A conversation between Vito Schnabel and Rene Ricard, published by Interview in 2004, sheds some light on Andy Warhol’s approach to sex:
Vito Schnabel: Did Andy do drugs?
Rene Ricard: No. Andy didn’t do drugs. He didn’t have sex. Of course, he did drugs! Of course, he had sex! Andy was addicted to Obetrol, a speed pill. He would give it to us when he wanted us to talk in the movies [...] It was very clever of Andy to make out like he didn’t have sex. Homosexuality was very threatening to people. Andy was really smart. And really insecure.
Much like the work of Stan Brakhage, another titan of experimental cinema who shot a staggering amount of 16mm film in his lifetime (albeit over the span of several decades), Andy Warhol’s films contain a broad set of axioms that, while at times a tad reductive, help summarize the projects both men actively pursued throughout their lives. The defining characteristics of Warhol’s early film period, before he got his hands on an Auricon, are as follows: his films are silent, minimalist, deliberately embrace expansive durations, and, above all else, serve as clinical, passionless formal experiments. The ongoing exhibit at the Museum of Sex, “Looking At Andy Looking,” seeks to reframe the last of these assumptions and argues that Warhol was, in fact, a dude who fucked.
To be specific, Warhol was a dude who fucked other dudes, including the poet John Giorno, whose face and bare ass are prominently displayed in Sleep (1964)—a five-hour, non-narrative endurance test that consists of footage of Giorno asleep. Sleep is one of the three 1964 Warhol features included in the exhibit, along with Blow Job and Couch. Up until Sleep, Warhol was feeling his way around the Bolex with a series of portraits and one-off filmic doodles. That his first major motion picture happens to be one of his most queer films—an intimate profile of his lover that’s longer than Richard Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg—isn’t merely a coincidence; it’s integral to understanding both him, an openly gay man since before the late ‘60s liberation movement, and his art, which frequently indulged in unrepentant homoerotism. However, excluded from the exhibit is Kiss (1963), an hour-long make-out session of both heterosexual and homosexual lip-locking. Plus, none of the films from Warhol’s Haircut trilogy made it either. While not explicitly gay, the trilogy stars Billy Name, another one of Warhol’s former lovers, and is shot in a similarly delicate fashion as Sleep. These films were made a year before Sleep and their omission from the Museum of Sex’s exhibit, while not a deal-breaker, signals an interest toward showcasing Warhol work that has already been canonized.
While Sleep and Blow Job are certainly the biggest name brand Warhol titles in the exhibit, there are also a number of smaller films, as well as never-before-seen rolls of explicit Factory content, that make equally strong impressions. This is especially true given their spatial proximity within the museum; they are all housed in a dark, cramped room that makes viewing them feel like you are watching pornography in your parents' basement. Three (1964), which is placed perpendicularly next to Blow Job, can be viewed as a fellatio-driven numerological game based on its namesake: three different tableaux, each lasting three minutes, of three different men (Walter Dainwood, Gerard Malanga, and Ondine) sucking each other off in a bathroom. If Blow Job is a 35-minute long reaction shot, then Three is nothing but action shots. A newly digitized screen test of the horologist Winthrop Kellogg "Kelly" Edey, shot from below and with his head tilted back, exudes a smarmy, hot-shot charisma charged with sexual energy. And Fu (1964), an unused roll Warhol shot for Couch, finds the aforementioned Malanga in a ménage-à-trois with Rufus Collins and Kate Heliczerthat’s shrouded in darkness, as if we’re not supposed to bear witness to their sensual acts. Considering this material was never intended to see the light of day, perhaps we aren’t.
Looking at Andy Looking is on view through March 9, 2025 at the Museum of Sex.
