What Frederick Wisemans National Gallery essentially says is that art is not eternal, its not something to be venerated, artists are only human beings with their creations basically nothing more than human artifacts, but precisely BECAUSE of that, art is an essential necessity to life, that we need art to learn how to see the world, and we need to learn how to see art in order to have some understanding about our world, our lives. And that fundamental culture is in crisis today. National Gallery is also a film about the survival and the well-keeping of such culture and an institution based on that culture, how it can sustain itself to continue to be what it must be, and how to keep the art pieces alive. Education of the audience is essential to that survival, but that certainly doesnt mean trying to brain-wash the audience to embrace some elitist culture of art lovers. Its just a little push so that they (or we) realize how little we have been seeing our world, how our visions were limited and prejudiced, prisoner of conventionalities. Conventional prejudices are also part of the art world (and our industry of cinema is no exception,if not worse) like what the artists meant misunderstood as essential to the understanding of an art piece. Well artists of course do many things for many reasons, but it doesnt necessary means they wanted to say something. In one sequence a curator explains how Rubens altered his work by changing the density of darkness by over-laying varnishes--simply to fit to the light and shade pattern of the place the painting was to be hang (a thick layer of varnishing means the painting would look darker). In other several sequences it is mentioned that oil paint become transparent over the years and a brighter spot in a Velazquez or a Rembrandt was not what was painted by the artist. Or the first long sequence of the film already was about a medieval altar painting about which the guiding person ask the audience to imagine how dark it was back then and how the painting would have looked like, all the while acknowledging that the medieval period being so overwhelmingly a religious period is hard to imagine today. And the conclusion to this series of sequences may be about Vermeer, about whose work the guiding person confirm there is always a mystery with Vermeer, that enigma adds more to the art than what the artist meant, and suggesting that the artists intention was indeed to convey the mystery and not what he wanted to say or what he meant. Art should not be object of mere adoration, nor to be consumed by some group of people who consider themselves of special knowledge or prestige as they think they understand and love and so on. Its a way to learn to see the wold differently and thats is the only reason for educating the audience. ...and hence more and more I cannot stand for instance the culture of film festivals today. they are so elitist, self-obsessed and snobbish about love or future of cinema or whatever, when its so clear they have learned anything from the movies they show. youtu.be/Hlnx-bwYOhI
Posted on: Sat, 22 Nov 2014 09:40:24 +0000
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