If there’s one thing that I regret about the 13 Most Beautiful concert on the NZ International Arts Festival is that I wasn’t prepared for it. I don’t mean prepared on a “I read a bit about the concert and I know what it is about”. I mean on a “I know the universe around it quite well” way.
The 13 Most Beautiful is a concert prepared by the Kiwi Dean Wareham and his wife Britta Phillips. The band plays while Andy Warhol’s screen tests show on the background. Those amazing, black and white silent (and sometimes awkward in a way) screen tests, that Andy shot with a bunch of nice looking crazy people in The Factory on the 60’s.
It’s really had to have a opinion of the whole concept. The band was good (not awesome, but good enough) and the matching with the people on each screen test was probably the best part of it. Before each song Dean or Britta would give us a brief history of the person who was going to be on the next test, and that’s what helped me connect the ideas and enjoy it for a bit. And they made a nice job writing and choosing the write music to match to each of those 13 tests.
The screen tests are nothing more than a camera set on a persons face for around four minutes. After stare at the person’s face for a while you can’t help but wondering about their history, what they are thinking about and how their life was. And that is what was really beautiful. Legend tells that Andy Warhol shot more than 500 screen tests on The Factory, and I really would love to have a glance on some of the most famous ones (such as Dali’s and Bob Dylan’s).
I’ve got a mixed review from some friends that went to the concert. Some of them loved it, some of them were bored. On my vision the whole idea wasn’t more interesting because of my complete ignorance about Andy Warhol and the Pop Art universe. But I’m not sure that it would’ve been a awesome concert even if I knew all of that.
Since then, I’m trying to catch up with the movement and that’s where my regret is coming from. How all this cool stuff slipped through my radar for this long?




