{"data":{"id":"4550","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":4550,"topgoose_id":1421,"tms_id":4550,"display_name":"Jonas Mekas","sort_name":"Mekas Jonas","display_date":"1922–2019","begin_date":"1922","end_date":"2019","biography":"\u003cp\u003eExperimental filmmaker Jonas Mekas has\nmade more than one hundred films and\nhas played an active role in New York’s\navant-garde film community for more than\nfifty years. He started the journal \u003cem\u003eFilm\nCulture\u003c/em\u003e in 1954; began writing criticism\nfor the \u003cem\u003eVillage Voice\u003c/em\u003e in 1958; and, in 1969,\ncofounded Anthology Film Archives,\na screening space, museum, and library\nin New York.\n\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDuring World War II the Lithuanian-\nborn Mekas was imprisoned in a Nazi\nlabor camp because of his Slavic heritage;\nhe managed to escape, but ended up\nliving in refugee camps in Germany for four\nyears. His time spent watching films in\nthe camps fostered a lifelong interest\nin cinema. When Mekas arrived in New York\nin 1949, he began making a documentary\nabout the experience of being displaced by\nwar. Although he never fully realized the\nproject, his footage points to the loneliness\nof his immigrant status. His subject matter\nsoon expanded to include unscripted\nrecords of his personal life and the New\nYork art scene, as well as poetic and\nfantastical sequences. To assemble the\nsix-reel opus\u003ca href=\"/collection/works/46267\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026nbsp;Lost Lost Lost\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, Mekas\nselected passages from hours of material\nshot between 1949 and 1963, including\nhis earliest documentary-style material.\nThe resulting film constitutes a journey of\nartistic and personal self-discovery; in\nsuccessive reels a gestural and expressive\nstyle emerges, and by the end the air\nof loneliness begins to ease. As the artist\nhas explained, “By reel six one cannot\nsay that I feel lost anymore; paradise has\nbeen regained though cinema.”\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500094053","wikidata_id":"Q699702","created_at":"2017-08-30T16:23:41.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-04-11T07:02:38.835-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/4550/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/4550/exhibitions"}}}}