Bruce Conner was an American artist who was born in McPherson, Kansas, on November 18, 1933; he worked with assemblage, film, drawing, sculpture, painting, collage, and photography.
I could have put him in any of those categories but it is his photography that I love, so, here he is.
In 1959, Conner founded what he called the Rat Bastard Protective Association. Its members included Jay DeFeo, Michael McClure (with whom Conner attended school in Wichita), Manuel Neri, Joan Brown, Wally Hedrick, Wallace Berman, Jess Collins, Carlos Villa and George Herms. Conner coined the name as a play on 'Scavengers Protective Society'.
He and his wife were living in Massachusetts in 1963, when John F. Kennedy
was assassinated. Conner filmed the television coverage of the event
and edited and re-edited the footage with stock footage into another
meditation on violence which he titled Report. The film was issued several times as it was re-edited.
He was an active force in the San Francisco counterculture of the mid-1960s as a collaborator in light shows at the legendary Family Dog at the Avalon Ballroom. He also made a number of short films in the mid-1960s in addition to Report and Vivian. These include Ten Second Film (1965), an advertisement for the New York Film Festival that was rejected as being "too fast;" Breakaway (1966), featuring music sung by and danced to by Toni Basil . . .
. . . The White Rose (1967), documenting the removal of the magnum opus by fellow artist Jay DeFeo from her San Francisco apartment, with Sketches of Spain by Miles Davis as the soundtrack; and Looking for Mushrooms (1967), a three-minute color wild ride with Tomorrow Never Knows by The Beatles as the soundtrack. (In 1996 he created a longer version of the film, setting it to music by Terry Riley).
Conner was among the first to use pop music for film soundtracks. His films are now considered to be the precursors of the music video genre. They have inspired other filmmakers, such as Conner's friend Dennis Hopper, who said, “Bruce’s movies changed my entire concept of editing. In fact, much of the editing of Easy Rider came directly from watching Bruce’s films." In 1966, Hopper invited Conner to the location shoot for Cool Hand Luke which starred Paul Newman; the artist shot the proceedings in 8mm, revisiting this footage in 2004 to create his film Luke.
Conner
photographed many of the punk bands in San Francisco. During the 1970s
he focused on drawing and photography, including many photos of the late
1970s West Coast punk rock scene. His 1978 film used Mongoloid by Devo as a soundtrack.
The Bruce Conner papers are held by the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Conner's 1976 film short, Crossroads, was preserved by the Academy Film Archive, in conjunction with the Pacific Film Archive, in 1995. The film features 37 minutes of extreme slow-motion replays of the July 25, 1946, Operation Crossroads Baker underwater nuclear test at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.
The event was captured for research purposes by five hundred cameras
stationed on unmanned planes, high-altitude aircraft, boats near the
blast, and from more distant points on land around the Atoll.
The location was selected in part because the network of islands formed
an almost complete ellipse around the detonation site, allowing for a
comprehensive documentation of the event from numerous angles.
The documentary film featured music by electronic artist Patrick Gleeson and minimalist composer, Terry Riley.
Bruce Conner had twice announced his own death as a conceptual art event or prank; he died on Monday, July 7, 2008, of natural causes, the last survivor of the Bay Area Beat era art scene.
From 2016 to 2017, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art featured an exhibition of Conner's multimedia work entitled, It's All True, which was derived from a letter that the Conner wrote to his friend, collaborator and art collector, Paula Kirkeby, in 2000, listing the many ways he had been characterized in the media (link below). Viewfinder links:
Styrous® ~ Thursday, November 18, 2021
Terry Riley
Net links:
YouTube links:
Net links:
Academia ~ Bruce Conner
The Brooklyn Rail ~ Tribute to Bruce Conner
Bruce Conner ~ Crossroads
KQED ~ Artist who Twice Declared Himself Dead LA Times ~ Conner worked in assemblage, film, sculpture
The New Yorker ~ Bruce Conner’s Crusade of Reinvention
SFMOMA ~ It's All True
Smithsonian ~ Bruce Conner papers
University of Chicago ~ Bruce Conner’s thinking of you YouTube links:
Atomcentral ~ Crossroads Baker
Bruce Conner -
Atomic bomb (edit)
Breakaway (documentary)
A Movie (documentary)
Museum of Contemporary Art ~ Bruce Conner: Mongoloid documentary
Styrous® ~ Thursday, November 18, 2021
