Bruce Conner was born November 18, 1933, in
McPherson,
Kansas. His well-to-do middle-class family moved to
Wichita, when Conner was four. He attended high school in Wichita, Kansas. His first solo shows in San Francisco, in 1958 and 1959, featured paintings, drawings, prints, collages, assemblages, and sculpture.
A Movie was a "poverty film", in that instead of shooting his own footage Conner used compilations of old newsreels and other old films. He skillfully re-edited that footage, set the visuals to a recording of
Ottorino Respighi's
Pines of Rome, and created an entertaining and thought-provoking 12-minute film, that while non-narrative has things to say about the experience of watching a movie and the human condition. In 1994,
A Movie was selected for preservation by the
National Film Registry at the
Library of Congress. Conner subsequently made nearly two dozen mostly non-narrative
experimental films. In 1959, Conner founded what he called the Rat Bastard Protective Association. Its members included
Jay DeFeo,
Michael McClure (with whom Conner attended school in Wichita),
Manuel Neri,
Joan Brown,
Wally Hedrick,
Wallace Berman,
Jess Collins,
Carlos Villa and
George Herms. Conner coined the name as a play on 'Scavengers Protective Society'. A 1959 exhibition at the Spatsa Gallery in San Francisco involved an early exploration by Conner into the notion of artistic identity. To publicize the show, the gallery printed up and distributed an exhibition announcement in the form of a small printed card with black borders (in the manner of a death announcement) with the text "Works by the Late Bruce Conner." A work of Conner's titled
Child—a small human figure sculpted in black wax, mouth agape as if in pain and partially wrapped in nylon stockings, seated in—and partly tied by the stockings to—a small, old wooden child's high chair—literally made headlines when displayed at San Francisco's
De Young Museum in December 1959 and January 1960. A meditation or perhaps comment on the then pending
Caryl Chessman execution, the work horrified many. "It's Not Murder, It's Art," the
San Francisco Chronicle headlined; its competitor the
News-Call Bulletin headlined its article, "The Unliked 'Child'". The sculpture was acquired by the
New York Museum of Modern Art in 1970, but greatly deteriorated in subsequent years, such that the museum kept it in storage for long periods and Conner at times asked that it not be shown or suggested it no longer existed. In 2015–2016, another attempt to restore the work was undertaken, involving months-long efforts by two conservators. The work was successfully restored and displayed in ''It's All True'', a retrospective exhibition which opened at Museum of Modern Art in July 2016. A New York City exhibition of assemblages and collage in late 1960 garnered favorable attention in
The New York Times,
The New Yorker,
Art News, and other national publications. Later that year Conner had the first exhibition at the Batman Gallery, in San Francisco; Ernest Burden, owner and designer of the Designer's Gallery in San Francisco assisted Conner and the Batman owners and had the entire gallery painted black, similar to the last show at the Designer's Gallery to showcase Bruce's work, and the show received very favorable reviews locally. Another exhibition in New York in 1961 again received positive notices. In 1961, Conner completed his second film,
Cosmic Ray, a 4-minute, 43 second black-and-white quick edit collage of found footage and film that Conner had shot himself, set to a soundtrack of
Ray Charles' "
What'd I Say." The movie premiered in 1962; most suggest the film concerns sex and war.
Mid-career (early 1960s to c. 2000) Conner and his wife, artist
Jean Conner, moved to Mexico , despite the increasing popularity of his work. The two — along with their just-born son, Robert — returned to the USA and were living in
Massachusetts in 1963, when
John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Conner filmed the television coverage of the event and edited and re-edited the footage with stock footage into another meditation on violence which he titled
Report. The film was issued several times as it was re-edited. In 1964, Conner had a show at the Batman Gallery in San Francisco that lasted just three days, with Conner never leaving the gallery. The show was announced only via a small notice in the want ads of the
Los Angeles Times. Part of the exhibition is documented in Conner's film
Vivian. Toward the end of 1964, London's Robert Fraser Gallery hosted a show of Conner's work, which the artist documented in a film called
London One Man Show. Also that year, Conner decided he would no longer make assemblages, even though it was precisely such work that had brought him the most attention. According to Conner's friend and fellow film-maker
Stan Brakhage in his book ''Film at Wit's End'', Conner was signed into a New York gallery contract in the early 1960s, which stipulated stylistic and personal restraint beyond Conner's freewheeling nature. It is unlikely that Conner would ever sign such a restrictive document. Many send-ups of artistic authorship followed, including a five-page piece Conner had published in a major art publication in which Conner's making of a
peanut butter, banana, bacon, lettuce, and Swiss cheese sandwich was reported step-by-step in great detail, with numerous photographs, as though it were a work of art. Just before Conner moved to Mexico in 1961, he repainted a worn sign on a road surface so that it read "Love". Conner produced work in a variety of forms from the 1960s forward. He was an active force in the
San Francisco counterculture of the mid-1960s as a collaborator in
Liquid light shows at the legendary
Family Dog Productions at the
Avalon Ballroom. He also made—using the new-at-the-time
felt-tip pens—intricate black-and-white
mandala-like drawings, many of which he subsequently (in the very early 1970s)
lithographed into prints. One of Conner's drawings was used (in boldly colored variations) on the cover of the August, 1967 issue (#9) of the
San Francisco Oracle. He also made collages made from 19th-century engraving images, which he first exhibited as The
Dennis Hopper One Man Show. He also made a number of short films in the mid-1960s in addition to
Report and
Vivian. These include
Ten Second Film (1965), an advertisement for the
New York Film Festival that was rejected as being "too fast;"
Breakaway (1966), featuring music sung by and danced to by
Toni Basil;
The White Rose (1967), documenting the removal of fellow artist
Jay DeFeo's magnum opus from her San Francisco apartment, with
Miles Davis's
Sketches of Spain as the soundtrack; and
Looking for Mushrooms (1967), a three-minute color wild ride with
the Beatles' "
Tomorrow Never Knows" as the soundtrack. (In 1996 he created a longer version of the film, setting it to music by
Terry Riley). In 1966,
Dennis Hopper invited Conner to the location shoot for
Cool Hand Luke; the artist shot the proceedings in 85mm, revisiting this footage in 2004 to create his film
Luke. During the 1970s Conner focused on drawing and photography, including many photos of the late 1970s West Coast
punk rock scene. A 1978 film used
Devo's "Mongoloid" as a soundtrack. Conner in the 1970s also created along with photographer
Edmund Shea a series of life-size
photograms called
Angels. Conner would pose in front of large pieces of photo paper, which after being exposed to light and then developed produced images of Conner's body in white against a dark background.
Throne Angel, in the collection of the
Honolulu Museum of Art, is an example with the artist crouching on a stool. Conner also began to draw elaborately folded
inkblots. In the 1980s and 1990s Conner continued to work on collages, including ones using religious imagery, and
inkblot drawings that have been shown in numerous exhibitions, including the 1997
Whitney Biennial. Throughout Conner's entire body of work, the recurrence of
religious imagery and
symbology continues to underscore the essentially visionary nature of his work. '
May the Heart of the Tin Woodsman be with You from 1981, in the collection of the
Honolulu Museum of Art, is an example of the artist's collages that are both mystical and symbolic. It is an engraving collage, with glue, melted plastic and charred wood. In 1999, to accompany a traveling exhibition, a major
monograph of his work was published by the
Walker Art Center, titled
2000 BC: The Bruce Conner Story, Part II. The exhibition, which featured specially built in-gallery screening rooms for Conner's films as well as selected assemblages, felt-tip pen and inkblot drawings, engraving collages, photograms, and conceptual pieces, was seen at the Walker, the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth, the
de Young in San Francisco, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
Late career (c. 2000 to 2008) Conner announced his retirement at the time of the "2000 BC" exhibition, but in fact continued to make art until shortly before his death. However, much of this work, including in particular the many inkblot drawings he made, including a series responding to 9/11, were presented using pseudonyms or the name "Anonymous." Conner also made collages from old engravings, and completed (depending on how they are counted) three or four experimental films. He also used computer-based graphics programs to translate older engraving collages into large-sized woven tapestries, and made paper-based prints in that way as well. Various other artistic projects were completed as well, including in the year of his death a large assemblage titled
King. Conner also in late 2007 directed and approved an outdoor installation of a large painting, resulting in what one observer suggested is a final work-in-progress. == Films ==