Collection

Jack Smith is best known for films with no narrative continuity, often shot frenetically and referencing kitschy Hollywood productions of the 1930s and 1940s. Their originality owes much to their low quality, slapstick humour, psychedelic effects and cast of oddball characters from the artist’s entourage. Here we see New York bohemians and transvestites disguised and made-up by Smith, who calls them “creatures” or “Cinemaroc stars” (named after an imaginary film studio). In parallel to his film work, Smith was a photographer as well. Even though his pictures were often linked to the aesthetics, costumes, characters and scenery of specific films, they were also tableaux vivants in their own right. Smith was also a street performance artist who would improvise anarchistic theatre pieces. Aesthetically, he would often make use of things that had ended up on the scrapheap of modern culture, hence his fondness for washed-up celebrities, trashy decors and social outcasts.