Robert Breer

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Robert Breer (born September 30, 1926 in Detroit , Michigan , † August 11, 2011 in Tucson , Arizona ) was an American filmmaker and visual artist whose experimental animated films are considered classics of American avant-garde film . Breer began his artistic career as a painter and sculptor in Paris before turning to film. Breer produced his first films in the early 1950s, and by 2003 he had made more than 40 short films .

biography

Robert Breer grew up in Detroit. His father was a successful engineer and inventor who developed the Chrysler Airflow , among other things . Robert Breer initially wanted to follow in his father's footsteps and began studying engineering at Stanford University in California in 1943 , but then decided to study art. Interrupted by two years of military service, Breer graduated from Stanford in 1949.

Breer went to Paris , where he continued his training as a painter and sculptor at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and with Ossip Zadkine . Breer painted in the style of geometric abstraction ; his artistic models included Victor Vasarely and Piet Mondrian , whose work he had got to know in Stanford. Breer's works were exhibited in Denise René's gallery , where he discovered the films of the avant-garde Hans Richter , Walter Ruttmann and Fernand Léger .

Breer began to experiment with moving images. On the one hand, he designed Folioskope, a kind of flipbook , and Mutoskope issued at Denise René, on the other hand, he created the first experimental short films in the Cinémathèque française have been performed. In his films of the Form-Phases series, made between 1952 and 1954, based on the absolute film, geometric figures were apparently set in motion by individual photographs. In 1954, in Image by Images , he contrasted this with a series of 240 disjointed individual images that were projected in a ten-second loop. In the following years Breer made other short films as non-narrative collages of single images, drawings and short real film sequences, including 1956 Recreation , which was kept Dadaistic . The rapid change of images and motifs was called " retinal collage" .

In 1957, Breer created A Man and His Dog Out for Air for the first time, a film that was completely drawn by him. The engraved images became Breer's preferred animation technique alongside the collage. As a drawing base he mainly used index cards in the 4x6 inch format . Breer's lines were often compared to Paul Klee's drawings. A Man and His Dog Out for Air was shown for several months in New York as the supporting film for Alain Resnais ' Last Year in Marienbad .

In 1959 Robert Breer left Paris and settled in New York. There he made contact with the pop art scene and worked with artists such as Claes Oldenburg . Breer finally gave up painting, but took part in happenings and experimented as a sculptor with kinetic art . In 1960 the documentary film Homage to Jean Tinguely's 'Homage to New York' was made , in which Breer explored Jean Tinguely's object art . In 1964 Breer worked with the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen . His collage-style film Fist Fight was part of the New York screenings of Stockhausen's originals . At 66 , Breer broke away from his “retinal collages” in 1966 and created an abstract animated film, the style of which was further developed in the following years at 69 , 70 and 77 .

In 1970 Robert Breer was involved in the design of the Pepsi-Cola Pavilion at the Expo '70 in Osaka and exhibited life-size moving sculptures, so-called floats . In 1974 he processed his experiences in Japan in the film Fuji , in which he combined film recordings of a train ride with animated sequences. For the animation, Breer used the rotoscopy method developed in the 1910s . Fuji was listed in the National Film Registry in 2002 as an American film worth preserving.

In the following years Robert Breer experimented with a wide variety of animation styles and materials for his films. For the short film LMNO , published in 1978 , a tribute to the cartoon pioneer Émile Cohl , he used pencils and spray paints as drawing materials, among other things . In Swiss Army Knife with Rats and Pigeons again from 1980 combined Breer animations with live-action footage of a Swiss Army knife . In 1988 he worked with photographer William Wegman on the music video for Blue Monday 88 for the British new wave band New Order .

In addition to his work as a filmmaker and sculptor, Breer has also been a lecturer at Cooper Union since the early 1970s . Robert Breer completed his last film, What Goes Up , in 2003. He died on August 11, 2011 in Tucson, Arizona, where he spent the last years of his life. Robert Breer was married twice. He had five daughters. His daughter Emily Breer is also a filmmaker and animator , and his daughter Sabelle Breer is a successful songwriter .

Robert Breer was founded in 1987 by the American Film Institute with the Maya Deren Award honored for his life's work as an independent filmmaker. His films are now available in various film museums , including the Museum of Modern Art . The Anthology Film Archives , founded by Jonas Mekas , Jerome Hill , P. Adams Sitney , Peter Kubelka and Stan Brakhage , included his films in their representative collection of cinematic works of art (The Essential Cinema Repertory) as early as the early 1970s . A comprehensive retrospective of Breer's entire artistic work was opened two months before his death in the Baltic Center for Contemporary Art in Gateshead ; it will be shown from October 2011 to January 2012 at the Basel Museum Tinguely .

Filmography

  • 1952: Form Phases
  • 1953: Form Phases II
  • 1953: Form Phases III
  • 1954: Form Phases IV
  • 1954: Image by Images I
  • 1954: Un miracle
  • 1955: Image by Images II
  • 1955: Image by Images III
  • 1955: Image by Images IV
  • 1956: Motion Pictures
  • 1956: Cats
  • 1956: Recreation I
  • 1956: Recreation II
  • 1957: Jamestown Baloos
  • 1957: A Man and His Dog Out for Air
  • 1958: Par avion
  • 1959: Eyewash
  • 1960: Homage to Jean Tinguely's 'Homage to New York'
  • 1960: Inner and Outer Space
  • 1961: Blazes
  • 1962: Horse Over Tea Kettle
  • 1962: Pat's Birthday
  • 1963: Breathing
  • 1964: Fist Fight
  • 1966: 66
  • 1968: 69
  • 1968: PBL # 2
  • 1970: 70
  • 1972: Gulls and Buoys
  • 1974: Fuji
  • 1976: Rubber Cement
  • 1977: 77
  • 1978: LMNO
  • 1979: TZ
  • 1980: Swiss Army Knife with Rats and Pigeons
  • 1982: Trial Balloons
  • 1986: Bang!
  • 1989: A Frog on the Swing
  • 1993: Sparkill Ave!
  • 1997: Time Flies
  • 2000: Atoz
  • 2003: What Goes Up

literature

  • Ute Holl, Andres Pardey, Laurence Sillars: Robert Breer (exhibition catalog). Kerber Verlag, Bielefeld 2011, ISBN 978-3-86678-530-4 .
  • Wheeler Winston Dixon: The Exploding Eye: A Re-visionary History of 1960s American Experimental Cinema . State University of New York Press, Albany 1997, ISBN 0-7914-3566-0 .
  • Jackie Leger: Robert Breer: Animator . In: Animation World Magazine. Vol. 1, No. 4, July 1996, pp. 24-26.
  • Scott MacDonald: A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers . University of California Press, Berkeley 1992, ISBN 0-520-07917-5 .
  • Lois Mendelson: Robert Breer: A Study of his Work in the Context of the Modernist Tradition . UMI Research Press, Ann Arbor 1981, ISBN 0-8357-1228-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b William Grimes: Robert Breer, Pioneer of Avant-Garde Animation, Dies at 84 . In: The New York Times . August 17, 2011 (accessed August 19, 2011).
  2. ^ David Whetstone: Baltic announce film-maker Robert Breer has died . In: The Journal. August 16, 2011.
  3. ↑ Michael O'Pray: Avant-garde Film: Forms, Themes and Passions . Wallflower Press, London 2003, ISBN 1-903364-56-6 , p. 64.
  4. ^ Scott MacDonald: A Critical Cinema 2. p. 16.
  5. ^ Artist and animation filmmaker Robert Breer dead . In: Die Presse , August 15, 2011.
  6. ^ Robert Breer: My Contacts with Jonas Mekas . In: David E. James (Ed.): To Free the Cinema: Jonas Mekas & the New York Underground . Princeton University Press, Princeton 1992, ISBN 0-691-07894-7 , pp. 213-214.
  7. ↑ Scott MacDonald: A Critical Cinema 2 , pp. 32-34.
  8. ↑ Benjamin Piekut: Experimentalism Otherwise: The New York Avant-Garde and Its Limits . University of California Press, Berkeley 2011, ISBN 978-0-520-26850-0 , p. 141.
  9. ^ Billy Klüver: Pepsi-Cola Pavilion, Osaka 1970 . In: Arch + , No. 149/150, April 2000, pp. 126-133.
  10. ^ Daniel Eagan (Ed.): America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry . Continuum, New York 2010, ISBN 978-0-8264-1849-4 , pp. 714-715.
  11. ↑ Jackie Leger: Robert Breer: Animator , pp. 25-26.
  12. ^ Joan Simon (Ed.): William Wegman - funney, strange . Yale University Press, New Haven 2006, ISBN 0-300-11444-3 , p. 279.
  13. ^ Robert Breer , press release of the Baltic Center for Contemporary Art, June 11, 2011.
personal data
SURNAME Breer, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American filmmaker
DATE OF BIRTH September 30, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Detroit , Michigan
DATE OF DEATH August 11, 2011
Place of death Tucson , Arizona