May 10th, 2017: Warhol in Drag

[xoxoxoBruce]

Andy Warhol was a strange duck, well suited to being an artist. He had a habit of taking Polaroid photographs as a useful tool
for things and people he wanted to silk screen later. But he was a Polaroid junkie, taking tons of pictures of shoes, Vodka
bottles, and lots of stuff. He also took a lot of pictures of himself in drag.

Andy Warhol enjoyed dressing for parties in drag, sometimes in dresses of his own design. He admired “the boys who spend
their lives trying to be complete girls,” so in 1981 he and a photographic assistant, Christopher Makos, agreed to collaborate
on a session portraying Warhol in drag. In many ways, they modeled the series on Man Ray’s 1920s work with the French
artist Marcel Duchamp, in which the two artists created a female alter ego name Rrose Sélavy for Duchamp.

Warhol and Makos made a number of pictures, both black-and-white prints and color Polaroids, of their first attempt.
For the second round of pictures, they hired a theater makeup person. This stage professional better understood the
challenge of transforming a man’s face into that of a woman.
After the makeup, Warhol tried on curled, straight, long, short, dark, and blonde wigs.

He ain't pretty Father, he's my brother.

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