Gianfranco Baruchello, RIP

Michael Snow Tribute #14

When Michael Snow died last Thursday I felt compelled to amass as many of our books, records, CDs, videos and bits of ephemera of his that I could unearth in the house. This involved going through six different book shelves, three different storage spaces for records and countless archival (and non-archival) boxes where I store things like this. Subsequently I've spend the last few days trying to return the items, or shovelling snow as I've taken to calling it*. 

Tomorrow will conclude the week of tribute posts. It took a while for obituaries to appear, but here are a few: 

“…I was just over 30 when we made the documentary about him. It's a summation in many ways, or an extension, of the work I was doing at the AGO in 1994-1995, organizing screenings, performances and public talks as part of The Michael Snow Project.  It was a really amazing time. I can’t overstate how singular the scale of the project was – major exhibitions at the AGO and The Power Plant, four companion publications (one that I edited), Walking Woman banners designed by Bruce Mau’s studio throughout the downtown core, and complementary exhibitions and programs in various corners of the city from City Hall to the Glenn Gould Studio. All for one living artist. It’s something that we aren’t likely to ever see again."

- Jim Shedden, Manager of Publishing at the Art Gallery of Ontario

"Concurrent with his filmmaking, Snow continued to work across various media, as exemplified by the 1974 artist’s book Cover to Cover, which can be read forward or backward, and his 1987 album The Last LP, which purported to contain field recordings of vanishing ethnic musics but in fact comprised multitracked fragments composed and performed by Snow. His 1979 Flight Stop, a flock of fiberglass geese in flight created from many photos of a single goose, remains on view today at Toronto’s Eaton Centre, with which it is inextricably identified; other public works include The Audience, 1989, a group of over-life-size sculptures of celebrating people painted gold at Toronto’s Rogers Centre; and The Windows Suite, 2006, a series of plasma screens on a downtown Toronto hotel showing “impossible” sequences.

Considered by many to be Canada’s most important artist, Snow is represented in the National Gallery of Canada by seventy-five works; he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1981 and promoted to Companion in 2007 for his contributions to cinema. He has enjoyed retrospectives at multiple venues in Toronto and at the British Film Institute; his work was included in the reopening exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, in 2000, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2005.

Though he worked in a broad range of media, Snow’s own source of inspiration was not external but internal. “Cross-media pollination . . . doesn’t happen to me,” he told the National Gallery of Canada in 2014. “I have ideas, and the wish to attempt something; I muse about it, sometimes for a long time, and then finally ‘attempt’ it.”"

- Artforum

"Michael Snow was born in Toronto in 1928. He attended the Ontario College of Art and initially started out in the world of advertising design. Dissatisfied with his job, he went hitchhiking in Europe and then embarked on a career as a professional musician. He played in jazz clubs in Canada at night; during the day, he created paintings in his studio.

In 1961, he and his wife, the artist Joyce Wieland, moved to New York. Early on, he showed with Poindexter Gallery, the same space that also represented abstractionist painters like Jules Olitski and Willem de Kooning. But it was his ties to the New York film world that ultimately brought him fame.

Under the aegis of Jonas Mekas, Snow was able to screen his works for crowds that included artist Nam June Paik and filmmaker Shirley Clarke. It wasn’t until he screened Wavelength at a festival in Belgium and won the grand prize for it that he realized the following his work had gained."

- ArtNews

*Groan at the pun all you like, but note that the purple invite at the bottom right is for a show called Fresh Snow. See also, Weather Report. 

Michael Snow: Music for Piano, Whistling, Microphone and Tape Recorder

Michael Snow

Music for Piano, Whistling, Microphone and Tape Recorder

New York City, USA: Chatham Square Productions, Inc., 1975

2 vinyl LP set

Edition size unknown

Michael Snow released artists' records (The Last LP, Sinoms) as well as musical records (mostly in the genre of experimental or improvised Free Jazz), both solo and with his band CCMC. This disc, influenced by his association with minimalist composers Steve Reich and Philip Glass, falls somewhere in between the two. 

Originally released in 1975, it was been reissued twice: once on CD (housed in the same artist-designed gatefold LP sleeves, in 1994) - and in 2016 from Song Cycle Records, again on vinyl. The original vinyl was also accompanied a double cassette release (below). 

“During the years 1973 to 1978 I was represented by the Bykert Gallery in New York, which had the most prestigious stable of any gallery I have been associated with: Dorothea Rockburne, Chuck Close, Brice Barden, and other exhibited there. Klauss Kertess, one of the owners of the gallery, started a record company called Chatam Square, which issued the first Philip Glass recordings. In 1975, Kertess asked me if I would like to issue a recording of my own music. I attempted to make an integration of the album jacket design, the label design for the two LPs, and the music itself.

The title of the album Michael Snow: Music for Piano, Whistling, Microphone and Tape Recorder (1975), is quite explicit. The four faces of the album jacket are covered with a printed text that I wrote. By being printed in four diminishing size of type on the four faces (large on the front, diminishing on the two inner faces, and smallest on the back cover), the text design parallels the form of one of the pieces on the album, Falling Stars, which uses a little piano composition I composed and played. By means of recording at different speeds from one tape recorder to another, I made a piece in which this piano “phrase” is first played very fast (and high). The phrase is then repeated, slowing down to a normal recording speed, and then continues to slow down. The pieces takes two sides of an LP, the second side consisting entirely of the slowest version.

One of the two pieces, W in the D, is a twenty-six minute recording of solo whistling I did with a hand-held microphone as an instrument. The work is constructed of a large number of separated whistled  phrases, each of which is preceded by the sound of my breathing in. My breathing in (and out) is recorded differently during each phrase by my moving the microphone closer to or further away from my mouth. Each whistled phrase is a newly invented “line” of no particular genre that could be sustained for as long as I had air in my lungs. The amount of air inspired determined the length of the “line”, and each line is different from its predecessor or its follower. There is no development; each virtuoso whistle is frame by the recorder intake of breath. The piece was “improvised”, but it is not jazz. W in the D was recorded and had its first public appearance prior to its release on the Chatham Square recording. I had been invited to present something in an evening of performance at NYU. I had all the lights in the auditorium turned off and played Whistling in the Dark through the auditorium PA.”

- Michael Snow

Michael Snow Tribute #11: A Survey

Michael Snow

A Survey [Special Edition]

Toronto, Canada: Art Gallery of Ontario/Isaacs Gallery, 1970

124 pp., 20.5 × 21.5 × 1 cm., hardcover

Edition of 125 signed and numbered copies

Published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name, held at the Art Gallery of Ontario, February 14-March 15, 1970, this artist book/exhibition catalogue hybrid combines images of the artist's work alongside family photographs. Designed by Snow himself, the work also includes texts by Robert Fulford, Dennis Young, Richard Foreman & P. Adams Sitney.

A Survey marks the beginning of Snow's use of repurposing earlier works for new. "The whole retrospective thing," he told Joe Medjuck in 1971, "made me look back at my old work for the first time. I was interested in the idea of using the records of old work as the material for new works."

The deluxe edition is housed in a plexiglass slipcase and includes a small magnifying glass in a glassine envelope, a fresnel magnifying sheet, three Walking Women stickers, a nude photographic bookmark, and a 22 x 23" folded print of the work Manual (above, bottom). Each copy is individually annotated, signed and numbered by the artist.

The work is valued at around a $1500, depending on condition. 

"Like Warhol before him, Snow also took on the task of designing the catalogue for his first retrospective, which took place at the Art Gallery of Ontario in February and March of 1970. Unlike Warhol’s catalogue, however, there are some concessions to the traditional exhibition catalogue format, including a list of art works in the show, as well as a biography and C.V. But, that’s as far as it goes. For A Survey, Snow combines elements of the exhibition catalogue with a family scrapbook. The layout of the book reflects Snow’s interest in serial imagery and photographic experimentation. The limited edition hardcover is encased in a clear plastic shell, and includes several extras: a fresnal magnifying sheet; some Walking Woman stickers; a signed and numbered poster picturing drawings of a soft cover version of the book twisted into various shapes; and, notoriously, a laminated ‘bookmark’ picturing, on one side, a photo booth strip picturing the artist’s erect penis and, on the other, an equally intimate portrait of his wife, the artist Joyce Weiland, who, for her exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada the following year, designed her own artist book/exhibition catalogue, True Patriot Love."

- Bill Clarke

 

Michael Snow Tribute #10: Black and White

Jack Vorvis & Michael Snow

Black And White

Toronto, Canada: Track & Light Recordings, 1994

Audio CD, 14 x 13 cm.

Edition size unknown

The first time I met Michael Snow was at a CCMC performance at Nathan Philips Square in May of 1994. Paul Dutton - who I knew from his independent publishing and his role in The Four Horsemen with bpNichol - had suggested I come see him perform with the band (which I think he had only recently joined, though I may be wrong). 

I brought with me Snow's most recent release, a record of Free Jazz, with Michael on piano and Jack Vorvis on drums, which I think I only listened to once (as I'm not a huge fan of the genre). 

Michael signed the disk for my girlfriend at the time and invited us to join him and the band for dinner, at some place around Queen and Yonge long since closed. We were joined by poet Christian Bök (who told me about his forthcoming book Eunoia - which came out seven years later and was worth the wait) and an actor from Phantom of the Opera or one of the other epic theatre pieces of the time. 

I was young and impressionable and it made a big impression. Not because it was a grand meal with important discussions about music and art and poetry and theatre. But because it was just a simple dinner with friends, reminiscing, even bickering about the bill. 

Michael was being feted at the time with the city-wide "Michael Snow Project" (and four accompanying books on his work), and I think this City Hall performance was part of that series. But at dinner he did not hold court as the star. He was humble and sweet and funny. 

Michael Snow Tribute #9: The Last LP

Michael Snow

The Last LP: Unique Last Recordings Of The Music Of Ancient Cultures

Toronto, Canada: Art Metropole, 1987

12" vinyl LP, gatefold sleeve

Edition size unknown

"We lost a legend today - Michael Snow 1928-2023. This record is not his most famous work, but it’s one very close to my heart. I was working at Art Metropole at the time (1987) that Michael was publishing this album with them and I was assigned to work with him on it. I remember a very long car ride the two of us took together to the factory where they were pressing the record. I was just starting out as an artist and we chatted the whole way there and back. I grilled him about how to make it as an artist and he was super encouraging and I remember feeling really excited about the future. Lots of what he said came to be true and although I had many interactions with him subsequently, I will always cherish that particular chat. He was an amazing artist and a wonderful example of how to do it. Rest in peace."

- Micah Lexier

Michael Snow Tribute #6

 

Michael Snow Tribute #1

 

Michael Snow - who died tonight at the age of 94 - has lived in the same home (with his wife, curator Peggy Gale) since 1984. Five years ago the city of Toronto named a lane after him, in honour of his international reputation as an artist. 

Willem De Ridder, RIP

 

Willem de Ridder died last week after a brief illness, on December 29th. The Dutch artist, anarchist, storyteller, publisher, composer, and "chairman" of Fluxus for Northern Europe was 83. His career stretched over seven decades, mostly avoiding the trappings of the art world (which has yet to publish an obituary for him). 

De Ridder graduated from the Academy of Arts in Den Bosch, and shortly afterwards decided to stop painting. After meeting George Maciunas and Nam June Paik in the early sixties, de Ridder was invited to run the Fluxus European Mail-Order House. 

"An enormous crate arrived by freight, delivered to my house," de Ridder told me in 2002. "There was a huge amount of things from Maciunas: suitcases, boxes, all kinds of work. I thought, "Shit, now I have to do something about it." So I arranged all the various editions beautifully and had a friend of mine take a photograph of the display. My girlfriend [Dorothy Meijer] at the time sat in the middle of display. The photo looked so great that I distributed it and made a catalogue of the work, which I also heavily distributed. It listed all of the Fluxus works for sale, with prices and a description. Of course, I didn’t sell anything. Not a single thing."

A recreation of the work (with a cardboard cut-out of Meijer) is now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York (above). 

Together with Wim T. Schippers, de Ridder organized Dutch Fluxus festivals in 1963 and 1964 and, later, the Wet Dream Festival, the first international erotic film festival. 

The latter was a spin-off from Suck: The First European Sex Paper, which he ran as part of the SELF group (Sexual Egalitarian and Libertarian Fraternity)1. Only eight issues were produced over a five year period of the periodical now called "an experimental amalgam of sexual liberation, feminist ferment, alternative visual culture, and literary ambition."2 De Ridder provided an office for the newspaper, and spearheaded the graphic design and artistic content, tapping his network for contributions by John Giorno, Valerie Solanas, Otto Muehl, Thomas Bayrle, Gunter Rambow, Ed van der Elsken, and others. 

Previously, the artist had founded the music newspaper Hit Week, which published 32 issues between 1965 and 1969. He also co-founded the "counter culture" nightclubs Provadya and Paradiso.

“When I started at Paradiso, everyone could just jump on stage. And if you didn’t know what was going to happen, we didn’t either,” De Ridder recalled in 2018. “In no time it was packed and they came from all over the country.” The venue - operational for over fifty years - has hosted performances by Adele, Arcade Fire, David Bowie, James Brown, Nick Cave, Duran Duran, Guns ‘n’ Roses, Hole, Ice Cube, Curtis Mayfield, Willie Nelson, Nirvana, the Pixies, Prince, The Ramones, The Rolling Stones, Sonic Youth, U2, Frank Zappa, and countless others.3 

De Ridder collaborated with performance artist and porn star/activist4 Annie Sprinkle, with whom he was also romantically involved, from 1978 to 1980. 

A consummate story-teller, with a captivating voice, de Ridder hosted a weekly radio show on Amsterdam radio station Radio 100 for over twenty years. 

“I was only interested in going into unknown territories, the insecure field of life. Most people are terrified of it. When I brought audiences into that state during my performances, there was panic, but there was always an idiot who said: “It’s ART!” The audience was immediately relieved. Oh… it’s art. Thank God. We were getting scared. The word “art” destroys all life. That’s why I step out of it. Museums are a sort of mausoleum.”

- Willem de Ridder 5

1. Other members of SELF included William Levy, Jim Haynes, Germain Greer and Heathcote Williams. 

2. Alison M. Gingeras, Document Journal. 

3. https://www.dutchnews.nl/features/2017/08/amsterdams-paradiso-from-flower-power-to-punk-and-beyond/

4. In 1996, Annie Sprinkle became the first porn star to get a doctoral degree, earning a PhD in human sexuality from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco.

5. Flash Art, 2016

[Willem de Ridder, top right, with Ben Patterson, Geoffrey 

Hendricks, Philip Corner, Eric Andersen and Alison Knowles]

[Willem de Ridder and Ben Patterson at CultClub, 2012]

[Willem de Ridder, Annie Sprinkle and unknown couple] 

[Willem de Ridder and Myrto Semmoh in 2018]