Marie Menken

Her film Glimpse of the Garden was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

• Name — Marie Menken • Birth Name — Marie Menkevicius • Born — 25 May 1909 • Birthplace — New York City, U.S. • Died — 29 December 1970 • Place of death — New York City, U.S. • Occupation — Experimental filmmaker • Spouse — Willard Maas

Marie Menkevicius was born in Brooklyn, New York, on May 25, 1909, to Roman Catholic Lithuanian immigrant parents. She studied at the New York School of Fine and Industrial Arts as well as the Art Students League of New York and honed her craft as a painter. To support herself, she worked as a secretary at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum before receiving a scholarship from Yaddo and moving to upstate New York. • Illustration — Marie Menken's parents (Mr. and Mrs. Menkevicius) • Illustration — Marie and Adele Menken

There is no why for my making films. I just liked the twitters of the machine, and since it was an extension of painting for me, I tried it and loved it. In painting I never liked the staid and static, always looked for what would change the source of light and stance, using glitters, glass beads, luminous paint, so the camera was a natural for me to try—but how expensive! Menken and her husband Willard Maas began a well-respected avant-garde art group known as The Gryphon Group in the mid-1940s. It was around this time that Menken, bored by the static nature of paint on canvas, began to experiment with film. She released her first film, Visual Variations on Noguchi, in 1945 to acclaim within experimental art circles of the time. She used a hand-held and hand-cranked 16 mm Bolex camera for this as well as many of her later films, contributing to the spontaneity and agility of her work. Noguchi is a non-narrative film that combines quick, decontextualized shots of the sculptures of Isamu Noguchi with shrill, discordant music. Menken and the Gryphon Group began to produce numerous short experimental films around the time of Noguchis release. She also began to experiment with various types of animation techniques, including collage and stop-motion cinematography, owing to her background in painting. Arguably her best-known film is Notebook (1962), which consists of short snippets of film she shot between 1940 and 1962, spliced together in a meditative fashion. Menken continued to make films that both were influenced by and commented on the various art movements her contemporaries took part in, including abstract expressionism in Drips in Strips (1963) and pop art in Andy Warhol (1964). Lights, shot in New York City's quietest hours over three consecutive Christmas seasons from 1964 to 1966, is known for Menken's technique of "night writing".

In 1931 she met Willard Maas, a professor of literature at Wagner College in Staten Island. They married in 1937, but it was a rocky and unstable marriage, described as a "succession of fights and drinking bouts". Menken and Maas lived at 62 Montague Street in Brooklyn. As core members of the Gryphon Group, they were highly respected by the experimental and avant-garde art circles of the time. Menken was known for her association with and influence on many of the leading members of the movement, including pop artist Andy Warhol, painter and experimental filmmakers Kenneth Anger and Stan Brakhage. According to the 2006 film documentary Notes on Marie Menken produced by Martina Kudláček, it was Menken who schooled Andy Warhol on using the 16 mm Bolex. The film presents previously unseen footage by Menken salvaged from basements and storage vaults, including a camera "duel" for Bolexes between Menken and Warhol; the two are seen dueling on top of a New York City building, facing each other with Bolex cameras and dancing in circles around each other while gliding across the roof-top of Menken's penthouse apartment. Menken later appeared in several Warhol films, including Screen Tests (1964), The Life of Juanita Castro (1965) and Chelsea Girls (1966).

Menken's painting style utilized unconventional mediums, particularly reflective materials such as glass, phosphorescent paint, and sequins. She attributed this to her desire to capture movement in her paintings, something that would eventually influence her move to film as well as her films' emphasis on the theme of light. Her background in painting was evident in her later experiments with animation, collage, and stop-motion work. Movement is prominent in her films, either slow and meditative or quick and spastic. Unlike many other avant-garde films at the time, her early films lacked any obvious symbolism, and were instead to be experienced purely visually. Peter Kubelka wrote that Menken put the "medium of film" to its best usage and "transports the viewer to a new world... Nobody before the invention of the Bolex and the usage of it by Marie has ever had in his brain material of thoughts of this kind... I think Marie learn her filmmaking from letting the Bolex talk. Her films are expeditions, like Columbus, into a country she had not seen before herself."

Menken was highly prolific and also worked on many films attributed to the Gryphon group, its members, and other filmmaking circles. As such, this is only a partial filmography. • Visual Variations on Noguchi (1945) • Hurry! Hurry! (1957) • Glimpse of the Garden (1957) • Dwightiana (1959) • Eye Music in Red Major (1961) • Arabesque for Kenneth Anger (1961) • Bagatelle for Willard Maas (1961) • Notebook (1962) • Mood Mondrian (1965) • Andy Warhol (1965) • Wrestlers (1964) • Moonplay (1964–66) • Drips in Strips (1961) • Go Go Go (1962–64) • Lights (1966) • Sidewalks (1966) • Excursion (c. 1968) • Watts with Eggs (1967)