Dirty Laundry
Absolut Panushka, Jan-Apr 1997.
In 1948, after completing a number of abstract films, Dwinell Grant asked the Baroness Hilla von Rebay of the Guggenheim Foundation for a grant to make a further film.
The Baroness said she already had enough good filmmakers, but needed a critical theory for abstract animation comparable to Kandinsky’s “Concerning the Spiritual in Art.” Grant told her he was no writer or critic, but she remained adamant: a critical text or no grant. Grant finally said he would try, and Rebay informed him that as a Fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, he would have to appear in a suit at all times in public, and must live in a respectable apartment on Park Avenue near the Museum. A considerable chunk of his grant money went into these expenses.
After reading Grant’s text, Rebay summoned him to her office and angrily screamed at him that what he had written was complete nonsense, garbage, a waste of Guggenheim money. She told him he had to repay the grant immediately. “But I can’t,” he replied. “You had me spend much of it on clothing and rent.” “Then you will have to work at the museum until you have paid off this debt,” she said.
When the handsome Grant reluctantly agreed and asked what he could do, the Baroness smiled at him, raised an eyebrow, reached into a desk drawer and drew out a handful of lingerie. “Launder these!” she commanded. Grant took them to the men’s restroom and washed them, then brought them back to Rebay’s office (she was gone) and hung them on the desk, shelves and lamps. He left, never to return.
Dwinell Grant had started out as an abstract painter in Ohio, living in relative isolation from other abstract filmmakers in California and New York. He decided to make abstract films while teaching both art and theater production at a college. His first film, Composition 1 (Themis), uses theatrical lighting to give geometric figures (made of paper, glass and wood) a mysterious presence as they move about.
In 1941 he made Composition 2 (Contrathemis) with conventional drawings on paper lit from beneath and above with dramatic effect. Although Grant did not know Fischinger’s work, the crescent shapes swirling around in some scenes remarkably parallel the forms Fischinger used in the Studies. Grant’s very original (silent) design, however, has a sparser, more constructivist feel than the romantic sensualism of Fischinger’s visual music.
Composition 3 returned to stop-motion of wire, modeled clay and other solid objects with moving light effects. In 1943 he made an experiment with pure color flickers, Color Sequence, but decided the results were too disquieting and rarely screened the film — until the 1970s when experimental filmmakers embraced it as a pioneer work.
The 1945 Composition 4, perhaps his most fascinating work, was composed for stereoscopic projection, with the viewer wearing polaroid glasses to see the depth effects — years before the Hollywood 3-D craze. Grant’s animation (some drawings, some paper cut-outs) plays with the antithesis between hard geometric shapes, mostly square, which push forward and pull back, and the slinky movements of a slender line which can curve like a snake around corners, behind and in front.
Following his experience with the Baroness, Grant made Composition 5, but was dispirited and gave up abstract filmmaking. With the publication of Cecile Starr’s Experimental Animation in 1976, he was rediscovered, and his work screened internationally in the Film as Film Art Exhibition. Encouraged by the positive reception of his films by a young audience, he made Composition 6 in 1985.
Moritz, William. “History of Experimental Animation.” Website. Absolut Panushka, curated by Christine Panushka. (Jan-Apr 1997).