28936: Minsky: (news) NYTimes Obit-Rudi Stern Obit-8/18 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Tequila Minsky <tminsky@ix.netcom.com>

  Rudi Stern, Artist Whose Medium Was Light, Dies at 69
In recent years, Mr. Stern concentrated primarily on documentary
filmmaking. His films include “Haiti: Killing the Dream” (1992), which
he directed with Katharine Kean.


By MARGALIT FOX

Published: August 18, 2006


Rudi Stern, a multimedia artist who spent decades bending light to his
will in the service of both art and commerce — from the psychedelic
shows he created for Timothy Leary to the vibrant neon in Studio 54 —
died on Tuesday in Cadiz, Spain. He was 69 and had made his home in
Cadiz in recent years.



The cause was complications of lung cancer, said Jeff Friedman, the
owner of Let There Be Neon, the Manhattan studio and gallery that Mr.
Stern founded in 1972.

Mr. Stern was a modern-day illuminator, his chosen medium light itself.
In the 1960’s, he was known for his avant-garde light shows and was
also an early advocate of video art. In the 1970’s, he was widely
credited with reviving the dying craft of neon. Over the years, he
designed lighting for theater and opera, for television and films, and
for rock groups like the Byrds and the Doors.

Most recently, Mr. Stern was known for the multimedia installation
“Theater of Light,” which was shown at various locations in New York
and New Jersey between 1999 and 2001. Involving multiple screens,
thousands of painted glass slides and more than 30 projectors, “Theater
of Light” surrounded audience members with densely layered, constantly
changing images, intricately choreographed to music.

Writing in The New York Times in 2001, Anita Gates reviewed a
performance at the Flamboyán Theater in Lower Manhattan.

“What you see on 2,000 or so slides hand-painted by Mr. Stern is
probably as subjective as a Rorschach test,” she wrote. “There are,
among other things, geometric patterns, faces on tabloid covers,
windowpanes that turn into a skyline, an egg that turns into a street
map, a red spider web that weaves itself into batik, lush foliage in
jungle colors, royal purple fabric with gorgeous gold thread and the
surface of Jupiter as Keir Dullea saw it in ‘2001.’ Or at least that’s
what I saw.”

But it was for his work in neon that Mr. Stern was most widely known.
He designed signs for Broadway shows, including “Kiss of the Spider
Woman,” and installations for performance artists like Laurie Anderson
and Nam June Paik. There was also Mr. Stern’s bread and butter, the
innumerable renditions of PIZZA, BEER and EAT AT JOE’S that hung in
ordinary establishments across the country.

He dreamed of setting the world ablaze. “I have plans for neon
pavements, neon highways, neon tunnels; neon on bridges, under water,
outlining trees in parks,” Mr. Stern told Omni magazine in 1981.

Rudolph George Stern was born in New Haven on Nov. 30, 1936. As a young
man, he trained as a painter, studying with the noted artists Hans
Hoffman and Oskar Kokoschka. He earned a bachelor’s degree in studio
arts from Bard College in 1958 and a master’s from the University of
Iowa in 1960.

After settling in Manhattan in the mid-60’s, Mr. Stern met Jackie
Cassen, an artist who worked in light. For the next several years, they
collaborated on luminous kinetic installations, including “psychedelic
celebrations” for Timothy Leary, the noted evangelist for LSD.

In 1969, Mr. Stern and several colleagues founded Global Village, an
experimental video center and performance space in Manhattan. Around
this time, he developed a passion for old neon signs, and soon his loft
was abuzz with sputtering tubes.

At the time, neon was moribund. First used commercially in France in
the early 20th century, neon came to the United States in 1923. It
swept the country in the 1930’s, after the repeal of Prohibition, when
garish signs advertising cocktails seemed like a magnificent idea. But
after World War II, as neon signs were replaced increasingly by
fluorescent-lighted plastic, the art of bending colored tubes into
sinuous, gas-filled forms began to wane.

At Let There Be Neon, originally in SoHo and today on White Street in
TriBeCa, artisans have produced everything from architectural
installations to outdoor sculpture to fanciful neon castles that can be
dropped, apparently without incident, into fish tanks. (“Neon’s good
for fish,” Mr. Stern told The Times in 1979. “It makes them grow.”)

In recent years, Mr. Stern concentrated primarily on documentary
filmmaking. His films include “Haiti: Killing the Dream” (1992), which
he directed with Katharine Kean. He wrote several books, among them
"Let There Be Neon” (Abrams, 1979) and its sequel, “The New Let There
Be Neon” (Abrams, 1988).

Mr. Stern’s first marriage, to Moira North, ended in divorce. He is
survived by his wife, Raffaella Trivi, and their daughter, Stella, both
of Cadiz. He is also survived by a daughter from an early relationship,
who declined to give her last name or hometown, Mr. Friedman said. Her
given name is Lumiere, the French word for light.