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Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987)
Lupe, 1965
Lupe is among the first of Andy Warhol's double-screen films and one of three films he made in the winter of 1965 and 1966 dealing with scandals involving Hollywood actresses. Lupe stars Edie Sedgwick, one of the so-called "Superstars" that formed Warhol's entourage at The Factory, his New York studio. Two screens placed side by side show Sedgwick enacting the final hours leading to the suicide by overdose in 1944 of the Hollywood siren Lupe Velez.
In this double projection, a single film is cut in half and both sections are projected simultaneously. The left-hand screen shows Sedgwick reclining on a day bed in a large Park Avenue apartment, dressed in a pink baby-doll dress, applying makeup, having her hair cut. On the right-hand screen, Sedgwick, now attired in a long blue dress, drifts around the dining room, drinking wine and attempting to eat at the table. As her physical demise begins, the camera starts to spin and her head droops. The final shot on both screens shows Sedgwick collapsed in the bathroom. Lupe marked both Sedgwick's own personal decline (she died of a drug overdose in 1971) and the end of her collaboration with Warhol. In Warhol's dismantling of linear cinematic time, splitting, doubling, and mirror reflection are used to suggest psychological tension and a fracturing of the human psyche.
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About Andy Warhol
Born 1928, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Died 1987, New York, New York
After attending art school in Pittsburgh, Andy Warhol became one of New York's most successful commercial illustrators in the late 1950s. He achieved international reknown for the paintings and films he produced beginning in the 1960s. Throughout his career, as in his iconic paintings of Campbell's soup cans or Marilyn Monroe, Warhol employed silk-screening and repetition, focusing on commonplace objects and popular subjects. In 1964 Warhol established a studio called The Factory. There, he worked with assistants to create paintings, films and performances. Warhol's films share themes of time and seriality, tragedy, celebrity and every day life. The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, currently displays the largest public collection of Warhol's work.
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Yoko Ono (American, born Japan, 1933)
Sky TV, 1966
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