ORDER TICKETS

This selection of Harry Smith’s early works is everything that currently survives. He numbered his films but did not name them; he let select programmers, including Jonas Mekas, assign titles. And Smith would play the early films silent at first, then relied on chance soundtracks or “automatic synchronization” which often meant playing Dizzy Gillespie records and later The Fugs, then eventually he settled on frequently accompanying the early abstractions with The Beatles. Though he was a fan and did not mind associating his work with such an extraordinarily popular group, he also claimed he thought this selection would enrage arthouse hipsters the most.

These first works undoubtedly reflect his interest in the experience of music and his sometimes synesthesiac response to it, particularly Nos. 1 – 7’s resemblance to “visual music” or graphic scores. From the apparent cellular division of the shapes drawn directly on film in No. 1 to No. 2’s squares resembling moving windows that open to luminous layers of color and organic patterns, as the numbers rise, so does the astonishing complexity of the painted shapes until cut-out collage images start appearing. By No. 10, the screen is filled with snowflakes, skeletons, snakes, dolls, eyeballs, dancers, Hindu gods, books, tarot cards, the Tree of Life, moons and mushrooms moving and morphing ritualistically in the vacuum of space or shifting rooms. An Indian dancer pops through a carpet creating a cut-out of herself which then becomes her synchronized shadow—a recurring primal film within the film and an eloquent encapsulation of the fluid movement between various times, places and dimensions toward which Smith’s art and cinema aspired.

With much of the same imagery as No. 10, this version, in Smith’s words, is a “commentary on and exposition of No. 10 synchronized to Thelonious Monk’s recorded composition ‘Misterioso’…” As P. Adams Sitney explains, No. 10 and 11 “describe analogies among Tarot cards, Cabalistic symbolism, Indian chiromancy and dancing, Buddhist mandalas, and Renaissance alchemy.” Around a central statue-like figure appear this magic show of transforming colors, objects, beings and symbols to the score of one of his favorite tunes by his friend and legendary jazz great who was also apparently one of the reasons Smith relocated from the West Coast to New York.

Film No. 13 (Oz or The Magic Mushroom People) was to be a feature-length, widescreen 35mm film for the masses. On Smith’s alternate route to Emerald City, Oz would be separated into different lands such as “Hieronymus Bosch Land” or “Microscopia” with the iconic characters as originally drawn by W.W. Denslow in L. Frank Baum’s original book. Thanks to Allen Ginsberg’s promotion, Smith’s ambitious visions were matched with generous funding from a group of wealthy heirs and philanthropists, including Elizabeth Taylor. He took full advantage of this unexpected largesse by building an animation studio, hiring friends and keeping drugs flowing over a year of intensive work. The production came to a halt with the overdose death of their primary funder, Henry Phipps, and when the remaining investors were shown the nine completed minutes of film, they had the studio’s locks changed and much of the work destroyed. Film No. 16 begins with only a few minutes of the beautiful psychedelic wonderworld that could have been, and abruptly shifts to film Smith shot in 1968 through his handmade teleidoscope. Only directly related to the earlier scenes through the color scheme, these dazzling, mirrored portals reflect Smith’s intention “to convert Oz into a Buddhistic image like a mandala.”