Kenneth Anger, the visionary filmaker and author of Hollywood Babylon, inspired, outraged, and entertained generations of people around the world. According to the Sprueth Magers gallery that represented him:
Through his kaleidoscopic films, which combine sumptuous visuals, popular music soundtracks, and a focus on queer themes and narratives, Anger laid the groundwork for the avant-garde art scenes of the later twentieth century, as well as for the visual languages of contemporary queer and youth culture. His earliest works, such as the 1947 black-and-white ecstatic short, Fireworks, established Anger as an enfant terrible of the filmmaking underground. In his works of the 1950s and 1960s, he pushed the camera apparatus to its limits, incorporating double exposure, found footage, and manipulations of the celluloid itself. Anger’s personal occultism, explored most deeply in his masterpieces Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954), Invocation of my Demon Brother (1969), and Lucifer Rising (1972), was a constant in his practice, with the act of transgression—from sacred to profane, from culture into counterculture, from old to new cinematic forms—becoming his defining mode of creation.
Kenneth was a trailblazer. His cinematic genius and influence will live on and continue to transform all those who encounter his films, words and vision.
