Bruce Conner is a contrary man. In 1959, he sent out black-edged invitations to a show of paintings by "the Late Bruce Conner." That same year, he began a work-to-rule campaign over his New York dealer Charles Alan’s insistence that the artist sign his paintings on the front of the canvas, by signing them in such unlikely places and near-microscopic cursive that he had to draw maps to each autograph‘s location. By the next year, Conner was refusing to sign any works, but gamely tried to oblige Alan by providing him with a rubber stamp of his signature, encouraging the dealer to stamp it "on my work, other people’s work, or anything."

Bruce Conner’s peculiar films are one-half julienned Cold War newsreels and one-quarter mocking music tracks, and the rest fell out of the blender.

As a lightly cultured suburbanite, I generally take an “Emperor’s New Clothes” approach to museum-sanctified Profound Art Films. I tend to mute my misgivings and mumble, for fear of appearing narrow-minded to the more aesthetically attuned. But Conner’s hogwash is enough to make you roll up your brain’s welcome mat and double-bolt the door.