Joining the Cult: The American Underground and Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Girls

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Andy Warhol, The Chelsea Girls, 1966
Photo: Andy Warhol Museum

The changing American film landscape of the 60s, while giving rise to an independent cinema and transgressive portrayals of violence and sexuality within mainstream cinema, also created a market for once-taboo subject matter. Moral relativism had sold out by the mid-60s, so underground filmmakers began to seek different truths from the tools of filmmaking. From this era of micro-budget, anti-narrative, anti-film films came voices such as Stan Brakhage (Dog Star Man), Kenneth Anger (Scorpio Rising), Michael Snow (Wavelength), and, of course, Andy Warhol.

Warhol began his artistic career as a pop artist, itself a discipline concerned with the artistic value of commercial product. This was his first foray into abstract, experimental modes of expression, and arguably remain as his most notable and lasting artistic creations. By 1962, Warhol established the first of three buildings he would deem “The Factory,” a studio for Warhol’s paintings, silkscreens, films, and also shoes, apparently. A veritable cult emerged within the factory as Warhol, as avant-garde performers and artists flocked to East 47th Street in New York City. Several of these performers became known as Warhol’s “superstars,” who featured as the subjects of Warhol’s experimental films. Between ’62 and ’68 (the years in which the first Factory was still occupied by Warhol and his entourage) Warhol produced over 60 films with his superstars. This includes the now infamous Sleep, a six-hour film showing Warhol’s partner, John Giorno, asleep in a single long take. These films were barely seen outside of New York art exhibits and were decidedly commercially unsuccessful (nine people attended Sleep’s premiere; two left within an hour). Except Chelsea Girls.

For the life of me, I don’t know what made Chelsea Girls any kind of popular. Shot in the Hotel Chelsea and the Factory, the film operates almost as a greatest hits reel for Warhol, or a catalogue of all of his frequent collaborators, all of whom may or may not be at any given moment in the three-and-a-half-hour film extremely high, deeply confessional, performing as a character, or simply being filmed as they are. Almost every scene employs only a few shots, with some scenes (all of which are 33 minutes in length) comprising only one long take close-up of the subject of the vignette. Apparently, dozens of scenes were shot, but the best 12 were selected by Warhol and co-director Paul Morrissey for the final cut. Two scenes each are then played next to each other in split-screen, often with one staggering behind the other, offsetting the experience even further. Usually, one is played with its sound on while the other has its sound turned off. Sometimes, both vignettes are entirely silent. Sometimes both are in black and white, sometimes one is in color and one is not, sometimes both are in color. If there is any real, propulsive momentum in Chelsea Girls, it is wondering at what the next two vignettes will look and sound like, hoping that the 33 minutes of the last scenes are soon up. It is a boring, strange, and at times incomprehensible film, its poor sound quality contributing to its overall unprofessionalism. Although it is technically available in one print, Warhol intended the film to be played with different scenes played together each time, destroying any possibility for a single discernible narrative thread or thematic arc. Characters rarely, if ever, appear in more than one vignette. Nothing happens. People talk, but the audience can’t always hear them.

Chelsea Girls is notable for its explicit discussions of sex and drugs, and its portrayal of queer characters is certainly notable, following in the vein of experimental filmmakers like Kenneth Anger and Willard Maas, whose films similarly lent visibility to and received censorship for portraying homosexuality on the screen. Underground American cinema was not just the result of anti-commercial sentiments, but also the product of disenfranchised artists who wanted to create films that better reflected their American experiences in the margins of American society. Largely influenced by the works of Maya Deren (Meshes in the Afternoon), herself one of the first major female directors in American cinema history, 60s experimentalism often combined self-awareness of the manipulations of film with early, open homosexual representation. What could and could not be shown on screen was being radically altered by the creators of the decade as they worked against Hollywood conventions.

So, Chelsea Girls, in all its anti-film glory, is certainly worth checking out, even if you can’t or don’t want to finish it. Experimental film’s quality is deeply subjective, but within these odd portraits there is always something to be learned about our relationship to film, the transgressive nature of art produced outside of the Hollywood system, and the way independent artists thought about and constructed images on film.

 

Further Viewing:

Wavelength (1967) – Michael Snow’s experimental masterpiece, which is pretty much (spoilers) about a wall and a sharp buzzing noise. One of the experimental era’s great oddities.

Scorpio Rising (1963) – Perhaps Kenneth Anger’s most notable film, starring a group of gay bikers and portraying a series of taboos.

Meshes in the Afternoon (1947) – Maya Deren’s seminal experimental film.

Dog Star Man (1964) – Stan Brakhage’s masterpiece. One of the best things I’ve ever seen.

 

CAMERON FAIRCHILD | Superstar | KXSU Arts Reporter

 

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