"Superstar Denis Deegan in Screen Test"

gelatin silver print

signature stamp and title (ink) on verso, certificated

The Screen Tests are a series of 400 to 500 experimental films by Andy Warhol, which were mainly shot between 1964 and 1966 in the legendary "Silver Factory" in New York. As a rule, the person portrayed had to sit on a chair in front of a screen and was filmed with a still camera for three minutes. The time limit corresponds to the complete passage of a 16 mm film reel. There are always close-ups of the faces, sometimes only the mouth, an eye or another detail can be seen. The effect on the people filmed was extremely varied: some tried to appear cool and showed no emotion, others could not stand the psychological pressure and started to cry or walked away.
Warhol used some of the early screen tests in the films 13 Most Beautiful Women (1964) and 13 Most Beautiful Boys (1965). In the 40-minute silent films, black and white on 16 mm film, there is no plot, only portrait shots of each performer are shown, played back slightly slower than they were recorded.
Callie Angell writes about the relationship between Denis Deegan and Andy Warhol in Andy Warhol Screen Tests: The Films of Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonne, Vol. One, 2006: "Warhol apparently first met the red-haired actor and model Denis Deegan in Los Angeles in the fall of 1963, when Deegan was instrumental in arranging for some scenes in Warhol's film Tarzan and Jane Regained, Sort of... to be shot at the home of actor John Houseman. Two early pre-Screen Test portrait films of a bare-chested Deegan may have been shot in California at this time... Deegan then moved to Paris where he lived for the next two years, and were, in 1965, he introduced Warhol to Nico... After his return to New York in 1966, Deegan starred in several color sound sequences shot that fall: Dentist: Nico, Ivy, Denis and Ivy and Denis I and II."
(Christoph Fuchs)