Claire Burch (American, 1925-2009)
Untitled, 20th century
Oil on canvas
24 x 30 in.
Framed: 31 2/3 x 37 3/4 x 1 1/2 in.
Signed lower right: Claire Burch
After attending grade school in Brooklyn, Burch completed a commercial art course at Washington Irving High School in Manhattan and received her B.A. in English from NYU. In the suburbs of Great Neck, New York, she first began writing poetry and articles which were published in Life magazine, The New Republic, Mademoiselle, McCall's, Saturday Review, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, and numerous literary quarterlies and anthologies.[1] Burch also developed a career as a psychiatric writer, publishing two books on the subject: Careers in Psychiatry and Stranger in the Family.
In the early 1970s Burch became a playwright and painter. Her play Ten Cents a Dance was optioned to be directed by José Quintero, the famous O'Neill interpreter. Burch wrote a total of seven plays and several folk operas, but eventually moved on to filmmaking and video anthropology—she was an early adapter of video as a medium.
In 1978, Burch moved to California with her longtime companion Mark Weiman, publisher and owner of Berkeley's Regent Press. She had endured a series of illnesses and wanted to escape the harsh climate of Manhattan.
Burch gained insight and inspiration from insanity and the often unexpected behavior associated with it. She would often videotape homeless people in People's Park and Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, which were collected in her film People's Park in Berkeley: Then and Now. The film documented the dispute between homeless activists and the University of California from the riots of 1969 through 1996 by interviewing park "regulars," and profiling the events surrounding the deaths of park supporters James Rector and Rosebud Denovo.[2]
She also produced documentaries on noted cultural figures such as James Baldwin (whom she knew as a teenager), Timothy Leary and Country Joe McDonald. Also of note was Oracle Rising, a film about the legendary psychedelic newspaper The SF Oracle published in the Haight-Ashbury district during the Summer of Love. Her last completed film was Elegy for the Naked Guy...
Category
20th Century Abstract Expressionist Canvas Paintings
