A History of Artists' Film and Video in Britain

321 Pages·2006·209.143 MB·English

by  David Curtis

A HISTORY OF ARTISTS’ FILM AND VIDEO IN BRITAIN
1 Seemingly So Evidently
Not Apparently Then,
Frances Hegarty and Andrew
Stones, site specific
installation with live and
recorded video at Sheffield
Midland Station,1998.
A History of Artists’ Film
and Video in Britain
David Curtis
Publishing
First published in 2007 by the
BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE
21 Stephen Street, London W1T 1LN
The British Film Institute’s purpose is to champion moving image culture in all its richness and diversity across the
UK, for the benefit of as wide an audience as possible, and to create and encourage debate.
Copyright © David Curtis 2007
The publisher and author gratefully acknowledge the support of
the Arts Council England and Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design
in the publication of this book.
Front Cover illustration: Dryden Goodwin, One Thousand Nine Hundred and Ninety-Six, 1996.
(Back Cover, top to bottom) Hans Richter and others, Everyday, 1929/67; David Larcher, VideØvoid, 1993–5; David
Hall, Television Interventions (aka Seven TV Pieces), 1971; Ian Bourn, The End of The World, 1982.
Back Cover illustration: Tony Hill, Point Source, 1973.
Cover design: Ketchup/SE14
Text set by D.R. Bungay Associates, Burghfield, Berkshire
Layout and design by Ketchup/SE14
(cid:2)British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library(cid:2)
(cid:45)(cid:55)(cid:38)(cid:50)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:29)(cid:27)(cid:28)(cid:16)(cid:21)(cid:16)(cid:28)(cid:24)(cid:24)(cid:25)(cid:27)(cid:16)(cid:20)(cid:29)(cid:26)(cid:16)(cid:26)
(cid:73)(cid:45)(cid:55)(cid:38)(cid:50)(cid:2)(cid:29)(cid:27)(cid:28)(cid:16)(cid:21)(cid:16)(cid:28)(cid:23)(cid:28)(cid:27)(cid:21)(cid:16)(cid:24)(cid:21)(cid:26)(cid:16)(cid:21)
(cid:73)(cid:52)(cid:40)(cid:42)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:29)(cid:27)(cid:28)(cid:16)(cid:21)(cid:16)(cid:28)(cid:23)(cid:28)(cid:27)(cid:21)(cid:24)(cid:16)(cid:21)(cid:27)(cid:16)(cid:28)
Acknowledgments
This book was commissioned by and would not have seen the light without the encourage-
ment of Rob White, sadly no longer an editor at the BFI. Rebecca Barden and Tom Cabot
have ably picked up the project and steered it to its conclusion.
The following friends read the manuscript at various stages, and their comments and
corrections have enormously improved it: A.L. Rees, Felicity Sparrow, William Raban, Guy
Sherwin, Christophe Dupin, Malcolm Le Grice and Mike O’Pray. Biddy Peppin has lived
with it as long as I have, and I’m grateful for her patience and her deft sub-editing. My
colleagues at the Study Collection Steven Ball and Lara Thompson have been supportive
throughout, and our intern Poppy Shibamoto helped organise many of the images. Gary
Thomas at Arts Council England generously supported the making of colour plates, which
we all believed was essential to this project. Too many individual artists to list here have
replied to arcane questions and searched through cupboards for images, and I’m grateful to
them for their support. All errors of fact and thought that remain are mine alone.
D.C., June 2006
Contents
Acknowledgments v 1.2: Institutions
Sponsored Films 53
Introduction Museums and Collections 58
Artists 1 Post-War Recovery 60
Economics 3 Experimental Film Fund 62
The Arts Council 66
PART ONE The BFI 74
Funders and Broadcasters 78
1.1: Artists
The Film Society 9 PART TWO
Little Magazines 12
Internationalism and Festivals 13 2.1: Film and Fine Art
Schooling Artists 23 The Camera 87
The London Filmmakers Co-op 25 Landscape 94
Into the Gallery 37 Portrait 103
Video as Video 40 Still Life 112
The 1990s 46 Collage 114
Pop Art 119
Absurd 124
Psychedelic 127
Sculptors’ Films 128
Abstraction 131
Figurative Animation 144
2.2: Narrative: Fiction, Documentary, 2.4: Politics and Identity
Polemic Sexual Liberation? 247
‘Studies in Thought’ 153 Feminism 253
1920s Amateurs 157 New Romantics 261
Grierson’s Avant-Garde 158 Identity 266
War 165 The Body 275
Post-War Revival 168 Social Space 281
Free Cinema 171
Ambitious Narrative 173 Conclusion 291
Work 183
The Production of Meaning 186 Index 295
Image and Voice 194
2.3: Expanded Cinema and Video Art
Film as Film 205
Conceptual Art and
Early Installations 213
Video Art and Television 220
Expanded Cinema 228
Other Structures 234
Gidal’s Legacy 236
Later Installations 240

Introduction
Artists :Economics
ARTISTS
At the end of the 1920s, as commercial film production in Britain appeared on the edge of
extinction, and as cinema as a silent art form seemed threatened by the literalness of sound
recording, artists and writers joined the debate about film’s future and potential. Particularly,
they questioned cinema’s dependence on visually opened-up but intellectually cut-down
versions of stage melodramas. In ‘An Open Letter to the Film Industry and to All Who are
Interested in the Evolution of the Good Film’ the Hungarian photographer, film-maker and
teacher Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, living in London, wrote:
Shall we look on while the film, this wonderful instrument, is being destroyed before our eyes
by stupidity and dull-witted amateurism? The unbiased observer cannot fail to see, to his great
distress, that the film production of the world is growing more and more trivial every year. To
the trained eye and mind, the present-day film can give no pleasure”1.
Moholy argued that the industry’s exclusion of ‘the experimental film creator [and] the
free independent producer’ was bringing about its own downfall, and urged support for a
‘pioneering group’ of makers (himself no doubt included). More radically, Virginia Woolf
speculated that cinema had yet to realise its potential as a purely visual language, in which
‘thought could be conveyed by shape more effectively than by words’.2
This book is about how artists living and working in Britain3have continued this debate
about the moving image’s potential. It is a history of artists’ engagement with the moving
image in all its forms. The term ‘artist’ in this context is not confined to those painters and sculp-
tors who occasionally make films (though they too made their contribution), but identifies
people who have worked with the moving image with a particular freedom and intensity,
often in defiance of commercial logic, and knowingly risking the incomprehension of their
public. Importantly, film and video art as discussed here is not a phenomenon restricted to one