Though a seminal figure in the evolution of film in late modern art, Robert Breer’s name and works remain scarcely known to audiences of either postwar art or film history. This study intends to remedy this by tracing a kinetic imaginary across the writings, objects and performances of Breer and his contemporaries from the 1950s to the 1970s, and situating these interventions within a more encompassing narrative about the animation of postwar art. Bringing kinetic sculpture and cinematic animation into dialogue with optical painting, performance, and intermedia, this book will make connections between new theories of materiality and objecthood, perception and spectatorial investment, and questions of temporality and duration both within and beyond the human.
Andrew V. Uroskie specializes in late modern and contemporary art. His book, Between the Black Box and the White Cube: Expanded Cinema and Postwar Art, was published in 2014 with the University of Chicago Press. His essays have been published in Grey Room, Animation, Organized Sound, Sequencias, Forum Italicum, the Journal of Visual Culture, and October, as well as in edited anthologies in several languages. He serves as the Director of Graduate Studies for the MA/PhD Program in Art History and Criticism at Stony Brook University.