Oskar Fischinger
Oskar Fischinger | |
---|---|
Born | Oskar Wilhelm Fischinger 22 June 1900 Abstract animator, filmmaker, painter |
Years active | 1920–1947 |
Notable work | Motion Painting No. 1 |
Spouse | Elfriede Fischinger (1932–1967; his death) |
Children | 5 |
Oskar Wilhelm Fischinger (June 22, 1900 – January 31, 1967) was a German-American
Biography
Born in Gelnhausen, near Frankfurt, Fischinger apprenticed at an organ-building firm after he finished school until the owners were drafted into World War I. The next year he worked as a draftsman in an architect's office, until he too was called to duty. However, since he was too "unhealthy", he was rejected from combat duty. After the war, the Fischinger family moved west to Frankfurt. There Fischinger attended a trade school and worked as an apprentice, eventually obtaining an Engineer's Diploma.
Early career
In Frankfurt, Fischinger met the theatre critic
In 1924, Fischinger formed a company with American entrepreneur Louis Seel to produce satirical cartoons that tended toward mature audiences. One survives in his film estate, Pierrette I. He also continued to make abstract films and tests of his own, trying new and different techniques, including multiple projector performances. "In 1926 and 1927, Fischinger performed his own multiple projector film shows with various musical accompaniments. These shows were titled Fieber (Fever), Vakuum, and Macht (Power)'".[3]
Facing financial difficulties, Fischinger borrowed from his family, and then his landlady. Finally, in an effort to escape bill collectors, Fischinger decided to surreptitiously depart Munich for Berlin in June 1927. Taking only his essential equipment, he walked 350 miles through the countryside, shooting single frames that were released many decades later as the film Walking from Munich to Berlin.
Berlin
Arriving in Berlin, Fischinger borrowed some money from a relative and set up a studio on Friedrichstraße. He soon was creating special effects for various films. His own proposals for cartoons were not accepted by producers or distributors, however.[4] In 1928, he was hired to work on the feature film Woman in the Moon (German: Frau im Mond), directed by Fritz Lang, which provided him a steady salary for a time. On his own time, he experimented with charcoal-on-paper animation. He produced a series of abstract Studies that were synchronized to popular and classical music. A few of the early Studies were synchronized to new record releases by Electrola, and screened at first-run theatres with a tail credit advertising the record, thus making them, in a sense, the very first music videos.
The Studies — Numbers 1 through 12 — were well received and many were distributed to first-run theatres worldwide, as far as Japan and South America. His Studie Nr. 5 screened at the 1931 "Congress for Colour-Music Research" to critical acclaim. In 1932, Universal Pictures purchased distribution rights to one of the Studies for the American public. The special effects Fischinger did for clients' films and commercials led to his being called "the Wizard of Friedrichstraße". In 1932, Fischinger married Elfriede Fischinger, a first cousin from his hometown of Gelnhausen.
As the
Hollywood
Upon arriving in Hollywood in February 1936, Fischinger was given an office at Paramount Studios, German-speaking secretaries, an English tutor, and a weekly salary of $250.($4400 in 2017 dollars, adjusted for inflation). He and Elfriede socialized with the émigré community. As he waited for his assignment to begin, Fischinger sketched and painted.[6] He prepared a film which was originally named Radio Dynamics, but known today as Allegretto, tightly synchronized to Ralph Rainger's tune "Radio Dynamics". This short film was planned for inclusion in the feature film The Big Broadcast of 1937 (1936). However, Paramount only planned to release in black-and-white film, which was not communicated to Fischinger when he began his work. Paramount would not allow even a test in color of Fischinger's film. Fischinger requested to be let out of his contract and left Paramount. Several years later, with the help of Hilla von Rebay and a grant from the Museum of Non-Objective Painting (later The Guggenheim), he was able to buy the film back from Paramount. Fischinger then redid and re-painted the cels and made a color version to his satisfaction which he then called Allegretto. According to biographer William Moritz, this became one of the most-screened and successful films of visual music's history, and one of Fischinger's most popular films.
Most of Fischinger's filmmaking attempts in America suffered difficulties. According to Moritz, Fischinger composed An Optical Poem (
The Museum of Non-Objective Painting commissioned him to synchronize a film with a march by
Frustrated in his filmmaking, Fischinger turned increasingly to oil painting as a creative outlet. According to Moritz, though the Guggenheim Foundation specifically requested a cel animation film, Fischinger made his Bach film Motion Painting No. 1 (1947) as a documentation of the act of painting, taking a single frame each time he made a brush stroke—and the multi-layered style merely parallels the structure of the Bach music without any tight synchronization. Although he never again received funding for any of his personal films (only some commercial work), the Motion Painting No. 1 won the Grand Prix at the Brussels International Experimental Film Competition in 1949. Three of Fischinger's films also made the 1984 Olympiad of Animation's list of the world's greatest films. On January 31, 1967, he died at the age of 66.
The Academy Film Archive has preserved many of Oskar Fischinger's films, including Motion Painting No. 1, Squares, and Spirals.[8]
Lumigraph
In the late 1940s Fischinger invented the Lumigraph (patented in 1955) which some have mistakenly called a type of color organ. Fischinger had hoped to make the Lumigraph a commercial product, widely available for anyone, but this did not happen. The instrument produced imagery by pressing against a rubberized screen so it could protrude into a narrow beam of colored light. As a visual instrument, the size of its screen was limited by the reach of the performer. Two people were required to operate the Lumigraph: one to manipulate the screen to create imagery, and a second to change the colors of the lights on cue.
The device itself was silent, but was performed accompanying various music. Fischinger gave several performances in Los Angeles and one in San Francisco in the early 1950s, performing various
Today one of the instruments is in the collection of the Deutsches Filmmuseum in Frankfurt, and the other two are in California. In February 2007 Barbara Fischinger performed on the original Lumigraph in Frankfurt, and in 2012 in Amsterdam.
Films
- Wachs Experimente (1921-26)
- Stäbe (1923-27) - experiments, not a completed film
- Spiralen (c. 1926)
- Pierrette I (1926)
- Raumlichtkunst project, series of live performances (c. 1926)
- München-Berlin Wanderung (1927)
- Seelische Konstruktionen (c. 1927)
- Study Nr. 9 (1931)
- Ornament Sound experiments (c. 1931)
- Study Nr. 10 and 11 (1932)
- Study Nr. 12 (1932)
- Coloratura (1932)
- Study Nr. 13-fragment (1933-34)
- Kreise (Alle kreise erfasst Tolirag) (1933-34) - two versions
- Muratti greift ein (1934)
- Squares (1934)
- Swiss Trip (Rivers and Landscapes), (1934)
- Komposition in Blau (1935)
- Muratti Privat (1935)
- Allegretto (1936-1943) - two versions, one never filmed by Fischinger
- An Optical Poem (1937)
- An American March (1941)
- Radio Dynamics (1942)
- Motion Painting No. 1 (1947)
- Muntz TV and Oklahoma Gas Commercials (c. 1952)
- Numerous animation tests, fragments and experiments from the 1920s - 50s
See also
References
- ^
Reiniger, Lotte (1970). Shadow Theatres, Shadow Films. London: BT Batsford. ISBN 978-0-7134-2286-3.
- ^ "Lotte Reiniger's Introduction to The Adventures of Prince Achmed" (PDF). Milestone Films. 2001. pp. 9–11. Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 November 2009. Retrieved 25 September 2013.
- ^ Keefer, Cindy (2005). "Space Light Art - Early Abstract Cinema and Multimedia, 1900-1959". White Noise. Melbourne: Australian Centre for the Moving Image.
- ^ Moritz. (2004). p.22.
- ^ Moritz. (2004). p.207
- ^ Moritz. (2004). p.67.
- ^ Moritz, William (1977). "Fischinger at Disney - or Oskar in the Mousetrap". Millimeter Magazine: 25–28, 65–67. Retrieved 22 June 2017 – via www.michaelspornanimation.com.
- ^ "Preserved Projects". Academy Film Archive.
Sources
- Moritz, William (2004). Optical Poetry: The Life and Work of Oskar Fischinger. Bloomington: IN: Indiana university press. ISBN 978-0253216410.
Further reading
- Klein, Adrian Bernard (1937). Coloured Light An Art Medium (3rd ed.). London: The Technical Press. ASIN B000857J6K.
General theoretical text, not specifically related to Fischinger
- Rimington, Alexander Wallace (1912). Colour-Music The Art Of Mobile Colour. London: Hutchinson. ASIN B00085V3IU – via Internet Archive.
General theoretical text, not specifically related to Fischinger
External links
- Oskar Fischinger Trust - administers paintings and drawings.
- "Raumlichtkunst 1926/2012" [Space Light Art 1926/2012] (Three screen reconstruction). Whitney Museum. 26 October 2016.
- Reichmann, Hans-Peter. Sammlung Oskar Fischinger (Oskar Fischinger Collection). Frankfurt am Main: Deutsches Filminstitut. (in German)