THE READYMADE PERSONA
A SELECTION OF SCREEN TESTS BY ANDY WARHOL
UTAH MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, SALT LAKE CITY, UT
MAY 3 - JUNE 8, 2013
Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests are a seminal moment in the history of portraiture.
Warhol asked hundreds of people to take five minutes to sit in front of the camera without giving any specific direction.
The result reveals the essence of the person through their unselfconscious boredom, caricatured posturing or grasping attempts at their proverbial 15 minutes of fame. The subjects presented here are specific to illustrating each of those layers with cameos by Marcel Duchamp, innovator of the readymade and whose troublingly playful wit changed art forever; and Jack Smith, a filmmaker whose work honed in on the slippage between directionless states of being with the notion of playing the self. And lastly Allen Midgette, a man who toured the country and played Warhol at the artist’s discretion, until unmasked in Salt Lake City in 1968.
