Michael Snow: Sequences

Since his reception of the Independent Film Award (1968) from the journal Film Culture, Michael Snow’s work has placed in the ranks of such major figures of avant-garde cinema as Stan Brakhage and Gregory Markopoulos, as well as in the company of two other artists-turned-filmmakers: the photographer Robert Frank and the painter Andy Warhol. The image of Michael Snow that emerges from this complete monograph is that of a contemporary Renaissance man. The artist himself captured this diversity in a profile written in the late 1960s: “I am not a professional. My paintings are done by a filmmaker, sculpture by a musician, films by a painter, music by a filmmaker, paintings by a sculptor, sculpture by a filmmaker, films by a musician, music by a sculptor – sometimes they all work together.” Mixing reflexive humour with a nuanced grasp of the many faces of contemporary art, Snow’s text acknowledges the difficulties an artist faces in approaching different disciplines when there is a tendency towards purity in all these media as separate endeavours. Within a structure of seventeen chapters, Michael Snow makes a complete overview on his own work, writing the texts and laying out each sequence – an editorial task he knows very well, as is evidenced by this beautiful artist’s book. Certainly, this is an unsurpassed book about one of our most outstanding artists.