Before filming Exploding Plastic Inevitable (or EPI), I was living in Chicago, and studying at the Illinois Institute of Technology Institute of Design (formerly the New Bauhaus) from 1962–67 (B.S. in Photography, 1965; M.S. in Cinematography, 1967). The method of teaching used at the Institute of Design (or ID) allowed one to explore various media so as to fully understand the nature of any particular medium and its creative potential. This was in contrast to the established method of teaching, which involved learning a particular tradition or style of art. The Bauhaus method encouraged one to explore creative possibilities within any particular medium, without limitations. It’s very much the difference between teaching and learning. With teaching, someone tells you how to do it; with learning, you discover for yourself the essentials through your own experimentation. Added to this was art history, which provided a perspective on one’s own explorations. This combination of medial exploration and art history proved an excellent way to explore the mediums of photography and film.

The initial exploration of the photographic medium at ID involved working with light, paper and chemicals, without a camera. Light and dark shapes were created solely through the interaction of chemical and light. The next phase was to include objects on the paper and expose these to light. In addition, the various chemicals were used in an experimental manner to create imagery. All this provided a broad understanding of the medium of photography.

One of the most significant ways I learned to explore photography (and one that later had a strong influence in the making of EPI) involved printing multiple negatives superimposed together. This allowed multiple levels of space/time to be experienced simultaneously, an effect that would eventually be used in the editing of Exploding Plastic Inevitable to provide an immersive experience similar to the original EPI multimedia events.

Why did you study at the ID and what did you study there?

I chose the Institute of Design because it had the most advanced courses in the art of photography. (The ID had a degree program in photography and it was one of the ID’s most significant programs from the early 1950s to the 1970s.)

In Chicago, I read Moholy-Nagy’s book Vision in Motion. The experience was like a great door being opened in my mind. This incredible vision and understanding of art and design in society provided me with tremendous insight. I read the book many times in order to absorb it all. It provided a very expansive overview and perspective about vision and prepared me for the learning process at ID. This prospect filled me with tremendous enthusiasm and energy. There was no better place to be!

What was the main focus of the ID at that time?

The main focus was to provide a foundation that was valid for learning all types of art and design. The first year of studies began with the Foundation Course, which provided the basis for learning. It consisted of three principal areas of information and experimentation that were tightly correlated with one another: technology, art and science. This included:

1. The use of tools and machines (technology).

2. The exploration of physical properties of materials and media (science).

3. The study and exploration of shapes, surfaces and textures, volumes, space and motion (art).

In addition, the study of Art History provided a historical understanding of art, society, technology and culture.

The Foundation Course provided an absolutely essential and complete learning experience. To this day I continue to find that experience provided essential knowledge of lasting value in both living and working. As noted above, the initial experience with photography began not with the camera but with the study of light-sensitive materials and the chemicals that affected these materials—the photogram (science) and the experimentation of these materials to create visual imagery (art) and eventually the camera (technology). This process of integration and correlation was a profound learning experience adaptable to all endeavors. The teacher of this course Joe Jachna, then the photography department assistant. As a teacher, his great sensitivity, mild manner and careful encouragement provided a very a rich learning environment. His own artwork in photography was focused on what he called “moments”—moments of awareness that lifted one up out of “the ordinary” to a heightened level of being. He used the act of photographing the physical world to capture these experienced “moments” of transcendence, demonstrating that the “inexpressible” could, if ever so subtly, be visualized, and expressed.

Who were your teachers?

The main teachers at ID were the very best photographers of that time: Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. They were the department’s primary teachers and were very accessible, gave encouragement, were wise and exceedingly helpful. Harry Callahan (ID faculty member from 1946 to 1961) was an extremely visually oriented person and worked in a very intuitive manner. He was an intuitive, quiet person who would communicate ideas about art with warmth and understanding. These qualities were especially evident in the excellence of his own photographic work.

Aaron Siskind (ID faculty member from 1951 to 1971) was also a very creative, warm and understanding person who possessed the ability to communicate his great understanding of art and to express artistic concepts in a clear manner. Together, they complemented each other, providing a wide perspective of insights. Their pedagogical approach shaped the first professional graduate program in photography to be run in the United States.

Other teachers and photographers who were associated with the photography department at ID around that time included Bob Tanner, Arthur Siegel, Kenneth Josephson and Charles Swedlund. Art Sinsabaugh, an instructor at ID from 1949 to 1959 was an especially considerate person and provided a lot of assistance. They all had been students at ID, and later participated as assistant teachers at various times. Together, they provided a “bank” of knowledge which was perhaps unique in the world at that time. One was fortunate to be there at that time.

How did you experience the school at the time when you were studying?

The teaching of the ID was an enormously positive experience. Instead of learning a particular method, style or “ism” of art, one explored the medium itself in order to discover its properties and the possibilities it offered for creative image-making. This was of essential value. If one studied a particular style or genre, unknowingly one was also “locked” into using the medium in that particular manner. The teaching at the ID freed one from this constraint.

For example, in the visual design department, one explored tools and media: paper, pens, ink, brushes, (technology) before creating designs. The study of cinema, as I’ve mentioned with respect to photography, began with the exploration of the light-film material itself without the technological apparatus (the camera). Drawing and painting directly on the film was also explored as a means to learn about the creation of shapes, surfaces and textures, etc.

Technology, art and science were all explored with an open mind, without any limitations on how they “should” be used. This allowed for an exploration with enormous creative potential—a method of learning that was so open and adaptable that many years later, with the advent of digital technology, I still felt a freedom of thought and was able to adapt easily to this new technology. This foundation of learning through the open exploration of different aspects of technology, art and science proved to be of great value.

How was the Light and Color Workshop organized by György Kepes in the New Bauhaus?

My time at the ID was after the period when Kepes was a teacher there. So, unfortunately, I was not able to have that experience, which I am certain would have been a very meaningful and helpful in the filming of the EPI.

How did your studies at ID influence your filmic work (and what works did you produce there?)

My studies at ID profoundly influenced my later filmic work. The Foundation Course, the knowledge of Aaron Siskind and Harry Callahan, and the community of young photographers associated with the Photography department provided the best possible learning environment. All of these had a great influence on my future work in film.

The first film works I produced at ID were a series of short B&W 8mm studies which explored the artistic properties of film as articulated within the ID Foundation Course (based on the Foundation Course of the Bauhaus), dealing with shapes, surfaces and textures, volumes in space, motion and time. These film works were a thorough exploration into my discovery of film and provided me with a tremendous experience of film as a medium for art-making.

Thereafter, I made a 16mm color film utilizing all the previous experiments combined together in a theme based on the alphabet. This film is now in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Another 16mm film of 20 minute duration was made of the artist Stephen Auslander (An Unusual Portrait): it received a Certificate of Excellence at the Kent Film Festival in 1965.

The final film I made at ID was a 16mm B&W film titled The Photography of Aaron Siskind. It presented Siskind’s photography in a historical context using voice-over commentary by the photographer to provide insight and understanding into his art. The film is now in the archives of the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona.

Do you know other artists from the ID who were involved with the Factory, New American Cinema, expanded arts or Fluxus?

The other filmmakers involved in the cinema course at ID were quite a creative group of individuals and produced some very interesting work. We were all familiar with the underground film work being made in San Francisco through the Canyon Cinema Film Cooperative and also the underground films made in New York, shown through the Film-Makers’ Cooperative created by Jonas Mekas. In Chicago, the Chicago Film Cooperative showed the work of Midwest artists.

The works of the New American Cinema, the Fluxus Group, Expanded Arts, the Ann Arbor Experimental Film Festival and work of the Once Group were also well known. Weekly screenings of underground and experimental films from around the country were shown at local university film societies. And experimental filmmakers using technology to make films in novel ways were also invited to the ID to present their films and creative ideas. Together, all these energies provided for an enormously creative environment. In addition, during the three-month summer break I traveled to New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco to see the work of other artists, filmmakers, photographers and musicians.

Did you work on light and media environments at the ID?

Jay Doblin, Director of the ID between 1955–1969 and best known for his contribution to systems thinking and design theory, became interested in the use of intensive visual projections as a new method of learning in 1965. The Product Design department (then under the direction of Ray Pearson) built a media projection environment consisting of a small enclosed space equipped with multiple media projectors. In this environment, one was bombarded with imagery from all directions. The idea was to transfer information through visual stimuli, from the senses directly to the emotions—bypassing traditional logical and rational learning through sequential processing. By intensive image projections, the brain would process the visual information intuitively and simultaneously.

While not directly involved in the project, I had the opportunity to experience this media environment on numerous occasions. I found it to be extremely interesting, but since it was such a different way of experiencing images (as a stimuli overload instead of a more contemplative experience), I had to make a conscious effort to accept the bombardment of imagery and sensory overload.

There was a wide interest at this time within the field of design and learning for this type of image environment. The designers Charles and Ray Eames also explored this.¹

Which connection in the artistic approach do you see between the ID and the Exploding Plastic Inevitable?

The creative approach, as taught at the ID, directly affected the making the Exploding Plastic Inevitable. In 1965, the standard method of filming was either that of drama or documentary. Neither of these were used in creating the EPI. The goal of the film was to re-create the experience of being in Warhol’s media projection environment. With regards to filming, the focus was on feeling the intense energy in the space rather than making an objective documentation or a literal drama. The focus of filming was on recording the dynamic interactivity of interchange between light, movement and the human form. Contrasts— between light/dark, color/B&W, fast and slow—were the dynamic elements.

Are there artistic techniques that you learned at the ID that were used for Exploding Plastic Inevitable?

The learning process of the Foundation Course allowed one to explore the broad use of technology, art and science. This has served me very well in all my creative endeavors. It provided a method of creative experimentation and exploration, opening up worlds of numerous possibilities. My experience of this learning method was the fundamental ground for filming—and much later, being able to recreate Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable using digital technology. The strategy I used while filming the EPI, addressed in your last question, was based of some of the basic visual elements I first experimented with in my 8mm films.

How did it happen that you filmed the Exploding Plastic Inevitable?

What kind of work did you see in San Francisco?

The rock-bands of the time—Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and others—were all performing. However, for me, the live projections shown in conjunction with the music were of most interest. This included film projections, slide projection, and real-time live projections using liquids that moved. Liquid colors were added to other liquids—and by manually moving the liquids in time to the beat it was possible to sync these projections to the music. These concerts were concurrent with the emergence of “expanded cinema”—using multiple screen projections and lighting to create a total immersive environment.

What kind of venue did the EPI take place in and how many people attended the shows?

Warhol premiered the Exploding Plastic Inevitable with the Velvet Underground and Nico on the lower east side in New York City in late April of 1966. It opened at the Dom and performances during that month were sold out. It attracted all types of people—uptown socialites like Jackie Kennedy, downtown poets like Allen Ginsburg and Barbara Rubin, artists, musicians and Midtown career people. It also attracted a great deal of publicity and was a major news happening at the times, with many news crews on the scene, including Walter Cronkite, then America’s most well-known news anchor. The EPI was a raging success. Warhol’s immersive media projection environment/discotheque created a new art form.

Mark Francis, founding director and first curator of the Warhol Museum said:

“The EPI ... represents Warhol’s epiphanic moment, and remains his greatest work, however difficult it may be for us to sense their flavor today. … No one in avante-garde circles or in popular rock spectacles with light shows had combined so many elements with such a synaesthetic effect before.”

After the success of the EPI in New York, Warhol arranged for the Velvet Underground to cut their first LP album at Scepter Records, which later became the infamous disco Studio 54.

The EPI then went on tour to Los Angeles and San Francisco. It came to Chicago in June of 1966 for a week of shows at Poor Richard’s, a nightclub with space for a couple hundred people. It previously had been a church … not a traditional church, but some kind of a free church. It was a big hall without windows, filled with lights shows and projections, no air conditioning, people dancing and very humid air.

The Experience of Being in the Exploding Plastic Inevitable

Larry McCombs’ exquisite account of his experience in the EPI at Poor Richard’s, Chicago, 24 June 1966:

What did the stroboscopic effects of Exploding Plastic Inevitable do to the audience?

The strobe light has the effect of changing one’s perception of ordinary time and motion. Depending on the rate of the flash-cycle, motion can appear to either speed up or slow down which creates a sense of being beyond normal time. It is an experience of being in another space/time dimension.

The filmed sequences of strobe lights were combined in editing with the footage that had been optically printed. Together, they replicated this powerful feeling of being in different time/space, one so different from our usual experience.

In his book Expanded Cinema, the author Gene Youngblood commented on this:

“EPI was photographed on color and black–and-white stock during one week of performances by Warhol’s troupe. Because the environment was dark and because of the flash-cycle of the strobe lights, Nameth shot at eight frames per second and printed the footage at the regular twenty-four fps. In addition, he developed a mathematical curve for repeated frames and super- impositions, so that the result is an eerie world of semi-slow motion against an aural background of incredible frenzy. Colors were super-imposed over black-and-white negatives and vice-versa. An extra-ordinary off-color grainy effect resulted from pushing the ASA rating of his color stock; thus the images often seem to lose their cohesiveness as though wrenched apart by the sheer force of the environment.”

“Watching the film is like dancing in a strobe room: time stops, motion retards, the body seems separated from the mind. The screen bleeds onto the walls, the seats. Flak bursts of fiery color explode with slow fury. Staccato strobe guns stitch galaxies of silverfish over slow motion, stop-motion close-ups of the dancers’ dazed ecstatic faces.”³

With regards to the strobe effect, the art critic Martin Grennberger once asked me:

“I am interested in the eradication of the distinction between ground and ceiling, which in your work creates an almost amorphous space with the flickering, stroboscopic light. In a way this also points in a direction of the dissolution of the medium (into the total environment). Could you say something more about this? It is connected to you being IN the environment.

Ronald Nameth: Yes, it is very much connected to me being in the environment. It’s both a dissolution of the original experience and an expansion and transformation of it into another. Warhol and the Velvet’s had the goal of creating a dissolution of space/time, and the EPI film also mirrored this dissolution of space/time.“⁴

The writer and critic Gene Youngblood, observed this and commented in his book Expanded Cinema:

“Nameth (…) managed to transform his film into something far more than a mere record of an event. Like Warhol’s show, Nameth’s EPI is an experience, not an idea. In fact, the ethos of the entire pop life-style seems to be synthesized in Nameth’s dazzling kinesthetic master-piece. Here, form and content are virtually synonymous, and there is no misunderstanding what we see.”⁵

“It’s as though the film itself has exploded and reassembled in a jumble of shards and prisms. Gerard Malanga and Ingrid Superstar dance frenetically to the music of the Velvet Underground (Heroin, European Son, and a quasi-East Indian composition), while their ghost images writhe in Warhol’s Vinyl projected on a screen behind. There is a spectacular sense of frantic uncontrollable energy, communicated almost entirely by Nameth’s exquisite manipulation of the medium.”⁶

“Nameth does to cinema what the Beatles do with music: his film is dense, compact, yet somehow fluid and light. It is extremely heavy, extremely fast, yet airy and poetic, a mosaic, a tapestry, a mandala that sucks you into its whirling maelstrom.”⁷

How were the light experiments of György Kepes connected to the stroboscopic and light experiments by the Velvet Underground?

The stroboscopic light experiments of Kepes at MIT were similar to the stroboscopic experiments in the EPI. This was an intensive period in the exploration of immersive visual/total environments (most of them in connection with rock music). There were many individual and groups involved in creating immersive visual environments in New York City, San Francisco and elsewhere around the country.

How was the collaboration with Warhol?

At the time of the filming in Chicago, Warhol and his troupe were in France to present his new double-screen film Chelsea Girls at the Cannes Film Festival. So my collaboration with the EPI was on a practical level: with Danny Williams, who coordinated all the lights and film projections, and with the audio technician Faison, who ran the audio equipment.

What kind of contact did you have with Velvet Underground during these performances? The fact that you were there down on the floor filming, they were obviously aware of your presence. How would you describe the dynamic during these shows?

Actually, they were not aware of my presence and could not see me as it was so dark. Since the filming was not directed but just “recorded,” there was no need to coordinate the filming with the Velvet Underground. Filming with a small hand-held portable camera, and I wanted to be as close to them as possible. The best place was on the floor under a table near the stage. The Velvets were standing off-stage. Because of the low light, most of the recording was of the performers onstage in the spotlights—Gerard Malanga, Ingrid Superstar and other performers.

The dynamic during the EPI shows can only be described as Extremely INTENSE.

The VU were doing, as I have mentioned, three performances a day. During the day, the VU (together with performers Gerard Malanga and Ingrid Superstar) were busy meeting the press and performing at events.

How did Warhol interact with other artists of Exploding Plastic Inevitable, like Barbara Rubin, Gerald Malanga, the Velvet Underground?

During the premiere of the EPI at the Dom, Warhol was mainly involved in the projection of the films and transparencies. He worked together with several other people and enjoyed experimenting with the superimposition of films and transparencies on each other, creating multiple levels of imagery.

Warhol himself said:

“I’d usually watch from the projection balcony or take my time turn at the projector, slipping different colored gelatin slides over the lenses and turning on my movies like Harlot, The Shoplifter, Couch, Banana, Blow Job, Sleep, Empire, Kiss, Whips, Face, Camp, and Eat into all different colors. Stephen Shore, Little Joey and Danny Williams would take turns operating the spotlights while Gerard [Malanga] and Ronnie [Tavel] and Ingrid [Superstar] and Mary [Woronov] danced sadomasochistic style with whips and flashlights and the Velvets played and the different colored hypnotic patterns swirled and bounced off the walls and the strobes flashed and you could close your eyes and hear cymbals and boots stomping and whips cracking and tambourines sounding like chains rattling.”

Did you work together with Warhol on other projects?

After Chicago, the EPI continued on the tour for another year in the United States and Canada. As my focus now was on the editing of the extensive film recordings, I secluded myself in an editing room and worked there for the next six months. Thus, my direct involvement with the EPI came to an end.

The Editing of the EPI Film

After previewing all the recorded film, it was clear that a single-screen presentation possessed limitations for presenting the EPI and the original live experience. The environment itself had been one of intense multiplicity—of lights, people, and movement.

Since the EPI film was not intended as a documentary “about” the performance or the music (no voice-over dialogue telling you what you were seeing) but rather as a direct experience, like the original EPI, there were no pre-determined rules on how this should be accomplished. So, the way forward was a complete unknown.

After many frustrating false starts, I began experimenting with ideas from the Bauhaus Foundation Course. Since one image contained only one space/time element, one possible solution was to combine levels of imagery to create multiple space/times, recreating the original immersive environment of multiple projections. The problem in editing was that film viewers of the time only allowed one piece of film to be previewed at a time. I tried to force two and sometimes three pieces of film into the previewer, but it would not function.

The solution I arrived at was to preview one roll at a time, and then another, then a third, fourth and fifth—and then in my mind, superimpose and combine these together. Another method I employed was to physically combine several layers of film together in my hand and turn them to the light, to see them together as miniature images, barely visible. Seeing them in motion was impossible as only one strip of film could be put into the editing viewer.

So began a long process of working through the limitations of the existing technology. Compared to the digital technology of today, looking back it feels as if one was working in the stone-age of film. Everything was so much more primitive and limited. The only solution was to visualize the result in my mind. Eventually, this technique of visualizing in the mind began to work.

Five edited rolls of film were synchronized together, then sent to the film lab and printed as a single roll.

The resulting film thus has up to five levels of imagery. It was only after the processed film came back from development at the lab, that it was possible to see the results. Fortunately, most of it worked according to expectations.

After completing the film (which became known as the “long version”) a number of screening situations arose where a request was made for a short version. So, the twelve-minute short version was created. As time has passed and people have become less knowledgeable about the EPI, it became obvious that some contextual information was needed. So, another version was created—first with a prologue and then, later, with an epilogue.

It is interesting that of all the films I have made, the EPI is the only one which continues to metamorphize and change over time. All of my other films were edited and are finished as they are. Not so the EPI. It keeps taking on new forms, growing and expanding into something else. Part of the reason for this is that the technical tools available at the time I originally edited it were so primitive that they did not permit the pre-visualization of the sequences. As digital tools for pre-visualization have become available, this has allowed the film to take on a new form, closer to the original experience of the live EPI. And finally, as new screening situations come about, a transformation is again required to meet these new conditions.

It seems the EPI will never be “completed” but instead continue to evolve into other forms.

Warhol was not involved in the editing process, nor did he preview any of the edits of the EPI. He never told the Velvet Underground what to do while producing their first album, nor how to do it. He just encouraged them to stay true to their own vision and not let other people try to change it. Warhol never imposed any conditions on the making of the EPI film.

Talking a bit about the editing of the sound: as you mentioned earlier, you did not have access to a portable synch sound camera, so you shot without sound.

The editing of the sound was basically matching the rhythm of the music to the rhythm of the imagery. As the film was not intended as a document of the performance but rather a direct intense experience of the EPI, and since the sound did not have to be synchronized, the imagery could be aligned with the rhythm of the music and the theme of the lyrics. The concept of making a music video of each song was still some twenty years in the future.

Thus, the individual songs were not the focus but rather the actual experience of the sound in the environment, as one moved around and in and out of the space.

Could you elaborate on the song structures? They are almost a fragmentation—there’s no whole song. How did you approach that?

The approach was to re-create the feeling of the dissolution of time/space and this very much focused on the fragmentary experience of the live performances. The real challenge was that one frame of film did not contain this experience. The fragmentation of space/ time was achieved through superimposing many frames together to finally achieve this effect.

John Cale of the Velvet Underground was well versed in experimental music. He had previously collaborated with both John Cage and La Monte Young. He experimented with sound in totally new ways. For the EPI, the prelude was to have two LPs playing different music simultaneously. After that, two different reels of the Warhol film Vinyl would be screened, with the sound tracks of both playing simultaneously. Sometimes all four sounds sources were playing simultaneously.

The Velvets wanted to make each performance unique. They never wanted to completely play a song the same way twice. They were always looking for ways to make the music alive and of the moment. As I’ve mentioned previously, at the end of EPI performances, the Velvets would perform a long freeform session with noise and feedback running up to 20 minutes. By the time it was finished, you were finished.

And then, there’s both a long and a short version later.

The long version of the film was the first edit to be completed. It was long simply because it contained the entire range of the recordings.

Later, after many screenings of the long version in standard cinema setting with fixed seats, it became obvious that this version simply did not work in that setting. The short version was created to be screened for standard cinema settings.

How did you decide on which songs to include?

The long version had most of the songs in the Velvet’s set list. The decision as to which songs would be in the short version came down to the fact that “Heroin” and “Venus in Furs” were both absolutely essential songs that had to be included.

The single-screen 16mm film was made available for screenings from 1966 to around the beginning of 1980s. The first screenings of the film were at underground film screenings and cinematheques. Regular film distributors had no interest in underground films, because most people are not interested in seeing cinema based on art. However, the growth of underground film was made possible by student film societies, interested in seeing such work. A network of underground film screenings came into being at many universities around the United States as a way to see independent films. Students would create film societies and arrange screenings independent of the university. Local cinemas in university towns took notice of this and arranged Saturday midnight underground film screenings to attract student audiences. Later, even art museums began presenting these films. Communication was very much by word-of-mouth, between the various student organizers around the country. My film was distributed by Film-Makers’ Cooperative in New York, by the Chicago Filmmakers Cooperative in Chicago, and by Canyon Cinema Cooperative in San Francisco.

Later, when the VHS videocassette became available, the EPI was distributed in that medium. And when the DVD was introduced, this became the means to present multiple-screen environments in exhibitions automatically over a period of many months.

What is interesting is that the new videocassette media allowed music videos to become the new medium for music. This brought about the emergence of music TV, MTV. It is interesting that the EPI recording with the Velvet Underground was actually one of the first music videos. (The music video as a genre first came into being some 20 years later).

The idea of making a multiple-screen projection environment of the EPI for exhibition had been under consideration for many, many years. It required at least four film projectors with special equipment to be able to automatically run the film as a very large loop. With art museum exhibitions having a duration of two to three months, the film would have to run automatically for the entire period. Such a duration would result in the film’s emulsion being completely worn down by continuous use. This combined with the cost of making four prints and the cost of equipment rental, made the idea almost impossible.

The solution for multiple-screen exhibition presentations became feasible with the advent of the DVD disk and video projector. These allowed for a cost-effective automatic method of exhibiting a multiple-screen projection of EPI.

Now, EPI presentations use digital files for direct projection.⁹

Thinking about Warhol and the Bauhaus together is really interesting. It seems like he (unconsciously) continued many concepts of the historical Bauhaus:

- The interdisciplinarity of different artistic fields (painting, film, photography, media art, music, light effects)
- multi-screen/multimedia environments
- modes of production such as seriality
- pop-cultural aesthetics, advertising and aesthetics of industrial design
- the role of portraits at the Bauhaus vs. screen test (sexualized bodies, cross dressing, new gender concepts)
- there are also parallels in the self-presentation of the Factory and the Warhol Superstars as artist communities and new subjectivities
- the Bauhaus as (one of) the first pop-culture movements.

Therefor maybe the most interesting question is: did Warhol ever talk about the Bauhaus as a source of inspiration?

Warhol was a very astute observer of society. He was very knowledgeable of all these developments. Before becoming an artist he had been a very successful commercial illustrator. He was an avid observer of society through all the media of his time—TV, radio, cinema, printed magazines and newspapers¾every medium.

As the machine became the prominent method of all forms of production, he was aware of the seriality of these methods of production, which were defining the visual culture of his time. He once said he “wanted to become a machine,” called his studio “the Factory.”

Warhol was well-versed in the various art traditions and its most likely he was aware of the Bauhaus tradition, and the attitude of the Bauhaus regarding art, science and technology was definitely relevant to the emergence of Pop Art, based as it was on the machine-made image. Historically, one can see that the Bauhaus initiated this understanding of the interconnection between art, science and technology in the 1920s. Through the teachings of Moholy-Nagy, the New Bauhaus/Institute of Design in Chicago brought this development to a new level, together with the dynamic rise of the United States and its culture after the end of the Second World War. The New Bauhaus/ID seemed to embody the creative energy of this emerging culture.

The 1960s saw a re-emergence of the Bauhaus ideas about the expanded field of art, but, of course, in a different way and in a different culture than that of the original Bauhaus. It emerged as a truly American manifestation—Pop Art. And because of Warhol, it was much more focused on the mirroring of contemporary society and culture.

The boundaries that previously separated the various arts were dissolved and with this came a new collaborative expansion and exploration of contemporary media. Painting, film, photography, music, lighting and new modes of production were all open to new collaborations across the spectrum of art. This freedom allowed elements to be synthesized together in new ways.

And although I know of no direct references that Andy Warhol made about the Bauhaus as a source of inspiration, he did make remarks that are very similar to the spirit of the original Bauhaus. About the times, Warhol said:

“We all knew that something revolutionary was happening.
We just felt it.
Things could not look this strange and new without some barrier being broken.”

“The Pop idea, after all, was that anybody could do anything,
so naturally we were trying to do it all.
Nobody wanted to stay in one category;
we all wanted to branch out into every creative thing that we could.
That’s why, when we met the Velvet Underground at the end of 1965,
we were all for getting into the music scene too.”¹⁰