My artistic vehicle for expression has always been my paintbrush, and my camera has always been a method to capture the frame to be reinvented as I saw fit into my canvas. This was also the method of Andy Warhol.
Confession; I am slightly biased towards this film because Warhol is one of my favorite fine artists of all time.
Andy used a specific Polaroid camera (that Polaroid only kept in production specifically for Warhol’s use) to capture snapshots of life and reinvent them through painting, screen-printing and film. His vision changed the world; he had the ability to take ordinary items and make them extraordinary.
The movie focuses on the life of Edie Sedgwick and her relationship with Warhol, art, New York, film, drugs and fame. She was his inspiration, his muse, his art. He made her infamous and tore her down all before her early death at age 28.
I adore this movie!
I love how the film is shown entirely from Edie’s perspective as a prop to Andy’s art. The movie shows his artistic process and the lifestyle that follows.
I was entirely caught up in the fabulous lifestyle of the 1960’s glamor and found myself not only craving a cigarette but the freedom to do whatever the hell I want.
Don’t we all?
The film inspired me beyond all others. It made me feel a rush of excitement, creativity, and faith that my art can shake the world.
Maybe it will, but most likely it won’t and I don’t care. I just want to portray the world as I see it. It’s my life, my vision, my lens.
It also reminded me how I have not picked up my paintbrush in a year! I realized that my camera used to be the means for my painting, but somewhere along the way my camera BECAME the medium itself. Sometimes I feel as if I should return to my brushes; take the better images I am now making and turn them into even greater works of art. But the lazy and less structured me loves the images for what they are and doesn’t want to change them.
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