Lengthy typed letter signed from Stan Brakhage to Will Petersen

N.p. N.p., 1973. Lengthy typed letter signed from Stan Brakhage to Will Petersen, roughly 500 words, dated May 28, 1973. Petersen was the director of the Creative Arts Center at West Virginia University, and Brakhage's letter confirms an upcoming talk at the university and answers in some detail a number of Petersen's questions. With Brakhage's manuscript signature in black ink at the closing: "Blessings / Stan." Included is the original mailing envelope, with Brakhage's Rollinsville, Colorado PO Box address, postmarked May 29, 1973. Several ink annotations on the envelope, presumably by Petersen, some relating to thoughts on Brakhage.

After briefly confirming transporation and terms for his talk, Brakhage dives into several topics, including his reaction to Petersen's stone prints for a piece called the "Prefiguration," and how desperately he wishes he could transmit the same level of detail to his own work (i.e., the celluoid canvas), that he finds Frank Samperi difficult to read, "apropo art," Frank Oppenheimer, Stanley Hayter, and watercolor artist Emile Nolde. Not surprisingluyhdiscusses his reactions to art very broadly, and only conceptually in relation to his own work on celluloid—furthering and deepening the evidence that Brakhage really was more an artist than just an "experimental filmmaker," and that his knowledge and understanding of the work of his contemporaries was comprehensive, and fully integrated into his own.

One page, 8.5 x 11 inches. Near Fine.

[Book #134299]