Charlie Rose

viewer1  06/07/2010 11:57 PM Report

The general idea about film's influence on the development of Cubism may be well founded, but not crucial nor central to the work of that period. It does make for yet another fascinating way to look back to early modernist painters and their world.

Where Mr. Glimcher attempts to look forward, making an argument for the importance of contemporary Chinese art today, he falls short. He compares the contemporary scene with the Cubists and Pop artists because they share an eye for popular culture; then he compares Picasso's use of Iberian sculpture -- without fully understanding its ritual context, to the Chinese artists' similar ignorance about Western art history. But Picasso was capable of drawing deep currents of form and meaning from the icons of another culture. I'm not seeing a similar quality in contemporary Chinese art. Mr. Glimcher shows his significance as a gallerist and promoter of art, not as an art historian, which he is not.

T B -emerging artist, American

Linda Stone  09/01/2007 06:50 PM Report

This program was fascinating and totally engaging! Thank you, thank you again. Please

give us more of these great visual art programs.

Beth Gersh-Nesic  08/15/2007 02:26 PM Report

Two things:

1. Art historians who specialize in Cubism have been talking about Picasso and film since Prof. Natasha Staller published her article on Picasso and Melies in the journal Art History in 1989. Her book "A Sum of Destructions: Picasso's Cultures and the Creation of Cubism" (Yale U. Press, 2001) added more.

2. Andre Salmon (one of Picasso's closest friends) pointed out in 1912 that Picasso's Cubism was "a dynamic decomposition of luminous power . . . Geometric signs--a geometry at once infinitesimal and cinematic ..." page 52 in my book "Andre Salmon on French Modern Art" (Cambridge U. Press,2005).

Also, in 1907--Picasso still lived in Montmartre.

My students have been looking at early films during the Picasso and Cubism courses at Purchase College over the last 10 years.

The PaceWildenstein exhibition was wonderful, but not groundbreaking.

Kirsten Bengtson  08/10/2007 06:10 PM Report

As someone who enjoyed the exhibition at Pace last June, and recently watched the Charlie Rose interview, I was fascinated to learn that the idea of early film's influence on Cubist painting had not been thoroughly explored until now. As a photographer, I was aware that the photography's precision had helped 'free' painting from the burden of realism, and that early motion studies by Muybridge and Eakins and their mutliple still sequences had paved the way for film, but I did not make the connection between early film-making and multiple viewpoints in painting until seeing this exhibition. The films were lyrical and extraordinary. The Wright Brothers' tentative first flights (coupled with Braque and Picasso's identification with them) served as a lovely metaphor for Modern art spreading its wings and soaring off into the wild blue yonder.....

Carol Donelan  06/23/2007 12:52 AM Report

Attributing the logic of fragmentation and multiple points-of-view in the paintings to the painters' interest in film may seem pretty obvious, but what was a surprise is how much the cinematic apparatus itself starts to figure in the paintings, in the differently directed blocks that make up the figures. Like little cameras or projectors pointing in all directions. Film historians talk about how the apparatus itself was an object of spectacle in early cinema. This is what Tom Gunning describes in his notion of the "cinema of attractions." Viewers were as interested in the capacity of the apparatus to project the image as in the image itself. I can sense the influence of Professor Gunning's ideas in this discussion (he wrote an essay for the catalog, which I'd like to get my hands on). Last but not least, I thought the concluding statements by the curator about the need for art history to be rewritten in order to take into account the influence of film were provocative and very exciting. Here's to more collaboration between art history and film studies.

Gerry Ahronheim  06/11/2007 10:47 PM Report

More interested in photography than in painting, I was lured to see the exhibit in NYC a few weeks ago. I found was fascinated by the thesis and its defense almost as much as by the components (paintings, film clips, and equipment) themselves. It was a remarkable and memorable experience, educationally as well as aesthetically, and has provoked much thought.

I would love to have had the opportunity to discuss, with Mr. Glimcher and Mrs. Rose, an additional perspective: the superposition onto a single (canvas) plane of numerous points of view of an object seems to me highly analogous to the effect of the stroboscope on photography, as greatly exploited in the 1940's and '50's by various highly-regarded photographers. Was their work influenced by the cubist experience? Or, perhaps, were earlier strobe-like images -- for example, the many-armed Hindu deities -- also influences on Picasso and Braque?

Alternate ideas notwithstanding, a marvelous exhibit and an excellent video. Thanks!!

Madi Lanier  06/10/2007 03:30 PM Report

The Picasso Braque film was one of the most outstanding videos ever made !

Robert Philbin  06/09/2007 06:13 PM Report

Interesting discussion of the roots of modernism and much praise to Ms. Rose and Mr. Glimcher for fleshing out one of the more obvious influences on cubism.Picasso refused to labeled a cubist, of coures; perhaps he viewed the work as an exploration to be taken and discarded on the way to the next exploration. Analogous to Miles Davis changing musicians in his continual quest for the new. Great to see the art work as well. Thank you.