Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Rirkrit Tiravanija has made a career as an "artist" by copying early happenings and performance art and re-staging them with multi-ethnic flavors. Now he's made a movie. I'm less interested for the moment in whether or not it's any good -it might be very good- than by the fact that it's been reviewed by a film critic.

Christian Marclay's career has had a similar arc, though he's white European; he's re-formatted mid-20th century sound art for the age of the turntable and the remix. His work is sometimes charming, derivative but educated, and often not. Guitar Drag is an exception, though mostly if you understand that it was made in response to the murder of James Byrd Jr., something referred to in early reviews but now mentioned less and less.
I haven't seen The Clock. It sounds like a nice piece (here also reviewed by a film critic).

At MoMA, there are two floors dedicated to painting and sculpture.
The 5th Floor, Painting and Sculpture I, covers (roughly) 1880 to 1940
The 4th floor, Painting and Sculpture II, covers 1940 to 1980
The second floor, Contemporary Galleries, includes all media -works the curators choose to categorize as "art" and not by medium (Cindy Sherman is an "artist" not a "photographer") from 1980 to the present.

Painting and Sculpture I now includes a room of films by D.W. Griffith.
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Too recent to call it a repeat, call it a reprise: La Grande Illusion

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