Andy Warhol’s ‘Screen Tests’ showcased in grand exhibit at Lower East Side gallery

Between 1964 and 1966, Andy Warhol quietly made film history by doing almost nothing at all.

It was the era of his “Screen Tests” — short black-and-white portraits of his various “superstars” and whoever else he felt like filming. The process was simple: put someone in front of the camera with little or no direction and let the camera run for 3 minutes. The result was then slowed down and unedited in its finished 4 1/2-minute version.

Presented in a gallery setting for the first time, “Poetry and Pose: Screen Tests by Andy Warhol,” is a selection of the work hosted by the Lower East Side’s Ki Smith Gallery and curated by Greg Pierce, the director of film and video at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.

“This is the first time that a selection of ‘Screen Tests’ has been exhibited by way of compiling every portrait from a sitter’s single session whereby the good and the not so good are presented together,” Pierce notes. “Everyone in this show was chosen because Warhol shot at least two portraits of them during a single session and some – Roderick Clayton and Peter Hujar – were filmed four times. The 16 people chosen comprise a small but representative mix that made up the creative melting pot that was Warhol’s Factory over a period of three years.”  

Included in the show are all the original members of the Velvet Underground, Edie Sedgwick, Baby Jane Holzer and less familiar names like Kenneth King — who remembers Warhol turning on the camera and saying, “Well, I’ve gotta go now, and paint,” and walking away. 

For Smith, the show is something special for the gallery.

“My grandfather once told me”, Smith muses, “that some shows  are to sell and some are to show off. … So if I’m going to show off it might as well be a museum quality show.”

He notes that the show “highlights some of the more rare screen tests that not only don’t often get to see the light of day, but in some cases have never…