known Paul Morrissey features\u00a0Flesh, Trash and Heat<\/em>, Andy Warhol directed hundreds of experimental films, including 472 short portraits of Factory visitors and almost 100 of greater length. In 1970 he withdrew these largely non-commercial works from what was in any case limited distribution. After his death in 1987, a lengthy process of viewing and cataloguing the films began, and it has not yet reached the second volume of the\u00a0catalogue raisonn\u00e9<\/em>. Only a handful of the 1960s films have ever been issued on DVD, so those who wish to view them must hire prints or book screenings at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Museum of Modern Art in New York or the film archive at the University of California, Los Angeles. These obstacles make J.J. Murphy's detailed discussion of 56 of these works an impressive project, even before he surprises the reader with his insistence on their dramatic character.<\/p>\n

An experimental film-maker himself, Murphy is also a member of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's famed department of communication arts. His attention to the formal detail of these films is not exceptional for Warhol criticism, which has historically emphasised their avant-garde problematising of temporality, space, sound, viewpoint and frame. For the portrait films or 'screen tests' taken of visitors to The Factory, Warhol typically asked his subjects to sit still, look at the camera and avoid blinking as they were filmed for 2.7 minutes (the duration of a 100ft film roll) at 24 frames per second. The silent portrait was then projected at two-thirds the shooting speed for 4.2 minutes, giving the slowed film the impression of a still image - one that would then uncannily weep or defiantly chew gum, grimace or - in the case of the ageing Marcel Duchamp - signal 'cut'.<\/p>\n

Murphy moves from these miniature character tests to the psychodramas that arose from Warhol's penchant for submitting his non-actors to the unpredictable consequences of their own narcissism, drug-taking, psychic instability and bitchy repartee. (As he points out, Warhol's fascination with conversation would eventually take him out of cinema and into his video versions of television chat shows.) But despite his attraction to conflict, dramatic incident and spectacle, Warhol was never interested in plot and causality. Whereas Morrissey made money by ensuring that the spectator would want to know what happened next, 'a Warhol film', as avant-garde film-maker Jonas Mekas wrote disparagingly of\u00a0Flesh<\/em>, 'never gives you the impression that it wants to make itself interesting'. Anyone impatient with this kind of pandering might be intrigued by a five-hour film of a slumbering poet in\u00a0Sleep<\/em>; or\u00a0Horse<\/em>, a Western that literalises the term 'horse opera' with Florence Foster Jenkins' off-key rendition of Gounod's\u00a0Faust<\/em>; or\u00a0My Hustler<\/em>, the pursuit of a handsome young rent boy by four Fire Island sophisticates that, in the words of art scholar Douglas Crimp, 'just ends'. Or, as Murphy relates with considerable relish, the very idea of 'commissioning a dialogue script,\u00a0Their Town<\/em>, for\u00a0The Chelsea Girls<\/em>\u00a0and not playing the sound'. But the drama that he enjoys so much is not simply that of flouting film conventions or common sense. Discussing the much-discussed but little-watched vigil over the sleeping John Giorno, Murphy follows its descent from\u00a0Sleep<\/em>\u00a0to death, when in the final reel the extreme contrasts of black and white transform this decreasingly eroticised 'mass of flesh' into a corpse and the film into a horror story about dying in your sleep.<\/p>\n

Warhol, who would himself die in his sleep after a routine gall bladder operation, returned repeatedly to the theme of mortality in his 1960s Death and Disasters series and the 1976 'Skull' paintings, and Murphy enters a strong claim for his Gothicism. Similarly, where others have speculated on the flares, flashes and white circles in\u00a0Empire<\/em>, Murphy offers a 1,000-word footnote on its film stock, aperture width and lab processing, and then marvels at how these contingencies turn the floodlit tower of the Empire State Building into a space station in a star-studded galaxy: 'Just as\u00a0Sleep<\/em>\u00a0is not really a film about a man sleeping, but rather a meditation on death, so\u00a0Empire<\/em>\u00a0turns out to be a celestial, or cosmic, film.' If his title -\u00a0The Black Hole of the Camera<\/em>\u00a0- suggests the still-prevalent characterisation of the filmmaker as a disaffected voyeur, Murphy's engaging study gives us Warhol the visionary instead.\"<\/p>\n

\u2014 Mandy Merck,\u00a0Times Higher Education<\/a><\/em>, (August 2012).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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\"There have been many books on Warhol's life, as both a painter and a filmmaker. Stephen Koch's\u00a0Stargazer: Andy Warhol's World and His Films<\/em>\u00a0(CH, Jan'74) was an early entry, followed by David Bourdon's magisterial\u00a0Warhol<\/em>\u00a0(1989), and more recently Steven Watson's\u00a0Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties<\/em>\u00a0(2003). Callie Angell's\u00a0Andy Warhol Screen Tests: The Films of Andy Warhol: Catalogue Raisonn\u00e9<\/em>\u00a0(CH, Dec'06, 44-2013) covered some of Warhol's early film work, but until now no one has offered a definitive study of the numerous sound films Warhol made between 1964 and 1968, an astonishingly prolific period in the artist's career. Murphy's study is critical to any understanding of Warhol's impact and influence as a filmmaker. The author's meticulous attention to specifics, supported by numerous illustrations, is all the more important because the films themselves are preserved only in museums in 16mm film format and so are generally unavailable to viewers. Detailed descriptions couple with solid knowledge of the era to make the films come alive. This is one of the best books on Warhol's films to date.\u00a0Summing Up<\/strong>: Essential. All readers.\"<\/p>\n

\u2014 W. W. Dixon,\u00a0University of Nebraska\u2013Lincoln<\/em>,\u00a0CHOICE<\/em>, (September 2012)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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\"Andy Warhol has already been the subject of a couple of columns here. Simply put, his works (or those boasting his name as producer) straddle the experimental, the underground, and the cult forms better than anybody else from the sixties. Warhol surrounded himself with equally talented\u2014if sadly often less well known\u2014individuals who all contributed in their own way to the wider Factory aesthetic.<\/p>\n

As a filmmaker, Warhol supervised his own cinematic universe, with its own style, its own rules, and its own unique perspective. This world had its own stars, drawn from the bohemian community that grew around the artist. They included Edie Sedgwick, Taylor Mead, Viva, Eric Emerson, Brigid Berlin, Gerard Malanga, Ondine, Mary Woronov, Paul America, Joe Dallesandro, and many others, who posed for screen tests, enacted vignettes, and finally acted in more \u2018traditional\u2019 narrative feature films. Alongside these stars were other artists who would either hang out or stop by The Factory and occasionally appear in films that danced between quasi-documentaries of outr\u00e9 personalities performing staged versions of themselves, and directly fictional works.<\/p>\n

J.J Murphy\u2019s book,\u00a0The Black Hole of the Camera: The Films of Andy Warhol<\/em>, examines Warhol\u2019s work at length. Taking a broadly historical trajectory, the book examines the films and the various artistic collaborations that produced these works, from writers such as playwright, Ronald Tavel, who created scenarios in which the cast often enacted psychodramas; Chuck Wein, who similarly worked as an instigator of narratives; and director, Paul Morrissey. Tracing the development of film through Warhol\u2019s career, Murphy\u2019s book re-addresses and, perhaps more importantly, re-invigorates the idea of Warhol as one of the central filmmakers of the American avant-garde and underground while simultaneously being the era\u2019s most visionary pop artist.<\/p>\n

Tracing the development of Warhol\u2019s work through these collaborations, as well as through his use of expanded cinema and sound portraits, Murphy offers an exhaustive analysis of Warhol\u2019s filmmaking practice; the techniques employed to get the performances for his films; and the ways in which films were shot and edited. A product of thoroughly engaged research and heavy on details,\u00a0The Black Hole of the Camera: The Films of Andy Warhol<\/em>\u00a0describes the methods used to create the works and the films themselves, meaning that even those who may have only seen the better known movies or snippets of projects online can still enjoy this fascinating and essential book.\"<\/p>\n

\u2014 Jack Sargeant,\u00a0FilmInk<\/em>, (October 2012)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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\"The market seems able to bear an almost unlimited number of books on Andy Warhol. Most are about as substantial as Uniqlo\u2019s line of Warhol T-shirts and do just as little for his artistic reputation. Two recent publications, however\u2014Douglas Crimp\u2019s\u00a0\u201cOur Kind of Movie\u201d: The Films of Andy Warhol<\/em>\u00a0and J. J. Murphy\u2019s\u00a0The Black Hole of the Camera: The Films of Andy Warhol<\/em>\u2014stand out as substantive contributions that reveal the scope and importance of Warhol\u2019s dauntingly large cinematic corpus. While differing from each other in style, approach, and organization, both are likely to be consulted for years to come.<\/p>\n

Murphy\u2019s\u00a0The Black Hole of the Camera<\/em>\u00a0(its title taken from a comment by Warhol superstar Mary Woronov) aspires to inclusiveness, with individual sections devoted to each of the more than fifty Warhol films restored to date (save for\u00a0Sunset<\/em>\u00a0[1967]) grouped within chapters that range from Warhol\u2019s earliest films through collaborations with Ronald Tavel and Chuck Wein, \u201cexpanded cinema\u201d works including\u00a0The Chelsea Girls<\/em>\u00a0(1966), \u201csexploitation\u201d films such as\u00a0The Nude Restaurant<\/em>\u00a0(1967), and even the first four features directed by Paul Morrissey (Flesh<\/em>\u00a0[1968\u201369],\u00a0Trash<\/em>\u00a0[1970],\u00a0Women in Revolt<\/em>\u00a0[1971], and\u00a0Heat<\/em>\u00a0[1972]). An accomplished filmmaker himself, Murphy shows remarkable sensitivity to Warhol\u2019s surfaces, framing, and camerawork; the overt or surreptitious presence of narrative tropes and structures (which he traces into even the most minimal films); and the varying degrees of drama (or \u201cpsychodrama,\u201d one of Murphy\u2019s main avenues of approach to Warhol\u2019s cinema) among the characters on screen.<\/p>\n

Murphy\u2019s book (like Crimp\u2019s) represents an impressive investment of labor, not only in viewing time (no small feat when one film is the eight-hour-long\u00a0Empire<\/em>\u00a0[1964]), but also in sorting through the abundance of secondary literature. He attentively uncovers new facts and original insights\u2014for instance, that the infamous set-up in\u00a0The Life of Juanita Castro<\/em>\u00a0(1965), in which the actors all stare from neatly arranged, stepped-back rows toward a fictional camera to the left of the frame, derived from a family photograph of Fidel Castro\u2019s sister\u2019s wedding published in\u00a0Life<\/em>\u00a0magazine. The connection not only makes the puzzling mise-en-sc\u00e8ne more comprehensible, but adds a new dimension to the play of still versus moving images central to all facets of Warhol\u2019s art.<\/p>\n

Much of the book is devoted to detailed but nonetheless synthetic film overviews, presented in clear and objective prose that will undoubtedly lend the volume an important second life as a reference work, a comprehensive Warhol film guide, at least until completion of the catalogue raisonn\u00e9 undertaken by the Whitney Museum of American Art\u2019s Andy Warhol Film Project. (Murphy expressly omits Warhol\u2019s nearly five hundred four-minute\u00a0Screen Test<\/em>\u00a0portrait films, already brilliantly discussed in the catalogue raisonn\u00e9\u2019s first volume by the late Callie Angell, whose importance and loss are noted by both Murphy and Crimp.) Like most readers, I suspect, I found the entries\u2019 interest varied in inverse proportion to my familiarity with the films. Analyses of two movies I\u2019ve not yet seen\u2014Screen Test #1<\/em>\u00a0(1965), in which Tavel taunts Warhol\u2019s then boyfriend Philip Fagan, and\u00a0Face<\/em>\u00a0(1965), a two-reel close-up of Edie Sedgwick\u2014were thoroughly absorbing, but descriptions of films I know more intimately proved, unsurprisingly, less so. Sometimes, the synoptic quality of Murphy\u2019s discussions, however careful, seemed to clothe subjective reactions in objective guise. For instance, while Murphy\u2019s captivation with Sedgwick is evident, he is no fan of the Tavel-scripted\u00a0Kitchen<\/em>\u00a0(1965), which abounds with incestuous double entendres and identity confusion among two pairs of characters who differ in gender while sharing homophonic names: Jo, Joe, Mikie, and Mikey. Whereas I have always found\u00a0Kitchen<\/em>\u00a0particularly intriguing, both as a script and as performed for the camera, Murphy ultimately dismisses it as the \u201csilly contrivances of an otherwise absurd plot,\u201d nominating Sedgwick\u2019s unscripted moments as the film\u2019s primary attraction.<\/p>\n

One consequence of the manner in which Warhol refused the standard interpellative procedures of mainstream Hollywood cinema is his films\u2019 capacity to change quite dramatically depending on the circumstances of their showing and the viewer\u2019s attentiveness and subjective investments. Whether by reducing profilmic events to such an extent that the viewer\u2019s interest almost inevitably wanders\u2014as in\u00a0Empire<\/em>\u00a0and even\u00a0Blow Job<\/em>\u00a0(1964)\u2014or, inversely, by so multiplying the foci of visual attraction throughout the frame (and, eventually, across multiple screens)\u2014as in\u00a0Haircut (No. 1)<\/em>\u00a0(1963),\u00a0Couch<\/em>\u00a0(1964),\u00a0Vinyl<\/em>\u00a0(1965), and\u00a0The Chelsea Girls<\/em>\u2014Warhol frees, or pushes, his audiences to investigate the visual field subjectively, thereby giving rise to the \u201cvery personal\u201d and \u201cvery varied\u201d receptive mode that Warhol\u2019s associate Jack Smith described as \u201cthoughts via images,\u201d which, \u201c[m]ore interesting . . . than discovering what is a script writer\u2019s exact meaning . . . always give rise to a complex of feelings, thots [sic], conjectures, speculations, etc.\u201d Both Murphy and Crimp acknowledge and deftly characterize the particular viewing phenomenology induced by Warhol\u2019s cinema. Yet, in the case of\u00a0Kitchen<\/em>\u00a0and certain other films, including the Tavel-scripted\u00a0Vinyl<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Horse<\/em>\u00a0(1965), I found that Murphy\u2019s objective tone inadvertently threatened to restrict movies capable of offering a wider variety of readings. . . .<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to give the impression that Crimp doesn\u2019t put his own spin on Warhol\u2019s films. His narration of the arc of Tavel\u2019s humiliation of Mario Montez in\u00a0Screen Test #2<\/em>\u00a0(1965), for instance, is as inflected by his own investments and intellectual aims as Murphy\u2019s characterization of Sedgwick\u2019s role in\u00a0Kitchen<\/em>. In that sense, Crimp\u2019s and Murphy\u2019s books complement one another. (Indeed, Murphy reveals how versions of both the unzipped fly and commending one\u2019s soul unto God\u2014incidents at the heart of Crimp\u2019s reading of\u00a0Screen Test #2<\/em>\u2014were prefigured in\u00a0Screen Test #1<\/em>.) Yet, whereas Murphy provides a more quantitatively comprehensive overview of the range and diversity of Warhol\u2019s cinema (and is, in this, an important achievement), Crimp manages more subtly to reveal the manner in which Warhol\u2019s cinema not only allows us to see difference, but also, and as a necessary component of this, to\u00a0see differently<\/em>. While \u201cOur Kind of Movie<\/em>\u201d stands on its own for its contributions to queer theory, queer history, and Warhol\u2019s social and political significance for both, it can be appreciated equally for the exemplary way in which it articulates the richness, complexities, and demands of Warhol\u2019s cinema. As such, I find it telling that Crimp chooses to conclude his book not with a summation of the sociological and theoretical interests that initially brought him to the subject, but with an epilogue devoted to the materiality of Warhol\u2019s films, one that amounts to an impassioned (though low-key) plea to experience these movies as they are best seen: in a darkened theater, on 16-mm film, projected at the proper speed, in their full duration, and among an audience, however small. Crimp and Murphy share this respect for Warhol\u2019s cinema, and their books equally challenge the entire field to discover the pleasures and rewards of respecting the specificity and integrity of Warhol\u2019s production.<\/p>\n

Branden W. Joseph is Frank Gallipoli professor of modern and contemporary art at Columbia University.<\/em>\"<\/p>\n

\u2014 Branden W. Joseph,\u00a0Artforum<\/em>, (October 2012)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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\"I first came to Andy Warhol through music. To this impressionable 1980s teenager, Warhol was the Svengali, who had famously adopted The Velvet Underground as the in-house band for The Factory and as central to his\u00a0Exploding Plastic Inevitable<\/em>. Warhol, it seemed to me, facilitated a subterranean culture of decadence populated with impossibly beautiful young people hell-bent on challenging the mainstream through art, music, theatre and film. He had designed album covers for the Rolling Stones, made screen-prints of Elvis, inspired Bowie, ghosted the self-indulgence of glam rock, acted as a direct stimulus for the DIY aesthetic of punk and pre-empted the concept of celebrity culture. This, however, was only a small part of the Warhol universe; snatched samples of his films followed on rare late night Channel 4 or BBC 2 screenings. His cinema has influenced many and can clearly be seen as a motivating factor for a generation of experimental film-makers. However, Warhol still resists any easy explanation; he remains a complex and at times controversial persona who even after his death in 1987 endures as an enigma.<\/p>\n

Warhol\u2019s influence on popular culture cannot be denied. However, there exists an interesting dichotomy between his populist gallery-based art and his more challenging and experimental cinematic output. Warhol\u2019s reputation and importance to American Underground Cinema and the avant-garde aesthetic remains significant and J. J. Murphy\u2019s timely, in-depth and exhaustive study of Warhol\u2019s cinematic output is a welcome addition to the discourse that still surrounds the artist. Celebrating his work as a prolific film-maker,\u00a0The Black Hole of the Camera<\/em>(2012) attempts to get to the heart of Warhol\u2019s cinema and its contribution to both popular culture and its place in experimental cinematic heritage. Warhol\u2019s films have been discussed many times previously, most effectively by Stephen Koch in\u00a0Stargazer<\/em>\u00a0(1973) where we are given a vivid elicitation of his world and an analysis of his psyche through a detailed scrutiny of Warhol as more than simply a \u2018heuristic mystery\u2019 (1973: 132). Warhol\u2019s interest in voyeurism and the scoptophilic is securely handled, Murphy\u2019s narrative is effective in deconstructing both form and content and allows for a deeper understanding of the theory\/practice interchange central to the films. Warhol\u2019s non-edited approach to his early cinema is effectively articulated with Murphy analysing the content but also the importance of the medium of film itself. Warhol\u2019s early films with their structuralist approach, and integration of \u2018reel time with real time, the homogeneity of space unsullied by editing and the total lack of narrative or at least the reduction of representation to simple acts\u2019 (2006: 66) immediately creates a tension through the negation of any narrative flow. We are asked simply to watch, to begin to question what we are seeing and then to begin to question our own voyeurism. The unflinching gaze of the camera questions first subject and then viewer as we start to look around the frame, away from the central cinematic \u2018object\u2019. Warhol wants us to look at the cinematographic as we do a painting, exploring the screen\/canvas in a relationship that at times defies definition. The early films, especially the\u00a0Screen Test<\/em>\u00a0series, like Warhol himself, sit motionless, rooted by the brevity of the film stock and the headlight glare of the meanings they suggest. We are constantly aware the self-reflexive nature of the films and begin to question temporality, space, place, spectatorship and to generate meanings in through and beyond the texts. Similarly, the materiality of the film stock itself and how it could be manipulated through processing to create the desired effects makes for interesting reading.<\/p>\n

Moving onto the later films and the more famous psychodramas, Murphy\u2019s detailed analysis and narrative exposition of Warhol\u2019s\u2019 \u2018expanded cinema\u2019 offer the reader an appreciation of these later sound films in which the importance of Warhol\u2019s \u2018stars\u2019, his ing\u00e9nues and their improvised contribution, becomes increasingly foregrounded. Whilst reading Murphy\u2019s book, one quickly becomes conscious of the sense of community at the heart of Warhol\u2019s Factory and of his desire for the creation of collaborative art. It is also to Murphy\u2019s credit that he does not shy away from recent controversies, especially Paul Morrissey\u2019s \u2018revisionist history of Warhol\u2019s film-making\u2019 (228) in which Morrissey condemns Warhol as \u2018simply an empty shell ... who really brought no ideas to the table\u2019 (Uncut Magazine<\/em>, interview, August 2005).<\/p>\n

Controversies aside, as a deconstruction of Warhol and his cinema,\u00a0The Black Hole of the Camera<\/em>\u00a0presents not simply an analysis of form and content, theory and practice but a wider analytical discourse concerning the mythology of American Underground Cinema and its importance to the wider cultural landscape. While the underground will always in some way begin to influence the mainstream through a general sanitized re-articulation of its ideologies, themes, and concepts, Warhol\u2019s cinema with its themes, style, and approach seem to resonate more than most. It is this legacy alongside his comprehensive analytical discourse that Murphy so effectively foregrounds in\u00a0The Black Hole of the Camera<\/em>\u00a0(2012), placing Andy Warhol and his films firmly at the Zeitgeist of 1960s American Underground Cinema.\"<\/p>\n

\u2014 Eddie McMillan, Canterbury Christ Church University,\u00a0The Journal of Screenwriting<\/em>\u00a04:3 (2013)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Filming the Factory<\/p>\n

\"Andy Warhol is probably the most widely recognized artist of the second half of the twentieth century\u2014recognized not only by the museum and the art market but also by a broad public across the globe. After his first film in 1963, his career was almost entirely devoted to filmmaking between 1965 and 1968, yet this body of work has only recently been considered as central to Warhol\u2019s oeuvre. He is best known for the slow moving, silent early films\u00a0Sleep<\/em>\u00a0(1963),\u00a0Kiss<\/em>\u00a0(1963\u201364) and the 472 screen tests, which framed their subjects with a static camera for a duration dictated by the length of the film strip. Yet in the space of five years, Warhol made over fifty films that display a wide array of themes and approaches, using sound, colour, and narrative. Two books published in 2012 aim in different ways to account for Warhol\u2019s rich career in filmmaking:\u00a0\u2018Our Kind of Movie\u2019: The Films of Andy Warhol<\/em>\u00a0by the art historian and critic Douglas Crimp and\u00a0The Black Hole of the Camera: The Films of Andy Warhol<\/em>\u00a0by the filmmaker and writer J. J. Murphy.<\/p>\n

One reason it has taken some time for an account of Warhol\u2019s films to emerge is that, around 1970, the artist removed them from distribution; as a result they were rarely screened until after his death. Since 1982 the Andy Warhol Film Project at the Whitney Museum of American Art has worked with the Museum of Modern Art, New York to systematically preserve these films, with retrospective screenings taking place periodically after 1988. As Crimp points out, this situation meant that scholars have relied on Steven Koch\u2019s 1973 publication\u00a0Stargazer: Andy Warhol\u2019s World and His Films<\/em>; a book that has rarely been out of print.\u00a0Stargazer<\/em>\u00a0established a number of commonplace views about Warhol\u2019s filmmaking, Koch suggests: the artist was barely involved in much of the decision making on set; the films are voyeuristic; and there is a significant drop in quality after the commercial success of\u00a0Chelsea Girls<\/em>\u00a0in 1966. These assumptions have largely remained unchallenged, and indeed without the films themselves were largely unchallengeable. Over the last twenty years, as the films have returned to the cinema screen, there have been a number of important scholarly texts published on them by Jennifer Doyle, Branden Joseph, Juan Su\u00e1rez, and Reva Woolf among others, each casting light on particular aspects of the practice from their different viewpoints. These accounts have been firmly anchored by the research of Callie Angell, of the Andy Warhol Film Project, who produced the indispensable publication that accompanied the Whitney\u2019s second retrospective of Warhol\u2019s films in 1995 and the first volume of\u00a0The Films of Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonn\u00e9<\/em>. Angell died suddenly in 2010, while still at work on the second volume of the catalogue raisonn\u00e9. Her scholarship was marked by an intricate and detailed knowledge of the circumstances and methods of Warhol\u2019s film production that only a dedicated archivist could possess. Angell\u2019s work benefited not only from first hand access to the films themselves (including those as yet unpreserved) but also close links to the archives of the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and crucially had unrivalled contact with the members of the factory who had worked on these films in the 1960s. As Crimp and Murphy make clear, Angell was also a generous scholar, who was willing to pass on her knowledge to others with an interest in the work. Her long and detailed introductions to screenings of Warhol\u2019s films always enriched the viewing experience. The Whitney recently announced that the catalogue raisonn\u00e9 project will be completed by John G. Hanhardt (who instigated the Warhol Film Project in the early 1980s), Bill Horrigan, and Bruce Jenkins. The existence of the catalogue raisonn\u00e9 project, and the delay in its publication brought on by Angell\u2019s death is significant to the shape the two books under review take.<\/p>\n

J. J. Murphy\u2019s volume attempts to cover the more than fifty films that have been currently preserved, which includes almost all of those which were in circulation during the 1960s with the exception of the screen tests and the commissioned film\u00a0Sunset<\/em>. His approach is to describe broadly each of the films in turn under seven taxonomic categories. These range from genre distinctions such as \u2018sound portraits\u2019 and \u2018sexploitation films\u2019 to those characterized by the involvement of particular individuals, for example films scripted by Ronald Tavel or those made with Chuck Wein. This approach is useful for comparing the artist\u2019s technique in similar films but it has a tendency to confuse the chronology if the book is read from start to finish. Murphy\u2019s matter-of-fact tone often matches that of the films themselves. Each film is treated in roughly the same way, with a minimum of authorial opinion or analysis. In some cases this approach can be frustrating, as it fails to account for what makes the films compelling to watch; however, it is perhaps the only way in which so much material could be covered in a book of this length. Murphy clearly challenges the moralizing tone of Koch\u2019s earlier volume in regard to the films made after the success of\u00a0Chelsea Girls<\/em>, which\u00a0Stargazer<\/em>\u00a0dismisses as a descent into \u2018degradation\u2019. The so-called sexploitation films of the late 1960s (Nude Restaurant<\/em>\u00a0of 1967,\u00a0Lonesome Cowboys<\/em>\u00a0of 1967\u201368,\u00a0Blue Movie<\/em>\u00a0of 1968) have a particular currency today as the artistry of queer pornographers such as Fred Halstead, Wakefield Poole, and Peter de Rome is beginning to be reassessed, and they demand the careful attention Murphy brings to them.<\/p>\n

Murphy\u2019s descriptive approach is supported by a historicism that often registers important aspects of the films\u2019 reception.\u00a0Outer and Inner Space<\/em>\u00a0(1965) shows socialite Edie Sedgwick interacting with her own face as it is shown on a pre-recorded video playing on a television monitor captured in frame. The film was preserved and widely screened in 1998; Murphy points out that in the 1960s it had been very rarely shown and for forty years was seen by no one. Since 1998 it has established itself within the canon of video art, where its technique has been said to prefigure works like Lynda Benglis\u2019\u00a0Now<\/em>\u00a0(1973) and Joan Jonas\u2019\u00a0Vertical Roll<\/em>\u00a0(1972). The screening and distribution history of\u00a0Outer and Inner Space<\/em>\u00a0is crucial to understanding the limits of the relationship between Warhol\u2019s film and the tapes of Jonas and Benglis. Yet Murphy is uneven in this approach. At the other extreme is a very well-known film titled\u00a0Vinyl<\/em>\u00a0(1965), a loose leather-clad adaptation of\u00a0A Clockwork Orange<\/em>\u00a0soaked in amyl nitrate and suffused with sadomasochism, which was bought by a number of film archives in the 1970s. This meant that it never disappeared from screens and came to stand metonymically for Warhol\u2019s sound films as a whole, inspiring a range of work such as the cinema of transgression, no wave cinema, and the new queer cinema of the 1990s. These details are not mentioned by Murphy so it becomes unclear why\u00a0Vinyl<\/em>\u00a0has come to be seen as a quintessential Warhol movie while closely related films, such as\u00a0Horse<\/em>\u00a0(1965), have not.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless,\u00a0The Black Hole of the Camera<\/em>\u00a0brings to life various rare works and crucially stimulates the reader\u2019s curiosity to watch the films themselves. Offering a wide view of Warhol\u2019s filmmaking, it will act as an excellent introduction for those coming to the films for the first time....<\/p>\n

The concluding chapter of Crimp\u2019s book chimes closely with some of the central concerns of Murphy\u2019s \u2013 namely the importance of medium specificity to the experience of Warhol\u2019s films. Crimp quotes from Amy Taubin\u2019s blistering review of the exhibition of Warhol\u2019s screen tests organized by Klaus Biesenbach at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2011 (the review is essential reading for anyone remotely interested in the display of film in the museum) where she rightly states the importance of viewing the films in 16 mm projection where one might see, for example, \u2018the dialectic between the uncontrolled movement of the grain and the stillness Warhol demanded of his subjects\u2019. Like Taubin, both authors clearly underline the technical decisions that shaped Warhol\u2019s aesthetic and the effect they have on the way in which an audience experiences the films in projection: the altered perception caused by the slightly slowed speed of projection in the silent films; the startling flash of the strobe cut in later works; or the almost hallucinatory white mists that signal the end of a reel are all effects best experienced in the original medium. As the 16 mm film strip and projector become increasingly unfamiliar in everyday life, it is essential that viewers of work like this are aware that when they see experimental film reproduced online or on DVD, they are looking at only the barest shadow of the work. Both Murphy and Crimp are to be praised for their thoughtful insight into the importance of medium specificity to Warhol\u2019s practice as a whole. \"<\/p>\n

\u2014 James Boaden,\u00a0Art History<\/em>\u00a036:4 (September 2013)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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