Anita Thacher

Anita Thacher (died September 8, 2017) was an American visual artist and experimental filmmaker based in New York. Her work has been displayed around the world and included in the collections of many museums such as the MoMA in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

She is known for films such as Homage to Magritte (1974), Loose Corner (1986) and the trilogy of shorts, Cut (2013), Chase (2015), and The End (2015). and "Back Track" (1969) with Dennis Hopper. Through the 1970s she continued to make experimental films creating one of her most famous pieces "Homage to Magritte" in 1974 with Dennis Oppenheim and Dee Dee Halleck. Homage to Magritte is a series of surrealist visuals that evoke the work of famous painter René Magritte. In this period many of her films were shown at festivals, such as Sea Travels (1978) which was screened at The American Film Festival in 1979.

Thacher's work continued to play with the surrealist nature of film. In the 1981 group show "Film as Installation", Thacher's still in-progress piece "Loose Corner" (1980–1986) was said to work "to 'sabotage' film's trompe l'oeil illusionism".

Thacher was both a friend, colleague, and neighbor to Woodman. Commentators have suggested that Woodman's suicide had a large personal effect on Thacher who in 1981, the year of Woodman's death, created the art installation "Light House" which contained an empty chair with images of people projected onto in. The piece reflects impermanence, absence and the presence of loss.

In 1995, Thacher was commissioned to create "Illuminated Station" a public work of art and installation piece around an 1894 train station built in Greenport Long Island. The building is owned by the MTA, but as of 2005 it now houses the East End Seaport Museum and Maritime Foundation.

Post-Death Thacher's work has continued to be shown following her death. In 2017, her analog slide show installation Anteroom was displayed and Thacher was described both as a "traditional modernist" and "ahead of her time". The work was later acquired by the Guggenheim in 2018.

Themes Thacher's film work was largely surrealist, creating absurdist visuals and playing with the unreality of film and projection.

Filmography Permanent Wave (1968) Manhattan Doorway (1968–1980) Back Track (1969) Mr. Story (1972) Homage to Magritte (1974) Sea Travels (1978) The Breakfast Table (1979) Loose Corner (1980–1986) One Art (1987) Painted Earth, the Art of the Mimbres Indians (1989) To The Top (1991) Docking at X (2001) Lost / In Memoriam (2006) Cut (2013) Chase (2015) The End (2015). Source: