Week 4 (July 12 – 18) – Roots of the Underground: Film-makers’ Coop
The Film-Makers’ Cooperative is a non-profit dedicated to experimental and avant-garde cinema; almost all of the most well-known American experimental filmmakers have had works in their catalogue at some point.
Robert Breer occupies a singular space in the history of experimental animation. His work—often described as moving painting—rejects traditional narrative structures in favor of pure, rhythmic visual experience. Eyewash stands as a quintessential example of his obsession with the intersection of stasis and motion.
Breer’s background is key to understanding his work. The transition from the rigid, calculated world of engineering (inherited from his father, Carl, a pioneer at Chrysler) to the fluid, subjective world of abstract art created a unique friction in his creative process.
While he abandoned a career in automotive design after his exposure to the Neo-Plasticism of Piet Mondrian in Paris, he never lost the tinkerer’s mindset. He treated the film frame as a structural unit, much like a mechanical component, pushing the limits of what the human eye could process.
He did not storyboard in the traditional sense. By setting up systems—often involving mechanical devices or high frame rates—he engineered situations in which the final result was unpredictable even to him. He wasn’t just creating animation; he was creating a machine for optical spontaneity.
At just over three minutes, Eyewash is a relentless assault of color and form. It is a landmark in the flicker film and abstract animation genres, effectively bridging the gap between high-modernist painting and the burgeoning Pop Art movement of the late 1950s. Every frame is meticulously hand-colored. This imbues the geometric shapes with a raw, human texture that contrasts sharply with the frantic, machine-like speed at which they appear.
Breer exploits the viewer’s biological limitations. By flashing images at a rate that approaches the threshold of conscious recognition, Eyewash forces the brain to fill in the blanks. It creates an after-image effect, where shapes seem to dance, vibrate and float independently of the screen.
Breer’s return to America in 1959 brought a European avant-garde sensibility to the New York art scene. His time at Cooper Union allowed him to pass this experimental philosophy to a new generation of filmmakers. He proved that animation didn’t need to be about cartoons or stories; it could be a raw study of time, light, and the fallibility of human perception.
