A History of Artists' Film and Video in Britain, 1897-2004

by Curtis, David

• ISBN13: 9781844570966
• ISBN10: 1844570967
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-05-27
• Publisher: British Film Inst

Summary

In recent years the use of film and video by British artists has come to widespread public attention. Jeremy Deller, Douglas Gordon, Steve McQueen and Gillian Wearing have all won the Turner Prize (in 2004, 1996, 1999 and 1997 respectively) for work with the moving image. This fin-de-siecle explosion represents the culmination of a long history of activity by artists and experimental film-makers, famous and less well known. Since its invention in the 1890s, artists have responded to cinema's challenge, whether in pursuit of visual poetry, the exploration the art form's boundaries, the hope of political impact, or more simply, the desire to re-invigorate such time-honoured fine art subjects as portraiture and landscape. Their work represents an alternative history to that of commercial cinema in Britain - and a tradition of art-making that has been only intermittently written about.

Author Biography

David Curtis is Senior Research Fellow at the AHRB British Artists' Film & Video Study Collection, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. From 1977 to 2000 he was responsible for artists' film at the Arts Council of Great Britain. In 2003-4 he curated Tate Britain's largest-ever show of artists' film and video, A Century of Artists' Film in Britain. He was involved in the London Filmmakers' Co-op in the late 1960s and ran the cinema at both the Drury Lane and Robert Street (IRAT) Arts Laboratories. His book Experimental Cinema (1970) was one of the first books to survey the international film avant-garde.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. V
Introduction
Artists	p. 1
Economics	p. 3
Artists
The Film Society	p. 9
Little Magazines	p. 12
Internationalism and Festivals	p. 13
Schooling Artists	p. 23
The London Filmmakers Co-op	p. 25
Into the Gallery	p. 37
Video as Video	p. 40
The 1990s	p. 46
Institutions
Sponsored Films	p. 53
Museums and Collections	p. 58
Post-War Recovery	p. 60
Experimental Film Fund	p. 62
The Arts Council	p. 66
The BFI	p. 74
Funders and Broadcasters	p. 78
Film and Fine Art
The Camera	p. 87
Landscape	p. 94
Portrait	p. 103
Still Life	p. 112
Collage	p. 114
Pop Art	p. 119
Absurd	p. 124
Psychedelic	p. 127
Sculptors' Films	p. 128
Abstraction	p. 131
Figurative Animation	p. 144
Narrative: Fiction, Documentary, Polemic
'Studies in Thought'	p. 153
1920s Amateurs	p. 157
Grierson's Avant-Garde	p. 158
War	p. 165
Post-War Revival	p. 168
Free Cinema	p. 171
Ambitious Narrative	p. 173
Work	p. 183
The Production of Meaning	p. 186
Image and Voice	p. 194
Expanded Cinema and Video Art
Film as Film	p. 205
Conceptual Art and Early Installations	p. 213
Video Art and Television	p. 220
Expanded Cinema	p. 228
Other Structures	p. 234
Gidal's Legacy	p. 236
Later installations	p. 240
Politics and Identity
Sexual Liberation?	p. 247
Feminism	p. 253
New Romantics	p. 261
Identity	p. 266
The Body	p. 275
Social Space	p. 281
Conclusion	p. 291
Index	p. 295
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.