Lecture: “Celebrating Maria Lassnig on Film”
MFA Boston
March 4, 2023
https://www.mfa.org/event/lecture/celebrating-maria-lassnig-on-film
Full Lecture
Martha Edelheit was a friend of Maria Lassnig’s and fellow member of the feminist filmmakers’ collective Women/Artist/Filmmakers, Inc. active in New York in the 70s, which included artists such as Rosalind Schneider, Carolee Schneemann, Doris Chase, and Olga Spiegel.
Find the full interview at the bottom of this page.
Lecture
Celebrating Maria Lassnig on Film
Saturday, March 4, 2023
2:00 pm–3:00 pm
Maria Lassnig may be known best for her paintings, but the artist was also a pioneer in the world of film. Lassnig’s work often focused on themes of autobiography, friendship, New York City, and, perhaps most ambitiously, physical sensation. More specifically, the filmmaker aimed to represent subjective corporeal feelings in her art.
In this program, scholars and individuals who are intimately familiar with Lassnig provide context to her film work, as well as her participation in the Women/Artists/Filmmakers Inc. collective.
Jocelyn Miller, independent curator and artist
Peter Pakesch, director, Maria Lassnig Foundation
Lynne Sachs, artist/filmmaker
Moderated by Michelle Millar Fisher, Ronald C. and Anita L. Wornick Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts
Sponsors
This project was produced in collaboration with Phileas.
October 15, 2022–April 2, 2023
Body Awareness: Maria Lassnig’s Experimental Films
Although best known as a painter, Maria Lassnig (1919–2014) began to experiment with film in 1970. From that point on, she created animations using felt-tip pen drawings, stencils, spray paint, and collaged magazine cutouts as well as live-action scenes featuring protagonists and settings drawn from friends and everyday encounters. In one way or another, all of Lassnig’s films investigate what the artist termed “body awareness,” an ambitious artistic desire to express the complex and often slippery subjective qualities of internal sensory experience and self-perception.
This exhibition celebrates Lassnig’s pioneering work on film, featuring 16 pieces that explore physical sensation, autobiography, friendship, and New York City, where the artist lived in the 1970s. Reproductions of ephemera—texts and images from the Maria Lassnig Foundation in Vienna, Austria—give visitors a glimpse into the artist’s practice and document the evolution of her ideas. With candid and unsparing interrogations of identity that eschew the contemporary fascination with spectacular imagery, Lassnig’s films remain strongly relevant to—and an antidotal critique of—art and life today.
MFA Late Nites
MFABoston
March 31, 2023
https://www.mfa.org/event/special-event/mfa-late-nites-march-2023
Special Event
MFA Late Nites
Friday, March 31, 2023
8:00 pm–1:00 am
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Kick off your weekend on Friday, March 31, at MFA Late Nites! This after-hours party celebrates the new exhibition “Hokusai: Inspiration and Influence,” complete with dancing and DJs, pop-up performances, exploring the galleries, and more.
In Conversation with Maria Lassnig’s Films
8:30–9:30 pm
Level 1, Room 156
Join two contemporary artists and a curator for a lively conversation on the intersection of gender, identity, and intimate interpersonal relationships in Maria Lassnig’s films. See excerpts from Lassnig’s work as well as work by others. Featuring curator Sophie Cavoulacos and artists Samantha Nye and Ng’endo Mukii.
MFA Late Nites
In Conversation with Maria Lassnig’s Films
Museum of Fine Arts Boston
March 31, 2023 – 8:30–9:30 pm
As part of the MFA’s Late Nites program on the evening of March 31, 2023, we present In Conversation with Maria Lassnig’s Films. Taking the late Austrian artist Maria Lassnig’s films as a point of departure, two contemporary artists – Samantha Nye and Ng’endo Mukii – and one curator – Sophie Cavoulacos – respond with their own “critics picks” that deepen and augment Lassnig’s engagement with the body, identity, feminism, and experimental film making.
The program responds to the MFA’s current exhibition Body Awareness: Maria Lassnig’ Experimental Films. Although best known as a painter, Maria Lassnig (1919–2014) began to experiment with film in 1970. From that point on, she created animations using felt-tip pen drawings, stencils, spray paint, and collaged magazine cutouts as well as live-action scenes featuring protagonists and settings drawn from friends and everyday encounters. In one way or another, all of Lassnig’s films investigate what the artist termed “body awareness,” an ambitious artistic desire to express the complex and often slippery subjective qualities of internal sensory experience and self-perception.
We hope to introduce Maria Lassnig to you if you do not know her work already, and deepen the interest of those of you who do – as well as to share artists’ films that are enmeshed in some of the same explorations as Lassnig herself, whether contemporaries of the artist or artists working today.
Program:
- Maria Lassnig, Self-portrait, 1972 (4 mins)
- Pierce Magliozzi, a home movie, circa 1958-1963. (8 mins 38 seconds, excerpt)
- Cindy Sherman’s Bird, 1976. (3 mins 19 seconds)
- Sara Stern, Mirror Ball, 2022. With a sound contribution by Sam Sewell. (5 mins, excerpt)
- Ng’endo Mukii,Yellow Fever, 2012 (6 mins 50 seconds)
- Ng’endo Mukii, Homage to Wangarī, 2018 (1 min 20 seconds)
- Barbara Hammer, Dyketactics, 1975. (4 mins)
- Maria Lassnig, Baroque Statues, 1974 (15 mins, excerpt)
- Rachel Stern photographs
- Samantha Nye, Visual Pleasure/Jukebox Cinema: Calendar Girl, 2018 (4 mins 18 seconds)
- Maria Lassnig’s Kantate, 1992 (7 mins)
Coda: Lynne Sachs, Carolee, Barbara, and Gunvor, 2018 (9 mins)