2010
Vernacular Modernism and Harry Smith
Oslo Academy of Fine Art
April 21-22, 2010
There is no doubt that vernacular histories such as American early blues music are highly refined artistic expressions. Artist and archivist, Harry Smith, insisted that symbolic developments across cultures were fundamentally related, and found many distinctions to be arbitrary at best. Tensions between so-called high and low culture is a dynamic constructive force that drives culture forward to express the needs and realities of every new age.
Full schedule, including a talk with Harry Smith Archives director Rani Singh and screenings of Early Abstraction, Late Superimpositions, Seminole Patchwork Quilts, and Heaven and Earth Magic, available here.
posted 16 April 2010
John Zorn Plays to Harry Smith Films
Anthology Film Archives
April 1, 2010
We're a little late getting the news out here (Lou Reed made a surprise guest appearance!), but a conscientious fan managed to get it up on our Facebook page, which generally has more recent updates. Details on the Anthology event here.
posted 16 April 2010
Chelsea Hotel: Ghosts of Bohemia / Harry Smith, Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe, Michael Auder, Jonas Mekas
DOX Center for Contemporary Art, Prague
4 December 2009 - 15 February 2010
This exhibition doesn’t aspire to present a comprehensive history of the Chelsea Hotel and its bohemia. Instead, it focuses on three seminal artists associated with that legendary place - Harry Smith, Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe – to explore the changing notions of bohemia from the ‘50s to the ‘80s. The work and lives of Harry Smith, Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe represent multiple chapters in the story of America’s bohemia. They all struggled with modern contradictions between material progress and spiritual pursuits or between the artist’s critical attitude to society and his dependency on it. Their work and lives also expose a changing attitude to success. By comparing Smith, Warhol, Mapplethorpe and also other two artists, Jonas Mekas and Michel Auder, a complex picture emerges, revealing not only differing notions of bohemia’s “otherness” and various attempts to address the above contradictions, but also describing bohemia’s trajectory in the second half of the 20th century. The exhibition highlights the crucial role of bohemia in modern culture and ask what is its meaning today when we may be witnessing the demise of bohemianism? Or its fundamental transformation?
posted 22 December 2009
Two upcoming Harry Smith: The Avant-Garde in the American Vernacular book events
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
7:00 PM
Book Soup
8818 W. Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90069
Harry Smith: The Avant-Garde in the American Vernacular editors Rani Singh and Andrew Perchuk, plus special guests, will discuss the life and works of Harry Smith.
~~~~~~~~~~~~Thursday, January 28, 2010
7:00 PM
Hammer Museum
10899 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90024
Free; limit one ticket per person on a first come, first served basis.
Join Patti Smith and friends at the Hammer Museum for a night of film, live music, and remembrance of filmmaker, musicologist, ethnographer, bohemian, and occultist Harry Everett Smith.
posted 25 November 2009
Harry Smith: The Avant-Garde in the American Vernacular now available for pre-order!
This new, wide-ranging study of Harry Smith's life and work, published by the Getty, will be available on November 30th. It's being sold for pre-order on Amazon and at the Getty bookstore.
Filmmaker, musicologist, painter, ethnographer, graphic designer, mystic, and collector of string figures and other patterns, Harry Smith (1927-1991) was among the most original creative forces in postwar American art and culture, yet his life and work remain poorly understood. Today he is remembered primarily for his Anthology of American Folk Music (1952)--an idiosyncratic collection of early recordings that educated and inspired a generation of musicians and roots music fans--and for a body of innovative abstract and nonnarrative films. Constituting a first attempt to locate Smith and his diverse endeavors within the history of avant-garde art production in twentieth-century America, the essays in this volume reach across Smith's artistic oeuvre.
In addition to contributions by Paul Arthur, Robert Cantwell, Thomas Crow, Stephen Fredman, Stephen Hinton, Greil Marcus, Annette Michelson, William Moritz, and P. Adams Sitney, the volume contains numerous illustrations of Smith's works and a selection of his letters and other primary sources.
Andrew Perchuk is assistant director for Contemporary Programs and Research at the Getty Research Institute. Rani Singh is senior research associate in Contemporary Programs and Research at the Getty Research Institute as well as the director of the Harry Smith Archives.
posted 25 November 2009