(E)MOTION PICTURES

During her stay in New York from 1968 to 1980, Maria Lassnig learned the technique of animation, setting her drawings into motion. From the 1970s onwards, she continued her preoccupation with self-portraiture and body-awareness in animation. Furthermore, Lassnig left an extensive body of footage that gives an insight into her multifaceted role as filmmaker. This film program aims to situate her work within the context of independent, feminist and experimental animation in the 1970s in New York.

The complex production of turning drawing, film footage and sound into animation and experimental film inspired a collective working method. In 1974 Lassnig founded the feminist avant-garde group Women/Artist/Filmmakers, Inc. with other female (film) artists, including Doris Chase, one of the pioneers of video and computer animation. Chase’s films capture dance to depict movement, something Lassnig too assesses in her animations. Lassnig's films were also prized in the independent animation film scene around the American filmmaker George Griffin. After receiving an award for her film Selfportrait (1971), she was recognized alongside contemporary women animators such as Suzan Pitt. She took up feminist and erotic subjects in her animated films, and also created narratives about these issues based on her own experiences in relationships. Her work is regarded as a compelling force for the recognition of the underground genre of animation in the fine arts.

This program is curated by Stefanie Proksch-Weilguni, PhD candidate at the University of Basel

About the speaker

Since September 2017, Stefanie Proksch-Weilguni writes her dissertation on Maria Lassnig and the group of the Women/Artist/Filmmakers, Inc. in New York from 1968 to 1980. She is a doctorate student in art history with a scholarship from the eikones - Graduate School at the University of Basel and at the Institute of Art History at the University of Vienna. She contributed the essay Painting with a Camera. On Maria Lassnig’s Films to the current exhibition catalog and also previously, has been publishing and lecturing on Maria Lassnig’s body awareness paintings and films. Performative art practices have also been a central theme during her curatorial internship at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg for the exhibition Carolee Schneemann. Kinetic Painting (2015) and her Master thesis on Romanian performance art, awarded with the Sir Ernst Gombrich Prize in 2016. From 2016 to 2017 she worked as project assistant at the Artist-in-Residence program of Lower Austria.

About the exhibition

The Austrian artist Maria Lassnig (1919-2014) is internationally regarded as one of the leading artists of the 20th century. She made her name with her “Körperbewusstseintbilder” (“body awareness paintings”), in which she depicted the sensations experienced by her body, by means of which she defined her relationship to the world. The exhibition Maria Lassnig – Ways of Being will be on view April 6 until Auguts 11, 2019.