Ken Jacobs, a pioneering experimental filmmaker who blurred the boundaries between cinema and visual art, died at 92 in New York from kidney failure, according to his son, filmmaker Azazel Jacobs. A key figure in the postwar New York underground alongside Jack Smith and Jonas Mekas, Jacobs challenged conventional filmmaking through works like "Blonde Cobra" (1963) and "Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son" (1969), using techniques such as live radio accompaniment, slow motion, and looping to deconstruct the medium. He studied painting under Abstract Expressionist Hans Hofmann and described his own work as "Abstract Expressionist cinema," often drawing direct comparisons between film and painting.
Jacobs's death marks the loss of a foundational artist who expanded the definition of cinema and influenced generations of filmmakers and visual artists. Though his work remained on the fringes of mainstream art history, recent years saw renewed institutional recognition: in 2023, MoMA acquired 212 of his works, calling him "one of the great moving-image artists of the 20th and 21st centuries," and the Whitney Museum currently features his film "Little Stabs at Happiness" in its "Sixties Surreal" exhibition. His insistence that film could function as a painterly, performative medium—rather than merely a narrative one—cements his legacy as a transformative figure in both experimental film and contemporary art.