Len lye

“It was the sinful thing we did, artists of one kind of another, to sneak in to the movies in the afternoon instead of working,” recalls Greenwich Village writer Alastair Reid. “If the movie was a tear-jerker of some kind, suddenly we’d hear the sound of someone not only sobbing but howling—‘Hooooooo!’—and three people would stand up and call ‘Len!’, and he’d say ‘Here.’ Len blubbed constantly at movies, it was very endearing, and when we heard him we’d all go and join him.” ¹ This was Len Lye, avant-garde filmmaker, painter, kinetic sculptor, and theorist of a new “art of motion.” He would go on a work binge for weeks in his West Village studio, but a day always came when this “sucker for romantic movies” would again be lured to the cinema. In the words of his wife Ann who usually accompanied him, “Len often cried at movies, he’d bawl and people would turn around. Once when we came in late, he started crying then turned to me and said, ‘It wouldn’t be so bad if I only knew what it was about!’” ²