05 Feb

Posted at 08:15h in Film by

In 1968 Leo Hurwitz and Manny Kirchheimer filmed an early version of Cezanne’s Still Life with Apples, to be called Journey into a Painting at the Museum of Modern Art for the American Federation of Arts. Unlike that film, the expanded Discovery in a Painting, made from the same materials, would be voiceless, the images would simply flow to reveal through framing and editing the intimate interior of the artist’s world. There would be no one but your own sensibilities to guide you. Writing notes like, “I see what an intense and penetrating eye gives back through paint: the warmth of...

05 Feb

Posted at 08:00h in Film by

Leo Hurwitz’s 29-minute film, Discovery in a Painting, is a beautiful sampling of his personal passion for seeing. Filmed at MoMA in New York City, this film is one of the various ways Leo explores the importance of seeing with open eyes. For Leo, seeing doesn’t just involve seeing what is there. More radically, perhaps, seeing means seeing what others don’t want to see; and seeing what is hidden but can be discovered if we stop to take a look. Watching Discovery in a Painting, I couldn’t help but wonder why Leo chose Paul Cezanne’s Still Life With Apples (1895-1898) as...

29 Jan

Posted at 08:00h in Film by

This Island, a Leo Hurwitz film - directed and edited by Leo with co-editor Peggy Lawson and cameraman Manfred Kirchheimer - is a film about a museum: The Detroit Institute of Art. But, This Island isn’t just about a museum. It’s about discovering the meaning in art; and that requires looking deeply and openly to see what is there. If we let him, Leo Hurwitz has a few things to teach us about seeing. We are witnesses to that fact as we watch all his films. Light and the City and Discovery in a Landscape in his The Art of...

18 Dec

Posted at 08:00h in Film by

The Sun and Richard Lippold begins with Leo Hurwitz’s voice, reminiscing. “In the studio of Richard Lippold, where being a musician as well as a sculptor, he played Bach and Pachelbel for me, and where we talked for many hours, an idea came to me which is now this film.” This film, of course, is The Sun and Richard Lippold; a short film about the Sun, inspired by Richard Lippold, the artist, and his Sun. Lippold’s Sun began as a permanent installation in the Oriental Room at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, then moved to a larger...

11 Dec

Posted at 08:00h in Film by

John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917 – 1963) was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on November 22. 1963. I was sixteen years old when his murder was announced over the loud speaker in my high school English class. School was dismissed. I walked home along the train tracks with a close friend, both of us shaken by the suddenness of death. Leo Hurwitz’s Essay On Death speaks to death’s randomness. Of course, JFK’s murder wasn’t random, but the fact that death can come out of nowhere at any time means that we live constantly with the fragility of life. At the same time, we...

20 Nov

Posted at 09:00h in Film by

This Piece is Written By Manfred Kirchheimer with Edits By Tom Hurwitz The first tape recorders were stolen from the Nazis. Enter John T. Mullin and Bing Crosby. Just after the Allies’ victory in Europe, Mullin was investigating a rumored secret German radio-wave ray for the US Army. He came up dry on the ray, but found two portable tape recorders and a bunch of recording tape, both of which were virtually unknown outside of Germany.  Bing Crosby (no dummy) put up the initial investment to bankroll the Ampex Corporation and it’s line of tape recorders. A revolution was in the...