Andy Warhol's Beauty #2: Demystifying and Reabstracting the Feminine Mystique, Obliquely

Abstract

From a fixed angle and focus, the camera in Beauty #2 (1965) records Edie Sedgwick and Gino Piserchio—the latter a newcomer to the Warhol world who, we are told as the film progresses, was brought home for Edie's entertainment—performing.1 As the half-undressed couple smoke, drink, eat, converse, and rather clumsily and woodenly fondle and kiss, much of the screen time is occupied by the voice of Edie Sedgwick's former boyfriend, Chuck Wein, whose absent body is located beyond the right edge of the filmic frame, facing Edie's bed at an angle perpendicular to that formed by the camera and the couple. In the film, Edie most centrally occupies the triangular arena formed by the location of the camera, the position of Chuck Wein, and the bed's headboard pressed against the far while wall. While she inhabits this seemingly privileged site, the glare of a spotlight that seems better suited to an operating table than a movie set threatens to reduce her form to a mere outline, just as the sometimes brutal interrogations performed upon her by the off-screen Chuck Wein threaten to steal her show.