A Beautiful Deep Dive Into Our Worldwide Arts + Culture
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A Beautiful Deep Dive Into Our Worldwide Arts + Culture |
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WHO IS ED EMSHWILLER? CalArts Legend and Video Pioneer |
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by Gordy Grundy As readers know, our Formerly Known As Cinema is quite enthusiastic about Francis Ford Coppola's new film 'Megalopolis.' We appreciate the balls and the ambition. A curious name, Ed Emshwiller, popped up in relation to Coppola and his new film. The first significant screening of the film 'Megalopolis' was held at the Universal CityWalk IMAX Theater on March 28, 2024 for friends, family, Hollywood studio elite and film distribution companies eager for a piece of the anticipated blockbuster pie. As the bewildered audience strolled out of the theater with tongues wagging, the resulting hullabaloo was a cacophany of love, death and defeat for the new film. Opinions and critiques flew like richotecting bullets. Film journo Jordan Ruimy reported a source, "It's a Francis Ford Coppola film and, also, feels like it was made by Ed Emshwiller." Emshwiller! Who could be so significant? Who is Ed Emshwiller? The 2022, old-Hollywood film 'Babylon' ends with a montage sequence timed to a heartbeating score that saves the curious film. Audiences were finally able to engage emotionally with this rousing conclusion of images from the history of cinema, a collection of great film moments alongside significant technical innovations. Director Damien Chazelle included a fuzzy clip of a radiating, smiling face. It was the work of Ed Emshwiller. In this following clip, Emshwiller's 'Sunstone' can be seen at the 0:38 second mark:
Technology moves faster than history. Emshwiller, the digital animation pioneer, is remembered as fuzzy as the early images on a low resolution computer screen. Emshwiller (1925 - 1990) distinguished himself in several different ways. Throughout the Fifties and the Seventies, Emshwiller was best known as an illustrator of sci-fi pulp novels and magazines. He was the winner of 5 Hugo Awards, the literary prize for the best science fiction or fantasy works. An article, 'The Prolific Pioneering Pulp Art of Ed Emshwiller,' shows the many styles of his work, Click Here ... ... A collection of images can be found on Artnet, Click Here ... ... And more in this collection, Click Here
Emshwiller gravitated to film, visual effects and technologies. A 1964 Ford Foundation grant encouraged him. Work on documentaries and shorts multiplied. Below-the-line Hollywood is a very small community, especially in the tech circles. Surely Coppola and the inventive Emshwiller had some sort of relationship. Most significantly, Emshwiller was the producer of 'Sunstone,' a 1979 3-D, 3-minute computer-generated video with Alvy Ray Smith, a computer scientist who would later be instrumental in the creation of Lucasfilm. The video broke new ground.
Emshwiller founded the Computer Animation Lab at the California Institute of Arts or CalArts, where he had a long tenure of many accomplishments. CalArts is a busy beehive and Emshwiller was a legendary presence. A life well-lived: Below, we have attached the 'Biographical/Historical' section from the Ed Emshwiller papers at the CalArts Institute Archives. (1) Has the work of Ed Emshwiller had an influence on Coppola's "Megalopolis?" We shall see. Interest in the beleagured film is waning. Exhibitors have little faith. As I temporarily hang my typewriter in the middle of the Pacific, I truly hope to see this art film on an IMAX screen. I seriously doubt I shall be so lucky. If I am reduced to a screening on my iPhone, I will nonetheless applaud the passionate history and risk of Coppola's film.
POSTSCRIPT: Like any fan devoted to the medium, I did see 'Megalopolis' on opening day, one man's effort to contribute to the all important first weekend box office tally. I sadly saw the Coppola epic on a medium-sized screen, as IMAX was reserved for 'Beetlejuice Beetlejuice' and the kiddie 'The Wild Robot.' No, Ed Emshwiller was not an influence in the film. Maybe a friendly wink. The film visualizes an organic architectural future. In my study of Emshwiller's work, architecture was not a feature. _________________________ GORDY GRUNDY is an arts writer, columnist and Editor-in-Chief of Art Report Today and Formerly Known As Cinema
(1) Biographical / Historical Abstract expressionist painter, popular science fiction illustrator, experimental filmmaker, and California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) faculty member, dean, and provost, Edmund (Ed) Alexander Emshwiller was born February 16, 1925 in Lansing, Michigan. Art lessons and weekend classes at the Chicago Art Institute and Corcoran Gallery supplemented his elementary and high school education, fostering his artistic potential at a young age. After serving in the U.S. Army (1943-1946), Emshwiller studied painting and illustration at the University of Michigan, where he met Carol Fries, who he married. Upon graduating in 1949, Emshwiller went to Paris and studied graphics at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. A year later he moved to New York where he continued his graphic studies at the Art Students League. From 1951 to 1964, Emshwiller worked as a painter and freelance illustrator for science fiction magazines in New York alongside raising three children with Carol. The couple became members of Cinema 16, a film society that supported and screened the works of experimental filmmakers. Inspired to try his hand at film, Emshwiller made a series of shorts documenting the progress of his paintings and illustrations. He received an award for best artistic achievement from the Creative Film Foundation for his first public film, "Dance Chromatic," in 1960. The use of live dancers superimposed with images of animated paint and color became a recurring aesthetic in his personal works. During the 1960s and early 1970s Emshwiller was active in the New American Cinema Group in New York, making experimental films such as "Thanatopsis" (1962), "Relativity"(1966), and "Image, Flesh and Voice"(1969); cine-dance, which includes the films "Totem" (1963), "Fusion" (1967), and "Film with Three Dancers" (1970), the latter of which was made in collaboration with some of the dancers of the troop Pilobulus; documentaries such as "George Dumpson’s Place" (1964), "Art Scene U.S.A." (1966), and "Project Apollo" (1968); low-budget features including "Time of the Heathen" (1962); and, multimedia performance pieces such as "Bodyworks" (1965). In 1971 Emshwiller made his first videotape. For most of the 1970s Emshwiller was an artist-in-residence at the Television Lab, WNET/13 in New York City, where he produced a number of unconventional videotapes such as "Scapemates" (1972), "Crossings and Meetings" (1974), and "Dubs" (1978). In 1979 Emshwiller made "Sunstone," his first digital computer animation videotape at New York Institute of Technology. Shortly after that Emshwiller moved to California and joined the faculty of CalArts where he served as dean of the School of Film/Video (1979-1981). Throughout the 1980s, Emshwilller continued to work in film, video, and computer graphics, creating "Skin Matrix" (1984), and the multimedia work, "Hungers" (1988). With the aid of distributors in New York, Canada, and Europe, and his membership and administrative positions in film cooperatives, Emshwiller’s works were disseminated throughout the world to libraries, institutions, and individuals. He traveled extensively to conferences, festivals, and institutions to lecture, serve as a panel moderator, and screen his films. Emshwiller received grants from the Ford, Guggenheim, and Rockefeller Foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and from the New York State Council of the Arts. He also served as the provost of CalArts (1981-1985) as well as a faculty member in the School of Film/Video (1985-1989). Emshwiller died from chronic lymphocytic leukemia, July 27, 1990. Sources: “Emshwiller biographies and film descriptions,” Series 5, Box 28, Folder 2
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