Michel Auder’s films, which span in length from five minutes to multiple hours, are all edited from the thousands of hours of footage the artist has casually shot throughout his life. Early on, Auder made a habit of carrying portable video-recording equipment on a daily basis, and so amassed a biographical reel that frequently captured his fellow artists in the New York art scene, including such personalities as Cindy Sherman, Larry Rivers, and, most famously, Alice Neel. Auder did not consider his practice to be factually driven, however: “It was not in any way a documentary, not to be relate...
Chelsea Girls with Andy Warhol
In 1969 Michel Auder began a series of video diaries that chronicled the art scene in downtown New York. In Chelsea Girls with Andy Warhol, Auder captures revealing moments in Warhol's public and private life: the opening of the 1970 Whitney Museum retrospective, a party held at John Lennon and Yoko Ono's home, a heated telephone conversation between Warhol, Viva and Brigid Berlin, and an illuminating interview conducted with Larry Rivers, the grandfather of Pop Art, following the publication of The Philosophy of Andy Warhol in 1975. The issue of money is a consistent topic of conversation with Viva, who after departing the Factory in 1969 sent Warhol a series of threatening letters demanding money.
