Taylor Mead obit

Remembering Taylor Mead

 

He was not on the list.

The New York Times' City Room shares the sad news that poet, performer, painter, Warhol star, and New York downtown legend Taylor Mead passed away yesterday at the age of 88. Mead, above, at The Poetry Project in 1993. 

A force within the Beat movements in both San Francisco and New York, he began writing and performing his particular brand of raunchy, irreverent, and often hilarious poetry in the early 1950s. He made his first film, The Flower Thief, in 1960 with San Francisco underground filmmaker Ron Rice. Inspired by Robert Frank’s 1959 Beat classic Pull My Daisy, which was narrated by Jack Kerouac and featured poets Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, and Peter Orlovsky, The Flower Thief follows the sprightly Mead as he wanders through the oceanfront arcades and smoke-filled poetry cafes of bohemian San Francisco. Breaking down the boundary between art and life with its impressionistic, improvised style, the film has been hailed by film theorist P. Adams Sitney as “the purest expression of the Beat sensibility in cinema.”

By 1963 Mead had made his way to New York City where, as a downtown celebrity in his own right and a fixture on the East Village poetry circuit, he was introduced to Andy Warhol and became known as one of his most accomplished actors. Between 1963 and 1969, Mead starred in numerous Warhol films, including Tarzan and Jane Regained … Sort Of (1963), The Nude Restaurant (1967), Imitation of Christ (1967), and Lonesome Cowboys (1969). As a tongue-in-cheek rebuttal to a letter published in the Village Voice complaining about its coverage of tedious avant-garde films (such as “films focusing on Taylor Mead’s ass for two hours”), Warhol and Mead made Taylor Mead’s Ass (1964), an hour-long silent film of Mead performing with just his rear end. He has appeared more recently in Rebecca Horn’s Buster’s Bedroom (1991), Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), and as the subject of William A. Kirkley’s documentary Excavating Taylor Mead (2005), which captures the octogenarian superstar’s antics in the Lower East Side as he fights eviction from an apartment filled with ephemera from his extraordinary life.

 

Source: Whitney Biennial Artist Page, 2006.

 

Watch Taylor Mead pay homage to Jim Carroll with "They're All Dead" at The Poetry Project's 2010 Marathon Reading, below. That's Penny Arcade to the right. Rest in peace, Taylor, you'll be dearly missed.

Filmography

The Flower Thief (1960, directed by Ron Rice) - Flower Thief

Passion in a Seaside Slum (1962, Short, directed by Bob Chatterton)

Lemon Hearts (1962, Short, directed by Vernon Zimmerman)

Too Young, Too Immoral (1962, directed by Raymond Phelan) - Scribbles

Hallelujah the Hills (1963, directed by Adolfas Mekas) - Convict II

Tarzan and Jane Regained...Sort Of (1963, directed by Andy Warhol) - Tarzan

Babo 73 (1964, directed by Robert Downey, Sr.) - President Sandy Studsbury

Couch (1964, directed by Andy Warhol) - Himself

Taylor Mead's Ass (1964, directed by Andy Warhol) - Himself

Le Désir attrapé par la queue (1964, directed by Jean-Jacques Lebel)

The Nude Restaurant (1967, directed by Andy Warhol) - Harmonica Player

Imitation of Christ (1967, directed by Andy Warhol) - Hobo

**** (1967, directed by Andy Warhol)

European Diary (1967, director)

The Illiac Passion (1967, directed by Gregory Markopoulos) - The Demon or Sprite

Dialogue with Che (1968, directed by José Rodriguez-Soltero) - CIA Agent

The Bizarre Ones (1968, directed by Henri Pachard)

Lonesome Cowboys (1967, directed by Andy Warhol) - Nurse

San Diego Surf (1968, directed by Andy Warhol) - Mr. Mead

Midnight Cowboy (1969, directed by John Schlesinger) - The Party No. 5

The Secret Life of Hernando Cortez (1968, directed by John Chamberlain)

Brand X (1970, directed by Wynn Chamberlain) - Viewer / President / Minster / Nurse

Cleopatra (1970, directed by Michel Auder)

Up Your Legs Forever (1971, directed by John Lennon and Yoko Ono)[14] - Himself

Hit Squad (1976, directed by Bruno Corbucci) - Crazy man in New York (uncredited)

Messalina, Messalina! (1977, directed by Bruno Corbucci) - (uncredited)

Brothers Till We Die (1978, directed by Umberto Lenzi) - Mentally ill Man (uncredited)

Feedback (1978, directed by Bill Doukas)

Tally Brown, New York (1979, documentary, directed by Rosa von Praunheim) - Himself

Union City (1980, directed by Marcus Reichert) - Mentally ill Man (uncredited)

Underground U.S.A. (1980, directed by Eric Mitchell) - The uncle

No Such Thing As Gravity (1989, directed by Alyce Wittenstein)

C'est vrai! (One Hour) (1990, directed by Robert Frank)

Buster's Bedroom (1991, directed by Rebecca Horn) - James

Shadows in the City (1991, directed by Ari M. Roussimoff) - Father

Last Supper (1992, directed by Robert Frank)

Natural Born Crazies (1994, directed by George Baluzy)

Taylor Mead Unleashed (1996, directed by Sebastian Piras)

Ecstasy in Entropy (1999, Short, directed by Nick Zedd)

Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV (2000, directed by Lloyd Kaufman)

Coffee and Cigarettes (2003, directed by Jim Jarmusch) - Taylor (segment "Champagne") (voice)

Excavating Taylor Mead (2005, Short, directed by William A. Kirkley) - Himself

Electra Elf: The Beginning (2005, directed by Nick Zedd)

Man Under Wire (2005, directed by Josh Bishop)

Nubile Nuisance (2006, directed by David B. Wilson) - Father Jocasta

The Party in Taylor Mead's Kitchen (2011, directed by Jeffrey Wengrofsky)§

Toilet Gator (2017, directed by Jonathan M. Parisen) - Bar act

Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man (2018, directed by Ron Rice) - The Atom Man (final film role)