Between 1945–46, the pioneering experimental filmmaker Marie Menken (1909–1970) made her first solo film: a four-minute, black-and-white work entitled Visual Variations on Noguchi.
While alone in Isamu Noguchi’s MacDougal Alley studio in Greenwich Village, New York City, Menken moved quickly between and around his sculptures, rapidly manipulating a hand-cranked Bolex camera to achieve radical shifts of perspective.
Curator Kate Wiener brings the work of the pioneering experimental filmmaker Marie Menken to the museum. It’s a celebration of her wonderful, daring and strange 4 minute film, visual variations on Noguchi. The Anthology Film Archives lent these films to the museum allowing viewers to see Menken’s first solo film and the show’s centerpiece. The film is a riotous and frenetic portrayal of Noguchi’s work in motion. Shot with a 16mm handheld camera in Noguchi’s former Macdougal Alley studio in 1945 or 1946. Menken’s film takes us on a wild journey in and around Noguchi’s sculpture, letting us see them from an utterly unique perspective. As you’ll hear Menken’s mirage of moving images is paired with a jarring soundtrack, that was pieced together by the experimental composer Lucia Dlugoszewski and added in 1953. While the film can be overwhelming and disorienting, reportedly having early viewers run from it screaming from the sheer energy of it all, it does have a lot to teach us about looking anew, about finding beauty in fracture and embracing the glorious state of bewilderment. Something all three of the artists share.
The show will reveal the residences between Menken, Noguchi and Dlugoszewski’s seemingly different practices and celebrate Menken’s invitation to bring the full force of our moving bodies to Noguchi’s work. Truly embodying his statement, “Sculptures move because we move.”
