[Frameworks] Robert Breer 1926-2011

[Scott Ross]

Really sad to hear that... I am a big fan.

When I read this today and looked for news about his death, I was surprised
to find almost no trace of Breer on Wikipedia. So I spent a couple hours
drafting an article on him... please add or edit as I just started with
basic info from online sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Robert_Breer

-Scott Ross

On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 4:03 AM, Pip Chodorov <frameworks at re-voir.com>wrote:

> Dear FrameWorkers,
>
> Very sad to relate that Bob Breer passed away yesterday.
>
> He was a good friend, a very funny man, and a great artist.
> He chose film, at a time when his painting career was taking off.
> He lived in Paris for ten years and showed at
> Denise René's gallery - big abstract paintings.
> Then he made a flipbook and got interested in abstract animation.
> He felt that his abstract compositions were maybe
> just steps in a continual flow of motion from one
> to another.
> In the 1950s, gallery artists didn't show films.
> (I guess that changed in 1966 when Warhol made Chelsea Girls).
> His fellow painters became big: Oldenberg, Lichtenstein, Rauschenberg...
> But Breer loved movement.
> He made sculptures that move v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y.
> He made films that move very fast.
> He was ahead of his time.
> His films were not popular...
> He was an inventor.
> His father made cars (his father made the first
> streamlined car for Chrysler after having
> demonstrated, in the Wright brothers' wind
> tunnel, that their cars were designed to go
> faster backwards than forwards!)
> And his father also made home movies - in 3D - with a Bolex.
> Breer moved back to America and made experimental
> films that pushed film art into new directions.
> He was one of the founding filmmakers of the New York Filmmakers'
> Cooperative.
> He also made big sculptures that would creep
> around the art space, for example at Expo '70 in
> Osaka.
> He taught at Cooper Union for many years and
> sensitized a new generation of artists to
> experimental film.
> Over the last 15 years, many museum shows
> combined his paintings, moving sculptures
> ("floats"), and films. He felt that finally he
> could have a career as an artist and as a
> filmmaker.
>
> We will miss Bob Breer.
>
> -Pip Chodorov
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