Film-Making in the Art CurriculumAuthor(s): Irving KriesbergSource: Art Journal, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Winter, 1968-1969), pp. 175-176Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/775214 .

Accessed: 16/06/2014 02:35

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

College Art Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Art Journal.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.96 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 02:35:44 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

letters to the editor

SIR:

In his article on Ludwig Knaus (A. J. Spring, '68, pp. 262-265) Thomas Brum-

baugh indicates the possible influence of Masaccio, Boltraffio and others upon this

painter. In the case of The Forester at Home a major influence seems to come from closer to home: Knaus was apparently thinking of Durer's engraving of Saint Jerome in his

study when he designed this composition, something that Knaus would not be ex-

pected to include in his letter to Andreas. The Forester's basic play of triangles and rec- tangles is expert, even if largely hidden by an insistence on realistic detail. Within lim- its, the organization is similar to Diirer's, al-

though nothing has been directly copied and

many objects have undergone a transmuta- tion. Diirer's animals have become Knaus', and the furnishings have been altered and moved. Yet the similarities are there, particu- larly in the spindly-legged chair and the table behind it.

But Knaus' indebtedness to Duirer may have extended in this case beneath surface appear- ances to a deeper core of meaning. Dfirer's il- lustration of absolute conviction and of the inner serenity that comes with complete faith

may also have been paraphrased, so that the

message of spirituality is secularized into a rustic contentment.

JAMES H. TURNURE Bucknell University

SIR:

I would appreciate information on draw-

ings and paintings by Benjamin West which have recently changed hands or have never been published. I would also be grateful for letters to or from Benjamin West and for other documents.

HELMUT H. VON ERFFA

Rutgers State University

SIR:

Mrs. Katharine Lamb, widow of the Irish

painter Charles Lamb, wishes to trace two of her husband's pictures for a commemorative exhibition to be held in Dublin next year. They are The Gaeltacht (Irish landscape with figures-date unknown) and "Young Connemara Girl" (1924). The first was pur- chased by a Mrs. Kreutzberg of Bethlehem, Pa., nothing is known of the purchase of the second but it is thought to have come to the United States. Any information should be sent to Mrs. Lamb, Carraroe, County Galway, Ireland.

MICHAEL FITZGERALD

Embassy of Ireland, Washington, D.C.

SIR:

The University of Nebraska Art Galleries are undertaking comprehensive research into the life and work of Ralph A. Blakelock. This project is supported by grants from the National Foundation on the Arts and Hu- manities and the University of Nebraska Re- search Council. It will have several phases, the first of which will be the compilation of a national inventory of works in all media at- tributed to the artist.

Subsequently, paintings and drawings will be assembled for detailed physical and stylis- tic analysis by a panel of technical specialists and art historians. It is expected that the

findings of this research will enlarge the number of works known to be authentic as well as establish a definitive body of informa- tion about the artist. The project will culmi- nate in a comprehensive exhibition and ap- propriate publications.

Any persons owning works or documents

pertaining to Ralph A. Blakelock are asked to contact

NORMAN A. GESKE Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Lincoln, Nebraska

SIR:

I am engaged in research on the painter Thomas Couture and on the painters who studied under him. Any information on works by Couture in U.S. collections, letters, and documents will be appreciated.

ALAIN DE LEIRIS

Universitty of Maryland

SIR:

I am preparing a study on the ideal (i.e., non-portrait) marble sculpture of the 19th

Century American neo-classic sculptors such as Hiram Powers, Thomas Crawford, Harriet Hosmer, etc., which will lead to a total cat-

alogue and to a seminar in this subject. I would appreciate any information concerning the whereabouts of works by such artists, ei- ther privately or institutionally owned.

WILLIAM H. GERDTs

University of Maryland

SIR:

The Mus~e d'art et d'histoire of Geneva, Switzerland is preparing a new catalogue raisonn6 of the prints of Felix Vallotton. They request information from museums and private collectors pertaining to preparatory sketches, trial proofs, first states, "bons A tirer" and any other useful information which has not already appeared in the cata- logue of Louis Godefroy, published in 1932.

Musde d'art et d'histoire Geneva, Switzerland

(Continued on page 225)

Irving Kriesberg

Film-Making in the Art Curriculum

It has been clear from the beginning that cinema beyond its popular role in the movie theatre as photoplay, newsreel, or documen-

tary is a visual art of time, its formal modes and insights revolutionary. In its brief his-

tory, film-making has taken many paths, but for some individuals whatever else it may be to the public it is an art of personal expres- sion. Those film productions which only a few

years ago were so rare and so obscurely called

"experimental" are now called "under-

ground" and they see the light of day every- where. And that avidity which surrounds the

making and showing of films-whether we call it infatuation or passion-might well be con- sidered by the art schools. For film-making actually can offer unique and powerful chal-

lenges for art students, as several schools are

discovering. With enthusiasm so widespread, techniques

now so familiar, and equipment now so easily available, a whole new area of art training is

opening up. But it is not about training for a profes-

sion of film-making that I am speaking. I am

talking about the experience of film-making as part of a general art curriculum. The stu- dent needs to work on a creative level, cer-

tainly, and with some technical discipline; but he need not look toward a career in film.

The point is that some film work is con- cerned primarily with visual form (or expres- sion) just as painting and sculpture generally is. And when techniques of animation are used to create that form, the artist is obliged to perceive and articulate the image or the motion with a new clarity. Just as the painter who is faced with the task of creating form in three dimensions is obliged to sharpen his

conception in ways that painting seems not to

require, and just as the sculptor who gives himself the problem of working with color must answer questions the sculptor ordinarily bypasses, so in the same way, the student who

faces the necessity of formulating his design in time subjects his visualization to a new

discipline and a new precision. It is this ex- perience of perceiving form in time that is so valuable for all art students regardless of their specialization.

The author, a well known painter is on the art department faculty at Queens College, New York. He has made animated films, taught film making to art students at Yale and at Queens is setting up courses under the head- ing "Studies of Form in Time." Ronald Binks of the Rhode Island School of Design is inter- ested in forming a library of films made at art schools and requests schools with suitable material to notify him. g

175 Letters to the Editor

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.96 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 02:35:44 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Professional graphic designers realize that more and more the printed image is giving way to the projected image and sculptors or

painters, even those who do not go off to be- come kineticists, environmenteers, or film- makers, will increasingly be influenced by these disciplines. Film animation can be as useful an activity to the painter of today as

clay modeling was to the painter of the Re- naissance.

But more than that, working in animation can help lead to radical thinking about form and art and about the esthetic experience it- self.

In a recent experimental seminar at the Yale Graduate School of Art called "Film Animation" almost none of the students made narrative cartoons. The range of ideas was limited only by enrollment. One student

simply photographed eight heads cut from

magazines, one head to a frame, repeated the

eight frames until he had enough footage to

loop into the projector, and then let the ma- chine run. At 24 frames per second the im-

ages flashed too swiftly for the eye to register a single picture, but the contours of the heads in total created a dancing silhouette. And occasionally a single frame would regis- ter on the retina and dominate for a moment the blur of features that filled the screen.

Contrary to expectations, the longer we looked, the more varied and interesting the

shifting image grew. The eye, hooked and

dragged now by one frame, now by another, combined the successive images into con-

stantly changing patterns and rhythms. Rhythm, contour, and variety were all func- tions of time.

In another brief film, a student juxtaposed vertical red bands against green bands and moved them against each other changing nothing but the tempo. Projected on the screen, the pattern was one of bars moving laterally, bars blinking, bars changing direc- tion (as of carriage wheels appearing to turn

backwards), bars with clear edges and bars with fuzzed edges, bars that were red and green, bars that were grey, and finally a total field of whirring grey. Again, color, image, and movement were seen as conditions linked to time as steam and ice are conditions linked to temperature.

In another, a simple abstract figure reiter- ated by multiple exposure, but in each de- scribing a slightly different movement, com- bined, when projected, to a richly complex configuration. When several prints were made of the footage the student edited the dupli- cates into half a dozen different films. The little shape the artist had painted or cut had multiplied, combined and changed, like a cell in an organism, and had indeed become something else.

We found that the action of computer-pro- grammed patterns can be recorded or imi- tated for the camera: a dot extended to a

line, the line repeated at different angles making a figure, a curve diverging from a curve of different diameter (duration); time becomes the "paper" upon which the beam writes. Perforated computer tapes adjusted to run through a projector become a source of change-oriented designs.

Sometimes "abstract paintings" were ani- mated. This can be done by breaking the total work down into separate movable ele- ments. The student was always surprised at the extent to which the movement dominated his design. It is movement that engages the

eye. No matter how engrossing any single po- sition of the design may be while contem-

plated inert under the camera, it is sub-

merged, once projected, into a continuum of motion that has its own life.

Animating figures into a narrative was usu-

ally too ambitious a project for the general art student. In any case, conventional single- cell animation offers more labor than learn-

ing for the artist. But "technical animation," in which the action is created by simple movements or juxtapositions of acetates, cut- outs or "op" constructions, does challenge the

ingenuity and creativity of the student and

obliges him to conceive his movements-and his images-in basic geometric terms. It is a

process that calls for a rigorous analysis of

form, analagous to the practice of cubism in

painting. A few students, working within a very lib-

eral definition of the term "animation", shot

landscape from a moving car, or objects on

moving turntables, and rejected the idea of

editing, claiming that the idea of the film was to shoot particular material in a particular way, and the results of that action should not then be altered. This led to some interesting considerations: is art an action we perform or is art an object we look at? is intention some-

thing which guides the artist from the start of his work, or is it something he discovers afterwards, or is it something he needn't con- cern himself with at all? These of course are

questions which might be asked of any art; in this case they must be considered in terms of cinema. In the end, the art student must realize he is working in a different medium; he must realize that the material he needs to

organize (or for which he is responsible) is the footage itself, not the designs or objects that once moved before his camera. That re-

spect for the integrity of his medium is the

greatest lesson of all. For an introductory course, little equip-

ment is needed besides an animation (sin- gle-frame) camera fixed above a table. 16 mm film makes for easier editing and better

projection, but 8 mm or super 8 is much

cheaper and may encourage the student to shoot several versions of his material. The

student may want to record a sound tape to be played during projection, but a synchro- nized sound track as part of the film is for

more ambitious projects than are hlcre con- templated. Editing equipment, however, is necessary, though this can be limited to a good viewer and splicer. In almost all cases, students should be strongly encouraged to edit their work and this process should be scheduled as part of the production. Some film-makers conceive of their raw footage as

having the same relationship to their finished work as paint on the palette has to the fin- ished painting.

The use of sound can be a useful tool, a harmful crutch, or a distracting complication. Some instructors find it useful to give begin- ning students a simple sound track upon which to base and measure their first produc- tion. But the indiscriminate addition of a sound tract to give specious interest and co- herence to a haphazard array of images is a real disservice to the student.

Although the inclusion of film-making in a

general art curriculum is feasible and can be

enormously valuable, it is crucial that the teacher realize the purpose of the couirse.

Some professional art schools include film- making as a separate area and offer several courses in a two or three year sequence. Nat-

urally such programs are professionally ori- ented and should include studies incorporat- ing the use of sophisticated equipment and

techniques. Some schools offering pro-rams in Graphic Art include small film-making projects. Design-oriented in style and mes- sage-oriented in substance, these exercises are generally too slight and too restricted to af- ford a genuine experience of film as a me- dium or any real practice in the temporal analysis of form. Many schools include film- making as an extension of courses in photog- raphy. Technically and physically this is logi- cal, but the question of esthetic orientation is crucial. As an esthetic construct, the motion picture is as different from still photography as the temporal design is from the static.

The possibilities of film are so beguiling and the initial procedure of photography so

deceptively simple that one of the main jobs of the instructor is to keep in mind the pur- pose and limitations of the student's efforts. Thus, rather than allow the beginner to em- bark on a complicated live-action soul-search movie, let the instructor give the student a few hundred feet of old newsreel or TV foot-

age to edit and manipulate: he will learn more about the art of the cinema that way than he will with all his tortured involviement with script, directing and acting.

Indeed, the single most impressive aspect of the flood of student films now coming out of our design classes is the inventiveness and wide range of effects achieved with very lim- ited means.

This is the experience of modern life they feel so keenly and to which they respond whenever they are given a chance.

ART JOURNAL XXVlll 2 176

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.96 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 02:35:44 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions