Here’s a BBC documentary about one of the most famous images in the world, the Japanese woodblock print of The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, by 18th century artist Hokusai.
Part 2:
Parts 3 – 5 after the jump
Category Archives: Documentary Film
Five Artists: 1971 Documentary Film
Here’s a 1971 art documentary featuring five black artists. Compare this to a bloodless piece of work like the NOVA documentary I posted yesterday where artists are posed on a red pillow in front of a blue wall to spout off about their ‘brands’ and the business of art while a DSLR camera puts them either to the right or the left of frame because that’s what good composition looks like in 2011.
The artists featured are:
Barbara Chase-Riboud, a sculptor living in Paris
Charles White, a painter in Los Angeles
Betty Blayton, a painter-collage artist and director of the Moma Art School In Harlem
Richard Hunt, a sculptor in Chicago
Romare Bearden, a New York painter who uses collages and cut-outs
Enjoy these five artists who actually sound like artists.
NOVA: An Art Documentary That Entirely Excludes Black Artists
I wanted to like this film. I tried really hard. It was filmed during the Nova Contemporary Culture which happened in July and August 2010, at the MIS-Museum of Image and Sound, and SESC Pompeia, in São Paulo, Brazil.
It put me off with a few too many artist comments about art being a business and branding. There are a few real pretentious twits running through this art documentary. There’s also a lot of very nice, clean, well-behaved, pleasant, comfortable, easygoing, precise, smooth, color-balanced art going on here. I’ll be clear and remind my hesitant readers that I’m really quite the shining example of a creep. When I walk into a gallery I’m looking for the artist who is capable of throwing dirt into my eyes and laughing at me while I wipe it off. Most of the art in this film looks like it has been pre-approved for use by IBM in their next commercial.
I’m not looking for an artist who can tape off their lines straight and make them intersect at the farthest corner of the room. Draw crooked why don’t they? There’s so much goddam masking tape in this film it could wrap the Empire State Building six times over.
But if you watch this thing all the way through you just have to notice that out of all these young up-and-comers there’s apparently not a single black artist involved. I couldn’t find one. Maybe I missed something. But I went back and checked. How do you achieve something like that in 2011? Seriously? Don’t you have to work overtime hours to purposely exclude black artists from a documentary or a major art show like this? Can it be true that there are no black artists capable of sticking masking tape to a museum wall and painting inside the lines? Don’t black artists travel to Brazil?
It may not be director Isaac Niemand’s or producer ROJO‘s fault that the cast excludes black artists, but then perhaps they should have filmed a different art show. Maybe it’s Brazil’s fault.
I feel a little bad about criticizing a documentary film on Vimeo because their service is so based on mutual support and respect between artists. But that kind of thing has severe limits in the world of grownups and serious people.
Art is not preschool. It’s not about support and encouragement of creativity. Self-help bullshit doesn’t have a place in art. Art is about beauty, ugliness and thought that gets up in front of you and is willing to knock you unconscious without apology, willing to scare you, horrify you, enrage you, enrapture you, unsettle you, save you, uplift you, insult you, smash you, whither you, confuse you, ennoble you, or destroy you. But it does not ever want to please you.
Keep the pleasant art in Brazil thank you.
Lovely Lovely: Art Documentary by Matthew Collings
Mature Content and Language
This is another episode in the art documentary series, This is Modern Art, by Matthew Collings. In this episode, Collings explores the place of beauty in modern art. How does beauty fit into art that tries to shock? What is the purpose of beauty in art? Doesn’t most conceptual art try to dispense with beauty entirely? Is beauty something we need for comfort? Does it have something to say in art or is it just a distraction?
Part 2
Parts 3 – 5 after the jump
This is Modern Art – A Documentary Film by Matthew Collings
Mature content and language:
So this is a 1990s documentary about modern art. Matthew Collings, an artist himself, leads us through Picasso, Pollock and Warhol to try to get some glimmer of an idea on what modern art might be. I like the approach of admitting confusion and investigating the various possibilities. I must admit that I’ve always held Picasso in the highest position among artists, but the quotes attributed to him are seeming more threadbare with each repetition. I feel that Pollock was some kind of accidental moron who produced absolutely magnificent works. The first time I ever approached a Pollock at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, I was quite literally blown away and actually said out loud, ‘Oh holy fucking shit! That’s what it is.’ The painting was enormous with lots of black and white in it. But the size was not really significant. What hit me in the head about it was that it suddenly went 3D on me. It almost made me dizzy. I saw all the layers and complexities and they were overwhelming. But nevertheless, Pollock is moronic and doesn’t hold the interest.
I’ve always felt that the sly, insulting, flippant intelligence of Andy Warhol was an extremely important aspect of art in the 20th century. His odd repetitive behavior, both verbal and visual, makes the great statement of modern art. I think Warhol’s art can only exist in its relationship to film. In fact, I think Warhol’s work is entirely filmic. There is probably not a single painting in his entire body of mature work. It is easy for many people to insult Warhol and dismiss him as junk. I suspect that would make him very happy. Warhol is kind of like Los Angeles. The good stuff is hidden in the dumpy shop at the end of the strip mall you’re driving past. You have to go inside and look around a bit or you won’t find it. Most people move to LA and drift through it with their second-hand little dream and a part-time job while they try to become someone they once saw in a magazine. Meanwhile, they’re just a person from Iowa who’s never even looked at LA. They’ll go back to die in Iowa while watching soap operas and smoking American Spirits. Warhol knew that almost everyone you meet is that person from Iowa who doesn’t have any eyes and his art is code for how to avoid them. He wanted you to watch him on television and think he was an idiot. He was actually in the wrong city. New York was over in the fifties. He should have moved to LA.
Part 2:
Watch parts 3 – 5 after the jump
The House in the Middle – Possibly the Most Insane Film Ever
The U.S. government wants you to keep your house tidy and clean. If you don’t, it’ll get blown up and burned to a cinder by an atomic bomb blast. Seriously. This is the entire message of this ridiculous 1954 U.S. government educational film about the effects of a nuclear blast. It seems obvious to me that if you were working for the U.S. government in the fifties you were just a drooling simpleton. This film actually goes from mind-boggling insanity to postmodern masterpiece if you squint at it in the right way. It represents nearly everything you need to know about the 20th century in America.
A is for Atom – Nuclear Documentary by Adam Curtis
This is a five-part documentary by British filmmaker Adam Curtis about the rise of nuclear energy in the United States. These sections make up A is for Atom which is a 1-hour segment of a much longer science and politics television series called Pandora’s Box. It chronicles the development of the nuclear power industry and shows clearly how little was ever understood about what would happen or what should be done during a nuclear accident.
Parts 2 – 5 after the jump
Printing Banksy: Modern Multiples Creates the LA Prints
The art is thin, but secret identities are always fascinating. No artist needs one. They are always put in place to cover up a glaring weakness. In Banksy’s case, the weakness is that he is simply a mildly talented, professionally skilled illustrator with some measure of showmanship. The showmanship is the primary industry in his case. He draws for people who are texting. There is absolutely no art being produced. None at all. But that is one hell of grand joke if you ask me! Banksy naked would simply be the emperor with no clothes. I do however believe that the energy and impulses behind the current explosion of street art will lead directly into the next great movement in art. But that movement will most assuredly not include Banksy.
This is a video about the Los Angeles fine art printer, Richard Duardo, who worked with Banksy to prepare for a 2006 gallery show. The film was made by Brad Beyer and Robert Dragan. There’s an official website.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUzUQfyA1sg&feature=player_embedded&w=560
Aspects of Nuclear Radiation – 1950s Atomic Propaganda Film
In the 1950s, while the US army was intentionally blasting soldiers with radiation in order to study them as they melted and died, this film was made to minimize public worry about nuclear radiation. Governments always lie about nuclear radiation. They never tell the truth. So, as President Obama stands before the nation assuring us that no dangerous radiation will reach our shores from the sudden nuclear Armageddon of Japan, watch this reassuring little film and wonder.
A.45 at 50th – A Film About Actor James Cromwell and the Black Panthers in 1968
MATURE CONTENT AND LANGUAGE:
I got a nice surprise submission to my Vimeo Candlelight Stories Short Film group this week. It’s a fascinating documentary about one famous actor’s experiences during the turmoil of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
John Cromwell, the son of actor James Cromwell, directed this short film with Joshua Bell. It’s about his father’s experience with members of the Black Panther Party civil rights organization in 1968. It’s a fascinating short documentary look at someone who finds himself in an unfamiliar world just trying to lend a decent helping hand. James Cromwell has been involved with the defense of the Black Panthers and other human rights causes for decades. I like the film’s professional quality and easy capturing of the sixties look. It presents its important and dramatic subject matter with a good dose of rather charming humor.
Here’s an article and interview with the director and his father.
The Challenge – A Tribute to Modern Art
Picasso, Matisse, Cezanne, Chagall, Braque, Warhol, Rothko, Kandinsky, de Kooning, Motherwell, Nevelson, Pollock, Miro, Duchamp, Calder, Ernst, Richter, Beuys, Giocometti, Klee, and on. Hosted by Orson Welles. Directed by Herbert Kline. It’s great because there are so many of the artists speaking for themselves.
China: The Roots of Madness – 1967 Documentary
This film was written and conceived by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Theodore H. White. It covers 175 years of Chinese history, showing the turbulent forces that led to the victory of communism. The film is rumored to have had CIA involvement with its making and it has been harshly criticized for being blatantly dismissive of its subject and casually racist. But of course the harsh attitude toward its subject makes sense when placed within the context of a U.S. government trying to resist the spread of communism in the sixties.
Man in Space – 1955 Disney Documentary
Disney’s lavish history of rockets leading right up to a pre-Sputnik 1955!
Parts 2 – 8 after the jump
It is Not the Same Thing – A Film by Kathy Choi
The Echo Park Film Center in Los Angeles is posting films made in its youth film class structured around the concept of work. The students made films about how they view jobs and work. It’s a great idea for a film class and throws the students into a very mature thought process. I really like this very fine film by Kathy Choi, Ce N’est Pas La Meme Chose (It Is Not The Same Thing). She lets a woman from France compare the working life there to the life in America. There are fascinating and sharp observations made about how the French worker simply wants to be efficient and get the job done within the regular day contrasted with how the American worker is expected to show a willingness to stay longer and ‘look’ more busy or dedicated.
Having closely observed American corporate office life I can attest to the phenomenon that is the actual ruling principal behind the entire American economy: at all costs one must always look busy.
The sad fact of our current jobless recovery is that an enormous percentage – probably in the 50% range – of all corporate American jobs are totally and completely unnecessary and should not exist. In other words, those jobs should not come back because they are fake. They are occupied by people spending the vast majority of their time looking busy, talking busy, pretending, and doing next to nothing.
The French view which holds a job to be something limited and something to do efficiently and well, while not allowing it to overwhelm one’s life strikes me as a very mature and reasonable view.
This little film is exceedingly good and reminds me of Godard.
Rising to High Places – 1963 Documentary On Office Buildings
A great example of mid-twentieth century English pride in… office buildings! This is a 1963 production of the Rank Organization. My depressing view on modern city skylines, regardless of how beautiful they may be at night, is that all those magnificent towers are simple stacks of flimsy cubicles and low ceilings with ugly lighting. Modern cities are nothing more than support structures for desks.