Charles Atlas

Charles Atlas has been a leading figure in film and video for more than fifty years. Known for his relentlessly innovative engagements with genre, technology and form, the New York-based artist has pushed at the boundaries of moving images from the earliest moments of his career, when he was filmmaker-in-residence at the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. In the decades since, Atlas has honed an expansive practice that bridges moving images, installation, theatre, and performance, achieving widespread acclaim for his pioneering films and videos and his landmark collaborations with artists such as Yvonne Rainer, Marina Abramović and Ahnoni and the Johnsons.

At the Contemporary Art Gallery, Atlas presents Hail the New Puritan (1985–86), an "anti-documentary" that follows Scottish dancer and choreographer Michael Clark in a highly stylized day-in-the-life as he and his company prepare for a performance. Shot in the thriving queer, punk and post-punk countercultures of 1980s East London — with appearances from figures such as Leigh Bowery and Mark E. Smith of The Fall — Hail the New Puritan toes the tenuous boundary between fantasy and reality, capturing a dazzling culture of self-fashioning and world-making, and the potent energies of a rapidly shifting social landscape.

Biography

Charles Atlas (b. 1949, St. Louis, MO) has lived and worked in New York City since the early 1970s. In 2024, the ICA Boston presented About Time, the first U.S. museum survey devoted to Atlas’ work. Other recent solo exhibitions include The Mathematics of Consciousness, a 100-foot long video installation commissioned by Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY (2022); Charles Atlas: Ominous, Glamorous, Momentous, Ridiculous, Fondazione ICA Milano, Italy (2021); and Charles Atlas: The past is here, the futures are coming and The Kitchen Follies, The Kitchen, New York (2018). Atlas’ work is included in the permanent collections of major institutions worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tate Modern, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich; and De Hallen Haarlem, The Netherlands. In 2024, Atlas’ archive was acquired by The Getty Research Institute.

Acknowledgements

Charles Atlas: Hail the New Puritan is generously supported by Claudia Beck.