Join us on Thursday, November 10, at 6 pm, for a Whole Grain: Experiments in Film & Video program featuring 20 film portraits selected from Andy Warhol’s famous Screen Tests. This 16mm screening is in conjunction with the Tang’s current exhibition Where Words Falter: Art and Empathy.

The program includes Screen Tests featuring Dennis Hopper, Peter Hujar, Bruce Rudow, François de Menil, Patrick Fleming, Helmut, Ivy Nicholson, Jane Holzer, Walter Dainwood, Paul Katz, Ethel Scull, Barbara Rose, Robin, Lou Reed, Edie Sedgwick, John Ashbery, Jonas Mekas, Ann Buchanan, and Paul Morrissey.

About Warhol’s Screen Tests

Andy Warhol was a pop artist and prominent figure in the arts and entertainment world of New York in the ’60s and ’70s. Between 1964 and 1966, he filmed over 500 film portraits of his friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, each three to five minutes in length. Many of the people we see featured in these film portraits we recognize as celebrities and pioneers in their industry. Others captured on film include Yoko Ono, Salvador Dalí, and Bob Dylan. He amassed this collection of clips, referred to as “Screen Tests”, to edit them together into various full-length films throughout his career, but each clip can be seen as an individual work of art. Capturing only the shoulders up, each slowed-down black and white “living portrait” offers a few minutes of vulnerability and showcases the uniqueness of each individual. Now compiled into reels of ten screen tests each, these clips highlight Warhol’s artistic interest in the celebrity persona, displaying stillness on faces we often see as dynamic and lively in popular culture.

About Whole Grain

The Tang Teaching Museum’s series Whole Grain explores classic and contemporary work in experimental film and video. Whole Grain is programmed by Assistant Director for Engagement Tom Yoshikami. All events are free and open to the public.