Zdzisław Beksiński (1929-2005) - True Inspiration

http://www.beksinski.pl/

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I stumbled upon the work of this graphic master just the other night, and find it (as most would, I expect) extraordinarily compelling.

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Polish Masters of Animation Pt. 4: Julian Józef Antonisz

Very much like the case with Ryszard Czekala, I have not been able to dredge up much information on this guy or his work. There is, however, a page for him on Wikipedia in Polish. Without going through the trouble of choppy, nonsensical online translation, it is at least obvious that he was born in 1941 and died in 1987. So far I’ve seen three of his animations - ‘How a Sausage Dog Works’, 1971, ‘Ostry Film Zaangazowany’ (A Highly Committed Movie), 1979, and 'Non-Camerowa' from 1983. They are fairly similar in method and structure, except for the fact that the action of A Highly Committed Movie is based solely on a musical score, versus the narration which apparently (even though I can’t understand it) drives How a Sausage Dog Works and Non-Camerowa. The technical aspect to the films is quite enigmatic in itself. At times in A Highly Committed Movie and certainly entirely throughout Non-Camerowa, the method seems to be akin to that of Norman Mclaren, among others - i.e. the images are drawn / painted or ‘scratched’ directly onto unexposed film. Occasionally, though, certain objects which appear onscreen alongside the images seem to contradict that method.

Perhaps a rough Google translation of the Polish Wikipedia page will clear things up...

Here’s ‘How a Sausage Dog Works' and 'Non-Camerowa.' ‘A Highly Committed Movie’ is available on PWA’s Anthology of Polish Animated Film - http://pwa.gov.pl/en/show/60/index.html

How a Sausage Dog Works, 1971.

Non-Camerowa, 1983

Various Pathological Curiosities

Grant Museum of the University of Toronto Medical School

Museo delle Cere Anatomiche, Bologna, Italy

Anatomia, by Joseph Maclise (c. 1850)

Manuel d'Anatomie Descriptive du Corps Humain (1825)

Anatomical Tables, by John Banister (c. 1580)

Polish Masters of Animation Pt. 3: Walerian Borowczyk

A sculptor, a painter, an illustrator, a still photographer, a giant in the history of cinema; no matter the medium, Walerian Borowczyk (1923-2006) was always, above all else, an artist with an amazing vision.

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Although most known for his live-action films of eroticism and fetishistic symbolism, Borowczyk started off in film making short-subject cut-out animations assisted by Jan Lenica (see previous post) in the mid-50s. After a falling out with the fellow artist-turned-animator, Borowczyk continued with his work in animation throughout the 1960s, before turning to live-action feature films.

The School

Les Astronautes, 1959 (part 1)

Les Astronautes, 1959 (part 2)

Polish Masters of Animation Pt. 2: Jan Lenica

Wow, it’s been a while. Hopefully I’ll be updating regularly again after this. Here’s a couple links to start this one off -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Lenica

http://www.kinoeye.org/01/06/bird06.php

I’d read about him. I’d seen his stark, violently striking posters. Some of my major influences cited him as their influence. But, it wasn’t until recently that I finally experienced some of the most mind-numbingly brilliant animation I’ve ever seen, created by him in a period between the 1950s and the present. Jan Lenica is, without a doubt, one of THE masters of not only animation, but cinema as a whole.

The bootlegged DVD I got a hold of features four of his films, along with a mini-documentary (in Polish) of Lenica at work. The films are:

Dom, 1956 / 1958 (?)
Nowy Janko Muzykat, 1960
Labirynt, 1962
WYSPA R.O., 2001

There aren’t any clips available, or even very few stills, so I am going to direct this not specifically at each film, but Lenica’s style overall.

The earlier work is much cruder technically, but the films seem to hold much more artistic quality, working on editing nuances and interesting graphic amalgams. Lenica’s origins in poster work are very apparent in Nowy Janko Muzykat, which follows the ‘exploits’ of a cut-out figure man, who appears to have been drawn by an eight year old. The films, with the exception of the most recent - WYSPA R.O., employ collage cut-out animation, sometimes woven together by live-action shots. The entire system lends itself to a Svankmajerian feel. One comes away from Dom, which was made while Lenica was still working collaboratively with Walerian Borowczyk, looking at Jan Svankmajer’s work with new eyes, much like discovering Svankmajer AFTER the work of the Brothers Quay. It’s all a disillusioning process, down to the very core inspirations.

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The masterpiece here is Labirynt, an excruciatingly complex piece of cut-out animation employing various images which seem to have been taken from the pages of an archaic encyclopedia. The entire work reminds one of the surreal, ambiguous events which take place in the 1968 film Yellow Submarine (a feature film transporting the Beatles through an animated world of monsters, various pop-culture references, and modern popular songs).

All in all, this is some of the most inspiring work I have seen in a long time. Simple at times, but always brilliant. If anyone has a chance to ever get any of his films on video (I had a heck of a time!) make sure you do! Review score: 5/5.

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EDIT: Holy moly - someone using the username TheMotionBrigades (http://youtube.com/profile_videos?user=TheMotionBrigades) has posted alot of very cool stuff on YouTube, including some of Lenica's films! Here you all go - enjoy!

Labirynt, Part 1

Labirynt, Part 2

Dom

Nowy Janko Muzykat

Ryszard Czekala

Quite honestly, all I have been able to dig up regarding this amazing Polish animator is that he was born in 1941, and these three films. This is brilliant work, unlike any cut-out animation I have seen before, especially due to the acute use of focus in the last two. But I'll let the films speak for themselves. Enjoy.

Ptak (Bird), 1968

Apel (Roll-Call), 1971

Czlowiek i Chleb, 1997

Just Another Saturday . . .

Optical Poetry - Quite some time ago I stumbled upon an amazing animated silhouette film - and now I’ve rediscovered the work!

Oskar Fischinger was a German painter, illustrator, and animator. In the late 20s he worked at the gigantic Ufa Studios in Germany, at one point working on special effect rocketry for Fritz Lang’s Frau Im Mond. The above film, which was made some time before 1930 and the original score for which is now lost, is called Seelische Konstruktionen, and contains some of the most captivating animation I have ever seen. As stated, the music put to it obviously isn’t the original music. It’s by the band Liquid Liquid from the early 80s, and it seems to fit quite nicely. It adds an equivocal tribal semblance; raw and mantra-like. The last couple seconds of animation seem to end abruptly, perhaps the copy it was taken from had the very end missing, or the person who uploaded it cut it off. But for some reason those last two or three seconds sent a shiver down my spine the first couple times I saw them. It has the same effect on me as do the most powerful moments of Kafka's diary; a nebulous sense of expurgated tragedy.

The Maniacal Satire of Phil Mulloy

This guy is the contemporary William S. Burroughs of hand-drawn animation! A brilliant satirist employing a genuine syntax of over-the-top violence, eroticism, and societal criticism all wrapped up in a turgid editing style. You gotta’ love it.

The Sound of Music, 1992

Anamorphosis

A distorted or monstrous projection or representation of an image on a plane or curved surface, which, when viewed from a certain point, or as reflected from a curved mirror or through a polyhedron, appears regular and in proportion; a deformation of an image.
- Webster’s, 1913.

I’ve decided this is a subject too interesting too pass up. I was first introduced to the phenomena of Anamorphosis through a short Penn & Teller informational video on the mechanics of artistic perspective in an art class, but it wasn’t until some time later when I discovered the work of the Brothers Quay in the form of a Kino Video release, fully-loaded with slightly grainy, but still beautiful films that I was properly introduced to the fascinating subject.

Anamorphosis is a technique of optical distortion to create an image which, at first glance, is either completely hidden behind groupings of anonymous lines or various images created atop it, or appears to be something else completely. Yet, when viewed at a certain angle, or through a particular means of reflection to reverse the distortion, the initial image becomes clear. The first known example of Anamorphosis, a sketch from Leonardo Da Vinci’s diaries, dates back to the late 1400s. Hans Holbein the Younger, an early 16th century German artist most known for his woodcuts of the Dance of Death, was very interested in the process, and went on to paint perhaps the most well-known example of Renaissance Anamorphosis, the 1533 painting ‘The Ambassadors.’

During the 19th century the technique became more of a novelty feature, and dropped from the realm of fine art. Yet, not only did Anamorphosis see new life during the 20th century, from artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Salvador Dali, it has also become the basic principle behind such film formats as CinemaScope and Panavision, employing anamorphic lenses on motion picture cameras and projectors; ‘squeezing’ the image horizontally to fit into the film frame, and then ‘stretching’ it while being projected through a complementary lens during projection.

Anamorphosis
Uploaded by confidencial

De Artificiali Perspectiva (Anamorphosis), 1991, by the Brothers Quay.

Cabinet of Curiosities

The Mutter Museum in Philadelphia houses a vast collection of Victorian-era medical oddities; crude antique prosthetics, human pathological specimens preserved in formaldehyde, hundreds of skeletal curiosities, and a vast array of photographs. I just ordered a copy of the book of photographs taken within the museum, ‘The Mutter Museum: Of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia’ from Amazon.com - http://www.amazon.com/Mutter-Museum-College-Physicians-Philadelphia/dp/0922233241/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-9949795-0824721?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1185694513&sr=8-1

Some time around 2000 the curator of the Mutter at the time invited photographers to the museum to pictorially chronicle a section of the museum’s collection through artistic photographs. These images, as well as photographs taken within the museum from the turn of the century through the 1940s, are what compose this book’s some 200 pages.

Plakaty! Plakaty! Plakaty!

http://www.polishposter.com/ is undoubtedly one of the best sites for Polish poster art online. Not only can one view extensive galleries of posters designed for the stage, cinema, and advertising, but micro-biographies for each artist are supplied as well. AND, to top it all off, they also have a large stock of original posters up for purchase.

The poster shown above is by Franciszek Starowieyski, an artist who turned his skills to poster design sometime in the 60s; his amazing work reaching up to the 90s. His incredibly powerful poster for Witkacy's Beyond Reality from 1981 is featured briefly in the opening sequence of the Brothers Quay's most well-known film, The Street of Crocodiles.

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There's always been so many things about poster design that have fascinated me. A poster artist once famously claimed, albeit rather biasedly, that posters are the most important art form, because of the mass’s constant exposure to them. I think there’s something true about this statement because, as can be seen at Polishposter.com, this stuff really is fine art, and it’s designed with a singular purpose. So much good art is never experienced, whereas posters have always been near the frontline, so to speak.

I have to knock a few things off my wall and make room for a new poster soon . . .

Something fresh.

For the past few days I've been reading the diaries of Franz Kafka. I'd heard so much about his diaries in the past, and I'd always intended on getting around to reading them. When I found a link to English translations this last weekend I decided to finally dig in.

After having only read The Metamorphosis and In The Penal Colony I must say I wasn't quite prepared for this. The diaries are written in a very elusive way: these half-fragments and broken thoughts. Yet, there is something strangely fulfilled and well-executed throughout his seemingly incomplete threads, as if the fragmentary nature of them holds the writing together in a tentatively self-sustaining manner.

I’ll post a link later when I’m not feeling so lazy, and actually have the will to search for it. Until then, here’s a cool music video of Hugh Cornwell’s Another Kind of Love directed by Jan Svankmajer.

Video Codes