Michael Snow

Writing, for Michael Snow, is as much a form of “art-making” as the broad range of visual art activities for which he is renowned, including the “Walking Woman” series and the film Wavelength. Conversely, many of the texts included in this anthology are as significant visually as they are at the level of content — they are meant to be looked at as well as read. Situated somewhere between a repository of contemporary thought by one of our leading Canadian artists and a history book as it brings to light some important moments in the cultural life of Canada since the 1950s, these texts tell their own story, marking the passage of time, ideas and attitudes. The works included here, ranging from essays and interviews and record album cover notes to filmscripts and speeches (which, in Snow’s hands, often fall into the category of performance art), are not only “built for browsing,” they offer insights into both the professional and the private Snow. Together, they expand the context of Snow’s work and show the evolution of a great Canadian artist, beginning with his early attempts at defining art, to his emergence and recognition on the international art scene. This book is one of four books that are part of the Michael Snow Project. Initiated by the Art Gallery of Ontario and The Power Plant Gallery, the project also includes four exhibitions of his visual art and music.

Essential texts on the work of the influential artist Michael Snow: essays and interviews spanning more than four decades. Few filmmakers have had as large an impact on the recent avant-garde film scene as Canadian Michael Snow (b. 1928). His works in a range of media—film, installation, video, painting, sculpture, sound, photography, drawing, writing, and music—address the fundamental properties of his materials, the conditions of perception and experience, questions of authorship in technologically reproducible media, and techniques of translation through written and pictorial representation. His film Wavelength (1967) is a milestone of avant-garde cinema and possibly the most frequently discussed “structural” film ever made. This volume collects essential texts on Snow's work, with essays and interviews spanning more than four decades. From its earliest issues, October has been a primary interlocutor of Snow's work, and many of these texts first appeared in its pages. Written by such distinguished critics and scholars as Annette Michelson, Hubert Damisch, and Malcolm Turvey, they document Snow's participation in postwar discourses of minimalism, postminimalism, photo-conceptualism, and avant-garde cinema, and examine particular works. Thierry de Duve's essay on linguistics in Snow's work appears alongside Snow's response. The volume also includes other writings by Snow, images from his 1975 work Musics for Piano, Whistling, Microphone, and Tape Recorder, and an interview with the artist conducted by Annette Michelson. Essays and interviews Jean Arnaud, Érik Bullot, Hubert Damisch, Thierry de Duve, Andrée Hayum, Annette Michelson, Michael Snow, Amy Taubin, Malcolm Turvey, Kenneth White

Michael Snow is rightly recognized as the greatest living Canadian artist and one of the most significant figures in Canadian art history. In a productive, lengthy career, he has, in a wide variety of genres, asked (and often answered) some of the most vexing and important issues in the history of art.

Canadian filmmaker and artist Michael Snow (b. 1928) is known as a pioneer of conceptualist and multimedia practice. His seminal film Wavelength (1967), described as a "45-minute zoom," investigates the relationship between time and space, a subject the artist has explored throughout his career in a variety of mediums. Although considered one of the most important experimental filmmakers of his generation, Snow is less known in the United States for his visual art, including photography. Michael Snow: Photo-Centric focuses on a selection of the artist's photographic work from 1962 to the present. The book considers Snow's interest in late modernism's self-reflexivity and, specifically, his exploration of how the mechanics of photography affect perception, cognition, and consciousness. Essays by Adelina Vlas and the artist himself consider the importance of Snow's photographic work within his larger practice, its connection with and continuation of modernist ideas, and its experimental quality within the history of the medium. Published in association with the Philadelphia Museum of Art Exhibition Schedule: Philadelphia Museum of Art (02/01/14-04/27/14) Additional venues TBD.

An all-encompassing view of the life and work of one of Canada’s greatest living artists Michael Snow is rightly recognized as one of the greatest Canadian artists. In a productive, lengthy career, he has, in a wide variety of genres and media, asked (and often answered) some of the most vexing and important questions in the history of art. During his lifetime, the notion of what constitutes a work of art has undergone many changes, and his work has consistently been at the forefront of that discussion. Michael Snow: Lives and Works examines all aspects of the artist’s work and provides a guide to understanding its subtleties and complexities. The book also charts the life of Snow: his early years as a student and artist in Toronto, his stay in New York City, his turbulent marriage to Joyce Wieland, his reputation as a lady’s man, and his adventures in movie making and improvised music. In many ways, Snow is the visual artist as intellectual: his images are vibrant and compelling, but so are the ideas behind them. Ultimately, his work is about perception. What do we really see when we look at a work of art? What is the act of looking all about? What exactly is a work of art? Michael Snow: Lives and Works is a personal and intimate portrait of an artist who has helped shaped the face of Canadian art in our time.

Michael Snow is renowned as a pioneering filmmaker and conceptual artist, with a career spanning four decades. He is perhaps best known for Wavelength, one of the most influential experimental films ever made. This book traces threads running through Snow's practice from the 1960s to the present, from his early Walking Woman series to his most recant works. His primary concern with perception is evident in the wide range of media he has used throughout his career, form film, photography and installation to painting and audio work. Almost Cover to Cover plays on Snow's acclaimed artist book Cover to Cover, a section of which is reproduced here. A cult figure for many, this book will situate Snow's importance for contemporary art at a time of renewed interest in time-based work interdisciplinarity, narrative and film.