Barbara Rubin

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 Cocks and Cunts (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.