Zur Frage, auf welche deutschen Vorbilder sich Karl Bartos bezieht, sagt er selbst einiges auf seiner (englischsprachigen) Homepage:
During my time with KW I’d been interested in German film. Fritz Lang’s „M“ or „Metropolis“, Walter Ruttmann’s „Berlin – Symphony Of A Great City“ or Robert Wiener’s „The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari“ were as much classics to me as the films of Luis Buñuel and Jean Cocteau. But it’s only now that I’m really engaging with them. Through my research – it couldn’t have happened any other way – I rediscovered Bauhaus, where artists like Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky connected their images with elements of music, or where Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack worked on his “Reflektorische Farblichtspiele”. They then led me to Hans Richter, Walther Ruttmann, Viking Eggeling, Oskar Fischinger. And at some stage the terms “absolute film” and “visual-musician” popped up and they began to fascinate me. And “visual-musician” is what I see myself as today.
--