"Hutton's exquisite images, precise, observational style, and use of long takes and silence encourage the mind to roam. These ships come to seem like inspiriting physical measures of mankind's outsized capacity for hard work and boundless imagination, by which we overcome the isolation of the human condition."-Film Comment
Peter Hutton (born 1944, Detroit) is one of the most passionate and poetic urban and landscape portrait painters in the film. As a former merchant mariner, he spent nearly 40 years sailing around the world, often taking cargo ships from the Yangtze River to the Polish industrial city of Lodz and from northern Iceland to a ship cemetery on the coast of Bangladesh. A comprehensive review of these 18 films shows an artist's dedication to awakening a more contemplative and spontaneous way of observing and imagining the world.
Whether it is reminiscing about the passing of a city or reflecting on the ever-changing nature of nature, Hutton is sculpting with the passage of time; each movie unfolds in silent reverie, a series of extended single shots shot from a fixed position, let people Recalling the origin of film and the tradition of painting and still photography. The works on display include two magnificent series that Hutton started in the 1970s-one is an impressionist sketchbook in New York, and the other is an exploration of the Hudson Valley, transcribing and elevating the landscape in Thomas Cole and the 19th century Luminism painter. “It’s like Basho’s haiku,” the scholar Tom Gunning observed. “These seemingly simple films provide lessons in viewing and shaping image art, and make you wonder how someone can make such a humble and Such an amazing thing."
Reference: https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/600 https://expcinema.org/site/en/wiki/artist/peter-hutton
Article: Peter Hutton, Filmmaker With Austerely Romantic Worldview, Dies at 71
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