Joseph Koerner


Back to Sauerländer in 1996.

It was a mistake to use his own voice. Using an actor would have given it more distance, allowing us to hear the text he wrote performed to match the care in the writing. Art is artifice. He calls it a visual essay, but the images are illustrations: they augment the text rather than the other way around. It's a historical and autobiographic essay set to images and music. It was edited by a professional. I'm criticizing is as an artwork, the construction, crafting of an object, a thing of one sort of another, but the essay is lovely, and the result is moving. He's trying to do something.

Bosch and Bruegel: From Enemy Painting to Everyday Life

Colin Eisler told me years ago to stop doing what I was doing and "do what you want".
He'd become a nihilist; he knew the past was being forgotten and decided there was no use trying to be serious anymore.
The point is to work with what you have.

I would've liked to meet Sauerländer.  I'd like to meet Koerner.