Someone has been kind enough to upload a bunch of short, abstract Harry Smith films to YouTube (the lazy blogger’s best friend). Harry Smith is known to fans of folk music as the compiler of the Folkways anthology, an important document of early American folk. But his film work, inspired by alchemy and the occult as much as it was by modern art, is just as important. Kenneth Anger referred to him as the “greatest living magician.” But for Smith, the music he loved and the films he made went hand in hand. Many of these early films were screened during jazz concerts in San Francisco and New York. Smith said that he made the work for contemporary music, and talked about the films in terms of synaesthesia of color and sound. For this reason, his work is considered a precursor to ’60s psychedelic culture. You can read more about him and his work at the Harry Smith Archives. This particular film, Color Study, was made in 1952 (the music was added by the person who stuck it on YouTube):

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