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HY HIRSH | color photographs

PAUL M. HERTZMANN, INC. | SAN FRANCISCO

Paul M. Hertzmann, Inc. Post Office Box 40447 San Francisco, California 94140 Tel: 415 626-2677 Fax: 415 552-4160 Email: [email protected]

Photographer and filmmaker Hy Hirsh led a restless and unconventional life. He worked in Los Angeles and San Francisco before creative and economic opportunities lured him to Europe in 1955. He died in Paris at age 49 under clouded circumstances, his death variously attrib- uted to a drug overdose or a heart attack.2 One account, probably apocryphal, suggests that upon Hirsh’s death his estate was seized by the French police because of the illegal cannabis found among his belongings.3 When his estate was released, much of his life’s work in film and photography went missing. What survives is work that Hirsh left with close friends and a few items that were returned to his family.4

The abstract color prints featured in this catalogue are unique among Hirsh’s body of little- known photographic work. They directly link his still photography to the experimental filmmaking for which he is best known. By closely connecting the two, he joins such artists as Man Ray and Francis Bruguière in making a notable contribution to both experimental filmmaking and photography.

His parents, Russian immigrants Max and Olga Hirsh, brought him to Southern California as a child in 1916, placing Hirsh in an ideal location to develop an interest in both filmmaking and photography. He was just 19 years old when he began working in the Hollywood studios. From 1930 through 1936 he was employed as a camera operator and editor, primarily at Columbia Studios.5 He began to make still photographs in 1932.6

Hirsh’s personal life was often tumultuous.A romantic relationship with Mae Agronowsky led to the birth of Hirsh’s only child, Diane, in 1934. He lived with them for two years but found trad- itional family life too confining. In 1939 he married Marie Gattman, a dancer and actress. She shared Hirsh’s interest in workers’ rights and left-wing politics, as well as his bohemian lifestyle.7

The couple lived in Los Angeles for a short time before moving to San Francisco’s Haight Street. Hirsh became the photographer for the California Palace of the Legion of Honor and the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, photographing artwork, processing film and making prints. He also used the museum darkroom facilities for his own artistic pursuits, though this arrange- ment was not officially approved. When colleagues knocked on the lab door, which Hirsh kept locked, he could be heard scurrying about in an attempt to hide his own artwork before return- ing to a museum project and opening the door.8

His early photographic style mirrored that of the most influential movement in California photography, Group f64, whose inaugural exhibition was held at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in 1932. The “straight” photographers of Group f64, including Edward Weston, Ansel Adams and Imogen Cunningham, insisted on “truth to the medium” by communicating their experiences through the elements of photography most characteristic of the medium. They pre- visualized their subject full-frame, printed the entire uncropped negative, emphasized fine detail, and adamantly opposed alterations to either negative or print. Hirsh’s photographs from that time are sharply focused renderings in black and white that employ little, if any, manipulation.

Hirsh also was influenced by the social documentary approach of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographers who poignantly recorded the impact of the Great Depression on displaced workers and their families. The harsh economic reality and the leftist leanings of many in Hollywood undoubtedly had an impact on Hirsh, as well.9 Hirsh’s photographs from this

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…form and image obey the ceaseless logic of dream. Henry Miller

Fig. 1. Self-Portrait. Vintage silver print, ca. 1955.

period often explore social issues. More detached than most FSA photographers, he seldom focused upon individuals or rural subjects. City scenes were a frequent subject for his camera, particularly the decay and rubble of urban life. He photographed dilapidated debris—the wasted leftovers of human existence.Among his merciless images are rusted-out machinery abandoned in vacant urban lots (fig. 2) and stacks of old crates (fig. 3).

He received early recognition for these photographs, which he exhibited in Los Angeles and San Francisco in seven shows between 1935 and 1955.10 In the second of these, a 1936 group exhibition entitled Seven Photographers held at the Stanley Rose Gallery in Los Angeles, he exhibited with some of the leading figures of West Coast photography: Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and Brett Weston.11 Hirsh’s work was also represented in publications during this period, including U.S. Camera in 1936, 1937 and 1939.

The San Francisco Museum of Art presented a solo exhibition of his photographs in 1943.12

Critic Alfred Frankenstein wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle, “Hirsh is a craftsman in the tradition of Weston and the other ‘pure’ photographers. His plates are surgically clean in detail and surface, but he prefers a rather somber color and tone, and tends toward rather sober subject matter.”13 Frankenstein describes Hirsh’s work of the time as depicting “a strong and honest and pitiless record of the world…”

While Hirsh pursued photography, he grew interested in underground filmmaking. In the film, Even—As You and I, a live action short made in 1937, he acted and assisted with the pro- duction, though he is not listed in the film credits.15 The film depicts the hesitant efforts of three young men who attempt to create a film for entry in a contest, discover Surrealism, and produce a series of wild, freewheeling visual experiments. Such playful exploration appealed to Hirsh.

He became increasingly involved in the underground film movement blossoming in San Francisco’s jazz-beat scene (and in Los Angeles, in the shadows of Hollywood). In 1946 a land- mark symposium on avant-garde filmmaking was presented by the San Francisco Museum of Art. Entitled Art in Cinema, it celebrated the spirit of experimental film while generally dismissing Hollywood movies as entertainment. The event, which Hirsh surely attended, showcased early films by Marcel Duchamp, Oskar Fischinger, and Man Ray (both Fischinger and Man Ray were living in Los Angeles at the time). Films by younger Californians were shown, such as those by brothers James and John Whitney, winners of the first international award in experimental animation in 1946. The growing California independent film community eventually included Jordan Belson, Stan Brakhage, and Harry Smith.

In this invigorating environment Hirsh met filmmaker Sidney Peterson, whose work was screened at the symposium.16 In 1947 Peterson joined the faculty of the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA) in San Francisco and founded its film program.17 He enlisted Hirsh in the making of the first film produced at the college, The Cage. Hirsh was originally brought in as camera- man, but the project became a full collaboration between the two men.

Working with Peterson on The Cage, Hirsh again found filmmaking to be a medium ripe for bold experimentation.As Peterson later described in a letter, “Together, in one way and another, we did everything either could think of to do with a camera. We tried animation. We tied the camera to a contraption and rolled it down a hill.We reversed the action and shot it upside down and then reversed the film in accordance with the rule, since made explicit by Jasper Johns, about taking an object, doing something to it and then doing something else to what had been done.”18

As Hirsh’s involvement in alternative filmmaking deepened, his commitment to the classical restraint of straight photography diminished. The purist approach seemed too limiting, with its restrictions on manipulation and the preciousness with which its practitioners regarded the finished print. Hirsh began exploring more expansive approaches to photography. He produced surrealist inspired works such as a slightly disturbing image of manikin forms (fig. 4), as well as images filled with ambiguous spaces and a prevailing sense of mystery (fig. 5).

Fig. 2. Untitled [Abandoned Machinery]. Vintage silver print, ca. 1935.

Fig. 3. Untitled [Stacked Crates]. Vintage silver print, ca. 1940.

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Although he had been greatly influenced by Adams and Group f64, he came to regard the older photographer as emblematic of an inhibited, narrow approach to photography. With a note of ridicule for Adams, who was the founder of the photog- raphy department at CSFA, Sidney Peterson recalled the sharply different sensibili- ties of Adams and Hirsh, “What I find extraordinary … about Hy at the time, was the readiness with which he lent himself [in the making of The Cage] to what must have seemed sheer madcappery to many and to have done it, as a photographer, in the very citadel of photographic conservatism, a school of photography … presided over by that arch conservative Ansel Adams. His [Hirsh’s] own status as a photographer was on the line and he couldn’t have cared less. I doubt he even thought about it.”19

Hirsh’s exploratory nature expressed itself most fully in filmmaking. He began creating his own art films in 1951.20 In San Francisco he produced four films: Divertissement Rococo (1951), Eneri (1953), Come Closer (1953), Gyromorphosis (1954), and at least six more, later, in Europe.21 Eneri, won first prize at the California State Exposition in 1954. Gyromorphosis won a medal at the 1958 Brussels Exposition, as did a film he produced in Europe, Autumn Spectrum (1957).

In Eneri shapes jump and play, lines wiggle and twist, colors convert and combine. Together they form a rhythmic display accompanied by a dynamic Afro- Cuban beat.22 The result is something like rubbing your eyes hard and watching the array of patterns and colors dance on the back of your eyelids—a spectral vision set to rhythmic drumming.

Hirsh’s arrangements, however, are neither random nor haphazard. They are carefully considered and artfully orchestrated, yet they remain lively and fluid. Some pulsate with geometric shapes, while others employ the soothing, hypnotic motion of reflections on the surface of water. Still others feature female forms swimming in liquid color.

These pioneering efforts by Hirsh and other animators are the equivalent of early flying contraptions. Such films were laborious to make and today appear delightfully crude in light of present-day computer technology. As with the first aviators, one has to admire the inventiveness, adventurousness, and do-it-yourself independence of these filmmakers. What is surprising is how fully realized these films are and how compelling they remain.

Making these films required considerable know-how, and Hirsh was regarded as a techni- cal wizard. Peterson described Hirsh’s adaptation of a Taylor-Hobson lens to the Cine Special camera used by the two of them in the making of The Cage. The lens, as Peterson explained, was “a novelty number intended for the amusement of friends, the anamorphic equivalent of a funhouse mirror…Hy cooked up some sort of adapter and it was used in all those school films, I think, and then, finally, I gave it away to Stan Brakhage and it became, as they say, legendary.”23

To produce his films, Hirsh combined a number of techniques. With the “oil wipe” process, for example, simple lines and shapes were drawn in thick colored oils and then filmed. Hirsh also rigged a device for recording in film the patterns produced on an oscilloscope screen. He shot the patterns in black and white and used filters to add color. Oscilloscope derived images appear in a number of his films. He united these and other effects using an optical printer, a device capable of overlaying various images onto a single strip of film. Hirsh hand built his own optical printer and shared it with other filmmakers, most notably Jordan Belson and Harry Smith.

Combined images became integral to Hirsh’s still photography, too. Sometimes he utilized double exposure, other times he overlapped separate negatives. In Europe he employed both approaches to produce a series of fashion spreads for Elle, overlaying the image of a model with a floral motif or combining a model’s image with that of a landscape turned on its side (fig. 7).24

Fig. 4. Untitled [Manikins]. Vintage silver print, ca. 1940.

Fig. 5. Untitled [Paris]. Vintage silver print, late 1950s.

In another print he produced a mocking, Dali-like self-portrait by superimposing two negatives, one of himself and one of a broken sheet of glass (fig. 1).

In Paris he shot hundreds of color slides of old wall posters that were peeling, exposing layers of posters underneath. These torn and deteriorating posters, their printed images inter- mixing, resulted in surprising and unexpected juxtapositions (fig. 6). The subject itself, the layers of posters, shot on a single negative, provided a montage equivalent to double exposure.

Hirsh’s still photography and filmmaking were linked to one another, both in technique and subject matter. The slides of posters, for example, were taken in preparation for making a film in 1958 of the same subject, entitled Défense d’Afficher. The slides were shown a decade later, after Hirsh’s death, in Recent Color, a presentation organized by John Szarkowski at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, “exploring experimental directions in contemporary color photography.”25

The most important connection between Hirsh’s films and photographs involved music, which was one of Hirsh’s passions. He maintained a large record collection and attended jazz performances in Bay area coffeehouses. Be it primal drum beats or the cool jazz of Thelonius Monk (in Chasse des Touches), music was a key rhythmic and emotional component of his films.

Beyond its use on the sound track, music fulfilled a profound role for Hirsh and other avant-garde filmmakers, both in the United States and Europe. These artists explored the rela- tionship between visual art and music, searching for the basic elements shared by both. For example, just as musical notes and phrases can be said to have a certain coloring, colors can be said to have volume and impart mood. In this pursuit artists created paintings, photographs, films and light shows as the visual equivalents of music. This tradition of art is often referred to today as visual music.26

The visual music movement during the twentieth century belonged to the reductive direc- tion of modernism—an effort to distill art down to its most fundamental elements of expression. Artists wanted color, line, shape, value and texture, rather than the subject matter, to carry the emotional message of their art. This is why their work, be it filmmaking or painting, is often abstract and without a recognizable subject. Perhaps the most popularly known example of visual music is the Walt Disney film, Fantasia, in which the usual Hollywood storyline gives way to phan- tasmagorical displays of abstract shapes and colors. Artists who worked in the visual music tradition include painters such as Wassily Kandinsky, Oskar Fischinger and Stanton Macdonald- Wright. Some artists are still pursing this path today.

Not surprisingly, given their interest in the synesthetic relationship between the various arts, many creators of visual music films also produced art in other media. Fischinger (who worked on Fantasia) was both a painter and filmmaker, as was Harry Smith, Jordan Belson, James Whitney, and Len Lye. Man Ray and Francis Bruguière were painters, photographers and filmmakers.

Hirsh’s role as a visual music filmmaker has been recognized, but his contribution to visual music as a still photographer has been overlooked. The color abstract images reproduced in this catalogue evolved, like his filmmaking, as a part of the visual music movement. They are closely connected to his films, particularly Eneri, Chasse des Touches (1959), and La Couleur de la Forme (1960–61). The same elliptical patterns, flowing lines, and biomorphic shapes are displayed upon fields of saturated color in both his films and photographs. The experience for the viewer is nearly the same in either – an exuberant evocation of the freewheeling jazz-beat spirit so alive at the time in San Francisco and Paris.

It is important that these color prints not be viewed as mere film stills, since they do not duplicate specific film frames. They stand alone as works of art. In these prints time is momen- tarily held—like a musical chord sustained—so that we might meditate on the image’s visual and emotional character. As such these photographs are artful companions to Hirsh’s films. They represent his purist expression of visual music created in still photography.

Dennis Reed

Fig. 6. Untitled [Wall Posters, Paris] Color slide, ca. 1958.

Fig. 7. Untitled [Illustration in Elle, August 18, 1961, p. 31]. Half-tone color reproduction.

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About the Author Dennis Reed is best known for his 1986 book and exhibition, Japanese Photography in America, 1920–1940, and as the co-author of Pictorialism in California: Photographs, 1900–1940, published in 1994 by the J. Paul Getty Museum. The Wind Came from the East: Asian American Photography, an essay, will be published by Stanford University in 2008. Reed is Dean of Arts at Los Angeles Valley College.

Author’s Acknowledgements I wish to express my gratitude to Hirsh’s daughter, Diane Kleinfeld, who shared her personal story. Cindy Keefer, Executive Director of the Center for Visual Music, generously provided information and guidance regarding Hirsh’s life, his films, and the films of others with whom he worked. Judith Berlowitz offered extensive information on Hirsh’s marriage to her aunt, Marie Gattman-Hirsh-Chapman. Jeff Gunderson assisted with facts related to CSFA. I also want to mention Dr. William Moritz, an expert on experimental film, who I had the pleasure of meeting in the early 1980s when I began to research Hirsh’s work.

Notes

1 Henry Miller, “Introduction: The Red Herring and the Diamond-backed Terrapin” in Art in Cinema, San Francisco Museum of Art (San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Art, 1947), 5.

2 Interview with Dr. William Moritz, 1984. Hirsh’s death certificate indicates cardiac infarction as the cause of death. 3 Dr. William Moritz, “Hy Hirsh & The Fifties: Jazz and Abstraction in Beat Era Film” in Kinetica 3: Abstraction/Animation/Music (Los

Angeles: The iotaCenter, 2001), 5–8. This story has been widely circulated, but this author is aware of no direct evidence to support it. 4 Interviews with Diane Kleinfeld, Hirsh’s daughter, in 1983, 2006-2007. 5 Kerry Brougher, Olivia Mattis, Jeremy Strick, Ari Wiseman Judith Zilczer, Visual Music: Synaesthesia in Art and Music Since 1900

(London: Thames & Hudson, 2005), 252; Moritz, Hy Hirsh Biography, iotaCenter [article online]; available from http://www.iotacen- ter.org/visualmusic/articles/moriz/hirshbio; Internet; accessed 15 May 2007.

6 Document entitled, Hy Hirsh: Curriculum Vitae, provided by Barbara Shuey to Dr. Moritz [from the William Moritz Collection, Center for Visual Music, Los Angeles].

7 Judith Berlowitz, Biography of Marie Gattman-Hirsh-Chapman, typed manuscript, December, 2006; Berlowitz emails to author, 2006–2007; Kleinfeld interviews.

8 As related by Hirsh’s San Francisco roommate, Beryl Sokoloff, to Cindy Keefer, interview, 2002. 9 For a time Hirsh worked for the WPA.

10 1935, 1936, 1937, 1940, 1946, 1954 and 1955. 11 Sherril Schell’s work was also included in the exhibition. 12 One version of Hirsh’s Vita, prepared after his death (or amended), probably by Beryl Sokoloff, indicates that a one-man show of his

work was held in Germany in October of 1961 [from the William Moritz Collection, Center for Visual Music, Los Angeles]. 13 Alfred Frankenstein, San Francisco Chronicle, April 18, 1943 (from a typed copy). The reference to color refers to mood, as the prints

discussed were black and white. 14 Ibid. 15 Kerry Brougher, Olivia Mattis, Jeremy Strick, Ari Wiseman Judith Zilczer, 252. 16 Sidney Peterson’s film The Potted Psalm, made with James Broughton, was among those screened at the festival. 17 This was an exciting time at CSFA because Douglas MacAgy, as the new director, immediately began to transform the institution. It was

he who famously brought to the school such painters as Clifford Still, Richard Diebenkorn and David Park, hired Peterson to found the film program, and approved the new photography department headed by Ansel Adams and Minor White. The CSFA was renamed the San Francisco Art Institute in 1961.

18 Sidney Peterson, unpublished letter to Marie Gattman-Hirsh-Chapman, November 11, 1977. 19 Ibid. 20 He also produced short reportage films for television in 1954–1955. 21 Filmographies vary and footage exists from apparently unfinished films. Gyromorphosis was likely filmed in Amsterdam. 22 Eneri was named after his girlfriend of the time, Irene, by spelling her name backwards (Hirsh and Gattman had divorced). Always

interested in the new technology, Hirsh bought an early magnetic tape recorder and used it during a fashion shoot to record the music for Eneri.

23 Peterson. 24 His work appears in at least five issues of Elle in 1961. 25 Museum of Modern Art, Press Release, No. 24, February, 1968. 26 Kerry Brougher, Olivia Mattis, Jeremy Strick, Ari Wiseman, Judith Zilczer, 1–272.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS & PRICES

All color illustrations are from original chromogenic photographs, printed by Hirsh himself, using the Ansco Printon process. The color prints are untrimmed, full sheets, 97⁄8 x 87⁄8 inches [25 x 20 cms.] or the reverse. All black and white illustrations are from vintage gelatin silver photographs, printed by the photographer. Hirsh’s credit stamp is on the reverse of all photographs. Each print is identified by an inventory number, shown in brackets below.

Front cover. Untitled chromogenic photograph, ca. 1950. [4841] $4,500

Inside front cover. Untitled chromogenic photograph, ca. 1950. [4839] $4,500

Fig. 1. Self-Portrait. Vintage silver print, ca. 1955. 8 x 77⁄8 inches. [4818] $3,000

Fig. 2. Untitled [Abandoned Machinery]. Vintage silver print, ca. 1935. 75⁄8 x 95⁄8 inches. [4419] $3,000

Fig. 3. Untitled [Stacked Crates]. Vintage silver print, ca. 1940. 75⁄8 x 95⁄8 inches [4820] $3,000

Fig. 4. Untitled [Manikins]. Vintage silver print, ca. 1940. 75⁄8 x 95⁄8 inches [4821] $3,000

Fig. 5. Untitled [Paris]. Vintage silver print, late 1950s. 53⁄8 x 73⁄4 inches [4822] $3,000

Fig. 6. Untitled [Wall Posters, Paris]. Color slide, ca. 1958. Not for sale.

Fig. 7. Untitled [Illustration in Elle, August 18, 1961, p. 31]. Half-tone color reproduction. Not for sale

PLATES

Page 6. Untitled chromogenic photograph, ca. 1950. [4840] $4,500

Page 7 top. Untitled chromogenic photograph, ca. 1950. [4847] $3,500

Page 7 bottom. Untitled chromogenic photograph, ca. 1950. [4827] $4,000

Page 8. Untitled chromogenic photograph, ca. 1950. [4832] $4,000

Page 9. Untitled chromogenic photograph, ca. 1950. [4828] $4,000

Page 10. Untitled chromogenic photograph, ca. 1950. [4831] $3,500 Page 11. Untitled chromogenic photograph, ca. 1950. [4845] $3,500

Page 12. Untitled chromogenic photograph, ca. 1950. [4835] $4,000

Page 13 top. Untitled chromogenic photograph, ca. 1950. [4844] $3,500

Page 13 bottom. Untitled chromogenic photograph, ca. 1950. [4826] $3,500

Page 14. Untitled chromogenic photograph, ca. 1950. [4843] $3,500

Page 15. Untitled chromogenic photograph, ca. 1950. [4837] $3,500

Page 16. Untitled chromogenic photograph, ca. 1950. [4836] $4,500

Page 17. Untitled chromogenic photograph, ca. 1950. [4833] $3,500

Page 18. Untitled chromogenic photograph, ca. 1950. [4829] $3,500

Page 19. Untitled chromogenic photograph, ca. 1950. [4842] $3,500

Page 20. Untitled chromogenic photograph, ca. 1950. [4825] $3,500

Page 21 top. Untitled chromogenic photograph, ca. 1950. [4846] $3,500

Page 21 bottom. Untitled chromogenic photograph, ca. 1950. [4824] $3,500

Back cover. Untitled chromogenic photograph, ca. 1950. [4830] $4,500

CONDITIONS OF SALE

All the photographs are from the estate of Hy Hirsh and are subject to prior sale.

Customers will be billed for shipping and insurance. Applicable sales tax will be charged.

SELECTED CHRONOLOGY

1911 Born October 11, Philadelphia, PA.

1930–36 Worked as a cameraman and editor at Columbia Studios, Los Angeles.

1932 Made his first black and white photographs.

1936 Exhibited in “Seven Photographers” at Stanley Rose Gallery, Los Angeles.

1936–37 Worked as a photographer for the WPA, Los Angeles.

1937 Acted and worked as cinematographer in his first film project Even-As You and I. Moved to San Francisco.

1937–54 House photographer for the Palace of the Legion of Honor and the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco.

1943 Solo exhibition of his photographs at the San Francisco Museum of Art.

1946–52 Assisted Sidney Peterson and other experimental filmmakers.

1951 Created his first independent abstract animation film, Divertissement Rococo.

1952 Divertissement Rococo screened at the Sixth International Edinburgh Film Festival.

1954 Awarded first prize for Eneri at the California State Exposition.

1954–55 Made 15 short documentary films for television (believed lost).

1955 Moved to Paris. Received “Lion d’Or de Cannes” for publicity film.

1955–61 Worked in Spain, Holland, France in film publicity, advertising and fashion photography, experimental films, and experimental still photography. His commercial photographs were published in Elle, Réalités, and Vanity Fair.

1958 Received award for his films, Gyromorphosis and Autumn Spectrum at Brussels Exposition.

1960 Film “Retrospective Hy Hirsh” at the Louvre, Pavillon de Marsan, Paris.

1961 Died November, Paris.

1968 His color slides shown in Recent Color at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

1977 His photographs exhibited in “The 30’s and 40’s: Vintage Prints by Hy Hirsh” at Focus Gallery, San Francisco.

1978 His photographs exhibited at the Stephen White Gallery, Los Angeles.

SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY

The Cage, 1947 16mm, silent, 28 mins. Director: Sidney Peterson

Horror Dream, 1947 10 mins. Director: Sidney Peterson

Clinic of Stumble, c. 1948 16mm, 16 mins. Director: Sidney Peterson

Lead Shoes, 1949 16mm, 18 mins. Director: Sidney Peterson

Divertissement Rococo, 1951 16mm, color, sound, 12 mins.

Eneri, 1953 16mm, color, sound, 7 mins.

Come Closer, 1953 16mm, stereoscopic color, sound, 7 mins.

Gyromorphosis, 1954 16mm, color, sound, 7 mins.

Autumn Spectrum, 1957 16mm, color, sound, 7 mins. Music: Modern Jazz Quartet

Défense d'Afficher, 1958 16mm, color, sound, 8 mins.

Chasse des Touches, 1959 16mm, color, sound, 4 mins. Music: Thelonius Monk, “Evidence”

Décollages Recollés, c. 1960 16 mm. black/white and color Two projector film, (unfinished)

La Couleur de la Forme, 1961 16 mm, color, 7 mins. (original lost)

Scratch Pad, 1961 16mm, color, sound, 9 mins.

Etude Anatomique du Photographe, 1961 (believed lost)

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

“The Enigma of Hy Hirsh,” Cartoons: One Hundred Years of Cinema Animation. Paris: Editions Liana Levi, 1991.

Berlowitz, Judith. Biography of Marie Gattman-Hirsh-Chapman, typed manuscript, December, 2006.

*California Arts and Architecture, April, 1941, pp. 20–21. Curtis, David. Experimental Cinema. London: Studio Vista, 1971.

*Elle, no. 788, 1/27/1961, pp. 42–45.

*Elle, no. 789, 2/3/1961, pp. 44–47.

*Elle, no. 795, 3/17/1961, pp. 94–113.

*Elle, no. 797, 3/31/1961, pp. 88–93.

*Elle, no. 817, 8/18/1961, pp. 30–41.

Fischer, Hal. “Exhibition Wrap-up,” Artweek, 12/24/1977.

Frankenstein, Alfred. “A New Crop of Photo Shows,” San Francisco Chronicle, 12/13/1977.

Haller, Robert. “Hy Hirsh,” Articulated Light: The Emergence of Abstract Film in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Film Archive/Anthology Film Archives, 1995,

Hy Hirsh: Curriculum Vitae, provided by Barbara Shuey to Dr. William Moritz. William Moritz Collection at the Center for Visual Music, Los Angeles.

Keefer, Cindy. “Hy Hirsh Preservation: History and Mystery,” Kinetica 3. Los Angeles: The iotaCenter, 2001.

Keefer, Cindy. “Space Light Art-Early Abstract Cinema and Multimedia, 1900–1959,” White Noise, Melbourne: Australian Center for the Moving Image, 2005.

Kerry Brougher, Olivia Mattis, Jeremy Strick, Ari Wiseman Judith Zilczer. Visual Music: Synaesthesia in Art and Music Since 1900. London: Thames & Hudson, 2005.

La Technique Cinématographique, November, 1961, obituary.

LeGrice, Malcolm. Abstract Film and Beyond. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977.

Moritz, William. “Non-Objective Film: The Second Generation,” Film as Film: Formal Experiment in Film 1910–1975. London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1979.

“Visualle Musik: Hohlenmalerei fur MTV,” Sound and Vision. Frankfurt: Deutsches Filmmuseum, 1993.

Moritz, William. “Hy Hirsh,” Articulated Light: The Emergence of Abstract Film in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Film Archive/Anthology Film Archives, 1995.

Moritz, Dr. William, “Hy Hirsh,” l’Art du Movement. Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1996.

Moritz, Dr. William. “Hy Hirsh & The Fifties: Jazz and Abstraction in Beat Era Film,” Kinetica 3. Los Angeles: The iotaCenter, 2001.

Museum of Modern Art, Press Release, no. 24, February, 1968.

*Photographs: Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Lincoln: Nebraska Art Association, 1977, p. 156 [Untitled: Horse and Wagon].

Pike, Robert. The Film as an Art Form: A Study of the West Coast Experimental Film Movement. UCLA Masters Thesis, 1960.

Scheugl, Hans and Schmidt Jr., Ernst. “Hy Hirsh” Lexikon des Avantgarde-, Experimental- und Undergroundfilms. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1974.

*Southern California Photography: An Historical Survey. Los Angeles: The Photography Museum, 1980, pl. 29.

Stauffacher, Frank (ed.). Art in Cinema, San Francisco Museum of Art, 1947.

*U.S. Camera, 1936, p. 109 [“Cabbages”].

*U.S. Camera, 1937, p. 134 [Untitled: Horse and Wagon].

*U.S. Camera, 1939, p. 129, [“Girl in the Sun”].

*Entries preceded by an asterisk contain photographs by Hy Hirsh.

Hy Hirsh materials are housed in the William Moritz Collection at the Center for Visual Music in Los Angeles, CA.

$25