Marian Zazeela
Encyclopedia
Life and work
Born to Russian-Jewish parents and raised in the Bronx, Marian Zazeela was educated at the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing ArtsFiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts
Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts is a high school specializing in teaching visual arts and performing arts, located near Lincoln Center and the Juilliard School in the Lincoln Center district of Manhattan, on Amsterdam Avenue...
and at Bennington College
Bennington College
Bennington College is a liberal arts college located in Bennington, Vermont, USA. The college was founded in 1932 as a women's college and became co-educational in 1969.-History:-Early years:...
where she studied with Paul Feeley
Paul Feeley
Paul Feeley was an artist and director of the Art Department at Bennington College during the 1950s and early 1960s.-Biography:...
, Eugene C. Goossen and Tony Smith
Tony Smith (sculptor)
Tony Smith was an American sculptor, visual artist, architectural designer, and a noted theorist on art. He is often cited as a pioneering figure in American Minimalist sculpture.-Education:...
. She earned a Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
degree with a major in painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
in 1960.
Shortly after graduation, she relocated to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
where she provided stage design for LeRoi Jones / Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka , formerly known as LeRoi Jones, is an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism...
's The System of Dante's Hell
The System of Dante's Hell
The System of Dante's Hell is a short novel by African American writer LeRoi Jones, published in 1965 by Grove Press. The novel follows a young black man living nomadically in big cities and small towns in the southern United States, and his struggles with segregation and racism...
and acted and modeled for Jack Smith
Jack Smith (film director)
Jack Smith was an American filmmaker, actor, and pioneer of underground cinema...
(appearing in his film Flaming Creatures
Flaming Creatures
Flaming Creatures is an American experimental film by filmmaker Jack Smith. Due to its surreal, graphic depiction of sexuality, the film was seized by the police at its premiere, and was officially determined to be obscene by a New York Criminal Court. The 43-minute featurette attracted media and...
and photography book The Beautiful Book), before being introduced in 1962 to composer La Monte Young
La Monte Young
La Monte Thornton Young is an American avant-garde composer, musician, and artist.Young is generally recognized as the first minimalist composer. His works have been included among the most important and radical post-World War II avant-garde, experimental, and contemporary music. Young is...
, with whom she has been associated ever since.
During a period of rapid growth in the early 60s, Zazeela not only joined Young's musical group Theatre of Eternal Music
Theatre of Eternal Music
The Theatre of Eternal Music, sometimes later known as The Dream Syndicate, was a mid 1960s musical group formed by La Monte Young, that focused on experimental drone music. It featured the performances of La Monte Young, John Cale, Angus MacLise, Terry Jennings, Marian Zazeela, Tony Conrad, Billy...
as vocalist (which also included, at various times photographer Billy Name
Billy Name
Billy Name, , is an American photographer, filmmaker and lighting designer. He was the archivist of the Warhol Factory, from 1964 to 1970. His brief romance and subsequent friendship with Andy Warhol led to substantial collaboration on Warhol's work, including his films, paintings and sculpture...
, minimalist musician Terry Riley
Terry Riley
Terrence Mitchell Riley, is an American composer intrinsically associated with the minimalist school of Western classical music and was a pioneer of the movement...
, musician John Cale
John Cale
John Davies Cale, OBE is a Welsh musician, composer, singer-songwriter and record producer who was a founding member of the experimental rock band The Velvet Underground....
, video artist and musician Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad is an American avant-garde video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician/composer, sound artist, teacher and writer...
, and poet and musician Angus MacLise
Angus MacLise
Angus MacLise was an American percussionist, composer, poet, occultist and calligrapher probably best known as the first drummer for the Velvet Underground.-Biography:...
), but also produced for them light show
Light show
Light show may refer to:*Aaron Landes* Laser lighting display * Liquid light shows* Christmas lights* Meteor shower* Wizards in Winter Christmas light show...
s (among the earliest in the form) which may have inspired Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
and were contemporaneous to the early work of better-known light-artist Dan Flavin
Dan Flavin
Dan Flavin was an American minimalist artist famous for creating sculptural objects and installations from commercially available fluorescent light fixtures.-Early life and career:...
. This work derived from her earlier - more expressionistic - calligraphic canvases and drawings, now taking on a psychedelic
Psychedelic
The term psychedelic is derived from the Greek words ψυχή and δηλοῦν , translating to "soul-manifesting". A psychedelic experience is characterized by the striking perception of aspects of one's mind previously unknown, or by the creative exuberance of the mind liberated from its ostensibly...
aspect by mostly using slides of still images and colored gels blended in exceedingly slow dissolves from one to the next creating optical effects associated with Op Art
Op art
Op art, also known as optical art, is a style of visual art that makes use of optical illusions."Optical art is a method of painting concerning the interaction between illusion and picture plane, between understanding and seeing." Op art works are abstract, with many of the better known pieces made...
. In 1965, she titled this body of work the Ornamental Lightyears Tracery, and it was subsequently presented at the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
, Albright-Knox Art Gallery
Albright-Knox Art Gallery
The Albright-Knox Art Gallery is an art museum located in Delaware Park in Buffalo, New York. The gallery is a major showplace for modern art and contemporary art. It is located directly across the street from Buffalo State College.-History:...
, Maeght Foundation, Moderna Museet
Moderna Museet
Moderna museet, the Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm, Sweden, is a state museum located on the island of Skeppsholmen in central Stockholm, that was first opened in 1958. Its first manager was Pontus Hultén...
, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Documenta 5, Haus der Kunst
Haus der Kunst
The Haus der Kunst is an art museum in Munich, Germany. It is located at Prinzregentenstrasse 1 at the southern edge of the Englischer Garten, Munich's largest park.-History:...
, and Dia Art Foundation
Dia Art Foundation
Dia Art Foundation is a non-profit organization that initiates, supports, presents, and preserves art projects. It was established in 1974 as the Lone Star Foundation by Philippa de Menil, the daughter of Houston arts patron Dominique de Menil and an heiress to the Schlumberger oil exploration...
, among other galleries and venues.
Over the next 30 years, Zazeela elaborated this work into increasingly environmental and sculptural forms, often incorporating the use of colored-light and colored-shadow, which she titled Dusk Adaptation Environment (installation), Still Light (sculpture), Magenta Day / Magenta Night (installation/sculpture), and, more generally, Light. Obsessed with duration and play upon the senses in saturation, by the late 60s, Zazeela began presenting light-work in collaboration with Young's minimal
Minimal
Minimal can mean:* In mathematics, see Minimal element.* In music, see Minimalist music.* In electronic music, see Minimal techno.* In art see Minimalism.* In computing, see Computing minimalism.* Names:...
music in what were envisioned as long-term installations titled Dream Houses. One of them at 275 Church Street, above the couple's loft, has run since the early 90s and is open to the public three days a week.
In 1970, Zazeela began studies in the Kirana school of Hindustani classical music
Hindustani classical music
Hindustani classical music is the Hindustani or North Indian style of Indian classical music found throughout the northern Indian subcontinent. The style is sometimes called North Indian Classical Music or Shāstriya Sangeet...
with Pandit Pran Nath
Pandit Pran Nath
Pandit Pran Nath was a Hindustani classical singer and teacher of the Kirana gharana , with a successful American career.-Early life:...
, of whom she has been a devoted disciple ever since. (Pandit Pran Nath died in 1996.) She performs occasionally with Young and others. Her "Selected Writings" were published with Young in 1969 and a book on the two of them with writing on Zazeela by Henry Flynt
Henry Flynt
Henry Flynt is a philosopher, avant-garde musician, anti-art activist and exhibited artist often associated with Conceptual Art, Fluxus and Nihilism.-Background:...
and Catherine Christer Hennix
Catherine Christer Hennix
Catherine Christer Hennix is a Swedish-American composer, philosopher, scientist and visual artist associated with drone minimal music. Hennix was affiliated with MIT's AI Lab in the late 1970s and was later employed as research professor of mathematics at SUNY New Paltz. She currently lives in...
(edited by William Duckworth) was published in 1996 by Bucknell University
Bucknell University
Bucknell University is a private liberal arts university located alongside the West Branch Susquehanna River in the rolling countryside of Central Pennsylvania in the town of Lewisburg, 30 miles southeast of Williamsport and 60 miles north of Harrisburg. The university consists of the College of...
Press. A monograph of her drawings was published in Germany in three languages ca. 2000.
External links
- Marian Zazeela at Mela Foundation
- Images of Zazeela graphic design
- Text and audio interview with La Monte Young
- Zazeela and Young's Selected Writings, pdf file.
- "The Soul of the Word" images and text by Zazeela, from Aspen magazine #9
- 2003 Interview of Zazeela and La Monte Young by Frank Oteri on Dream Houses
- Video clip of Marian Zazeela discussing Pandit Pran Nath
- Photos of Marian Zazeela light performance for a performance of cellist Charles Curtis
- Biography at eNotes
- Biography at Kunst im Regenbogenstadl