3-D Films: The New Colorization?

Sorry to bang an old drum, but I couldn't help but notice a piece in yesterday's New York Times that detailed James Cameron's grand plans for "three-dimensionalizing" more and more classic movies. You all know Cameron as the somewhat megalomaniacal director of "Avatar," and that other amazing cinematic work, "The Titanic" (excuse the archness, but I really can't help it if this is what is held up as great film art nowadays). Cameron now claims that, via the magic of technology which he pioneered, film editors will be able to make great films even more exciting by choosing which parts of the mis-en-scene should be closer and which further away, thus allowing the viewer to more fully enter the physical world of the film.

Hmm, why am I suddenly having deja-vu all over again? Who does this sound exactly like? Yep, you guessed it, that other paradigm of megalomania, Ted Turner, who believed that colorization was the answer to engaging people more fully in classic movies. By the way, have you seen any colorized movies lately? Yeah, probably not, because they have really become a rip-roaring dated embarrassment, a large Brontosaurus of an idea passed over by aesthetic and technological evolution. My first few experiences of watching colorized movies were filled with wonderment -- not at the added dimension to the viewing experience, but at how much the colorized films looked like those syrupy old studio photos that were once touched up with colored pencils -- you know, roses on the cheeks, blue dots on top of the eyes. Well, that's exactly what colorized movies look like -- touched up, and not with the colors you might have imagined -- no, the most banal and stereotypical color conceptions of some low-end production prole sitting in Turner production studios.

In sum, I really don't want someone to tell me what color Katherine Hepburn's hair is, and I also don't want someone to tell me if Rosebud is closer to me than Orson Welles. Believe it or not, I already have my own ideas about those things. And I will remain skeptical of any more "advances" by these presumptive "film innovators" that only appeal to a kind of lack of imagination and ADD-like need for stimulation in movie viewers.

James and Ted, your assignment today is to watch Eric Rohmer's "My Night At Maude's," and then tell me exactly why it doesn't need color or 3-D. Class dismissed.

Notes on Exhibitions of the Past Year: Part 3

William Kentridge

The William Kentridge Exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art this past year demonstrated the cumulative weight of the South African artist's work over the past twenty years, including his animated drawings, designs for theatrical sets and props, collages, and large drawings. For me, the animated drawings are by far his strongest suit, artistically speaking, for in them we see the most fully elaborated of Kentridge's thoughts and dreams. While his set designs for Shostakovich's "The Nose," and Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro" are amusing and clever, and the large drawings, especially "Middle-Aged Love," can be poignant, Kentridge's animated drawings attain something more complex and much more compelling, possessing a unique poetry that engraves them in the viewer's brain.

I first encountered Kentridge's work at a show entitled "Animated Paintings" at the San Diego Museum of Art two winters ago. The exhibit itself was beautifully curated, including contributions from a number of exciting artists; that, and the fact that there were also three other intelligently conceived exhibits at the Museum at the same time, definitely laid bare my East Coast provinciality -- I simply had not expected to see so much exciting art in San Diego, of all places (shameful, I know). The Kentridge piece in the animated painting exhibit, "Tide Table" (2003) was a revelation. I had not heard of the artist when I came into the darkened viewing room, and watched, entranced, as charcoal drawings morphed from image to image, telling the story of Soho Eckstein, one of Kentridge's artistic alter egos, in his South African milieu. When the film ended, I watched it two more times because, as fascinating as the unfolding "story" was, the images themselves were so beautifully drawn as to demand a longer look.

Certain motifs predominate in "Tide Table": cattle, in various stages of plumpness and dessication, wave patterns in the ocean, military dictators with binoculars, middle-aged men in cabana chairs hiding behind newspapers, African children dancing in the surf. In one of the most charming passages -- though with a somewhat grisly conclusion -- a cabana chair does a Keatonesque dance in its tent by the beach, folding and unfolding, transforming itself over and over, only to finally become Rembrandt's butchered cow carcass, hung from above. The themes seem germane to Kentridge's liberal South African roots: the observing and the observed, victimizers and victims, cycles of time, guilt and denial, freedom and slavery.

An important motif that recurs in several other films with Kentridge's alter egos is the folded newspaper, which covers and uncovers, physically engulfing the viewer and thus also obscuring his view. For me, it is very reminiscent of the scene in Terry Gilliam's movie "Brazil," in which Robert DeNiro's character is rapidly engulfed in a chaotic tornado of papers which start out, innocuously enough, as a stack on a kitchen table. In this scene, as in Kentridge's animated drawings, what begins as a quotidian banality suddenly and unpredictably becomes a terrifying force of nature.

This motif is quite central in Kentridge's "Felix in Exile" (1994) in which his other alter ego, Felix Teitelbaum, also uses newspapers first as a buffer or defensive shell, until they blow away from him out of control in a maelstrom. Also out of control is the water tap in Felix's room, whose blue pigment pervades and then overflows the otherwise black and white space where Felix lives, while an image of Felix's African lover appears mournfully in his mirror. The papers blow out into the countryside, covering and burying fallen young African men; his lover gazes up into the constellations of an endless black sky. In the hands of another artist this could be melodrama, but Kentridge's mute images question and suggest; they don't simplify, and therein lies their poetry and their beauty.

Notes on Exhibitions of the Past Year: Part 2

Seattle Art Museum

In my previous post, I mentioned a noteworthy piece by the Korean artist, Do-Ho Suh, which was all the more striking because of its setting in the enormous second level space of the Seattle Art Museum. Joining Do-Ho Suh's piece on this floor are two other impressive artworks by younger artists, an atmospheric dark quilted piece by Anissa Mack, "Broken Star," and an astonishing wood carving of a veiled head by Dan Webb called "Shroud." Taken together, the craftl and content of these pieces packed a powerful artistic wallop. This was my first visit to SAM and it was a joy-ride from the get-go, starting with the gargantuan, comic Jonathan Borofsky sculpture, "Drilling Man," outside the entrance, all the way up through the fourth floor collections of African, Pacific Northwest and Aboriginal Australian art.

The permanent contemporary collection at SAM is a standard mix of Dine, Rothko, Warhol, Andre and the usual suspects of 20th Century American art. There were a few surprises, though: an unusually textural and lush Robert Ryman, an extremely fine de Kooning ("Wall Landscape"), a witty Colescott. If you aren't familiar with the artist John Covert, there is a compelling example of his Surrealist doll paintings here as well. The European Galleries, though not a large collection, had a few exceptional pieces, e.g., De la Tour's "St. Francis tended by St. Irene," Cranach's "Judgment of Paris," Tintoretto's Portrait of a "Procurator of San Marco," a Rubens' sketch of the Last Supper.

The standout exhibit at SAM this summer for me was "James Ensor and Georg Baselitz: Graphic Works," in the Wright Galleries for Modern and Contemporary Art. It runs through October 24th, so if you're not already in the neighborhood you probably won't get a chance to see it, and that's a shame. This intelligently conceived show features the graphic artwork of the two artists with an emphasis on political content. Both Baselitz and Ensor's graphic works, including prints and drawings, focus on man's inhumanity to man, exploring the role of the soldier in war. There is a morbidity, a dark focus on fleshly vulnerability in all the works, and also an underlying moral outcry. Having seen the Ensor exhibit last year at Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY, I was struck by the similarities in tone between the two artists, and also the beauty of their line. The exhibit was also a revelation for me since my previous acquaintance with Baselitz was mostly through his well-known "upside-down" paintings of the 1980's; after seeing these graphic works, I gained a newfound respect the East German-born artist.

Is More Always More? A Consideration of the Now Ubiquitous Use of 3-D in Film

Just curious -- what does 3-D really buy for the film viewer other than nausea and migraine headaches? I've seen a few 3-D movies and mostly found the special effect to be a distraction, like the flippers in a pinball machine; you're so busy watching all the wingdings whir that you forget where the ball is. My eleven-year-old defends it, saying, "It's like you're really there!" But believe me, with most of the current crop of 3D movies, there's no "there" there. (For the only exception I've seen to this, see my post re: the "Monogram" animation at Musee Contemporain in Montreal, 9-7-09.) Note: I have not nor intend to see "Avatar." Sorry.

Thanks to the magic of Netflix, I was fortunate enough to recently view Carl Theodore Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc,." a silent movie, i.e., one that gives the contemporary viewer less and not more stimulation accompanying the film image. The DVD allowed the viewer the option of watching with or without music; I chose without. In sum, the beauty, intelligence and pathos of this movie was overwhelming. It took a bit more mental energy to engage fully, but once in, I was immersed completely. The acting, the mis-en-scene, the camera angles, and of course the emotional appeal of the story itself, made for an extremely affecting experience.

In particular, there is one moment in Joan that I will never forget, and which leads me to believe in Dreyer's absolute cinematic genius: it is a cutaway sequence in which, while Joan is stoically enduring her painful martyrdom, falling in and out of consciousness amid the flames, the camera suddenly takes in one of the crowd milling around the pyre. We see an infant nursing at his mother's breast, who, having become aware of the ruckus surrounding him, pulls away abruptly from the nipple. He gazes furiously towards the camera for a beat and then, just as suddenly, resumes his sucking with equal ferocity. I challenge anyone to watch this and tell me that this is not filmmaking at its most brilliant. And no special effects. Not even sound.

Notes on Exhibitions of the Past Year: Part I

A-Maze-ing Laughter

Yue Minjun (Vancouver Biennale)

There have been some wonderful exhibits over the past year, ones that inspired, provoked, and gave a rich return for the viewing. Particular noteworthy were the William Kentridge Exhibit at MOMA, the Charles Burchfield Exhibit at the Whitney, and the Cy Twombly show at the new wing of the Art Institute of Chicago. I also found inspiration, however, in re-visiting some excellent permanent collections, e.g., the National Gallery in Washington D.C., as well as the discovery of collections that were new to me, e.g., the Seattle Art Museum, to be discussed below.

But first, a brief digression (and refinement of mission statement) . . .

I have been thinking about renaming this blog "Aesthetic Diary," because much of what I tend to ruminate about (whether in print or internally) relates to aesthetic values. Since I believe aesthetic values -- i.e., the assessment of art experience in terms of formalism, intelligence and meaning (but not, heaven forbid, morality) -- are or should be integral to creating and viewing art, the words "casual" and "random" perhaps don't belong in this blog title.

But let's not get all Hilton Kramer-esque here. To set the record straight, this blog is not a conservative forum about the rise and fall of Western Civilization through the lens of culture. It does, however, emphasize looking at art in terms that place it in a category apart from fashion and the "gee whiz" shock of the new. Classicism co-existing with progressivism, I hope.

Go East, Young Artist

The picture above was taken from Yue Minjun's bronze sculpture installation, "A-maze-ing Laughter," currently set in the plaza on the south side of Stanley Park in Vancouver, British Columbia, a venue of great natural beauty. I had seen images of Yue's paintings reprinted in journals and on-line over the past few years, mostly permutations of self-portraits that fit neatly into the new Chinese "cynical art" genre, and was not initially that favorably impressed by his work. But this installation is something else entirely; what appears to be a 3D installation could really could be reclassified as performance art for the way in which individuals typically seem to interact with it. Yue's "laughing yoga" poses are very affecting, and during several visits I noticed viewers in the plaza quickly become similarly mirthful and playful, often striking wacky poses with the figures while someone else would take their photo.

Reading a larger meaning in this series of gestural self-portraits comes a few beats after the initial visceral reaction. Taken together, like an animated sequence, the exaggerated stances of the bronze self-portraits evoke a strong sense of the artist being physically there with you while he whips himself into a frenzy of some kind of self-actualization. It's kind of like Yue's self-mocking version of The Ascendance of Man in terms of his own creative process, and it is so energetic and joyous it makes you want to join in.

The increasing Western visibility of commercially and critically important Asian artists has been a phenomenon for some time now, at least the past ten to fifteen years. This is hardly surprising, given the clear historic pattern of parallel development between financial markets and artistic movements. What Abstract Expressionism was to post WWII America, i.e., the cultural flourishing of a newly invigorated and powerful nation, the emerging art scene in Asia, however you label it, may be to China, India and South Korea's recent ascendancy -- and in the case of China, even domination -- in global financial and political spheres.

On a related note, one of the most impressive artworks I viewed in the Seattle Art Museum this summer was an ingenious installation by Do-Ho Suh, entitled "Some/One," in which the armor of an ancient Korean warrior emerges from the floor, built up from tens of thousands of stamped metallic dog-tags. It is a beautiful piece, and a sobering commentary on how the Korean male identity is "stamped" into each individual by his compulsory military training. To hear the artist discuss this work, go to: http://video.pbs.org/video/1237715781. In the video, Do-Ho Suh speaks about how the piece was made and "what it is to be de-humanized" by a nation's military machine.