Gunvor Nelson
Encyclopedia
Swedish
artist Gunvor Grundel Nelson was born in 1931 in Stockholm
, Sweden. Now living in Kristinehamn, Sweden. She has worked as an experimental filmmaker since the 1960s. Some of her most widely known works were created while she lived in the Bay Area in the mid-1960s and early 1970s, where she became well established among other artists in the avant-garde film circles of the 60s and to the present (Gill, 28).As of 2006 she has to her credit twenty films, five videos, and one video installation (Holmlund, 67).
degree from Mills College
in Oakland, California
. Her teaching experience includes the San Francisco Art Institute
from 1970 to 1992, after which she moved back to Sweden in 1993. Additional positions she has held include a year at San Francisco State University
from 1969 to 1970 and a semester in 1987 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been featured in numerous Europe
an and North America
n festivals, one-woman shows, and she has been the recipient of several awards and grants. Some of these awards include: a Guggenheim Fellowship
, two National Endowment for the Arts
grants, as well as a Rockefeller Foundation
grant (Holmlund, 84). Nelson's films were shown quietly in the underground circuit on the West and East coasts of the United States, until the mid-70s when she began to get press from sources that ranged from Playboy editors to Pauline Kael
. This increase in national press coverage of her films was in part due to the notable Take-Off, a memorable satire
on the performance of the striptease
(Gill, 28).
Nelson often creates what she termed “personal films” rather than “experimental” or “avant-garde” films; on this matter she says:
Her depictions of women's experiences and issues of identity are never overtly political in their agenda or simplistic in nature; often they explore the sensual and erotic, and critique society's portrayal of women (Sundholm, 4) yet she denies any specifically "feminist
" agenda behind her art-making. Instead, she creates "feminist" works in the broader sense of the term, they seek to find a more universal resonance as they address the personal and: "what is original, instinctive, and natural in womankind". Nelson also prefers not to be referred to as a "woman" artist but simply an "artist".
Nelson's work often reveals her fascination with the visual translation and transformation of the world that a camera is capable of achieving. Commenting on her first film Schmeerguntz, a collaborative effort with Dorothy Wiley Nelson said:
Her fascination with materials reflected in the titling of her work likely stems from her earlier artistic background as a painter. The visual transformations she obtains in the act of filming she typically modifies through painting and animation, and then organizes through painstaking editing of images and sound.
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
artist Gunvor Grundel Nelson was born in 1931 in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
, Sweden. Now living in Kristinehamn, Sweden. She has worked as an experimental filmmaker since the 1960s. Some of her most widely known works were created while she lived in the Bay Area in the mid-1960s and early 1970s, where she became well established among other artists in the avant-garde film circles of the 60s and to the present (Gill, 28).As of 2006 she has to her credit twenty films, five videos, and one video installation (Holmlund, 67).
Education and awards
She obtained a Master of ArtsMaster of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
degree from Mills College
Mills College
Mills College is an independent liberal arts women's college founded in 1852 that offers bachelor's degrees to women and graduate degrees and certificates to women and men. Located in Oakland, California, Mills was the first women's college west of the Rockies. The institution was initially founded...
in Oakland, California
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
. Her teaching experience includes the San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco Art Institute is a school of higher education in contemporary art with the main campus in the Russian Hill district of San Francisco, California. Its graduate center is in the Dogpatch neighborhood. The private, non-profit institution is accredited by WASC and is a member of the...
from 1970 to 1992, after which she moved back to Sweden in 1993. Additional positions she has held include a year at San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University is a public university located in San Francisco, California. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers over 100 areas of study from nine academic colleges...
from 1969 to 1970 and a semester in 1987 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been featured in numerous Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an and North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
n festivals, one-woman shows, and she has been the recipient of several awards and grants. Some of these awards include: a Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
, two National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
grants, as well as a Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...
grant (Holmlund, 84). Nelson's films were shown quietly in the underground circuit on the West and East coasts of the United States, until the mid-70s when she began to get press from sources that ranged from Playboy editors to Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
. This increase in national press coverage of her films was in part due to the notable Take-Off, a memorable satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
on the performance of the striptease
Striptease
A striptease is an erotic or exotic dance in which the performer gradually undresses, either partly or completely, in a seductive and sexually suggestive manner...
(Gill, 28).
Films
In many of her major works she addresses subjects such as: childhood, memory, the idea of home/homeland and displacement, aging and death, and the symbolism of natural forces — particularly in relation to female beauty and power. Her talents for editing what is often dreamlike imagery, combined with fine attention to the effects of language and sound on the moving image, serve to enhance the consistent aesthetic of her experimental films.Nelson often creates what she termed “personal films” rather than “experimental” or “avant-garde” films; on this matter she says:
"Everyone seemed unsure of what to call it. It is difficult. Are you really so "avant-garde"? Experimental films sounds like something incomplete. I have made both surrealistic and expressionistic films, but I prefer the term "personal film". That is what it is about. Even if many don't understand the meaning of the term. On the other hand, it can be easier to refer to them as avant-garde films. But I like the description "personal film" since it stems from one person. When you paint, the term you choose will be described by method; mural painters for instance and so on. But when it comes to film we lack [the capacity] to describe what we are really doing." (Sundholm, 167).
Her depictions of women's experiences and issues of identity are never overtly political in their agenda or simplistic in nature; often they explore the sensual and erotic, and critique society's portrayal of women (Sundholm, 4) yet she denies any specifically "feminist
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
" agenda behind her art-making. Instead, she creates "feminist" works in the broader sense of the term, they seek to find a more universal resonance as they address the personal and: "what is original, instinctive, and natural in womankind". Nelson also prefers not to be referred to as a "woman" artist but simply an "artist".
Nelson's work often reveals her fascination with the visual translation and transformation of the world that a camera is capable of achieving. Commenting on her first film Schmeerguntz, a collaborative effort with Dorothy Wiley Nelson said:
"I discovered how beautiful things look through the camera... A melon or dirty dishes, seen with a lens in close-up were translated into something else... The camera became like binoculars; you zero in on a small area and isolate it, and it becomes more precious because it's selected." (Holmlund, 78).
Her fascination with materials reflected in the titling of her work likely stems from her earlier artistic background as a painter. The visual transformations she obtains in the act of filming she typically modifies through painting and animation, and then organizes through painstaking editing of images and sound.
Filmography
- Schmeerguntz, 1965 (15 min.):sd., b&w; 16mm
- Fog Pumas, 1967 (25 min.):sd., color; 16mm
- Kirsa Nicholina, 1969 (16 min.):sd., color; 16mm
- My Name is Oona, 1969 (10 min.):sd., b&w; 16mm
- Five Artists: BillBobBillBillBob (with Dorothy Wiley), 1971 (70 min.): sd.,col.;16mm
- One and the Same (with Freude Solomon-Bartlett), 1972 (4 min.): sd.,col.;16mm
- Take Off (with Magda), 1972 (10 min.): sd., b&w; 16mm
- Moon's Pool, 1973 (15 min.): sd., col.; 16mm
- Trollstene, 1973-76 (120 min.): sd., col.; 16mm
- Before Need* (with Dorothy Wiley), 1979 (75 min.): sd., col.; 16mm
- Frame Line, 1984 (22 min.): sd., b&w; 16mm
- Red Shift, 1984 (50 min.):sd., b&w; 16mm
- Light Years, 1987 (28 min.): sd., col.; 16mm
- Light Years Expanding, 1987 (25 min.): sd., col.; 16mm
- Field Study #2, 1988 (25 min.): sd., col.; 16mm
- Natural Features, 1990 (30 min.): sd., col.; 16mm
- Time Being, 1991 (8 min.): si., b&w; 16mm
- Old Digs, 1993 (20 min.): sd., col.; 16mm
- Kristina's Harbor, 1993 (50 min.): sd., col.; 16mm
- Before Need Redressed (with Dorothy Wiley), 1995 (42 min.):sd., col.; 16 mm
- Tree-Line/Tradgrans, 1998 (8 min.):sd., col.; video
- Bevismaterial:52 Veckor (Collected Evidence: 52 Weeks), 1998 (4x30 min.): installation
- Snowdrift (a.k.a. Snowstorm), 2001 (9 min.): sd., col.; video
- Trace Elements, 2003 (9 min.): sd., col.; video
- True to Life, 2006 (38 min.): video
- New Evidence, 2006 (22 min.): video
Sources
- Gill, June M. The Films of Gunvor Nelson. Film Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Spring, 1977), pp 28–36. JSTOR Bard College Library
- Holmlund, Chris. "Excavating Visual Fields, Layering Auditory Frames: Signature, Translation, Resonance, and Gunvor Nelson’s Films." Women’s Experimental Cinema. Ed. Robin Blaetz. Duke University Press: Durham & London, 2007. 67-88.
- Jensen, Jytte. "Gunvor Nelson Retrospective: Personal Lens." Film Exhibitions 2006. 10 Oct. 2008
- Sundholm, John. The Material and the Mimetic: On Gunvor Nelson's Personal Filmmaking. Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 48.2 (2007) 165-173. JSTOR Bard College Library.