Tony Conrad, Michael Snow, Jonas Mekas, various
I Was a Flawed Modernist : Collected Writings by Paul Sharits, Collected Stories about Paul Sharits
Author(s) Tony Conrad, Michael Snow, Jonas Mekas, Ken Jacobs, David Franks, Yann Beauvais
Format softcover book
Year 2017
Language(s) English
Pages 394 pages
Description
Paul Sharits was a pioneering visual artist of the structural film movement alongside artists such as Tony Conrad, Hollis Frampton and Michael Snow. Sharits' work focuses primarily on installations that incorporate endless film loops, multiple projectors and experimental soundtracks.
Sarah Markgraf is a professor of film studies at Bergen Community College in New Jersey. Her writings have been published in Millennium Film Journal, Afterimage, Film Quarterly and Metaphor and Symbol.
The renowned experimental filmmaker Paul Sharits (1943 - 93) comes to life in two ways in "I Was an Imperfect Modernist: Collected Writings and Stories of Paul Sharits". One section of the book presents orally recounted stories about this colorful artist, many from artists of their own renown, such as Carolee Schneemann, Robert Longo and Tony Conrad. The other section offers all available writings by Sharits, many of them - including letters to Stan Brakhage and Henry Holmes Smith - previously unpublished. Sharits' writing reveals a powerful intellect, but also, at times, a sense of fragility not typically associated with such a flamboyant figure. In this way, this volume presents a vivid and sometimes contradictory picture of an artist whose films remain just as radical today.