Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
For Jack Smith (1932-1989), Atlantis was both the idea of a fantastical utopia and the reality of the Lower East Side apartment in which this prophetic artist staged baroque, improvisational multi-hour one-man theatrical productions, often with a cast of stuffed animals and dolls. An avant-garde photographer, filmmaker, actor, performance artist, and all around “flaming creature,” Smith has been credited as a major influence by Fellini, Godard and Jarmusch. In Mary Jordan’s mesmerizing portrait, he fairly jumps off the screen: a combination mystic, comedian and madman, a protean artist whose vast energy and creativity were undermined (or perversely fed?) by the poverty of his day-to-day life and his paranoid misgivings about just about everything. If there is a heaven for the wonderfully bizarre, Jack Smith resides there, accompanied by his patron saint, Maria Montez.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 8:34 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can still trackback from your own site.
Comments are closed.
Starburst Theme designed by Claire
powered by WordPress 1.5 | valid XHTML and CSS