Jack Smith (film director)
Encyclopedia
Jack Smith was an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 filmmaker, actor, and pioneer of underground cinema
Underground film
An underground film is a film that is out of the mainstream either in its style, genre, or financing.-Definition and history:The first use of the term "underground film" occurs in a 1957 essay by American film critic Manny Farber, "Underground Films." Farber uses it to refer to the work of...

. He is generally acclaimed as a founding father of American performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...

, and has been critically recognized as a master photographer, though his photographic works are rare and remain largely unknown.

Biography

Jack Smith was raised in Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

 where he made his first film, Buzzards over Baghdad, in (1952). He moved to New York in 1953.

Smith was one of the first proponents of the aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...

 which came to be known as 'camp
Camp (style)
Camp is an aesthetic sensibility that regards something as appealing because of its taste and ironic value. The concept is closely related to kitsch, and things with camp appeal may also be described as being "cheesy"...

' and 'trash', using no-budget
No budget film
A no budget film is a produced film made with very little, or no money.Young directors starting out in filmmaking commonly use this method because there are few other options available to them at that point. All the actors and technicians are employed without remuneration, and the films are largely...

 means of production (e.g. using discarded color reversal film stock) to create a visual cosmos heavily influenced by Hollywood kitsch
Kitsch
Kitsch is a form of art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art or a worthless imitation of art of recognized value. The concept is associated with the deliberate use of elements that may be thought of as cultural icons while making cheap mass-produced objects that...

, orientalism
Orientalism
Orientalism is a term used for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists, as well as having other meanings...

 and with Flaming Creatures
Flaming Creatures
Flaming Creatures is an American experimental film by filmmaker Jack Smith. Due to its surreal, graphic depiction of sexuality, the film was seized by the police at its premiere, and was officially determined to be obscene by a New York Criminal Court. The 43-minute featurette attracted media and...

 created drag culture as it is currently known. Smith was heavily involved with John Vaccaro, founder of The Playhouse of The Ridiculous, whose disregard for conventional theater practice deeply influenced Smith's ideas about performance art. In turn, Vaccaro was deeply influenced by Smith's aesthetics. It was Vaccaro who introduced Smith to glitter and in 1966 and 1967, Smith created costumes for Vaccaro's Playhouse of The Ridiculous. Smith's style influenced the film work of Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...

 as well as the early work of John Waters
John Waters (filmmaker)
John Samuel Waters, Jr. is an American filmmaker, actor, stand-up comedian, writer, journalist, visual artist, and art collector, who rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films...

. While all three were part of the 1960s gay arts movement, Vaccaro and Smith refuted the idea that their sexual orientation was responsible for their art.

Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad is an American avant-garde video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician/composer, sound artist, teacher and writer...

 produced two CDs from the Jack Smith tape archives subtitled 56 Ludlow Street that were recorded at 56 Ludlow Street between 1962 and 1964.

Smith has also been referenced by artists such as Laurie Anderson
Laurie Anderson
Laura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson is an American experimental performance artist, composer and musician who plays violin and keyboards and sings in a variety of experimental music and art rock styles. Initially trained as a sculptor, Anderson did her first performance-art piece in the late 1960s...

, Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman is an American photographer and film director, best known for her conceptual portraits. Sherman currently lives and works in New York City. In 1995, she was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. She is represented by Sprüth Magers Berlin London in and Metro Pictures gallery in...

 and Mike Kelley, filmmakers David Lynch
David Lynch
David Keith Lynch is an American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style, which has been dubbed "Lynchian", and which is characterized by its dream imagery and meticulous sound...

 and Matthew Barney
Matthew Barney
Matthew Barney is an American artist who works in sculpture, photography, drawing and film. His early works were sculptural installations combined with performance and video...

, photographer Nan Goldin
Nan Goldin
Nancy "Nan" Goldin is an American photographer.-Life and work:Goldin was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in the Boston, Massachusetts suburb of Lexington, to middle class Jewish parents whose ideas, moderately liberal and progressive, were put to the test when on April 12, 1965 their eldest...

, musicians John Zorn
John Zorn
John Zorn is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist. Zorn is a prolific artist: he has hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, or producer...

, Lou Reed
Lou Reed
Lewis Allan "Lou" Reed is an American rock musician, songwriter, and photographer. He is best known as guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter of The Velvet Underground, and for his successful solo career, which has spanned several decades...

 and David Byrne
David Byrne (musician)
David Byrne is a musician and artist, best known as a founding member and principal songwriter of the American new wave band Talking Heads, which was active between 1975 and 1991. Since then, Byrne has released his own solo recordings and worked with various media including film, photography,...

, and theatre director Robert Wilson
Robert Wilson (director)
Robert Wilson is an American avant-garde stage director and playwright who has been called "[America]'s — or even the world's — foremost vanguard 'theater artist'". Over the course of his wide-ranging career, he has also worked as a choreographer, performer, painter, sculptor, video...

. Theater legend Richard Foreman
Richard Foreman
Richard Foreman is an American playwright and avant-garde theater pioneer. He is the founder of the Ontological-Hysteric Theater.-Life :...

 writes, 'Jack Smith is the hidden source of practically everything that's of any interest in the so-called experimental theatre today.'

The most famous (and arguably the most notorious) of Smith's productions is Flaming Creatures
Flaming Creatures
Flaming Creatures is an American experimental film by filmmaker Jack Smith. Due to its surreal, graphic depiction of sexuality, the film was seized by the police at its premiere, and was officially determined to be obscene by a New York Criminal Court. The 43-minute featurette attracted media and...

(1962
1962 in film
The year 1962 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*May - The Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards are officially founded by the Taiwanese government....

). The film is a satire of Hollywood B movies and tribute to actress Maria Montez
María Montez
María Montez was a Dominican-born motion picture actress who gained fame and popularity in the 1940s as an exotic beauty starring in a series of filmed-in-Technicolor costume adventure films. Her screen image was that of a hot-blooded Latin seductress, dressed in fanciful costumes and sparkling...

, who starred in many such productions. However, authorities considered some scenes to be pornographic. Copies of the movie were confiscated at the premiere and it was subsequently banned (technically, it still is to this day). Despite not being viewable, the movie gained some notoriety when footage was screened during Congressional hearings and right-wing politician Strom Thurmond
Strom Thurmond
James Strom Thurmond was an American politician who served as a United States Senator. He also ran for the Presidency of the United States in 1948 as the segregationist States Rights Democratic Party candidate, receiving 2.4% of the popular vote and 39 electoral votes...

 mentioned it in anti-porn speeches.

Smith's next movie Normal Love was the only work in Smith's oeuvre with an almost conventional length (120 mins.), and featured multiple underground stars, including Mario Montez
Mario Montez
Mario Montez was one of the Warhol superstars, appearing in thirteen of Andy Warhol's underground films from 1964 to 1966. He took his name as a male homage to the actress Maria Montez, an important gay icon in the fifties and sixties...

, Diane di Prima
Diane di Prima
Diane Di Prima is an American poet.-Early life:Di Prima was born in Brooklyn. She attended Hunter College High School and Swarthmore College before dropping out to be a poet in Manhattan...

, Tiny Tim
Tiny Tim (musician)
Tiny Tim , , born in Manhattan, was an American singer and ukulele player. He was most famous for his rendition of "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" sung in a distinctive high falsetto/vibrato voice.-Rise to fame:Born to Lebanese parents in 1932, Khaury displayed musical talent at a very young age...

, Francis Francine, Beverley Grant, John Vaccaro, and others. The rest of his productions consists mainly of short movies, many never screened in a cinema, but featured in performances and constantly re-edited to fit the stage needs (including Normal Love).

Apart from appearing in his own work, Smith worked as an actor. He played the lead in Andy Warhol's unfinished film Batman Dracula
Batman Dracula
Batman Dracula is a American film that was produced and directed by Andy Warhol, without the permission of DC Comics.-Production background:The film was screened only at his art exhibits...

, Ken Jacobs
Ken Jacobs
Ken Jacobs is an American experimental filmmaker. He is the director of Tom, Tom, The Piper's Son , which was admitted to the National Film Registry in 2007, and Star Spangled to Death , a nearly seven hour film consisting largely of found footage.He coined the term paracinema in the early 1970s,...

's Blonde Cobra, and appeared in several theater productions by Robert Wilson.

He also worked as a photographer and founded the Hyperbole Photographic Studio in New York. In 1962, he released The Beautiful Book, a collection of pictures of New York artists, that was re-released by Granary Books.

After his last film, No President (1967), Smith created performance and experimental theatre work until his death on September 25, 1989 from AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...

-related pneumonia.

In 1989, Penny Arcade
Penny Arcade (performer)
Susana Ventura , better known by her stage name Penny Arcade, is an American performance artist, actress, and playwright based in New York City.-Career:...

, New York performance artist and former Warhol superstar tried to salvage Smith's work from his apartment after his long bout with AIDS and subsequent death, as per Smith's request. Arcade attempted to preserve the apartment as Smith had transformed it - an elaborate stage set for his never to be filmed epic "Sinbad In a Rented World" - as a museum dedicated to Jack Smith and his work. This effort failed.

In 1992, performer Ron Vawter
Ron Vawter
Ron Vawter was an American actor and a founding member of the experimental theater company, The Wooster Group....

 recreated Smith's performance "What's Underground about Marshmallows" in Roy Cohn/Jack Smith which he presented in a live performance and which was later released as a film.

Until recently, Smith's archive was co-managed by Arcade, alongside the film historian J. Hoberman
J. Hoberman
James Lewis Hoberman , also known as J. Hoberman, is an American film critic. He is currently the senior film critic for The Village Voice, a post he has held since 1988.-Education:...

 via their corporation, The Plaster Foundation, Inc. Within ten years of Smith's death, the Foundation, operating largely without funding but through donations and good will, was able to restore all of Smith's films, create a major retrospective curated by Edward Leffingwell at PS 1, the Contemporary Arts Museum, now part of MOMA
Moma
Moma may refer to:* Moma , an owlet moth genus* Moma Airport, a Russian public airport* Moma District, Nampula, Mozambique* Moma River, a right tributary of the Indigirka River* Google Moma, the Google corporate intranet...

, put his films back into international distribution, and publish several books on Jack Smith and his work.

In January 2004, the New York Surrogate Court ordered Hoberman and Arcade to return Smith's archive to his legal heir, estranged, surviving sister Sue Slater. Hoberman and Arcade fought to dismiss Slater's claim, arguing that she abandoned Jack's apartment and its contents; the Plaster Foundation created the archive and took possession of the work only after 14 years of repeated, documented attempts at communication with her. In a six-minute trial, Judge Eve Preminger rejected the Foundation's argument and awarded the archive to Slater.

By October 2006, the Foundation had still refused to surrender Smith's archive to the estate, claiming money owed them for expenses associated with managing the archive—and hoping Smith's work would be bought by an appropriate public institution that could safeguard his legacy and keep the works in the public eye. According to curator Jerry Tartaglia, the dispute was finally resolved as of 2008, with the purchase of Smith's estate by the Gladstone Gallery
Barbara Gladstone
Barbara Gladstone is an American gallery owner and art dealer. She owns the Gladstone Gallery on W. 24th St in New York City which was designed by Selldorf Architects, and she represents many popular contemporary artists, including Shirin Neshat, Anish Kapoor, Sarah Lucas, and Matthew Barney...

.

Quotations about Smith

  • "He was the king of the underground." George Kuchar
    George Kuchar
    George Kuchar was an American underground film director, known for his "low-fi" aesthetic.-Early life and career:...


  • "The godfather of performance art." Laurie Anderson
    Laurie Anderson
    Laura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson is an American experimental performance artist, composer and musician who plays violin and keyboards and sings in a variety of experimental music and art rock styles. Initially trained as a sculptor, Anderson did her first performance-art piece in the late 1960s...


  • "The only true underground filmmaker." John Waters
    John Waters (filmmaker)
    John Samuel Waters, Jr. is an American filmmaker, actor, stand-up comedian, writer, journalist, visual artist, and art collector, who rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films...


  • "Jack Smith was the real Warhol." John Zorn
    John Zorn
    John Zorn is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist. Zorn is a prolific artist: he has hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, or producer...


  • "Jack oozed his aesthetic. And you either knew exactly what Jack wanted or you weren't interested in that scene. Andy [Warhol] picked up that you don't really have to direct people. You have to get them into the sense of what you are doing." Billy Name
    Billy Name
    Billy Name, , is an American photographer, filmmaker and lighting designer. He was the archivist of the Warhol Factory, from 1964 to 1970. His brief romance and subsequent friendship with Andy Warhol led to substantial collaboration on Warhol's work, including his films, paintings and sculpture...


  • "Jack Smith inspired Charles Ludlam
    Charles Ludlam
    Charles Braun Ludlam was an American actor, director, and playwright.-Early life:Ludlam was born in Floral Park, New York, the son of Marjorie and Joseph William Ludlam. He was raised in Greenlawn, New York, on Long Island, and attended Harborfields High School. The fact that he was gay was not a...

    , of the 1960s Ridiculous Theatrical Company
    Playhouse of the Ridiculous
    The Theatre of the Ridiculous is a theatrical genre that began as an American movement in New York in 1965 with the beginnings of "The Play-House of the Ridiculous" and the spin-off group formed in 1967 "The Ridiculous Theatrical Company"....

    , and also inspired Hibiscus
    Hibiscus (entertainer)
    Hibiscus was one of the leaders of the psychedelic gay liberation theatre collective group known as the Cockettes in early 1970s San Francisco; in today's theatrical parlance he would be considered to be a "Creative Director".-Early life:Harris was born in Bronxville, New York in 1949 to George...

     to move out to San Francisco and found the Cockettes." Cited in article about Antony Hegarty
    Antony Hegarty
    Antony Hegarty is an English singer-songwriter, best known as the lead singer of the band Antony and the Johnsons.-Early life:...

    , who was tracing his own "family tree," including what he had learned of it from his teacher Martin Worman, a former member of the Cockettes.

Selected filmography

By Jack Smith
  • 1952
    1952 in film
    The year 1952 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* January 10 - Cecil B. DeMille's circus epic, The Greatest Show on Earth, premieres at Radio City Music Hall in New York City....

     Buzzards over Baghdad
  • 1961
    1961 in film
    The year 1961 in film involved some significant events, with West Side Story winning 10 Academy Awards.-Top grossing films : After theatrical re-issue- Awards :Academy Awards:* Atlantis, the Lost ContinentB...

     Scotch Tape
  • 1963
    1963 in film
    The year 1963 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* June 12 - Cleopatra starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rex Harrison and Richard Burton premieres at the Rivoli Theatre in New York City....

     Flaming Creatures
    Flaming Creatures
    Flaming Creatures is an American experimental film by filmmaker Jack Smith. Due to its surreal, graphic depiction of sexuality, the film was seized by the police at its premiere, and was officially determined to be obscene by a New York Criminal Court. The 43-minute featurette attracted media and...

    (b/w, 46 min.)
  • 1963 Normal Love (120 min.)
  • 1967
    1967 in film
    The year 1967 in film involved some significant events. It is widely considered as one of the most ground-breaking years in film.-Events:* December 26 - The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour airs on British television....

     No President (a/k/a The Kidnapping of Wendell Wilkie by The Love Bandit, ca. 50 min.)

With Jack Smith as actor
  • 1960
    1960 in film
    The year 1960 in film involved some significant events, with Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho the top-grossing release in the U.S.-Events:* April 20 - for the first time since coming home from military service in Germany, Elvis Presley returns to Hollywood, California to film G.I...

     In Ken Jacobs
    Ken Jacobs
    Ken Jacobs is an American experimental filmmaker. He is the director of Tom, Tom, The Piper's Son , which was admitted to the National Film Registry in 2007, and Star Spangled to Death , a nearly seven hour film consisting largely of found footage.He coined the term paracinema in the early 1970s,...

    's Little Stabs at Happiness.
  • 1963
    1963 in film
    The year 1963 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* June 12 - Cleopatra starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rex Harrison and Richard Burton premieres at the Rivoli Theatre in New York City....

     In Ron Rice
    Ron Rice
    For the American football player see Ron Rice Ron Rice was an American experimental filmmaker, whose freeform style influenced experimental filmmakers in New York and California during the early 1960s.-The Flower Thief:Rice twice collaborated with future Warhol star Taylor Mead, including Rice's...

    's Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man
    Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man
    Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man is an experimental film by Ron Rice. It stars Winifred Bryan as the Queen of Sheba and Taylor Mead as the Atom Man. Featured players are Ron Rice, Julian Beck, Judith Malina, Jack Smith, and Jonas Mekas. Rice died before the editing was complete, so Mead finished...

    .
  • 1964
    1964 in film
    The year 1964 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* January 29 - The film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is released....

     In Ron Rice
    Ron Rice
    For the American football player see Ron Rice Ron Rice was an American experimental filmmaker, whose freeform style influenced experimental filmmakers in New York and California during the early 1960s.-The Flower Thief:Rice twice collaborated with future Warhol star Taylor Mead, including Rice's...

    's Chumlum.
  • 1989
    1989 in film
    -Events:* Batman is released on June 23, and goes on to gross over $410 million worldwide.* Actress Kim Basinger and her brother Mick purchase Braselton, Georgia, for $20 million...

     In Ari Roussimoff (Frankenhooker
    Frankenhooker
    Frankenhooker is an American black comedy horror film that was released in 1990. Very loosely inspired by Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, the film was directed by Frank Henenlotter and stars James Lorinz as medical school drop-out Jeffrey Franken and former Penthouse Pet Patty Mullen as the...

    )'s Shadows in the City.

About Jack Smith
  • 2006
    2006 in film
    - Highest-grossing films :Please note that following the tradition of the English-language film industry, these are the top-grossing films that were first released in the United States in 2006...

     Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
    Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
    Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis is a documentary film that premiered in the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival. It is a collection of interviews and clips by and about the revolutionary artist Jack Smith...

    Documentary written, directed and co-produced by Mary Jordan.

Books

  • By Jack Smith:
    • 1960 16 Immortal Photos
    • 1962 The Beautiful Book (dead language press, republished 2001 Granary Books)
  • About Jack Smith
    • Leffingwell/Kismaric/Heiferman (eds.), Flaming Creature: Jack Smith, His Amazing Life and Times, London: Serpent's Tail, 1997
    • J. Hoberman, On Jack Smith's 'Flaming Creatures' (And Other Secret-Flix of Cinemaroc), New York: Granary Books, 2001
    • J. Hoberman and Edward Leffingwell (eds.), Wait For Me At The Bottom Of The Pool: The Writings Of Jack Smith, New York and London: High Risk Books and PS1, 1997

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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