Leonardo

The fundamental aesthetic nature of the ‘abstract’ animated film is analysed within the structures of art theory and film theory. By setting the formal vocabulary of ‘abstract’ painting into cinematic motion, the form finds itself in a functional dilemma. On the one hand, the spatial ambiguities offered by ‘abstract’ images go far in compensating for painting’s lack of movement, and thus there is no need to add the kinetics of cinema. On the other hand, cinema technically allows images to move, and so the compensation offered by ‘abstraction’ becomes inoperable. However, the fact remains that certain ‘abstract’ animations offer a unique expression through which the viewer can visually experience a non-measurable, non-causal and non-sequential sense of time duration. In the article this quality is termed ‘temporal ambiguity’. How this expression occurs in animations such as Harry Smith’s ‘Early Abstraction No. 3’, Werner Graeff’s ‘Film Partitur (Composition 1/22)’ and Jules Engel’s ‘Train Landscape’ is described. Animations by Oskar Fischinger, Douglass Crockwell and Dwinelle Grant are also discussed.