Documenting The Visual Arts

245 Pages·2020·6.677 MB·English

by  Roger Hallas

Documenting the Visual arts

Bringing together an international range of scholars, as well as filmmakers
and curators, this book explores the rich variety in form and content of the
contemporary art documentary.
Since their emergence in the late 1940s as a distinct genre, documentaries
about the visual arts have made significant contributions to art education, public
television, and documentary filmmaking, yet they have received little scholarly
attention from either art history or film studies. Documenting the Visual Arts brings
that attention to the fore. Whether considering documentaries about painting,
sculpture, photography, performance art, site-specific installation, or fashion,
the chapters of this book engage with the key question of intermediality: how
film can reframe other visual arts through its specific audio-visual qualities, in
order to generate new ways of understanding those arts. The essays illuminate
furthermore how art documentaries raise some of the most critical issues of
the contemporary global art world, specifically the discourse of the artist, the
dynamics of documentation, and the visuality of the museum. Contributors
discuss documentaries by filmmakers such as Frederick Wiseman, Lynn Hershman
Leeson, Jia Zhangke, and Trisha Ziff, and about artists such as Michael Heizer, Ai
Weiwei, Do Ho Suh, and Marina Abramovic´.
This collection of new international and interdisciplinary scholarship on visual
art documentaries is ideal for students and scholars of visual arts and filmmaking,
as well as art history, arts education, and media studies.
Roger Hallas is Associate Professor of English at Syracuse University. He is the
author of Reframing Bodies: AIDS, Bearing Witness, and the Queer Moving Image
(2009) and the co-editor of The Image and the Witness: Trauma, Memory, and Visual
Culture (2007).

Documenting the
Visual arts
Edited by Roger Hallas
First published 2020
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 selection and editorial matter, Roger Hallas; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Roger Hallas to be identified as the author of the editorial material,
and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
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now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
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registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hallas, Roger, 1970- editor.
Title: Documenting the visual arts / edited by Roger Hallas.
Description: London ; New York : Routledge, 2020. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019033567 (print) | LCCN 2019033568 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781138565999 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138565982 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781315123301 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Documentary films--History and criticism. | Art and motion
pictures.
Classification: LCC PN1995.9.D6 D5824 2020 (print) | LCC PN1995.9.D6
(ebook) | DDC 070.1/8--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019033567
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019033568
ISBN: 978-1-138-56599-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-56598-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-12330-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Swales & Willis, Exeter, Devon, UK
contents
List of figures vii
Acknowledgements ix
List of contributors x
Introduction 1
Roger Hallas
Part i
historical foundations 21
1 Henri Storck’s Le Monde de Paul Delvaux and Pygmalionist cinema 23
Steven Jacobs
2 A sculptor’s life on screen: John Read’s film portraits
of Henry Moore for BBC television 34
Katerina Loukopoulou
Part ii
representing the artist 51
3 A portrait of the artist as automaton: creativity, labor, and
technology in Tim’s Vermeer 53
Stephan Boman
4 Flesh and vision: Jia Zhangke’s Still Life and Dong 68
Amy Villarejo
vi Contents
5 Globalizing Ai Weiwei 82
Luke Robinson
Part iii
Questions of documentation 97
6 Film and the performance of Marina Abramovic´: documentary
as documentation 99
Chanda Laine Carey
7 Gained in translation: site-specificity in recent documentaries 113
Vera Brunner-Sung
8 The wages of !W.A.R.: activist historiography and the feminist
art movement 128
Theresa L. Geller
Part iV
museum gazing 143
9 When art exhibition met cinema exhibition: live
documentary and the remediation of the museum experience 145
Annabelle Honess Roe
10 Museum movies, documentary space, and the transmedial 160
Asbjørn Grønstad
11 “Seeing too much is seeing nothing”: the place of fashion
within the documentary frame 174
Matthew J. Fee
Part V
art worlds and film worlds 189
12 Challenging the hierarchies of photographic history 191
Trisha Ziff, interviewed by Roger Hallas
13 On the history (and future) of art documentaries
and the film program at the National Gallery of Art 205
Margaret Parsons, interviewed by Marsha Gordon
Index 221
Figures
2.1 Advertisement for the 16mm print of Henry Moore, as published
in Art News Annual 53, no. 7 (1955). 40
2.2 Henry Moore: The Language of Sculpture (John Read, 1974). 43
2.3 Henry Moore: The Language of Sculpture (John Read, 1974). 44
2.4 Henry Moore: The Language of Sculpture (John Read, 1974). 44
3.1 David Hockney tracing a live projection within a camera obscura.
David Hockney’s Secret Knowledge (Randall Wright, 2002). 56
3.2 Tim Jenison painting within his optical apparatus. Tim’s Vermeer
(Teller, 2013). 62
3.3 Jenison’s perspective as he copies the image reflected in his shaving
mirror. Tim’s Vermeer (Teller, 2013). 64
3.4 Jenison using a computer to analyze perspective cues in Vermeer’s
The Music Lesson. Tim’s Vermeer (Teller, 2013). 65
4.1 The director’s signature. Still Life (Jia Zhangke, 2006). 70
4.2 Workers’ flesh. Still Life (Jia Zhangke, 2006). 72
4.3 Liu Xiaodong painting Han Sanming. Dong (Jia Zhangke, 2006). 73
4.4 Detail of painting by Liu Xiaodong. Dong (Jia Zhangke, 2006). 77
5.1 Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (Alison Klayman, 2012). 89
5.2 Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (Alison Klayman, 2012). 89
5.3 Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (Alison Klayman, 2012). 91
6.1 Seven Easy Pieces (Babette Mangolte, 2007). 105
6.2 The Artist is Present (Matthew Akers, 2012). 107
6.3 The Space In Between: Marina Abramovic´ in Brazil
(Marco del Fiol, 2016). 110
7.1 Fallen Star: Finding Home (Vera Brunner-Sung and Valerie
Stadler, 2016). Courtesy of the Artist and Stuart Collection,
University of California, San Diego. © Do Ho Suh. 119
viii Figures
7.2 Fallen Star: Finding Home (Vera Brunner-Sung and Valerie
Stadler, 2016). Courtesy of the Artist and Stuart Collection,
University of California, San Diego. © Do Ho Suh. 120
7.3 Levitated Mass (Doug Pray, 2013). 123
7.4 Interview subjects in multiple shots from Levitated Mass. 124
8.1 !Women Art Revolution (Lynn Hershman Leeson, 2010). 129
8.2 !Women Art Revolution (Lynn Hershman Leeson, 2010). 137
8.3 !Women Art Revolution (Lynn Hershman Leeson, 2010). 139
9.1 Presenter Tim Marlow discusses the exhibition’s layout with
curator Luke Syson. Leonardo Live (Phil Grabsky, 2011). 150
9.2 The British Museum’s Twitter feed emphasizes the liveness of their
forthcoming Pompeii Live broadcast on June 18, 2013. 155
10.1 National Gallery (Frederick Wiseman, 2014). 165
10.2 The Great Museum (Johannes Holzhausen, 2014). 168
10.3 Museum Hours (Jem Cohen, 2013). 171
10.4 Museum Hours (Jem Cohen, 2013). 171
11.1 The First Monday in May (Andrew Rossi, 2016). 181
11.2 The First Monday in May (Andrew Rossi, 2016). 182
11.3 The First Monday in May (Andrew Rossi, 2016). 182
11.4 The First Monday in May (Andrew Rossi, 2016). 185
12.1 Chevolution (Trisha Ziff, 2008). 194
12.2 The Mexican Suitcase (Trisha Ziff, 2011). 195
12.3 The Man Who Saw Too Much (Trisha Ziff, 2015). 199
12.4 Witkin & Witkin (Trisha Ziff, 2017). 202
13.1 Poster for the first Films on Art program at the National Gallery
of Art, Washington, DC, 1979. Courtesy of the National Gallery
of Art. 206
13.2 De Artificiali Perspectiva or Anamorphosis (The Brothers Quay and
Roger Cardinal, 1991). 211
13.3 Parabeton: Pier Luigi Nervi and Roman Concrete (Heinz Emigholz, 2012).
Courtesy of Grasshopper Film. 217
acknowleDgements
I would like to express my warmest gratitude to all the contributors for their rich
ideas and rigorous scholarship that brought this collection together. Additionally,
Steven Cohan, Matthew J. Fee, Marsha Gordon, Frances Guerin, Chris Hanson,
Will Scheibel, Shawn Shimpach, and Patricia Zimmermann all gave sage advice
along the way. I am very grateful for the research leave supported by the College
of Arts and Sciences and the Humanities Center at Syracuse University, which
enabled me to develop this project. I would also like to thank the College for
providing subvention to support the publication of this book. I thank T.J.West for
indexing, Andrew Melvin for copy-editing, and Natalie Thompson for managing
the production of the book. Natalie Foster and Jennifer Vennall at Routledge have
both been incredibly helpful, supportive, and patient throughout this process.