Pioneering interdisciplinary artist Charles Atlas new exhibit ‘HAIL THE NEW PURITAN’ @ The Bass Museum of Art
The latest exhibition being mounted at the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach is HAIL THE NEW PURITAN by pioneering interdisciplinary artist Charles Atlas. He is an American video artist and film director who also does lighting and set design, and is a pioneer in developing media-dance, also called dance for camera. Media dance is work that is created directly for the camera. While Atlas’ primary artistic medium is video, he also began to experiment with live electronic performance in 2003. Atlas worked collaboratively with Merce Cunningham from 1975 to 1981 and as the Cunningham company’s filmmaker-in-residence (1978–1983), when he made 10 dance films
Hail the New Puritan (1985–86) is a landmark in the history of media-based performance, offering a fictionalized documentary of a day in the life of Scottish choreographer and dancer Michael Clark. Fusing the formal discipline of classical ballet with the raw vitality of punk, post-punk, and queer underground subcultures, Clark’s performances—and Atlas’s mock-documentary approach—broke new ground with their exploration of self-fashioned personas and the politics of style. Set against the backdrop of 1980s London, the film captures the spirit of a shifting cultural moment, where physical movement operates as both personal expression and social defiance. Atlas’s camera acts as an extension of the performing body, crafting a visual language attuned to the energies, textures, and codes of a changing society.
Nearly four decades later, Hail the New Puritan remains a vital cultural touchstone, its experimental pulse resonating across time. At The Bass, its presentation deepens a conversation already embedded within XI (2004), the immersive installation by assume vivid astro focus (avaf) currently on view on the museum’s second floor. Though distinct in form and approach, the two works share a commitment to performance as a space of transformation, where identity is continually constructed and remade through image, movement, and theatrical display.
https://queerguru.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/ssstik.io_@violetwave_1748134189019.mp4
CHARLES ATLAS: HAIL THE NEW PURITAN
https://thebass.org/
MAY 28–OCT 19, 2025
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