George Antheil
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George Johann Carl Antheil was an American avant-garde composer, pianist, author, and inventor whose modernist musical compositions explored the sounds – musical, industrial, and mechanical – of the e
Detail from a portrait of Antheil, by American photographer Berenice Abbott, c. 1927
Journal entry by a young Antheil, showing a violin and hand saw, captioned, "Drawing of a violin and the thing to play it with"
Antheil photographed with his signature bangs, c. 1922
12 Rue de l'Odéon, Antheil's home in Paris, as seen in 2004
Ballet Mécanique
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Ballet Mécanique is a Dadaist, post-Cubist art film conceived, written, and co-directed by the artist Fernand Léger and the filmmaker Dudley Murphy. It has a musical score by the American composer Geo
George Antheil
…part of his "bad boy" behavior, Antheil provocatively pulled a revolver from his jacket and laid it on the piano. Antheil's best-known composition is Ballet Mécanique. The noise music "ballet" was originally conceived to be accompanied by the film of the same name by experimental filmmakers Fernand Léger and Dudley…
Ballet Mécanique, 1923–24
Antheil posing with one of the "noisemakers" he built for Ballet Mécanique, c. early 1920s
Futurist pratella