Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis

For Jack Smith (1932-1989), Atlantis was both the idea of a fantastical utopia and the reality of the Lower East Side apartment in which this prophetic artist staged baroque, improvisational multi-hour one-man theatrical productions, often with a cast of stuffed animals and dolls. An avant-garde photographer, filmmaker, actor, performance artist, and all around "flaming creature," Smith has been credited as a major influence by Fellini, Godard and Jarmusch. In Mary Jordan's mesmerizing portrait, he fairly jumps off the screen: a combination mystic, comedian and madman, a protean artist whose vast energy and creativity were undermined (or perversely fed?) by the poverty of his day-to-day life and his paranoid misgivings about just about everything. If there is a heaven for the wonderfully bizarre, Jack Smith resides there, accompanied by his patron saint, Maria Montez.