The Whitney Museum of American Art has announced that it will exhibit Pioneering Experimental Filmmaker Harry Smith, the first solo exhibition of artist, filmmaker, collector, and groundbreaking musicologist whose compendium of song recordings, the Anthology of American Folk Music, laid the groundwork for the popularization of folk music in the 1960s.
During his 50-year career, Smith made renegade and innovative use of the changing recording and distribution technologies, from his voracious approach to record collecting to experiments with early tape-recording systems to groundbreaking manipulations of abstraction and collage in film. Smith was an innovator in collecting, organizing, and sequencing images and artifacts that structure the ways we understand and share culture and experiences today. The exhibition introduces his life and work within a museum setting for the first time and features paintings, drawings, designs, films, and sound recordings.
The exhibition, designed in partnership with artist Carol Bove, distills his remarkable and varied production into a number of distinct sculptural spaces. Smith’s early hand-painted abstract films, his film of Seminole textiles, and Andy Warhol’s Screen Test of Smith will be presented alongside stills from the liner notes of the Anthology of American Folk Music (1952).
The artist’s rarely seen film Mahagonny (1970–80) creates a portrait of urban America with a mesmerizing, hectic, and repetitive showcase of four films presented simultaneously while an original score from the Brecht-Weill opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1930) plays at high volume. A small black box theater will immerse visitors in Smith’s collage film Heaven and Earth Magic Feature (c. 1957–62).
Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith, will exhibit Oct 4, 2023–Jan 2024 at the Whitney Museum of American Art
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Harry Smith, Algo Bueno [Jazz Painting], c. 1948–49
Lightbox projection from 35mm slide of lostoriginal painting. Estate of Jordan Belson, San Francisco, CA
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Harry Smith, Untitled stereopticon cards, c. 1949–50
Gelatin silver prints mounted on cardboard, 3 1/2 x 7 in. each (8.9 x 17.8 cm). Estate of Jordan Belson, San Francisco, CA
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Harry Smith, Abstract film studies (two slides projected alternately), 1951
Lightbox, approx. 20 x 29 in. (50.8 x 73.7 cm). Estate of Jordan Belson, San Francisco, CA
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Harry Smith, Untitled [1052], c. 1951
Ink and watercolor on notebook paper, 9 1/2 x 6 in. (24.1 x 15.2 cm). Estate of Jordan Belson, San Francisco, CA
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Harry Smith, Untitled, c. 1951
Watercolor, pencil, ink, and gouache on paper with cut-out, approx. 14 x 11 in.(35.6 x 27.9 cm). Collection of John Zorn, New York
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Harry Smith, Untitled, September 28 and October 19, 1951
Ink, watercolor, and tempera on paper, 34 × 27 1/2 in. (86.4 × 69.9 cm). Collection of Raymond Foye, Woodstock, NY
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Harry Smith, Untitled, c. 1952
Watercolor and ink on paper, 9 x 6 in.(22.9 x 15.2 cm). Lionel Ziprin Archive, New York
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Harry Smith, Untitled [Zodiacal hexagram scratchboard], c. 1952
Ink on cardstock, 7 x 5 1/2 in. (17.8 x 14 cm). Lionel Ziprin Archive, New York
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Harry Smith, Untitled [Demoniac self-portrait], c. 1952
Scratchboard, 8 1/2 x 5 1/2in. (21.6 x 14 cm). Lionel Ziprin Archive, New York
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Harry Smith, Untitled [Study for Inkweed Studios greeting card], c. 1952
India ink on scratchboard, 8 x 6 in. (20 x 15 cm). Private collection
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Harry Smith, Untitled 3-D Greeting Card [“are you looking for the third dimension?”], 1953
Silkscreened ink on paper, 5 3/4 x 5 3/4 in. (14.6 cm x 14.6 cm). Estate of Jordan Belson, San Francisco, CA
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Harry Smith, still from Film No. 12 (Heaven and Earth Magic Feature), c. 1957–62
16mm film, black and white, sound; 1 hr. 6 min. Courtesy of Anthology Film Archives.
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Andy Warhol, Screen Test: Harry Smith [ST314], 1964
16mm film transferred to digital video, black and white, silent; 4 min. The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved.
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Harry Smith, still from Film No. 18: Mahagonny, 1970–80
16mm film transferred to digital video, color, sound; 2 hr. 21 min. Courtesy of Anthology Film Archives and Harry Smith Archives; Harry Smith Papers, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA
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