James Whitney (December 27, 1921 – April 8, 1982), younger brother of
John
John is a common English name and surname:
* John (given name)
* John (surname)
John may also refer to:
New Testament
Works
* Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John
* First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John
* Secon ...
, was a filmmaker regarded as one of the great masters of abstract cinema. Several of his films are classics in the genre of visual music.
Early life
James Whitney was born December 27, 1921, in
Pasadena
Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial district.
...
,
California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
, and lived all his life in the
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...
area. He studied painting, and traveled in England before the outbreak of World War II. In 1940, he returned to Pasadena.
Career – early works
James completed a number of short films over four decades, two of which required at least five years of work. James collaborated with his brother John for some of his early film work.
The first of the brothers' films was ''
Twenty-Four Variations on an Original Theme''. Its structure was influenced by
Schoenberg's serial principles.
James spent 3 years working on ''
Variations on a Circle'' (1942), which lasts some 20 minutes, and was made with
8mm film 8 mm or 8mm may refer to:
;Film technology
*8 mm film, a photographic cine film format principally intended for domestic use. The term may also refer to later variants:
** Super 8 mm film
** Single-8 film
** 8 mm video format, a type of video recor ...
.
James and John created their series of Five ''
Film Exercises'' (John #1 and #5; James #2, #3 and #4) between 1943 and 1944, for which the brothers won a prize for best sound at the 1949 Brussels Experimental Film Competition.
In 1946, the brothers travelled to
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and wa ...
to show their films at the first of ten annual "Art in Cinema" festivals, organized by
Frank Stauffacher Frank Stauffacher (1917 – 24 July 1955, in San Francisco, California) was an American experimental filmmaker, best known for directing the cinema series "Art in Cinema" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from 1946 to 1954.
He was the cinem ...
.
Following this period, James became more involved in spiritual interests such as
Jungian psychology
Analytical psychology ( de , Analytische Psychologie, sometimes translated as analytic psychology and referred to as Jungian analysis) is a term coined by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, to describe research into his new "empirical science" ...
,
alchemy
Alchemy (from Arabic: ''al-kīmiyā''; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, ''khumeía'') is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in China, India, the Muslim world, ...
,
yoga
Yoga (; sa, योग, lit=yoke' or 'union ) is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines which originated in ancient India and aim to control (yoke) and still the mind, recognizing a detached witness-consci ...
,
Tao
''Tao'' or ''Dao'' is the natural order of the universe, whose character one's intuition must discern to realize the potential for individual wisdom, as conceived in the context of East Asian philosophy, East Asian religions, or any other phil ...
, and
Jiddu Krishnamurti. These interests heavily influenced his later work.
James was a potter and ceramicist, interested in raku ware, and examples of his pottery still exist today.
Career – later works
Between 1950 and 1955, James laboured to construct ''
Yantra
Yantra () (literally "machine, contraption") is a geometrical diagram, mainly from the Tantric traditions of the Indian religions. Yantras are used for the worship of deities in temples or at home; as an aid in meditation; used for the benefit ...
''. The film was produced entirely by hand. By punching grid patterns in cards with a pin, James was able to paint through these pinholes onto other cards, to create images of rich complexity and give the finished work a very dynamic and flowing motion, but the film was not completed yet. It was first released as a silent film.
A very short, black and white, manipulated fragment from an early version of ''Yantra'' was shown at one of the historic
Vortex Concerts in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...
's Morrison
planetarium in early 1959. Soon after Vortex, the film acquired its soundtrack, when Jordan Belson synchronized it to an excerpt from
Henk Badings
Henk Badings (hĕngk bä'dĭngz) (17 January 190726 June 1987) was an Indo-Dutch composer.
Early life
Born in Bandung, Java, Dutch East Indies, as the son of Herman Louis Johan Badings, an officer in the Dutch East Indies army, Hendrik Herman Ba ...
’ "Cain and Abel". This did not occur at the Morrison Planetarium Vortex Concerts, contrary to popular belief (Keefer, 2008).
Analogue computer equipment developed by brother John, allowed James to complete ''
Lapis
Lapis lazuli (; ), or lapis for short, is a deep-blue metamorphic rock used as a semi-precious stone that has been prized since antiquity for its intense color.
As early as the 7th millennium BC, lapis lazuli was mined in the Sar-i Sang mines ...
'' (1966) in two years, when it might have taken seven years otherwise. James drew dot patterns again for this film, but the camera was positioned using computer control, allowing each image to be overlaid from multiple angles. In this piece, smaller circles oscillate in and out in an array of colors resembling a
kaleidoscope
A kaleidoscope () is an optical instrument with two or more reflecting surfaces (or mirrors) tilted to each other at an angle, so that one or more (parts of) objects on one end of these mirrors are shown as a regular symmetrical pattern when v ...
while being accompanied by Indian
sitar
The sitar ( or ; ) is a plucked stringed instrument, originating from the Indian subcontinent, used in Hindustani classical music. The instrument was invented in medieval India, flourished in the 18th century, and arrived at its present form ...
music. The patterns become hypnotic and trance inducing.
''Dwija'' (1973), meaning "twice-born" or "soul" in
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
, is completely
solarized, and much of the imagery is re-photographed by rear-projection to create a constant flow of hardly definable transformations of color and form.
''Wu Ming'' (1977), meaning "no name" in
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
, repeats a single action over and over – a particle disappears into infinity, and returns as a wave. James described the particle-to-wave action in Wu Ming as being "like throwing a pebble into water and seeing the ripples spread out".
His two final films, intended to form a quartet with ''Dwija'' and ''Wu Ming'', were ''
Kang Jing Xiang'' and ''
Li'', which were left incomplete when James died April 8, 1982, after a brief and unexpected illness. Kang was completed post-humously according to James' instructions. His short test for Li is believed to be lost.
Several of James' films were preserved by
Center for Visual Music, Los Angeles (CVM); HD transfers from their preservation project were seen in major museum exhibitions including Visual Music at MOCA and The Hirshhorn Museum (2005), Sons et Lumieres at Centre Pompidou (2004–05), The Third Mind at The Guggenheim Museum, and other shows. Scholars may view high quality copies of Yantra and Lapis at CVM. CVM also provided prints from this preservation to Centre Pompidou, Paris, which provided support for this project. As of this writing in 2017, the films are largely not in distribution, and difficult to rent or screen.
Archive
The Academy Film Archive houses the Whitney Collection and has preserved over a dozen films from the collection. The collection encompasses the work of John and James Whitney, as well as John's sons Mark, John, and Michael.
Filmography
*''Twenty Four Variations on an Original Theme'' (with John Whitney) (1939–1940) 5 min, 8mm
*3 Untitled Films (with John Whitney) (1940–1942) 15 min 8mm
*''Variations on a Circle'' (1941–1942) 9 min, 8mm
*''Film Exercises #2'', ''#3'' (1943–1944) 3 min, 16mm and ''#4'' (1944) 8 min, 16mm. Actually he is credited along with his brother John for their Film Exercises 1 - 5.
*''Yantra'' (1950–1957) 8 min, 16mm. Sound added in 1959.
*''Lapis'' (1963–1966) 10 min, 16mm
*''Dwija'' (1973), 16mm.
*''Wu Ming'' (1977) 17 min, 16mm.
*''Kang Jing Xiang'' (1982) 13 min, 16mm. Completed posthumously.
*''Li'' (unfinished)
OTHER:
*''High Voltage'' (1959) 3 min, 16mm, constructed by
Jordan Belson from James' footage, not directed by James
Further reading
Willis, Holly: Cinema Du Dots: LA Weekly, 2005
Moritz, William. "James Whitney." Articulated Light: The Emergence of Abstract Film. Boston: Harvard Film Archives, 1996
Moritz, William. "James Whitney." L'art du Mouvement: Cinema du Musee National d'art Moderne. Paris: Centre Pompidou, 1996
Moritz, William. "In Memoriam James Whitney." Osnabruck Media Art Festival program May 1996.
Bendazzi, Giannalberto. Cartoons. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995.
Sightlines. New York: Educational Film Library Association, Winter 1985–86
Moritz, William. "The Poetic Eye-- Visionary Filmmaker James Whitney, An Appreciation." The Advocate. Los Angeles: David B. Goodstein, April 2, 1985.
Whitney, James. "Yantra." New Magazine Beyond Baroque Foundation, May 1977
Sitney, P. Adams. Visionary Film: The American Avant Garde 1943–1978. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.
Jacobs, Lewis. "Avant-Garde Production in America." Experiment in Film. New York: Arno Press, 1970
Keefer, Cindy. "Cosmic Cinema and The Vortex Concerts." Cosmos: The Search for the Origins, from Kupka to Kubrick. Arnauld Pierre, Ed. Madrid:El Umbral/Santa Cruz de Tenerife:TEA, 2008. (on Yantra)
References
External links
*
Photograph of James and John Whitney and their equipmentWhitney-inspired musical animationscreated b
Jim Bumgardner*Interview with
Museum of the Moving Image
The Museum of the Moving Image is a media museum located in a former building of the historic Astoria Studios (now Kaufman Astoria Studios), in the Astoria neighborhood in Queens, New York City. The museum originally opened in 1988 as the Amer ...
guest curators Leo Goldsmith and Gregory Zinman o
Science & Filmabout James Whitney's work
{{DEFAULTSORT:Whitney, James
1921 births
1982 deaths
American film directors
American animated film directors
American animators
Whitney, John
Whitney, John
American expatriates in the United Kingdom