Billy Name

Billy Linich
Billy Name
Nationality	American
Known for	archivist/photographer/lighting designer

Billy Linich, known as Billy Name and Billy Goat, (born 22 February 1940 in Poughkeepsie, New York), is an American photographer, artist, filmmaker, lighting designer, and the main archivist of the Warhol era from 1964-70. His brief romance and subsequent close friendship with Andy Warhol fostered substantial collaboration on Warhol's most influential work, including his films, paintings and sculpture. Linich became Billy Name among the coterie known as the Warhol Superstars, and he is considered one of the most significant. He was responsible for "silverizing" Warhol's New York studio the Factory, where he lived until 1970. His images of Edie Sedgwick, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, Nico, Ultra Violet, Bob Dylan, Mary Woronov and of Warhol himself, amongst others, are portraits of the height of the Pop art era.

Career in theater

Linich began his career as a lighting designer in the theater in 1960 when he worked at Serendipity 3 as a waiter. His first apprenticeship was with Nick Cernovich, who had won an Obie Award for best lighting. Linich learned from Cernovich. "It was the end of the period of the romantic avant-garde, the romantic bohemia, where artists kept younger artists and a male artist would always have a young man around." He also played music in the Theatre of Eternal Music.

Collaboration with Andy Warhol

When Andy Warhol decided, during the last months of 1963, that he was too busy making films to take pictures at The Factory (and, besides, the camera was too complicated and it had too many buttons), he turned the task over to Billy Name. He was the obvious choice for “Factory Fotographer.” Prior to his association with Andy, in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, Linich had been involved in theatrical lighting design. First, under the tutelage of the pre-eminent lighting designer for the avant-garde dance world, Nick Cernovich, with whom Linich designed the lighting for the Spoleto Festival of Two Worlds in 1960, and then later at Judson Memorial Church, New York Poets Theater, and Living Theater, Linich illuminated the likes of dancers Lucinda Childs, Yvonne Rainer, Merce Cunningham, James Waring and Freddy Herko. And Andy’s regard for Linich was high. As he would later explain:

"(He) had a manner that inspired confidence...He gave the impression of being generally creative - he dabbled in lights and papers and artists’ materials... I picked up a lot from Billy..." The Warhol Diaries; Warhol & Hackett

Within a short time, Linich became a permanent fixture at the Factory, having taken up residence in the back of the studio at 231 East 47th Street during his trademark silvering of its interior from January to April 1964. With the gift of Andy’s 35-mm single-lens reflex Honeywell Pentax camera and the operating manual in hand, Billy Name taught himself the technical aspects of photography. He had soon converted one of the Factory’s bathrooms into a darkroom where he mastered the methods of processing and developing film. These newly acquired skills, combined with his background in lighting, his innate sense of artistry and his desire to experiment, resulted in the production of an intensive body of work that captured for posterity his “silver years” at the Factory (1963-70).

Billy Name’s close friendship with Andy Warhol and his role as a trusted player in the making of Warhol’s artistic environment gave him the opportunity to focus his keen eye on the scene at the Factory, created by a core group of participants who largely improvised before the camera’s eye, evolving a lively, cutting-edge mise-en-scene. Billy contributed immensely to this atmosphere, as his understanding of theater and lighting was important ...to the essential look itself of the transformed space and silvered walls of the factory. The unique position that Billy assumed gives his photographs a particular immediacy, intimacy and knowledge.

Quotes by Linich

• "I have a huge appetite for learning everything about the whole field of Zen and astrology and yoga."
• "It was the Cardboard Andy, not the Andy I could love and play with. He was so sensitized you couldn't put your hand on him without him jumping. I couldn't even love him anymore, because it hurt him to touch him." Linich on the change in Warhol after he was shot by Valerie Solanas; Linich held a bleeding Warhol in his arms while waiting for the ambulance to arrive.

Quotes about Linich

• "Billy Name exquisitely transforms sexploitation into glamour, and the 'nudie' into a work of beauty." Debra Miller, on Billy Name's stills from the 1967 Warhol film The Nude Restaurant.
• "B. Linich is like a dog, a poodle--one does not have to have the same responsibilities towards him as towards other people--he is loved for the reasons a poodle is loved." Soren Angenoux
• "Billy Linich arrived [at Diane di Prima's California home] the earliest and stayed the longest. Billy was at that time doing a bit of everything: writing, collaging, taking odd combinations of drugs, making mots that sounded way hipper than they probably were, and mostly looking wise with a little half-smile and crinkly eyes." Diane di Prima

Bibliography

• All Tomorrow's Parties: Billy Name's Photographs of Andy Warhol's Factory, by Billy Name, Dave Hickey, and Collier Schorr; ISBN 1881616843 Distributed Art Publishers (DAP) (August 1997)
• Billy Name: Stills from the Warhol Films by Debra Miller; ISBN 3791313673 Prestel Pub (March 1994)
• Steven Watson, Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties (2003) Pantheon, New York

External links

• Billy Name's Official Website
• Billy Name's Images at OvoWorks, Inc.
• Warholstars.com profile of Billy Name

Video

• 90 minutes of Exclusive Interview of Billy Name in VOD (costs $4.99 USD to watch)