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Marie Menken

Marie Menken (May 25, 1909 – December 29, 1970) was an influential American experimental filmmaker, painter, and socialite, best known for her pioneering avant-garde films that emphasized abstract visuals, kinetic camerawork, and poetic explorations of light, motion, and everyday subjects.^[1]^[2] Born Marie Menkevicius in New York City to Lithuanian immigrant parents, she grew up in Brooklyn alongside a brother and sister, in a Catholic household that shaped her early artistic inclinations.^[1] After studying painting at the New York School of Fine and Industrial Arts and the Art Students League, Menken worked as a secretary to Hilla Rebay at the Museum of Non-Objective Painting (now the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum) and as a night manager at Time-Life, while exhibiting her textured abstract paintings at galleries like Betty Parsons and Tibor de Nagy.^[3] In 1937, she married poet and educator Willard Maas, whom she met at the Yaddo artists' colony the previous year; the couple settled in a Brooklyn Heights penthouse and co-founded Gryphon Film in 1946 to produce and distribute their non-narrative works, often blending their artistic practices in collaborative projects.^[1]^[3] Menken's interest in film was sparked by animator Norman McLaren, leading her to adopt a handheld Bolex camera for her debut solo effort, Visual Variations on Noguchi (1945–1946/1953), which captured rapid, dancing movements around Isamu Noguchi's sculptures, set to a soundtrack by composer Lucia Dlugoszewski.^[3]^[4] Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Menken created over a dozen short films, including Glimpse of the Garden (1957), Go! Go! Go! (1962–1964), Lights (1964–1966), and Watts with Eggs (1967), employing techniques like undercranking, stop-motion, and pixilation to transform static scenes into rhythmic, sensory abstractions influenced by Abstract Expressionism, Pop art, and Fluxus.^[2]^[5] She also animated sequences for Maya Deren's At Land (1944) and appeared in Andy Warhol's Screen Tests (1964) and Chelsea Girls (1966), while teaching Warhol how to operate a Bolex camera.^[1]^[3] Menken's innovative "somatic camera" style—characterized by shaky, gestural movements that rejected classical cinematography—profoundly impacted underground filmmakers such as Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, and Kenneth Anger, establishing her as a foundational figure in American avant-garde cinema despite limited recognition during her lifetime.^[2]^[5] Following her death from complications related to alcoholism, her husband Maas passed away shortly after on January 2, 1971; today, works like Glimpse of the Garden are preserved in the National Film Registry, affirming her enduring legacy in experimental film.^[1]^[5]

Early Life and Education

Childhood and Family Background

Marie Menken was born Marie Menkevicius on May 25, 1909, in Brooklyn, New York, to Lithuanian immigrant parents who practiced Roman Catholicism.^[1] She grew up in Brooklyn alongside a brother and a sister named Adele, in a household marked by frequent financial difficulties typical of many immigrant families during the early 20th century.^[1] She and her sister later changed their surname from Menkevicius to Menken.^[1] The family's modest circumstances reflected the broader economic challenges faced by Lithuanian newcomers adapting to urban life in America, where cultural preservation often intertwined with the struggles of assimilation.^[4] As the Great Depression took hold in the late 1920s—coinciding with her adolescence—the family's ongoing economic hardships intensified amid widespread urban poverty.^[1] These formative experiences in a culturally rich yet challenging setting influenced Menken's early perspective.

Formal Education and Early Artistic Training

Marie Menken's family background provided the foundation for her pursuit of artistic education in New York City.^[1] In the late 1920s, Menken attended the New York School of Fine and Industrial Arts (now part of Pratt Institute), where she focused on studies in painting and design, laying the groundwork for her visual arts practice.^[4] She continued her training at the Art Students League of New York, an institution renowned for its rigorous programs, honing her skills in drawing and painting techniques essential to her early career as an artist.^[4]^[6] Following her formal studies, Menken secured employment in the 1930s at the Museum of Non-Objective Painting—the precursor to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum—serving as a secretary to Hilla Rebay, the museum's founding director and chief curator.^[4] This role immersed her in the curation and stewardship of modern art collections, offering direct exposure to non-objective painting and contemporary artistic developments that influenced her evolving aesthetic sensibilities.^[4] In 1936, Menken received a summer residency at Yaddo, the prestigious artists' colony in Saratoga Springs, New York, which supported her initial creative endeavors in painting and writing during this formative period.^[4] This fellowship not only provided dedicated time and resources for her work but also connected her to a network of emerging artists, including her future husband, Willard Maas.^[4]

Professional Career

Painting and Visual Arts

Marie Menken began her artistic career as a painter in the 1930s, receiving formal training at the New York School of Fine and Industrial Arts and the Art Students League of New York, which provided the foundation for her technical proficiency in visual arts.^[4] During the 1930s and 1940s, her paintings were influenced by the abstract expressionism of the New York School, with which she was associated as part of the second generation of artists.^[7] She employed experimental techniques, creating highly textured canvases that incorporated reflective materials such as phosphorescent and metallic paints, as well as collages blending natural and manufactured elements like sand and stone chips.^[3]^[8] These works emphasized the play of light on two-dimensional surfaces, exploring movement and luminosity in abstract forms.^[9] In the 1940s, Menken's paintings gained visibility through exhibitions and sales in New York galleries, facilitated by her professional role as a secretary at the Guggenheim Foundation, which connected her to influential art circles.^[10] She participated in group shows at prominent venues, including the Betty Parsons Gallery and Tibor de Nagy Gallery, starting in the late 1940s, where her abstract works were displayed alongside those of contemporaries like Franz Kline and Grace Hartigan.^[7] By the mid-1940s, Menken began transitioning from painting to experimental filmmaking, viewing the camera as a natural extension of her static canvases to capture dynamic light and motion.^[3] Her visual arts background directly informed her cinematic compositions, particularly in her debut film Visual Variations on Noguchi (1945), where techniques of texture, reflection, and abstraction translated into moving images, though she continued painting intermittently thereafter.^[11]

Filmmaking Development and Key Productions

Marie Menken transitioned from painting to experimental filmmaking in the mid-1940s, drawing on her visual arts background to inform the framing and composition of her early films. In the mid-1940s, she co-founded the Gryphon Film Group with her husband, Willard Maas, establishing the first experimental film production company dedicated to creating avant-garde short films in a cooperative environment that united artists and intellectuals.^[3]^[12] Menken's debut as a director came with Visual Variations on Noguchi (1945), a four-minute black-and-white short produced under the Gryphon banner while she was caretaking Isamu Noguchi's MacDougal Alley studio in New York City. Using a hand-cranked 16mm Bolex camera, she captured dynamic, hand-held shots of Noguchi's interlocking sculptures, emphasizing their motion and form through rhythmic panning and close-ups, with a score by Lucia Dlugoszewski added later in 1953.^[13]^[3] By the mid-1950s, Menken had developed her production methods further, as seen in Glimpse of the Garden (1957), a five-minute color film exploring a flower garden through extreme magnification and implied time-lapse effects to highlight shifting light and blooming forms, accompanied by birdsong. Shot on 16mm with her signature intuitive handheld approach, the work exemplified her focus on natural subjects and subjective lyricism.^[14] Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Menken faced significant challenges in funding and distribution for her independent productions, often relying on self-financing from her graveyard-shift job at Time magazine while distributing films through the Gryphon Group to underground venues and emerging cooperatives like the Film-Makers' Cooperative. These obstacles limited wider access but fostered a dedicated avant-garde audience via non-commercial screenings in New York and beyond.^[12]^[5]

Collaborations and Institutional Roles

Marie Menken co-founded the Gryphon Film Group with her husband, the poet and filmmaker Willard Maas, in the mid-1940s as a collaborative endeavor dedicated to producing and distributing experimental films outside mainstream channels.^[15] The group operated primarily from their New York residence, fostering an informal network of avant-garde artists and enabling the creation of innovative short works that blended poetry, visual abstraction, and personal expression during the 1940s and 1950s.^[16] Menken contributed as cinematographer and editor to several Maas-directed productions under the Gryphon banner, including Geography of the Body (1943), a surreal exploration of human form using abstracted close-ups, and Image in the Snow (1952), a lyrical meditation on winter landscapes that highlighted their shared interest in mythic and sensory imagery.^[16] These joint efforts exemplified the group's role in pioneering cooperative experimental cinema, predating larger New York underground movements.^[15] In addition to her production work, Menken played a supportive role in the burgeoning infrastructure of independent film distribution through her involvement with the Film-Makers' Cooperative, established in 1961 to promote and circulate avant-garde works.^[2] Her films, such as Notebook (1962–1963), became part of the cooperative's collection, which she helped sustain by contributing to its mission of artist-driven preservation and exhibition, thereby aiding the wider dissemination of experimental media to audiences beyond commercial circuits.^[2] This engagement positioned Menken as a key figure in institutionalizing access to non-narrative cinema, bridging individual creativity with communal resources during the 1960s expansion of the New York avant-garde scene.^[17] Menken's influence extended to mentoring emerging filmmakers, particularly in practical techniques that shaped the next generation of experimental artists. She advised Andy Warhol on the use of the 16mm Bolex camera in the mid-1960s, guiding his transition from painting to filmmaking and inspiring his early static-shot experiments, as documented in her own portrait film Andy Warhol (1965).^[18] As a mentor and muse, Menken also impacted figures like Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, and Jonas Mekas through shared screenings and hands-on demonstrations of handheld cinematography and in-camera editing, fostering a legacy of accessible, intuitive approaches to avant-garde production.^[19]

Personal Life

Marriage and Partnership with Willard Maas

Marie Menken married the poet, educator, and experimental filmmaker Willard Maas in 1937, following their meeting the previous year at the Yaddo artists' colony in upstate New York.^[4] The couple established their home in a penthouse at 62 Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights, where they resided from at least 1940 until their deaths and frequently hosted lively gatherings that drew members of New York's avant-garde scene.^[15] In 1946, Menken and Maas co-founded the Gryphon Group, a loose collective dedicated to experimental filmmaking, through which they collaborated on several projects—including Menken's role as cinematographer on Maas's Geography of the Body (1943)—while maintaining distinct individual practices in painting, poetry, and film.^[3]^[16] Their marriage, though creatively symbiotic, faced significant personal strains, marked by intense arguments and excessive alcohol consumption, with Maas's alcoholism exacerbating tensions during the 1950s and 1960s.^[20]^[21] Marie Menken cultivated deep friendships within New York's avant-garde film community during the 1940s and 1950s, notably with Maya Deren, Kenneth Anger, and Stan Brakhage, through which they engaged in shared screenings and mutual critiques of their experimental works.^[19]^[22]^[20] For instance, Menken collaborated directly with Deren by animating the chess sequence in the 1944 film At Land, fostering an exchange of ideas on gestural aesthetics and handheld cinematography that defined their mid-1940s output.^[19]^[11] Similarly, her rapport with Anger involved directing Arabesque for Kenneth Anger (1961), filmed in Spain in 1958 with his assistance, while Brakhage later recalled formative discussions and viewings of Menken's films that shaped his own poetic approach to cinema in the 1950s.^[22]^[23] As a prominent socialite in Brooklyn Heights and Manhattan's underground art scene, Menken and her husband Willard Maas transformed their penthouse at 62 Montague Street into a vibrant salon that bridged communities of painters, poets, and filmmakers from the late 1940s onward.^[20]^[24] These gatherings, often described as lavish and wild, attracted luminaries such as Tennessee Williams and emerging talents, creating informal spaces for cross-disciplinary dialogue that extended beyond structured exhibitions or screenings.^[20]^[25] In the early 1960s, Menken extended her influence to Andy Warhol, whom she met through poet Charles Henri Ford, offering early encouragement that propelled his ventures into experimental filmmaking.^[25] As a mentor, she inspired Warhol's adoption of handheld techniques and lyrical abstraction, culminating in her 1965 portrait film Andy Warhol, which documented his Factory activities and solidified their creative bond.^[19]^[26] Menken's vivacious and supportive personality played a pivotal role in nurturing these networks, as contemporaries like Anger noted her energetic presence and willingness to collaborate informally, often prioritizing communal inspiration over individual acclaim.^[22] This approachable demeanor, evident in her hosting of inclusive events and provision of technical guidance, helped forge lasting ties that amplified the avant-garde's collaborative spirit outside institutional frameworks.^[20]^[27]

Artistic Style

Techniques in Painting

Menken's painting techniques in the 1940s emphasized reflective and luminous materials to achieve dynamic light effects in her abstract works. She incorporated phosphorescent paints, crushed glass, and sequins into her compositions, creating surfaces that captured and refracted light in unpredictable ways, often evoking a sense of movement and vitality.^[3] These elements were applied to masonite or canvas, as seen in her untitled works from the period, where sequins and glass fragments embedded in oil paint produced shimmering, jewel-like textures that shifted with viewing angles.^[8] In parallel, Menken developed collage techniques that integrated urban detritus with painted elements, reflecting her Brooklyn upbringing amid the city's industrial landscape. She blended found manufactured objects—such as beads, shells, and metallic scraps—with layered oils and sands, constructing assemblages that merged the organic and the mechanical into textured narratives of urban life.^[28] These collages, often non-objective, used adhesive applications and overlapping fragments to build depth, prioritizing tactile contrast over illusionistic depth.^[8] By the 1950s, Menken's practice evolved toward fully non-representational forms, focusing on texture and implied movement through accumulative layering and gestural applications. She expanded her use of sand and assemblage in large-scale abstracts, scraping and embedding materials to evoke rhythmic flows and organic undulations on the canvas.^[28] This shift aligned her with the abstract expressionist milieu of contemporaries like Jackson Pollock, yet distinguished itself through her innovative material experimentation, such as phosphorescent swirls and embedded detritus that prioritized luminous tactility over pure dripped gesture.^[29]

Innovations in Experimental Film

Marie Menken pioneered the use of the handheld Bolex camera in experimental filmmaking, liberating the medium from static tripods and enabling fluid, unscripted movements that captured spontaneous urban and natural rhythms. In her film Lights (1966), she wielded the Bolex handheld during late-night shoots amid New York City's Christmas illuminations, allowing the camera to weave dynamically through neon displays, fountains, and building facades while keeping the device warm under her coat in freezing conditions. This approach produced a sense of graceful improvisation, transforming the city's ephemeral lights into sculptural, flowing forms that emphasized perceptual immediacy over composed shots.^[30]^[19] Menken's innovative application of time-lapse and double-exposure techniques further advanced the capture of transient phenomena, compressing time and layering images to evoke sensory immersion. In Notebook (1962), a compilation of career-spanning fragments, she employed time-lapse in sections like "Raindrops" to condense the formation and fall of water droplets, highlighting subtle temporal shifts in everyday elements, while double-exposure in "Moon Play" superimposed lunar movements to create dancing, ethereal overlays. These methods, achieved via the Bolex's manual rewind and variable speeds, overcame the camera's mechanical limitations to produce discontinuous, diary-like sequences that prioritized rhythmic abstraction.^[31]^[32] Central to Menken's contributions was a non-narrative emphasis on sensory experience, harnessing light, color, and rhythm to evoke direct perceptual engagement without symbolic or interpretive overlays. Her films eschewed plot in favor of visual poetry, as seen in Notebook's "Night Writing," where neon lights functioned as calligraphic traces, and Lights' luminous abstractions that invited viewers to immerse in the pure kinetics of illumination. By editing improvisational footage on single Bolex rolls—often structuring compositions in-camera and sometimes using splicing—she turned technical constraints into an aesthetic of immediacy, fostering a process-oriented form that blurred amateur spontaneity with avant-garde precision. This single-roll method ensured unmediated flow, aligning her film's structure with the ephemerality of the captured moments.^[31]^[19]^[32]

Legacy

Influence on Subsequent Artists

Marie Menken served as a mentor to Andy Warhol, instructing him in the use of the 16mm Bolex camera, which directly influenced his early forays into underground filmmaking during the 1960s.^[3]^[33] This hands-on guidance, captured in footage of the two engaging in a Bolex "duel," equipped Warhol with practical skills that shaped his initial experimental films, such as Sleep (1963), where he applied single-frame techniques reminiscent of Menken's lyrical approach.^[25] Menken's personal and poetic filmmaking style profoundly inspired key figures in the New American Cinema movement, including Stan Brakhage and Kenneth Anger, who adopted her emphasis on subjective, lyrical expression over narrative conventions. Brakhage cited Menken as one of his primary inspirations, crediting her rhythmic, light-focused works for encouraging his exploration of pure cinematic motion and personal vision in films like Mothlight (1963).^[34]^[35] Similarly, Anger, who collaborated with Menken on Arabesque for Kenneth Anger (1960), praised her innate sense of movement and rhythm, which echoed dance-like qualities and influenced his own ritualistic, symbolic shorts such as Scorpio Rising (1963).^[12]^[36] Through her example of self-reliant production—filming, editing, and distributing her own abstract shorts without institutional support—Menken liberated subsequent female filmmakers, providing a model of independence in a male-dominated avant-garde scene. Filmmakers like Joyce Wieland drew from this precedent, incorporating Menken's collage-like aesthetics and autonomous workflow into their structural and feminist experiments, such as Wieland's Water Sark (1964).^[5] Her trailblazing role as one of the few women active in 1940s-1960s experimental cinema underscored the viability of personal, low-budget creation, inspiring a generation of women to claim space in the medium.^[25] In the 1970s, shortly after her death in 1970, archival screenings at institutions like Anthology Film Archives introduced Menken's oeuvre to post-avant-garde generations, preserving her influence amid the co-op's Essential Cinema Repertory. These programs, which included staples like Glimpse of the Garden (1957), highlighted her contributions to the movement's foundational lyricism and ensured her techniques continued to resonate with emerging artists exploring non-narrative forms.^[37]

Posthumous Recognition and Preservation

Marie Menken died on December 29, 1970, at the age of 61, following a brief illness at Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn.^[6] Despite her pioneering role in experimental filmmaking during her lifetime, Menken's contributions largely faded into obscurity in the immediate decades after her death, overshadowed by more prominent figures in the avant-garde scene.^[38] This period of neglect began to shift in the early 2000s, as renewed scholarly and curatorial interest highlighted her innovative techniques and influence on subsequent generations of artists.^[25] A key catalyst for this revival was the 2006 documentary Notes on Marie Menken, directed by Martina Kudlácek, which drew on interviews with contemporaries like Stan Brakhage and Kenneth Anger to illuminate her overlooked role as a multifaceted artist and underground filmmaker.^[38] The film emphasized Menken's personal struggles, creative process, and lasting impact, bringing her work to wider audiences through festival screenings and distribution.^[39] Complementing this, in 2007, Menken's short film Glimpse of the Garden (1957) was selected for inclusion in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, recognizing it as culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant and ensuring its long-term preservation.^[40] Menken's recognition continued to grow through institutional exhibitions in the 2010s and 2020s, focusing on the intersections of her painting and film practices. In 2021, her works were featured in Women in Abstraction at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, an exhibition that showcased over 100 female artists' contributions to modernist abstraction from the 1930s onward, underscoring Menken's dual role as painter and filmmaker. This show, curated by Christine Macel and Karolina Ziebinska-Lewandowska, highlighted Menken's experimental abstractions alongside peers like Joan Mitchell and Lygia Clark, drawing attention to her innovative use of light and motion.^[41] Further exhibitions followed, including A Glorious Bewilderment: Marie Menken’s Visual Variations on Noguchi at the Noguchi Museum in 2023–2024, which revisited her 1945–1946 film of Isamu Noguchi's sculptures. Screenings of her films continued into 2024 and 2025, such as at MassArt's Ciné Culture series in 2024 and Kunsthalle Winterthur in April 2025, affirming her enduring relevance in experimental cinema.^[3]^[42]^[43]

Filmography

Early and Mid-Career Films

Menken's entry into experimental filmmaking occurred with Visual Variations on Noguchi (1945), a four-minute black-and-white short that served as an abstract study of Isamu Noguchi's sculptures, captured through hand-held Bolex camera movements emphasizing light, shadow, and textural contrasts.^[13] The film, shot in Noguchi's Greenwich Village studio while Menken house-sat, utilized zooms, pans, and unusual editing to animate the static forms, creating a haptic exploration of sculptural dynamics scored by composer Lucia Dlugoszewski.^[44] This debut work established Menken's signature kinetic style, bridging her painting background with film's capacity for motion and abstraction.^[45] A notable hiatus followed her early collaborative works until the mid-1950s. By 1957, Glimpse of the Garden marked a lyrical turn, a five-minute color film employing time-lapse techniques to depict flowers blooming in a friend's garden, blending magnification and birdsong for a poetic evocation of natural cycles.^[14] This work highlighted Menken's shift toward organic subjects, contrasting her prior abstract studies while maintaining disorienting camera work for immersive sensory effects.^[36] That same year, Hurry! Hurry! offered a stark counterpoint, a three-minute microscopic examination of spermatozoa in motion, reimagined as a "dance of death" via scientific footage overlaid with fiery abstractions, emphasizing life's frantic undercurrents.^[46] Culminating the period, Dwightiana (1959) used stop-motion on drawings by patron Dwight Ripley, infusing lighthearted whimsy into Menken's repertoire and signaling her maturation in blending personal networks with visual experimentation.^[47] Other mid-career works included Eye Music in Red Major (1961), an abstract color study, and Arabesque for Kenneth Anger (1961), featuring architectural and water motifs set to music by Teiji Ito.^[1] Across these films, Menken's mid-career output traced a progression from sculptural abstraction to intimate natural and biological observations, prioritizing subjective perception over narrative.

Later Works and Compilations

In the 1960s, Marie Menken produced several films that refined her signature techniques of handheld camerawork and luminous abstraction, focusing on urban environments, natural phenomena, and personal impressions. Notebook (1962), a 10-minute silent work in color and black-and-white, compiles diary-like fragments of daily life, travels, and fleeting observations, drawn from footage accumulated over years to form an intimate, vignette-style montage.^[48]^[49] These "tiny or too obvious" moments, as Menken described them, capture playful animations and impressions that evoke a personal visual journal.^[49] Go! Go! Go! (1962–1964), an 11-minute color silent film, documents the frenetic energy of New York City through rapid handheld shots of traffic and urban motion, undercranked to heighten rhythmic intensity.^[50] Lights (1964–1966), a 6-minute color silent film, immerses viewers in the neon glow of New York City's holiday displays, shot handheld during late-night hours over three consecutive Christmas seasons to avoid crowds and traffic.^[30]^[51] The work transforms storefront decorations, fountains, and building facades into a rhythmic celebration of artificial light's ephemeral beauty against the winter darkness.^[30] Moonplay (1962/1964), a 5-minute black-and-white film scored by Teiji Ito, builds on Notebook's conceptual foundations through single-frame exposures of the moon across various nights, rendering its phases as a darting, blinking abstraction of celestial light.^[52] This lunar fantasy emphasizes stop-motion animation to evoke ethereal motion and shadow play.^[52] Later efforts included Drips in Strips (1963), a short abstract piece, and Watts with Eggs (1967), exploring everyday objects with pixilation and motion effects.^[2] Menken's later period also included unfinished projects, such as footage for explorations of everyday objects and motions that remained unassembled at her death in 1970. Following her passing, her husband Willard Maas briefly oversaw aspects of her oeuvre before his own death in 1971, after which archivists compiled selections like Marie Menken - Visual Variations (ca. 2010), assembling shorts such as Notebook, Lights, and Moonplay to preserve her experimental legacy.^[47] These compilations highlight her refined phase of luminous, fragmented filmmaking from the 1960s onward.

References

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Marie MENKEN - Light Cone
She died on December 29, 1970. Four days after her death, on January 2, 1971, Willard Maas died. Menken appeared in Andy Warhol's films SCREEN TESTS (1964) ...
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Marie Menken - The Film-Makers' Cooperative
Marie Menken (1910-1970) is the unsung heroine of the American avant-garde cinema. A mentor, muse and major influence for such key experimental filmmakers.
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Menken, Marie (1910–1970) - Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism
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A look at Willard Maas busy at work, showing that no creativity comes without labor. Work-in-progress: Marie Menken and the mechanical representation of labor.
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"Marie Menken was six-foot-two and hefty, with a foghorn voice that could silence a room, but she made films whose delicacy was their surprise…
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Marie Menken, 61, Early Leader In Underground Movies, Dies
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American filmaker. Born in Brooklyn into a modest Lithuanian family, Marie Menken is considered one of the essential American avant-garde film-makers.
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Originally trained as a painter, Menken was known for making abstract paintings and collages that combined natural and manufactured materials (sand, stone chips ...
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Who's the Source for 'Virginia Woolf'? - Wagner Magazine
“A telephone message told me, Marie Menken died. She died on December 29. Two days later, an early morning, we stood in a small Brooklyn Heights church, a ...
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In making the transition between art and film, Menken's approach was deeply concept-based (depending on the particular project at hand). While attending to ...
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Dec 23, 2024 · Menken made small, personal, lyrical films that don't seek to scandalize or provoke, and yet, underneath a playful surface are radical ...
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A lyric, tender, intensely subjective exploration of a flower garden, with extreme magnification, flashing color harmonies.
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Willard Maas & Marie Menken Residence
Bisexual poet-filmmaker-educator Willard Maas and his wife, visual artist-filmmaker Marie Menken, resided in this building from at least 1940 to their deaths ...
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About - The Film-Makers' Cooperative
The Film-Makers' Cooperative supports, distributes, preserves, and exhibits artworks from its collection which spans the history of the moving image. Anyone may ...
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[PDF] STAN BRAKHAGE AND THE INSTITUTIONS OF THE AVANT-GARDE
The friendships, influences, and professional relationships Brakhage formed here during his early twenties— with Marie Menken, Willard Maas, Kenneth Anger, Maya ...
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Hanging Out with Narcisa Hirsch in the 1970s | Viennale
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Gerard Malanga In Search of the Miraculous
Apr 14, 2021 · Two of its members, Marie Menken and Willard Maas, were my earliest mentors. Marie, especially, encouraged me to go out and make movies. She ...<|control11|><|separator|>
[30]
(PDF) Hands in the machine: Maya Deren and Marie Menken's ...
Jul 20, 2022 · PDF | In this article, I examine how Maya Deren and Marie Menken's mid-1940s filmmaking enacts a gestural aesthetic.<|separator|>
[31]
[PDF] Women's Experimental Cinema: Critical Frameworks - OAPEN Library
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A case in point is found in the work of Marie Menken, the first filmmaker examined. ... In the mid-1930s, she received a residence-grant from Yaddo, an art ...
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[34]
[PDF] Visionary - FILM
I remain convinced that the most conspicuous absence in Visionary. Film is the magnificent work of Marie Menken. ... time lapse photography on the other ...
[35]
[PDF] Exposing the Film Apparatus - OAPEN Library
Dec 1, 2010 · Menken's Notebook (1962), Go! Go! Go! (1963), and Andy Warhol (1965); ... Marie Menken also made ample use of discontinu- ous forms, as ...
[36]
[PDF] people and things | CUNY
May 22, 2022 · Menken, who was teaching Warhol how to use the 16mm Bolex handheld came- ra. In turn, Warhol himself was the subject of Jonas Mekas's ...Missing: taught | Show results with:taught
[37]
All that is light: Stan Brakhage on film | Sight and Sound - BFI
Jan 12, 2023 · One of my main inspirations has been Marie Menken, and Harry Smith is often in my mind as I work. Many of them didn't paint on film, but their ...
[38]
Notebook: The Films of Marie Menken
Oct 18, 2007 · Marie Menken inspired a generation of filmmakers—from Andy Warhol and Gerard Malanga to Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, and Jonas Mekas ...Missing: formal education School Industrial Arts
[39]
Marie Menken: Glimpse of the Garden - The Culturium
Apr 5, 2020 · Inspired by her existing accomplishments in abstract expressionistic painting, her cinematographical technique encompassed an exploration ...Missing: expressionism | Show results with:expressionism
[40]
About - Essential Cinema - Anthology Film Archives
A very special series of films screened on a repertory basis, the Essential Cinema ... Marie Menken: Glimpse of the Garden, 1957. Arabesque for Kenneth Anger, ...
[41]
Notes on Marie Menken - Icarus Films
Martina Kudlacek, director of the critically acclaimed "In the Mirror of Maya Deren," brings us the story of Marie Menken (1909-1970), one of New York's ...Missing: friendships | Show results with:friendships
[42]
Notes on Marie Menken (2006) - IMDb
Rating 7.2/10 (54) Notes on Marie Menken: Directed by Martina Kudlácek. With Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, Peter Kubelka, Alfred Leslie. A look at avant-garde filmmaker Marie ...
[43]
National Film Registry 2007 (January-February 2008)
National Film Registry 2007. Librarian Adds 25 Titles to Film Preservation ... “Glimpse of the Garden” (1957); “Grand Hotel” (1932); “The House I Live In ...
[44]
Women in Abstraction: An Interview with Curator Christine Macel
Aug 9, 2021 · ... 2021, at Centre Pompidou, considers contributions of women artists to abstraction. ... Marie Menken, Howardena Pindell and Harmony Hammond ...
[45]
A Glorious Bewilderment: Marie Menken's 'Visual Variations on ...
Sep 27, 2023 · This exhibition explores the interplay and affinities between these three artists' practices and celebrate Menken's invitation to bring the full force of our ...Missing: formal Industrial
[46]
Visual Variations On Noguchi - Marie Menken
"By use of hand-held, ambulating camera, unusual editing and a startling experimental score by Lucille Dlugozewski, the sculptures ...
[47]
Marie Menken - Visual Variations | Experimental Cinema
Dec 9, 2022 · She films paintings and sculptures that seem to account for a portrait of women (at first portrayed as submissive, the male gaze of the painters ...Missing: themes symbolism
[48]
Marie Menken - Hurry! Hurry! - The Film-Makers' Cooperative
A daring film ballet danced by human spermatozoa under powerful magnification. A dance of death made from scientific footage, printed over murky fire.Missing: Hurdy Gurdy 1946
[49]
Notebook - Marie Menken - The Film-Makers' Cooperative
Notebook 1962. 16mm, color and b/w, silent, 10 min. Marie Menken · Experimental. These are too tiny or too obvious for comment, but one or two are my dearest ...Missing: time- lapse double- exposure techniques
[50]
NOTEBOOK - Light Cone
NOTEBOOK. by Marie MENKEN 1962-1963 / color-b&w / silent / 1 screen / 10' 00. These are too tiny or too obvious for comment, but one or two are my dearest ...
[51]
https://www.letterboxd.com/film/lights/
[52]
Moonplay, by Marie Menken | Experimental Cinema Wiki
Film directed by Marie Menken during the years 1964-66. Sound by Teiji Ito. Synopsis 'An expansion upon an idea put forward in Marie Menken's film Notebook; ...