The Academy and then Avant-garde: A probelmatic romance

What have been the major critiques of the "academicization" of the American avant-garde film? Give your own response to these critiques in relation to the films and readings from our class.

There seem to be many specific criticisms on the “academicization” of American avant-garde. However the prevailing sentiment seems to more a subject of nostalgia. After all, avant-garde cinema is about stepping outside the normal means, about leaving narrative structures behind and in many cases, the democratization of art. If these types of cinema exist within the world of the academic then the films give up a piece of their very essence. However, as the writer of this article notes more than once, it is the academy that has held the community of the avant-garde together and academy for which the future of avant-garde will rest. Let’s take a look the some the more specific criticism made mention of in the article.

Cannon Formation: This problem is one I understand and can relate to. The writer writes than only certain filmmakers, like Andy Warhol, get mentioned while others are left out. He mentions how in the process of canonization many important things are left out, such as the contribution of women. In my personal opinion, even in the study of the main stream cinema many important figures of cinema are set aside so that we may closer study something else. For example, if I watch Citizen Kane or anything else in the oeuvre of Orson Wells again I may spontaneously combust.

Freedom of Expression: Does a university setting limit the artistic freedom of those who would wish to study, to teach or create controversial anti-establishment art? Those who criticize this method of academicization would say so. I, a student who recently watched defecation on screen, would have to disagree.

Political Irrelevance: This is bit confusing to me. Basically the criticism is that the academy will over politicize a film and thus render it outside of its original aesthetic intentions. In other words by making the films into something they are not it makes them unapproachable and maybe artless. But as the writer points out many of the films simply aren’t approachable and make little to no sense to even the trained viewer, without a bit of academic and critical help in the explanation of their very existence.

In relation to this class I can not help but note that the very existence of this class is contradictory to many of the artists and critics in the avant-grade movement. However, at the same time I would never have considered or bothered to learn about much of the film we have watched in this class without the class. I might even brush them off as flawed attempts for shock value or narrative homicide, but with scholarly observation the true meaning of many of the films can be found.

To sum the articles up and my agreement with them is one simple phrase my grandfather uses every day; “Don’t bite that hand that feeds you.” Without the academy I am not sure avant-garde could sustain itself. Yes, sometimes the real world forces avant-garde film makers to bend their moral limits and accept some kinds of government funds, or worse, the impute of the evil corporation, but this is sadly enough, just the nature of the beast.

Art and Objecthood (Week Eight, I think)

I am not quite sure if this is the post from last week or for this week, but here we go. The question.

The answer I want to propose is this: the literalist espousal of objecthood amounts to nothing more than a plea for a new genre of theatre; and theatre is now the negation of art. Literalist sensibility is theatrical because, to begin with, it is concerned with the actual circumstances in which the beholder encounters literalist work."

If this is Fried's answer, what is his question? Why does he object to what he calls "objecthood," "theatricality," and "literalist" work?

To quote the article the question asked is "What is it about objecthood as projected and hypothesized by the literalist that makes it , if only from the perspective of recent modernist painting, antithetical to art?"

Before moving forward let's look at what exactly the question even means. The writer mentions that to him objecthood is "non-art." Painting, not from a literalist perspective, is too restrictive because it is limited to one plane, therefore with three-dimensionality it becomes something more likely to please the literalist, but ultimately it too fails.

Still I confess this whole article causes nothing much more than confusion. However considering what I just said allow me to explain it in a manner that I think is close to what the article is trying to say.

Because literalist work is so caught up in the way it is presented and received, it is less art and more theatre. Although not necessarily theatre which is art, but the showyness, the literalist ability to evoke something in viewers that is like the way theatre is perceived. So when you go to a gallery and see art, literalist art I mean, you are actually going to experience something, instead of actually, you know, seeing art.

So if this is the answer and the question. There still remains another question. What does he say is his problem with this system? Well I think, even though he spends what I feel are entirely too many pages to say this, basically if literalist art exists to be showy and not to be art, then it is needlessly at war with other art and isn't art.

Okay so, because I am having a bit of trouble explaining it, allow to me to pull an example from own life and in some ways make a point in favor of this writers. When I got the chance to go to the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, Spain I recall being very excited to see great works of modernist art. The ones I recall most were these very large circular pieces of metal. They were all in a spiral shapes and they were all amazing. You couldn't help but be drawn to them in a truly theatrical way. However, in spite of the power of the emotions that overwhelmed me, I mostly felt an overly serious sense of "neat." But the whole experience for me, was somewhat, artless. Not detached in any way, but theatrical.

Thus art, according to this author, is the opposite of "objecthood." Objecthood then, is "non-art." So strangely a correct, overly simplified summary of this article could be. The opposite of art is "non-art." This is somewhat amusing to me. And like always, even though I think the writer has very valid points, I can't help but be weary of anyone who goes out of there way to define art as a particular thing.

Art is, as the old adage goes "in the eye of the beholder." Hmm...does that statement, as I have often wondered, sound hypocritical?

The Lives of Perfomers

I should have written this earlier, before we discussed it in class. However, I am going to try and make this post as organic as possible and say what I was I was thinking about this film when I first finished watching it. It was a profound relief, like breathing again after an asthma attack or finding water in an endless desert. At last the long and arduous process of watching the film was over.

If The Lives of Performers is art posing as science, than as science it still infuriates me to some small degree. In other words, even now upon understanding the intentions of her film it seems more like an experiment than a completed actual film.

Now, having read all the articles about it and having discussed it in small group I believe my initial issue with the film as being too much like science was a fair criticism. After all, like a great deal of those things that are avant-garde, the films are like tests. And the outside of that, as we discussed in class I also think the film failed on its own terms.

It wasn't the worst film I have ever seen (Crash holds that very special distinction) but I would certainly never want to endure it again.

I don't doubt the infamous imdb guy's claim that the audience walked out. I don't walk out on movies, ever, but I could certainly see why someone would.