Barbara Rubin(1945-1980)
- Actress
- Cinematographer
- Director
In 1965, Barbara Rubin was living in New York as an underground
filmmaker. It was around this time period that Rubin -- a part-time art
groupie -- became entranced by an up-and-coming band going by the name
of The Velvet Underground. Andy Warhol, at the time, was looking for a band to manage and
Rubin thought the band would be perfect for Warhol's managerial
talents. The band would play their gigs at the Café Bizarre, a bar on
West 3rd Street, and Warhol sent poet/photographer Gerard Malanga to hear them
play. The Velvet Underground became an integral part of Warhol's
Factory, and they would eventually begin to play before the screens
that would project the films of Rubin, Warhol and Paul Morrissey. One of the
films they played before was Christmas on Earth (1963), a film Rubin made at the age of
17 with one of 16mm cameras owned by filmmaker Jonas Mekas. It is, in many
circles, considered to be one of the first legitimate works of
multi-media art. In 1966, Warhol was invited to give a lecture at the
New York Society for Clinical Psychiatry at Delmonico's Hotel. He took
Mekas, Rubin and the Velvet Underground with him. Instead of giving the
lecture, Mekas and Rubin filmed the group of shocked psychiatrists (and
their wives) while the Underground, with 'Nico' in tow, played their
music as Warhol asked the attendees embarrassing questions about their
sex-lives. (Excerpts from this encounter would be shown in Mekas'
'Walden'). Rubin, yet again, contributed her talents to an underground
movement that made it a their mission to explore cultural and sexual
boundaries while fusing image and audio in new and experimental
ways.