One was a drug-addled, gay ex-lover of the artist, the other a staunchly straight professional with a vision: two men (both called William) became the most important chroniclers of Andy Warhol’s early period in New York, one of the most mythologised periods of art history. They later vanished from Warhol’s Factory and his life – and their negatives were almost lost. But in a kitsch one-bed flat in a luxury complex on the Strand in London, their legacy is revived in an intimate exhibition, WarholMania.
It is the first time the photographs of Billy Name and William John Kennedy have been shown together, though they photographed Warhol at the Factory between 1964 and 1970. The staging of WarholMania in this small, plush residential flat is disorienting at first – footsteps disappear into thick carpets, natural light is shut out with chintzy silver curtains and shiny silver balloons float ominously overhead – a nod to the silver foil that covered the Factory. It’s a delicious way to recreate the atmosphere conjured in the photographs, of a hard-to-access place where anything could happen.
