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Jack Smith
(November 14, 1932 - September 25, 1989) U.S.A.

Jack Smith

Filmmaker, performance artist, and writer

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Born at Columbus, Ohio, Jack Smith was one of the most accomplished and influential underground artists in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, a key figure in the cultural history of Downtown film, performance, and art. From the late 1950s until his death from A.I.D.S. in 1989, Smith was chiefly recognized for his work in film and performance.

Innovative and idiosyncratic, Smith explored and developed a deceptively frivolous camp aesthetic, importing allusions to B-Grade Hollywood films and elements of social and political critique into the arena of high art. Less celebrated than the many people he inspired, Smith's multi-media influence is evident in the works of a broad segment of the American Avant Garde.

Smith was both filmmaker and performance artist. After a period of about eight years (1961 - 1969) in which Smith showed the films in their completed forms in conventional film screening settings, he began to incorporate the films and his slides into the performances. He developed this technique called "Expanded Cinema" in many of his performance pieces of the period.

He died in Manhattan, New York, of AIDS-related complication.

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Source: excerpts from: http://www.hi-beam.net/mkr/js/js-bio.html

His work include:

  • Overstimulated (1960)
  • Flaming Creatures (1961)
  • Normal Love (1963)
  • Scotch Tape (1963)
  • Respectable Creatures (1967)
  • Normal Love Addendum Reel (1968)
  • No President (1968)
  • Hot Air Specialists (1970)
  • Hamlet (1976)
  • Bowery Dawn (restored 1997)
  • I was A Male Yvonne Decarlo (restored 1997)
  • Ghosts
  • Jungle Jack in Cologne Zoo
  • Reefers of Technicolor Island
  • Color Heatwave of Tabu
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