An Analysis of the Effects of Contextual Representation: Andy Warhol's "Screen Tests" in an Exhibition and in Book Form (PDF)

Essay from the year 2011 in the subject Art - Photography and Film, grade: 62, University of Westminster (Media, Arts and Design), course: Contemporary Photographic Practices, language: English, abstract: In 1964 Pop artist Andy Warhol started to take his "Screen Tests", short portrait films of his colleagues and friends who visited him in his famous studio, the "Factory" in New York.
Today, more than forty years after the last test was taken, fascination with the films still motivates people to look at them in exhibitions and books. They still catch us with their complex character as time witnesses and social documents, combined with a strong effect as extraordinarily personal pieces of art.
In the following essay, I will illustrate in which way these complex films and their meanings are shaped in different contexts of representation: installed in an exhibition and printed in book form.
At first when dealing with this question, it needs to be clear what the Screen Tests are: The films are not screen tests in the conventional sense of the word. The term usually means short test films taken of actors on castings to decide if they get a part in a film. In Warhol's Screen Tests, the sitter was instructed to look straight into the camera, without movement or emoting, and if possible even without blinking over the three minutes of recording time. People were recorded in close- ups, deprived of the chance to hide even the smallest movement of their faces (Angell, 2006).
The "Stillies", as Warhol called them in the beginning, were often produced spontaneously and with casual rapidity. The conceptual sophistication of these films as a whole makes this long- term project a central piece of Warhol's work as a portrait artist in the medium of both film and painting. They can be seen as the "stem cells of Warhol's portraiture" (Angell, 2006, p.12): Giving us an overview over the world of fame and glamour in the 1960s scene, with almost exclusively well- known sitters, they deal with the same objects - celebrities - as Warhol's paintings do.
Like all of Warhol's early films, they are taken on his first film camera "Bolex" in black- and- white and on silent speed (16 instead of 24 frames per second). It is especially the combination of the slow silent speed, the almost- stillness of the obedient sitters and the unusual lack of sound in the films, which makes these portraits "hybrid art images" (Sokolowski, 2004, p. 9), on the borderline between still photography and the moving image.