Jerry Jofen

Jerry Jofen (1925–1993) was an American painter, collagist, and experimental filmmaker.

Jerry Jofen
Born	1925 Bialystok, Poland
Died	1993 New York City, United States
Occupation(s)	painter, collagist, filmmaker
Spouse	Ellen

Life and career

Zalman "Jerry" Jofen was born in Bialystok, Poland, to a scholarly rabbinical family. In 1941 he fled with his family to the United States to escape the Nazis, arriving in San Francisco on the last refugee ship from Japan. Later he moved to New York City, where he spent much of his time in Greenwich Village. Starting out as a painter, he began to explore film and other media in the 1960s. Jofen is best known for his part in the New York underground film scene, where he collaborated with artists such as Jack Smith, Ken Jacobs, and Angus MacLise.^[1][2] Few of his films survive, mainly because he had a habit of destroying them or leaving them unfinished.^[3] Nevertheless he was a noted experimental filmmaker in his day,^[4] making innovative use of superimposition and other techniques, and influencing other artists such as Andy Warhol, Stan Brakhage, Ron Rice, and Barbara Rubin.^[5][6][7][8]

In 1965 Jofen's work was included in the New Cinema Festival (also known as the Expanded Cinema Festival), an extensive series of multimedia productions in New York presented by Jonas Mekas and featuring the work of such artists as Robert Rauschenberg and Claes Oldenburg. Mekas was impressed with Jofen, writing in the Village Voice, "The first three programs of the New Cinema Festival – the work of Angus McLise [sic], Nam June Paik, and Jerry Joffen [sic] – dissolved the edges of this art called cinema into a frontiersland mystery."^[9] Jofen's entry also made a lasting impression on the playwright Richard Foreman, who recalled it years later as one of his favorites.^[10]

Jofen's films include, among others:

• Voyage (ca. 1962), with Ron Rice, Joel Markman, et al. and music by Angus MacLise.^[11]
• How Can You Tell the Dancer from the Dance (c. 1968), a "psychedelic portrait of a night in the city."^[12]
• We're Getting On (c. 1973) with Jack Smith^[13]
• Rituals and Demonstrations (1977), a documentary about Jewish religious rituals in 1970s Brooklyn.^[14]

He also appears in Jonas Mekas's Film Magazine of the Arts (1963)^[15] and Birth of a Nation (1997).^[16]

Jofen's technique has been described as "collage-like,"^[17] and in fact he has also been recognized as a gifted collagist, his work often compared to that of Kurt Schwitters.^[18][19] Rarely shown during his lifetime, Jofen's collages began attracting more attention after a 1997 showing curated by Klaus Kertess, who wrote, "Jerry Jofen was a migrant in search of light. Collage formed his art and his life. Makeshift procedures and the dispersal of the found and discarded in restless search for coherence, so often endemic to collage, parallel the make-do strategies, vagaries and serendipity of immigrant life."^[20]

Jofen's films have been screened at the Museum of Modern Art, the Jewish Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and, more recently, the Anthology Film Archives. His collages are exhibited regularly at the Pavel Zoubek Gallery in New York.^[17]

See also

• New American Cinema

References

1. "Jerry Jofen Artist Biography". artsy.net. Retrieved 26 October 2014.
2. "Guide to the Angus MacLise Sound Recordings". Yale University Library. Retrieved 26 October 2014. [MacLise] collaborated with several notable artists on multimedia projects, such as Gerard Malanga, Yoko Ono, Jonas Mekas, and Jerry Jofen.
3. van der Voort, René. "Angus MacLise: Master of Synthesis". Blastitude. Retrieved 26 October 2014. See also "Rare Films by Jerry Jofen" 2014-10-26 at the Wayback Machine at zvents.
4. Mekas, Jonas (January 13, 1966). "Village Voice Critics Choose Best Films of 1965". The Village Voice. Retrieved 26 October 2014. One of the most creative areas during last year has been the 'expanded' cinema, 'mixed media' area. I should point out particularly the work of Jerry Joffen [sic]...
5. O'Pray, Michael (1989). Andy Warhol: Film Factory. British Film Institute. p. 41. ISBN 978-0851702438.
6. Sitney, P. Adams (editor) (2000). Film Culture Reader. Cooper Square Press. p. 331. ISBN 978-0815411017. Stan Brakhage first realized and pointed out that the major invention of Jerry Joffen [sic], whose indescribable endless film is too seldom seen, was precisely the suggestion of significant action out of the camera's field. Brakhage himself utilized this principle in Song 6 (1964)... {{cite book}}: |first1= has generic name (help) (from "Structural Film" essay by P. Adams Sitney)
7. Renan, Sheldon (1967). An Introduction to the American Underground Film. E. P. Button & Co., Inc. ISBN 978-0525472070. Jerry Joffen [sic], for example, is known to have influenced the work of such people as Ron Rice.
8. Osterweil, Ara (2010). "Queer Coupling, or The Stain of the Bearded Woman" (PDF). araosterweil.com. Wayne State University Press. [Barbara Rubin] took superimposition from Jerry Joffen [sic]... Osterweil spells his birth name "Zalman Joffen"; his agent and the tribute website use "Jofen."
9. Comenas, Gary. "Expanded Cinema?". warholstars.org. Retrieved 31 October 2014.
10. Davy, Kate (1981). Richard Foreman and the Ontological-Hysteric Theatre. ISBN 978-0835712200.
11. Unterberger, Richie. "Angus MacLise Artist Biography". AllMusic. Retrieved 26 October 2014.
12. . zevents.com. Archived from the original on 26 October 2014. Retrieved 26 October 2014.
13. "Jack Smith in We're Getting On". jerryjofen.com. Retrieved 26 October 2014.
14. "Plenary 4: ARCHIVAL SCREENING: Anthology Film Archives and the History of the Documentary Avant Garde". Visible Evidence. Retrieved 26 October 2014. Includes a blurb by J. Hoberman.
15. Ball, Gordon (1999). 66 Frames. Coffee House Press. p. 215. ISBN 978-1566890823.
16. "Birth of a Nation". The Film-makers Coop. Retrieved 29 October 2014.
17. "Pavel Zoubok Gallery, Jerry Jofen, Salvatore Meo, May Wilson - Rough". ArtSlant. 2011. Retrieved 26 October 2014.
18. Kalm, James. "Stapled to the Soul: Jerry Jofen, Tomas Lanigan-Schmidt". artcritical.com. Retrieved 26 October 2014.
19. Goodrich, John (July 3, 2008). "Cut-and-Paste, Then and Now". The New York Sun. Retrieved 26 October 2014. Jerry Jofen's untitled mixed-media collage of 1968 comes closest to the formal vitality of Kurt Schwitters with a vigorous opposition of elements... See also James Kalm's article at artcritical.com: "Though giving a tip of the hat to Kurt Schwitters, this work elicits authentic Pop rather than the affected version currently in mode." And Peter Frank's review at the AC Institute 2013-02-04 at the Wayback Machine: "...the late Jerry Jofen's superbly wrought neo-Schwittersian stapled-paper pieces, all rhythm and cartoonish wit tempered with a subtle mordancy and a perfect sense of color and composition."
20. "Press release for 'Stapled' exhibition". Pavel Zoubok Gallery. Archived from the original on 26 October 2014. Retrieved 26 October 2014.

External links

• Tribute website
• Photo of Jofen (center) with Taylor Mead and Ron Rice in Film Culture magazine. (The photo also appears in The Exploding Eye: A Re-Visionary History of 1960s American Experimental Cinema by Wheeler W. Dixon, SUNY Press, 1997. ISBN 978-0791435663)