"The Discovery of the Century" Painter and Filmmaker Maria Lassnig "Body Awareness" Article in New York Review of Books
/In his article “Body Awareness”, in the New York Review of Books, on Austrian artist Maria Lassning, James Quandt explores the artist’s extreme, unsparing paintings together with her autobiographical, feminist, dance and experimental films. In recognition of the importance of her work, GME recently added MARIA LASSNIG FILMS IN PROGRESS (US, 1970-1979), together with the bound publication MARIA LASSNIG. FILM WORK (AUSTRIA, 2020) to our collection of Lassnig’s film work, as well as the earlier GME release MARIA LASSNIG: ANIMATION FILMS (Austria, 1970-1992), for distribution on DVD/DSL bundle to the North American institutional market.
MARIA LASSNIG FILMS IN PROGRESS highlights both finished films and film fragments, all produced using 16mm, 8mm, and Super 8, comprised of live action footage, animated drawings, animated paper cut-outs, and documentary footage of the artist’s studio and her surroundings in New York.
MARIA LASSNIG. FILM WORK, available in English and in German, provides the first comprehensive index of Lassnig's film works, offering insight into the filmmaker's world of ideas through a wide selection of her own, previously unpublished notes. It includes contributions by James Boaden, Beatrice von Bormann, Jocelyn Miller, Stefanie Proksch-Weilguni, and Isabella Reicher and extensive conversations on the rediscovery of Lassnig’s fascinating films.
Drawing on some of the same themes and subjects as her paintings, her filmic narratives, as seen in MARIA LASSNIG: ANIMATION FILMS, are profound and astute observations of the complexities of male-female relationships and of the experience of being both a woman and an artist.