Andy's Work

”The MoMA in Berlin” Receives Company:
Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures / Design Seen at MoMA



From Warhol to the Wiggle Side Chair: The Museum of Modern Art in New York not only has the most famous collection of Modernist paintings, drawings, and sculptures; it also has the most important film department of any museum worldwide, while its collection of 20th-century industrial products is every bit as significant. Visitors who have missed these areas in ”The MoMA in Berlin” should look out for two new exhibitions opening in the German capital.


Mary Lea Bandy, artistic director of the film department of the Museum of Modern Art, presides over several thousand videos and 19,000 films. On the occasion of MoMA’s guest appearance in the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, which features its painting and sculpture collection, she was invited by one of the most active art institutions in Berlin to develop an experimental form of presentation for Andy Warhol’s art works on film. The point of departure for the unusual exhibition in the Kunst-Werke is Warhol’s Screentests, short films three to four minutes in length that show moving portraits of the Factory superstars as well as famous personalities such as Salvador Dali, ”Baby” Jane Holzer, and Dennis Hopper . Over 500 of these ”screenings” were made between 1964 and 1965. With his Screentests , Warhol didn’t only ironically adopt Hollywood’s casting system for the underground; he also wanted the works to be understood as ”moving stills,” as portraits in a painterly sense. It’s impossible to overlook the conceptual proximity between his silkscreen portraits and the unmoving camera positions of the ”plotless” screentests. Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures now offers viewers the possibility to experience this proximity directly.


Andy Warhol. Screen Test: "Baby" Jane Holzer. 1964. Film: 16mm, approx. 4 min. © The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh. Gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

In the Kunst-Werke, Warhol’s films are presented like paintings, and the viewer is free to move among them. A selection of Screentests is shown in continuous projection together with other Warhol films ( Eat, Kiss, Sleep, Empire) presented on ultra-flat screens let into the wall. In order to underscore the museum-like impression, Mary Lea Bandy is also showing a part of the works in classically fashioned wooden frames. The result is an initial impression of a painting gallery before the viewer notices the moving images among the works. The exhibition concept has already created controversy among critics. Anyone interested in getting an impression of Warhol’s films shouldn’t let this opportunity slip by. ”Nothing can substitute the experience of walking among these images,” the Sueddeutsche Zeitung wrote in spite of its reservations concerning the show’s concept, ”and maybe, in this way, they will be accessible to many for the first time.”

The exhibition Design Seen at MoMA invites the visitor to another experience entirely. Berlin’s Kunstgewerbemuseum – founded in 1867 as the first craft museum of its kind in Germany – possesses a design collection that includes around 2,500 serially manufactured products from the 20th-century international avant-garde. The design collection concentrates on objects in the areas of furnishing, decoration, jewelry, and fashion whose design and manufacture took place under equally high standards of functionalism and aesthetics. Hence, the museum is an ideal location for the show, augmenting the MoMA exhibition in The New National Gallery by presenting modern design from its own collection with an equivalent in MoMA’s design department.