“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.”   ~Jonathan Swift

 

Left: Circus mural depicting the visual arts (c. late 19th c.) Private collection

The ‘Art’ of Film

You may not have noticed, but ARTES, a magazine dedicated for the last six years to covering the visual arts—in various iterations—has branched out to include theater and film as a primary editorial category. Inclusion of film in the arts is an empowering gesture, as the increasingly-diverse creative community always benefits from public exposure and thoughtful critique. And with video performance genre becoming more a part of contemporary arts scene—both in museums and other public venues—it seems appropriate to offer a vital forum, like ARTES, for review and debate of this important, time-honored medium. xxxxxx

Recently, theater professionals like Edward Rubin, Geary Danihy, Herbert Simpson and Mark Favermann have lent their critical perspective to plays, both classic and experimental, on stages in New York, Toronto and Connecticut. Their expertise has been most appreciated. Most recently, film critic and art historian, Nancy Kempf, has agreed to add her ‘voice’ to the visual arts debate. Her inclusion to the ranks of our cadre of writers raises some interesting questions about the specific role of film in cultural confluence we call the ‘arts scene.’

Does ‘film,’ as an art form—in the purest sense of the word—earn a place at the table of a forum committed to the visual arts? Are art films fair game, but blockbusters with loads of CGI-generated special effects off limits? Put differently: is there a substantive aesthetic difference between “going to a film” and “sitting down to watch a movie?” Put differently, can film producers rise to the standard of the great artists of recent centuries, framing and elevating our social narrative in lasting ways, assuring themselves a vaunted place in the history of art?

The answer is, yes. And here is why…

Starting with the broad assumption that all film is art, then the task—just as with paintings, sculpture or photography—is to sort out the good from the bad. Riding this slippery subjective slope might mean setting aside low budget or Indie masterpieces that wither under the light of critical scrutiny in favor of grand, but vacuous productions aimed purely at public appeal. This would be wrong in the short run, as the time horizon for acceptance and true appreciation of a work of art extends well into the future.

Just as with any visual medium, the passage of time is often the best determiner of whether a film is art or merely popular entertainment. This critical, temporal element allows for the ascent of bad film (or bad art) to the status of ‘good’ film simply by virtue of a temporal shift in formalistic standards of assessing what we see before us. In other words, we evolve culturally toward the verity of the message embodied in the medium; i.e. – we learn to meet the object on its own terms, while the narrative framework of the film never moves. I would note, for example, that the 19th century experiments with bodies in motion, by Eadweard Muybridge (the precursor to motion pictures) were scientific and investigatory in nature, and are only now considered ‘artful’ because of the passage of time.

Outside the ‘passage of time’ test, the boundary between artful and unartful film is not altogether obvious. Film historian, Jesse Prinz, notes that “art films” are usually made by professional artists, and are intended to be exhibited in galleries alongside paintings and sculpture. “These include early experiments by Marcel Duchamp and Hans Richter, as well as works by so-called video artists, such as Pipolatti Rist, Bill Viola, and Matthew Barney…Second, art films include films that are shown in independent movie theaters (or “art houses”) and made by auteur directors, such as Truffaut, Godard, Fellini [and others]. Art house films are highly varied, of course, but it has been argued that they tend to have certain features in common. Bordwell, for example, notes that their characters tend to lack clear goals, they tend to be ambiguous, they tend to be realist (in that, for example, the deal with situations or characters that are more like ordinary life than is typical in mainstream cinema, and they are often shot on real locations), and they tend to express the distinctive style of their directors (hence the auteur tradition).

Art house films also tend to be iconoclastic or anti-establishment to some degree, and they are often to challenge rather than to entertain. If they entertain, it is because their narrow audiences are entertained by challenged and violations of conventions. So defined ‘art house’ films are perhaps less obviously works of art than gallery films, but most people these days would be inclined to put them in that category. And, indeed, films by auteur directors are frequently shown at the world’s great museums.” Thus, according to Prinz, “a film is art when it affords an aesthetic stance.”

But, is there a danger in putting too much emphasis on film-as-reality? Stated differently, is our passive reception of an aesthetic message really a “stance” at all—except for the film’s production crew and actors? Are we, as a new generation of movie and museum-goers, conditioned to ‘see’ in the same way generations past have? It seems like a ridiculous question; but consider for a moment how information is delivered and received by our overloaded 21st century senses. Image data are being delivered to us in rapid-fire bits and bytes. The average person can easily mistake a high-resolution image of a Picasso painting on their iPhone for an actual encounter with art. Facsimile masks as reality in all too many cases. The NFL, for example, is embedding hi-tech devices in shoulder pads to offer stadium goers more play-by-play data that home viewers get. Game attendance is dropping because fans are misreading their high resolution flat screen and sofa vantage point for a real life stadium experience. How we see, therefore, is increasingly subjugated to technology. Professor J. Wild, at the University of Chicago, offers a course called “The Cinematic Turn.” In it, he investigates the history and theory of the moving image and art practice. He points out that two concepts have emerged in contemporary humanistic thought: the “visual turn” and the “cinematic turn.”

While the ‘visual turn’ examines the ascendancy (and/or denigration) of vision as the dominant mode of both critical inquiry and artistic expression, the ‘cinematic turn’ focuses on the cinema’s more explicit incorporation into (contemporary) art practice. He asks how the moving image has redefined the parameters of artistic form, exhibition, and reception, and how the perceived ‘turns’ to vision and the cinema might indicate changes in the ecologies of art making and, perhaps more importantly, the critical thought about it. I would posit that by exploring the points of contact between the cinema and the visual arts across the twentieth-century, we may be increasingly trending toward having cinema—and specifically ‘art films’—do our ‘seeing and thinking’ for us. It’s the difference between buying a ticket for rides at a theme park, and setting out into a national park on an adventure of self-discovery.

Discovering the aesthetics in any film is, when it works, a highly personal experience. Over the years, ARTES has placed a wide range of art, artists and artistic trends before our readers to ponder. Whether contemporary art presented on canvas, stage, or screen meets Prinz’s “aesthetic stance” will be left to our readers. But the selection of works to be considered will endeavor to steer the narrow passage between commercialism on one shore and visionary interpretation on the other. In the final analysis, art is what stirs the emotions and captivates the senses.

From this perspective, whether films are almost always art, or whether that rarified designation should be reserved for a handful of ‘art films’ will now be playing out on the pages of ARTES.

Thank you for reading ARTES Magazine.

Richard J. Friswell, M.Ed., M.Phil.

Publisher & Managing Editor