Dog Film [Films in Progress]

Dogs appear throughout Lassnig’s work, at times as domestic companions, and other times as philosophical portals. In a series of aquarelles and drawings about the “inner eye” (1978–80) — one titled “Dog” as Mental Image — Lassnig used the figure of the dog to investigate the connection between what we see with the naked eye and how this intermingles with images we hold in our mind.  Lassnig writes “The truth is that I don’t see anything with closed eye[s] … Instead of a dog, layers and lines appear,”(1) “stains with feet, undergrowth with ears and tails,”(2) a description that comes to life in Dog Film. Using multiple exposures, Lassnig creates a filmic collage of wagging tails, toothy snouts, groping paws, and panting tongues tangled together to form ghostly chimeras that are part-dog, part-human. (Jocelyn Miller, Maria Lassnig. Film Works/ Filmography [excerpt])

(1) – Maria Lassnig, Dog, 1978 (pencil/color pencil on paper).
(2) – Maria Lassnig, Bewusstseinsbild vom “Dog” (“Dog” as Mental Image), 1978 (pencil/color pencil on paper).

Rough cut by Maria Lassnig. Color correction and final cut completed posthumously by Mara Mattuschka and Hans Werner Poschauko in accordance with Lassnig’s notes from her notebook on film, “Optical Printer.”

Digitization by the Austrian Film Museum. This film was preserved and restored by the Maria Lassnig Foundation in collaboration with the Austrian Film Museum.