Michael Snow

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Michael Snow (born December 10, 1929) is a Canadian artist working in painting, sculpture, video, films, photography, holography, drawing, books and music.

In 2004, the Université de Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne awarded him an honorary doctorate. The last previous artist so awarded was Pablo Picasso.

He was born in Toronto and studied at Upper Canada College and the Ontario College of Art. He had his first solo exhibition in 1957. Since then, his work has appeared at exhibitions across Europe, North America and South America. His works were included in the shows marking the reopening of both the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2000 and the MoMA in New York in 2005. In March 2006 his works were included in the Whitney Biennial.

Snow is considered one of the most influential experimental film makers, the subject of retrospectives in many countries. In his 2002 Village Voice review of *Corpus Callosum, J. Hoberman wrote “Rigorously predicated on irreducible cinematic facts, Snow's structuralist epics—Wavelength and La Région Centrale—announced the imminent passing of the film era. Rich with new possibilities, *Corpus Callosum heralds the advent of the next. Whatever it is, it cannot be too highly praised.” *Corpus Calossum was screened at the Toronto, Berlin, Rotterdam, and the Los Angeles film festivals amongst others. In January 2003, Snow won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Douglas Edwards Independent Experimental Film/Video Award for *Corpus Callosum. His numerous films have premiered in major film festivals all over the world. Five of his films have premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). In 2000, TIFF commissioned Snow with Atom Egoyan and David Cronenburg to make short films, Preludes, for the 25th Anniversary of the Toronto International Film Festival.

Originally a professional jazz musician, he also has a long-standing interest in improvised music, as indicated by the soundtrack to his film New York Eye and Ear Control. He has performed alone and with other musicians in North American, Europe and Japan piano. He performs regularly in Canada and abroad, often with the improvisational music ensemble CCMC since the mid-1970s and with which he has released more than a half dozen albums.

His works have been in virtually every Canadian pavilion at every world fair since his famours Walking Women sculpture graced Expo 67 in Montreal.

His most recent book work BIOGRAPHIE of the Walking Woman / de la femme qui marche 1961-1967 (2004), published in Brussels by La Lettre vole. It is all images of public appearances of his globally famous famous icon.

Anarchive2: Digital Snow describes Michael Snow as “one of the most significant artists in contemporary art and cinema of the past 50 years.” This 2002 DVD was initiated by Paris’ Centre Pompidou and produced with the support of la foundation Daniel Langlois, Université Paris, Heritage Canada, the Canada Council, Téléfilm Canada and Montreal’s Époxy. It is an encyclopedia of his works in many media, browsed in a manner inimitably and artfully created by Snow. Its 4,685 entries include film clips, sculpture, photographs, audio and musical clips, and interviews.

In 1981, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. He received the first Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts (2000) for cinema.

In 1993 The Michael Snow Project was a many month, multi-venue major retrospective of Snow’s works in Toronto including public venues and at the Art Gallery of Ontario and The Power Plant. Concurrently his works were the subjects of four books published by Alfred A. Knopf Canada.

1 Facts and Figures
2 Art installations
3 Filmography
4 External links

[edit] Facts and Figures

Snow was one of the four performers of the rarely performed Steve Reich piece Pendulum Music on May 27th 1969 at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The other three were: Richard Serra, James Tenney and Bruce Nauman.

Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal, 2002
Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts, 2000
Chevalier de l'ordre des arts et des lettres, France, 1995
Guggenheim Fellowship, 1972

Honorary degrees:

Université de Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne (2004), Emily Carr Institute, Vancouver (2004) Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax (1990), University of Toronto (1999), University of Victoria (1997), Brock University (1975)

Visiting Artist/Professor at MAPS (Master of Art in Public Sphere), Ecole Cantonale d’Art du

Valais, Sierre, Switzerland (February 2005, January 2006)

Visiting Artist/Professor at L’école Nationale Supérieure d’Art de Bourges, France.

   	(December 2004, May 2005)

Visiting Artist/Professor, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 2001
Visiting Artist/Professor, le Fresnoy, Tourcoing France, 1997-8
Visiting Professor, l'Ecole Nationale de la Photographie, Arles France, 1996
Visiting Professor, Princeton University, 1988
Professor of Advanced Film, Yale University, 1970
CCMC artists in residence, La Chartreuse, Avignon Festival, France, 1981

[edit] Art installations

"The Windows Suite" is a permanent installation comprised of 32 varied sequences of images, which are presented on 65" plasma screens in 7 of the windows of the façade of the Toronto Pantages Hotel and Spa and related condo buildings facing Victoria Street in central Toronto.

Some of these sequences one might possibly glimpse in the windows of a sophisticated hotel, condo, spa and parking garage building, but many sequences are “impossible,” e.g. in one sequence fish swim from window to window. This installation was opened as an official event of the Toronto International Film Festival September 2006.

Flight Stop - Toronto Eaton Centre a collection of life sized Canada geese in flight hanging over the main section of the mall.
1989 - The Audience - SkyDome (now Rogers Centre in Toronto) is a collection of larger then life depictions of fans located above the northeast and northwest entrances. Painted gold, the sculptures show fans in various acts of celebration.