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Robert Wilson and the Film Max Bill: The Master’s Vision
from Crossover Culture Max Bill’s and Georges Vantongerloo’s Ties with the United States by Angela Thomas
Robert Wilson met Bill and I in Moscow, where in 1988 the two had been invited to deliver lectures on their art. Bill spoke about his large-scale sculpture Continuity, a work with many iterations and a long history that includes its destruction by far-right vandals in 1947 and its subsequent three-year-long remaking in granite. Bob Wilson spoke about the theater, the opera, and his stage sets. The two met again in Zurich. Bill bought a large-format drawing by Wilson, The Golden Windows,37 which was on show at Galerie Lüpke in Frankfurt am Main.
After Bill had died and I had remarried, Bob Wilson visited me and my second husband (the author and film director Erich Schmid) at Haus Bill in Zumikon. Erich directed a film about Bill, titled Max Bill: The Master’s Vision. Bob arranged for the film to be screened at the Watermill Center on Long Island’s East End. The film went on to tour twenty-two countries, with screenings in several U.S. and Canadian cities followed by Q&As with us in attendance. Among the stops were cinemas in Washington D.C., Boston, New York City, Seattle, Chicago, and MIT in Cambridge.
