Pre-war avant-garde teachers linked young artists into generative collaborations.

Evidence

The two men met in a City College night-school film class taught by the onetime Dadaist Hans Richter and, as Jacobs put it, “found common cause.” Smith was intrepid as well as inspired, dressing up in not quite drag, not exactly garbage, striking poses or cavorting—as documented by Jacobs often in film-saving fast motion—in the empty streets around Washington Market. “I filmed him as my Don Quixote at odds with New York, challenging its sleepwalking citizens,” Jacobs later wrote. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 76

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s thesis that avant-gardes are produced by conditions/institutions, not genius — here, the cheap night-school class taught by a ‘onetime’ avant-gardist.