Cinema is Dead, Long Live the

Cinema
Celebrating 100 years of cinema
Art and film have a troubled and incestuous history. Orson Welles, for
example, may have attained auteur status with innovative and
revolutionary cinematic aesthetics while struggling within the
daunting constraints of the ollywood studio system. !ut while
Citi"en #ane $1%&1' is often cited as the most important film ever
made, Welles was punished for his transgressions during the editing
of his next feature (he )agnificent Ambersons $1%&*', which +#O re,
cut while he was away filming in -outh America. )ore recently, visual
artists li.e +obert /ongo and 0avid -alle have attempted to migrate
from the gallery into the multiplex, emerging from their garrets 1ust
long enough to savage the public with their touristic 1aunts into
commercial filmma.ing. !ut in many ways it2s Andy Warhol who
stands as the totemic mar.er between these two worlds. With his
eight hour film epic 3mpire $1%4&', a single, static shot of the 3mpire
-tate !uilding, Warhol brought the art world of 5ew 6or. crashing
into the bac.lots of ollywood, transforming the 7actory into a
dream factory. Warhol wanted to become a machine, and with his
purchase of a 14mm !olex movie camera in 1%48 he got his chance.
(he artist became a filmma.er.
With its fusion of cult pop auteurship, the ethos of experimental
filmma.ing, and a trenchant aesthetic minimalism, 3mpire is a fitting
establishing shot for the /os Angeles )useum of Contemporary Art2s
celebration of the centenary of cinema in its elaborate exhibition,
9all of )irrors: Art and 7ilm -ince 1%&;2. (he show is one of a spate
of li.e,minded attempts to explore the relationship between cinema
and the visual arts this past year. (he list includes the ayward
<allery2s 9-pellbound2 and 9100 =ahre #ino2 at the #unsthaus >?rich,
as well as single artist shows such as Chris )ar.er2s -ilent )ovie
$1%%&,;' and Chantal A.erman2s 023st $1%%;'. !ut 9all of )irrors2
has the special privilege of having been generated in the belly of the
beast itself. (hroughout the gallery Warhol, Weegee, Cindy -herman
and -alvador 0ali mingle with the li.es of itchcoc., Cronenberg,
<odard and Welles in a 1uxtaposition of the contemplative @uality of
static art with the dynamism of the moving image. !ut the
overarching conundrum that purportedly lin.s all of the filmma.ers
and artists in the exhibition is one of ontological proportions: 9what is
, or was , the cinemaA2
As unspecific as the art student2s perennial introductory @uery 9what
is artA2, the @uestion is, strangely enough, the best answered one in
the entire exhibition. !ecause what becomes abundantly clear $if
almost symptomatically' throughout all of these exhibitions is not so
much the hybridisation of film and the visual arts, but rather the
increasingly apparent gaps between media. 7ilmma.ers stumble
when attempting to manufacture static artB visual artists trip over
cinematic land,mines when crossing into film. !eyond this, the other
startling truth that comes to mind when loo.ing at these exhibitions
is how incredibly seductive film really is. When confronted by Welles2
Citi"en #ane, for example, iroshi -ugimoto2s blac. and white
photographs of empty movie theatres wither away li.e the witch in
the Wi"ard of O" $1%8%'. 3ven in Warhol2s wor., the 7actory screen
tests of 3die -edgwic. and <erard )alanga radiate a decidedly
different .ind of fascination from the sil.,screen paintings of )arilyn,
)arlon, /i" or (roy. (he reasons for this are impossible to pin down,
but the fact remains that the world has roc.ed to a rhythm of *&
frames per second for over a century and hasn2t loo.ed bac..
0oes this explain the recent proliferation of moving images in the
gallery spaceA /et2s face it, the relationship of film to visual art is not
a new phenomenon. (he two cultural spheres have been intimately
imbricated at least since the early *0s when the chiaroscuro
techni@ues of )ax +einhardt2s expressionist theatre found their way
into the repertoire of 7.W. )urnau, 7rit" /ang and other Weimar
filmma.ers. Add a dose of fascist persecution to the mixture and you
get the mass emigration to ollywood that resulted in the birth of
film noir, that hybrid child of <ermanic angst and American pulp
fiction. What2s new in the current artistic climate is something @uite
different: an institutional desire to frame films as ob1ets d2art. Cn part
this has been inspired by the increasing importance that the medium
of film has come to play in the wor. of contemporary artists:
practitioners as diverse as -igmar Dol.e, -tan 0ouglas and )atthew
!arney employ the moving image as a primary means of conveying
their message. Cn a world where artists coexist with screen stars and
pop music icons in the pages of Cnterview, Eogue and +olling -tone,
film provides a sexy street,cred to the visual artist, while the gallery
space offers a culturally edifying aura to the resumF of the
commercial filmma.er.
!ut all is not what it seems in the land of special effects and 1ump
cuts, and concretising the cinematic within the gallery space is not
always static,free. (his is amply illustrated in 9-pellbound2 which
resonates with the furious sounds of the box office as much as art
chatter. (erry <illiam2s installation for his film (welve )on.eys
$1%%;', for example , a wall of filing cabinets placed in front of a bac.
pro1ection of the film , serves as nothing less than an enormous piece
of mar.eting. +egardless of what one thin.s of the film $or of its far
more provocative progenitor /a =etFe $1%4*' by Chris )ar.er',
<illiam2s attempt at forging (welve )on.eys into a gallery
installation failed miserably, and its booming soundtrac. added
insult to in1ury by bleeding !ruce Willis2 voice into the surrounding
gallery space. !ut we can at least be than.ful that <illiam2s
contribution to 9-pellbound2 was only offensive in a commercial sort
of way. Deter <reenaway, on the other hand, saw fit to drag the
spectator into the recesses of his own maniacal ego in an installation
which attempted to rival the complex mise,en,scGnes of his films: live
actors in glass vitrinesB a cacophonous musical scoreB an epilepsy,
inducing light showB and an empty wall of chairs labelled
9AH0C35C32. Derhaps Clement <reenberg was right after all when he
suggested that each art form should find its own "ero degree.
!y contrast, the crossover pro1ects of filmma.ers such as Chris
)ar.er in his -ilent )ovie $commissioned by the Wexner Center for
the arts, and included in 9all of )irrors2' and Chantal A.erman in
the film and video installation of her feature 023st succeed in this tas.
of translation by stic.ing closer to their shooting scripts, so to spea..
!oth these wor.s insist on the cinematic, refusing to compromise the
fundamental precepts of filmic experience $montage, movement in
time, mise,en,scGne' to the constraints imposed by the gallery space,
yet both do so by relying on other technologies. )ar.er overcomes
these limitations by employing video and computer technology, while
A.erman actually pro1ects 023st as a film in the gallery along with an
installation which deconstructs the film into its constituent trac.ing
shots through 3astern 3urope on a ban. of video monitors. Cronically
perhaps, the one wor. in 9-pellbound2 that actually answers the
ontological @uestion of cinema as posed by )oCA2s 9all of )irrors2,
and holds its ground with )ar.er and A.erman, is 0ouglas <ordon2s
*& our Dsycho $1%%*', a video installation which pro1ects
itchcoc.2s film at three frames per second, free"ing the cinematic
grammar of this @uintessential example of auteurism in a gelatinous
petri dish of filmic deconstruction.
!ut even in these best,case scenarios, should we so readily applaud
the blurring of boundaries between the artist2s studio and the film
studioA (he Ctalian 7uturist )arinetti once called the museum a
sepulchre and an ossuary for dead art. (he worst cases of this
crossover phenomenon conform to this model by deploying a blatant
nostalgia for a culture of film , both commercial and experimental ,
that may no longer exist. Ct2s this @uestion of the potential death of
cinema as an art form that underlies all these exhibitions and which is
foregrounded in )oCA2s @uestion 9what is , or was , the cinemaA2 As a
spectator, however, the case is clear. Cn a cultural climate where filmic
debacles of epic proportions such as Waterworld $1%%;' and
Cut(hroat Csland $1%%;' wea.en the cinematic gene pool by radiating
their over,budget isotopes, films li.e Andy Warhol2s 3mpire still offer
a necessary corrective shoc. therapy. (he cinema is dead, long live
the cinema.
Douglas Fogle
About this article
Dublished on 04I0%I%4!y Douglas Fogle