Book Description

The first extended monograph on Sara Kathryn Arledge, lavishly illustrated with previously unseen works on paper, hand-painted slides, and film stills, bound in cloth and featuring the innovative use of papers of multiple weights, textures, and colors.In Arledge's artwork, abstraction is an entry point to consider daily encounters marked by abundance, loss, and transcendence, along with a healthy dose of skepticism and pointed humor. An under-recognized painter and innovator of mid-20th century experimental cinema, Arledge (1911-1998) was a prolific artist who emphasized the eerie in the mundane and the disorienting in the beautiful. Defying convention and authority, Arledge created a diverse and experimental body of work in between film and painting: "My plan was to extend the nature of painting to include time." She is considered a pioneer of ciné-dance (dance made uniquely by and for the medium of film) and was one of the first to film dance movement. Arledge worked at the margins of art history, shaping her practice along with her idiosyncratic personal myth.Arledge's two major film works, Introspection and What is a Man?, were completed in 1946 and 1958, respectively, yet neither was screened with any frequency until the late 1970s. Arledge's exhibition and screening history is erratic, with many years between various public presentations. Her films have been exhibited most recently at the Armory and at Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archives, which holds her archives, and at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1977); Pasadena Filmforum (1980); and the Independent Film Festival, Santa Cruz, CA (1982). Her paintings were exhibited in large group exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum, The Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum.This publication accompanies an exhibition organized by the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, CA. Alongside photographic reproductions of Arledge's work, the gorgeous clothbound catalogue contains Arledge's personal writing, an expanded timeline of her life, and an interview with Terry Cannon, the founder of Los Angeles Filmforum (formerly Pasadena Filmforum) and an early champion of Arledge's work.