The Billy Name Collection: The Silver Era at Warhol's Factory

It was due to the recent discovery of Billy Name's silver trunk from the deep recesses of the Factory's storage that we have been given the current exhibition. It is a mistake to consider archaeology only in terms of the ancient past. The clues and information given up by artifacts fascinate because in their randomness they allow us to fill out the picture with sharper and clearer insights. They provide a glimpse into a community no longer available. And so it is with Billy Name's trunk of memories and evidence; Billy's original photos and mock-ups for Stockholm's Moderne Museet catalogue, and the Andy Warhol Index Book; some vari-colored 'thermofaxes' (of auto accidents, pistols, Marilyn, a male odalisque, ad more) which he made either at Andy's behest or with him; and various still photos of denizens of the Factory at work and at play.

For those of us who watch art closely, it has become a commonplace to locate the spirit of the Sixties, roughly between the Inauguration of John F. Kennedy and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in the Warhol factory on East Forty-Seventh Street. The daily activities in the huge and low-ceilinged space ranged the full sweep of Andy's interests, from his silkscreened pictures to creating his film oeuvre—always a rather primitive affair. The 'Factory' was quickly named both for its former use and because it rhymed perfectly with Andy's intentions and activities.

In the same way as it would be a mistake to read too much into this presentation, eccentrically angled as it is by Billy himself, it is equally at our peril that we ignore it. The Silver Trunk adds fresh factuality to what the written word has revealed about Andy and his times. Through the dramatic flare that illuminates the first hand material of Billy Linich's trunk, we are brought to smile and to shudder one more time at the hilarious yet self-destructive life it elucidates.

—Henry Geldzahler