Film, Fiction, and Biography

I’ve been fascinated by cinema since I was young. It’s unquestionably the dominant art form of our culture and I often feel as though my own paintings wish to create a filmic quality in their abstraction.

In the spirit of that fascination, I decided to create some film lists during this pandemic, in an effort to inspire others. I’m not a film historian, and I bring my own biases to bear on these lists, nor are these lists intended to be definitive in any sense of the word. Think of these as cinematic mixed tapes (or playlists if you prefer).

I hope to both expose you to films you may not be aware of as well as get you to reexamine films you may be familiar with. The lists are curated in the same way I used to curate art exhibits; there are rules I apply to the themes beyond their genre which I will describe with every b-weekly list. My choices are based on artistic credibility. Each film adheres to the principals of great cinema, writing, directing, acting, production design, and cinematography. I endeavor to include a few choices that have been little seen or have been underappreciated. All of these films defy convention or break new ground.

I hope you enjoy these lists and I look forward to your feedback and thoughts.

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Biopics

Film biographies have become all too common and more often than not they fall into obvious story arcs of the rags to riches to drug abuse to death scenario. The films on this list all avoid cliché even when they retain a familiar story arc. I also avoided films where the lead actor was the dominant focus, even if their work was critical to the film. There are many good biopics out there like Ray, or the most recent Judy, that although well intentioned become weighted by an overwhelming singular performance that causes you to lose sight of the other aspects of the story.

La Vie en Rose

If you’ve ever heard Edith Piaf sing Non, Je ne regrette rien (No, I do not regret anything) then you understand the power of her voice and how she captivated a nation with it. Marion Cotillard’s portrayal of Piaf in La Vie en Rose delivers a stunning performance. Directed by Olivier Dahan who also co-wrote the screenplay with Isabelle Sobelman, the film is wonderfully shot and avoids falling into cliché despite its now all too familiar rags to riches plot. The music is all original Piaf which makes it all the more potent.

I’m Not There

I think I was nearly 40 before the genius of Bob Dylan hit me. Looking back on that revelatory day when I listened to a radio marathon of his life’s work, it seems impossible it took me so long. He has always been enigmatic to many, and more so due to his continuous evolution as an artist. I’ve always been a fan of the director Todd Haynes who brings wit, and sensitivity to his characters and has always managed to portray music in a thoughtful way. I’m Not There is an inventive, delightful melange of multiple actors—Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Ben Whishaw, Marcus Carl Franklin, and Richard Gere—portraying the multiple personalities of Bod Dylan. It’s a tribute to Dylan and the American songbook in the best possible way.

12 Years A Slave

Steve McQueen, the director of 12 Years A Slave is an artist first, and film maker second. He rose to prominence winning the Turner Prize in 1999 for his video art. He has always brought forth a connection to body and art, forcing the viewer to confront his filmic experiences in very real, tactile ways. This film could be considered brutal except for the fact that in America our persistent need to repress the realities of slavery only makes it so. The beach landing in My Private Ryan is equally brutal regarding human horrors, but somehow more palatable because it is within the context of white history. Chiwetel Ejiofor is extraordinary in his ability to place any viewer into the shoes of Solomon Northup. Sean Bobbitt’s cinematography of the deep south makes you believe you’re actually in 1841. This film is of course, particularly poignant given the current Black Lives Matter protests.

Capote

It’s still hard for me to believe we lost Philip Seymour Hoffman, the greatest actor of his generation. His acting in Capote is in perfect sync with Catherine Keener (who plays Harper Lee) and shows off what made him such a great actor, his ability to play even iconic figures in an understated, human way. The production design is wonderful in its juxtaposition of Capote’s NYC Mad Men like life, and the barren farmland of small-town Kansas. Bennet Miller the director wisely lets the actors do what they do best. The writing is also exceptional interweaving class, sexuality, race, and culture into what on the surface starts off as a detective story.

Raging Bull

Raging Bull is the film that made Robert De Niro and Martin Scorcese legends in filmmaking, both a the absolute height of their powers in this film. The film accomplishes a rare perspective on a very old and very controversial sport, boxing. As Joyce Carol Oates said; “To watch boxing closely, and seriously, is to risk moments of what might be called animal panic—a sense not only that something very ugly is happening but that, by watching it, one is an accomplice.” The same could be said for watching Raging Bull. One of the rare films where violence becomes poetry and the sport becomes more compelling than the story of the man. It’s also a clear lens on the undercurrent of white male privilege.

American Splendor

Speaking of extraordinary actors, Paul Giamatti was made for the role of Harvey Pekar, the late comic book writer who the comic book series of the same name. In an age when Marvel has its own film studio, this film is a revelation and accidentally predicts the resurgence of the form. I love American Splendor because it elevates the beauty in the mundane suffering of everyday life. It celebrates oddity and eccentricity. Hope Davis is the perfect foil to Giamatti as his third wife Joyce Brabner. The interplay of Krumb’s original drawings and the understated cinematography of Cleveland makes this film a real jewel.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Le Scaphandre et le Papillon) is based on the biography of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the subject of the film. Bauby was the editor of French Elle magazine and before his unfortunate accident what you would call a playboy. If ever a painting was made into film, this would be it. Julian Schnabel the famous NY painter directs with a visual flare that perfectly maps to the experience of its lead character. Mathieu Amalric stars in what is probably his best acting. A visually stunning and emotionally powerful film that leaves you realizing just how precious life is.

Coal Miner’s Daughter

Before the form in American cinema became a cliché Coal Miner’s Daughter established the biopic form. It closed out the decade of the 70’s with it’s gritty, real-life characters that owe’s tribute to films like Deliverance, and McCabe and Mrs Miller, when films were made as art not as marketing campaigns. Sissy Spacek deservedly won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Loretta Lynn, and is supported by exceptional acting by Tommy Lee Jones, Beverly D’Angelo, and the late great drummer from The Band, Levon Helm. Michael Apted’s directing is tight and unvarnished. It’s a window into Kentucky Appalachia, and the realities of American poverty.

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters

This film has often been referred to as the greatest biopic nobody has seen, and that’s a shame. It is truly a masterpiece and unlike any other film you’ll watch in this genre. Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters abstractly captures the life of the larger-than-life Japanese artist Yukio Mishima. At times surreal, perverse, and violent, it mirrors the extraordinary isolated life of its subject. Written and directed by the brilliant Paul Schrader with a score by none other than Philip Glass it is truly a wonder to behold.

Frontier Ghosts

A REVIEW OF THE REVENANT

“We had seen God in His splendors, heard the text that Nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of man.” ― Ernest Shackleton

There is a surprising amount of water in Alejandro Iñárritu’s The Revenant. The film begins with water and ends with water. Water is the central metaphor for what it is to be human. Humanity and nature can be both fluid and an unstoppable force, soft and hard. The power of The Revenant lies not in its unrelenting fury, but in its subtle grasp of an uncaring universe.

No one and no thing is spared from an unwashed treatment in this film. Nature is as unforgiving as humanity. Native Americans are as brutal as the Europeans and Americans. There is betrayal and compassion in nearly equal measure. The Revenant lays bare, in sweeping cinematic meditations and succinct episodes of violence the experience of the earliest settlement of the American west. It may be hard for us to grasp the unknown rawness that was the Dakota territory in 1823, or for that matter America. In 1820 Maine, yes Maine, became the 23rd state in the Union. After the Missouri Compromise of that same year, declaring state’s rights over Federal dictate, fur trappers and settlers poured into the Missouri river region.

Although filmed in Canada, Montana and South America, The Revenant is based on a story of the fur trapper Hugh Glass whose party, the Henry & Ashley Company (Rocky Mountain Fur Trade Company in the film) was attacked by Arikara (Ree) indians while trapping in the upper Missouri river in South Dakota. Soon after Glass splits off with the remaining party of trappers to travel overland in order to deliver their haul and escape the rath of the Arikara indians. Shortly into the journey, Glass stumbles upon a Grizzly mother who ferociously defends her cubs with Glass ending up the recipient of near-death wounds. The remainder of the film is the harrowing tale of Glass’ determination in the face of punishing odds to find his way back to Fort Henry and the rest of the fur traders. 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OfPMJQ3Bpo]

Iñárritu’s film differs substantially from what is known of the real Hugh Glass but that is unimportant to the film or the viewer. What lies at the heart of the original story and The Revenant film is a European ideology that persisted a never ending conquering of all things they deemed savage in the pursuit of wealth and territory. This is the soft underbelly of North American history. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 opened up a great swath of the American plains to settlement and began a relentless exploration that ended with the subjugation and genocide of millions of indians. Iñárritu’s story embellishment of Glass’ lust for revenge (in real life Glass forgave Fitzgerald and Bridger), provides an underpinning of darkness that matches the true story of European destruction of native tribes. Despite Glass’ heroic survival against indians, nature, a bear, the French, and even his own trappers; the lesson Iñárritu wants us to understand is this fundamental lack of European compassion. Glass is the revenant or ghost of European continental oppression. There is nothing redemptive in the history of North America and you will a similar lacking in The Revenant. In the end Iñárritu’s Glass is left trapped between dreams and reality, built on the random consequences of an unpredictable life. 

As cinema, there is little to find fault with in The Revenant. It is everything and more, that The Hateful Eight is not. Iñárritu paints violence with a delicate brush in sharp contrast to Tarrantino’s dull hatchet. Where Tarrantino embraces without question the mindless consumerist cartoon characters of our popular culture, Iñárritu  reaches back into our dark past to show us the true vision of what led us to this point in time, leaving us along in a wilderness of the mind to contemplate our shared history. Leonardo DiCaprio, is uniquely suited for the role of  Hugh Glass. DiCaprio brings a vulnerability in terms of scale that allows a wider audience to identify with him. Indeed all of the acting is at its professional best including an understated standout performance by First Nations actor Duane Howard as the Arikara leader Elk Dog.

The film pays homage to the work of Terrence Malick sans the heavy-handed spirituality, and borrows from Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man, Sydney Pollack’s Jeremiah Johnson, and Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke. Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography focuses on earth, water, and sky creating unspoken relationships between humanity and the ultimate arbiter, nature. There are extraordinary moments when crystalline snow clouds rush across tree tops as they crackle with the icy cold, or the hot breath of human or animal cloud the camera lens. The film exquisitely captures the fierce, desolate majesty of the early 19th century Louisiana Territory while avoiding an emphasis on grandeur over reality, or style over substance. Despite some sweeping vistas and breathtaking scenery, one always feels firmly planted in place, in a specific location that is witness to the smallness of humanity.

I worry American audiences inured to fake violence and accustomed to ten second cuts will find the film burdensome and as Anthony Lane of the New Yorker inaccurately stated that “the beauty has a willful air”. Despite its more than two and a half hour length, I never found it overwrought or willful. Although there is a Shackleton-like endurance to the film, it underpins the Revenant’s message of our human desire for incessant domination of nature even at our own expense. Like all great art, The Revenant is more interested in ambiguity than answers. I can’t wait to see it again, and again.

Art and the Artist

There is an age old question regarding the artist and the outcomes of that artist, namely can you despise the maker while still admiring what they made? Are there limits to that concept if the answer is yes? If the answer is no, is all art bound by its creator’s personality, and if so, what happens when the deeds of the human being have long since been forgotten but the art lives on? These questions seem to emerge more and more in an age when we are quick to judge people based on a perfidious text message or an off-handed comment that then goes viral. The diminishing privacy associated both knowingly and unknowingly around our social lives has only poured gasoline on the fire of moral boundaries. Although few traditional artists become celebrities, there work sometimes does. Few people knew who Chris Ofili was until Rudolph Giuliani decided to take issue with The Holy Virgin Mary. Aside from politicians feigning righteous indignation at artists to curry political favor, most so-called ‘blue-chip’ artists remain completely unknown by populist standards. What is known of these artists, if anything, is the product of their creativity, the art itself.

When art has an impact on a broad range of viewers it takes on a mystical association. Great art can be transcendent in it’s representations, providing the viewer with emotional responses that are otherwise the dominion of church, cosmology, philosophy or moments of extreme trauma or ecstasy.  Natural human curiosity gets the better of us and we want to delve into how such a work was created and who was responsible for moving us so. Why else would a film like Gerhard Richter Painting even be possible? Although the film grossed a tiny amount in comparison to major film releases, (a meager $242,000 in the U.S.) none the less audiences sat transfixed as a german painter was filmed squeegeeing paint on and off canvases. The studio of Francis Bacon was dismantled, walls and all, after his death in 1992 and shipped to a museum in Dublin as if it were an ancient archeological relic. In the midst of this fascination about how an artists does what he/she does, lies the inevitable cult of personality. It isn’t enough to simply witness the act of art making, there is a desire to know the person behind it. What mind could create a great work of art? What is their behavior, their loves, their desires, their politics that inevitably fuel their production? Therein lies the rub.

Over the past three decades I’ve had the opportunity to meet, interact and sometimes even indulge in robust libation with a wide range of artists from MacArthur Prize winners and internationally renowned blue chip artists to complete unknowns. Given those experiences I can say unequivocally, that there is no secret sauce to making great art. Personalities range across the gamut of human beings from inglorious to generous. I have met artists of great stature that would blend into any local hometown diner unnoticed and those that carry such idiosyncrasies it is hard to imagine how they availed themselves to the world at all. On balance I would say that most artists are perplexed as much by what they do as those that view their art. They see their art making as a strange drive within themselves that they can no more shuck off than the shape of their head. Most artists create because they have an interior urge to do so. They are driven to share, in whatever strange way, their experiences both exterior and interior, of this world through the medium of their choice. It is precisely this ubiquitous urge that can create a dissonance between the art that is made and the artist who makes it. No artist in recent memory has met with more of this turgid dissonance than Carl Andre.

An enormous retrospective of Andre’s work just closed at the temple of all things Minimalism, Dia Beacon and it drew considerable attention and derision due to the personal life of the artist being represented. The reason for this is well reported and decades old, and carries the heaviest of moral weight with it; the death of another human being.     On the evening of September 8, 1985 in Greenwich Village, New York, Ana Mendieta died by plummeting from the 34th floor of the tower in which Andre resided. The circumstances which led to her death are vague at best, particularly given the fact the only witness (or perpetrator) was Andre himself and both he and Mendieta were heavily intoxicated on champagne. Ana Mendieta was a rising star in the art world, albeit one who struggled against the shadow of Andre’s stature, her gender in a male dominated industry, and her Cuban heritage. It is precisely because of Mendieta’s heritage, gender, and politics that has attracted even greater attention to the incident, mixing with the few known facts to create a whirlpool of speculation, and passionate force. This can be heard in the Abstract Expressionist painter Howardena Pindell’s comment to a journalist just after Andre’s acquittal; “Oh, sure, I see it as totally symbolic: your life isn’t worth shit.” Thirty years on, Mendieta’s death remains a scab in the art world that reminds us of the inequality, and white upper class domination that dictates who is remember and who is forgotten. Many are wondering why, in light of the vagaries and loss of Mendieta, should Andre get such recognition now? Certainly, Dia Beacon feels as though Andre’s work is what matters and deserves, despite any whirlpool of discontent and anger about him as a person, deserved a retrospective.

Since the beginning of Carl Andre’s trial the confusion and sometimes contradictions in Andre’s portrayal of the circumstances combined with the fierce feminist community that Mendieta was a part of, has created a toxic mix of emotion. When the Dia Beacon retrospective opened, animal blood and guts were thrust upon the Manhattan location of Dia in an effort to draw attention to the still raw emotional wounds that remain with those who feel Mendieta was killed rather than fell. Although Andre was acquitted of the murder in a rare non-jury trial (he waved his right to a jury and asked that the judge be the sole decider of the outcome) many feel verdict was unjust.

When I read the plain style account Naked By The Window written by Robert Katz that wove together Andre and Mendieta’s past, as well as the known evidence and resulting trial, I felt confusion and discontent. It seemed entirely possible and plausible given Andre’s size, his level of intoxication and the volatility of his relationship with Mendieta that he could, in a moment of passion, have thrown her from his apartment window. The window sat above a hip-height (for Mendieta) radiator and it was well documented that Mendieta was terrified of heights. Making it even more difficult was Andre’s sometimes seeming bizarre behavior, sullen demeanor and his uniform of denim overalls. He went silent about the circumstances of the evening and he closed himself off from Mendieta’s family, some say in order to avoid moral judgement at a time of guilt. It took three grand juries to indict Andre to trial and the entire proceedings dragged on for three years creating an operatic arc within the tiny Soho art community that was the New York art world then. Artists like Frank Stella, a life-long friend of Andre’s still finds himself the point of criticism for immediately putting up bail for Andre when arrested. Rich white men, protecting other rich white men, the saying goes. This opera has persisted and aside from the verdict, and unresolved (and likely forever unresolved) circumstances of Mendieta’s death, it is exacerbated by the the type of work that Andre creates—Minimalism.

It has been reported that at the time of Andre’s trial, the art bar Puffy’s passed a pitcher with “CARL ANDRE DEFENSE FUND” written on it and someone put a brick in it. Minimalism remains to this day one of the more unpopular art movements, despite its universal philosophical themes. Since its inception in the 1960’s it has been derided as both overly simplistic (a tired and common argument used against art) and as a cold embrace of latent modernist principals. The fact that Andre became powerful within the art world by aligning standard construction bricks on a floor in classic geometric patterns adds to the fury against the man and his work. Like many artists of that period he is both a heavy drinker and averse to discussing the art work itself. The few times Andre has spoken about his work or art making it only adds confusion or contempt toward his personality such as, “I mean, art for art’s sake is ridiculous. Art is for the sake of one’s needs.” Position this quiet, middle-aged, wealthy, white male who was dominating the art world against the fiery, Cuban Mendieta whose work was powerfully grounded in themes of feminism, identity and mysticism and you have the perfect storm of binary fracture—women versus men, color versus white, body-centered art versus material Minimalism, outsider versus the establishment. This dynamism has muddied the waters related to Andre’s retrospective no matter what side you fall on, guilty or not guilty in terms of Carl Andre the human being. On the second to last day of the retrospective at Dia Beacon, several women artists staged an event called “CRYING; A PROTEST” where they walked amongst Andre’s works and began crying for the loss of Mendieta and her absence from the exhibition. My friend Faheem Haider, also wrote about the lack of acknowledgement of Mendieta in the retrospective and suggested that the man, Carl Andre was hiding behind the work in order to avoid responsibility. If one is responsible to universal principals, Faheem suggests, then he might feel it unnecessary to address things on a day to day scale.

The death of another human being by mysterious circumstances, especially one of such promise and creative power is incredibly difficult to anneal. The fact that Mendieta and Andre were such opposites also attracted to each other only makes the mystery and tragedy of her death more ripe and volatile. There remains the question, outside of the tragedy, of whether or not Carl Andre’s work should be given the attention inherent in a retrospective? Can the work be viewed for it’s aesthetic value outside of the conditions of Andre’s personal life? If a retrospective is warranted, despite the tragedy, is it necessary to include mention or representation of Mendieta’s work? I think it’s important to keep in mind at such contentious crossroads as these, that one of the functions of art, if it has a function at all, is to present ideas that scratch at the underlying components of our humanity. There is no right or wrong approach to that practice and much of art is oblique, raising more questions than answers. In my mind it is hard to argue against the body of work that Andre has produced in his lifetime and the contribution it has made to art as a conversation about humanity. You may hate it’s overt simplicity, its ground in the Tao Te Ching or what you perceive to be a love of modernism’s power, but the impact it has had and influence on art and everyday life is hard to deny. Minimalisms influence, for better or worse can be felt all the way down the line to the design pornography of Apple. Is it a horror that Mendieta was taken from us, no matter the circumstances so young—of course. Her voice in the art world today is much needed in a dynamic hell bent toward commodity and consumerism. The loss of her future contributions to art is a loss for all of humanity. 

L. Carl Andre, "Grecrux" (1985) - R. Ana Mendieta, "Silueta Series, Iowa" (1977)

There is a long line of art production that has been made by terrible people or born out of societies terrible in their actions. Should we condemn Mayan art or Egyptian art because of the behavior of those cultures? Should all of the armor be removed from museums throughout the world because it was created for the purposes of war, no matter how beautiful? Should On the Waterfront be permanently banned because its author, Budd Schulberg sold out others in Hollywood to the House Un-American Activities Committee, often destroying their careers? Does it make On the Waterfront any less of a powerful story? I believe it is possible to separate the local human dimensions of an artist’s life from the work of the artist. Many artists cannot explain how it is they do what they do or even how their better works came into being. Impulse, instinct, drugs, passion and every other thing that is uniquely human creates a conflagration of ideas and actions that becomes a work of art. Artists often refer to it as the happy accident. When the outcome of that is something that can move us either in anger, disgust or in ecstasy and joy, the artist has done their job, even if that artist themselves is lousy at living.

One way that Dia Beacon could have dealt with the emotionally charged atmosphere surrounding Carl Andre better, would have been to dedicate space and energy to a dual retrospective of Mendieta’s work. The fact that her work was an offshoot related to Minimalism could have been creatively curated in a way that both recognized the tragedy of her death as well as the likely underlying reason she came to fall in love with Andre, and visa versa, to begin with. An institutions job is ultimately to give a platform to the artists who have had a memorable impact on the human story. A combined retrospective of the two artists would have not only been deserved on both parts (who knows where Mendieta would have taken her land-body art practice) but would have given a meaningful frame to why art is important to begin with.

Verdant Horrors

Verdant Horrors

Richard Mosse at Portland Museum of Art

In the deepest folds of our collective Western imagination lives a place called the dark continent—Africa. This idyllic source of our human genesis is now a place filled with mystery, fear and self loathing in the hearts of Americans and Europeans alike. For over a century European re-discovery of Africa yielded repression, slavery and destruction. Now the African continent is reaping what colonization has sowed.

In the most central heart of Africa lies both its richest and most menacing place, the Democratic Republic of Congo. A country of 77 million equatorial people spread across a dense, verdant, resource rich land mass roughly the size of Western Europe, D.R. Congo has been unraveling since its independence from Belgium in 1960. In 1997 civil war broke out fueled by immeasurable corruption, an influx of Hutus from neighboring Rwanda and a struggle for natural resources. To date the war has killed an estimated 5.4 million people and displaced millions more. It is into this, the darkest of the dark continent, that the Irish-born photographer Richard Mosse entered in 2010, camera in-hand.

The Portland Art Museum (PAM) is hosting Richard Mosse’s exhibit The Enclave in Portland, Oregon. The Enclave is both documentary photography and film footage, is visually riveting in unexpected ways. Mosse stumbled upon infrared film, long forgotten and then sidelined for being photographic kitsch. It was developed by the U.S. military and Kodak in the 1940’s to distinguish military installations from dense green overgrowth in aerial photography. Infrared photography shifts green into shades of shocking magenta-violet. It renders the dense Congolese jungle in vibrant red-blue hues while leaving the human mark of trails, buildings,  trucks and human flesh unchanged. In the familiar landscape of the West this would be far less effective than how it functions in Africa.

The adroitly timed exhibition sits poised against elevated American racial tension. It tugs at Portlanders (and white Americans) shame, fear and confusion. It reveals the hidden truths of war when our daily experience is curtained off from our collective military actions abroad. The shocking pinks and reds create push black faces against an alien landscape that mimics the European-born, white colonialist fear of the ‘other’. The Enclave is a psychedelic explosion of color that simultaneously fractures our visual ground while heightening our empathy.

The exhibition at PAM is split in two rooms, one containing the large format photographs and the other the video installation. The photos are dimly lit elevating their enigmatic proposition. Mosse owes more to the work of Edward Burtynsky than traditional documentary war photographers James Nachtwey or Lynsey Addario. The photography is less interested in the action of conflict than its aftermath. The work is all about residuals, deeply rooted in landscape photography, subtly rendering the changes manifested out of the depravities of war. Ruin porn is all too often war photography’s de facto position and Mosse elegantly avoids those trappings. His power lies in his ability to break from the obviousness of wars destructive terror as well as the blood and guts of dead bodies. This Irishman, born in a country with a long history of civil conflict is much more interested in the mundane, the bucolic, and the penetrating tension of stillness that is largely what war is. Action may be an attention-getting vehicle that shocks us, but Mosse’s photography wants us to look more deeply into the soul of conflict by examining its quiet moments and subtle residue. 

Bursting sounds roar from a darkened opening at the opposing end of the photographic exhibition space. Entering an unnerving and disorienting pitch black opening, you’re confronted with a black room filled with six hanging projection screens being intermittently and sometimes simultaneously bombarded with infrared film footage that Mosse directed while in the D.R. Congo. A soundtrack ranging from peeping insects, wind through jungle grass, and water washing ashore to gun and artillery fire, and the singing/shouting voices of people is played like a symphony above the screens. The infrared film makes military camouflage look like Haute couture at Paris fashion week than than the clothing of machete-wielding Congolese militia. The pink-pony color shatters any normalcy that otherwise dulls our sense of war. The lack of actual on-screen violence creates a persistent, unnerving tension and at one point the screens go black as the echoing sounds of artillery fire rain from the ceiling speakers. Most disorienting are the filmic apparitions of bizarre military exercises and community parties. Film footage of the deceptively calm waters of lake Kivu (itself prone to limnic eruptions that spontaneously release volumes of CO₂ choking the life out of everything near its banks) is played on separate screens while other screens play footage of village music celebrations showing tribal leaders feed money into the pockets of prancing women. The underlying culture and landscape are presented as is and yet intuitively you realize all is not right.

The Enclave first opened at the Irish pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2013 and is promised to travel on to other exhibition spaces. In a time when conflict is the disposition of superpowers and terrorists as recently witnessed in France with the Charlie Hebdo slaughter, it is important to reveal the deep roots of human conflict. The Enclave implausibly reveals a distant war as a play on our collective humanity while still holding a powerful aesthetic seat. Despite Mosse’s use of infrared film, the exhibition never falls into gimmickry or kitsch. Seldom does documentary photography and film hold such potency while maintaining a delicate ambiguity.

The Enclave is on view at the Portland Art Museum through April 12, 2105

Burning Down Byrne

On October 7, 2014, David Byrne the modern day Renaissance man and ex-Talking Heads lead, posted a blog entry on his website “I DON’T CARE ABOUT CONTEMPORARY ART ANYMORE?” The commentary, a seeming impromptu riff on his reaction to the current state of contemporary art, has garnered a lot of attention. Byrne isn’t just a painter and musician, he’s currently partnered with one of the art stars of the 1980’s, Cindy Sherman. His position, therefore, provides him with unusual access from both the point of celebrity and art world insider, to the undercurrent of New York’s art market. So, when Byrne writes about the art world he is writing from a position of art and financial power as well as a practitioner.

A few days later the artist and former gallerist, Ric Kasini Kadour wrote on Hyperallergic a counterpoint screed which attacked Byrne directly; “I Don’t Care About David Byrne Anymore?” A sideline memetic reaction has been taking place on everyone’s favorite social media platform Facebook. Aside from Kadour’s somewhat vitriolic retort (“Boo hoo, fuck off.”), I think both Kadour and Byrne miss the mark in their commentary about the state of contemporary art and strangely find themselves closer in alignment than either might admit.

First of all, contemporary art is not class warfare as many would like to pretend it is. As the late Robert Hughes so eloquently put it, “In art there is no progress, only fluctuations of intensity.” Capitalism by nature is predicated on constant progress and consumption, whether perceived or real. Art doesn’t play by those rules, which is exactly what makes it desirable to the 1%. What the extremely wealthy can’t have, they must have. This doesn’t pollute the art world per se, but only becomes more recognizable, more obvious in times of, as Hughes puts it, fluctuating intensity. Right now contemporary art is experiencing a period of low intensity, as is music. There may be a lot of people out there making things but there is no current collective zeitgeist to grab hold of and that makes for a lot recirculation of the old, the average, and the bad. Artists have always and will always pander to rich collectors because money makes the world go round and despite protests to the contrary, being a starving artist sucks. In order for art market to operate as class warfare it would have to persistently deny future Basquiats or present day Sam Falls, but it doesn’t. It may be dictated by tastemakers who see dollar signs but it doesn’t discriminate based on class. For this very reason, it keeps a perpetual flow of young, fresh MFA graduates hungry for success and fully participating in the system that fuels the amusement of the 1%.

Secondly, Byrne and Kadour both use straw man arguments to make their points. It is so easy to pick on the richest artist in the world, Damien Hirst and his For the Love of God (2007) diamond skull. Hirst is an opportunist more than a real artist and the bulk of his production is either a direct or near direct rip-off of other more talented artist’s work. So what. He is one man in a very large pool of makers and one man does not the art market make. Hating on Jeff Koons or Damian Hirst does little to add to the conversation on contemporary art. In equal measure, Kadour’s naive references to what might be termed ‘working class artists’ of various ilk is no better a position against the great art market engine. Just because you make something doesn’t mean you’re adding anything to the collective cultural conversation, especially didactic, playful sculptures of robots. Great art as we all know, penetrates deeply into the collective subconscious and communicates some form of undefinable knowledge that changes how we inhabit the world and bridges race, class and culture. The fact that there is little great art being made now may be lamentable but blaming it on economic conditions, secret gallery cabals or David Byrne himself, seems silly at best.

I understand Byrne’s disappointment as much as I get Kadour’s anger at Byrne and the art world. How many artists were of equal or superior measure to Vermeer or Titian in their time but lacked middle class upbringings or support from the church? Nobody ever said the art market or life was fair. I don’t believe that money pollutes the water of art production, there are just too many examples of great artists who found their power outside of the art market or wealthy patronage to convince me otherwise. Likewise I’m tired of the old 1960’s argument that by virtue of your own wealth or lack there of, you can’t comment on certain cultural conditions because you are either in or out of the “club.” Byrne paid his dues and couldn’t have possibly predicted his rise to wealth by way of an incredibly strange art-rock group that emerged in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Saying he’s rich so therefore he can’t comment on the rich is absurd. If anything, there is potential for him to reveal things that others would not ever have access to. By the same token, Kadour’s middle-class status, or at least non-wealthy status, isn’t an automatic pulpit for criticism either. The answer to contemporary art’s dilemma is not a socialist equalizing one. History teaches us that art often blossoms during conditions of inequality more than its opposite and therefore cannot be constrained or defined by economics or politics alone. Kadour regurgitates a lazy and tired argument that implies that if only less rich people were involved the art market would be more fair, and by association, better. Nothing could be further from reality.

Byrne’s comparison of the Dutch tulip bubble or Tulpenwoede is an apt one that Kadour completely glosses over. As someone who has spent a lot of time in working class artists studios, smaller more provincial galleries (like the Portland, Oregon gallery Kadour mentions—I live in Portland) I can tell you I have yet to see a great hidden, seething mass of talent. Bryne is right that the art market is paralleling the current economic conditions. Art has always been a profitable investment, out earning the stock market with regularity. It’s experiencing a bubble and with bubbles come breaks and then something interesting usually happens.

The real danger we face in the art world is the institutionalization of art production. Every year there are over 1,200 applicants for the MFA program at Yale. Yet, the percentage of employment of arts-related graduates has steadily declined since the 1970’s. The number of students receiving a bachelors degree in fine art in the U.S. has gone up 25% in nine years. In 2010 there were 29,000 graduates in art related fields. That’s 300,000 degreed people calling themselves artists in a ten year span. With tuition having risen at such rapid rates over the past three decades it is no wonder we have such simmering anger amongst young artists. There are simply too many artists who carry too much college debt to ever be equalized by even the most economically balanced art market. Combine this with the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans never set foot during their lifetime in a commercial art gallery, despite millions attending art museums and you begin to see the dilemma. Art production is equated with laziness and frivolity in America and paying for such things is considered the folly of the rich. Why would you ever spend $1,000 for a work of art when you can endlessly listen to the new Beyonce album for a mere $15.99?

Until we change the underlying dynamics of how artists learn to practice their craft, how they form a professional practice while holding down a full time job and how they can create collectively owned gallery spaces that establish themselves in the suburbs and lower income communities, using micro payments and shared economic models, nothing will change in the art market of America and likely little will happen to create the conditions for the next generation of great artists.