Gyorgy Kepes

The Frank Eidlitz Collection contains the 16mm and 35mm film work of graphic designer and visual artist Frank Eidlitz (1923–1997), predominantly made during a Winston Churchill Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge in 1966. The collection contains Eidlitz’s experiments with light, movement and technology in film.

This film focuses on Gyorgy Kepes, an influential Hungarian-American artist with whom Frank Eidlitz studied in 1966. Kepes, a professor at MIT, founded the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) in 1967 to facilitate the intersection between art, science and technology.

Kepes was author of the books ‘The Language of Vision’ (1944), ‘The New Landscape in Art and Science’ (1956) and the six-volume series of essays ‘Vision and Value’ (1965-1966). In 1965 he organised the exhibition ‘Light as a Creative Medium’ at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, Massachusetts.

The film, though silent, features Kepes speaking at a seminar. It includes title cards towards the beginning, including one introducing Gyorgy Kepes and another showing a brochure for a symposium accompanying the exhibition in January 1966. It also includes close-ups of Kepes’ influential books, including editions in a variety of languages.

The film then shows snippets of a trip to Kepes’ holiday house near Long Pond in Cape Cod, including scenes of the lake nearby and the interior of the house. The house was designed by Kepes’ friend and colleague Marcel Breuer, the renowned modernist architect.

The final section of the film includes footage of the painting ‘Sleeping Venus’ (1508-1510) traditionally attributed to the Italian Renaissance painter Giorgione, which is crossfaded into a shot of a nude woman in the same reclining pose. The film ends with images of Kepes working in his studio, his paintings stacked against the walls. The footage focuses on details of these paintings and elements of the artist’s studio, such as paintbrushes and tubes of paint.