Michael Snow facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Michael Snow
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Snow in 2007
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| Born | December 10, 1928 |
| Died | January 5, 2023 (aged 94) Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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| Education | Ontario College of Art |
| Known for | Installation artist, filmmaker, painter |
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Notable work
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Wavelength (1967) <----> (1969) La Région Centrale (1971) Flight Stop (1979) *Corpus Callosum (2002) |
| Movement | Structural film |
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| Awards | Officer, Order of Canada 1981 Companion, Order of Canada 1997 Chevalier d'ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France 1995 Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts 2000 Honorary Doctorate, Université de Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne 2004 Honorary Doctorate, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi 2016 |
Michael James Aleck Snow (December 10, 1928 – January 5, 2023) was a famous Canadian artist. He worked with many different types of art, like films, sculptures, photos, and music.
His most well-known films are Wavelength (1967) and La Région Centrale (1971). Wavelength is seen as a very important film in experimental cinema, which means it pushed the boundaries of how movies are made.
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Michael Snow's Life Story
Michael James Aleck Snow was born in Toronto, Canada, on December 10, 1928. He went to Upper Canada College and then studied art at the Ontario College of Art.
His first art show was in 1957. In the early 1960s, Snow moved to New York City with his wife, who was also an artist named Joyce Wieland. They lived there for about ten years. Moving to New York helped Snow get many new ideas and meet other artists. His work became more and more famous.
He moved back to Canada in the early 1970s. By then, he was well-known as a visual artist, a filmmaker, and a musician.
Exhibitions and Recognition
Snow's art has been shown in many exhibitions across Europe, North America, and South America. His works were part of the big reopening shows at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in 2000 and the MoMA in New York in 2005. In 2006, his art was also featured in the Whitney Biennial, a major art show in New York.
Family and Later Life
Michael Snow married fellow artist Joyce Wieland in 1956. They moved to New York City in 1963 and returned to Toronto about ten years later. They divorced in 1976.
In 1990, he married Peggy Gale, who was a curator and writer. They had one son together. Michael Snow passed away from pneumonia in Toronto on January 5, 2023. He was 94 years old.
Michael Snow's Creative Work
Michael Snow was known for being very creative and working in many different art forms.
His Experimental Films
Snow is thought to be one of the most important experimental filmmakers ever. These are films that try new ways of telling stories or showing ideas, often without a traditional plot.
His 1967 film Wavelength is especially famous. It won a top prize at an experimental film festival in Belgium. Many people felt it helped them understand how films work in a new way. Film expert Scott MacDonald said that few filmmakers have had such a big impact on experimental film as Michael Snow.
Wavelength is considered a masterpiece and is kept safe by the Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada. It was even named one of the 100 Best Films of the 20th Century by Village Voice critics.
Snow's films have been shown at film festivals all over the world. Five of his films first premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). In 2000, TIFF even asked Snow, along with other famous directors, to make short films for the festival's 25th anniversary.
His 2002 film *Corpus Callosum was also highly praised. It was shown at many film festivals, including Toronto, Berlin, and Los Angeles. In 2003, Snow won an award for this film from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.
His Music and Sounds
Before he became famous for his films, Michael Snow was a professional jazz musician. He loved playing improvised music, where musicians make up the music as they go along.
He played the piano by himself and with other musicians in North America, Europe, and Japan. Snow often performed with an improvisational music group called CCMC. He released several music albums starting in the mid-1970s.
One interesting project was his 1987 album, The Last LP. It pretended to be recordings of rare music from different cultures around the world. But it was actually just Michael Snow himself playing all the sounds! He hid the joke in tiny, backward-printed text on the album cover.
Snow also performed a special piece of music called Pendulum Music with other artists in 1969 at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Other Art Forms
Before moving to New York in 1963, Snow started a long-term art project called the "Walking Woman." This project used a single shape of a woman walking. He explored endless ways to show this shape, sometimes as a solid figure and sometimes as an empty space.
Snow often combined different materials and methods in his art. This created unique pieces that were hard to put into just one category. A great example is his 1979 artwork Flight Stop. This art piece is in the Toronto Eaton Centre mall. It looks like 60 geese flying, but it's actually a clever mix of fiberglass shapes and photos of a single goose.
In 1982, Snow actually sued the Eaton Centre because they put Christmas bows on his Flight Stop sculpture. He won the case, Snow v Eaton Centre Ltd, which was important because it showed that artists have rights to protect their work from being changed without their permission.
Snow's art has also been shown at world fairs. His "Walking Women" sculpture was at Expo 67 in Montréal. He also created a book called BIOGRAPHIE of the Walking Woman / de la femme qui marche 1961-1967 (2004), which showed pictures of his famous "Walking Woman" art in public places.
A special DVD called Anarchive2: Digital Snow was released in 2002. It's like an encyclopedia of all of Snow's works, including film clips, sculptures, photos, music, and interviews. It was created with help from the Centre Pompidou in Paris and other organizations.
Awards and Special Recognitions
In 1993, a big art event called "The Michael Snow Project" took place in Toronto. It was a huge show of his art at many different places, including the Art Gallery of Ontario.
In 1981, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada, which is a very high honor. In 2007, he was promoted to Companion of the Order of Canada for his amazing contributions to art around the world. He also received the first Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2000 for his films.
In 2004, the Université de Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne gave him an honorary doctorate. This is a special degree given to people who have achieved great things. The last artist to receive this honor was Pablo Picasso.
Honorary Degrees from Universities
Michael Snow received many honorary degrees from universities, including:
- Université de Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne (2004)
- Emily Carr Institute, Vancouver (2004)
- Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax (1990)
- University of Toronto (1999)
- University of Victoria (1997)
- Brock University (1975)
Other Important Awards
- Gershon Iskowitz Prize, 2011
- Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Independent/Experimental Film and Video Award for "*Corpus Callosum", 2002
- Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal, 2002
- Chevalier de l'ordre des arts et des lettres, France, 1995
- Guggenheim Fellowship, 1972
- Grand Pix of the Knokke Experimental Film Festival for "Wavelength", 1967
- Member, Royal Canadian Academy of Arts
Major Public Artworks
Michael Snow created several large art installations that you can see in public places:
- The Windows Suite: This is a permanent art piece with 32 different image sequences. They are shown on large screens in 7 windows of the Toronto Pantages Hotel and Spa. Some images look like things you might see in a hotel, but others are "impossible," like fish swimming from window to window. This art was opened during the Toronto International Film Festival in 2006.
- Flight Stop: Located in the Toronto Eaton Centre, this artwork shows many life-sized Canada geese flying. They hang over the main part of the mall. As mentioned before, this artwork was part of an important court case about artists' rights in 1982.
- The Audience (1989): This artwork is at the Rogers Centre (formerly SkyDome) in Toronto. It's a collection of very large, gold-painted sculptures of fans. They are located above the northeast and northwest entrances of the stadium and show fans celebrating in different ways.
List of Films by Michael Snow
- A to Z (1956)
- New York Eye and Ear Control (1964)
- Short Shave (1965)
- Wavelength (1967)
- Standard Time (1967)
- One Second in Montreal (1969)
- Dripping Water (with Joyce Wieland, 1969)
- <----> or Back and Forth (1969)
- Side Seat Paintings Slides Sound Film (1970)
- La Région Centrale (1971)
- Two Sides to Every Story (double 16mm installation, 1974)
- "Rameau's Nephew" by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen (1974)
- Breakfast (Table Top Dolly) (1976)
- Presents (1981)
- So Is This (1982)
- Seated Figures (1988)
- See You Later (1990)
- To Lavoisier, Who Died in the Reign of Terror (1991)
- Prelude (2000)
- The Living Room (2000)
- Solar Breath (2002)
- *Corpus Callosum (2002)
- WVLNT ("Wavelength For Those Who Don't Have the Time") (2003)
- Triage (2004), with Carl Brown
- SSHTOORRTY (2005)
- Reverberlin (2006)
- Puccini Conservato (2008)
- Cityscape (2019)
See also
- In Spanish: Michael Snow (cineasta) para niños
