ROBERT BREER

The American artist Robert Breer (1926-2011) was a pioneer of experimental animated film. He began his career in the late 1940s in Paris with geometric abstract paintings inspired by neoplasticism before taking an interest in the phenomenon of movement, which led to his first animated films. Breer then produced a number of optical installations, which, like a flip book, create the illusion of movement through a rapid sequence of individual images. He devoted the mid-1960s to moving objects and sculptures that shift through the exhibition space at a barely noticeable speed. In Jamestown Baloo’s (1957), A Man and His Dog Out for Air (1957) and 69 (1968), Breer experimented with the perception of movement by pushing the speed of the frame sequence to the very limits of perceptibility. The almost painful visual rhythm of the reel requires the viewer to stare at the object relentlessly.