Michael Snow

by King, James;

  FIGURES 64 AND 65. Michael Snow, two stills from Wavelength, 1967.

  The film’s final movements can be read as Snow’s valediction to the WW phase of his career and a suggestion that he will now pursue photography. Regina Cornwell has suggested that this shift reflects in part a rejection of hierarchal forms in favour of “relationships [of] continuity and repetition rather than contrast and interplay.” The WW figures are contrasting repetitions that “interplay” with each other. In the future, the emphasis will remain with repetition, but dissimilar objects will be examined in photographs sequential in nature.

  Snow has claimed that Wavelength resembles more a Vermeer than a Cézanne. Like in the interiors carefully rendered by the Dutch artist, the inner drama in Snow’s film takes place in a quiet, sedate domestic space; like the French artist, space is always being reconfigured as the zoom moves forward.

  As Regina Cornwell has also pointed out, the work of Stan Brakhage bears comparison to that of the abstract expressionists because both are dominated by a “romantic subjectivity.” As such, his films “become repositories of his inspired and mythopoetic vision in abstruse and recondite images.”9 Snow does not venture in this direction. In fact, it can be argued, in Wavelength he avoids the “gesture.” In so doing, according to the film historian P. Adams Sitney, Snow created a new kind of experimental film that Sitney labels “Structural.”

  In a letter to Mekas and Sitney, Snow claimed that what his film “attempts to be is a ‘balancing’ of different orders, classes of events and protagonists.… The film events are not hierarchal but are chosen from a kind of scale of mobility that runs from pure light events, the various perceptions of the room, to the images of moving human beings.”10 Put another way, Brakhage is a romantic whereas Snow is a classicist who attempts to investigate and balance reality.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN:

  NEW SURFACES

  By 1967 Snow had in large part obtained what he had wanted to achieve in New York City. There, he exchanged his experiments on WW figures for a new preoccupation: film. At first, this seems a considerable shift in direction. That is really not so. In Toronto, Snow, in a large number of oils, had constructed his own takes on abstract expressionism and post-painterly abstraction; his early sculptures employed some minimalist approaches. In a way, he had exhausted such avenues before he settled in New York City. The WW figures gave him the opportunity to constantly challenge his imagination to create exciting new variations. The connection between the WW figures and films resides at a very basic level: the Walking Woman looks as if she is in motion, but she is stationary.

  Films allowed Snow to add actual movement to his work. It permitted him to explore a new kind of surface texture. Standard Time (1967) is a good example of this new turning. It has the feel of “a home movie … shot somewhat spontaneously” in Snow’s loft at Chambers Street. This film includes some completely circular pans, in which the camera moves at different tempi; some pans are left to right, others are right to left; there are also up and down tilts. Parallel to the movements of the camera are sounds from a radio moving in and out of different stations and increasing and decreasing in volume. Snow’s description of the film is short but to the point: “This is my home, wife, camera, radio, [pet] turtle movie. Circular and arc saccades and glances. Spatial, parallel sound.” In form, Standard Time is the deliberate opposite of Wavelength, and, provocatively, does not live up to its title.

  FIGURE 66. Michael Snow, still from Back and Forth, 1969.

  Back and Forth (1969), set in a classroom, concentrates on motion rather than Wavelength’s light. As one critic observed, in this film Snow is able “to completely suffuse form with content, while not relinquishing the traditional elements of characterization and acting.”1 The camera pans the same distance from side to side at medium speed, slows down and then goes extremely fast. Events take place in the classroom, including a mock fight. In his own commentary on the film, Snow points out that it is concerned with perception, attempts to capture a new kind of spectator-image relationship and is “sculptural because the depicted light is to be outside, around the solid (wall) which becomes transcended/spiritualized by motion-time.” In comparison, Wavelength is more “transcended by light-time.”2

  In Artforum, Manny Farber claimed that the beauty of this film resided in its hardness. “Snow has mobilized a mirthless, lonely subject, a classroom, into an expressive weapon.… As the back-forth image speeds up to a hair-raising psychotic clip, light appears to filter off the sides of a horizontal cube of greenish whiteness. All literary connections in a film image have been junked and … sculpted-in-motion space — has been made the jump-off point of a film design that doesn’t rely on any behaviour-sensory patterns of the spectator.”3

  FIGURE 67. Michael Snow, still from One Second in Montreal, 1969.

  One Second in Montreal (1969) is a black-and-white silent film with no motion. It consists of holds on thirty photographs taken in the winter of some parks in Montreal. Each photo is first shown for an exact number of frames; then the durations become longer and longer; after the longest durations, the holds get shorter and shorter until the final image is one frame in length. The photographs were badly printed offset lithographs sent to Snow years before as part of an invitation to submit ideas for a competition. The artist recalls, “I did not enter the competition, but I was moved by the rather barren, artless photos and kept them.”4 For Snow, the photographs had a nostalgic aura — he had lived in Montreal for five years as a child.

  In some ways, Snow’s early films — all extremely formalist — invite the viewer to gaze at them as if they are stationary works of art, such as sculptures. In eschewing traditional narrative film and employing “structural” techniques, they demand a level of attention not usually paid to cinematic works. Instead, they insist that the viewer exercise patience in order to see how films are created, how motion functions. Snow’s films are ultimately about what we can see if we look carefully. In addition, he confronts the viewer. Have you really looked? Did you really see what is placed in front of you?

  What these four films have in common is a determination on the part of their creator to form a new aesthetic independent of both traditional cinematic form and Brakhage’s lyrical brand of cinema. These films do not tell stories in any traditional way and, moreover, they do not emphasize the interiority of their creator. Rather, they demonstrate aspects of looking that have been overlooked in earlier cinema. P. Adams Sitney provides an excellent description of this new kind of cinema which he calls structural: this is a “cinema in which the shape of the whole film is predetermined and simplified, and it is that shape which is the primal impression of the film. The structural film insists on its shape, and what content it has is minimal and subsidiary to the outline.”5

  In the work of a lyrical filmmaker such as Brakhage, the sensibility of the creator is foregrounded; in the work of a structural filmmaker such as Snow, that mediating presence is absent. Snow uses cinema to create a new ontology; for him, it must have a distinct existence separate from all other arts. In fact, it must rid itself of any vestiges of painting at the very same time it paints in a new way using movement, shadows, and sound. For him, traditional narrative cinema is compromised because it too readily integrates elements from other genres.

  As Snow was well aware, experimental cinema engages viewers in a new way. Instead of waiting for a narrative to unveil, the audience must turn its attention to the meaning of the images appearing and flickering on the screen and respond actively to them. These demands force viewers to become engaged with what the surface and forms on the screen mean independent of traditional storytelling. Meaning resides on the surface — and the usually rectangular shape of cinema is a form of framing.

  Film, as it liberated Snow’s imagination even further, provided him a segue into photography, a form he had explored in Four to Five; later that project was transformed into NYEEC. Atlantic (1967) comes directly out of the experience of making Wav
elength. The final photo in that film was taken at New York’s South Ferry Terminal, and Atlantic is composed of a grid of thirty similar photographs taken at the same place and arranged on tapered tin boxes. On the bottom of each of the thirty framings is a black-and-white photograph displaying the surface of the water in motion. Each of these photographs resembles a frame in a film reel. Moreover, the work stands 244 centimetres high, 170 wide, and 38 deep and thus has an arresting sculptural presence.

  FIGURE 68. Michael Snow, Atlantic, 1967.

  As the spectator walks alongside this construction, some of the images vanish, obscured by the sides of the boxes. If the spectator stands back, a multitude of different views — all shimmering — can be glimpsed. Technically, Atlantic may be a sculpture composed of photographs, but the result is in large part cinematic because of the sense of movement elicited.

  The last performance of the WW figures was at the Ontario Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal. Each of the eleven figures (slightly larger than life size) was made of brushed stainless steel placed over plywood cords. Some were single cut-out WWs, but several were three-dimensional “solids.” The central piece (Big Wall Figure) was a free-standing, four-sided wall piece with a pie-like sculptural form removed from the corner of the rectangle. It also had a “passage made (in effect) by passing the Walking Woman shape across the face of the ‘wall.’” Snow assigned each figure a particular location around, near, and within the pavilion. In essence, he created an environment or installation in which the stationary walking women allowed spectators to walk around them. The small community of WWs also acted as hosts to the pavilion in that they welcomed members of the public to stroll around and in them. For Snow, this large project came at the perfect time “because my attentions were increasingly moving elsewhere.”6

  FIGURE 69. Michael Snow, Expo Walking Woman (Big Wall Figure), 1967.

  Leaving the WW behind allowed Snow to return to sculpture in a new way since the works in this medium from 1967 are “related to aspects of the camera. These are all pure objects concerned with their means of construction, but also are concerned with the work as a Director of Attention.”7 Put another way, Snow’s work as a filmmaker and photographer released a new impetus in his work as a sculptor because those two media had made him even more aware of the interactions possible between surface and movement. The titles of some of the works call attention to how they are “Directors of Attention”: one sculpture is about confusion, bewilderment, and, ultimately, blindness; another is about non-blindness.

  Snow has offered several analogies to describe Blind: “it’s like a three-dimensional cross-hatched drawing; it’s an object that monumentalizes fading in and fading out; and in another film-related resemblance, it’s like a zoom.”8 In many ways, Blind can be related to Wavelength. In each, there is a profound sense of loss.

  This piece consists of four porous partitions framed in steel and clad in aluminium mesh. There are four different gauges for the panels, which are mounted parallel to each other and form a cube on three sides. The viewer can look at this 244 x 244 x 244 cm cage-like form from the outside and, in so doing, realize it has the appearance of a place of confinement, a prison. In fact, as a viewer from the outside looks at persons already wandering into this piece, they look fuzzy and ghostlike — very much removed from everyday reality. When the viewer enters this structure and then walks between the panels, the “depth of field” of the resulting maze is entangling and causes confusion. Where am I and where am I going? is the usual response. In a sense, the work’s construction causes one to go blind. What looked discernible from the outside becomes much more mysterious when its interior is experienced. The title also obviously relates to Gerald Bradley Snow and, in this sense, captures the sense of isolation and loneliness he experienced.

  FIGURE 70. Michael Snow, Blind, 1968.

  When Blind and three other sculptures were shown at the Poindexter in February 1968, John Perrault in the Village Voice realized that “they were instruments of perception that focus the environment and make it visible. They are ‘frames’ that intensify visual experience. They are efficiently made but brutal in appearance. They were not made to be looked at, but to be ‘looked through.’ An art work is not necessarily an object to see; it may also be an object that creates a way of seeing.”9 Hilton Kramer in the New York Times was castigating: for him this was sculpture raised “to the level of brutalized absurdity.… They manage to suggest the atmosphere of a chic concentration camp, but that is about all the imagination discernible in them. Ugh!”10

  Sight (1967), like the earlier Window, is a two-sided sculpture. One side can be seen from the outside; the other is a black plastic surface with incised white lines, cut mainly in a grid pattern, although there are some diagonals. A portion of the plane section has been cut away to allow a hole through which a spectator can look at anything in his range of view; the other surface, in contrast, is armour plated — a viewer can see only inside the gallery. The contrast between unlimited and limited viewing is the trick here.

  FIGURE 71. Michael Snow, Abitibi, 1969.

  In the imposing Abitibi (1969) — named after the area in western Quebec known for logging — what should be the frame has taken over (usurped) the area traditionally reserved for an image, and at the edge of what would have been the frame, cement oozes out. The cement replaces the oils that would have been used on a canvas. The cement is repulsive in colour and texture, although the highly varnished wood panel is attractive. Here, in a complete reversal of viewer expectations, Snow uses sculpture to make a commentary on another genre: oil painting.

  FIGURE 72. Michael Snow, Membrane, 1969.

  Other works move in a very different direction. 432101234 (1969) and Membrane (1969) are experiments in minimalist art. The first employs C-clamps to compress two metal bars across a 6.3 centimetre-thick rectangle of sponge rubber and onto a rectangular plane of chrome-plated metal. The title refers to the transition that takes place on the surface of the mirror from one space to another. The name Membrane refers to the rubber material stretched across the wood. These two works are companion pieces in that in the former, the sponge rises up and sheds its reflection on the mirror-like chromed steel; in the latter, the rubber stretches downward to cast its reflection on the chromed steel. In both pieces, the pliant, stretched sponge and the rubber are contrasted to the hardness of the steel.

  By 1970, Snow had established the paradigm that he would follow for the remainder of his career. First, he would always be guided by his instincts as to what to investigate. In New York, his conviction that an artist need not focus on a single genre was strengthened. Of course, he had already learned much on this score in Toronto. Manhattan reinforced that conviction. Second, following from this resolve, he would never be confined to one or two genres — in fact, he would often seamlessly blend several together. Third, in his artistic practice, Snow would concentrate even more than before on the role of perception.

  FIGURE 73. Michael Snow at Isaacs Gallery with Half-Slip on the wall, 1964.

  The last is key in understanding Snow’s work. He would create works that frequently question their own authenticities as aesthetic entities; his creations often do not look like traditional pieces of art in whatever genre or genres they exist, and that is exactly the point. From the outset, someone looking at pieces of Snow’s work has to let go of previously held convictions — and pay attention to its formalist qualities.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN:

  CANADIANS IN MANHATTAN

  Joyce’s time in Manhattan strengthened her works, especially those in oils, some of which employ fully saturated pop-like colours. As well as continuing to paint, she also started working in quilted cloth and making mixed-media constructions. The couple always worked separately, but they discussed each other’s accomplishments on a daily basis. Joyce and Michael often, during long walks, talked about what they were trying to accomplish. “It was important to us that we were working on our own thing,” Michael recalls. “I
think it was pretty unique … that we were both pretty good and we were both working on different stuff.”1

  Her time in New York enlivened Joyce’s interest in making films. In 1958 she had made the four-minute Tea in the Garden, and the following year, with Michael, the twenty-minute A Salt in the Park. Before the couple left Toronto, it could be claimed that they were equally intrigued with the possibility of making films. While in New York, Wieland completed four films: Larry’s Recent Behaviour, Patriotism: Part I, Patriotism: Part II, and Water Sark. By 1967, Michael had received considerable acclaim for his work in cinema; she had obtained almost none.

  In Joyce’s view, she was the victim of the male establishment. She and her husband shared many friends who were directly involved in the independent film movement, but these connections were of no use in helping her work get attention. Michael was — and remained — deeply loyal to his wife when she suffered such slights. That sense of loyalty did not, however, extend to sexual fidelity.