Jordan Belson
Jordan Belson (born 1926, Chicago, Illinois) is an American artist and filmmaker who has created nonobjective, often spiritually oriented, abstract films spanning six decades.
Belson studied painting at the University of California, Berkeley. He saw the "Art in Cinema" screenings at the San Francisco Museum of Art beginning in 1946. The films screened at this series inspired Harry Smith, Belson and others to produce abstract films. Belson's first abstract film was Transmutation (1947). His first films were made with his scroll paintings. Belson's work was screened later as part of the "Art in Cinema" series.
He was the recipient of a grant from the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, which later became the Guggenheim (Oskar Fischinger recommended him to the MoNOP curator Hilla von Rebay). Much of his work is meant to evoke a mystical or meditative experience.
In 1957 he began a collaboration with sound artist Henry Jacobs at the Morrison Planetarium in San Francisco, California that lasted until 1959. Together they produced a series of electronic music concerts accompanied by visual projections at the Planetarium, the Vortex Concerts. Belson as visual director programmed kinetic live visuals, and Jacobs programmed electronic music and audio experiments. This is a direct ancestor of the "Laserium©"-style shows that were popular at planetaria later in the century. These shows involved projected imagery, specially prepared film excerpts and other optical projections specifically developed for use on the hemispherical screen. Not just an opportunity to develop new visual technologies and techniques, the sound system in the planetarium enabled Belson and Jacobs to create an immersive environment where imagery could move throughout the entire screen space, and sound could move around the perimeter of the room.
Belson also created special effects for The Right Stuff (1983).
Belson is still making films and fine art today. His latest film "Epilogue" was commissioned for the Visual Music exhibition at the Hirshhorn/Smithsonian, and completed in 2005. It was produced by Center for Visual Music [1] with support from the NASA Art Program. The New York Times described it as having "lush and misty optics".
Filmography
- 2005 Epilogue
- 2001 Bardo
- 1997 Mysterious Journey
- 1985 Northern Lights
- 1984 Fountain of Dreams
- 1982 Quartet
- 1980 Infinity
- 1977 Music of the Spheres
- 1975 Cycles) (with Stephen Beck)
- 1973 Light
- 1972 Chakra
- 1971 Meditation
- 1970 World
- 1969 Cosmos
- 1968 Momentum
- 1967 Samadhi
- 1965 Phenomena
- 1964 Re-entry
- 1962 LSD (unfinished)
- 1961 Allures
- 1959 Séance
- 1958 Raga
- 1953 Mandala
- 1952 Caravan
- 1952 Bop-Scotch
- 1951 Mambo
- 1948 Improvisation #1
- 1947 Transmutation
References
- Jordan Belson [2] Bibliography at Center for Visual Music library, contains links to articles online
- Keefer, Cindy. Space Light Art: Early Abstract Cinema and Multimedia, 1900-1959. White Noise. Ernest Edmonds, Ed. (Melbourne: Australian Centre for the Moving Image, 2005). Revised version is online at CVM Library.
- MacDonald, Scott. "Interview with Jordan Belson", A Critical Cinema 3: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998)
- Moritz, William. [3] "Jordan Belson, Last of the Great Masters", Animation Journal (Orange, CA: Chapman University, 1999), online at CVM Library.
- Sitney, P. Adams. Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde 1943-1978 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979) (Reprinted, second and third editions)
- Youngblood, Gene. Expanded Cinema (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1970)
- Keefer, Cindy. "Cosmic Cinema and The Vortex Concerts." Cosmos: The Search for the Origins. Arnauld Pierre, Ed. (Madrid: El Umbral/Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 2008).
Secondary source
- Brougher, Strick, et al. Visual Music: Synaesthesia in Art and Music Since 1900 (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2005) contains little info not found elsewhere, but some good images
