Gerard Malanga

Gerard Joseph Malanga (born March 20, 1943) is an American poet, photographer, filmmaker, actor, curator, and archivist.

Gerard Malanga
Malanga in 2005
Born	Gerard Joseph Malanga (1943-03-20) March 20, 1943 (age 82) New York City, U.S.
Education	School of Industrial Art
Alma mater	Wagner College
Occupations	Poet photographer filmmaker actor curator and archivist
Years active	1962–present

Malanga worked for pop artist Andy Warhol from 1963 to 1970.^[1] The New York Times referred to him as "Andy Warhol's most important associate."^[2][3] He began as Warhol's studio assistant, helping him with the silkscreening of his paintings. Later, he was appointed as a founding editor of Warhol's Interview magazine. As a Warhol superstar, he also appeared in a number of underground films.

His photography spans over four decades and includes portraits, nudes, and the urban documentation of "New York's Changing Scene." Malanga, who is primarily a poet, considered his portraits to be "poetry on film." He has directed several films and written books.

In 2024, Malanga was elected as a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.^[4]

Life and career

Early life and education

Malanga was born on March 20, 1943, in the Bronx, a borough of New York City, and raised on Fordham Road.^[5] He was the only child of Italian immigrant parents. His father, Gerardo Malanga, was a dry goods salesman.^[5] His early drawing ability was supported by his parents, who signed him up for an after-school art program.^[5]

In 1959, Malanga became a regular on Alan Freed's The Big Beat, televised on Channel 5 (WNEW) in New York City.^[6]

By his senior year, Malanga was interested in becoming a poet, but he was also studying graphic design and advertising at the School of Industrial Art in Manhattan.^[7] In 1960, he graduated from high school with a major in Advertising Design. After graduation, Malanga enrolled at the University of Cincinnati's College of Art & Design, but he dropped out within a year.^[7]

In 1961, Malanga was admitted to Wagner College in Staten Island on a fellowship.^[5] At Wagner, Malanga became part of a writing community. He befriended one of his English professors, Willard Maas, and his wife Marie Menken, who became his mentors.^[8] He also made friends with Saul Bellow and Robert Lowell.^[5] He attended a symposium with Kay Boyle, Frank O'Hara, LeRoi Jones, and Kenneth Koch.^[5] Malanga won the first Gotham Book Mart Avant-Garde Poetry Prize.^[5] He was an editor for the journal Wagner Literary Magazine.^[9]

Andy Warhol and The Factory

In 1963, Malanga was looking for a summer job when poet Charles Henri Ford introduced him pop artist Andy Warhol.^[10] Malanga had previously silkscreened fabrics for a necktie designer, and Warhol needed assistance with a silkscreening.^[5] He was immediately hired by Warhol at $1.25 per hour.^[5] "The first was the Elizabeth Taylor portrait. Ethel Scull 36 Times, Elvis Presley, Death and Disasters—we put out a lot of stuff, just the two of us," Malanga recalled.^[5] In September, Malanga drove to California with Warhol, Wynn Chamberlain, and Taylor Mead for Warhol's solo exhibition at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles. He never returned to Wagner College. "That summer job lasted seven years," he said.^[5]

Malanga was also involved in Warhol's filmmaking at the Factory. He appeared in films such as Kiss (1964), Harlot (1964), Soap Opera (1964), Couch (1964), Vinyl (1965), and Camp (1965). He played a combination of Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby in Warhol's film Since (1966).

Malanga dated model and debutante Susan Bottomly in 1966.^[11] After introducing her to Warhol, she was given the new moniker International Velvet. Malanga and Bottomly costarred in the film Chelsea Girls (1966).^[12]

In 1966, Malanga choreographed a dance for Warhol's multimedia presentation, The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, featuring musical performances by the Velvet Underground and Nico.^[13]

Malanga and Warhol collaborated on the nearly 500 individual 3-minute Screen Tests, which resulted in a selection for a book of the same name, published by Kulchur Press, in 1967.^[14][15] He co-produced Bufferin (1967), in which he reads his poetry and diaries.^[16] It is deemed to be the longest spoken-word movie on record at 33-minutes nonstop.^{[citation needed]}

In 1967, Malanga went to Italy to show his film In Search Of The Miraculous at the Bergamo Film Festival.^[17] While visiting friends in Rome, he ran out of money and reached out to Warhol for financial assistance.^[17] When Warhol did not respond, he decided to make a movie instead. To fund this project, Malanga planned to sell paintings based on images of Che Guevara's corpse, the recently deceased hero of the Cuban Revolution.^[17] He intended to create Warhol-style silkscreen paintings and sell them as original Warhol works.^[17] He wrote to Warhol explaining his plans and requesting his cooperation.^[17] After receiving no reply, he proceeded with the scheme and arranged to exhibit the works at Galleria La Tartaruga in February 1968.^[17] The gallerist, Plinio De Martiis, wanted to confirm that he was permitted to sell the works, so he contacted Warhol's New York dealer, Leo Castelli, who notified Warhol.^[17] Warhol claimed the works were authentic to save Malanga from imprisonment, but informed Martiis that Malanga was not authorized to sell them.^[17][18] Upon his return to New York, Malanga apologized to Warhol for the forgeries and continued working at the Factory after Warhol survived an assassination attempt in June 1968.^[17][19]

In 1969, Malanga managed the "Andy Warhol Theater: Boys to Adore Galore" under his company, Poetry on Film.^[19] The theater showed male pornographic films for six weeks.^[19] He hired Jim Carroll to work in the box office and fellow Warhol superstar Joe Dallesandro as the projectionist.^[20] Later that year, Malanga became a founding editor of Warhol's Interview magazine.^[20] In 1970, he left Warhol's studio to pursue his work in photography.

In the 1970s, more fake Warhol screen prints appeared in Europe, and Warhol suspected they were made by Malanga.^[21] Malanga denied that he had done them, but this created a strain in their relationship.^[22] In a December 1976 diary entry, Warhol said: "Ran into Gerard Malanga. Gerard wrote to Fred asking why he wouldn't let him do photography for Interview, I guess he just wants a press pass. Fred won't have anything to do with Gerard because we're still getting repercussions from all the fake Electric Chairs we think he did, they're being resold and resold and each time the money involved gets bigger, so Fred isn't about to give Gerard anything."^[23]

Photography career

His portraits were considered by Malanga to be "poetry on film."^[24] Nearly all of the major poetry magazines published his poems.^[24]

Malanga has photographed several poets and artists over the years including, Charles Olson, Iggy Pop, William Burroughs, and Herbert Gericke.^[8]

In 1973, the University of Wisconsin-Parkside Library hosted a touring exhibition featuring 110 of Malanga's portraits.^[24]

In 1975, Malanga performed a reading of his poems and shown his film April Diary at the Sears Harkness Theater in Binghamton, New York.^[25]

In 1985, Henry J. Stern, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, appointed Malanga as the first photo archivist for the department.^[26] He was responsible for cataloguing and conserving the historic negative collection of Robert Moses.^[26]

In his introduction to Malanga's first monograph, Resistance to Memory (Arena Editions, 1998), Ben Maddow, a photo historian and poet, said, "Malanga has that great essential virtue of the photographer: humility before the complex splendor of the real thing...Malanga is the photo-historian of this culture."^{[citation needed]}

In reviewing Malanga's book Screen Tests Portraits Nudes 1964-1996 (Steidl, 2000), photographer Fred W. McDarrah remarked that "Malanga is among the elite editors and photographers who have long dazzled and propelled the New York avant garde."^{[citation needed]}

Awards and honors

In 2024, Gerard was named a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.^[4]

Works

Poetry

• Screen Tests: A Diary (with Andy Warhol) (1967)
• The Last Benedetta Poems (1969)
• Gerard Malanga Selbsporträt eines Dichters (1970)
• 10 Poems for 10 Poets Black Sparrow Press (1970)
• chic death (1971)^[27]
• Wheels of Light (1972)
• Nine Poems for César Vallejo (1972)
• The Poetry of Night, Dawn and Dream/Nine Poems for César Vallejo (1972)
• Licht/Light (1973, bilingual)
• Incarnations: Poems 1965-1971 (1974)
• Rosebud (1975)
• Leaping Over Gravestones (1976)
• Ten Years After: The Selected Benedetta Poems (1977)
• 100 years have passed (1978)
• This Will Kill That (1983)
• Three Diamonds Black Sparrow Press (1991)
• Mythologies of the Heart, Black Sparrow Press (1996)
• No Respect: New & Selected Poems 1964-2000, Black Sparrow Press (2001)
• AM: Archives Malanga, Volumes 1, 2, 3 & 4 (2011)
• Three Broadside Poems, Bottle of Smoke Press (2013)
• Malanga Chasing Vallejo: Selected Poems: Cesar Vallejo: New Translations and Notes: Gerard Malanga. Three Rooms Press, Bilingual edition (2014)^[28][29]
• Tomboy & Other Tales, Bottle of Smoke Press (2014)
• Whisper Sweet Nothings & Other Poems, Bottle of Smoke Press (2017)
• Cool & Other Poems, Bottle of Smoke Press (2019)

• The New Melancholia & Other Poems, Bottle of Smoke Press (2021)

• Odie is Being Called Back & Other Poems, Bottle of Smoke Press (2024)

Editor

• The Brief Hidden Life of Angus MacLise
• The Collected Poetry of Piero Heliczer

Photography

• Screen Tests/A Diary, in collaboration with Andy Warhol (1967)
• Six Portraits (1975)
• Portrait: Theory (With Robert Mapplethorpe, David Attie, and others) (1981)
• Autobiography of a Sex Thief (1985)
• Good Girls (1994)^[27]
• Seizing the Moment (1997)
• Resistance to Memory (1998)^[27]
• Screen Tests Portraits Nudes 1964-1996 (2000)
• Someone's Life (2008)
• Photobooths (Waverly Press, NYC, 2013)
• Ghostly Berms (Waverly Press, NYC, 2013)
• Julien Mérieau, Astonish me! / étonnez-moi! (Warm, 2016)
• The Beats Portfolio (Bottle of Smoke Press, 2018)
• The VU Box (Bottle of Smoke Press, 2021)
• 10 Musicians (Bottle of Smoke Press, 2025)

Photo and written biographies

• Long Day's Journey into the Past: Gunnar B. Kvaran speaks with Gerard Malanga (2008)
• Souls (2010)
• Gerard Malanga by Lars Movin (2011)

Films

• Academy Leader (1964)
• Andy Warhol: Portraits of the Artist as a Young Man (1965)
• Prelude to International Velvet Debutante (1966)
• Portrait of Giangiacomo Feltrinelli (1966). World premiere: Vienna International Film Festival, 2005.
• In Search of the Miraculous (1967)
• The Recording Zone Operator (1968, incomplete)
• The filmmaker records a portion of his life in the month of August (1968)
• Preraphaelite Dream (with music by Angus MacLise, 1968)
• The Children (AFI grant with music by Angus MacLise, 1969)
• April Diary (1970)
• Vision (incorporating Bufferin, 1976)
• Gerard Malanga's Film Notebooks, with music by Angus MacLise (2005).

Music

• THREE weeks WITH my DOG with 48 Cameras (1999)
• Angus MacLise, The Cloud Doctrine produced by Gerard Malanga (w/ Guy Marc Hinant), 2003.