Bruce Conner | Artist and filmmaker, 74

Bruce Conner, 74, an iconoclastic artist and avant-garde filmmaker of the Beat era, died Monday at his San Francisco home.

One of the last surviving artists associated with San Francisco's Beat scene of the 1950s, Mr. Conner remained active and influential in the contemporary art world throughout his life.

In 1958, Mr. Conner made the 12-minute experimental A Movie, in which he set snippets of B-movies and other newsreel and film clips to music. The film has been cited as a precursor of music videos, and in 1991 the National Film Registry selected it for preservation in the Library of Congress.

Throughout his career, Mr. Conner also collaborated with many visual artists and musicians, including David Byrne and Brian Eno on the 1982 short film America Is Waiting and the band Devo for a film he made in the 1970s. - AP