UWM Golda Meier Multimedia Library Collection. Diane Kitchen, Peck School of the Arts. Mary Ellen Bute, 1952, 7 minutes, color, sound. Abstronic (1954) Mary Ellen Bute The Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive. Polka Graph (1952, color, 5 min.) Music: 'Polka' from The Age of Gold by Shostakovich. Mary Ellen Bute - Wikipedia. Mary Ellen Bute (November 2. Her specialty was visual music and, while working in New York between 1. Many of these were seen in regular movie theaters, such as Radio City Music Hall, usually preceding a prestigious film. Several of her later abstract films were categorized as part of her Seeing Sound series. A native of Houston, Mary Ellen Bute studied painting in Texas and, subsequently, Philadelphia, then stage lighting at Yale University, focusing her primary interest on the tradition of color organs, as a means of painting with light. She worked with Leon Theremin and Thomas Wilfred and was also influenced by the abstract animated films of Oskar Fischinger. Bute began her filmmaking career collaborating with Joseph Schillinger on the animation of visuals. Her later films were made in partnership with her cinematographer Ted Nemeth whom she married in 1. Her final film, inspired by James Joyce, was Passages from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, a live- action feature made over a nearly three- year period in 1. In the 1. 96. 0s and 1. Bute worked on two films which were never completed: an adaptation of Thornton Wilder's 1. The Skin of Our Teeth, and a film about Walt Whitman with the working title Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking. Bute was a founding member of the Women's Independent Film Exchange. Mary Ellen Bute died of heart failure at New York City's Cabrini Medical Center. She was five weeks short of her 7. Six months earlier, on April 4, she received a special tribute and a retrospective of her films at the Museum of Modern Art. An archive with some of Bute's personal papers is at the Beinecke Library at Yale University. ![]() A finding aid describes this collection. Film historian Cecile Starr's extensive collection of Bute papers is now at Yale. A small collection is at Center for Visual Music in Los Angeles. Several of her films are at the Yale Film Study Center, Center for Visual Music. ![]() George Eastman House, Museum of Modern Art in New York, Anthology Film Archives, and a number of other institutions and archives; an entire 1. Cecile Starr; and a travelling Retrospective film program of all of her abstract short 1. US, Australia and Europe by Center for Visual Music, in association with Cecile Starr and The Women's Independent Film Exchange. Filmography. The dates below are verified by documents from her distributor and the Center for Visual Music. Synchromy . Animation by Norman Mc. Laren. Tarantella . I wanted to manipulate light to produce visual compositions in time continuity much as a musician manipulates sound to produce music. 5.Abstronic (1952) 6.Pastoral (1950) 7.Color Rhapsodie (1948) 8.Polka Graph (1947) 9.Tarantella (1940) . 9 (1940) 10.Spook Sport (1939). Dmitri Shostakovich's Polka from The Age of Gold. Color Rhapsody (aka Color Rhapsodie) . Bach's Sheep May Safely Graze. Abstronic . Aaron Copland's Hoe Down and Don Gillis's Ranch House Party. Mood Contrasts . Stars a young Christopher Walken. ![]() Mary Ellen Bute (1906-1983) Rhythm in Light. Imagination, 1948; New Sensations in Sound, 1949 (RCA Commercial); Pastorale, 1950, Abstronic, 1952 and Mood.Ubu. Web Film & Video: Mary Ellen Bute. Mary Ellen Bute (1. Rhythm in Light – 1. Parabola – 1. 93. Dada – 1. 93. 6Synchromy No. Escape (Synchromy No. ![]() Spook Sport (Seeing Sound) – 1. Tarantella – 1. 94. Passages from Finnegans Wake – 1. A pioneer of visual music and electronic art, Mary Ellen Bute produced over a dozen short abstract animations between the 1. Set to classical music by the likes of Bach, Saint- Saens or Shostakovich, and filled with colorful forms, elegant design and sprightly, dance- like- rhythms, Bute's filmmaking is at once formally rigorous and energetically high- spirited, like a marriage of high modernism and Merrie Melodies.
In the late 1. 94. Lewis Jacobs observed that Bute's films were . Dada, 1. 93. 6; Parabola, 1. Escape, 1. 93. 7; Spook Sport (animated by Norman Mc. Laren), 1. 93. 9; Tarantella, 1. Polka Graph, 1. 94. Color Rhapsody, 1. Imagination, 1. 94. New Sensations in Sound, 1. RCA Commercial); Pastorale, 1. Abstronic, 1. 95. Mood Contrasts, 1.
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