From 1961 to 1967, Michael Snow worked on a series of artworks that he named the "Walking Woman". Accompanying his move from Canada to New York, they constitute one of the largest, most obsessively pursued themes and give rise to a countless series of variations, which are pursued parallel to his major film works. They are also highly controversial and became a trademark of Snow, in which the Walking Woman figures were printed in various places, such as T-shirts and ties. The Walking Woman series created an ontological and methodological shift in art during the 1960s. In this essay, I argue that the Walking Woman series has a main theme of variation not only on adopting only one walking woman figure in various media but also can be seen as an example of variation in art forms, which the variation theme can be also seen in later Snow’s films such as Wavelength and New York Eye and Ear Control.
The basic image of the Walking Woman is quite simple. It shows a side silhouette of a woman's body with a walking position. She has short hair and her body is slightly forward. The interesting part is that both of her wrinkles and angles are "cut-off" by the edge. Specific image can be seen in Figure. 1,Four Grey Panels and Four Figureswhich Snow made in 1963. From 1961 to 1967, Snow adopted this figure and made an amount of two hundred individual Walking Woman works. Snow adopts different variations on making them. According to Annette Michelson’s writing “Toward Snow”, the author indicates that: “She was made of wood, twisted out of stiffened canvas, blotted into a double Rorschach-like image, painted, drawn, printed. Finally, she was filmed, then amplified into a series of immense steel pieces, exorcized, as it were, in the 11-part dispersed composition commissioned for EXPO’67” (Michelson “Toward Snow”). It is also noticed that after the exhibition of the Walking Woman Work in EXPO’67 in 1967, Snow stopped making any further Walking Woman artworks. Even though the composition of his Walking Woman series seems to be representations of this woman figure, Snow himself does not see his work representational. The woman figure is just a container for Snow to show his variation theme on it. According to Snow: "My subject is not women or a woman but the first cardboard cutout of W.W.I made. A second remove depiction. Always use it same size as original. 5 ft. tall. W. W. is not an idea, it’s just a drawing, not a very good one either! Bad teste conversion W. W. though representational is invented, an individual. One subject, any medium” (Snow 17). Therefore, for Snow, the woman figure in his series can be replaced by anything, such as a cat or a dog. The main idea for Snow is the variations of this one subject. However, spectators can always recognize his works both as a representation of the woman figure and an abstract variation.
Figure. 1, Michael SnowFour Grey Panels and Four Figures, 1963
Before analyzing the variation theme, I begin by introducing the origin of how Snow started making the Waling Woman series first. The “environment” and “happenings” are two main reasons that Snow started his Walking Woman series. More specifically, Snow was largely influenced by the environment of abstract expressionism while he was in New York, representatives can be seen in Marcel Duchamp and Willem de Kooning’s works. The abstract expressionism emerged in the environment among the New York artists during the 1950s. It is noticed Snow and his wife Joyce decided to move from Toronto to New York to "get better" in their artworks in the early 1960s (Longford 5). The influence of these abstract expressionists can be clearly traced through Snow' own writing "A Lot of Near Mrs.", which he wrote: "Influences and thank you: Duchamp, Matisse, de Kooning, Mondrian. Echoings of artist working in ‘Happenings’ and ‘environments,’ the ideas having never seen same” (Snow 18). By talking about the “environment”, the main understanding of the abstract expression is that the contour of these artworks is designed in an abstract way. Abstract expressionists focus on expressing their inner subject matters while creating artwork. Taking de Kooning as an example of the artists who influenced Snow, he created a series of paintings based on woman representation in the 1950s. He named them as the Woman series. According to de Kooning and Harold Rosenberg's book,De Kooning. Texted by Harold Rosenberg: "From 1940 to the present, Woman has manifested herself in de Kooning's paintings and drawings as at once the focus of desire, frustration, inner conflict, pleasure, … and as posing problems
of conception and handling as demanding as thoseof an engineer.” (de Kooning and Rosenberg 29). Since paintings became a way to express the painter's inner feeling, de Kooning's Woman series shows a different painting style comparing to previous representational paintings that "picture" the objects into paintings. More exactly, de Kooning ignored the perspective drawing that is adopted in most of the paintings in order to make the painting looks more closely to how human optically receive the world. de Kooning's works combine both representation and abstraction, which he turned the image into an actual way of using paints to spread all over the canvas and still retained traces of what he draws.
Figure. 2, de Kooning,Woman, I, 1952 Example can be seen in Figure 2, one of
his famous paintings that he made in 1952, Woman, I, which is also in the Woman series. In this painting, viewers can notice that de Kooning adopted various colors and lines to paint all over the painting. Nevertheless, de Kooning did not lose completely the image, viewers can still see the representation of the woman figure. This painting style, abstract expressionism, became one of the new art trends in the United States in the 1950s. It is also noticed that similarly, in the 1960s, Snow also adopted a woman figure in his artworks and created his own Walking Woman series. Therefore, it is clear that de Kooning's Woman series as well as the similar abstract expressional “environment” influenced Snow to be motivated in the Walking Woman project while he was in New York.
Secondly, Snow was also influenced by the idea of what he called “happenings”, which means that artworks are in a way presented in real life and detached from artworks' original environments, such as museums or galleries. Moreover, the "happening" in artworks also raises Snow's question on the relationship between art and life. According to Snow’s writing, “A Lot of Near Mrs.”, he wrote that: “’Art’ and ‘life’ problem. Duchamp. If you can use stuff from the street as art in an art gallery why can’t you use ‘paintings’ or art as art in street. Not found art but lost art. Who can see it? Trying to find new uses for representation. Not a ‘figure painter’” (Snow 18). More exactly, "happenings" means that artworks are in a way happening in real-life, and this "happening" allows people to participate in the artworks on the street, on the subway, and on any places. By placing artworks in real-life, art is not something that people look at and feel detached, like in a museum, but in which people participate themselves together. "Happenings" reduce the gap between life and art. Moreover, it also reduces the alienation between viewers and creators. One of the representative artworks in his Walking Woman series for this "happening" idea is called Four to Five, in which Snow placed the Walking Woman figure on the street to see people's reactions and let people participate in the artwork. Therefore, both the "environment" of abstract expressionism in the United States and the "happening" idea of detaching artworks away from galleries to real-life become the two main factors that influenced Snow to develop this Walking Woman series in the 1960s.
After analyzing the historical context about the development of the Walking Woman series, I pick several Walking Woman artworks to specifically analyze Snow's variation theme. These works are Venus Simultaneous (1962), Four to Five (1962), Clothed Woman (In Memory of My Father) (1963) and his film New York Eye and Ear Control (1964).
Figure. 3, Michael Snow,Venus Simultaneous, 1962
Venus Simultaneous is an oil on canvas and wood construction, which is 3 meters long and 2 meters high. The variation theme can be seen through the artwork's structure, in which it consists of different mediums, such as painting, collage, and sculpture. More specifically, some of the Walking Women are painted on the background, some of them are collages, and one of them is detached from the background (See Figure. 3). Therefore, this work contains the Walking Women in different creating stages. Viewers can notice that the Walking Women are drawn on the surface (the painting), detached a bit from the background (the collage), and gotten away from the background (the sculpture). According to Martha Longford’s Michael Snow: Life and Work, the author indicates that: “one figure is nothing but an outline. Another is layered, a collage. Still another is built up with impasto to a sculptural thickness. There are eight variations in all, not counting the shadow cast by the projected figure” (Longford 12). The reason why Snow named this work with the word Simultaneous is that viewers can view the Walking Women everywhere and any space the same. Viewers can also see the Walking Women at the same time everywhere. Moreover, the single blue color that Snow adopted in this artwork also confuses the viewers to distinguish which of the Walking Woman is on the canvas and which is detached away from the canvas. According to a Canadian critic Arnold Rockman: “the figures seemed simultaneously to be inhabiting different kinds of space: moving back and forth across the spectator’s field of vision; receding; projecting, trespassing on each other’s turf; intruding into the real world!” (Longford 12). Therefore, the Walking Woman figure in this one artwork is repeated and repeated in various forms. Moreover, the various perspective of this one artwork also created a kind of ambiguity to distinguish between the real and the illusion.
Figure. 4 Michael Snow, Four to Five, 1962
Four to Five is a series of photographs that was motivated by the “happenings”. This artwork consists of 16 silver gelatin prints and they are mounted on the cardboard (Langford 43). The variation in this artwork can be also seen through how Snow brought the Walking Woman figure into the real environments, as “happenings” (See Figure. 4). For instance, Snow placed the Walking Woman in front of the store, at the subway entrance, on the crossroad, etc. According to an interview with Snow: “I became interested in making this one work [Four to Five], which was going to be black and white and was going to record this black silhouette figure I had designed in different locations in the city…it was just to put the figure in three-dimensional space in order to make these two-dimensional images of the situation” (Border 20). Moreover, by bringing this Walking Woman figure into real-life, the gap between art and life, illusion and fact also reduced. Four to Five is also the time when Snow placed the Walking Woman figure of the day. Viewers can see that people are off their work and on their way home. Snow placed the Walking Woman figure and photographed the pedestrian on how they react to it. By looking carefully into this photograph, people do not pay much attention to this figure. It is noticed that the work of art is so much immersed in the crowd that it is not abrupt in real life.
Clothed Woman (In Memory of my Father) is 1.52 meters high 3.86 meters long oil and lucite painting. The variation of this artwork is the adoption of different colors. More specifically, this painting contains seven panels, and each panel has some of the observed outlines of the Walking Woman. Snow filled in the shapes that are created by the outline in
spectrum-related colors (See Figure. 5). Therefore, it is more difficult for the viewers to read the representational shapes of the Walking Woman in Clothed Woman (In Memory of my Father) comparing to other Walking Woman works. This means that the proportion of abstraction is higher than the representation. According to James King's book Michael Snow: Lives and Works, the author indicates that: “of all the WWs, this oil and Lucite on canvas displays the most perfect integration of figurative and abstract representation. Each of the colours is rendered in carefully modulated, varied brush strokes and the resulting colour values call attention to their surfaces; each of the shapes is so varied that they tease the viewer to try to put them together” (King; Ch. 12). By integrating the representation and abstraction, similarly, this painting also contains the same idea of reducing the boundary between the fact and illusion.
Figure. 5, Michael Snow, Clothed Woman (In Memory of my Father), 1963
New York Eye and Ear Control has a similar attempt comparing to Four to Five. Snow also placed the Walking Woman figure in the real environment and detached from Walking Woman's two-dimensional space. According to James King: “Michael, in NYEEC, placed the figure in a series of environment in which she does a variety of things: sometimes, she is a ghostlike genius loci; in other situations, she is perceived as an outsider by the humans who encounter her. Of course, she is a flat, thin quasi-sculptural cut-out---a two dimensional being in a three-dimensional world” (King; Ch. 11). Since the worlds of art and ordinary human life are separate spheres of existence, this film reaches the same point in Four to Five that two- and three- dimensional forms can become equals. Therefore, the gap between reality and illusion, art and life are once again reduced in New York Eye and Ear Control. Except for the variation of placing the same Walking Woman in different locations, the film also varies in its form by emphasizing the sound. The music is played by a free jazz groups, the members are Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, Roswell Rudd, John Tchicai, Sunny Murray, and Gary Peacock. More specifically, the music in this film separates from the image. The overall calmness of the imagery finds its opposite in the free jazz soundtrack that accompanies it. According to Snow: “its title [New York Eye and Ear Control] also implies a simultaneity between image and sound. Music is not only used as a way to tell you that this is sad, or this is happy, as it’s used in narrative films. I always disliked that. In my films I’ve tried to give the sound a more pure and equal position in relation to picture” (Tsangari; “Expanding Cinema: Avant-Garde Artist Michael Snow”). Therefore, the music in this film is no longer an accompany to emphasize the image, the movement of the music itself is also one of the themes in this film. The balance between the image and sound in film medium also shows Snow's idea of variation, in which the components in a medium is not limited in a single composition, the emphasis of music can be as same as the image.
To conclude, the Walking Woman series contain variations in the content of the artworks, such as the variation of the color in Clothed Woman (In Memory of my Father), the variation of different spaces in Four to Five, the variation of medium using, such as Venus Simultaneous. Besides the contents are varied in Snow's Walking Woman series, the medium structure is also varied. An example can be seen in New York Eye and Ear Control of he changed the dominant position of the image in the film medium and argued that the sound is not a supporting role of the image. He balanced the position between the sound and image in the film medium as both opposite and mixed with each other. Therefore, Snow's variation in the Walking Woman series can be both seen through the contents and the structure.
Lastly, I analyze how the variation theme in the Walking Woman series in a way of influencing his further filmmaking, especially his film Wavelength that he made in 1967. It is noticed that this film is immediately after Snow stopping making the Walking Woman series. The content of this film is quite simple which zooms from a fixed camera position facing a wall with four tall sash windows. Over the course of the film, the angle of view narrows until the frame is filled with a black and white photograph of waves pinned up between the middle two windows. This film also contains four human events that are scattered and link in some suggestion of causality. This film contains both variations in its image and sound. More specifically, the image has variation in its field and color. According to Anette Michelson in "Toward Snow", "there is the occurrence, throughout the film, or color flashes in range of extraordinary intensity, of sudden changes of the field from positive to negative, or superimposition of fixed images over the progressive zoom, itself by no means absolutely steady, but proceeding with a slight, optical stammer” (Michelson 170). Similarly, this film also contains a mix of representation and abstraction, which is different from some of the avant-garde filmmakers, such as Stan Brakhage who also destroys the narrative structures in film, but his film is more abstract, in which there is no time and room. Except for the variations in images, the soundtrack in this film can be also seen as a development of New York Eye and Ear Control. It is a development because even though the sound and the image separate each other into two independent content of the film, the sound and image in Wavelength are in some way relate to each other. More specifically, the sound is gradually increased to accompany the zoom in the image. According to Snow: “In Wavelength I consider the auditory equivalent to the zoom, which in musical terms turns out to be a crescendo…The sound and image are related but each belongs to its own sphere…Whereas, in [New York] Eye and Ear Control there’s a terrific separation between the music…full of cries and yells and so on…and images which are calm, single spaced and placed things of long durations” (Snow and Dompierre 84). Therefore, the variation theme in Wavelength can be seen as a development of his previous Walking Woman series. This film varies in the image, such as changing the colors and fields and adopting superimpositions. The composition and relationship between the image and the sound are also influenced by New York Eye and Ear Control, which they relate to each other but stay in their own sphere as well.
To conclude, the development of Michael Snow's Walking Woman series was influenced by the New York environment of abstract expressionism and the idea of "happenings" which reduce the gap between artworks and life. The Walking Woman series contains a main idea of variation. The variations can be seen in the content of the artwork, such as colors and spaces. The Walking Woman figure also varies in different media, such as paintings, sculptures, photographs, and films. This variation theme also influenced Snow's later works, such as Wavelength in its variation of image and structure between image and sound.
Works Cited
De Kooning, Willem and Harold Rosenberg. De Kooning. Text by Harold Rosenberg. New York, Abrams, 1974.
De Kooning, Willem. Woman, I, 1952.
King, James. Michael Snow: Lives and Works. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in
Publication, 2019.
Longford, Martha. Michael Snow: Life and Work. Art Canada Institute, 2004.
Michelson, Anette. “Toward Snow.” On the Eve of the Future: Selected Writings on Film.
Cambridge MIT Press, 2007.
New York Eye and Ear Control. Directed by Michael Snow. 1964.
Snow, Michael. “A Lot of Near Mrs.” The Collected Writings of Michael Snow. Wilfried Laurier
University Press, 1994, pp. 26-34.
Snow, Michael. “Information or Illusion: An interview with Michael Snow.” The Collected
Writings of Michael Snow. Wilfried Laurier University Press, 1994, pp. 91-95.
Snow, Michael and Robert Enright. “The Lord of Missed Rules: An Interview with Michael
Snow.” Boardercrossings.com, issue. 102, 2007.
Snow, Michael. Four Grey Panels and Four Figures, 1963. Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
Snow. Michael. Venus Simultaneous 1962. Art Gallery of Ontario.
Snow, Michael. Four to Five 1962.
Snow, Michael. Clothed Woman (In Memory of my Father). 1963.
Tsangari, Athina Rachel. “Expanding Cinema: Avant-Garde Artist Michael Snow.” The Austin
Chronicle, 1999,
Wavelength. Directed by Michael Snow. 1967.
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