Taylor Mead
Taylor Mead was born in 1924 in Grosse Point, Michigan. He was an influential member of the Beat scene in San Francsico’s North Beach and New York’s Lower East Side, crafting witty, ironic and occasionally dirty poetry. His first venture into film stardom was in Ron Rice’s The Flower Thief in 1960. Soon after Mead relocated to New York, where he was introduced to Andy Warhol, with whom he made numerous films, including a starring turn in Warhol’s Tarzan and Jane Regained… Sort of. J. Hoberman once called Mead “the first underground movie star.” He recently appeared in Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes, and continues to perform at the Bowery Poetry Club every Monday night.
SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY
2006 Man Under Wire, dir. Josh Bishop
2005 Electra Elf: The Beginning, dir. Nick Zedd
Excavating Taylor Mead, dir. William A. Kirkley
2003 Coffee and Cigarettes, dir. Jim Jarmusch
1999 Ecstasy in Entropy, dir. Nick Zedd
1992 Taylor Mead Unleashed, dir. Sebastian Piras
Last Supper, dir. Robert Frank
1991 Buster Bedroom, dir. Rebecca Horn
1990 C’est vrai! (One Hour), dir. Robert Frank
1970 Brand X, dir. Wynn Chamberlain
1969 The Secret Life of Hernando Cortez, dir. John Chamberlain
Imitation of Christ, dir. Andy Warhol
1967-8 Lonesome Cowboys, dir. Andy Warhol
The Nude Restaurant, dir. Andy Warhol
The Illiac Passion, dir. Gregory Markopoulos
1964 The General Returns from One Place or Another, dir. Frank O’Hara
Taylor Mead’s Ass, dir. Andy Warhol
Couch, dir. Andy Warhol
1963 Tarzan and Jane Regained… Sort of., dir. Andy Warhol
Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man, dir. Ron Rice
Hallelujah the Hills, dir. Adolfas Mekas
1962 Too Young, Too Immoral, dir. Raymond Phelan
Lemon Hearts, dir. Vernon Zimmermand
1960 The Flower Thief, dir. Ron Rice
“Long a great fan of underground legend Taylor Mead, I finally got a chance to meet the actor, poet, filmmaker, and amiable longtime fixture of New York’s Lower East side in NOvember of 2008.”
Marc Siegel, “Taylor Mead 1924-2013,” ArtForum (October 2013)
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“I’m a disciple of Nietzsche-I believe in a minimum of effort and a maximum of error, “explains painter, poet, and Warhol underground film star/longtime lover Taylor Mead”
Ashley Simpson, “Taylor Mead Bothers to Share Some Wisdom,” Interview (January 2012)
“A skull-sized dent in the canvas of Andy as the Odalisque, 1994 is just about level with Warhol’s head in Taylor Mead’s portrait of his influential friend and collaborator..”
Johanna Fateman, “Taylor Mead,” Artforum (January 2012)
“Want to know whats on the mind of a real beatnik? Get thee to Churner and Churner…”
Emily Nathan, “The Gallery Shows NYC, The New York List,” artnet.com (January 2012)
“This week, you can admire the many facets of the Warhol superstar whose Ludlow Street apartment of 32 years is the subject of the 2005 documentary “Excavating Taylor Mead.”
Cary Abrams, “Clear Your Calendar: It’s Taylor Mead Week,” The Other Local, East Village(January 2012)
“The octogenarian Lower East Side boho luminary, poet, painter, filmmaker, and sometime Warhol collaborator presents a new set of drawings based on his “Fairy Tale Poem.”
“Crtitics’ Pick,” New York Magazine (February 2012)
“I first met Taylor Mead at the Limelight nightclub in 1986…Taylor was one of the invited “superstars.”
Clayton Patterson, “My times with Taylor Mead,” The Villager (January 2012)