#suzanpitt

CSS EXTRA CREDIT / Asparagus

The Artist and Animator Suzan Pitt recently passed away.

As a film student, I saw her film Asparagus many times.  It was an instant classic of experimental animation and feminist film making.  Pitt, along with Sally Cruikshank and Kathy Rose, have had I believe a strong influence on many young women animators today.

In the great documentary about her (https://www.suzanpitt.com/persistence-of-vision) she says this about her classic film Asparagus from 1979:

“I think Asparagus....you could come into it almost at any point....you could start at the middle....and it would be the same complex of ideas....it’s really, a kind of a circle”

This is, for the most part, the definition of an animated gif.

Back in the 1970s, due to the limitations of mechanical film projection no one considered making films as short as animated gifs are today and no one though of viewing it as a loop because you could not do that yet.  But some artists who were originally painters like Suzan Pitt that were seduced by the idea of motion paintings approached their work that way in terms of time. Non narrative.  No real beginning middle and end.  It is a stream of imagery that exists in time, but it out of time as well.

Pages de coloriage de tête de licorne, dans le style d'ombrage lumineux

Asparagus (1978)