Opening with long meditative, carefully composed tracking shots through tunnels, passages and man-made caves, Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow is a portrait with little context of the artist Anselm Kiefer. We learn in text Kiefer moved from his native Germany to Barjac, France, the studio where this work has been filmed.
The film sheds light on an experience in a way that a TV documentary on the same subject perhaps could not. However, like all cinema this is a manipulated experience that contains as much filmmakers Sophie Fiennes hand as it does Kiefer’s. The experience of the work cannot be replicated in Fiennes’ carefully composed frames and tracking shots, all intensified with a musical score lacking subtlety.
Kiefer’s work had been previously unknown to me, an advantage in that the film invites you to do discover his work and process with little commentary, aside from an interview...
The film sheds light on an experience in a way that a TV documentary on the same subject perhaps could not. However, like all cinema this is a manipulated experience that contains as much filmmakers Sophie Fiennes hand as it does Kiefer’s. The experience of the work cannot be replicated in Fiennes’ carefully composed frames and tracking shots, all intensified with a musical score lacking subtlety.
Kiefer’s work had been previously unknown to me, an advantage in that the film invites you to do discover his work and process with little commentary, aside from an interview...
- 8/15/2011
- by jpraup@gmail.com (thefilmstage.com)
- The Film Stage
When the art world had reached the conclusion that portraiture as a style of painting had played itself out, Chuck Close’s endeavors were consequently seen as antiquated. How to breathe new life into a genre that’s been a staple of every aspiring artist while still making the act of renewal to be more than just a singular effort in that direction? Chuck Close did it, mostly, in that he now regularly creates portraits based on a painstakingly arranged photograph that is then broken down into tiny segments which are then recreated with an abstract form. The resulting portraits have an unmistakable flair and it has become the style for which Chuck Close is famous, and this documentary charts, through a series of peer recounting, the steps that led up to Chuck’s revolutionary method.
Before the film delves too far into Close’s methodology, it gives a brief...
Before the film delves too far into Close’s methodology, it gives a brief...
- 9/4/2010
- by Lex Walker
- JustPressPlay.net
Once upon a time in the far age of 1992, there was an abstract expressionist painter who wished her work to remain abstract. She consented to being the subject of a documentary, yet didn't seem that interested in participating; at least not when it came to providing easily discernible context about her work.
It's a different slice from abstract artists who insist upon, or perhaps goad, their audience into the central meaning—intentional or not—behind an art piece. Joan Mitchell, interviewed here at the age of 66, at work and in her elements, does the exact opposite. She runs circles around interpretations and offers this gem in reference to art, which might as well have been said with a wave of her hand:
"The moment you put the blah blah blah on it, it destroys the whole meaning."
Having previously only known her name and remember seeing only a couple of her paintings somewhere,...
It's a different slice from abstract artists who insist upon, or perhaps goad, their audience into the central meaning—intentional or not—behind an art piece. Joan Mitchell, interviewed here at the age of 66, at work and in her elements, does the exact opposite. She runs circles around interpretations and offers this gem in reference to art, which might as well have been said with a wave of her hand:
"The moment you put the blah blah blah on it, it destroys the whole meaning."
Having previously only known her name and remember seeing only a couple of her paintings somewhere,...
- 8/25/2010
- by Arya Ponto
- JustPressPlay.net
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