During the 1960s Scottish animator Norman McLaren undertook a series of inquiries into the nature of the line that culminated in three films, Lines Vertical (1960), Lines Horizontal (1962) and Mosaic (1965). Although McLaren has always been associated with innovation in animation technique and aesthetics, often times his more formal concerns have remained overlooked, underexplored, or even dismissed by critics such as Malcolm LeGrice.   This paper seeks to readdress this by looking at the Line trilogy in relation to the development of minimalist tendencies that emerged in both art and music in the twentieth century.  Further to this McLaren has asserted that the structure of his Line films is influenced by the structure of Indian music, a music whose formal construction is intrinsically bound to notions of the spiritual. This paper will draw on these notions in order to examine how the process of simplification intrinsic to Indian music and by extension minimalism, across the arts, has an innate spiritual quality to it that can allow McLaren’s films to function on both a formal and spiritual level simultaneously.

The first two films in the series, Lines Vertical and Lines Horizontal, were an experiment in “pure design” (NFBC 1960, p. 1) with the aid of Evelyn Lambert, McLaren’s frequent collaborator at the National Film Board of Canada.  McLaren and Lambert distilled the process of animation down to its most basic elements, form and rhythm, to see if it was possible to make a film with a single line moving at varying speeds.  Lines that were 19” in length, the length of Lambert’s ruler, were engraved directly into the emulsion of the film.  At the end of each 19” segment the line would change direction marking a natural break in the action. The program notes for both films states that McLaren and Lambert “reduced picture and action to the bare minimum required to hold the eye and delight the senses.  What you see is simply a sheaf of lines, constantly gyrating, grouping harmoniously on the screen in accord with music” (NFBC 1960. p. 1).   From this statement three conclusions can be drawn. Firstly, McLaren was interested in exploring animation in its purest form. Secondly, McLaren was trying to create films that could appeal to audiences at a universal sensory level and finally, the films had an inherent musical rhythm to them that could allow musical soundtracks to be synchronised to them on a later occasion.

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