Thursday, July 8, 2010

Callie Angell (R.I.P. 1948-2010)


"i just finished cataloguing the most incredible Warhol film: 105 Screen Tests he shot of Philip Fagan, over 105 days, each film numbered and dated in sequence. This film was supposed to be six months long. And was called SIX MONTHS. But even in the truncated form the film would be 7 hours long, if assembled. Each 100 ft. film is lit meticulously and slightly differently, with extensive notes on each box about light placements and aperture settings- and it's quite astonishing how different the film's subject looks from film to film. These "portrait " films that he made could be the aesthetic equals of Rothko's paintings. But i had no illusions that it was no quite there yet, for others. The SIX MONTHS project might have been seen as a kind of minimalist film noir epic, a series of systematic experiments in black-and-white on the effects of different lighting on the human face."

-Callie Angell, curator WHITNEY MUSEUM