Such is the power of the Hollywood spectacle that even an opinionated parrot was moved to doing mea culpas and post hocs and caveat emptors... and parrots don't even speak Latin! Didn't I underestimate The Departed? Isn't it great that Marty final won one? Wasn't I just a bit unfair to Helen Mirren? Did I fail to recognize the strength of Jennifer Hudson's debut performance? Oh, I am so embarrassed, and I put this out on a blog for all the world to see...
There's just one word I can think of for these sentiments... resist! Let's start with the strongest case, Helen Mirren's performance in The Queen. First of all, my main point was that films with nothing special to offer are being raised to the level of great cinema because of one great performance, and that remains a serious problem with the tone of this year's Grammies. But let's talk about performances, anyway. If you saw The Queen, you know what Helen Mirren did: she subtly altered her facial expression to express a range of emotions from stern and rigid to, what shall we call it, softening up (?), and in one notable scene she shed a tear or two. Now that scene was perhaps a great one, but not particularly because she cried; every professional actress can cry on demand, regardless of how rigid a personality she is playing. What was great about it is that, as I said before, the stag is identified with Diana, through the medium of her children, and the Queen's awe at the stag's unexpected and imposing presence represents her final, hard-won identification and dignification of what her grandchildren had lost. If anything makes this a memorable film, it is the unfolding of that theme towards this moving climax.
But all this has little to do with altering one's facial muscles. It is a well known and perhaps remarkable fact that in cinema, as opposed to theater, it is the subtle gesture before the camera, rather than the grand movement, that dominates. Nevertheless, I am not particularly inclined to think of facial expressions as enough to constitute a great performance. And in this performance there was little else. (It's not a criticism of Helen Mirren, BTW; she did what she was called on to do, and maybe more. I said that the whole point and tenor of the film left me cold, and that's a problem for the producer and the writer, not the actress.) I did not see The Last King of Scotland, but from the clips I've seen, I'm quite sure that Forest Whitaker's performance there consisted of a lot more than twitching his upper lip. There is, perhaps, a difference between male and female film stars as far as the range of motion they are expected to have; but it's not as dramatic as "you guys move around, ladies just stand there and alter your facial expression". This role did not give enough scope of action to permit an all-round great performance, much less a great film.
The Departed was an enjoyable movie, albeit a remake of the Hong Kong (not Japanese!) film Infernal Affairs. I have no issue with remakes, though it is difficult to think of very many that are as good as the originals. I have some issue with mob films but not enough to fail to appreciate truly great ones like The Godfather, Donnie Brasco and Scorcese's own Goodfellas. The Academy was doing the thing that the Nobel and the Pulitzer and a million other Committees do, recognizing that a major artist has been slighted for his greatest work and playing catch-up because the failure has come to reflect more on the Committee than on the artist. (Think of Saul Bellow getting the Pulitzer for the cardboard novel Humboldt's Gift after being passed up for Herzog.) Thus he lost the Best Director award for Raging Bull to Robert Redford (Ordinary People), which is a bit ridiculous; and Goodfellas lost to Kevin Costner (Dances With Wolves). He was not even nominated for Taxi Driver (though that year sported an illustrious bunch of nominees, including Ingmar Bergman, Lina Wertmuller and Sidney Lumet, and the film had to compete with Rocky, for which John Avildsen won Best Director). Maybe it was just circumstance rather than disrespect, but it definitely looked like time to do right by one of the greatest American filmmakers of all time. But honoring him for a remake, with one dubious premise (Matt Damon's bred-for-moledom character) and one been-there-done-that idea (mob infiltrator becomes a bit too believable as mobster) must be slim recompense for failing to win the title for his best efforts. (Raging Bull was picked as the best film of the 1980's by Sight and Sound, acording to Wikipedia.)
What else? Babel! At least it won Best Original Score, losing six other nominations (including Best Picture, Best Director, and two for Best Supporting Actress), all of which it richly deserved. Actually, it was not the score, but the soundtrack that was so amazing. For example, never was a few seconds of absolute silence used to more dramatic effect. And you thought someone goofed at the end of the disco scene? So did I, briefly. Talk about point-of-view shots; how about point-of-hearing sounds? What was so shocking about it is that we never notice until that moment how different it all would be to a deaf person. Anyway, big-time dis for this film, and my opinion remains that it stands head and shoulders over the rest of the bunch in almost every way.
Dreamgirls - okay, Jennifer Hudson, not bad, though frankly I thought there were plenty of better supporting actress roles around this year (Rinko Kikuchi and Adriana Barraza both deserved it more). But what about the best song award? After all that Dreamgirls bruhaha, not one of those songs won the award! That's a dis if ever I saw one! The music may have been better than the film, but I'm glad in a way that it did not get the award. Why? Partly because of something that has nothing to do with this or any particular film. Look at Broadway lately: we're treated to one after another spectacle based on this pop star or that one, and everyone from Dylan and the Beatles to Billy Joel gets their chance at being the Next Big Show; virtually all of them falling off the stage quickly, and not a minute too soon. If someone wants to make a serious popular music film, be it The Last Waltz or Walk the Line or even La Bamba, I'm all for it, but this formulaic crap is made with the prayer of waltzing into a bit of cash by way of audience identification with someone's music. And this has got to go.
Okay, I'm done. The Parrot repenteth not. Hollywood recognizes itself in the Academy Awards, not as the built-on-sand spectacle that it is but as the Holy Woods of cinema, and the rest of us have to live with that, respect it to some extent, and resist it when necessary. Speaking of which, what do you think 2005 will be remembered for, Brokeback Mountain, or the Best Picture of the Year winner, um, what's it called? Oh, Crash, the film about the stock market in 1929, I mean, a car wreck in Los Angeles. Well, that's two years in a row that a really notable film was passed over so that the big H could take care of its own. Like I said, the artists and the artworks will outlive this spectacle. Orson Welles won nothing except Best Screenplay for Citizen Kane, often considered the greatest and among the most innovative films of all time. (John Ford won Best Picture and Best Director for How Green Was My Valley that year.) And so it goes.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Oscar Schmosker
I once heard the Academy Awards referred to as "Hollywood's opportunity to congratulate itself..." Since this is literally true, the apparently intended sarcasm cannot really be achieved without adding something like "... for spending $100 millions on idiotic flops, depicting ever more brutal, graphic and gratuitous violence, sensationalizing natural and manmade disasters, and trivializing the effects of poverty, genocide, crime, illness, insanity, racism and domestic strife by singling out isolated personal victories from the mass of ruined lives". (And if a Parrot can say that all in one breath you know it must be true.)
Oh. You thought Hollywood had suddenly turned socially conscious? Well, yes - you could say, it turned socially conscious Hollywood-style, by taking up social issues and giving us superficial solutions to them; the kinds of solutions that make good movies, of course. So and so rises from poverty through force of will and becomes a financial success sort of solutions. So and so saves hundreds from death and destruction through personal strength and cunning sort of solutions. Is that all? I suppose not; we have also a spate of the Highly Sensitive to Racial Disparities films and the Post-Colonial Post-Mortem films and the Gay People Are Basically Just People films, and I suppose plenty of others. And this socially conscious cinema comes not only in the explicit variety, but dressed up as parables about mutants and mice and zebras and superheroes and whatnot. (Though if there was a gay superhero film released recently I must have missed it.)
Okay, maybe this does not all fall on Hollywood. Maybe there are plenty of independent and international films that dance to these same tunes. Fine, I don't really care if the point can be circumscribed within a few square miles in Los Angeles or if it is a much wider phenomenon. (In fact, I have had an extremely difficult time finding lists of films made in Hollywood; Wikipedia has lists by studio, but they do not distinguish between films made, produced and directed there, versus those merely distributed by the studio.) Actually most of what comes out of Hollywood is still pure pap, forgettable junk that is the cinematic equivalent of fast food. Films aimed at children, superhero/sci-fi stuff, idiotic, formulaic comedies and romances. This mostly dross that I'm not interested in here, and neither is Oscar. What I'm really talking about is the complex of production and distribution companies, theaters, DVD manufacturers and advertisers (which could be read, "Sony, Sony, Sony, and Sony...", or "Disney, Disney... etc" but nevermind) which serves up to the Masses a handful of this total output , plus the occasional foreign or independent film, nationally and pushes it into the popular mind and ultimately that of the Academy, culminating in Sunday night's follow-up to Superbowl Sunday, the Academy Awards.
In fact, I don't have any objection to socially conscious cinema. The problem is that there seems to be a conception - and if I'm not mistaken it is more central in Hollywood than among other film cultures - that in order to make an important, relevant, meaningful film you have to take up one of these themes and work it out in this more or less formulaic way. In any case, this seems to be the message of the Academy, which probably represents Hollywood in the popular mind more than the studios themselves. And this means that any number of far better films will never win a "Best Motion Picture" award or much of anything else. Which hardly affects the history of film very much, it just makes the Academy more of a dog-and-pony show and less of a historical reference for critical judgment.
All that just by way of preface to my disgruntled review of some of the top Academy Award nominees this year:
The Queen: Why exactly did someone decide to make this movie? Because they thought it was really interesting how this long faded pseudo-monarchy responded to death of one of their ex-members? What a lapse in judgment. Nobody outside of England gives a crap about what these landed aristocrats think or how they react emotionally to anything. The subject matter seems about as distant from the popular consciousness as that of John Adams' opera Nixon in China; I mean, how can anyone stand watching a detailed study of emotional nuances in the meeting of a corrupt President and the engineer of the disastrous Cultural Revolution? Much less see any significance in it (other than the purchasing Chinese non-interference in the war in Vietnam in return for trade agreements)? I really wonder what moves people to think that they can make hay out of this; probably they read some Shakespeare and figured, hey, why can't we make some great tragedy out of royal melodramas? These folks should be prohibited from reading anything earlier than Chekhov. So why all the fuss about The Queen then? Oh, yes, Mr. Frears, I do get the subtle take on the traditional aristocrats-floating-above-reality-while-the-empire-crumbles-beneath-their-feet theme, thank you, we really needed another one of those. Yes, it does put you in contention for the socially-conscious-movie-of-the-year award (aka "Best Motion Picture") because Di did a lot of charitable stuff that gained her a lot of public sympathy. (Not to mention the Clintonesque benefit of having your husband cheat on you with a woman less attractive than yourself.) La-dee-da, thanks, got all that. So what? The premise is stupid, the film is boring, the attempted heightening of tension through pictures of flowers and crowds at the palace gates doesn't really work, at least outside of the UQ (that's United Queendom for those of you who think the King has any importance at all). Okay, Helen Mirren. Again, so what? I can't get worked up about a performance in which the range of emotional attitudes is from uptight to upset. And everybody outside the UQ - in fact, outside England, period - thinks that the whole bit about British emotional restraint is just so hokey. You can't appreciate a movie like this unless you think there is some real conflict between virtues: stalwart emotional self-discipline on the one hand and true sympathy and compassion on the other. But you've got to be British and probably upper class to really see any virtue in the former. The whole emotional premise of the film is lost on anyone who doesn't really have an issue with shedding a tear or expressing solidarity with the pain of the multitude. In fact most people think emotional restraint beyond the maintenance of reasonable composure in the face of ordinary difficulties is a vice, not a virtue. Oscar Schmosker rates this film a B- at best; and that's only because the metaphor of the stag as Di (or something like that) gives it some aesthetic interest.
The Last King of Scotland: Well, I didn't see it. But I have to mention it here because it is so outstanding that TWO of the "Best Motion Picture" nominees have essentially nothing to do with the "motion picture" but with the performances of their leads. To which all I can say is, I love a good performance, but it does not make a great film or great art. I love to watch Jennifer Aniston on Friends reruns, she gives a lot of great performances, but no one is going to call these sitcom episodes great art. It seems the Academy has really lost its way if it is mistaking great performances for great films. Oscar Schmosker doesn't rate films he hasn't seen, but suspects that this one has more to say about Forest Whitaker than power, brutality, insanity, or other Important Themes.
The Departed: Saw it a while ago. Fine film, who can argue? But unfortunately, the theme of mob infiltrator becoming a bit too much like the people he is trying to send to jail was done brilliantly and definitively, IMHO, in Donnie Brasco. So I had the deja vu feeling already. Then, Goodfellas is certainly a better Scorcese gangster film, and there, let it be said, the brilliant performance by Joe Pesci does definitely lift this vehicle so far above most others in its class that this follow-up feels like a rerun, or also-ran, or... deja vu all over again. The other thing is that the idea of this cleancut kid being bred from childhood for a role as a police department mole, and remaining loyal to his harsh, ungrateful and unseemly mobster master through all of it, seemed so utterly fabricated that even if it were "based on a true story" I'd have a hard time believing it. (Some true stories are just not true in the way that can be utilized by a work of art.) So I had issues with both sides of this film. Was it erastz-socially-conscious formulaic fare? No, not really. Not terribly conscious of anything except the power of cellphones, an increasingly common plot device in contemporary film, which I hope we will get beyond fairly quickly. Certainly entertaining. Oscar Schmosker gives it a B.
Babel: Who accidentally nominated this for "Best Motion Picture"? It towers above anything else I've seen in the past few years on practically every level. Let's put it this way: the use of music in this film is better than the entire package in many other films. Dramatically it dances rings around most of the other contenders. If it occasionally tests our sense of plot integrity, the hunch that all the pieces fit together is ultimately confirmed. I still have a little difficulty understanding the focus on the daughter of the Japanese hunter who gave the gun to the guy who gave it to his son who shot... but anyway, there was brilliant parallelism in the growing sense of isolation of each set of characters. The ultimate redemption of some of them was in no case complete, and in some cases there was nothing that looked much like redemption; rather, what seemed like minor indiscretions spiraled into outright disasters; and the worst victims were of course the poor, the powerless, the people who live so close to the boundary of existence that a slight mistake means disaster, while comfortable middle class families can even flirt with death and yet ultimately recover. The ingenious use of music is not the only technical device that makes the film stand out even beyond its social and emotional depth; in fact, every cinematic element I can think of, from lighting and camera positioning to costume and staging, are employed in each of the film's distinct settings to give a real feeling for the cultural and physical environment as well as to remind one of the connections between characters and situations. Volumes could be written about this film; Inarritu is a genius. I'll stop here. Oscar Schmosker says A, maybe A+ if someone can explain to me a little better how the Japanese sequences integrate with the overall architecture of the story.
The Pursuit of Happiness: Touching, great acting, but nobody in their right mind is going to believe that this kid is so happy and accepting of the sudden and complete departure of his mother from his life. Sensitive father films are welcome, in fact, could someone please make one about sensitive parrot Dads? But I'm not buying the premise that this five (?) year old kid just says goodbye to his Mom and everything's fine hanging out in homeless shelters and railroad bathrooms with his Dad. Now as for the rest of the film, this is a great example of the American Dream story, up-from-poverty through force of Will (Smith), with a few gratuitous digs at hippies along the way (haven't seen one quite so biased against hippie counterculture since Joe). Every time things get to the point where total collapse seems likely, one of his lost scanners shows up and he manages to sell it and get back on his feet. (The evil hippies are big scanner thieves, you see.) In the end, good old cronyism and chitchat over beer turns out o be more important to business success than book learning or intelligence. Thus our Hero gets the stockborker job because he "played the game", not because he excelled at anything in particular. Call it realism if you want. I thought it was a good movie and a Fine Performance, but if there is a message here worth remembering or teaching your kids, I missed it. Oscar Schmosker says B, mostly for effort.
Dreamgirls: I walked out after about an hour, can I still review it? This is about as formulaic as the pop star genre gets. Nothing going on here except a fast-paced rise to stardom through native talent and unlikely breaks. Compared to Walk the Line, much less to older, better pop star rise-to-fame movies (The Doors, etc.) this is candy-coated popcorn with no prize at the bottom. Why this should have won the awards it did from some other film societies is beyond me. A feather in the Academy's cap that this was not nominated for "Best Motion Picture"; though they probably should be compelled to develop some new categories, like "Worst Pop Star Picture". Oscar Schmosker gives this a C out of charity.
The Illusionist: Well-made art film, sure fooled me (the plot twist, I mean; can't say much more in case you didn't see it yet). Naturally it is hardly nominated for anything. Easily a B+ in the Schmosker catalogue. See it before it makes itself disappear.
The Painted Veil: Extremely well-made art film, in the classic mould, and of course it's nominated for nothing at all. (Did more than a handful of Academy members even bother to see it?) One critic (can't recall who) quipped, "Even real Merchant Ivory films don't get Oscars". And your point is...? Sorry, but this is what filmmaking used to be about, and still can be; stories wih real emotional depth, great cinematography, top-notch acting, little or no artificial enhancement with the latest, greatest special effects technology, some real social lessons without phony morality plays, an almost total lack of gratuitous violence or grisly carnage, disasters of a slow and deadly sort without cheap-shot catastrophe sequences, a "lost era" feel without millions of bucks in artificial sets and costumes and Model-T's... need I go on? Okay, this one is a twice or thrice or five-times told story, the Somerset Maugham story having been cinematized several times before. I didn't see any of those. I saw this one. It is a fine film. Oscar Schmosker says A-, and see it before it gets old enough that people start to think it's "one of those Merchant Ivory films".
An Inconvenient Truth: Lots of charts and lots of arguments for the reality and threat of global warming. One can hardly avoid being moved to agree, even though many of the arguments are really pretty dubious. I especially doubt his claims about our ability to reverse the trend before a fairly catastrophic rise in sea levels. But the overall impact is what counts. As film, this is nothing, a lecture with a big projection tv and a lot of staging. Much more could have been done outside the lecture, other than promotional shots of Gore and his family. Everybody should learn from the message, but whether it is really necessary to see the film is another question. I wouldn't call this a great or even a good documentary; rather, an opportunity to build consciousness about an important threat that we might be able to mitigate somewhat if enough people in the right places were persuaded of it. Oscar Schmosker doesn't quite know what to do with this one; maybe a B- as film, and PG-13 as social service.
Night at the Museum: Look at the review sites and you'll see that this one gets a much higher rating from audiences than from critics. Many films do, but with this one I could see why. It is actually not as stupid as it sounds; in fact, it is a bit of an intellectual fantasy, having all these historical figures come to life and interacting with them to explore their psychology. The real-people portraits were not exactly the ultimate in emotional probing, but the whole thing hung together fairly well. Here special effects were used in a way that might be called "charming", in the good sense that might be employed in reference to the Star Wars films. The film is directed at kids but I would not hesitate to send an adult there for a bit of fun. When order is inally restored in the museum there is an uncanny sense of moral and intellectual satisfaction that for all its hokeyness is more solid than some of the bang-us-over-the-head denouements of more serious historical films. Oscar Schmosker says B+, not half bad.
Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest, Flushed Away, X-Men III: Hey, do you think I have time to review every children's movie I've seen this year? No way. Mutants, rats, frogs, "the heart of Davey Jones"... the gross-out factor certainly has risen in PG films, helping kids acustom themselves to any future real horrors that might unfold (say tv coverage of a foreign war) and thus deaden themselves to the disgust this should generate. X-Men III has some definite virtues, e.g., interactive realignment of the Golden Gate Bridge... Also suggests some interesting social questions. If they invented a drug to "cure" something like e.g., homosexuality, would/should gay people take it? The recent experience with deaf-mutes at Gallaudet University suggests that members of a subculture often prefer to identify with it than integrate into the culture at large. XMen III suggests the same. But mostly, these movies are stocked with lots of unbelievable escapes from unbelievable dangers, and dubious underdog victories over the forces of evil. Compare Babel. It stands as this year's monument to film that avoids the pitfalls of ersatz-social-consciousness and cheap solutions to deep problems. Let's hope Oscar-not-Schmosker honors it appropriately.
Oh. You thought Hollywood had suddenly turned socially conscious? Well, yes - you could say, it turned socially conscious Hollywood-style, by taking up social issues and giving us superficial solutions to them; the kinds of solutions that make good movies, of course. So and so rises from poverty through force of will and becomes a financial success sort of solutions. So and so saves hundreds from death and destruction through personal strength and cunning sort of solutions. Is that all? I suppose not; we have also a spate of the Highly Sensitive to Racial Disparities films and the Post-Colonial Post-Mortem films and the Gay People Are Basically Just People films, and I suppose plenty of others. And this socially conscious cinema comes not only in the explicit variety, but dressed up as parables about mutants and mice and zebras and superheroes and whatnot. (Though if there was a gay superhero film released recently I must have missed it.)
Okay, maybe this does not all fall on Hollywood. Maybe there are plenty of independent and international films that dance to these same tunes. Fine, I don't really care if the point can be circumscribed within a few square miles in Los Angeles or if it is a much wider phenomenon. (In fact, I have had an extremely difficult time finding lists of films made in Hollywood; Wikipedia has lists by studio, but they do not distinguish between films made, produced and directed there, versus those merely distributed by the studio.) Actually most of what comes out of Hollywood is still pure pap, forgettable junk that is the cinematic equivalent of fast food. Films aimed at children, superhero/sci-fi stuff, idiotic, formulaic comedies and romances. This mostly dross that I'm not interested in here, and neither is Oscar. What I'm really talking about is the complex of production and distribution companies, theaters, DVD manufacturers and advertisers (which could be read, "Sony, Sony, Sony, and Sony...", or "Disney, Disney... etc" but nevermind) which serves up to the Masses a handful of this total output , plus the occasional foreign or independent film, nationally and pushes it into the popular mind and ultimately that of the Academy, culminating in Sunday night's follow-up to Superbowl Sunday, the Academy Awards.
In fact, I don't have any objection to socially conscious cinema. The problem is that there seems to be a conception - and if I'm not mistaken it is more central in Hollywood than among other film cultures - that in order to make an important, relevant, meaningful film you have to take up one of these themes and work it out in this more or less formulaic way. In any case, this seems to be the message of the Academy, which probably represents Hollywood in the popular mind more than the studios themselves. And this means that any number of far better films will never win a "Best Motion Picture" award or much of anything else. Which hardly affects the history of film very much, it just makes the Academy more of a dog-and-pony show and less of a historical reference for critical judgment.
All that just by way of preface to my disgruntled review of some of the top Academy Award nominees this year:
The Queen: Why exactly did someone decide to make this movie? Because they thought it was really interesting how this long faded pseudo-monarchy responded to death of one of their ex-members? What a lapse in judgment. Nobody outside of England gives a crap about what these landed aristocrats think or how they react emotionally to anything. The subject matter seems about as distant from the popular consciousness as that of John Adams' opera Nixon in China; I mean, how can anyone stand watching a detailed study of emotional nuances in the meeting of a corrupt President and the engineer of the disastrous Cultural Revolution? Much less see any significance in it (other than the purchasing Chinese non-interference in the war in Vietnam in return for trade agreements)? I really wonder what moves people to think that they can make hay out of this; probably they read some Shakespeare and figured, hey, why can't we make some great tragedy out of royal melodramas? These folks should be prohibited from reading anything earlier than Chekhov. So why all the fuss about The Queen then? Oh, yes, Mr. Frears, I do get the subtle take on the traditional aristocrats-floating-above-reality-while-the-empire-crumbles-beneath-their-feet theme, thank you, we really needed another one of those. Yes, it does put you in contention for the socially-conscious-movie-of-the-year award (aka "Best Motion Picture") because Di did a lot of charitable stuff that gained her a lot of public sympathy. (Not to mention the Clintonesque benefit of having your husband cheat on you with a woman less attractive than yourself.) La-dee-da, thanks, got all that. So what? The premise is stupid, the film is boring, the attempted heightening of tension through pictures of flowers and crowds at the palace gates doesn't really work, at least outside of the UQ (that's United Queendom for those of you who think the King has any importance at all). Okay, Helen Mirren. Again, so what? I can't get worked up about a performance in which the range of emotional attitudes is from uptight to upset. And everybody outside the UQ - in fact, outside England, period - thinks that the whole bit about British emotional restraint is just so hokey. You can't appreciate a movie like this unless you think there is some real conflict between virtues: stalwart emotional self-discipline on the one hand and true sympathy and compassion on the other. But you've got to be British and probably upper class to really see any virtue in the former. The whole emotional premise of the film is lost on anyone who doesn't really have an issue with shedding a tear or expressing solidarity with the pain of the multitude. In fact most people think emotional restraint beyond the maintenance of reasonable composure in the face of ordinary difficulties is a vice, not a virtue. Oscar Schmosker rates this film a B- at best; and that's only because the metaphor of the stag as Di (or something like that) gives it some aesthetic interest.
The Last King of Scotland: Well, I didn't see it. But I have to mention it here because it is so outstanding that TWO of the "Best Motion Picture" nominees have essentially nothing to do with the "motion picture" but with the performances of their leads. To which all I can say is, I love a good performance, but it does not make a great film or great art. I love to watch Jennifer Aniston on Friends reruns, she gives a lot of great performances, but no one is going to call these sitcom episodes great art. It seems the Academy has really lost its way if it is mistaking great performances for great films. Oscar Schmosker doesn't rate films he hasn't seen, but suspects that this one has more to say about Forest Whitaker than power, brutality, insanity, or other Important Themes.
The Departed: Saw it a while ago. Fine film, who can argue? But unfortunately, the theme of mob infiltrator becoming a bit too much like the people he is trying to send to jail was done brilliantly and definitively, IMHO, in Donnie Brasco. So I had the deja vu feeling already. Then, Goodfellas is certainly a better Scorcese gangster film, and there, let it be said, the brilliant performance by Joe Pesci does definitely lift this vehicle so far above most others in its class that this follow-up feels like a rerun, or also-ran, or... deja vu all over again. The other thing is that the idea of this cleancut kid being bred from childhood for a role as a police department mole, and remaining loyal to his harsh, ungrateful and unseemly mobster master through all of it, seemed so utterly fabricated that even if it were "based on a true story" I'd have a hard time believing it. (Some true stories are just not true in the way that can be utilized by a work of art.) So I had issues with both sides of this film. Was it erastz-socially-conscious formulaic fare? No, not really. Not terribly conscious of anything except the power of cellphones, an increasingly common plot device in contemporary film, which I hope we will get beyond fairly quickly. Certainly entertaining. Oscar Schmosker gives it a B.
Babel: Who accidentally nominated this for "Best Motion Picture"? It towers above anything else I've seen in the past few years on practically every level. Let's put it this way: the use of music in this film is better than the entire package in many other films. Dramatically it dances rings around most of the other contenders. If it occasionally tests our sense of plot integrity, the hunch that all the pieces fit together is ultimately confirmed. I still have a little difficulty understanding the focus on the daughter of the Japanese hunter who gave the gun to the guy who gave it to his son who shot... but anyway, there was brilliant parallelism in the growing sense of isolation of each set of characters. The ultimate redemption of some of them was in no case complete, and in some cases there was nothing that looked much like redemption; rather, what seemed like minor indiscretions spiraled into outright disasters; and the worst victims were of course the poor, the powerless, the people who live so close to the boundary of existence that a slight mistake means disaster, while comfortable middle class families can even flirt with death and yet ultimately recover. The ingenious use of music is not the only technical device that makes the film stand out even beyond its social and emotional depth; in fact, every cinematic element I can think of, from lighting and camera positioning to costume and staging, are employed in each of the film's distinct settings to give a real feeling for the cultural and physical environment as well as to remind one of the connections between characters and situations. Volumes could be written about this film; Inarritu is a genius. I'll stop here. Oscar Schmosker says A, maybe A+ if someone can explain to me a little better how the Japanese sequences integrate with the overall architecture of the story.
The Pursuit of Happiness: Touching, great acting, but nobody in their right mind is going to believe that this kid is so happy and accepting of the sudden and complete departure of his mother from his life. Sensitive father films are welcome, in fact, could someone please make one about sensitive parrot Dads? But I'm not buying the premise that this five (?) year old kid just says goodbye to his Mom and everything's fine hanging out in homeless shelters and railroad bathrooms with his Dad. Now as for the rest of the film, this is a great example of the American Dream story, up-from-poverty through force of Will (Smith), with a few gratuitous digs at hippies along the way (haven't seen one quite so biased against hippie counterculture since Joe). Every time things get to the point where total collapse seems likely, one of his lost scanners shows up and he manages to sell it and get back on his feet. (The evil hippies are big scanner thieves, you see.) In the end, good old cronyism and chitchat over beer turns out o be more important to business success than book learning or intelligence. Thus our Hero gets the stockborker job because he "played the game", not because he excelled at anything in particular. Call it realism if you want. I thought it was a good movie and a Fine Performance, but if there is a message here worth remembering or teaching your kids, I missed it. Oscar Schmosker says B, mostly for effort.
Dreamgirls: I walked out after about an hour, can I still review it? This is about as formulaic as the pop star genre gets. Nothing going on here except a fast-paced rise to stardom through native talent and unlikely breaks. Compared to Walk the Line, much less to older, better pop star rise-to-fame movies (The Doors, etc.) this is candy-coated popcorn with no prize at the bottom. Why this should have won the awards it did from some other film societies is beyond me. A feather in the Academy's cap that this was not nominated for "Best Motion Picture"; though they probably should be compelled to develop some new categories, like "Worst Pop Star Picture". Oscar Schmosker gives this a C out of charity.
The Illusionist: Well-made art film, sure fooled me (the plot twist, I mean; can't say much more in case you didn't see it yet). Naturally it is hardly nominated for anything. Easily a B+ in the Schmosker catalogue. See it before it makes itself disappear.
The Painted Veil: Extremely well-made art film, in the classic mould, and of course it's nominated for nothing at all. (Did more than a handful of Academy members even bother to see it?) One critic (can't recall who) quipped, "Even real Merchant Ivory films don't get Oscars". And your point is...? Sorry, but this is what filmmaking used to be about, and still can be; stories wih real emotional depth, great cinematography, top-notch acting, little or no artificial enhancement with the latest, greatest special effects technology, some real social lessons without phony morality plays, an almost total lack of gratuitous violence or grisly carnage, disasters of a slow and deadly sort without cheap-shot catastrophe sequences, a "lost era" feel without millions of bucks in artificial sets and costumes and Model-T's... need I go on? Okay, this one is a twice or thrice or five-times told story, the Somerset Maugham story having been cinematized several times before. I didn't see any of those. I saw this one. It is a fine film. Oscar Schmosker says A-, and see it before it gets old enough that people start to think it's "one of those Merchant Ivory films".
An Inconvenient Truth: Lots of charts and lots of arguments for the reality and threat of global warming. One can hardly avoid being moved to agree, even though many of the arguments are really pretty dubious. I especially doubt his claims about our ability to reverse the trend before a fairly catastrophic rise in sea levels. But the overall impact is what counts. As film, this is nothing, a lecture with a big projection tv and a lot of staging. Much more could have been done outside the lecture, other than promotional shots of Gore and his family. Everybody should learn from the message, but whether it is really necessary to see the film is another question. I wouldn't call this a great or even a good documentary; rather, an opportunity to build consciousness about an important threat that we might be able to mitigate somewhat if enough people in the right places were persuaded of it. Oscar Schmosker doesn't quite know what to do with this one; maybe a B- as film, and PG-13 as social service.
Night at the Museum: Look at the review sites and you'll see that this one gets a much higher rating from audiences than from critics. Many films do, but with this one I could see why. It is actually not as stupid as it sounds; in fact, it is a bit of an intellectual fantasy, having all these historical figures come to life and interacting with them to explore their psychology. The real-people portraits were not exactly the ultimate in emotional probing, but the whole thing hung together fairly well. Here special effects were used in a way that might be called "charming", in the good sense that might be employed in reference to the Star Wars films. The film is directed at kids but I would not hesitate to send an adult there for a bit of fun. When order is inally restored in the museum there is an uncanny sense of moral and intellectual satisfaction that for all its hokeyness is more solid than some of the bang-us-over-the-head denouements of more serious historical films. Oscar Schmosker says B+, not half bad.
Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest, Flushed Away, X-Men III: Hey, do you think I have time to review every children's movie I've seen this year? No way. Mutants, rats, frogs, "the heart of Davey Jones"... the gross-out factor certainly has risen in PG films, helping kids acustom themselves to any future real horrors that might unfold (say tv coverage of a foreign war) and thus deaden themselves to the disgust this should generate. X-Men III has some definite virtues, e.g., interactive realignment of the Golden Gate Bridge... Also suggests some interesting social questions. If they invented a drug to "cure" something like e.g., homosexuality, would/should gay people take it? The recent experience with deaf-mutes at Gallaudet University suggests that members of a subculture often prefer to identify with it than integrate into the culture at large. XMen III suggests the same. But mostly, these movies are stocked with lots of unbelievable escapes from unbelievable dangers, and dubious underdog victories over the forces of evil. Compare Babel. It stands as this year's monument to film that avoids the pitfalls of ersatz-social-consciousness and cheap solutions to deep problems. Let's hope Oscar-not-Schmosker honors it appropriately.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Parrot Eyes Lost (and Found)
So, where has El Parrotto been these many days? Reading Milton? Not quite. Let's see... He flew the coop? No, parrots don't live in coops, they live on lamposts, silly. Or at least designer cages (Frank Gehry, have I got a project for you!) Maybe the plumed blogger just cur-tailed his efforts? Maybe not. Parrot got into nuclear physics and was eaten by Schroedinger's Cat? No, actually, parrot took wing with Minerva's Owl and did some serious philosophy for awhile. Nothing wrong with that, you know; besides, it's not contagious. (Thank god, if he exists when no one's there to see him.) A couple of conference papers with deadlines, to be specific, one of which I actually met. (Possibly a first.) The other is a work in progress, only now I need a conference to fit the paper instead of the other way around. Oh well, won't be the first time.
We (the ubiquitous editorial We) did a little research on promoting the blog - it's called "reading the Blogger Help screens" - and found that we have seriously ignored much of the advice therein. First is to "publish regular updates". The last H.A. Monk post is dated 3 weeks ago. Baaaaaaadddd...... The next is to post short items that people can actually read and "spare them the 1000 word diatribes". Mr. Monk ('tis I) recently posted a piece on Brice Marden and pasted it into MS Word. After removing all the extraneous bits, he did a word count. It seems that a Parrot rattled off a 3,529-word post - a new world's record! This would be too long even for our philosophy conferences! Veeeeeeerrrryyyy bad!
So how about if we keep this one short? A good idea, since my desk is about four inches deep in articles and reminders about stuff I want to write about; and this post isn't about anything except flying off with an owl and getting lost for three weeks. Which brings me to... Valentine's Day! (And I haven't done a holiday post since Christmas, so I guess I'm due.) Parrot and Owl (by which I will lovingly refer to Parrot's wise Girlfriend) ran off to Duvet for a romantic drink. Other patrons were indulging in the dubious honor of paying $95 per person to lounge around an oversized mattress and eat sushi, or something that looked roughly like it - we never got close enough to the culinary cuddlers to see what they were actually stuffing down... errr, their throats. (Well, there's a correction that didn't fix anything.) Parrot and Owl wisely saved their money and sat at the bar. We each had some variation on a mimosa, consisting of champagne and peach schnappes; I guess it has a name but I don't know it. The thrifty birds (okay, this thrifty bird) ponied up $33.60 for their eight or so ounces of liquour; I mean, for the opportunity to watch their spendthrifty peers get horny over dinner, temporarily thankful for being preserved from the frigid, slushy mess awaiting them beyond. Duvet also sports a large jellyfish tank (SpongeBob, go away!) and plays new agey music to enhance the feeling that this experience is so totally pre-21st century. No surprise that there were tables (yes they have some) available on Valentine's Day.
Duvet's bathroom consists of a large dimly lit room with stalls arranged in a U shape. A napkin valet person sits by a handwash basin in the middle. The stall doors are two way glass, so you can see the valet but (presumably) he can't see you. In this situation I would imagine that most of Duvet's clientele would prefer a woman, but no such forethought on the part of Duvet. Or perhaps that's just why they have a guy there... Owl was wondering, does closing the lock turn on the two-way thing, otherwise you can see inside? Owl was happy she locked the door. Parrot didn't care; he pees with his back to guys all the time. And when Parrot is perched on his lamppost, caution is strongly advised.
Next, the lovebirds waltzed over to Francisco's Centro Vasco, a restaurant where the cuisine can hardly be called gourmet, but the seafood can definitely be called gourmand. Specifically, Francisco's serves lobsters of up to 20 lbs; some of the shells they have hanging up are larger than a 6 year old child. On this occasion the staff approached a nearby table with two options for the pot (vat? cauldron?) - a 9 pound monster, and an even more daunting 12 pound behemoth. Natural the big guy was the unlucky one (both were alive). The lovebirds dined on less conspicuous fare - a seafood paella (girlfriend ate the bivalves, I ate the other stuff) and a little 1 1/4 pound crustacean. (Parrot is a Scorpio - crustaceans are his friends. But they taste good too.)
The first time I was at Centro Vasco I noticed the place had one virtue other than lobsters with pituitary cases - an unusually high proportion of women whose only common virtue with a boiled lobster is that they were drop-dead gorgeous. (Hey, this blog is about aesthetics, ain't it?) My second visit was consistent with that experience. Yes, I'm talking about you, Owl, of course... but also birds of some other feathers. I'm not sure if there is a conceptual relationship going on here - lobsters, beautiful women... you figure it out. (And no cheap shots, like "they can be pretty crabby"... even if it's true, IYHO.)
Well, according to MS Word I'm at 878 words, and I haven't gotten to one of the main points yet. Damn. (Maybe Google could put a Word Count feature in the Blogger editor?) Anyway, here it is. Owl got a big bunch of flowers for VD (maybe we should change the initials of this holiday?) to help attract whatever little creatures Owls like to eat. (Do bivalves like flowers, I wonder?) And a box of chocolates from Jacques Torres (Google them; best chocolates in New York, an objective fact). And a wallet from Ferragamo, designed to show the purchaser just how thin your own wallet can become. And Parrot got... no, don't go there. Well, let's put it this way. Owl's 7.1 megapixel Cannon Powershot camera was getting a bit, how do you say, out of fashion, due to the release of a new 7.1 megapixel Cannon Powershot camera. So Owl bought herself the latest greatest 7.1 megapixel Cannon Powershot camera, and Parrot is now the proud owner (or is it borrower? I'm still not quite sure...) of a, you guessed it, 7.1 megapixel Cannon Powershot camera. You may have noticed the paucity of original images in The Parrot's Lamppost. That's because Parrot's only digital camera until now has been his pitiful little Verizon cellphone. This will all be corrected now. Parrot is armed and dangerous. Maybe he will even learn how to download the images. Parrot is very excited. Squawck!
Well, I've tried my best in the last paragraph to be as wordy as possible. Wouldn't want to shock anyone by starting off with an under-1000-word post after such a long absence. Not fair to my audience. Such as it is. Next up: a hit counter! Look for it soon, so I can count how many humans are failing to listen to me. Whatever the hit counter says, just subtract that from 6,000,000,000, and you get a good idea of how widely you are ignored. Amazing what we can do with technology these days. Well, I'm off to take some shots with my new out-of-fashion 7.1 megapixel Cannon Powershot camera. First stop? Maybe Francisco's Centro Vasco? Thanks, Owl! ;-)
We (the ubiquitous editorial We) did a little research on promoting the blog - it's called "reading the Blogger Help screens" - and found that we have seriously ignored much of the advice therein. First is to "publish regular updates". The last H.A. Monk post is dated 3 weeks ago. Baaaaaaadddd...... The next is to post short items that people can actually read and "spare them the 1000 word diatribes". Mr. Monk ('tis I) recently posted a piece on Brice Marden and pasted it into MS Word. After removing all the extraneous bits, he did a word count. It seems that a Parrot rattled off a 3,529-word post - a new world's record! This would be too long even for our philosophy conferences! Veeeeeeerrrryyyy bad!
So how about if we keep this one short? A good idea, since my desk is about four inches deep in articles and reminders about stuff I want to write about; and this post isn't about anything except flying off with an owl and getting lost for three weeks. Which brings me to... Valentine's Day! (And I haven't done a holiday post since Christmas, so I guess I'm due.) Parrot and Owl (by which I will lovingly refer to Parrot's wise Girlfriend) ran off to Duvet for a romantic drink. Other patrons were indulging in the dubious honor of paying $95 per person to lounge around an oversized mattress and eat sushi, or something that looked roughly like it - we never got close enough to the culinary cuddlers to see what they were actually stuffing down... errr, their throats. (Well, there's a correction that didn't fix anything.) Parrot and Owl wisely saved their money and sat at the bar. We each had some variation on a mimosa, consisting of champagne and peach schnappes; I guess it has a name but I don't know it. The thrifty birds (okay, this thrifty bird) ponied up $33.60 for their eight or so ounces of liquour; I mean, for the opportunity to watch their spendthrifty peers get horny over dinner, temporarily thankful for being preserved from the frigid, slushy mess awaiting them beyond. Duvet also sports a large jellyfish tank (SpongeBob, go away!) and plays new agey music to enhance the feeling that this experience is so totally pre-21st century. No surprise that there were tables (yes they have some) available on Valentine's Day.
Duvet's bathroom consists of a large dimly lit room with stalls arranged in a U shape. A napkin valet person sits by a handwash basin in the middle. The stall doors are two way glass, so you can see the valet but (presumably) he can't see you. In this situation I would imagine that most of Duvet's clientele would prefer a woman, but no such forethought on the part of Duvet. Or perhaps that's just why they have a guy there... Owl was wondering, does closing the lock turn on the two-way thing, otherwise you can see inside? Owl was happy she locked the door. Parrot didn't care; he pees with his back to guys all the time. And when Parrot is perched on his lamppost, caution is strongly advised.
Next, the lovebirds waltzed over to Francisco's Centro Vasco, a restaurant where the cuisine can hardly be called gourmet, but the seafood can definitely be called gourmand. Specifically, Francisco's serves lobsters of up to 20 lbs; some of the shells they have hanging up are larger than a 6 year old child. On this occasion the staff approached a nearby table with two options for the pot (vat? cauldron?) - a 9 pound monster, and an even more daunting 12 pound behemoth. Natural the big guy was the unlucky one (both were alive). The lovebirds dined on less conspicuous fare - a seafood paella (girlfriend ate the bivalves, I ate the other stuff) and a little 1 1/4 pound crustacean. (Parrot is a Scorpio - crustaceans are his friends. But they taste good too.)
The first time I was at Centro Vasco I noticed the place had one virtue other than lobsters with pituitary cases - an unusually high proportion of women whose only common virtue with a boiled lobster is that they were drop-dead gorgeous. (Hey, this blog is about aesthetics, ain't it?) My second visit was consistent with that experience. Yes, I'm talking about you, Owl, of course... but also birds of some other feathers. I'm not sure if there is a conceptual relationship going on here - lobsters, beautiful women... you figure it out. (And no cheap shots, like "they can be pretty crabby"... even if it's true, IYHO.)
Well, according to MS Word I'm at 878 words, and I haven't gotten to one of the main points yet. Damn. (Maybe Google could put a Word Count feature in the Blogger editor?) Anyway, here it is. Owl got a big bunch of flowers for VD (maybe we should change the initials of this holiday?) to help attract whatever little creatures Owls like to eat. (Do bivalves like flowers, I wonder?) And a box of chocolates from Jacques Torres (Google them; best chocolates in New York, an objective fact). And a wallet from Ferragamo, designed to show the purchaser just how thin your own wallet can become. And Parrot got... no, don't go there. Well, let's put it this way. Owl's 7.1 megapixel Cannon Powershot camera was getting a bit, how do you say, out of fashion, due to the release of a new 7.1 megapixel Cannon Powershot camera. So Owl bought herself the latest greatest 7.1 megapixel Cannon Powershot camera, and Parrot is now the proud owner (or is it borrower? I'm still not quite sure...) of a, you guessed it, 7.1 megapixel Cannon Powershot camera. You may have noticed the paucity of original images in The Parrot's Lamppost. That's because Parrot's only digital camera until now has been his pitiful little Verizon cellphone. This will all be corrected now. Parrot is armed and dangerous. Maybe he will even learn how to download the images. Parrot is very excited. Squawck!
Well, I've tried my best in the last paragraph to be as wordy as possible. Wouldn't want to shock anyone by starting off with an under-1000-word post after such a long absence. Not fair to my audience. Such as it is. Next up: a hit counter! Look for it soon, so I can count how many humans are failing to listen to me. Whatever the hit counter says, just subtract that from 6,000,000,000, and you get a good idea of how widely you are ignored. Amazing what we can do with technology these days. Well, I'm off to take some shots with my new out-of-fashion 7.1 megapixel Cannon Powershot camera. First stop? Maybe Francisco's Centro Vasco? Thanks, Owl! ;-)
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Steve Irwin and Nietzsche: Life as Art
A couple of nights ago the Animal Planet channel aired the last Steve Irwin episode and a special on his life. The special was not very special, though it was amusing to hear his daughter Bindi popping out phrases worthy of a professional commentator; also a bit eerie that she displayed so little negative emotion talking about her deceased father. Makes you wonder how and when she was coached for these interviews. But what I really want to say is about Steve Irwin himself. What the whole show made me think of is this Nietzschian idea that you should make your life a work of art. I consider this in general an extremely dangerous idea from an ethical point of view, since it encourages people to base their actions on some "aesthetic" decision about the shape of their own lives rather than on any standard of moral responsibility toward others. For most people, living by rational moral principles is enough of a challenge that we don't need to throw our aesthetic sensibilities into the mix.
But if one were to make one's life an artwork, I suppose Irwin's life would be a positive example of how to do it. That is, one can see the relish with which Irwin approached his work with extremely dangerous wild animals, as well as the ingenuity of his methods of dealing with them. And much of it was in the service of human interests as well. When you see him with his children you get the sense that they too form part of his Animal Planet. So you have this kind of rounded life where everything fits into place, a bit like an artwork: the relationship betwen the parts grows out of a conception of what one wants to say, and this infuses each action with meaning. Each part has a beauty of its own as well as a purpose in the larger system. And rather than speaking to the audience as an outside entity it draws you into it until you too become part of the living sculpture.
This is why his approaching deadly animals appears almost casual, a fact that at times drew some criticism, as it can give the wrong impression. You should teach people to treat these things with respect, indeed fear, one wants to say; not an enthusiasm for contact bordering on a sort of libido. A year ago my girlfriend and I went to the Everglades. An alligator was resting on a bank along a walk, and we decided to each pose for a picture next to it. It was over in a few seconds, but afterward I couldn't help feeling that we had both done something extremely stupid. We knew nothing about these creatures; it was not so unthinkable that it could have turned around in a flash and taken off one of our hands, or worse. But Irwin seems to have had an almost aesthetic relationship with such creatures, fondling horribly poisonous fish and "apex predators" as if he were somehow in tune with their psyches. It was this gift that let him make his life a tableau of man's relationship to life forms that appear alien. This is more than a metaphor for our relationship to "alien" human forms as well.
I don't want to get too carried away with this, but I think it is about as close as one can come to life as art without completely losing one's moral bearings. "Don't try this at home", I'd like to say; for most of us, it is sufficient that we live according to some set of straightforward principles, be it "respect all living creatures" or "treat others as you would like to be treated by them" or whatever. But those who are motivated by a kind of love of life and contact with nature as Irwin was might well be able to cross the line into an aesthetic life without getting into a morally dubious self-centered ethic. A few weeks ago I wrote about surfers and skiers who cling to a kind of right to commune with nature. Irwin, you might say, represented the apotheosis of such sentiments, where the "right" is raised to the highest level of spiritual union and pervades every aspect of what one does.
Let that stingray remind us that a life of devotion comes with risks. Better yet, let it remind us that what is a risk to the rational observer is just another part of the tableau once that separateness from nature is bridged by an aesthetic involvement in life. I guess this was his message.
But if one were to make one's life an artwork, I suppose Irwin's life would be a positive example of how to do it. That is, one can see the relish with which Irwin approached his work with extremely dangerous wild animals, as well as the ingenuity of his methods of dealing with them. And much of it was in the service of human interests as well. When you see him with his children you get the sense that they too form part of his Animal Planet. So you have this kind of rounded life where everything fits into place, a bit like an artwork: the relationship betwen the parts grows out of a conception of what one wants to say, and this infuses each action with meaning. Each part has a beauty of its own as well as a purpose in the larger system. And rather than speaking to the audience as an outside entity it draws you into it until you too become part of the living sculpture.
This is why his approaching deadly animals appears almost casual, a fact that at times drew some criticism, as it can give the wrong impression. You should teach people to treat these things with respect, indeed fear, one wants to say; not an enthusiasm for contact bordering on a sort of libido. A year ago my girlfriend and I went to the Everglades. An alligator was resting on a bank along a walk, and we decided to each pose for a picture next to it. It was over in a few seconds, but afterward I couldn't help feeling that we had both done something extremely stupid. We knew nothing about these creatures; it was not so unthinkable that it could have turned around in a flash and taken off one of our hands, or worse. But Irwin seems to have had an almost aesthetic relationship with such creatures, fondling horribly poisonous fish and "apex predators" as if he were somehow in tune with their psyches. It was this gift that let him make his life a tableau of man's relationship to life forms that appear alien. This is more than a metaphor for our relationship to "alien" human forms as well.
I don't want to get too carried away with this, but I think it is about as close as one can come to life as art without completely losing one's moral bearings. "Don't try this at home", I'd like to say; for most of us, it is sufficient that we live according to some set of straightforward principles, be it "respect all living creatures" or "treat others as you would like to be treated by them" or whatever. But those who are motivated by a kind of love of life and contact with nature as Irwin was might well be able to cross the line into an aesthetic life without getting into a morally dubious self-centered ethic. A few weeks ago I wrote about surfers and skiers who cling to a kind of right to commune with nature. Irwin, you might say, represented the apotheosis of such sentiments, where the "right" is raised to the highest level of spiritual union and pervades every aspect of what one does.
Let that stingray remind us that a life of devotion comes with risks. Better yet, let it remind us that what is a risk to the rational observer is just another part of the tableau once that separateness from nature is bridged by an aesthetic involvement in life. I guess this was his message.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Brice Marden at MOMA
Writing this blog is nothing if not an incentive to get to art events that I might otherwise blow off. Or not. But let's say, nothing in the past couple of years has caused me to have an appetite to spend $20 for admission to the rebuilt Museum of Modern Art. I liked Picasso's Guernica on the old wall; I figured I'd like it on the new wall too, and didn't need to spend $20 to find that out. Nor would I necessarily have ponied up that sum to see the work of Brice Marden, who was no more than one more in a jumble of art-world names whose work I could at best vaguely characterize. But the "institutional theory of art", which says that art is whatever is canonized as such by the institutions of the art world, is at least right to this extent: art that will sell for a lot of money and be talked about by critics is that which has been canonized by the art world, in particular by MOMA. So why not take this opportunity to blow my $20 and see who's being canonized? (Note: although the MOMA show is over, you can familiarize yourself with hundreds of examples of Marden's work by using Google Images.)
First off, the new museum is more impressive than I expected. The rooms, for all their rectilinear design, have a much more spacious feeling than the old MOMA. Each work seems to have it's own space. The new architecture uses light in a way that reflects the nature of the museum contents, letting it pour through in unexpected, oblique but attractive ways, cutting it up in ways that never compete with the works but rather make the space itself a work in the modernist mode. Atriums and wide corridors seem to connect the spaces in a way that lets you feel the museum as a whole, rather than a mere labyrinth of rooms and floors. Okay, I'm impressed. Doesn't mean I'm going to rush out and spend $20 for this very often (have I mentioned that admission to the museum is now $20?) but I might be inclined to recommend that everyone do it at least once.
The Brice Marden show was presented on two floors; the lower floor contained the drawings, and the paintings were on an upper floor. For what it's worth (now that the show is over) I think it was a mistake to tour the drawing exhibit first. Unless perhaps you are an artist or professional critic or curator, it is very hard to appreciate what is going on in the drawings without knowing the paintings. Many of them are not much more than charcoal-gray surfaces with a narrow line of light showing through at some point. Others were broken up into rectangular forms with the regularity of brickwork. It was not the lack of recognizable figures that made them inscrutable, but rather the lack of any variation between similar geometric parts other than minor tonal changes. There were also a few in which Marden used "found art" like postcards, and some in which the lines were freer and more sinuous. I cannot say I enjoyed any of this greatly; in fact, I felt a bit stupid for having come in with a decent amount of knowledge of art, art history and modernism, and still being unable to discern much more than gray rectangles and squiggles in these works.
When I got to the paintings I not only felt more in my element; I obtained a headset. (The headset, I'm happy to report, did not cost $20; it was free.) The recording consisted largely of interviews in which Marden would talk about individual works, or his work as a whole. I will refer to it more in a bit; let me first say something about the paintings.
There were two major groups among the paintings. The first consisted of works with monochromatic blocks of color arranged in various ways, from two or three side by side panels to slightly more complex arrangements. When I say "monochromatic" I mean that they appeared at first sight to be monochromatic; but usually on closer inspection there was actually a lot of variation in tonal density and texture, albeit it within a fairly tight chromatic range and on a mostly smooth surface. The second group consisted of lines snaking around the canvas on a more or less monochro
matic background. (Please note that the examples used here may not be the exact paintings displayed in the MOMA show; they are representative examples I found on the web.) The lines occasionally reminded one of Jackson Pollock in their intensity and freedom, but Marden attributes them to the influence of Chinese calligraphy. The paintings often had names denoting places, people, and events; but lest anyone think it a simple matter whether the notion of "representation" can be applied here, consider the fact that the only link between the title and the content was that the colors (and perhaps in some vague way the relationship among color blocks or lines) occurred to Marden in the course of experiencing or thinking about the subject. No one could ever tell from the three vertical blocks of paint in "Pearl" that it was "about" Janis Joplin.
As far as formal techniques, they were simple to the point of disappearance. There was an occasional symmetry, e.g., one painting consisted of two "T's" composed of various color blocks on either side of a larger "T". In the later works, one could say that the lines that weave through the painting generally fill the space in a fairly even way. That cannot be unintentional; there was certainly nothing preventing the artist from filling only a part of the canvas, or rather, of the background, since the canvases are pretty much always covered with a background color. There is, one could also say, a certain rhythm and intensity to the paintings: in the color block paintings the shades were clearly very carefully chosen, they complement or bounce off one another in a certain way. Great pains were taken to prepare the surfaces to a certain uniformity of texture, gloss, density, etc. The "calligraphy" paintings - which do not even remotely resemble actual calligraphy, as do some of the works of Franz Kline, for example, or occasionally (perhaps by mere chance) Robert Motherwell - can be variously described as sombre, joyful, frenetic, placid, and the like. The difference in emotional qualities suggests suggests both differences in content and in the formal techniques used to convey it. By analogy, an instrumental work of music has no visual content at all, but normally listeners would agree that it is either sad or happy, serious or playful, and the like. This is more or less an acknowledgment that the work, however inscrutable, has qualities that the artist (or composer) meant to convey and that he used some technical methods, not always obvious, to do so.
However, everything that can be said of the formal nature of Marden's work is highly metaphorical. And what can be said of their content is even more speculative. There is a definite point of disjunction here between the artist and the audience: there is what Brice Marden felt and thought of while creating the work, and there is what the viewer feels and thinks of while looking at it. Attempts to communicate across this gap are no more than reports by one side to the other; Marden's discussions of the works' titles and origins not only do not create meaning in the works themselves for the audience, they do not even have much impact on what the audience sees in the work. The block painting represented above is called Range. I suppose it could be about the prairie, and that the colors play off its dry, dusty palette, or the colors of horses or buffalo that roam there - the color range of the "range". But if someone told me it refers merely to a color range in the abstract or to the range in my kitchen I would feel neither more nor less guided. Such names and discussions express the artists thoughts and emotions across a gap over which at best the flimsiest bridge can exist.
This is not the case with all art. Figurative art often tells a story of sorts, and the meaning of the story is the meaning of the painting. The story may be that of The Execution of Maximillian, as in Manet's work which is the subject of another current show at MOMA; or it may be that the expression of this or that bourgeios patron refelcts her standing and certain social rules and constraints of her time. These thoughts are at least in some sense in the work itself. Given enough collateral information a sensitive viewer can make a reasonable guess as to what is expressed, or at least narrow down the range of reasonable interpretations to very few. Marden's work, like all abstract art, tells nothing like this. Or to put it another way, the collateral information needed to read into the work this meaning rather than that includes what was going on in the artist's mind at the time of creation: exactly the information that the interpreter is supposed to back out of the work in the other case.
Marden refers to this situation in one of his comments. He adopts the view that abstract painting contains greater expressive possibilities than figurative painting. Why? "When you look at it, you have nothing to go on but yourself. You're there, and it's there, and that's what you have to go on." This argument does not work for me. It says, essentially, that the great expressive possibilities of abstract art are the result of your feeling whatever it is you feel when you look at it. That is, abstract art is "expressive" in that it permits you to do some expressing. But this relegates abstract art to the value level of any found object that you can look at for a while and feel something - a brick wall, a torn poster, a cloud, a smudged apron, a dirty sidewalk. Who needs paint, canvas, or artists if this is the case? Let's just do abstract photography. I think Marden is a bit on the defensive here. Consider the monochromatic block paintings. You can read weightlessness or timelessness or spirituality or other subtle qualities into a Rothko, but that is partly due to their irregularity. The strict geometrics of Marden's monochromes makes even this very difficult. You can admire the apparent planes and complexity of a Pollack, the frenetic activity of a late Kandinsky or Cy Twombly, the luminous motion of a Mondrian, the dreamlike quality of a Klee or Miro. With Marden's "calligraphy" paintings you can at least feel moved, in a sense, by the controlled unwinding of the form, like a spring that uncoiled within an enclosed space, an insect weaving a path or a particle tracing lines in a cloud chamber. All these are difficult calls, and the viewer who just does not get it cannot be called wrong or necessarily insensitive. But the viewer who claims to really get monochromatic color blocks must be "getting" in a way that is as self-contained as are Marden's thoughts when he creates the work.
If all Marden can say about the work is that it gives the viewer a platform for self-expression, I am not convinced that there is much inherent value in it. (Financial value's another matter; after this sort of canonization by MOMA, I suppose six figures would be a bargain price for one of his major works.) But I am not sure this is all he can say. He tells us to look at them from far away, then up close, then move back... which suggests that there is, for him, a particular way of viewing that should guide our expressive relationship to the work. (Rothko, who seems to be an obvious influence, allegedly suggested that people view his large, so-called "multiform" paintings from 18 inches away - a bit like sitting in the front row at the movie theatre.) He tends to leave paint marks along a narrow strip at the bottom of the canvas, or on the sides, and calls this a "history" of the creation of the work. So there is a narrative here, however obscure. Perhaps obscuring the history of creation is part of the meaning.
The most elaborate work in the show was also Marden's newest and largest work, one he suggests is not necessarily finished, entitled The Propitious Garden. This consists in two sets of six panels each, arranged on facing walls. The background in each of the panels in each of the sets represents one color of the rainbow, arranged in VIBGYOR order - except, hold the "I", Marden says he "didn't understand indigo" so that one was dropped. (I couldn't find any evidence that leaving out "I" was some sort of comment on personal identity or Wittgenstein's Tractatus, so I won't go there. What self-control...) On each of the backgrounds were painted the interlocking, snaking lines of Marden's recent work, each one a different color. Now here's the formal kicker: in each panel, the "top" line was the color of the background of the previous panel. And the difference between the two sets of panels is that they go in reverse order, or to put in another way, in the second set, the color of the top line becomes the color of the background in the next panel.
Kendall Walton points out in Mimesis As Make-Believe that all art is "representational" in at least the sense that this line or shape or color is represented as being "in front of" or "to the left of" that other one. If a blue line crosses any other line without breaking but no line crosses blue without breaking then blue is represented as being the "top" line. The Propitious Garden demonstrates this succinctly: not only is there a "top" line/color, but it is "generated" in some sense by the previous panel, and the line crossings are carefully controlled while giving a sense of freedom as in his other later paintings. That formal technique made me feel some connection with this piece that I did not feel with the monochromes, and made the other later works more approachable, as if they were somehow leading to something like this. Moreover I felt a certain sympathy for the desire to motivate lines and colors in this way. Perhaps this shows how little it really takes to go from hermetic work, where the artist's face is completely hidden, to work that genuinely expresses something across the gap I referred to earlier. I wanted to linger and be with this work, whereas the earlier rectangles made me want to move along until there was something to hold on to. Of course, not everyone would feel as I did: some might find the formal means artificial and harmful to the freedom expressed in the earlier paintings. To which I say, absolute freedom is no freedom at all; freedom without constraint is a barrier to creativity. IMHO. And I doubt that the apparent Pollock-like freedom in the other later works is really free in this sense. Marden even mentions self-imposed constraints drawn from the art of calligraphy. There may be many others as well. The space, as I said, is surely not filled randomly.
Finally, let's talk about one of Marden's lengthier and more interesting comments. He says that "the history of modern art is tightening the relationship of the image to the plane." According to Marden, they become united in Cezanne. In abstract art, "you try to keep the plane and the image locked together". He invokes the following analogy: "If you imagine a sheet of glass that's invisible, you put that over the surface of the painting, you reduce it down to nothing, that becomes the plane. The image in a painting is projected from that plane." The ideas of the image being "locked together" with the plane and being "projected" from it tend to clash a bit. But at any rate the concept seems to be that the linear perspective of the Renaissance, with it's vanishing points and chiaroscuro, is slowly compressed until it disappears in Cezanne. At that point art is free to use the surface itself, rather than hide the fact that there is a surface. This thought does go a long way toward helping us understand some developments in the 20th century, like Jackson Pollack, who laid his canvases flat and squeezed paint onto them, and Morris Louis, who held them at an angle and dripped paint down them. These artists really used the surface without apology! Yet I wonder if this really characterizes all abstract art. The art of Yves Tanguy is abstract but maximally perspectival. Luc Sonnet, whose work I mentioned in a previous post, employs abstraction within the context of a kind of galactic depth of field. I don't know that I think Cezanne's work is exactly locked into the plane. I agree that perspective diminishes in importance, but if Cezanne folds everything into the plane, what to make of Picasso's Three Musicians? It seems even closer to the plane than Cezanne, but yet does not lack perspective entirely. In Marden's later work, one has to imagine depth and perspective, but he seems to be willing to license us to find what expression we can in the painting, so it's hard to see how plane and picture are "locked together". But if this is the way Marden wants us to imagine things in his work, that is a clue that can help one appreciate it in the absence of identifiable references.
Here are some analogies to think about. First: several years ago I saw a video work (can't remember the artist or where I saw it) which consisted in a man washing a facade of floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows. The windows would be all covered with (soapy?) water and he would squeegee the water off with a rubber blade attached to a long pole. I can't recall the details exactly (was the washer inside or outside? which side was the camera on? was it projected from opposite perspectives on either side of the screen?) but the important point is this: as he cleared the water from the window the window washer slowly revealed the content behind it. In this work you could easily think of the window itself as the plane of the canvas and the window washer as the artist creating content. Second: I have used the following analogy for certain philosophical theories of photography (from which I demur) in which the photograph is said to be "transparent". Imagine that you are looking through a plate glass window, say, in some country house, and that you have the ability at any point to freeze the scene behind the window, then remove the window, image intact, frame it and hang it in a gallery in New York. This is how some philosophers conceive of photographs. In this sense I guess photography would be the perfect realization of Marden's unity of plane and picture. (And it is well known that photography had a significant impact on the art world in the 19th century, so his location of the collapse of picture into plane in Cezanne would be roughly compatible with this.)
Third, and most interesting, I thinK: immediately after completing my tour of the Marden show I found myself in a room dominated by one of Monet's magnificent water lily panoramas. I was still thinking about Marden's remarks, and looking at the painting it suddenly struck me that in this painting, the water is the surface of the canvas itself. The water plays the primary role here, not the lilies or the footbridge or the fantastic wash of colors, all of which have tremendous visual power. What counts is the water: it is that which produces the form and generates the content of the image. The bridge, the foliage, everything else is reproduced in the water, and without this reproduction there is no scene here. And it is just because the water lilies share the plane of the water, and do not require this reproduction, and do not attempt to constitute a separate reality from the surface, that the painting is in some sense "about" them. They are, in a sense, the unity of image and plane. Here is a painting, then, which utilizes water as a metaphor for the canvas itself, and once you realize this a sort of furious drama unfolds between the real and virtual surface as they compete to constitute the plane of the image.
I still don't know if I am ready to accept Marden's view of the merging of plane and image as the key to understanding abstract art. But I know that I would never have had so deep an appreciation of Monet's water lilies if he had not put that thought in my head.
First off, the new museum is more impressive than I expected. The rooms, for all their rectilinear design, have a much more spacious feeling than the old MOMA. Each work seems to have it's own space. The new architecture uses light in a way that reflects the nature of the museum contents, letting it pour through in unexpected, oblique but attractive ways, cutting it up in ways that never compete with the works but rather make the space itself a work in the modernist mode. Atriums and wide corridors seem to connect the spaces in a way that lets you feel the museum as a whole, rather than a mere labyrinth of rooms and floors. Okay, I'm impressed. Doesn't mean I'm going to rush out and spend $20 for this very often (have I mentioned that admission to the museum is now $20?) but I might be inclined to recommend that everyone do it at least once.
The Brice Marden show was presented on two floors; the lower floor contained the drawings, and the paintings were on an upper floor. For what it's worth (now that the show is over) I think it was a mistake to tour the drawing exhibit first. Unless perhaps you are an artist or professional critic or curator, it is very hard to appreciate what is going on in the drawings without knowing the paintings. Many of them are not much more than charcoal-gray surfaces with a narrow line of light showing through at some point. Others were broken up into rectangular forms with the regularity of brickwork. It was not the lack of recognizable figures that made them inscrutable, but rather the lack of any variation between similar geometric parts other than minor tonal changes. There were also a few in which Marden used "found art" like postcards, and some in which the lines were freer and more sinuous. I cannot say I enjoyed any of this greatly; in fact, I felt a bit stupid for having come in with a decent amount of knowledge of art, art history and modernism, and still being unable to discern much more than gray rectangles and squiggles in these works.
When I got to the paintings I not only felt more in my element; I obtained a headset. (The headset, I'm happy to report, did not cost $20; it was free.) The recording consisted largely of interviews in which Marden would talk about individual works, or his work as a whole. I will refer to it more in a bit; let me first say something about the paintings.
There were two major groups among the paintings. The first consisted of works with monochromatic blocks of color arranged in various ways, from two or three side by side panels to slightly more complex arrangements. When I say "monochromatic" I mean that they appeared at first sight to be monochromatic; but usually on closer inspection there was actually a lot of variation in tonal density and texture, albeit it within a fairly tight chromatic range and on a mostly smooth surface. The second group consisted of lines snaking around the canvas on a more or less monochromatic background. (Please note that the examples used here may not be the exact paintings displayed in the MOMA show; they are representative examples I found on the web.) The lines occasionally reminded one of Jackson Pollock in their intensity and freedom, but Marden attributes them to the influence of Chinese calligraphy. The paintings often had names denoting places, people, and events; but lest anyone think it a simple matter whether the notion of "representation" can be applied here, consider the fact that the only link between the title and the content was that the colors (and perhaps in some vague way the relationship among color blocks or lines) occurred to Marden in the course of experiencing or thinking about the subject. No one could ever tell from the three vertical blocks of paint in "Pearl" that it was "about" Janis Joplin.As far as formal techniques, they were simple to the point of disappearance. There was an occasional symmetry, e.g., one painting consisted of two "T's" composed of various color blocks on either side of a larger "T". In the later works, one could say that the lines that weave through the painting generally fill the space in a fairly even way. That cannot be unintentional; there was certainly nothing preventing the artist from filling only a part of the canvas, or rather, of the background, since the canvases are pretty much always covered with a background color. There is, one could also say, a certain rhythm and intensity to the paintings: in the color block paintings the shades were clearly very carefully chosen, they complement or bounce off one another in a certain way. Great pains were taken to prepare the surfaces to a certain uniformity of texture, gloss, density, etc. The "calligraphy" paintings - which do not even remotely resemble actual calligraphy, as do some of the works of Franz Kline, for example, or occasionally (perhaps by mere chance) Robert Motherwell - can be variously described as sombre, joyful, frenetic, placid, and the like. The difference in emotional qualities suggests suggests both differences in content and in the formal techniques used to convey it. By analogy, an instrumental work of music has no visual content at all, but normally listeners would agree that it is either sad or happy, serious or playful, and the like. This is more or less an acknowledgment that the work, however inscrutable, has qualities that the artist (or composer) meant to convey and that he used some technical methods, not always obvious, to do so.
However, everything that can be said of the formal nature of Marden's work is highly metaphorical. And what can be said of their content is even more speculative. There is a definite point of disjunction here between the artist and the audience: there is what Brice Marden felt and thought of while creating the work, and there is what the viewer feels and thinks of while looking at it. Attempts to communicate across this gap are no more than reports by one side to the other; Marden's discussions of the works' titles and origins not only do not create meaning in the works themselves for the audience, they do not even have much impact on what the audience sees in the work. The block painting represented above is called Range. I suppose it could be about the prairie, and that the colors play off its dry, dusty palette, or the colors of horses or buffalo that roam there - the color range of the "range". But if someone told me it refers merely to a color range in the abstract or to the range in my kitchen I would feel neither more nor less guided. Such names and discussions express the artists thoughts and emotions across a gap over which at best the flimsiest bridge can exist.
This is not the case with all art. Figurative art often tells a story of sorts, and the meaning of the story is the meaning of the painting. The story may be that of The Execution of Maximillian, as in Manet's work which is the subject of another current show at MOMA; or it may be that the expression of this or that bourgeios patron refelcts her standing and certain social rules and constraints of her time. These thoughts are at least in some sense in the work itself. Given enough collateral information a sensitive viewer can make a reasonable guess as to what is expressed, or at least narrow down the range of reasonable interpretations to very few. Marden's work, like all abstract art, tells nothing like this. Or to put it another way, the collateral information needed to read into the work this meaning rather than that includes what was going on in the artist's mind at the time of creation: exactly the information that the interpreter is supposed to back out of the work in the other case.
Marden refers to this situation in one of his comments. He adopts the view that abstract painting contains greater expressive possibilities than figurative painting. Why? "When you look at it, you have nothing to go on but yourself. You're there, and it's there, and that's what you have to go on." This argument does not work for me. It says, essentially, that the great expressive possibilities of abstract art are the result of your feeling whatever it is you feel when you look at it. That is, abstract art is "expressive" in that it permits you to do some expressing. But this relegates abstract art to the value level of any found object that you can look at for a while and feel something - a brick wall, a torn poster, a cloud, a smudged apron, a dirty sidewalk. Who needs paint, canvas, or artists if this is the case? Let's just do abstract photography. I think Marden is a bit on the defensive here. Consider the monochromatic block paintings. You can read weightlessness or timelessness or spirituality or other subtle qualities into a Rothko, but that is partly due to their irregularity. The strict geometrics of Marden's monochromes makes even this very difficult. You can admire the apparent planes and complexity of a Pollack, the frenetic activity of a late Kandinsky or Cy Twombly, the luminous motion of a Mondrian, the dreamlike quality of a Klee or Miro. With Marden's "calligraphy" paintings you can at least feel moved, in a sense, by the controlled unwinding of the form, like a spring that uncoiled within an enclosed space, an insect weaving a path or a particle tracing lines in a cloud chamber. All these are difficult calls, and the viewer who just does not get it cannot be called wrong or necessarily insensitive. But the viewer who claims to really get monochromatic color blocks must be "getting" in a way that is as self-contained as are Marden's thoughts when he creates the work.
If all Marden can say about the work is that it gives the viewer a platform for self-expression, I am not convinced that there is much inherent value in it. (Financial value's another matter; after this sort of canonization by MOMA, I suppose six figures would be a bargain price for one of his major works.) But I am not sure this is all he can say. He tells us to look at them from far away, then up close, then move back... which suggests that there is, for him, a particular way of viewing that should guide our expressive relationship to the work. (Rothko, who seems to be an obvious influence, allegedly suggested that people view his large, so-called "multiform" paintings from 18 inches away - a bit like sitting in the front row at the movie theatre.) He tends to leave paint marks along a narrow strip at the bottom of the canvas, or on the sides, and calls this a "history" of the creation of the work. So there is a narrative here, however obscure. Perhaps obscuring the history of creation is part of the meaning.
The most elaborate work in the show was also Marden's newest and largest work, one he suggests is not necessarily finished, entitled The Propitious Garden. This consists in two sets of six panels each, arranged on facing walls. The background in each of the panels in each of the sets represents one color of the rainbow, arranged in VIBGYOR order - except, hold the "I", Marden says he "didn't understand indigo" so that one was dropped. (I couldn't find any evidence that leaving out "I" was some sort of comment on personal identity or Wittgenstein's Tractatus, so I won't go there. What self-control...) On each of the backgrounds were painted the interlocking, snaking lines of Marden's recent work, each one a different color. Now here's the formal kicker: in each panel, the "top" line was the color of the background of the previous panel. And the difference between the two sets of panels is that they go in reverse order, or to put in another way, in the second set, the color of the top line becomes the color of the background in the next panel.
Kendall Walton points out in Mimesis As Make-Believe that all art is "representational" in at least the sense that this line or shape or color is represented as being "in front of" or "to the left of" that other one. If a blue line crosses any other line without breaking but no line crosses blue without breaking then blue is represented as being the "top" line. The Propitious Garden demonstrates this succinctly: not only is there a "top" line/color, but it is "generated" in some sense by the previous panel, and the line crossings are carefully controlled while giving a sense of freedom as in his other later paintings. That formal technique made me feel some connection with this piece that I did not feel with the monochromes, and made the other later works more approachable, as if they were somehow leading to something like this. Moreover I felt a certain sympathy for the desire to motivate lines and colors in this way. Perhaps this shows how little it really takes to go from hermetic work, where the artist's face is completely hidden, to work that genuinely expresses something across the gap I referred to earlier. I wanted to linger and be with this work, whereas the earlier rectangles made me want to move along until there was something to hold on to. Of course, not everyone would feel as I did: some might find the formal means artificial and harmful to the freedom expressed in the earlier paintings. To which I say, absolute freedom is no freedom at all; freedom without constraint is a barrier to creativity. IMHO. And I doubt that the apparent Pollock-like freedom in the other later works is really free in this sense. Marden even mentions self-imposed constraints drawn from the art of calligraphy. There may be many others as well. The space, as I said, is surely not filled randomly.
Finally, let's talk about one of Marden's lengthier and more interesting comments. He says that "the history of modern art is tightening the relationship of the image to the plane." According to Marden, they become united in Cezanne. In abstract art, "you try to keep the plane and the image locked together". He invokes the following analogy: "If you imagine a sheet of glass that's invisible, you put that over the surface of the painting, you reduce it down to nothing, that becomes the plane. The image in a painting is projected from that plane." The ideas of the image being "locked together" with the plane and being "projected" from it tend to clash a bit. But at any rate the concept seems to be that the linear perspective of the Renaissance, with it's vanishing points and chiaroscuro, is slowly compressed until it disappears in Cezanne. At that point art is free to use the surface itself, rather than hide the fact that there is a surface. This thought does go a long way toward helping us understand some developments in the 20th century, like Jackson Pollack, who laid his canvases flat and squeezed paint onto them, and Morris Louis, who held them at an angle and dripped paint down them. These artists really used the surface without apology! Yet I wonder if this really characterizes all abstract art. The art of Yves Tanguy is abstract but maximally perspectival. Luc Sonnet, whose work I mentioned in a previous post, employs abstraction within the context of a kind of galactic depth of field. I don't know that I think Cezanne's work is exactly locked into the plane. I agree that perspective diminishes in importance, but if Cezanne folds everything into the plane, what to make of Picasso's Three Musicians? It seems even closer to the plane than Cezanne, but yet does not lack perspective entirely. In Marden's later work, one has to imagine depth and perspective, but he seems to be willing to license us to find what expression we can in the painting, so it's hard to see how plane and picture are "locked together". But if this is the way Marden wants us to imagine things in his work, that is a clue that can help one appreciate it in the absence of identifiable references.
Here are some analogies to think about. First: several years ago I saw a video work (can't remember the artist or where I saw it) which consisted in a man washing a facade of floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows. The windows would be all covered with (soapy?) water and he would squeegee the water off with a rubber blade attached to a long pole. I can't recall the details exactly (was the washer inside or outside? which side was the camera on? was it projected from opposite perspectives on either side of the screen?) but the important point is this: as he cleared the water from the window the window washer slowly revealed the content behind it. In this work you could easily think of the window itself as the plane of the canvas and the window washer as the artist creating content. Second: I have used the following analogy for certain philosophical theories of photography (from which I demur) in which the photograph is said to be "transparent". Imagine that you are looking through a plate glass window, say, in some country house, and that you have the ability at any point to freeze the scene behind the window, then remove the window, image intact, frame it and hang it in a gallery in New York. This is how some philosophers conceive of photographs. In this sense I guess photography would be the perfect realization of Marden's unity of plane and picture. (And it is well known that photography had a significant impact on the art world in the 19th century, so his location of the collapse of picture into plane in Cezanne would be roughly compatible with this.)
Third, and most interesting, I thinK: immediately after completing my tour of the Marden show I found myself in a room dominated by one of Monet's magnificent water lily panoramas. I was still thinking about Marden's remarks, and looking at the painting it suddenly struck me that in this painting, the water is the surface of the canvas itself. The water plays the primary role here, not the lilies or the footbridge or the fantastic wash of colors, all of which have tremendous visual power. What counts is the water: it is that which produces the form and generates the content of the image. The bridge, the foliage, everything else is reproduced in the water, and without this reproduction there is no scene here. And it is just because the water lilies share the plane of the water, and do not require this reproduction, and do not attempt to constitute a separate reality from the surface, that the painting is in some sense "about" them. They are, in a sense, the unity of image and plane. Here is a painting, then, which utilizes water as a metaphor for the canvas itself, and once you realize this a sort of furious drama unfolds between the real and virtual surface as they compete to constitute the plane of the image.
I still don't know if I am ready to accept Marden's view of the merging of plane and image as the key to understanding abstract art. But I know that I would never have had so deep an appreciation of Monet's water lilies if he had not put that thought in my head.
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