Andy Warhol Film Analysis

Within only five years from 1963 to 1968, Andy Warhol had added into his legacy of more than 60 films and the art world had yet seen anything else like it. Many of them were of epic length. They employed almost no camera work and used the minimum of plot. One of his most famous films, “Empire”, was eight hours long and consisted of of one continuous shot of the Empire State Building. In “Sleep”, Warhol filmed his poet lover, John Giorno, sleeping throughout the film for six hours. It is no surprise that Andy Warhol’s filmic work was incredibly hard to watch. They were dull and irritating. People would have been filled with boredom when they watched Warhol’s films. But as a fact that someone indeed produced such work was interesting. So what

The avant-garde tried to remove every trace of the artist’s hand. One of Warhol’s laconic statements was that he like boring things. He appeared to pursue an utterly mechanical kind of art which contains absolutely no personal meaning investment. When Warhol said “I just switch on the camera and walked away”, he literally did so. He mounted his camera fixed to a tripod, framed the subject of his film and left the place, only came back later to change the reels. There were no interruptions went beyond that. The camera to Warhol’s was an indiscriminate object. It filmed whatever came into frame. If there was any accident, it happened as part of the film. Warhol’s did not edit his film either. It was his purpose. He applied this intentional working process to his many films. By this way, he actively excluded his own personal presence. Any effort of intervention would have breached the artist’s purpose. It was exclusively mechanical art that he did. They were nothing more than stripes of film. Combining with Warhol’s minimal usage of plot, it feels extremely difficult for people to watch a film that has almost no incident occurs. Although his films actually showing a happening in time and that was the foundation of storytelling, it abandoned what could be called as cinematic narration. He eliminated the progress thus it was obvious to the viewers that what they were seeing on the screen would last

They are not there to be looked at but they invite the viewers to look at them and become a part of it. They are empty containers that wait to be filled up with all kind of ideas and interventions. Andy Warhol himself was indifferent about his working process. He completely left out all personal presence. He abandoned every possible meaning could have existed. By neglecting emotions, the films became entirely mechanical. His unorthodox approach created another kind of medium which was plain and flat on the surface. This medium is also indifferent to the audience. It does not try to wield anyone. It does not drag the spectators out of their world but rather to confront them with reality. It is not a resourceful fountainhead but it acts as a mirror. The viewers when watching Warhol’s film, watch their own conscious self. Whatever reactions come from the viewers are their own real experience and feelings toward the film. Warhol’s films are not a packaged page with full of information, they have blanks for people to reflect. To experience it means to penetrate deeper into that flat surface to go into another realm of time and space. Warhol’s work is like a void. Everything happens as an empty dimension waiting to be explore. The artist has taken his films to a spiritual level. To him, the films were just as normal as they could get and what constructs the meaning and the depth of them was absolutely relied on