(Toronto) Multidisciplinary artist Michael Snow, known in Canada and abroad for his abstract painting, public sculptures and experimental film Wave length of 1967, died at the age of 94.
The Toronto-born artist died on Thursday, said Tamsen Greene, senior director of New York’s Jack Shainman Gallery, which represented Snow.
The National Gallery of Canada said in a statement that Snow was “a giant of the art world, in Canada and internationally,” and “a formidable ambassador.” It is added that “his legacy is that of an unprecedented transformation of the relationship between the work of art and the viewer”.
Her creative experiences challenged perceptions and ultimately changed the way we understand art, the world, and each other.
Excerpt from the press release from the National Gallery of Canada
Some of his best-known projects are works of public art, including the installation of geese flight-stop of the Toronto Eaton Centre, created in 1979, and The Audience of the Rogers Centre, a sculpture of cheering fans that was unveiled when the SkyDome opened in 1989.
Snow the filmmaker
Throughout her artistic career, Snow has experimented with various media, including film, painting, sculpture, photography and music. However, to many moviegoers, he is perhaps best known for inspiring the name Wavelengths, designating the experimental film program of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
TIFF Managing Director Cameron Bailey has called Snow’s work in the visual arts transformative.
“Quietly, he tore down boundaries,” Mr. Bailey said in a statement dedicated to his contribution to cinema.
Cameron Bailey, chief executive of TIFF, adds that Wave lengthremarkable for its 45-minute camera zoom, “remains its most powerful gift”.
An interview with Snow as part of the podcast series Uncut TIFF in 2017 highlighted his interest in art as a teenager and the extraordinary perspectives that a few chance encounters opened up to him.
Snow said he started playing music in high school. Soon after, he traveled to Europe, where for part of the 1950s he set out to “try to find himself, look at art, and hitchhike.” He also spent those years sketching, a practice he fully embraced upon his return to Toronto, where he enrolled at the Ontario College of Art, now known as OCAD University.
Plot
An exhibition of his works at the Hart House of the University of Toronto allowed him to meet George Dunning, Canadian producer and director, who would go on to direct the Beatles animated film Yellow Submarine in 1968.
Dunning was light years away from this psychedelic project, but he was seduced by Snow’s early work, telling him that “whoever made these drawings was someone who must have been interested in cinema”.
It turns out that Snow had little interest in it. It seems that he “very rarely” went to the movies, but he was intrigued by the idea of applying his knowledge to animation and accepted a job offer from Dunning to learn how to animate.
My initiation to cinema was done in this way. I had no particular interest in cinema and I was introduced to its mechanics, to what it is, frame by frame.
Michael Snow, in a podcast of the series Uncut TIFFin 2017
Snow moved to New York in the 1960s and was exposed to the experimental film world of Manhattan.
He was to return to the North to present at the 1967 Montreal Expo a series of silhouette sculptures inspired by his character Walking Woman, a series of projects he created throughout the 1960s.
In the same year, he presented Wave lengthhis 45-minute medium-length film that takes place entirely inside a loft, with the camera slowly zooming in on a window frame.
Wave length won the grand prize at the Knokke Experimental Film Festival that year, exposing Snow to a new audience and encouraging him to continue his research in the field of experimental cinema.
In the years that followed, Snow did not neglect his other artistic passions.
In 1970, he participated in a solo exhibition at the Venice Biennale and, in 1974, he was part of the Canadian Creative Music Collective, an improvisational group that founded the Music Gallery in Toronto.
He also continued to make experimental short films, while exhibiting some of his other works around the world, including at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Snow received the Order of Canada in 1981 and was made a Companion in 2007.