Frederick Wiseman, Orphan Films, FIFA Montreal, & Other Documentary Screenings
“La Danse—The Paris Opera Ballet,” 2009. Directed by Frederick Wiseman.
Though it’s been a particularly busy past few weeks here at Art21 production HQ – creating new exclusive videos, shooting the preparation and rehearsals for William Kentridge’s Nose production at the Metropolitan Opera, and in general getting ready for our next season – this has also been quite a fertile time for documentary screenings. So I thought I’d extend my last post and talk about some more hard-to-resist documentary offerings in New York City and beyond.
But first, in my last post, I mentioned the passing of the acclaimed documentary editor Karen Schmeer. One of the very hopeful things to come out of this very, very sad event is the establishment of the Karen Schmeer Editing Fellowship. Here’s the description in the words of the website:
“The Karen Schmeer Editing Fellowship has been established to honor the memory and spirit of Karen. The yearlong experience encourages and champions the talent of an emerging editor. The fellowship provides opportunities to help cultivate an editor’s artistry and craft and to expand his or her professional and creative community.”
Now, on to the screenings. This programming can’t really be defined as art-related, though; the films are a little too important and interesting to pass up for editorial niceties. First, I really need to mention the yearlong screening series of the films of legendary and still active documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman at the Modern Museum of Art in New York. MoMA is showing all his films to date – a remarkable 39 works, including his latest project, Boxing Gym (2009) – through the end of the year. If you’re anywhere in the area, it behooves you to at least catch one. And if you’re interested in an almost encyclopedic depiction of the world on film, then take this probably once in a lifetime chance and see all of them (and if you do, I’d love to hear from you). Though I’m sad to report that classics like Titicut Follies (1967) – once banned by the Massachusetts Supreme Court – and High School (1968) have already shown, there’s still a lot of great screenings left. Next up is Juvenile Court (1973) on March 18. Go here for the schedule. And if you’re looking for a little help in navigating an admittedly intimidating body of work, check out filmmaker and avowed Wiseman fan Errol Morris’s amusingly alternative guide here.
Karen Schmeer, the Maysles Brothers, & Art Doc Screenings in NYC
Before I do anything, I want to mention the very sad passing of an important member of the independent documentary community, Karen Schmeer. Karen was killed in a hit and run accident in New York’s Upper West side almost two weeks ago. Karen was an exceptionally talented editor with credits including Sergio (2009), Sketches of Frank Gehry (2005), and filmmaker Errol Morris’s Fog of War (2003), and Fast, Cheap, & Out of Control (1997.) But more importantly, she was a friend to me and many others both in and out the production world. She will be greatly, greatly missed.
Karen Schmeer. Photo: Garret Savage.
Lots to cover but let me start with another Art21 Uncut first. The in-house Art21 production team, led by our newest member, Production Coordinator Ian Forster, recently got the chance to shoot at the big beautiful exhibit of Gabriel Orozco’s work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. So Ian and I spent a couple of quiet morning hours shooting Mobile Matrix – spectacularly suspended in the MoMA atrium – La DS, and a whole lot of other well-known and not quite so well-known Orozco works. For me, the installation of Working Tables, in the back area of the top floor gallery, was a highlight: the sheer density and variety of objects, many extremely disparate, yet all somehow connected. Below is a little uncut taste of some of the footage we shot.
Art21 Uncut: Gabriel Orozco at MoMA from Art21 on Vimeo.
Next up is something I’ve been hoping to do since I inaugurated this column and, given the current embarrassment of riches, have no choice but to mention. And that’s talking about the wealth of art documentary viewing opportunities in New York.
First up is the documentary presenting organization, Stranger Than Fiction. Screening at the IFC Center in New York for the past five years, Stranger than Fiction, in the words of its website, “presents an eclectic mix of documentaries – sneak previews and lost classics – followed by discussions with the filmmakers and post-show receptions.” Though not exclusively devoted to screening arts documentaries, it has shown a number of gems from the genre over the years. In mid-January, I caught a showing of the Maysles Brothers’ – and I’m sorry but the epithet truly works here – cinema vérité classic, Running Fence (1978), covering the epic struggle to install Christo’s and Jeanne-Claude’s Running Fence public artwork in Sonoma and Marin Counties, California in 1976.
Julie Mehretu & the Problem of Shooting Big
In our new column, On Location, Art21 Director of Production Nick Ravich breaks his silence and gives you the scoop on Art21’s production comings and goings including, among other things, straight-from-the-set reports on recent shoots and some (hopefully) enlightening discussions on those areas where television production and contemporary art collide. And if we’re lucky, Nick will expand his column to include some non-Art21 related musings, reviews, interviews, and other ephemera on the world of production and art in general. — Ed.
In a previous blog post, I had talked about a recent Art21 online video shoot with art teacher Lucia Vinograd’s rather amazing students at Besant Hill School in Ojai, California (Lucia is part of our Art21 Educators professional development initiative.) At the time, I was only able to post a couple of screen grabs from the field footage, but now I’d love to give you an actual video sample. So below is a short but inspiring scene with Besant Hill School student Julie Yu painting with a very unconventional brush, assisted by fellow student Griffin Davis.
Art21 Uncut: Water Gun Painting at Besant Hill School from Art21 on Vimeo.
I’m also posting this short, unedited clip as a very informal way of inaugurating a new strand of Art21-produced video releases of (appropriately enough) more informal, off the cuff, backstage-revealing moments—stuff that’s a little less polished and structured than our “Exclusive” videos. After two plus years of diligently producing online-intended video content, the staff here was looking to create a regular home for these moments that, for whatever reason, sometimes don’t make the final cut. Additionally, the hope is that these clips point, in some way, to the behind-the-scenes production process, while also previewing future video “Exclusive” releases.
Julie Mehretu. Art21 production still, 2009.
And in keeping with today’s theme of amuse bouche video, I’m posting an uncut clip from an ambitious web-only video shoot that I know I definitely haven’t mentioned. We had the very good fortune to shoot the installation and final painting of Julie Mehretu’s monumental ten panel work at the new Goldman Sachs building in lower Manhattan (the initial creation of this painting in Berlin was an extensive part of our original broadcast segment on Julie.) Last fall, over the course of a month, Julie and a team of studio assistants and a professional installation crew uncrated, unrolled, stretched, hung, and further painted the work, on site, in the Goldman Sachs lobby. And we were able to shoot some key moments along the way. So below is a video of the painting fully hung, but not yet finished, from the unique bird’s eye view of a scissor lift.
Art21 Uncut: Julie Mehretu Painting at Goldman Sachs from Art21 on Vimeo.
Now, part of the reason I’m posting this is because, well, it’s just plain cool and I wanted to make sure our viewers saw it, as well give them a quick look at the kind of stuff they’ll be seeing in our soon-to-be-released “Exclusive” segments drawing on this footage. But the other reason is a little less self-promotional. This particular shot – a vertiginous, downward angled tracking shot on a 20-foot plus tall painting that elongates the top “foreground” painting elements but compresses the bottom “background” painting elements – points to a much bigger issue: the difficulty of fairly, accurately, faithfully shooting art on video. Part of Art21’s mission is not to just represent contemporary artists “in their own words” (i.e. in as unmediated way as possible) but to represent their artwork in as a similarly undistorted way as possible. For modestly scaled, easel-size works, this is a relatively easy thing to accomplish. But for works the size of Julie’s – in this case an 80 x 23 foot painting installed in a narrow corridor — it’s basically impossible. There’s literally no position we could put the camera in that would give us a wide shot of the full painting, and certainly not one that wouldn’t create the kind of classic edge distortion – key stoning effects where right angles seem to bend at the tape — that typically happens when shooting wide angle. Additionally, the graphic complexity and density of Julie’s imagery – the tremendous variety of line, shape, and color – wreak havoc with interlaced video’s sometimes crude ability to give a stable, color-uniform image.
So what to do?
On Location: Filming Art21 Educators in Southern California
In our new column, On Location, Art21 Director of Production Nick Ravich breaks his silence and gives you the scoop on Art21’s production comings and goings including, among other things, straight-from-the-set reports on recent shoots and some (hopefully) enlightening discussions on those areas where television production and contemporary art collide. And if we’re lucky, Nick will expand his column to include some non-Art21 related musings, reviews, interviews, and other ephemera on the world of production and art in general. — Ed.
If you’re willing to indulge a little Art21 navel-gazing for this very first post, I’d like to inaugurate this column by highlighting something I’ve been hoping to spread the word on for some time – our web exclusive video production. As a lot of you readers are probably aware, in addition to the content we specifically shoot for the broadcast series, Art21 has been actively shooting footage specifically for release on the web. Past exclusive pieces have included our three recent videos on Kerry James Marshall (On Museums, Being an Artist, Black Romantic). But what a lot of folks might not be aware of is that, as opposed to the broadcast model where we hire outside crew, we’re using in-house personnel and gear to produce these shorts, soup to nuts. And it’s not just production staffers like coordinators Larissa Nikola-Lisa and Ian Forster, but other non-production folks like our Associate Curator, Wesley Miller, and our Education and Public Programming personnel, Jessica Hamlin and Marc Mayer, have all been involved. More importantly, we’re starting to expand the scope of these videos beyond Art21’s roster of broadcast artists.
And now’s a particularly opportune time to mention the widening range of this project because we’ve just come off one of our most ambitious and non-artist centered shoots to date: two full days shooting with the rather amazing art students and teachers at the Besant Hill School in Ojai, CA, and Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences in Santa Monica, CA. Our subjects weren’t Art21 broadcast artists, but teachers and students who actively use Art21 in the classroom. (The teachers are part of our Art21 Educators art education initiative. They had participated in an intensive Art21-organized professional development session in New York last summer; this shoot was part of a follow up classroom visit with the teachers.)
At the Besant Hill School in ludicrously beautiful Ojai, CA, we shot with teacher Lucia Vinograd and her uninhibited Advanced Class. The following pictures can only really do the experience justice. And yes, you’re looking at students who were body painting-dancing, blind water gun painting, and acetylene torching (a la Season 4 artist Judy Pfaff.) Oh, to be young again.
Left: A Besant Hill School (Ojai, CA) student gets ready for a body paint performance. Right: Early Judy Pfaff? No, a Besant Hill School student draws with an acetylene torch. All stills are from Art21's HDV original video footage, shot by Nick Ravich, 2009.
These and other student projects were all precociously creative responses to Lucia’s semester long curricula, “The Uses of Chaos, Chance, and the Unpredictable in Art” — a lesson plan influenced by some of the chance strategies of previous Art21 artists, like Cai Guo-Qiang. Students were asked to set up an art-making situation where some primary creative/mark-making element was out of their control. (I wish I had an art teacher like that in high school. I’d be a much cooler person today.)
At the very urbane Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences in Santa Monica, CA, teacher Pam Posey – an accomplished artist in her own right — took her 9th grade art class down the street to the Santa Monica Museum of Art, to check out the Tell Me Something Good: A Collaboration between Kim Schoenstadt and Rita McBride show. The exhibition of photographs and documents is, in the words of the museum’s website, “inspired by the conceptual art exhibition, Art By Telephone (Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1969), in which participants phoned in their specifications for their works of art.” A pretty heady premise for 9th graders but one that, as they got comfortable on the exhibit’s floor and were guided by Pam’s expert promptings, they were able to really bite into and discuss. Are the instructions hindering or helping the artist’s creativity? In the end, are the instructions more interesting than the art? Moreover, this show and discussion dovetailed nicely with Pam’s on-going lesson plan, “What Roles do Rules Play in Art?” – itself nicely reminiscent of some of the rules-based thinking behind the work of Season Five’s Systems artists.
