"I've never met a person I couldn’t call a beauty . . . I always hear myself saying, She’s a beauty! or He’s a beauty! or What a beauty! But . . . if everybody’s not a beauty, then nobody is."
—Andy Warhol quoted in The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: (From A to B and Back Again), 1975

Andy Warhol shot nearly five hundred Screen Tests of the famous and the anonymous in his studio, The Factory, between 1964 and 1966. The subjects were asked to pose, lit with a strong key light, and filmed by Warhol with his stationary 16mm Bolex camera on silent, black-and-white, 100-foot rolls of film. Each screen test was only as long as the roll of film. The resulting 2 3/4 minute films were projected in slow motion so that each lasted four minutes.

Rockers Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips, formerly of Luna and currently with Dean & Britta, perform onstage with their band (Lee Waters and Matt Sumrow) while the Warhol films are projected overhead. Commissioned by The Andy Warhol Museum to compose music for thirteen of the Screen Tests, the songwriting duo created new songs (with the exceptions of a Bob Dylan song and an obscure Velvet Underground cover) tailored to the personality of each film portrait. The resulting 13 Most Beautiful . . . Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests is a rocking live art experience that brings new perspective to Warhol's iconic films.

13 Most Beautiful . . . Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests was developed by Ben Harrison, associate curator for performance, with Geralyn Huxley, curator of film and video, and Greg Pierce, assistant curator of film and video of The Andy Warhol Museum.

“I probably came to Warhol via the Velvet Underground, he has had a huge influence on the history of rock music. You could make a case that he was one of the first punks, in two ways. 1) He suggested that anyone could be an artist, and that an artist could try his hand at anything. 2) Punk rock celebrates the commonplace and the ugly, and elevates it, and I think Warhol did the same.”
—Dean Wareham

“[S]ound and image powerfully entwined.”
—Ty Burr, Boston Globe

Composed by: Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips Developed by: Ben Harrison, associate curator for performance, with Geralyn Huxley, curator of film and video, and Greg Pierce, assistant curator of film and video, of The Andy Warhol Museum Musicians: Dean Wareham, Britta Phillips, Lee Waters, Matt Sumrow

Executive Producer: Tony Forte

Read Dean Wareham's Bomb Magazine article about creating 13 Most Beautiful . . .

Read blog articles about this show by clicking here.

Andy Warhol (artist) is widely regarded as the most important artist of the second half of the 20th century. His film work is highly influential in the history of experimental film. In 1979, P. Adams Sitney wrote in Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde, 1943-1978, “Warhol came to the avant-garde cinema in a way no one else had . . . He was a fully developed artist in one medium, and he entered another, not as a dabbler, but with a total commitment . . . For years he sustained that production with undiminished intensity, creating, in that time, as many major films as any of his contemporaries had in a lifetime.” From 1963 to 1971, Warhol produced an oeuvre comprised of more than 4,000 reels of film, including 500 original 33-minute sound reels, more than 800 original 2½-minute silent reels, and 2,800 reels of outtakes and prints.

Dean Wareham (guitar/vocals) was born in New Zealand and moved to New York City in 1977. There he attended high school, as well as shows at CBGB’s, Mudd Club and Hurrah. In 1985 he graduated from Harvard University with a degree in social studies. He then founded Galaxie 500 (as singer/guitarist and songwriter), recording three albums between 1988 and 1991. His next band Luna recorded seven studio albums and toured the world between 1992 and 2004. He now performs and records for the Zöe/Rounder label with his wife Britta Phillips. They have two full-length albums, L’Avventura and Back Numbers, and composed the score for The Squid and the Whale. Dean’s memoir, Black Postcards (now a Penguin paperback), is a personal and cultural chronicle of fifteen years in indie rock.

Britta Phillips (bass/vocals/keyboards) grew up in Bucks County, PA. She moved to New York City as a teen to pursue music like her father, Peter Phillips, who has played with Herbie Hancock, Maureen Fleming, and Philip Glass. Britta's first singing job was as the voice of cartoon rock star Jem of Jem & The Holograms. Soon after, she starred alongside Julia Roberts and Liam Neeson in the movie Satisfaction. Britta moved to London with her band, Belltower, where they joined the shoe-gazing scene. Belltower released one full-length album and several EPs. She later returned to the U.S. and toured with Australian singer-songwriter Ben Lee. In 2000, she joined Luna and played on the band’s final three albums. She now performs in Dean & Britta alongside her husband Dean Wareham.

Matt Sumrow (guitars/keyboards) was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and raised in Roswell, Georgia, Charlotte, North Carolina, and Mahwah, New Jersey. Born to a church-going Southern family, he was quickly introduced to gospel music, playing piano at age six and trumpet soon after. By 11 he was playing guitar and had his first band when he was a high school freshman. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he studied film & media and medieval religion. Immersing himself in Chapel Hill’s music scene, Matt toured with such bands as Comas, Mayflies USA, Cub Country, Jennyanykind, and Roman Candle. Now in Brooklyn, he plays keyboard and guitar with Dean & Britta, and records and performs with numerous bands including GIRLS and the Still Out.

Lee Waters (drums/bass/acoustic guitar) was born to a military family in Fort Benning, Georgia. Raised on bases throughout the U.S. and West Germany, he took refuge in music at a young age. At age 11, Lee acquired a pair of drumsticks, and played in his 6th grade band. His musical education continued in various schools as his family moved from base to base. After graduating high school and returning to the U.S., Lee settled in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he performed and recorded with local mainstays Portastatic, LUD, the Rosebuds, and alongside his wife Jenny in their band Work Clothes. He has also toured with Camera Obscura and The Essex Green, and played drums on two film scores by Mac McCaughan.

Ben Harrison (curator) is the associate curator for performance at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he develops live performance programming, including the Sound Series and the live art series Off the Wall. He also served as the associate curator for the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s Pittsburgh International Festival of Firsts 2008. As a curator of 13 Most Beautiful . . . , along with Geralyn Huxley and Greg Pierce, he has found the realization of this multimedia performance and tour to be completely gratifying, particularly given that the resulting DVD is the first official release of early Warhol film material. He hopes that this exciting collaboration with Dean Wareham and Britta Philips will provide further exposure for Warhol’s dynamic film portraits, the Screen Tests.

Greg Pierce (curator) is the assistant curator of film and video at The Andy Warhol Museum, and has worked there since 1994. Two recent exhibition catalogues—Warhol Live! (Montreal) and Other Voices, Other Rooms (Amsterdam)—feature his research and writing on Warhol's film and video work. Mr. Pierce is also a filmmaker and archivist who oversees The Orgone Archive, a proudly fringe motion picture archive and exhibition outfit also founded and based in Pittsburgh. The archive, which formed in 1993, houses over 10,000 film elements along with related equipment and ephemera.