On
a chilly afternoon in 1964, Andy Warhol, along with one of his muses, Taylor
Mead, photographer William John Kennedy and his wife, Marie, packed into Kennedy's
old VW bug. The destination: Queens, N.Y., where Kennedy wanted Warhol to see a
lush field of flowers in an industrial part of town.
As
soon as the iconic pop artist spotted the blanket of black-eyed Susans, he
raced out of the car.
"It
electrified him," Kennedy recalled. "He became gleeful. Jumping
around."
It
was here that Kennedy captured iconic images of Warhol with his large flower
works on canvas, standing among the wild, tall bright-yellow Rudbeckias.
"Instant
history!" Kennedy proclaimed.
Those
photographs will be among 60 exhibited at "Before They Were Famous: Behind
the Lens of William John Kennedy," opening this weekend at the Conrad
Indianapolis. "Before They Were Famous," featuring photographs of
Warhol and Mooresville native Robert Indiana, runs concurrently at the Site/109
gallery in New York.
Many
of the negatives were put into sealed boxes, stored and forgotten, only to be
rediscovered by Kennedy and his wife during their 1984 move from New York to
Miami. A set will become part of the permanent collection of the Andy Warhol
Museum in Pittsburgh, said director Eric Shiner, who described the photos as
"incredible."
"They
show a side of Warhol that is often not portrayed," he said. "One as
the workaholic and then the playful nature of Warhol."
As
a photographer capturing the nascent Pop Art movement in New York City, Kennedy
met Warhol and Indiana, now best-known as the creator of the iconic
"LOVE" sculptures.
Before
Pop Art had a name, it was being stretched on canvas, sculpted, molded, and
yes, even photographed, in different parts of New York, but mostly in a small
corner of Manhattan known as Coenties Slip by the East River.
It
was during this time that Kennedy met Indiana, head of the Coenties Slip group,
as they were known, a group of artists who inspired the aesthetic cool of the
time. Indiana was having a small exhibit in a modest New York gallery.
"We
hit it off," Kennedy, now 82, recalled. "I decided I wanted to start
photographing leading young artists in the city."
Indiana
invited Kennedy up to his studio, where the young photographer couldn't help
notice there were no windows -- strange for an artist's studio.
"Don't
you have any windows in here?" he asked. His host walked him over to an
unfinished brick wall.
"I
thought he was nuts." Very carefully, Indiana pulled a single brick from
the wall, and bid Kennedy to peek through the opening. "Looking through
you could see this marvelous panoramic of the New York City skyline."
And
so the magic began.
Just
by luck, Kennedy attended an art exhibit in New York where Indiana was sharing
space with Warhol. There, Kennedy took the only photographs of the two young
pop artists together. Soon after, Warhol called Kennedy and invited him to
start photographing him.
"I
came so close to dismissing the phone call because of this very slight
voice," he said. "I thought at first it was one of my friends playing
a trick on me. But then I could feel the seriousness in his voice. I sensed it
was the real deal, so I took him up on his invitation."
Warhol
summoned him to his Midtown studio, The Factory. "You had to take this
creaking old elevator, go up five flights . . . It comes to an abrupt stop on
the fifth floor," Kennedy recalled. "Andy is there to meet me at the
elevator door. The first thing I noticed was all the art. Everywhere.
Every inch of this huge studio is covered in art."
Kennedy
and his wife occasionally went to parties at the Factory, though that really
wasn't their scene. "It was loaded with many 'hangers-on,' " Marie
Kennedy recalled. Besides, Kennedy was busy making his own mark in fine art and
commercial photography, eventually shooting for Life magazine, Sports
Illustrated, American Express and IBM.
But
in 1963, the year before he married Marie, he was just starting out. He paid
$70 a month for his rented studio space at 161 W. 23rd St., between 7th and 8th
avenues. It was a photographer's dream, with its north light streaming through
the 10-foot-by-11-foot window.
"Always
from the beginning, my aim was to always be a photojournalist and to have that
freedom in my work," he said. Kennedy credits his progressive-thinking
aunt, who raised him from the age of 7 in Long Island, N.Y., as cultivating his
appreciation of art and photography.
"It
was she who exposed me to the terrible world I am involved in. Though I believe
I was born with art in my heart."
Kennedy and his wife, who live in Miami,
will attend the exhibit's opening at the Conrad. They will be joined in Indianapolis
by old friend and Factory superstar Ultra Violet. She will also be showing
works and unveiling a fine-art prototype of a 9/11 memorial piece.