{"data":{"id":"7344","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":7344,"topgoose_id":2929,"tms_id":7344,"display_name":"Stan Brakhage","sort_name":"Brakhage Stan","display_date":"1933–2003","begin_date":"1933","end_date":"2003","biography":"\u003cp\u003eAcross his fifty-year filmmaking career,\nStan Brakhage produced more than three\nhundred works while helping to define\nthe language of American avant-garde\ncinema. His singular approach to the use\nof color, motion, and light resulted in\na uniquely lyrical style that, in the artist’s\nwords, sought to depict “birth, sex,\ndeath, and the search for God.” Brakhage\nstudied art briefly at Dartmouth and the\nCalifornia School of Fine Arts in San\nFrancisco before turning to film and falling\nin with various circles of poets, artists,\nand filmmakers in California, Colorado, and\nNew York. Drawn to the works of the\nAbstract Expressionist painters of the\nmid-1950s, Brakhage experimented\nwith scraping, painting, and even collaging\nonto the emulsion surface of his 16mm\nfilm while continuing to document his\neveryday life. In 1964 he settled in a\nColorado mining town, where he trained\nhis camera on the wilderness and the\nsimple domestic activities of his wife and\nfive children.\n\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn addition to these first-person\nimpressions of family life, Brakhage also\ncreated entirely abstract time-based\nworks, visceral formal investigations of\nmoving shapes and color produced through\ninnovative techniques. \u003ca href=\"/collection/works/12923\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eMothlight\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, one\nof Brakhage’s most celebrated abstract\nfilms, was produced entirely without\na camera by collaging organic detritus\nbetween two strips of splicing tape\nand running this material through a film\nprinter. The projected film casts rhythmic\npatterns formed by moth wings, flower\npetals, blades of grass, and dirt flickering\nacross the screen; as Brakhage described,\nit’s “what a moth might see from birth\nto death if black were white and white\nwere black.”\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500122419","wikidata_id":"Q698676","created_at":"2017-08-30T17:39:59.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-04-28T01:32:26.162-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/7344/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/7344/exhibitions"}}}}