Luther Price (pseudonym) (January 26, 1962 – June 13, 2020) was an

experimental film Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, parti ...

maker and visual artist.

Biography

Price was born in

Marlborough, Massachusetts Marlborough is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 41,793 at the 2020 census. Marlborough became a prosperous industrial town in the 19th century and made the transition to high technology industry in the ...

in 1962. He received a BFA in Sculpture and Media/Performing Arts from

Massachusetts College of Art and Design Massachusetts College of Art and Design, branded as MassArt, is a public college of visual and applied art in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1873, it is one of the nation’s oldest art schools, the only publicly funded independent art school ...

, where he studied with Saul Levine. Before taking the name Luther Price, he worked under various pseudonyms, including Brigk Aethy, Fag, and Tom Rhoads. While at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Luther collaborated with students in the

Studio for Interrelated Media A studio is an artist or worker's workroom. This can be for the purpose of acting, architecture, painting, pottery (ceramics), sculpture, origami, woodworking, scrapbooking, photography, graphic design, filmmaking, animation, industrial design, ...

on many projects including creating events, performance art, music projects and exhibitions. He was an experimental filmmaker whose work has been widely screened in the United States and Europe at such venues as the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...

, and the

San Francisco Cinematheque San Francisco Cinematheque is a San Francisco-based film society for artist-made cinema. It was created in 1961 by a group of filmmakers, including Bruce Baillie and Chick Strand. This screening program grew into Canyon Cinema before being split o ...

. He was an adjunct professor at the

and the

School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University (Museum School, SMFA at Tufts, or SMFA; formerly the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) is the art school of Tufts University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusett ...

teaching his popular "Hand-made Films" curriculum. Price's

Super 8mm Super 8 mm film is a motion-picture film format released in 1965 by Eastman Kodak as an improvement over the older "Double" or "Regular" 8 mm home movie format. The film is nominally 8 mm wide, the same as older formatted 8& ...

and

16mm film 16 mm film is a historically popular and economical gauge of film. 16 mm refers to the width of the film (about inch); other common film gauges include 8 and 35 mm. It is generally used for non-theatrical (e.g., industrial, educ ...

s are usually constructed from found footage and often include controversial subject matter, such as pornography, surgical footage, and psychodramatic performances, as well as physical interventions into the actual material of the film stock. Later in his career he began crafting individual 35mm slides shown on slide projectors. His work was featured prominently in the

2012 File:2012 Events Collage V3.png, From left, clockwise: The passenger cruise ship Costa Concordia lies capsized after the Costa Concordia disaster; Damage to Casino Pier in Seaside Heights, New Jersey as a result of Hurricane Sandy; People gather ...

Whitney Biennial The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, United States. The event began as an annual exhibition in ...

Roberta Smith Roberta Smith (born 1948) is co-chief art critic of ''The New York Times'' and a lecturer on contemporary art. She is the first woman to hold that position. Early life Born in 1948 in New York City and raised in Lawrence, Kansas. Smith studied at ...

of the

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

called him "one of the Biennial's stars."

Ed Halter Ed Halter is a film programmer, writer, and founder of Light Industry, a microcinema in Brooklyn, New York. He currently teaches at Bard College, where he is Critic in Residence. Criticism His writing has been featured in ''Artforum'', '' The ...

selected his Inkblot films as the Best Film of 2011, noting "

is films In linguistics, a copula (plural: copulas or copulae; list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word or phrase that links the subject (grammar), subject of a sentence (linguistics), sentence to a subject complement, such as the word '' ...

struggle through the projector with an unsettlingly existential corporeality." His films are distributed by

Canyon Cinema Canyon Cinema is an American nonprofit organization for distributing independent, avant-garde, and artist-made films. After starting in the 1960s as an exhibition program, it grew to include a nationwide newsletter and a distribution cooperative. ...

in San Francisco,

The Film-Makers' Cooperative The Film-Makers' Cooperative a.k.a. legal name The New American Cinema Group, Inc. is an artist-run, non-profit organization incorporated in July 1961 in New York City by Jonas Mekas, Shirley Clarke, Stan Brakhage, Lionel Rogosin, Gregory Markopoul ...

in New York, and

Light Cone In special and general relativity, a light cone (or "null cone") is the path that a flash of light, emanating from a single event (localized to a single point in space and a single moment in time) and traveling in all directions, would take thro ...

in Paris. He was represented by Callicoon Fine Arts. He died at his home in

Revere, Massachusetts Revere is a city in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, United States, located approximately from Downtown Crossing, downtown Boston. Founded as North Chelsea in 1846, it was renamed in 1871 after the American Revolutionary War Patriot (American Re ...

on June 13, 2020, at the age of 58.

Selected works

*''Green'' (1988) (as Tom Rhoads) Super 8 mm, color, sound, 36 minutes *''Warm Broth'' (1988) (as Tom Rhoads) Super 8mm, color, sound, 30 minutes *''Sodom'' (1989) Super 8 mm, color, sound, 21 minutes *''Clown'' (1991) Super 8 mm, color, sound, 13 minutes *''Meat'' (1992) Super 8 mm on video, color, sound, 60 minutes, also a 2-hour performance *''Bottle Can'' (1993) Super 8 mm, color, sound, 20 minutes *''Erruption Errection'' (1994) Super 8 mm, color, sound, 10 minutes, *''Jellyfish Sandwich'' (1994) Super 8 mm, color, sound, 17 minutes *''Run'' (1994) Super 8 mm, color, sound, 13 minutes *''A.'' (1994) Super 8 mm, b&w, sound, 60 minutes *''Me Gut No Dog Dog'' (1994) Super 8 mm, color, sound, 42 minutes *''Meat Situation 04'' (1997) Super 8 mm, color, sound, 4 minutes *''Mother'' (1998–1999) Super 8 mm, color, sound, 25 minutes *''Home'' (1990–1999) Super 8 mm, b&w, sound, 13 minutes *''Ritual 629'' (1990–1999) Super 8 mm, color, sound, 15 minutes *''Recitations'' (1999) Super 8 mm, color, sound, 10 minutes *''Yellow Goodbye'' (1999) Super 8 mm, color, sound, 10 minutes *''Meat Blue 03'' (1999) Super 8 mm, color, sound *''Res hat ions'' (2000) Super 8mm, b&w, sound, 10 minutes *''#5'', (2000) Super 8mm, color, sound *''I'll Cry Tomorrow, Parts 1 and 2'' (2000) Super 8mm, color, sound, 20 minutes *''Dead Ringer'' (2000) Super 8mm, color, sound, 3 minutes *''A Patch of Green'' (2004) 16mm, 4 minutes *''Nice Biscotts #2'' (2005) 16mm, 10 minutes *''September Song'' (2005) 16mm, 5 minutes *''Dipping Sause'' (2005) 16mm, 8 minutes *''Turbulant Blue'' (2005-6) 16mm, 9 minutes *''Inside Velvet K'' (2006) 16mm, 10 minutes *''Fancy'' (2006) 16mm, 12 minutes *''Tamponia'' (2007) 16mm, 8 minutes *''Suffering Biscuits'' (2007) 16mm, 20 minutes *''Shelly Winters'' (2010) 16mm, 11 minutes *''After the Garden: Silking'' (2010) 16mm, 6 minutes

Notes

References

Bibliography

* * *

External links

San Francisco Cinematheque program notes from the Prelinger Archives

Film-makers Cooperative

California College of the Arts Lecture, 2012

2012 Whitney Biennial short: Luther Price

Rain n Shines Labyrinth Demo on SoundCloud

Eulogy from Mostra Internacional de Cinema Periférico organization

Luther Price: Light Window screening at MassArt, 2015

Luther Price MassArt Alumni Award, 2015

Luther Price, from Here to Eternity, 2020
{{DEFAULTSORT:Price, Luther 1962 births 2020 deaths 20th-century American artists 21st-century American artists American experimental filmmakers Film directors from Massachusetts People from Marlborough, Massachusetts People from Revere, Massachusetts Massachusetts College of Art and Design alumni Pseudonymous artists