''Taylor Mead's Ass'' is a film by

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the Art movement, visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore th ...

featuring

Taylor Mead Taylor Mead (December 31, 1924 – May 8, 2013) was an American writer, actor and performer. Mead appeared in several of Andy Warhol's underground films filmed at Warhol's Factory, including ''Tarzan and Jane Regained... Sort of'' (1963) and ...

, consisting entirely of a shot of Mead's buttocks, and filmed at

The Factory The Factory was Andy Warhol's studio in New York City, which had four locations between 1963 and 1987. The Factory became famed for its parties in the 1960s. It was the hip hangout spot for artists, musicians, celebrities and Warhol's superstar ...

in 1964.

Production

According to Watson's ''Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties'', Taylor Mead had achieved a degree of fame that "inspired a backlash." One example was a letter to the editors at ''

The Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newspaper, alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf (publisher), Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, th ...

'' in August 1964 by a Peter Emanuel Goodman, who was upset by Jonas Mekas's film reviews for the paper: "I have tolerated his praise of films shot without cameras, films shot without lenses, films shot without film, films shot out of focus, films focusing on Taylor Mead's ass for two hours, etc. . . . But the August 13 column in praise of Andy Warhol was a bit too much." Mead replied in a letter to the publication: "Re. Peter Goldman's letter in The Voice, Andy Warhol and I have searched the archives of the Warhol colossus and find no 'two hour film of Taylor Mead's ass.' We are rectifying this undersight with the unlimited resources at our command. Love and kisses." Two days later, Warhol shot the "sixty-minute opus that consisted entirely of Taylor Mead's Ass," during which Mead first exhibits a variety of movement, then ''appears'' to "shove a variety of objects up his ass." The film was Mead's last for Warhol "for more than three years", at the end of 1964, "Mead felt betrayed by Warhol for not showing the film." The satirical devices of exaggeration and incongruity are represented by the objects that give characteristics such as simile, symbolism, hyperbole, imagery, and foreshadowing to the film's pop culture iconography in the form of a photo of Lady Bird Johnson; another of Tippi Hedren and Rod Taylor in The Birds; another of Liz Taylor and Richard Burton in The V.I.P.s; and the Beatles on the cover of Life, Hemingway's Moveable Feast, followed by Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, a gay porn magazine entitled BIG, flowers, a vacuum cleaner hose, plus a Scott toilet tissue wrapper, which creates an avant-garde social commentary, historic time-capsule, and psychosexual drama. The film subsequently has received one review on IMDB, from an external source, an internet blog. The film was described as "seventy-six seriocomic minutes of this poet/actor's buttocks absorbing light, attention, debris" by

Wayne Koestenbaum Wayne Koestenbaum (born 1958) is an American artist, poet, and cultural critic. He received a B.A. from Harvard University, an M.A. from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, and a Ph.D. from Princeton University and is a 1994 Whiting Award recipie ...

, in ''

Art Forum ''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ x 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notably, ...

''. In his book, ''Andy Warhol'', Koestenbaum writes, "Staring at his cleft moon for 76 minutes, I begin to understand its abstractions: high-contrast lighting conscripts the ass into being a figure for whiteness itself, particularly when the ass merges with the blank leader at each reel's end. The buttocks, seen in isolation, seem explicitly double: two cheeks, divided in the centre by a dark line. The bottom's double structure recalls Andy's two-paneled paintings..."

In popular culture

In the 2006 film ''

Idiocracy ''Idiocracy'' is a 2006 American science fiction comedy film directed by Mike Judge and co-written by Judge and Etan Cohen. Starring Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Dax Shepard, and Terry Crews, the film tells the story of Corporal Joe Bauers ...

'', a theatrical film from the year 2505 is depicted called ''Ass'' which, like ''Taylor Mead's Ass'', consists of a closeup of someone's exposed buttocks for 90 minutes, and according to the movie, "it won 8 Oscars that year, including Best Screenplay".

References

External links

* {{Warhol 1964 films Films directed by Andy Warhol American black-and-white films 1960s American films

Production

In popular culture

See also

References

External links