The present lot is a 16mm film reel featuring nine of Bruce Conner's most celebrated and iconoclastic works of experimental cinema, compiled by Conner himself as a cohesive representation of his filmic output.

Gifted to his friend Natasha Nicholson around 1970, this reel would have been intended for distribution and public screenings. The reel includes the nine following films, with a total run time of approximately forty-five minutes.
 

Permian Strata, 1969, 4 minutes
A Movie, 1958, 12 minutes
Ten Second Film, 1965, 10 seconds
Vivian, 1965, 2 1/2 minutes
Liberty Crown, 1967, 5 minutes
Cosmic Ray, 1961, 4 minutes
The White Rose, 1967, 7 minutes
Looking for Mushrooms, 1961-67, 3 minutes
Breakaway, 1966, 5 minutes

The present collection comes from Natasha Nicholson, an artist who was close to Bruce Conner from 1967 to 1972, a productive period of transition (among many) for Conner, one where he was creating some of his now most notable collages, films and drawings. 

Nicholson first met Conner when she was twenty-two, in an evening class Conner was teaching at the Art Institute of San Francisco. The class was titled "For Women Only" and in the first session, Conner went over to the door, locked it and told the students: “we’re staying here all night. If anyone is uncomfortable, you can leave now.” Nervously, a few women left, but Nicholson stayed. She looks back now, saying Conner was one of the most brilliant teachers she has encountered: “mentally demanding” and able to “get you to go somewhere you had no intention of going...powerfully but quietly...into an unfamiliar realm.” 

They spent the next five years together, collaborating, learning from the other’s artistic practice and navigating the nascent, somewhat ungainly west coast art scene.  This time was particularly difficult for Conner, as he struggled to move away from the assemblages that had gained him recognition, avoid the label of “film-maker” and maintain gallery support as he withdrew from the art world. “Everything broke the rule from the last time,” Nicholson says of Conner’s work, and he was always concerned with “yes and no, black and white, positive and negative—all of the contrasts that could be between something.” 

Conner’s enigmatic, passionate and imperious approach to art making is evident in this collection, which includes a rare, early abstract painting, dense, metaphysical "all-over" prints and drawings, letters and ephemera, small collages and assemblages and a stunning 16mm reel of nine of his pioneering films, compiled by Conner himself.

"I haven't called very many people brilliant in my life, but he truly was. Everything he did, he could do any medium, anything and the passion that he brought to it was amazing."

Natasha Nicholson on Bruce Conner