Rediscovering Norman McLaren

Recently I ran across a copy of Canadian filmmaker Norman McLaren’s 1971 short film, Synchromy, which took me back to my early career when I was teaching art and English to middle school and high school students. Film study, in my mind, always exists in the dual worlds of images and words—and color, sound, movement, and all the rest. But McLaren’s film animations, most entirely wordless, are firmly anchored in the visual, kinesthetic, and musical arts.

We owe a debt of gratitude to the National Film Board of Canada, which supported McLaren’s work for many years and allowed him to give us a wealth of stunning films that are, by turns, lively, thought-provoking, celebratory, and meditative. McLaren’s animation techniques are perhaps as intriguing as his images. At various times he used animations that included a mixture of moving and still photographs, as in the Oscar-winning 1952 allegorical film, Neighbors. Other films, such as Synchromy, are Modern artworks in motion. The visuals of this particular film evoke the paintings of Piet Mondrian and Barnett Newman, both contemporaries of McLaren. And McLaren also drew directly on film (see photo).

As innovative as the visuals are McLaren’s soundtracks, many of which he composed. Particularly haunting is the music of his 1968 Pas de deux, which stands in contrast to the jazzy electronic beeps and blips of Synchromy.

Scottish-born McLaren (b. 1914) emigrated from Britain to the United States in 1939 and then moved to Canada in 1941. He was most active from the mid-1930s until his death in 1987 at age 72. In McLaren’s view, “Animation is not the art of drawings that move but the art of movements that are drawn.”

Introducing students to McLaren’s studies in movement and music in the 1970s and 1980s was like opening the curtains on a wonderful art world for the first time, a delight as much for me as a teacher as for my students. I suspect that for many students that would be just as true today, more than twenty years after McLaren’s death.

Personal Impressionism

After a restless, uncomfortable night of disturbed sleep, and after a breakfast of coffee and a bagel in a favorite eatery, I decided that a solitary stroll on the campus of Indiana University might bring a centering peace that would sustain me during the day ahead. It has been a long, hot summer, and early mornings are the only time of day that brings relief from the heat wave.

For some reason, I can’t say exactly why, I decided to walk around without my eyeglasses, perhaps simply because I needed to see the world in a different way, a way less troubled by the details of existence, of reality. What I discovered was a form of personal Impressionism.

Shapes, though recognizable, took on new dimensions. As positive space became less distinct, negative space asserted itself: fragments of blue sky among the leaves and branches of trees, shadows punctuated by sunlit stones or shrubs. I found myself reaching out to touch the rough bark of trees and to feel the texture of leaves. Instead of seeing individual flowers, I saw masses of color and visual texture. I stopped, literally, to smell the roses on a primrose bush.

Those of us who wear corrective lenses are fortunate to be able to tap this personal Impressionism at will. As visual acuity differs among individuals, I suppose we all create a singular view, as distinct from one another as the works of Renoir are from, say, those of Monet. And yet, there also are commonalities in that our less than perfect vision renders something less than perfect reality: an impression. And because it is an impression, it enables us to see reality in a different—and in my case, refreshing—way.

It was with a sense of peace and renewal that I walked back to my car. There, I put my glasses back on. After all, safe driving requires attention to reality. But my remembrance of the images of my personal Impressionism lingered agreeably.