Harry Smith

experimental cinema

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Abstraction#5,7,10

It starts out with little dots growing into squares and flowers as if flowers' blossoming shot at high-speed. For a little while, all the images seem like appearing from background and coming forward, toward us. The movement can be recognized as that of emerging feelings and emotions, and at this point, it gives a positive impression.

Now circles start to beat like a heart pumping blood to every part of out body. Again, they are akin to the flower images, and also look like eyes.

A montage of paper wall (shoji) images follows, which also reminds me of photo collages, which strips from different images is knitted like a cloth.

Colors used in this work are warm and bright, a lot of red, orange, and yellow, and they gives us quite different impression from works by Rothko, for example. More, forwarding I'd say.

These works are the homage to Fischinger and Smith uses many narrow angle triangles spreading like fireworks. Circles, squares, triangles emerge, disappear, overlapping each other, affecting and changing the others. A tiny dot becomes tides of big circles like a drop in the pond, and circles of waves it creates.

Smith quite never explained what those shape and forms means, but clearly, his works are heavily drawn to meditation practice. Have those images come down to him during meditation? Or his filmmaking process itself is the way he connects himself with his inner self, talking to him, looking inward? Maybe its a little bit of both.

Collages

He collected old magazines and catalogues, cut out drawing pictures, and made collages. He also used some religious symbol images from Eastern religion. The way he chose images was absolutely random, and he believed in the beauty of nature where random encounters exist all around. This idea comes from early Dada and Surrealist works (Max Ernest for example), that random juxtapositions will filter consciousness and bypass artists ego. This idea was again popular in the 50s among the circle led by John Cage, who were interested in Zen Buddhism and questioned the romantic tradition of the west. Cutouts from magazines and religious symbols signified something, but now putting in a very different context they mean something totally different from the original context.

If we see the flag of Buddhism and know what each color means, even though he was trying to reject the intellectual idea and tradition in Western art, he still was intertwined into the stream. It is simply fascinating to see his work again with some Buddhism and Taoism ideas. (see the section of color in Buddhisim)


				*experimental cinema* *Harry Smith*



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		Harry Smith--- painter, filmmaker, alchemist, anthropologist (1923-1991) Eastern religions, Jungian occult elements, rites and rituals of Native Americans heavily influence his work. He is also known as a jazz lover, and a keen collector of folk music. He is the first filmmaker who painted on film in the States.



		Abstraction#5,7,10 It starts out with little dots growing into squares and flowers as if flowers' blossoming shot at high-speed. For a little while, all the images seem like appearing from background and coming forward, toward us. The movement can be recognized as that of emerging feelings and emotions, and at this point, it gives a positive impression. Now circles start to beat like a heart pumping blood to every part of out body. Again, they are akin to the flower images, and also look like eyes. A montage of paper wall (shoji) images follows, which also reminds me of photo collages, which strips from different images is knitted like a cloth. Colors used in this work are warm and bright, a lot of red, orange, and yellow, and they gives us quite different impression from works by Rothko, for example. More, forwarding I'd say. These works are the homage to Fischinger and Smith uses many narrow angle triangles spreading like fireworks. Circles, squares, triangles emerge, disappear, overlapping each other, affecting and changing the others. A tiny dot becomes tides of big circles like a drop in the pond, and circles of waves it creates. Smith quite never explained what those shape and forms means, but clearly, his works are heavily drawn to meditation practice. Have those images come down to him during meditation? Or his filmmaking process itself is the way he connects himself with his inner self, talking to him, looking inward? Maybe its a little bit of both. Buddhism


								Collages He collected old magazines and catalogues, cut out drawing pictures, and made collages. He also used some religious symbol images from Eastern religion. The way he chose images was absolutely random, and he believed in the beauty of nature where random encounters exist all around. This idea comes from early Dada and Surrealist works (Max Ernest for example), that random juxtapositions will filter consciousness and bypass artists ego. This idea was again popular in the 50s among the circle led by John Cage, who were interested in Zen Buddhism and questioned the romantic tradition of the west. Cutouts from magazines and religious symbols signified something, but now putting in a very different context they mean something totally different from the original context. If we see the flag of Buddhism and know what each color means, even though he was trying to reject the intellectual idea and tradition in Western art, he still was intertwined into the stream. It is simply fascinating to see his work again with some Buddhism and Taoism ideas. (see the section of color in Buddhisim)