Michael Snow: Sequences : A History of His Art

Since his reception of the Independent Film Award (1968) from the journal Film Culture, Michael Snow''s work has placed in the ranks of such major figures of avant-garde cinema as Stan Brakhage and Gregory Markopoulos, as well as in the company of two other artists-turned-filmmakers: the photographer Robert Frank and the painter Andy Warhol.The image of Michael Snow that emerges from this complete monograph is that of a contemporary Renaissance man. The artist himself captured this diversity in a profile written in the late 1960s: "I am not a professional. My paintings are done by a filmmaker, sculpture by a musician, films by a painter, music by a filmmaker, paintings by a sculptor, sculpture by a filmmaker, films by a musician, music by a sculptor - sometimes they all work together."Mixing reflexive humour with a nuanced grasp of the many faces of contemporary art, Snow''s text acknowledges the difficulties an artist faces in approaching different disciplines when there is a tendency towards purity in all these media as separate endeavours. Within a structure of seventeen chapters, Michael Snow makes a complete overview on his own work, writing the texts and laying out each sequence - an editorial task he knows very well, as is evidenced by this beautiful artist''s book. Certainly, this is an unsurpassed book about one of our most outstanding artists.