Awhile back, Chuck Kleinhans posted a link to an essay by Erika
Balsom, about the place of "experimental" cinema within the museum/art
world context, which I did find interesting and wanted to make some
response to. Sorry for the length. I assume all uninterested can
just delete now!
Marilyn Brakhage
A Response to: “Brakhage’s sour grapes, or notes on experimental
cinema in the art world.”
Erika Balsom’s essay, her “notes on experimental cinema in the art
world,” explores the place of what she calls “experimental film”
within a museum context, and how to successfully integrate this body
of work into the institutions of the art world. This is a really
important issue for the future of film. And she both raises important
questions and arrives at some interesting and valuable conclusions.
However, I think she also bases her understanding of the historical
situation on some questionable premises. Her essay itself reveals (to
me) some obvious contradictions in her argument about the how and why
of the historical exclusion of “experimental film” from the art world
establishment (and its sometimes half-hearted inclusion now), even
while coming to some astute assessments of the current situation.
She does insist upon maintaining, from beginning to end, the
questionable terminology that maintains the false distinction of
“experimental cinema” and “artists’ cinema.” I know, of course, what
she is referring to, historically. But maintaining this vocabulary
becomes problematic. “Artists’ cinema” seems still to be understood by
her as cinema made by people who are artists in other media, and
“experimental filmmakers” are (apparently) assumed not to be
“artists.” That is to say, she never really questions the validity of
the terminology. And as she uses Stan Brakhage as a prime example of
the so-called experimental filmmaker’s “hostility” towards the art
world, I feel it necessary to point out that 1) Stan never considered
himself an “experimental” filmmaker, 2) Stan absolutely and without
question considered himself an artist, 3) he did not want his films
reserved for “a closed and impenetrable community,” he wanted them to
be seen by everyone, and 4) the hyperbolic Brakhage quotations she
references should be understood in a larger context of sometimes
conflicting thoughts, emotions and issues – which I think she does
somewhat misrepresent.
The history of artists (i.e. painters and sculptors) who made forays
into filmmaking is a problematic one – not so much in the early
decades of the 20th century, and not so much now, perhaps, but in the
decades in between. Perhaps it was really those artists from other
media who were often “experimenting” with film. (It is more RARE than
not, I think, for an artist who excels in one medium to also excel in
another.) So some very great painters, so I’ve heard, made some
rather bad – or, at least, not very interesting -- films. But good,
bad, or indifferent -- it was their films that would be accepted by
the art establishment. (I can remember, when studying Art History in
the 80s, professors who would tell students it was only okay to write
about film if one wrote about “a film made by an artist” -- meaning a
painter or sculptor, for example. They would never say that you could
only write about a sculpture made by a painter! But film, as a single
medium of choice, was not a recognized art form by the academy.
Someone who ONLY made films could not possibly be a true artist, in
this view.)
Brakhage’s warnings to Sharits (and others) about the supposed
“poison” of the museum/art world may have been, in part, a reaction to
these exclusionary attitudes of the “art world,” and to the dubious
choices that were being made by the establishment in regard to film;
they also would have been due, in part, yes, to a fear of loss of
‘life,’ as it were, from official enshrinement, perhaps; and probably
also due to his fear of fellow filmmaker-artists being threatened with
a loss of integrity, of their not being true to the art of film (the
dangers of fame and money and institutional pressures, etc.), as he
frequently witnessed the perhaps understandable desire of many to
‘escape’ from the hardships of being an independent filmmaker and to
find a more successful alternative. He likewise warned against the
‘evils’ of Hollywood. But Stan didn’t really hate museums and art
galleries; he did not engage in “totalizing rejection” of the art
world, as she puts it. He certainly went to museums and art galleries
whenever he could. And he considered himself a part of a long, visual
art tradition. In fact, while there might be something to the avant-
garde artists’ suspicions of the establishment – an honorable enough
tradition – contributing to their insistent independence, it was
certainly not a rejection of any true “art world.” [Furthermore, the
quoted correspondence with Sharits is from 1974 and 1985. Meanwhile,
Stan had major retrospectives of his work at MoMA in 1971 and 1977.
(So he couldn’t have been all that hostile.) He went on to have more
retrospectives in museums, work bought for museum collections,
inclusion in galleries and so on, IN HIS LIFETIME. Her
characterization of him, therefore, as “so openly hostile to the art
world during his lifetime,” is a little misleading.]
Of course the title “experimental filmmaker” is used to cover a wide
variety of practice, and not all such filmmakers define themselves in
the same ways. But as she uses Brakhage as a prime example, I have to
take some exception. She writes that “precisely at a time when film
and video were gaining a foothold in the gallery, experimental film-
makers and their advocates positioned themselves in opposition to an
established art world, embracing structures of production and
distribution very different than those of uptown gallery artists.”
Again, if the museums and galleries were defining the art of film as
‘films made by painters and sculptors,’ or as “video-art” (anathema to
many film artists at the time), if, indeed, the film artists that she
refers to as “experimental” were not as yet understood or appreciated
by most of the art establishment, then of course those film artists
(the ones she calls “experimental”) would “position themselves in
opposition to” [an established art world]. Or perhaps they would
accept that, like it or not, they were a force as yet quite separate
from it and not yet accepted by it. And yes, as Balsom points out,
they adopted a different (more democratic) distribution model. This
was partly a philosophically based choice (quite opposite to the “self-
insulating” impulse she claims later), and partly born of necessity,
perhaps. This distribution was greatly augmented by the filmmakers
themselves, constantly on the road, introducing their work to varied
audiences wherever they could.
But the larger question that the essay addresses is the place of
moving visual art within a gallery context, and here she states that,
“The old antagonism that experimental film-makers harbored for the art
context is significantly weakening” and asks, “What is one to make of
this integration of the history of experimental film into the art
world, a sphere of activity many experimental film-makers had for so
long disdained and/or rejected?” Yet in her following description of
the lack of respect for the medium specificity of celluloid film (not
for “artists’” films, which museums will consistently project on film,
but for “experimental” films which they generally wish to screen as
digital reproductions), she still doesn’t seem to see that the
supposed “antagonism” of experimental film-makers has really been more
about a lack of respect given TO them. She herself states that “No
museum would dream of exhibiting a digital copy of a film by Tacita
Dean, an artist represented by Marian Goodman Gallery, a commercial
entity that issues her 16 mm films in limited editions that sell for
upwards of 100,000 dollars. The practice is, however, quite frequent
in the exhibition of canonical works of experimental cinema. It can
result in poor image quality, unfavorable lighting conditions and
improper aspect ratios – but perhaps most importantly for some members
of the experimental film-making community, it manifests a blatant
disregard for the medium-specific properties of celluloid.”
Balsom rightly points out that in the museum world there is a double
standard “whereby experimental film-makers are treated with less
respect than ‘artists working in film’ – such as Tacita Dean, Stan
Douglas or Matthew Buckingham – whose work is never subject to such
transpositions.” She goes on to say that “recent exhibition practices
have demonstrated the persistent vestiges of not considering film to
be a legitimate artistic medium on a par with, say, painting or
sculpture -- unless, that is, it is sold in limited editions on the
art market. Despite the increasing interpenetration of the worlds of
art and experimental film, these lasting ramifications of their
differing models of distribution and acquisition continue to mark out
a divide between the two realms and their treatment in the
contemporary museum.”
Exactly. And so it seems that it was, all along, primarily about the
rejection BY the art establishment of 1) a newer medium that there
were few traditional art curators comfortable with assessing (easier
just to assume that if an acknowledged painter made it, it had
validity, perhaps), and 2) a medium (reproducible) and a group of
artists who didn’t easily fit the art world model of purchasing and
ownership.
My discomfort with some parts of her essay are simply that she makes
it sound as if the so-called “experimental filmmakers” would have been
welcomed with open arms, if only they hadn’t been so hostile. But
this was clearly not so. (Her description of the ongoing “double
standard” in presentation would seem to invalidate such a supposition.)
However, Balsom’s assessment of the present situation and the
important issues that need to be addressed for the successful
inclusion of film art into the museum setting is very valuable. As
she points out, film is not only more accepted in the art world now,
but it is becoming essential for museums to take on the task of
preserving and exhibiting this work as it should be seen. This is
particularly true as available venues for the presentation of the art
of celluloid film become fewer and fewer. And as she also points out,
it will be essential for museums and art historians to take on the
task of not only acquiring and exhibiting, but of researching,
restoring, studying and theorizing this complex body of work.
[Further to these points, the selling by filmmakers of limited
editions of their work (on celluloid) to museums may, indeed, become
more of a norm, as the use of digital reproductions increasingly
becomes the norm elsewhere.]
As to questions of exhibition, Balsom does point out some of the
inherent problems that arise with respect to the “quality of the
spectatorial experience” of film in this context. But the problems
are not insurmountable. While there may indeed be some films that are
still better viewed “downstairs in the museum auditoria” (or other
similar venues), there are also many film works that can be
experienced positively within a gallery space. It is not so very
difficult to use loop projectors for short films that can be viewed
and viewed again by people moving through the museum; and it is not so
very difficult to set aside small, partitioned, darkened areas with a
few seats, so that it doesn’t always have to be for a “mobile
spectator.” And in the case of a lot of smaller gauge film work, a
smaller, more intimate experience is sometimes even better than a
large screen auditorium viewing.
Let’s hope that more museums will increasingly make a serious
commitment to the long-term preservation and presentation of celluloid-
based film art, and that it does finally find its proper place within
the history of the plastic arts.
And at the same time – long live rebellious independents, carving out
new paths, wherever that may be.
On 23-Feb-12, at 7:39 AM, Chuck Kleinhans wrote:
Frameworks readers might be interested in this article in a new
journal from Intellect books: It's free as an electronic file; the
single copy price is US $36.00
http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=207/view,page=0?utm_source=MIRAJ&utm_campaign=MIRAJ&utm_medium=email
Brakhage’s sour grapes, or notes on experimental cinema in the art
world
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Erika Balsom Carleton University
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