A Colour Box: 1935 Abstract Direct Paint on Film Animation by Len Lye
Category Archives: Artist
The Birth of the Robot: 1936 Experimental Advertising Film by Len Lye for Shell Oil Company
In 1936, experimental filmmaker Len Lye made this short surreal animation to advertise the benefits of Shell oil for lubricating things. The film is a hyper-saturated stop-motion extravaganza that involves a mechanical world turning on some sort of hand crank. There’s an adventurer driving around the sands of Egypt. His car winds down and konks out leaving the man dead in the desert. The angel of oil rains drops of lubricating crude down on the Egyptian landscape bringing the parched skeleton to life as the Shell Oil robot. Fascinating. It’s got that awkward, shiny, naive beauty that could only be achieved in the 30s. Parts of this thing look like they might be influenced by Salvador Dali’s work. Something about that dead skeleton and the desert looks like it could fit right into the Surrealist master’s paintings.
Lye was from New Zealand and worked not only as an experimental filmmaker but also in newsreels and advertising. He was a kinetic sculptor, poet, painter and a writer of essays on artistic theory and philosphy. He made a 1935 short film called ‘A Colour Box’ which was the first generally exhibited film made by painting directly on the film emulsion. It’s a brilliant experimental animation posing as an advertisement for cheaper parcel post. I’m sure the great direct paint filmmaker Stan Brakhage must have been familiar with Lye’s work.
Here’s a gallery site with information and examples of his artwork.
1964 Documentary on Spanish Surrealist Film Director Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel was the great Spanish film director who made ‘Un Chien Andalou’ and ‘L’Age d’Or,’ two of the original surrealist films. This documentary, directed by Robert Valey, was made in 1964. The director talks freely and with a certain charming guile about his influences, friends, paranoias, enjoyments and his impressions of various countries. He once smacked Salvadore Dali down on 5th Avenue in New York city!
I enjoy listening to people like him talk about their work because they talk about how they see things – how they interpret the world. Compare the way he talks in this film to what you normally see coming from people like Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese. Those people don’t seem real. They don’t seem to have any point of view. Notice how people in the film consistently associate Buñuel’s filmmaking with the work of painters. It is the continual grinding down of art into business that destroys real culture. One should immerse one’s self in better ideas and more subtle things if one wants to avoid the dullness that permeates most film work currently going on in the United States. I have found it to be a general rule that people with real talent who are artists answer questions in a slightly confusing manner. Clarity is another word for fake. Buñuel appears to me to fit this general principal.
Buñuel wrote a short and very beautiful autobiography called ‘My Last Sigh.’ I recommend it very highly if you want to know more about the mind behind Surrealist film.
And of course, here is the great Surrealist short film, ‘Un Chien Andalou,’ made by Buñuel in 1929.
Alejandro Jodorowsky Discusses Psychomagic But He Smiles Too Much
Alejandro Jodorowsky on the Spanish program ‘Negro Sobre Blanco’ discussing his ‘phsychomagic’ ideas about how people must understand the influence of the family tree and how breaking with habits or curses from the past is essential for health and happiness. Jodorowsky has long held to the idea that art must heal human beings and society. His use for systems of magic like the Tarot are never for divination but rather for understanding one’s self and one’s place in the world. He approaches his own thoughts and theories with humor and exuberance. I find him to be very magnetic as a speaker. I also find that his good nature seems to prevent people from aggressively arguing some of his general assertions. In other words, most people who interact with Jodorowsky do so with the attitude that they are dealing with a grand old man of wisdom. In many ways I think he is just that. However, one should not have that in mind when actually talking to him. I also think he’s a nice man who genuinely works to help people feel better.
H. R. Giger Occult Experience: Short 1987 Film About the Artist
Bob Dylan Talks Music and Draws in a Trailer (1986)
Bob Dylan has always been in the enviable position of being taken seriously even when he is just messing around. God he must be fun to hang out with. I think he is one of the funniest human beings I have ever seen. He carries on here as if beginning an interview but he’s really drawing the interviewer with total focus and determination. He then proudly holds up one of the worst drawings I’ve ever seen in the long history art. But have you ever seen someone answer questions this way? I like the way in part 2 he predicts the sudden change in music about to happen when the kids who don’t like all the machine music of the eighties make something new in four or five years. He was predicting the emergence of the alternative scene and bands like Nirvana I think.