In artistic creation, many students may have heard the word "experimental". For example, experimental images, experimental photography, experimental avant-garde art, and so on. "Experimental" seems to be a word accompanied by uncertainty, but it also implies the meaning of avant-garde and avant-garde. In the process of making the portfolio, many students also hope to inject some experimental breakthroughs into their portfolios.
But "experimental", in the field of art, is often a simple thing to say and easy to do. Not only because it is difficult to understand, but also because it is difficult to control, but sometimes, many students may also have such an experience - those so-called experimental images, it seems, are not so pioneering or "experimental", why are they still called experimental images? so:
Today, we have shared with you 5 film artists who are very avant-garde in all of them, and they can almost be said to be experimental. Let's find the answer from them together~!
Jan Svankmajer
Jan Svankmajer / Jan Sven Meyer is a director artist from Prague, Czech Republic, who, as a student, has been passionate about surreal genres of film and filming, and this hobby has been extended into his own experimental animation, he is good at stage sets, but also good at using some objects for anthropomorphic performance.
In his works, even if there are actors involved, it is also a "personified" state, and he expresses human desires through infinite imagination and surreal creative techniques. His animated films are often contradictory and antagonistic, ranging from the crazy grotesque to the uncomfortable crampedness and witty black humor.
In Svankmajer's animated films, his experimentation is more reflected in the story under the lens than in the language of shooting, and he is good at using absurd and eye-popping stories, combined with strange things, to express his ideas, because in his view: "The purpose of creating new illusions is only to bring everyday things back to life." ”
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In this short, dialogue-free short film that lasts less than 20 minutes on set, the emotions of human nature are amplified to an uncomfortable degree. The film is divided into 3 parts, breakfast, Lunch, lunch, two people with different identities sit face to face silently, representing the active side of the man from the breakfast quiet eating phase; to the Chinese meal to show mutual incompatibility, began to swallow any object on the table, even if they are not food; and then began to eat a part of their body at dinner.
The whole picture of the film, from the initial joke to the later makes people feel a little nervous and scared. Can't help but feel frightened, under human nature, desire controls our thoughts and behaviors, and all the cynicism is eaten by the picture in the story.
Nobuhiko Obayashi
Obayashi / Nobuhiko Obayashi can be said to be a very representative Japanese filmmaker, in his films, almost every frame is doing experiments, and even many people have said: Obayashi's films are too experimental for me to accept. He is good at combining delicate emotions with grotesque ideas, and he is even better at using unique stop frames and fast cuts to render this fusion of emotions. In his film scenes, everything is weird, but full of wonderful beauty.
From the age of six, he tried his best to create small animations, and at the age of 15, he completed an internship at the shooting site of Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story. His film talent continued until he entered the university, unlike most of the decent students who studied filmmaking at that time, he often shot 8mm and 16mm homemade films during his college years.
Influenced by the American avant-garde art of the time, Obayashi's films began to take on a style that was both psychedelic and slightly terrifying. From a very early stage, Obayashi Has been experimenting, not only the expression of ideas, but also the control of equipment and shooting techniques, this advanced experimental style has been extended from short films to some of Obayashi's later commercial films, as well as advertising films.
Compared with most filmmakers' films for the audience, Obayashi's films tend to be more personal, and more often like a record of personal ideas.
In 1977, Nobuhiko Obayashi's horror comedy film < House > released, and this film is still regarded as a classic by many people today. In the film, the girls still show a fantastical beauty under the atmosphere of horror, and the visual effects of collage and fusion frames give people a very cult feeling.
Recommended videos < Legends in the afternoon, sometimes encounter vampires >
Although < House > is Obayashi's masterpiece, this film is not inferior, continuing the distinct Obayashi Nobuhiko style that has been formed in the < House >, collage, mixing and jumping. Although the plot is old-fashioned, that is, the story of the girl falling in love with a vampire, but throughout the nearly 40 minutes of the film, the experimental nature has always existed.
In this film, Obayashi's crazy obsession with experimental style overflows the screen, the picture is strange and unique, and although the form is a bit chaotic, it is absolutely avant-garde. The highly surreal nature also makes this film full of cult-specific fun under the color of horror.
Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès/ Georges Mérieux is no exaggeration to say that he is the most influential artist in the history of cinema. What makes him most unusual and most impressive is his imagination, which may stem from his own identity as a magician. And Yang Shiyun Meyer, whom we talked about at the beginning of today, is the most famous of Méliès' many fans.
In addition to this interesting professional identity, Méliès is the first director in the history of film and television, he completely brought his magic into the film, using magician-like ideas and inspiration to create a lot of film shooting methods, slow motion, fast motion, stop re-shooting, fade out, superimposed and so on film shooting techniques. For Méliès, cinema is not only an artistic medium that carries the story, but also art itself.
He created many "firsts" in film and television, and most of these firsts have become classics in film and television, and have affected the development of movies. During Méliès' lifetime, he shot hundreds of films, but limited to the technology of the time, most of them were short film genre films. Even under such restrictions, he still created a lot of artistic expression of film, such as integrating dramatic elements into films and using dramatic structures to build film story structures.
In general, Méliès's experimental nature to the film itself is to discover the magic of the film again and again. He changed film from a recording method to an art form, and through editing and post-creation, transformed film technology into a new artistic language. Perhaps for Méliès, cinema is also a wonderful way for him to accomplish magic.
Recommended video < Moon Travels >
This film is one of Méliès's most representative works, not only caused a huge sensation at the time, but still has a fantastic sense of beauty when watched today. The film is based on "From the Earth to the Moon" and "The First Man who Landed on the Moon", two classic science fiction novels that have left their names in the history of science fiction. Based on this inspirational background, the film also became the first science fiction film in the history of cinema.
The film was shot in two versions, one in black and white and the other in hand coloring. Long before this film, movies have been a way to record and describe reality, and although many previous films have begun to have humor, plot, horror and other styles, science fiction is still a field that no one has ever touched. On the one hand, it was technically difficult to achieve, on the other hand, most of the filmmakers' ideas at that time were still stuck.
Maya Deren
Maya Deren / Meya Dylan, an artist with multiple identities, in addition to being a filmmaker, is also an anthropologist, dancer, actress, poet and so on. Deren was born into a Ukrainian Jewish family, but due to his family's superior family, Deren received a very good and relatively open American education from an early age. These diverse identities and educational experiences have also brought a lot of influence to her film career.
If the experience of her childhood was to plant the seeds at the beginning of everything, then the acquaintance and love with her husband Alexandr Hackenschmied led the two to a high point in the art of cinema. Alexandr Hackenschmied is a film director who influenced and co-created deren, creating many of the little classics in the history of experimental imaging.
Just as most artist couples complement each other and influence each other in their artistic creations, Deren and her husband achieve each other, creating a series of influential experimental images. Deren is good at taking women themselves as a starting point, through experimental images, to explore delicate emotions and deep senses, so as to stimulate multiple feelings of vision and thinking.
Although most critics and moviegoers agree that Deren's films tend to be "surreal", Deren has always denied her "surrealist" label, and she has always tried to convey her breakthroughs with images. She is good at using rhythmic shots and dramatic pictures to create a psychological atmosphere. She often uses seemingly mundane and trivial records to stimulate people's deep rational discussions.
Recommended video < Afternoon Confusion >
This film is Deren's first and most famous film, the surrealist color of the film, through the lens, is constantly exploring the relationship between time, space, female self and society. The "chaos" in the film begins with a hand reaching down, leaving a flower on the side of the road. The heroine of the film, Deren, picks up the flower, and a series of chaotic, dreamy, but also intensely disastrous stories occur.
This film seems to be discussing a woman's half-dream, half-awake, seemingly unreal dream, but in fact it is Deren discussing gender identity, and sexual feminism, this film appeared at a time when women's social roles have undergone great changes, and Deren used this film to cause people to think, but also very directly revealed his own ideas and intentions.
Hans Richter
Hans Richter / Hans Richter, one of germany's most influential artists, has been a graphic painter, avant-garde artist and others before officially stepping into the field of cinema. Like Deren, Richter received a very good education from an early age because of his family's wealth. Influenced by the German Cubist art trend, Richter began to try to explore the field of video as a "Cubist artist".
In his view, art is often not just the art of the visual dimension itself, more often, it needs to carry a certain value, especially from the social, political, war and other fields.
This identity background and ideas made Richter react immediately after he began to create an image dimension. He combines Cubism, abstract art, and imagery to create a unique style of abstract image. Moreover, because he is good at black and white painting art, he also integrates this artistic concept into the film.
For example, he will use repetitive elements or graphics to carry out the general dynamic expression of abstract paintings, which is a work with great visual rendering power, which makes his films have a sense of rhythm and rhythm that is different from the works of other video artists.
Recommended video < Rhythm No. 21 >
This is a short film of only more than 3 minutes, there are no characters in the film, there is no dialogue, and throughout the 3 minutes of time, the screen is filled with different variations and arrangements of black and white squares. These squares continue to move with the rhythm of the music, and the concept of "rhythm" is presented here in a concise and clear visual way.
This short film was the most famous and most well-received of Richter's early experimental images, making Richter one of the first filmmakers to produce experimental images. This little short film was not created to attract the public or cater to the public's tastes, but rather an artistic experiment that Richter really carried out for himself.
After seeing the experimental works of these 5 video artists above, we return to the topic discussed at the beginning of today-
What is experimental? How to understand the experimental nature of art?
At the image level, what does experimental refer to?
And, how do we subtly incorporate experimentation into our own work without rolling over?
First of all, experimental is actually a time-sensitive word, why do many films or works of art now seem not "experimental", and even a little cheap and uninteresting? Because experimentation is often based on the point in time at which the artwork was created.
Just like Méliès, who we introduced today, several of the film production and editing methods he was good at, in our current view, may not even be worth 1 dime, but at that time, it was true that the transition of film technology became the beginning of film art. These were the most experimental attempts at a time when cinema was still used to document and tell stories, and it was these attempts that continued to drive the entire film industry.
Second, how to understand experimentality? As for experimental artistic creation, whether it is a moving image or a static art painting, it does not refer to a simple aspect, not only to technology, but also not only to ideas. It is multifaceted and integrated. It may be that different artists will focus on practice, but in general, it is based on the overall aspect of artistic creation itself.
For example, in Svankmajer's works, he is good at experimental combination of objects, then his experimentality is more reflected in his use of different creative materials and media to express experimental themes, to make breakthroughs in anthropomorphic images; and in Obayashi's experimental works, his experimental nature is both creative and covers the innovation of film shooting methods...
Finally, how do you incorporate experimentation into your portfolio? To tell the truth, experimentality is difficult to control, especially for students with zero foundation or weak foundation in artistic creation, it is actually more difficult, but it does not mean that experimentality is not achievable in the concentration of works.
My advice is that when you don't have full control over your ideas and creative forms, don't be experimental at the beginning, or to put it bluntly, just to show your sense of innovation, regardless of the need to experiment. After looking at the works of several artists today, I think you can also find that no matter where they experiment, they have never departed from their themes and expressed their original intentions. You don't experiment just to show off your skills.
The premise of all experiments is actually around your work itself. After clarifying the main line of creation and development, then we can try to make "experimental" attempts from the perspectives of materials, theme divergence, expression forms, and creative media.
Public number: yiyiarts (One One Art Study Abroad)