Bruce Conner, 1933 - 2008.

Bruce Conner, a San Francisco–based artist known for his assemblages, films, drawings, and interdisciplinary works, passed away Monday afternoon.... His gauzy assemblages of scraps salvaged from abandoned buildings, nylon stockings, doll parts, and other found materials gained him art-world attention, as did A Movie (1958), an avant-garde film that juxtaposed footage from B movies, newsreels, soft-core pornography, and other fragments, all set to a musical score. (In 1991, A Movie was selected for preservation by the United States National Film Registry at the Library of Congress.)

Artforum.

The entry to go to right now is Ray Pride's. He's collected text and trivia, video and links to more.

Updated through 7/12.

Update: Quotes and thoughts from Mubarak Ali and Brian Darr; and Ray Pride rounds up more linkage.

Update, 7/9: Bruce Conner: Mabuhay Gardens, an exhibition of photographs at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, is on view through August 3. Curator Steve Seid remembers Conner at SF360.

Updates, 7/12: "Bruce Conner's ecstatic films - fabricated from bits of old documentaries and educational reels, from mass-cultural snips and snails and recycled movie tales - were at once salvage projects and assertions of individuality in an increasingly anonymous age," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "In their modest way (modesty, in this case, being less a virtue than a worldview), they were acts of resistance, an aesthetic rejoinder to a world drowning in its own image. Just as important, they are generally a blast - witty, exuberant, despairing, engaged, apocalyptic."

Conner "saw his legacy celebrated in a 2000 touring show, puckishly titled 2000 BC: The Bruce Conner Story Part II," notes Ed Halter at Rhizome. "So the next time you get psyched over the latest online video concoction by Oliver Laric or John Michael Boling, take a moment and think of Conner, who might someday be considered one of the great forefathers of 21st century art."

"A Movie (1958), drew its substance from a variety of sources: stock footage, educational films, newsreels," writes Tom Sutpen at Bright Lights After Dark. "Like the assemblages, there was little of significance in each individual snippet, but when joined together the effect was mordant... a term that could be spread evenly across virtually the entire spectrum of American avant-garde filmmaking of that time... and more than a little grim (1961's Cosmic Ray utilized roughly the same technique, but to a more frenzied effect).... But while the earlier works could, as I say, be darkly humorous, 1967's Report is simply dark."

SF360 gathers thoughts from filmmakers Craig Baldwin and Lynne Sachs, curator/CalArts dean Steve Anker and New York curator/archivist Mark McElhatten.

Posted by dwhudson at July 8, 2008 2:38 AM