Breer's genius lay in, among other things, his casual approach to craft. He didn't work at; he played animation. As soon as I saw his paintings from the Paris years — so hard-edged, ordered, Olympian — I could see how film, as a vehicle of synthetic performance, pushed him off the cliff. He learned to fly by the seat of his pants, re-inventing our art with every new, effortless stroke. Lucky for us. Through him we got Arp's random discontinuities, Klee's indexical card miniature scale, Cage's not so silent silence, and all that modernist wit, irony, nonchalance. His work was always flavored by jolts of sly fun. It spilled beyond media into concrete, tangible objects: parodies of machines, propelled by the viewer's hand, or set in motion as snail-paced automata.
Breer was the prolific, generous form-giver: movement was his medium.
I will miss him.
GG
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Received on Thu Aug 18 2011 - 06:06:58 CDT
