Ericka Beckman

Last updated

Ericka Beckman is an American filmmaker who began to make films in the 1970s as part of the Pictures Generation. Her films concern the relationship between people and images, and how images structure people's perception of themselves and of reality.

Contents

Early life and education

Beckman earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Washington University in St. Louis in 1974 and attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 1975. [1] She attended the California Institute of the Arts, originally as a visual artist, but later changed her focus to filmmaking. [2]

Career in filmmaking

Beckman went to graduate school at CalArts in the late 1970s, and was influenced by the percussionist John Bergamo who taught there, and by Jack Goldstein's film loops. [3] Beckman's early films were handmade and collaborative, integrating choreography, music, and singing, as well as sculptural objects. Her handmade cinematic effects have been compared to Fernand Léger's Ballet mécanique (1921) or Hans Richter's Ghosts Before Breakfast (1928) and predated the visual technology of MTV and special-effects blockbuster films like Tron . [4]

Beckman stated about her early films, "As a young artist I was looking for a language to explain the relationship between the knowledge of one's self and movement in the physical world." [3] Beckman describes the subject matter of her films: "Film is creating a reality through the makeshift. My films move backwards, using narrative structures as does the mind of anyone trying to grasp the meaning of images in his memory." [5]

The Super-8 films that Beckman created and exhibited prior to 1978, such as White Man Has Clean Hands (1977) and Hit and Run (1977), [6] [7] used basic prop-constructions and do-it-yourself special effects. [8] After reading Swiss child psychologist Jean Piaget's Genetic Epistemology, Beckman began her "Super-8 Trilogy." [3] This trio of experimental films created between 1978 and 1980 included We Imitate; We Break Up (1978), [9] [10] The Broken Rule (1979), and Out of Hand (1980), and featured split screens superimpositions and ingenious pixilations. [6] In these films Beckman used herself and a rotating cast, including James Casebere, Mike Kelley, Matt Mullican, James Welling, Kirby Dick, and Paul McMahon, as performers. [11] The films combined childhood dream recollections with Piaget's ideas on the cognitive development of children. Beckman's "Super-8 Trilogy" [12] demonstrated her ability to express her ideas using technical wizardry and poetic narrative. Out of Hand was one of the reasons the Whitney Biennial began to include Super-8 films. [13]

Beckman is also known for her 30 minute non-linear narrative film Cinderella (1986), in which the fairy tale character becomes part of a game as a metaphor for society's restrictions on women. [12] [14] The film starred Gigi Kalweit and Mike Kelley; Brooke Halpin composed the music, with vocals by Katy Cavanaugh. [11] Beckman's later films include Switch Center (2003), which was shot in Hungary in an abandoned water purification plant. [11] The film's mostly male characters move in choreographed constant motion as they interact with their industrial environment, referencing the compromised history of Soviet-style collectivism. [12]

Like other Pictures Generation artists, [15] Beckman's films focus on the ways in which stereotypes shape an individual's self-image, [16] revealing their origin in a generation raised on mass media. The kinetic movements of the actors are based on the "task-oriented" choreography of Lucinda Childs and Trisha Brown.

Beckman's work has been shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. [14]

Beckman's films Cinderella (1986) and You the Better (1983) were preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2017 and 2019, respectively. [17]

Related Research Articles

Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist and collagist associated with the Pictures Generation. She is most known for her collage style that consists of black-and-white photographs, overlaid with declarative captions, stated in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed text. The phrases in her works often include pronouns such as "you", "your", "I", "we", and "they", addressing cultural constructions of power, identity, consumerism, and sexuality. Kruger's artistic mediums include photography, sculpture, graphic design, architecture, as well as video and audio installations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cindy Sherman</span> American photographer

Cynthia Morris Sherman is an American artist whose work consists primarily of photographic self-portraits, depicting herself in many different contexts and as various imagined characters.

Sherrie Levine is an American photographer, painter, and conceptual artist. Some of her work consists of exact photographic reproductions of the work of other photographers such as Walker Evans, Eliot Porter and Edward Weston.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kiki Smith</span> German-born American artist

Kiki Smith is a West German-born American artist whose work has addressed the themes of sex, birth and regeneration. Her figurative work of the late 1980s and early 1990s confronted subjects such as AIDS, feminism, and gender, while recent works have depicted the human condition in relationship to nature. Smith lives and works in the Lower East Side, New York City, and the Hudson Valley, New York State.

David Salle is a Pictures Generation American painter, printmaker, photographer, and stage designer. Salle was born in Norman, Oklahoma, and lives and works in East Hampton, New York. He earned a BFA and MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California, where he studied with John Baldessari. Salle’s work first came to public attention in New York City in the early 1980s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louise Lawler</span> American artist and photographer

Louise Lawler is a U.S. artist and photographer living in Brooklyn, New York. From the late 1970s onwards, Lawler’s work has focused on photographing portraits of other artists’ work, giving special attention to the spaces in which they are placed and methods used to make them. Examples of Lawler's photographs include images of paintings hanging on the walls of a museum, paintings on the walls of an art collector's opulent home, artwork in the process of being installed in a gallery, and sculptures in a gallery being viewed by spectators.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lorna Simpson</span> American photographer and multimedia artist

Lorna Simpson is an American photographer and multimedia artist. She came to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s with artworks such as Guarded Conditions and Square Deal. Simpson is most well known for her work in conceptual photography. Her works have been included in numerous exhibitions both nationally and internationally. She is best known for her photo-text installations, photo-collages, and films. Her early work raised questions about the nature of representation, identity, gender, race and history. Simpson continues to explore these themes in relation to memory and history in various media including photography, film, video, painting, drawing, audio, and sculpture.

Peggy Ahwesh is an American experimental filmmaker and video artist. She received her B.F.A. at Antioch College. A bricoleur who has created both narrative works and documentaries, some projects are scripted and others incorporate improvised performance. She makes use of sync sound, found footage, digital animation, and Pixelvision video. Her work is primarily an investigation of cultural identity and the role of the subject in various genres. Her interests include genre; women, sexuality and feminism; reenactment; and artists' books. Her works have been shown worldwide, including in San Francisco, New York, Barcelona, London, Toronto, Rotterdam, and Créteil, France. Starting in 1990, she has taught at Bard College as a Professor of Film and Electronic Arts. Her teaching interests include: experimental media, history of the non-fiction film, and women in film.

Laurie Simmons is an American artist, photographer and filmmaker. Since the mid-1970s, Simmons has staged scenes for her camera with dolls, ventriloquist dummies, objects on legs, and people, to create photographs that reference domestic scenes. She is part of The Pictures Generation, a name given to a group of artists who came to prominence in the 1970s. The Pictures Generation also includes Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, and Louise Lawler.

The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984 was an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City that ran from April 29 – August 2, 2009. The exhibition took its name from Pictures, a 1977 group show organized by art historian and critic Douglas Crimp (1944–2019) at New York City's Artists Space gallery.

Bill Beckley is an American narrative/conceptual artist.

Anne Collier is an American visual artist working with appropriated photographic images. Describing Collier's work in Frieze art magazine, writer Brian Dillon said, "Collier uncouples the machinery of appropriation so that her found images seem weightless, holding their obvious meaning in abeyance."

Ilene Segalove is an American conceptual artist working with appropriated images, photography and video whose work can be understood as a precursor to The Pictures Generation.

Nancy Dwyer is an American contemporary artist whose works include paintings, works on paper, public art, word sculpture and furniture art. Her work has been exhibited widely at venues including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, the New Museum in New York and many others. Her work was included in the 2009 exhibition “The Pictures Generation” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, alongside the work of her peers and contemporaries, including Cindy Sherman and Robert Longo, with whom she cofounded Hallwalls in Buffalo, New York in 1974, as well as work by Barbara Kruger, Richard Prince, John Baldessari, Louise Lawler and Sherrie Levine, among others.

Gretchen Bender was an American artist who worked in film, video, and photography. She was from the so-called 1980s Pictures Generation of artists, which included Cindy Sherman, Robert Longo, Jack Goldstein, Laurie Simmons and Richard Prince, and who mixed elements of Conceptual Art and Pop Art using images from popular culture to examine its powerful codes.

Trisha Baga is an American artist living and working in New York City. Her work is installation based and incorporates video, performance, and found objects.

Melanie Gilligan is a Canadian artist living in New York City who works in video, performance, text, installation, and music.

Craig Kalpakjian is an American artist working in New York, known for his computer-generated, photo-realistic renderings of anonymous, institutional spaces. He is considered one of the first artists of his generation to make digital images depicting entirely artificial spaces in a fine art context.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ming Smith</span> African-American photographer

Ming Smith is an American photographer. She was the first African-American female photographer whose work was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Larry Johnson is an American artist living and working in Los Angeles.

References

  1. ↑ "Ericka Beckman | Sam Fox School". www.samfoxschool.wustl.edu. Retrieved 2015-06-02.
  2. ↑ Richard Hertz (1 September 2011). Jack Goldstein and the CalArts Mafia. Hol Art Books. pp. 98–. ISBN   978-1-936102-21-1.
  3. 1 2 3 Bovier, Lionel; Dirié, Clément; Eklund, Douglas (2013). Ericka Beckman. The Super-8 Trilogy, 1978-1981, dvd booklet. JRP Ringie.
  4. ↑ Ekland, Douglas (2009). The Pictures Generation, 1974-1984. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. pp. 124–127.
  5. ↑ Horror Pleni: Pictures in New York Today, exh. cat. Milan: Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea. 1980. pp. n.p.
  6. 1 2 Hoberman, J. (1980). "Explorations: Low tech, high art". American Film (5): 13–14, 66.
  7. ↑ Dika, Vera (15 March 2012). The (Moving) Pictures Generation: The Cinematic Impulse in Downtown New York Art and Film. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 38–. ISBN   978-1-137-25384-2.
  8. ↑ Carroll, Noel (28 May 1998). Interpreting the Moving Image. Cambridge University Press. pp. 330–. ISBN   978-0-521-58970-3.
  9. ↑ Beckman, Ericka. "We Imitate We Break Up". Archived from the original on October 6, 2014. Retrieved February 1, 2014.
  10. ↑ Banes, Sally (2007). Before, Between, and Beyond: Three Decades of Dance Writing. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press. p. 174.
  11. 1 2 3 Los Angeles Film Forum (2014), Ericka Beckman
  12. 1 2 3 Stefan, Olga (10 September 2013). "Ericka Beckman - Reviews - Art in America". Art in America.
  13. ↑ Sitney, P. A. (1985). "Point of view: Rear-Garde". American Film (10): 13, 61.
  14. 1 2 Larios, Pablo (21 October 2015). "Ericka Beckman - Reviews - Archive - frieze d/e". frieze-magazin.de. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 29 September 2014.
  15. ↑ Eklund, Douglas (2009). The Pictures Generation, 1974-1984. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 127.
  16. ↑ Zipes, Jack (27 January 2011). The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-Tale Films. Routledge. pp. 189–. ISBN   978-1-135-85395-2.
  17. ↑ "Preserved Projects". Academy Film Archive.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.