‘Glimpse of the Garden’: Marie Menken’s magnified world
Experimental artist Marie Menken was one of the several exceptional geniuses who contributed to the emergence of the American avant-garde tradition during the 20th century. Known for her pioneering efforts like Visual Variations on Noguchi as well as her connections to other important contemporary figures like Andy Warhol, Menken’s incredible body of work is a crucial resource for all film fans who want a deeper understanding of experimental cinema.
Initially, Menken was drawn to painting and studied her craft in New York, but her perception of the medium started changing in the 1940s. After becoming a part of the avant-garde circle, Menken realised that painting was a static form of artistic expression, and she was much more interested in the dynamism of visual art. However, there was no specific reason behind her decision to venture into the mysterious waters of experimental cinema.
In one interview, Menken reflected on her pivot into filmmaking: “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!”
Looking back, that was probably one of the best decisions she ever made because her artistic vision was perfectly suited to the frameworks of cinema. Cited by Stan Brakhage as the biggest influence on his life, Menken’s iconic contemporary once explained that she “liberated a lot of independent filmmakers from the idea that had been so powerful up to then, that we have to imitate the Hollywood dolly shot, without dollies – that the smooth pan and dolly was the only acceptable thing. Marie’s free, swinging, swooping hand-held pans changed all that, for me and for the whole independent filmmaking world.”
Regarded by film scholars as one of the first directors to incorporate the freedom of the hand-held camera, Menken created several masterpieces that deserve much more attention and critical study. Within her oeuvre, there’s one special project called Glimpse of the Garden which perfectly epitomises her unique approach to cinema. Featuring images of a garden accompanied by the aggressive chirping of birds, it’s a film that explores the fundamentally transformative phenomenon of the cinematic experience.
In what can only be described as visual poetry, Glimpse of the Garden has a powerful emotional resonance that provides a solid foundation for its innocent explorations. Menken takes the shots of the mundane garden and fashions a completely new perspective out of it, examining the micro-worlds of magnified plant parts that almost come across as extraterrestrial landscapes. It reinforces the multiplicity of the medium, giving rise to wonderfully nuanced visual mythologies.
Watch the film below.
