Towers Open Fire

Directed by Anthony Balch from a script by William S. Burroughs (1963)— experimental montage, semi-derived from the text of The Soft Machine featuring readings by Burroughs, amongst other non-sensika from Brion Gysin.

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^{Maria Casarès, Edouard Dermithe & Jean Marais ↑}

‘Orphée is a film that can only exist on the screen… I try to use the cinema not as a fountain pen, but as ink.’

‘I bring several myths together and intermingle them. Ancient myth and modern myth. Drama of the visible and the invisible. Two worlds which cannot interpenetrate attempt this interpenetration. It results in the invisible world becoming visible and humanising itself to the extent of betraying its substance; that the visible world enters into the invisible world and does not mingle with it…

When one is making a realistic film, the figured line themselves up without difficulty, according to the rules of mathematics. If one invents an unreal rhythm, one must combine the figures and regulate the rules. The least mistake would turn the work into a fantasy, which I disapprove of, and which lacks force. One may like or detest Orphée, it is still true that if one studies the machinery with care, one will find nothing unbelievable in its details. The incredibility of the whole only exists for those who can see the world from their own point of view and within the four walls of their room.

The propaganda which pre-judges its influence is always wrong. The only propaganda is that which allows the crowd to share an intimate thought of a man, to awake the crowd to vague imaginings and to clarify them. As long as one does not admit this point of view, one will bore the crowd with spectacles which it has the bother of living and which it will not see when off duty.’

- Jean Cocteau, 1950

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Vasarely

(dir. Kassovitz 1960)— an abstract film on the artwork of Op-Art master Victor Vasarely, documenting an exhibition of that painter’s work at the Denise Renée Gallery.

Iannis Xenakis composed the music for the film, in the form of a piece entitled NEG-ALE (for piccolo, horn, cello and percussion) but later withdrew the work from his catalogue.

Film restored from a 16mm print, the audio remastered.

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About Victor Vasarely

Internationally recognized as one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Vaserly is the acknowledged leader of the Op Art movement, and his innovations in color and optical illusion have had a profound influence on many modern artists.

In 1947, Vasarely discovered his place in abstract art. Influenced by his experiences at Breton Beach of Belle Isle, he concluded that “internal geometry” could be seen below the surface of the entire world. He conceived that form and color are inseparable. “Every form is a base for color, every color is the attribute of a form.” Forms from nature were thus transposed into purely abstract elements in his paintings. Recognizing the inner geometry of nature, Vasarely wrote, “the ellipsoid form… will slowly, but tenaciously, take hold of the surface, and become its raison d’etre. Henceforth, this ovoid form will signify in all my works of this period, the ‘oceanic feeling’…I can no longer admit an inner world and another, an outer world, apart. The within and the without communicate by osmosis, or, one might rather say: the spatial-material universe, energetic-living, feeling-thinking, form a whole, indivisible… The languages of the spirit are but the supervibrations of the great physical nature.”

Vasarely was born in Pecs, Hungary in 1906. After receiving his baccalaureate degree in 1925, he began studying art at the Podolini-Volkmann Academy in Budapest. In 1928, he transferred to the Muhely Academy, also known as the Budapest Bauhaus, where he studied with Alexander Bortnijik. At the Academy, he became familiar with the contemporary research in color and optics by Jaohannes Itten, Josef Albers, and the Constructivists Malevich and Kandinsky.

After his first one-man show in 1930, at the Kovacs Akos Gallery in Budapest, Vasarely moved to Paris. For the next thirteen years, he devoted himself to graphic studies. His lifelong fascination with linear patterning led him to draw figurative and abstract patterned subjects, such as his series of harlequins, checkers, tigers, and zebras. During this period, Vasarely also created multi-dimensional works of art by super-imposing patterned layers of cellophane on one another to attain the illusion of depth.

In 1943, Vasarely began to work extensively in oils, creating both abstract and figurative canvases. His first Parisian exhibition was the following year at the Galerie Denise Rene which he helped found. Vasarely became the recognized leader of the avant-garde group of artists affiliated with the gallery.

In 1955, Galerie Denise Rene hosted a major group exhibition in connection with Vasarely’s painting experiments with movement. This was the first important exhibition of kinetic art and included works by Yaacov Agam, Pol Bury, Soto, and Jean Tinguely, among others.

During the 1950’s, Vasarely wrote a series of manifestos on the use of optical phenomena for artistic purposes. Together with his paintings and Vasarely prints, these were a significant influence on younger artists. According to the artist, “In the last analysis, the picture-object in pure composition appears to me as the last link in the family ‘paintings,’ still possessing by its shining beauty, an end in itself. But it is already more than a painting, the forms and colors which compose it are still situated on the plane, but the plastic event which they trigger fuses in front of and in the plane. It is thereby an end, but also a beginning, a kind of launching pad for future achievements.”

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Happy Birthday, Mr. Lynch.

We have the lady in the radiator on tape, singing just for you.

^{Sound: Film Notebook. Image: David Lynch, ‘Eraserhead’ (1977).}

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