Synopses & Reviews
"A fascinating, meticulously researched, and most welcome biographical study of the life and filmsand#160;of Edgar G. Ulmer, a picturemaker whose name has practically become proverbial for no-budget,and#160;ultra-rapidly shot movies of quality and personal vision. What Ulmer could accomplish in six daysand#160;remains a object lesson for directors who strive to create something good with little means, andand#160;proof that miracles can happen if there is talent involved."and#160;and#151;Peter Bogdanovich
"Noah Isenberg's lovingly researched and sumptuously written book on the relentless self-mythologizer Ulmer, a man who over his singularly strange filmmaking career commingled with Hollywood titans AND worked the outermost margins of the industryand#151;even the margins of history itselfand#151;represents an intoxicating and savvy approach to biography, one that acknowledges that poetic truth lies in the blurred miles-wide belt between confirmed fact and after-the-fact longing for a better seat in the empyrean. Rich and strange. What a wonderful work this is."and#160;and#151;Guy Maddin, writer and director ofand#160;My Winnipeg
"This enthralling biography pieces together for the first time one of the strangest and most elusive careers in Hollywood. Noah Isenberg shows, with tact, elegance and exhaustive research, how the Viennese director who came to Hollywood with Wilder, Preminger and von Stroheim, wound up in the netherworld of Poverty Row, and how the directorand#8217;s noir films, made under cheap conditions on six-day-shooting schedules, exhibit something primaland#151;the grinding greed, ambition, and outsider yearning of noir." and#151;Molly Haskell, author of Frankly, My Dear: 'Gone with the Wind' Revisited
"Noah Isenberg has combined dogged detective work and an acute critical sense to create the first portrait of Edgar G. Ulmer that casts light into the dark corners of this gifted filmmakerand#8217;s labyrinthine career. Ulmerand#8217;s own life seems as spectacularly accursed as that of the protagonist of his most famous work, the 1945 film noir Detour, yet Isenberg uncovers something noble and ultimately quite moving in Ulmerand#8217;s unflagging pursuit of high art under the most unlikely circumstances."and#151;Dave Kehr, author of When Movies Mattered
and#160;
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"A page turner of a biography."
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"The story of his [Edgar G. Ulmer's] life is told with remarkable research and insight."
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"The seasonand#8217;s must read [for film buffs] . . . Noah Isenbergand#8217;s long-awaited biography 'Edgar G. Ulmer: A Filmmaker at the Margins.' Ulmerand#8212;whose CV includes and#8220;People on Sunday,and#8221; and#8220;The Black Cat,and#8221; and#8220;Detour,and#8221; four Yiddish talkies, a half dozen bargain basement classics and as many indescribable odditiesand#8212;had a life that was every bit as interesting as his film. The writing is scholarly but, given the material, charged with irony and full of pep."
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"[A] cogent treatment of a singularly unlikely career. Isenberg's writing...allows the monumental eccentricities of Ulmer's underground journey to shine through."
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"Long considered as something of a guilty pleasure among filmmakers, critics, and fans, director Edgar G. Ulmer finally gets the attention and scholarship he deserves in Noah Isenbergand#8217;s new book."
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"A rare coupling of intellectual treatise and entertaining biography that beckons to both the film scholar and the public."
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"With sober intrepidness, Isenberg tethers down to earth some of the more wild claims made by and about his subject. In recounting the filmmakerand#185;s amazing career, he moves easily between describing the drama going on behind the scenes and analyzing the provocative work that Ulmer put on screen. . . . This fascinating biography gives us the chance to weigh the many frustrations in Ulmerand#185;s career against the joy he found in the act of creation."
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"Operating mostly outside of the Hollywood system, Edgar G. Ulmer (the original King of the Band#185;s) is a fascinating character whose rather notorious mysterious life is somewhere between fact and fiction. All of this is explored and solved . . . in scholar Noah Isenbergand#185;s brilliant new critical biography Edgar G. Ulmer: A Filmmaker at the Margins."
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"A most welcome book, which can lay claim to being a definitive study of Edgar G. Ulmer. . . . Isenberg has given us more than an academic study of the filmmakerand#8217;s eclectic career. He manages to paint a rounded, sympathetic but honest picture of the man whose endless dreams were so often dashed. . . . Edgar G. Ulmer: A Filmmaker at the Margins is scholarly but never dry. It is a valuable reference and a good read."
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"As Isenberg reveals in this utterly necessary book, Ulmer was a nonpareil slinger of [exaggerated stories] even for a business that thrives on everything inauthentic except avarice. . . . In so many ways he was the Micawber of Poverty Row, and the something that turned up was not the big budget spectaculars with A-list casts that he fervently hoped for, but the wormy little movies about failure that he actually made. They were more than good enough to justify a life, and this very good book."
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"The first English-language biography of the studio-era director oft crowned 'King of Poverty Row,' Edgar G. Ulmer: A Filmmaker at the Margins explores an itinerant, ramshackle, and occasionally brilliant career that encompassed proto-protoand#8211;New Wave experiments, Yiddish utopia, influential B-noirs, fly-by-night exploitation, and Cold War sci-fi super-cheese. . .Isenberg creates a picture of a filmmaker as ragtag and resourceful as the films he directed. . . . [He] effectively traces Ulmerand#8217;s artistic identity through the thematic (existential dread and rootlessness) and aesthetic (German Expressionism, classical music and opera) continuity of a body of work unified by little else."
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"Isenberg makes a scrupulously honest case for the director and 'land#8217;aesthetique du cheap,' as a French critic called Ulmerand#8217;s kind of style, avoiding injudicious praise and recognizing his weaknesses as well as his strengths. Then again, with Ulmer the weaknesses often are the strengths, and vice versa. Thatand#8217;s what makes him so fascinating and Isenbergand#8217;s energetic study so engrossing."
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"While other authors are drawn to celebrities of greater stature whose lives are well documented, Isenberg preferred the challenge of unraveling the mystery of this European transplant who clearly had talent but never found success in Hollywood. . . . Ulmer may not have had the resources given to his fellow and#233;migrand#233; directors but that didnand#8217;t stop him from endowing his films with a unique personal vision that may finally be finding the appreciation it deserves."
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"The Ulmer that emerges from the detail-packed, though rarely dry, pages of Isenbergand#185;s biography is tragicomic. During his lifetime, the and#233;migrand#233; director was rightly renowned for his ability to spin straw into gold (or silver, at any rate), yet this meant that he became in many ways a victim of his own success."
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"Now we have what is destined to become the definitive English-language critical biography from Noah Isenberg. . . The movies speak for themselves, but they have gained an eloquent companion."
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"This definitive study of fringe director Edgar G. Ulmer is also an anatomy of the B-movie industry. . . . The stories of Ulmer's offscreen seat-of-the-pants artistry make for a delightful and inspiring read. Recommended."
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"An authoritative new biography."
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"This impeccable collection of art confirms Lynchand#8217;s position as a gifted polymathand#8212;and one of the countryand#8217;s most important artists working today."
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"Remarkable for its revealing of the hidden career of a minor genius is Noah Isenberg's Edgar G. Ulmer: A Filmmaker at the Margins."and#160; Best Film Books of 2014
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"[An] illuminating study. . . . Arneson drew continually from his personal reservoir of untamed comedy to create works that resolutely crude."
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"A long-awaited and in-depth monograph of the life and work of Robert Arneson, an artist who has infused the alchemy of clay with the funk aesthetic of everyday objects and self-portraiture, in ways that elevate their sustaining power through his insightful social and political observations." Ten Best Art Books of 2013.
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"Distinguished art historian and critic Jonathan Fineberg excels at chronicling the psychosocial intersection between contemporary art and artists, and the evolving fabric of American values."
Review
and#8220;Artist relishing his role as troublemaker: The piece had to go, it was explained to Arneson, because the vice president of Kaiser Industries saw it and said, and#8216;Goddamn, no f- artist is going to attack American capitalism in this manner.' The piece was eventually bought by an Arneson student and collector, whose husband hated it so much that she later said that conflict over it had contributed to her divorce.and#8221;
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"Expands greatly the scope of our knowledge of auteur and impresario Lynch."
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"Lynchand#8217;s last Philadelphia canvases are brutally textural, integrating cigarette butts and filters, matted horse-hair, and bits of unidentifiable petrified organic matter. His more recent work, characterized by broad paint strokes and large-scale dramatic canvases, is more polished in its perversity."
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"Lynch is at his best when grasping just how unsavory we can find deterioration disrupting the mundane areas of our life, especially when evoking it as a reflection of human good and evil, and that holds true in his visual art. . . . Thereand#8217;s a definite vision and storytelling with the mix of text and image in the galleries."
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"He was, and remains, fond of biomorphic shapes, the incorporation of texts, working with textures, playing with dimensionality . . . David Lynch began as a painter and#8212; he still is a painter."
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"Late works find him tapping into primal fantasies of the psychotic annihilation of self and the other."
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"Impressively curated by Robert Cozzolino, The Unified Field makes a case for considering Lynch as 'an artist who happens to make film as part of his expression.'"
Review
"it is fascinating to see Lynch's noncinematic work, especially the earliest canvases . . . from January 1966 through the spring of 1967."
Synopsis
David Lynch is internationally renowned as a filmmaker, but it is less known that he began his creative life as a visual artist and has maintained a devoted studio practice, developing an extensive body of painting, prints, photography, and drawing. Featuring work from all periods of Lynchand#8217;s career, this book documents Lynchand#8217;s first major museum exhibition in the United States, bringing together works held in American and European collections and from the artistand#8217;s studio. Much like his movies, many of Lynchand#8217;s artworks revolve around suggestions of violence, dark humor, and mystery, conveying an air of the uncanny. This is often conveyed through the addition of text, wildly distorted forms, and disturbances in the paint fields that surround or envelop his figures. While a few relate to his film projects, most are independent works of art that reveal a parallel trajectory. Organized in close collaboration with the artist,
David Lynch: The Unified Field brings together ninety-five paintings, drawings, and prints from 1965 to the present, often unified by the recurring motif of the home as a site of violence, memories, and passion. Other works explore the odd, tender, and mincing aspects of relationships. Highlighting many works that have rarely been seen in public, including early work from his critical years in Philadelphia (1965and#150;70), this catalog offers a substantial response to dealer Leo Castelli's comment when he enthusiastically viewed Lynchand#8217;s work in 1987, and#147;I would like to know how he got to this point; he cannot be born out of the head of Zeus.and#8221;
Published in association with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Synopsis
Edgar G. Ulmer is perhaps best known today for
Detour, considered by many to be the epitome of a certain noir style that transcends its B-list origins. But in his lifetime he never achieved the celebrity of his fellow Austrian and German and#233;migrand#233; directorsand#151;Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger, Fred Zinnemann, and Robert Siodmak. Despite early work with Max Reinhardt and F. W. Murnau, his auspicious debut with Siodmak on their celebrated Weimar classic
People on Sunday, and the success of films like
Detour and
Ruthless, Ulmer spent most of his career as an itinerant filmmaker earning modest paychecks for films that have either been overlooked or forgotten. In this fascinating and well-researched account of a career spent on the margins of Hollywood, Noah Isenberg provides the little-known details of Ulmerand#8217;s personal life and a thorough analysis of his wide-ranging, eclectic filmsand#151;features aimed at minority audiences, horror and sci-fi flicks, genre pictures made in the U.S. and abroad. Isenberg shows that Ulmerand#8217;s unconventional path was in many ways more typical than that of his more famous colleagues. As he follows the twists and turns of Ulmerand#8217;s fortunes, Isenberg also conveys a new understanding of low-budget filmmaking in the studio era and beyond.
and#160;
Synopsis
The first major book to consider the life and work of Robert Arneson, A Troublesome Subject tells the fascinating story of how a high school art teacher transformed himself into an artist of international stature and ambition. Representing the full scope of Arnesonand#8217;s career in a rich survey of color reproductions, this book is at once a study of the trajectory of contemporary culture, the work of Robert Arneson, and the relationship between the two. It shows how Arnesonand#8217;s work articulated the crisis of narcissism that has defined American culture since 1970. Jonathan Fineberg develops his ongoing work toward a psychosocial history of art as he proceeds through Arnesonand#8217;s careerand#151;chronicling his early life, the formation of a personal style, and finding a unique subject matter in his famous post-1970 turn to self-portraiture.
Synopsis
"I went to Davis and I began spending time in TB9. It's wonderful to have a major book on Arneson that describes Bob, his studio door mostly open, working, working and so we all were working, workingand#151;always encouragement always looking. It was the place I needed at that timeand#151;he included everyone in the idea of making and doing."and#151;Bruce Nauman
"Fineberg delves deeply into the life and art of one of America's most important and under-known artists."and#151;Gary Garrels, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
"The book reveals a body of work that is as complex, entangled, and internally dynamic as the world that the artist encountered."and#151;Hannah Higgins, University of Illinois, Chicago
Synopsis
Born to a prominent family in Havana but exiled to the United States as a girl, Ana Mendieta (1948and#150;1985) is regarded as one of the most significant artists of the postwar era. During her too-brief career, she produced a distinctive body of work that includes drawings, installations, performances, photographs, and sculptures. Less well known is her remarkable and prolific production of films. This richly illustrated catalogue presents a series of sequential color stills from each of twenty-one original Super 8 films that have been newly preserved and digitized in high definition for the 2015 exhibition, combined with related photographs, and reference still images from all of the artistand#8217;s 104 filmworks; together these illustrations sample the full range of the artistand#8217;s film practice from 1971 to 1981. The book includes Mendietaand#8217;s first published comprehensive filmography resulting from three years of collaborative research conducted by the Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection and the University of Minnesota as well as original essays by John Perreault, Michael Rush, Rachel Weiss, Lynn Lukkas, Raquel Cecilia Mendieta, and Laura Wertheim Joseph. The first book-length treatment of Mendietaand#8217;s moving-image practice,
Covered in Time and History aims to locate her films centrally within her larger oeuvre and at the forefront of the multidisciplinary shifts that characterized visual arts practice during the 1970s.
Published in association with the Katherine E. Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota.
About the Author
Dr. Robert Cozzolino is Curator of Modern Art and Senior Curator at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) and has organized over thirty exhibitions at PAFA, including Jacob Lawrenceand#8217;s Hiroshima (2008), George Tooker: A Retrospective (2009), Narcissus in the Studio: Artistsand#8217; Portraits and Self-Portraits (2010), and The Female Gaze: Women Artists Making Their World (2012). A champion of underrepresented artists and uncommon perspectives on well-known artists, Dr. Cozzolino has been called the and#147;curator of the dispossessedand#8221; for his attention to the underdog.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
1. Traces of a Viennese Youth
2. Toward a Cinema at the Margins
3. Hollywood Horror
4. Songs of Exile
5. Capra of PRC
6. Back in Black
7. Independence Days
Postscript
Filmography
Notes
Select Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index