Hi Stephanie!
Being a CalArts grad, I'm sure you know Maureen Furniss' THE ANIMATION BIBLE
and also her READER IN ANIMATION STUDIES. These are definitely go-to classics,
and I rarely teach ananimation class without assigning texts from those books.
Robert Russett, co-author of EXPERIMENTAL ANIMATION with Cecile Starr,
completed HYPERANIMATION: DIGITAL IMAGES AND VIRTUAL WORLDS in 2009.
Chris Robinson, artistic director of the Ottawa International Animation
Festival also has a few recent books:ANIMATORS UNEARTHED: A GUIDE TO THE BEST
OF CONTEMPORARY ANIMATIONUNSUNG HEROES OF ANIMATION (co-written with Steve
Reinke)JAPANESE ANIMATION: TIME OUT OF MINDESTONIAN ANIMATION: BETWEEN GENIUS
AND ULTRA ILLITERACY
Paul Wells, author of UNDERSTANDING ANIMATION, also put out another book fairly
recently, RE-IMAGINING ANIMATION: THE CHANGING FACE OF THE MOVING IMAGE.
You may also want to consider the catalogs from recent shows:WATCH ME MOVE
(Barbican)STAN VANDERBEEK: THE CULTURE INTERCOM (MIT, Contemporary Arts Museum
Houston)QUAY BROTHERS: ON DECIPHERING THE PHARMACIST'S PRESCRIPTION FOR LIP
READING PUPPETS (MoMA)
Here are a few neat books on individual animators written in the past ten
years:PAUL SHARITS (Beauvais)OPTICAL POETRY: THE LIFE AND WORK OF OSKAR
FISCHINGER (Moritz)THE CABINET OF JAN SVANKMAJER: THE PENDULUM, THE PIT, AND
OTHER PECULIARITIES (Hartel, Blickle, Matte)ART THAT MOVES: THE WORK OF LEN
LYE (Horrocks)(That said, FIGURES OF MOTION, an old collection of Lye's
writings, is one of my favorite books of all time. It's out of print, but they
have it at the CalArts library - maybe even at Pitzer, I'm not sure.)
And, this isn't necessarily an animation-specific text... But, an article by
Erika Balsom - "Brakhage's Sour Grapes, or Notes on Experimental Cinema in the
Art World" - does a great jobsumming up many of the complications of
experimental film/animation's straddling of the gallery and cinema worlds.
If you clarify the focus of your class (production vs. studies or even certain
artists you're interested in), I might be able to come up with more relevant
texts for you. I would also bet real money that Marcin Gizycki, also on this
list, has a huge bounty of suggestions.
I hope this is helpful.
Best,JMJodie MackAssistant Professor of AnimationDartmouth College
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