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Wednesday, June 1, 2005
Museum of failures
I don't know how public the access to the exhibits is, but it looks like perfect terrain for a writer to wander around...
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Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Art criticism
I'm pretty busy with the last preparations for the performance I've been writing about recently.
In the meantime, if anyone is into more theoretical and art-critical issues, I've been following an interesting (though very expert sounding) discussion about the role (and lack of importance) of art criticism, at the Modern Kicks art blog here and here.
In the meantime, if anyone is into more theoretical and art-critical issues, I've been following an interesting (though very expert sounding) discussion about the role (and lack of importance) of art criticism, at the Modern Kicks art blog here and here.
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Monday, May 30, 2005
Reading about contemporary art history
Max Ernst, Woman/She-Bird (1921)
One of Cologne Dada's exhibitions was held in a space that could only be entered through a men's lavatory. It was promptly closed as an outrage against public morality on the grounds that one of the works--a 1920 Ernst collage titled The Word/She Bird--was pornographic. Ironically, the offending nude was the figure of Eve lifted directly from a 1504 print by Albrecht Dürer.I've recently come across two very different texts about contemporary art history. The first one is about Max Ernst, the second, about the development of works that question(ed) the limit between art and life. The second topic is much closer to my interests, but surprizingly the
text itself, entitled Hybrid processes between art and life, (by Rudolf Frieling, a curator and lecturer specializing in media art) made me... bored. It is quite an exhaustive and exhausting survey of performance (and media) art works that played with the notion of reality. I am sure many people can find it informative, although it doesn't really seem to discover any new grounds. It is intelligent, very scholarly, extremely well researched. But it is also inhuman in the way it spits out names, events, movements and ideas. Roselee Goldberg also condensates in her books, but she has pity on the readers. Perhaps because of the final rehearsal rush, all this is too much for my limited brainpower. I simply float away into other realms. And as I was floating, I flew across an excellent review of a new Max Ernst exhibition in New York, by Arthur C. Danto. Danto is a known and respected art critic and philosopher, author of such publications as the highly recommendable (though debatable) After the End of Art (there are some amazing reviews
of it on Amazon). Here, he manages to combine well-written criticism with great insight and sense of humor. Somehow, now I feel much closer to Ernst than to the whole gang of "disappearing ink draughtsmen".The work was not meant to be visually ingratiating, so it is sheer historical misjudgment to dismiss Ernst as "the worst leading painter in the twentieth century's most visually miserable major artistic movement," as one of my fellow critics recently put it.And another bit:
New York has been spared the all-too-familiar scenario of pious poster bearers, outraged politicians, defenders of artistic freedom citing the First Amendment, and the learned presence of art historians, theologians and perhaps psychologists explaining to viewers of The Charlie Rose Show that the Holy Boy, in the nature of His humanity, must more than once have tried his Mom's patience. But I doubt Ernst would have been pleased by the somber spirit of cultural duty and aesthetic appraisal with which his art is being approached at the Met. No one loved a good public dust-up more than Ernst and his Dadaist comrades, who used art to assail a society they held responsible for the pointless slaughter of millions in World War I.
Max Ernst, The Blessed Virgin Chastises the Infant Jesus Before Three Witnesses: A.B., P.E. and the Artist, (1926)
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Sunday, May 29, 2005
Work-in-progress in the movie business
At John August's excellent blog about screenwriting, you'll find some great advice for becoming a successful screenwriter (Hollywood style). One of the tips is - try and show your work-in-progress to as many people as possible. I find it fascinating how different the pragmatic, scarily down-to-earth approach is from the artsy oh-so-inspired talk I'm used to.
Try this one:
Try this one:
a screenplay has a short window of opportunity once it goes out, and that if it doesn’t sell, writers need to learn to let go and move on. They can’t live off the hope of that one script forever. Instead, they need to keep producing new material. Keep writing — don’t sit around and wait for the sale or the next assignment."Assignment". That is so amusing. I sincerely adore this attitude. Is there ever going to be some harmony, some cohesion between the film industry approach and the fine arts/theater one? (Is it all about the money?)
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Saturday, May 28, 2005
Drawing poetry in the digital age
Pencil in the obvious by Amanda Auchter is a simple, charming work (in Flash) based on the idea of book illustrations/drawings. It is image-ined poetry, drawn-out and drawn-away, an enchanting little tale of seduction, in a graphically appealing setting. My only problem is that the seduction is not quite what it seems: the text invites to draw things, but it is the artist that actually draws (the drawings appear by themselves). Maybe I'm just too spoiled by all the interactive game-like works that have been so popular recently?
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Open rehearsals
Today we're having a rehearsal open to the public. I'm quite nervous. I don't like the idea at all, although I was the one who suggested it. But I do have a problem with showing a work-in-progress, I guess I'm extremely old-fashioned in that sense. Works-in-progress are popular these days, with many art venues organizing them regularly (here in Lisbon the most popular one is CEM) which is understandable: I also love seeing an unfinished, somewhat rough work and being able to fill the blanks.
But as a director, the whole thing looks very different. Having all these people watch a show is one thing. In an open rehearsal, though, they feel justified to comment, and more than that, they feel almost obliged to criticize. I know pretty well what we need to work on - the show is still not quite ready. The last thing the performers need is having people tell them everything they thought went wrong. Of course, you can just ignore the comments, or use them to your profit. But for that you need a lot of experience and distance, which my performers do not have. On the other hand, they obviously need the practice in front of a public.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm so old-fashioned, I still believe in a work's aura. The term, first defined in modern context by Walter Benjamin's text Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, was also considered (by the author and most those who followed) a thing of the past. The idea is fairly simple: if the unique quality of an object of appreciation is taken away, its aura, the thing that turns an aesthetic experience into a quasi-sacred one, disappears. Well, in this case, I consider the "aura" to be the thing that makes us want to forget the rest of the world and stay with the work of "art" (in this sense, it is still quite present). Creating a "working" context changes the type of experience. Everything becomes close and reacheable, manoeuvrable. This can work in many cases, as in dance, or some forms of theater, or, obviously, in the case of sketches and drawings. But imagine a work-in-progress of Vanessa Beecroft's, or Robert Wilson's work. Maybe there are some things that shouldn't be seen before they're ready?
But as a director, the whole thing looks very different. Having all these people watch a show is one thing. In an open rehearsal, though, they feel justified to comment, and more than that, they feel almost obliged to criticize. I know pretty well what we need to work on - the show is still not quite ready. The last thing the performers need is having people tell them everything they thought went wrong. Of course, you can just ignore the comments, or use them to your profit. But for that you need a lot of experience and distance, which my performers do not have. On the other hand, they obviously need the practice in front of a public.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm so old-fashioned, I still believe in a work's aura. The term, first defined in modern context by Walter Benjamin's text Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, was also considered (by the author and most those who followed) a thing of the past. The idea is fairly simple: if the unique quality of an object of appreciation is taken away, its aura, the thing that turns an aesthetic experience into a quasi-sacred one, disappears. Well, in this case, I consider the "aura" to be the thing that makes us want to forget the rest of the world and stay with the work of "art" (in this sense, it is still quite present). Creating a "working" context changes the type of experience. Everything becomes close and reacheable, manoeuvrable. This can work in many cases, as in dance, or some forms of theater, or, obviously, in the case of sketches and drawings. But imagine a work-in-progress of Vanessa Beecroft's, or Robert Wilson's work. Maybe there are some things that shouldn't be seen before they're ready?
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