A Weekend with Alfred Leslie: Whitechapel Gallery, 21/22 April 2007

Alfred Leslie is a pivotal American artist-painter-filmmaker whose work spans the past fifty years. A celebrated contemporary of the Abstract Expressionists and a key figure in the extraordinary social milieu of downtown New York from the 1950s and 60s to the present, his own canvases were amongst the most revered of his peers. In 1964 he made Pull My Daisy with the photographer Robert Frank and in 1966 collaborated with the inimitable poet Frank O’Hara on The Last Clean Shirt. In 1960 he edited and published the amazing collection of texts and drawings that form the “one shot review” The Hasty Papers – in and of itself a summation of cultural activity with contributions from Allen Ginsberg, John Ashbery and Fidel Castro amongst may others.

Leslie dramatically moved away from abstraction to make giant almost hyper-real portraits, the majority of which were destroyed in the now infamous fire that ripped through his studio and its neighbouring blocks on October 17 1966. This utterly devastating event, that completely destroyed paintings, films and manuscripts, continues to inform his practice today. Invariably articulated by an initial process of reconstruction Leslie’s recent work makes memory new through its radical re-imagining. He lives and works in New York.

This weekend-long season is the first major presentation of Alfred Leslie’s films in the UK. It is introduced and discussed by Leslie who is an extraordinary orator and includes two exclusive screenings of works in progress.

Presented in association with LUX.


Sat 21 Apr

3pm
The Cedar Bar, Alfred Leslie, US 2001, video, 84mins
Originally written as a play in 1952 based on actual conversations between abstract expressionists Barnett Newman, Helen Frankenthaler, Willem de Kooning, Joan Mitchell, April Yabolonsky, gallerist John Myers and critic Clement Greenberg in their eponymous hangout, The Cedar Bar this video a work of such magnitude that it mocks description in its self-declared "WAR BETWEEN THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE ART AND THOSE WHO WRITE ABOUT IT". Spectacularly elusive, The Cedar Bar, genuinely yokes the push-and-pull of a once 'new' painting style with the enormity of expressionist opera into an uncontainable psycho-tornado!

5pm
USA Poetry: Frank O'Hara, US 1966, 35mins
Frank O'Hara discusses with Al Leslie, a filmmaker and artist, his work and the relationship between poets, playwrights, and artists. O'Hara also reads some of his poetry and talks about some of his friendships with other artists. Filmed off-air by NET on March 5, 1966 at the home of Frank O'Hara and the studio of Alfred Leslie in New York City.

The Last Clean Shirt, Alfred Leslie & Frank O’Hara, US 1964, 16mm, 39mins
In a letter to his friend and collaborator, the poet Frank O'Hara, Leslie writes: "We will shoot for two SEPERATE LEVELS on the film. One is the VISUAL, the other the HEARD & the spectator will be in TWO places or more SIMULTANEOUSLY. NOT AS MEMORY BUT AT THE SAME MOMENT. PARALLELISM! MULTIPLE POINTS OF VIEW!" It is a blueprint for The Last Clean Shirt in which a man and a woman take a car ride through the streets of downtown Manhattan. A clock on the dashboard foregrounds the fact that the film is a single shot. The woman speaks in Finnish jibberish, interpreted by the beautiful and brilliant story told via O’Hara’s subtitles that run throughout.

7pm
Alfred Leslie introduces:
Birth of a Nation (work in progress), Alfred Leslie, c.40mins
Referring to – and revising - DW Griffith’s notorious film of the same name, this work is a reconstruction of a never-completed, mutating essay. Originally shown in a variety of unfinished states, this current version reworks the only remaining 11minute fragment to survive.
And other works



Sun 22 Apr

3pm
Gold Diggers of 1933, Mervyn LeRoy, US 1933, 16mm, 96mins
Vituosic, geometry-defying choreography from Busby Berkeley combines with Depression-era slapstick wisecracks. This outstandingly delirious film reflects Leslie’s love of the musical – and the influence of a form that combines comedy, spectacle and song on his own practice.

5pm
Alfred Leslie in conversation and:

The Anatomy of Cindy Fink, Richard Leacock, Patricia Jaffe, Paul Leaf, US 1960, 16mm, 12mins
Cinema verité portrait of a teenage girl’s first jazz dance audition in a Greenwich Village studio. With Larry Rivers, Al Leslie, and Louise Lassier.

Pull My Daisy, Alfred Leslie, US 1959,16mm, 27mins
Based around Jack Kerouac's narration from the last section of his unproduced play 'The Beat Generation' (itself based on an incident between Neal Cassady and his wife Carolyn), Pull My Daisy as much a document of its own unravelling as it is footage of some of the most acclaimed writers and painters of its generation at play. Caught between the socio-historical cult of itself and its Beatnik players, and the excitement of its discreet yet radical formalism, Pull My Daisy has been pawed over by the watchdogs and self-appointed guardians of avant-garde film since its first double-bill showings with John Cassavete's 'Shadows' in the late 1950's. With its bawdy gags and caustic, iconoclastic humour, the film is actually predicated on the delicacy of a subtly shifting interplay between modes of 'depiction', between record and fiction, self-awareness and dubious, wilfull naivete, debunking the ordinarily stable registers its surface (and our own viewing habits) would otherwise invoke.

7pm
Lost in the Fire (work in progress), Alfred Leslie, c.50mins
An intimate memoir based around the 1966 studio fire that had such a radical and lasting impact on Leslie’s practice.
And other works

Whitechapel Gallery
Whitechapel High Street
London E1

Nearest tube: Aldgate East

Tickets:
Single screening: £5
Day ticket: £15/£12 concs
Weekend pass: £25/£16 concs

Box office: 020 7522 7888
www.whitechapel.org