The Best Idea Bill Ever Had!

Jordan Belson (1926–) is an American artist and filmmaker born in Chicago, Illinois; he has created nonobjective, often spiritually oriented, abstract films spanning six decades.


Jordan Belson studied Abstract Expressionist painting at the University of California, Berkeley. While he was there he saw the "Art in Cinema" screenings at the San Francisco Museum of Art. Inspired by this, Belson began creating his own experimental art films, beginning with Transmutation in 1947. He was the recipient of a grant from the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, which later became the Guggenheim (Oskar Fischinger recommended him to the MoNOP curator Hilla Rebay). Much of his work evokes a mystical or meditative experience.


In 1957 he began a collaboration with sound artist Henry Jacobs at the Morrison Planetarium in San Francisco, California, for a few years. Together they produced audio-visual lightshows at the Planetarium, the Vortex Concerts, with Belson as visual director programming kinetic live visuals, and Jacobs programming electronic music and audio experiments. This is a direct ancestor of the "laserium" shows that were popular at planetaria later in the century.


Belson created special effects for the Hollywood feature "The Right Stuff".


Belson is still making films and fine art today. His latest film "Epilogue" was commissioned for the Visual Music exhibition at the Hirshhorn/Smithsonian, and completed in 2005. It was produced by Center for Visual Music [1] with support from the NASA Art Program. The New York Times praised its "lush and misty optics".