Re: Gabriel by Agnes Martin

From: Cari Machet (email suppressed)
Date: Tue Mar 24 2009 - 20:55:49 PDT


i have seen and heard such comments about the camera work
i find it so massively humorous

you did make a very specific point that did not come to my mind
that there was a development of a brakhage aesthetic by shear volume
(through his will)
i have heard this before about some painter
he got his work out there
therefore he was known
(though his work was crap)
and we know about multiple paintings/films... being done over and over
or the same painting/film...
which i think is sort of boring or lacks energy
with brakhage it was different he did different things but yes has motifs
identifiers
your idea that we 'validated' the work is so interesting to me
and so much a part of what i am questioning
what i also find interesting about this idea of volume is duchamp
he did so little work
and often lacked repetitive motif
also his exalted relationship with playing chess
(ie the work of the mind)

that i have read very specific scenarios in posts by fred whereby brakhage
was criticized makes me happy - that there were people for him to dialogue
with must have been stimulating for him

cari machet
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Skype carimachet - 646-652-6434
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On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 3:41 PM, Jorge Lorenzo Flores Garza <
email suppressed> wrote:

> This is all very interesting. I question a lot of this biased issues
> myself. I agree in a way with Cari. Pertaining Brakhage I think that a lot
> of what we appreciate from him comes basically from him saying and writing
> how right he was in doing work like that. And that's probably what is so
> great about new achievements like his, because we get to see things
> differently. If someone from the Hollywood tradition looks at a Brakhage
> film, they will most probably say that it is bad camerawork, and I mean
> really bad. But we can learn to appreciate it because we open up our way of
> seeing through the work. We can see different aspects that wouldn't be
> there if shot in the traditional narrative Hollywood way. That is exactly
> what Brakhage was after. But it is very interesting to me that in some
> circles or in some epochs, that was considered wrong but in others it is
> genius only after we learn how to see things in such a way. I am not saying
> that Martin's work is great, I haven't seen the piece, but I do think we can
> very easily have biased opinions depending on the filmmaker, especially when
> it comes to Brakhage and people like that. We probably appreciate her
> painting the way we do because we base our opinion on earlier example and
> she was working in a particular tradition knowned to us. Had she developed
> more film projects we might have come up with a way of validating it by
> noticing certain aspects that are explored constantly and make us look at it
> in a different way. But she only made one film. Had Brakhage done only one
> film it might have been forgotten and classified as bad work since there was
> no development of the aesthetic.
> I guess I am not saying anything in particular, just interested in the
> questioning that arose from the conversations.
>
> Jorge Lorenzo
>
>
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__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.