Bruce Conner was 74
“Thank you for your thoughts about Bruce. We have lost an amazing artist… Bruce was firmly opposed to display of his films on-line, and on his behalf as an attorney I made numerous requests for removal. Now that Bruce has died, all copyrights are now held by Jean Conner (Bruce’s wife), and she has explicitly directed that I request and otherwise take action to have all on-line postings of Bruce Conner movies removed immediately.“
Artforum reports Bruce Conner, in declining health in recent years, has died, age 74. “Bruce Conner, a San Francisco–based artist known for his assemblages, films, drawings, and interdisciplinary works, passed away Monday afternoon. Conner moved to San Francisco in 1957 and quickly found his place within the city’s vibrant Beat community. His gauzy assemblages of scraps salvaged from abandoned buildings, nylon stockings, doll parts, and other found materials gained him art-world attention, as did A Movie (1958), an avant-garde film that juxtaposed footage from B movies, newsreels, soft-core pornography, and other fragments, all set to a musical score… 
Conner was active in the Bay Area’s 1960s counterculture scene, designing light shows for Family Dog performances at the Avalon Ballroom, and in the ’70s focused on drawing and photography…” There will be no funeral. A set of links to Conner’s visual arts is at the “Beats In Kansas” site. From the Larry Keenan Gallery. Wiki. A wowza extended appreciation by Dennis Cooper is here, including the notation that Conner had asked for embedded video to removed on June 12 of this year. Cooper quotes at length from a fine Kristine McKenna LA Times profile: “Conner’s last burst of intense art activity came in 1978 when he became involved in the San Francisco punk scene as a staff photographer for fanzine Search and Destroy. A corrosive aesthetic of outraged idealism that Conner had anticipated by decades, punk was tailor-made to his sensibility, and he spent most of 1978 at a punk club called the Mabuhay. “I lost a lot of brain cells at the Mabuhay,” he laughs. “During that year I had a press card so I got in free, and I’d go four or five nights a week. What are you gonna do listening to hours of incomprehensible rock ‘n’ roll but drink? I became an alcoholic, and it took me a few years to deal with that. “I’ve always been uneasy about being identified with the art I’ve made,” he concludes. “Art takes on a power all its own and it’s 
frightening to have things floating around the world with my name on them that people are free to interpret and use however they choose. Beyond that, I’ve seen many cases where artists have been defeated because the things they made came to be perceived as being more important then they themselves were. De Chirico struggled to develop a new style of painting, but nobody was interested-they only wanted to show his own work. This is something I’ve experienced myself, and it’s a highly unbalanced situation because essentially the artist is denied a voice about the course of his own life and work.” Caveh Zahedi got video of Conner appreciating Louise Brooks in 2006.
[Removed.]
A Movie (1958)
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America Is Waiting.
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Mongoloid.
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Breakaway (1966) (with Toni Basil)
[Removed.]
Valse Triste (1977)
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Vivian
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The White Rose
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Take the 5 10 To Dreamland.
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A link to Conner’s Mea Culpa [Removed.]. A linky, fact-filled appreciation from July 5 (diggin’ the hood ornament on that Rolls!). Conner is part of the 7th Gwanju Biennale. Below: detailed and fact-filled information about Report. {Stills from Nathan Austin’s blog.]
From a blog entry by Tom Warner: “In a work of memory, affection, and grief, filmmaker Bruce Conner uses experimental techniques, such as stop-action newsreel footage, numbered leader, television commercials, and a scene from Frankenstein, to record the assassination of President Kennedy, and to protest the exploitation of his death and the violence of the times in which he lived. Newsweek’s Jack Kroll called Conner “the most brilliant film-editor of the avant-garde.” And Film Quarterly’s David Mosen commented on Report thusly: “Society thrives on violence, destruction, and death no matter how hard we try to hide it with immaculately clean offices, the worship of modern science, or the creation of instant martyrs. From the bullfight arena to the nuclear arena we clamor for the spectacle of destruction. The crucial link in Report is that JFK with his great PT 109 was just as much a part of the destruction game as anyone else. Losing is a big part of playing games.” And Conner himself says of it: “I was so emotionally involved initially with Report that I would have to leave the auditorium while it was shown. It would disturb me so much that I would be physically shaking.” How precious is this film? Canyon Cinema [no longer] sells 16mm copies for $1,800! At one time there was a DVD available from Michael Kohn Gallery in West Hollywood called 2002 B.C. that contained eight 16mm Conner shorts, including Report. But Conner stipulated that his fans donate $50 to one of three L.A. charities in order to get the disc…
Bruce Conner Trivia: During the 1960s Conner became an active force in the San Francisco counterculture as a collaborator in light shows for the legendary Family Dog at the Avalon ballroom, and through his intricate black-and-white mandala drawings and elaborate collages made from scraps of 19th-century engravings, all of which remain icons of the period’s sensory-based spirituality. In the 70s, he started photographing SF punk bands for Search & Destroy magazine after seeing Devo play there (on a tip from his pal Antonia Christina Basiloti – better known as Tony Basil – who years earlier he filmed dancing naked in 1966’s Breakaway)….
Report Trivia: Between 1963 and 1967, this film went through seven transformations … and in 2005 Conner transferred the film to digital for yet another version. Conner comments: “My concept was to make every viewing print similar using the same soundtrack, but the images would change with each print. People could see this long process of various images at different viewing times. The experience would be similar to people’s memory of seeing films when they are shown again. There is sometimes a moment of wonder when the images seem to be different or in a different order than when the film was first seen…In the 1960s, it was possible to make unique reversal prints. I would just edit the A-roll of Report (one single line of 16mm film) take some images out, move them around, put other ones in. During the first eight minutes of the film, I used one image that would repeat over and over and over as a film loop. The prints went into distribution or into people’s hands, and then they would someday disappear from wear and tear.”
I never met Bruce Conner but in the early 60’s I worked with a friend, during the summer, painting art galleries in Manhattan. One of the galleries was the Alan Gallery where I saw some of Bruce Conner’s sculptures made of dark wax with torn women stockings stretched across them. They seemed quite unusual at the time.
In the ‘66 Elsa & I opened the Gate Theater in New York’s Lower East Side at 162 2nd Avenue by 10th Street. We were opened 7 days a week showing what was called underground (experimental) & some independent films, charging only $1.50 admission. At times we rented films from the West Coast where there was a very active experimental movement. This is when I began to see some of Bruce Conner’s films, I considered him one of the very best. I greatly appreciated the economy & means used in making his films. He edited together found films & clips from other films. None of them were shot by him. We showed many of his films, among them, “Cosmic Ray” with Ray Charles’ soundtrack, appeared in numerous programs each a compilation of short films.
Very recently, I read a letter Bruce wrote to an art magazine coming out of the new Brooklyn art scene. His writing was very honest and critical of the present situation in the arts. I wanted to write him a letter respectfully agreeing with his view; but never got around to it. A few days ago, someone gave me Bruce Conner’s obituary from the New York Times. I was moved by the departing of one of the most original American artists, who as Mr. Peter Boswell who organized his retrospective is quoted saying, “He is an artist who never got his due.” The speculators driven by the market follow the trends of the acceptable “isms,” not realizing that some of the most innovative artists had moved toward different original directions. What if one day there will be a new evaluation of the arts in this big market driven commercial era?
This is my tribute to one of the most original American Artists – a tribute from one artist to another. So long Bruce. I would have liked to have met you.
Aldo Tambellini