I thought Marilyn Brakhage's response to the Erika Balsom essay was outstanding, and I hope it will be reprinted in Moving Image Arts Journal so it circulates more directly where historians and scholars might find it in the future.
Greybeards like me on the Frameworks listserv can easily add to the main points Marilyn makes about Stan Brakhage per se and about the commercial and gallery and museum art world of the time. I vividly remember a dinner with Stan Brakhage (and others) at the University of Oregon perhaps 20 years ago when he was screening some of his films. The discussion got into the matter of Turner's paintings and light, and Brakhage was quite passionate about which museums had which paintings and had displayed them to best advantage. The next morning I ran into him on the main campus quadrangle, camera in hand, filming what interested him, while he was waiting for the University Art Museum to open. Two points that others might be able to develop more in dialogue with Balsom's thesis: a. animation, particularly drawn animation, has always had a more ambiguous relation to the traditional format/materials art world, perhaps mostly because almost all its artists have drawing skills and craft, which is more easily understood. Most art schools (used to) have first year drawing course requirements. b. there was a discussion c. 1970, and I think in Canyon Cinemanews, about establishing the "rare value" of film and its collectability, by making things such as unique editions of films (such as S8mm copies that collectors could buy and presumably view at home) or by making single unique films which would then be sold to collectors or museums. Of course this was also part of an art world discussion/quandary at the time when another mass reproduceable art--photography--was entering the art market (and museum collections). Chuck Kleinhans
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