Re: Cropping Art -- where is the outrage?

From: Cari Machet (email suppressed)
Date: Fri Sep 22 2006 - 17:08:14 PDT


On 9/22/06, James Kreul <email suppressed> wrote:
>
> > However, I am more annoyed the practice of not noting on-screen or in
> > voiceover that the footage is in fact a work by the artist (or in some
> cases
> > another artist like Jonas Mekas or Marie Mencken) until the final
> credits,
> > if at all. In these cases, viewers don't even know they are seeing a
> clip
> > from an artist's work instead of say, a home movie from the period, or
> 16mm
> > news footage. All these different sources tend to be equalized by the
> > documentary editing process, and I find this to be more insulting and
> > misleading than the cropping itself. They should be given equal weight
> to
> > any other artwork shown in a documentary that is ostensibly about art --
> if
> > paintings and sculptures are noted as such, so should an artist's films.
> >
> > Ed H.
>
>
> I think Scorsese's Dylan documentary did a good job identifying sources
> like
> Mekas (but my memory may be fuzzy),

yes they did an amazing job
but he knows alot about film
doc's can sometimes even attempt ignoring the medium

but you're right that this is a big
> problem with the Burns doc.
>
> There's a sequence which cross cuts between footage of Warhol preparing a
> Susan Sontag (I believe) Screen Test with footage from a Screen Test (or
> possibly two distinct Tests, I'm not sure). That cutting transforms the
> sequence into a kind of continuity sequence, as if all the sources were of
> one piece. I recall wanting to know the source for the non-Screen Test
> material...and as I recall the credits were in the annoying split screen
> format so it didn't even occur to me to wade through them and try to
> figure
> it out at the end.
>
>
yay the split screen w/ the credits was annoying
i am going to the film forum screening so i get 2 see them there -
hopefully
i'll let u know what's up
oh or u could order the dvd :[]

what i was outraged about as well as the cropping
was the spouting of andy as god propaganda
as if he just came out of nowhere like jesus
discussing his work w/ out referencing art history dada fluxus
let alone johns and rauschenberg (hell david smith)
unethical
he was riding a wave he wasn't THE wave
also some of the analysis of his persona
that by choosing to not have a persona he invented a persona made of nothing
- not logical - not possible
being vapidly detached IS a persona
- closer to the trueth was drella -
i also had problems w/
film analysis of sado-masochism in the haircut esp.
power stuff blah blah
did andy say that? - i would say it is projection
i am surprised they didn't falicize the empire state bldg.
they did get something right he saw absolute beauty in everything
that is what artists do (or are capable of doing)
and the whole thing about the films not being penetratable
or penatrating u
was lack of knowledge about film viewing activities
(comparison to hollowood -
yawn sleepy now)

unlike everyone in the film
i love his reaction to the factory guy dancing out of the window to his
death
(para)
- i wish we would have been there to film it -
why are aspects of life considered sacred fr: the camera?

c

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