Andy considered his series abstract : he called them landscapes. He particulary favored a cropping that isolated, as a unit, the groin, upper thighs, and abdomen.
He never opts for a full body shot he limited himself usually to a groin, chest, midsection, or rear. Beyond their explicitness, the Polaroïdes – like the silkscreens – reveal (Warhol’s) wish to crop sexuality, to see how much or how little flesh can fit into the Big Shot camera’s limited frame, and to observe how these spatial restrictions estrange and sunder the body. This voyeurism, this fascination for the recomposed naked body in several shots, haunts the artist who destinated himself at the forced glorifiaction of the naked man in a frontaly way presented, in his sexuality and in his gay relations. It was surprising who’d let me and who wouldn’t (Andy Warhol, The Warhol Look : Glamour, Style, Fashion, Pittsburgh, 1997, p.291). Whenever somebody came up to the Factory, no matter how straight-looking he was, I’d ask him to take his pants off so I could photograph his cock and balls. First of all, Warhol asked them to undress for shots. We know that lots of people wished to enter the Factory. Torsos illustrates male and female models. I’m fascinated by boys, who spend their lives trying to be complete girls, because they have to work so hard – double-time – getting rid of all the tell-tale mal signs and drawing in all the female signs. That was thus for him an incredible source of inspiration. The desire of being the one, the onlyone and the most beautiful woman was common for all those met drags. Warhol liked their own unicitiy, besides their ambiguity. Those faces, showed under several points of view, force their heavily made-up and frozen companies to us but also their integrity, private personnality and above all, their pride of being watched, admired. Warhol considers each identity as a unique and genuine one.
Those sometimes complicate attitudes look like those of a real movie or fashion star trying to reach their photographer’s inspirations. Unaware the photographer’s identity, ten agreed : the ten first models of the Ladies and Gentlemen serie (portfolio of ten serigraphies edited by Anselmino and printed by Einrici, edition 125).Male, drags and female models were very often shooted under several angles. Warhol’s assistants went to the Gilded Grape, a bar on the Eight Avenue and 45th Street, to meet anonymous models who would agree a shooting session.
Those pictures were a sociological mirror of the Factory but also a kind of archive wherein the artist felt free to choose according to his inspiration.The several angles shot of a same character was essential for the after selection of the right picture, as he did for example with Jackie Kennedy’s or Marilyn Monroe’s shots plates.The exhibited Warhol’s polaroïdes illustrate predilection themas : the human face, homesxuality, drags and transexuals, pornography.Luciano Anselmino, one of Warhol’s friends, suggested him the creation of a portfolio based on his movies characters. A lot of those polaroïdes were used as silkscreen on canvas or on paper. Everything, every object was worthy of interest : shoes, candies, toys, animals, iconic figures… but above all the human character. In the 70’s, Warhol’s photographs are like a diary, relating important or less events, famous or anonymous encountered peoples. At the beginning, photographs were tools to go through painting to a new kind of art based on impression.
Even child, he collected movie stars pictures : he felt himself impressed by all those icons of the present time. Those original pictures could be classified in three families : Ladies and Gentlemen (shots of drags), Torsos (shots of men, women, genitals and chests) and Sex Parts (shots of male genitals and gay sex).Warhol has ever been fascinated by photography. This exhibition presents models’s polaroïdes shooted by Andy Warhol, the King of Pop Art, from 1970 until 1985.