More a visual artist more than an animator, in fact due to his highly unorthodox approach [Robert] Breer has been described as an ‘anti-animator’. He started making the kind of free form animation seen here in the mid fifties by the means of fast sketchy drawings on filing cards. Much influenced by the avant garde; beat poetry, jazz, abstraction, ‘happenings’ and the new performance art, Breer incorporated these things into his films, his wide range of work also included mechanical devices, often used for showing his films in galleries. This was the era of the ‘beat generation’ and its experimentation with free form expressionist ‘stream of consciousness’ prose, poetry and painting, referred to as ‘underground’ due to its usual home in dark smoky cellars, hidden underneath the street level of mainstream life.
(Source: 100animatedshorts.com, via misterbadger)
