ASPEN ART MUSEUM
ANDY WARHOL: LIFETIMES
8
HARMONY HOLIDAY ON WILHELMINA ROSS
The Black trans women who sat for Warhol were paid US$50 each and never named. Ross’s photos dominated the series: she appeared in 52 Polaroids and 73 of the 268 canvases. My favorite image of her is a blunt Polaroid that features her in profile with perfect épaulement, just like a dancer. An elegant black and white scarf covers her head, she wears large pyrite-toned costume earrings, a jasper-colored matte lip, wispy mink lashes and otherwise soft makeup, while her left hand, manicured in gum-pink press-ons, is wrapped around her neck calmly, like she might strangle herself as an afterthought. There are a couple of versions: one with lips closed, one with them parted. In both, there’s a hint of wonder in her eyes. How do we
‘Randy Whorehall’ was the nickname given to Andy Warhol in a 1973 drag show called The Magic Hype . It was led by the Hot Peaches acting troupe, which included Marsha P. Johnson as well as the lesser-known queen Wilhelmina Ross, who named herself after the agency Wilhelmina Models and the singer Diana Ross. The show vamped and critiqued Warhol’s ‘Factory’, for being exactly that —an assembly line of doomed celebrities distracted by fleeting glamour. Two years after The Magic Hype debuted, both Ross and Johnson would ‘sit’— euphemism to conceal exploitation—for Warhol’s ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ series, for which he was commissioned by the art dealer Luciano Anselmino, at a rate of US$900,000, to find and photograph what Anselmino called ‘transvestites.’
understand that gleam? What vulner- ability does Ross’s exposed neck create, that she might transfer to her gaze? What guillotine might be echoed in the repeated snap and flash and snatch of her image? Does it feel like under-com- pensated prostitution, or a chance to protest through participation? You can’t render a diva anonymous forever. Though unnamed for years— the Warhol Foundation only published the list of all the sitters’ names in 2014— in the 1990s, someone came forward with Ross’s name and she stole the show back. In the music industry, artists some- times sign work-for-hire agreements on songs that generate millions, leaving them out of the profit, only to go back decades later and recapture those rights. Does Ross have that option? Does she
have any heirs or living family to ex- plore it for her? How much did the US$50 she earned to ‘sit’ (echoes of sit- ting in) cost her? Her images are selling for thousands still. I wonder how it feels to need Black subjects so desper- ately that you abandon them after their 15 minutes. The turnover rate, ladies and gentlemen, about as beautiful and artful as genocide. On the other hand, I gasp at the evidence of Ross’s glory in these photographs and feel vindicated.
Overleaf Andy Warhol, Ladies and Gentlemen (Marsha P. Johnson) , 1975 acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen, 50 × 40 in Above Andy Warhol, Ladies and Gentlemen (Wilhelmina Ross) , 1975 Polaroid, 4 1/4 × 3 3/8 in.
Photo: © Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Images Opposite Andy Warhol, Ladies and Gentlemen
(Wilhelmina Ross) , 1975 acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen, 50 × 40 in. Image and artwork licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York All images © 2021 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
Harmony Holiday is a writer, archivist and multi-genre artist living in Los Angeles. She co-curates 2220arts.org. Her fifth volume of poems, Maafa , will be published this year by Fence Books.
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