Museum Visit: "Dark and Deadpan: Pop in TV and the Movies" at The Whitney

                     The Andy Warhol Eating a Hamburger scene from Jorgen Leth's 1981 film, "66 Scenes from America" 

"Dark and Deadpan: Pop in TV and the Movies" was held in the Kaufman Astoria Studios Film & Video Gallery of the Whitney Museum and curated by Chrissie Iles and Jay Sanders.  In this installation of video projectors and television screens juxtaposed with audio, visitors entered a dark room with dim light flickering from each video screen.  Each screen is approachable and seductive.  They display "hip" and intriguing characters who performing unusual tasks and/or play out disorienting scenes which highlight the curiosities and experimentation of artists and "hipsters" of the Pop era of the 1950s and 60s. 
 
One of the most recognizable characters seen in this exhibition is Andy Warhol.  In a clip from the feature length film, 66 Scenes from America (1981) Warhol is seen sitting at a table (adorned in his trademark bleach-blond asymmetrical haircut)where a Burger King Whopper and glass bottle of Heinz ketchup accompanies him.  Warhol unwraps his greasy sandwich from it's iconic paper wrapper, issuing a rather profound indifference towards his imminent meal.  He displays an open agitation that the ketchup won't come out of the bottler, and appears neither excited nor dejected by his Whopper-eating experience.  

To watch him eat, one feels almost as bored as he looks.  Yet the magic of Warhol is that the viewer is interested in him no matter what he does.  Thus, one continues watching.  There is this silent anticipation as you observe Warhol chew.  One hopes some ironic seductive visually tantalizing experience is in store and will be presented to us as an award for making the commitment to keep watching.  Yet, nothing significant happens.  Perhaps, this segment (appropriately titled "Andy Warhol Eating a Hamburger") is a commentary of how most Americans consume their food passively, with an anti-climax. 

  

"Hold Me While I'm Naked" (1966) Directed by George Kuchar

One of the most suspenseful films chosen for this exhibition is George Kuchar's 1966 film, Hold Me While I'm Naked.  A story unfolds here, though staggeringly, about an aspiring film maker who directs erotic scenes in his low budget films.  He faces conflicts with himself, his personal relationships, as well as with the cast of his films.  While watching, the audiences is given visual information which is contradictory and difficult to decipher which scenes represent the main character's "real life" and what represents scenes within his films.

Overall, "Dark and Deadpan" is a fantastic look into the creative video output of pop artists during the 1950s and 60s.  America's history certainly is dark and full of contradiction, fictitious lust, and mass produced stimuli.