Outer and Inner Space (1965) dir. Andy Warhol

ANDY WARHOL has so become his own trademark and is so much a onename synonym for the culture of celebrity that it can be a shock to realize just how brilliantly original he was as a visual artist. A case in point: The doublescreen videobased film installation Outer and Inner Space at the Whitney Museum (through Nov. 30), which places his glamorous, doomed superstar Edie Sedgwick in a dialogue with her own videotaped image. First shown in 1966 and largely forgotten for some 30 years thereafter, Outer and Inner Space is a historical anomaly a masterpiece of video art made before the term even existed. The piece meditates on the distinction between film and tape while introducing the issues of realtime recording and simultaneous feedback that would inform much video art from the 1970s on. For the Whitney adjunct curator, Callie Angell, Outer and Inner Space creates this classic background for video art that it didnt know it had.