Thursday, May 27, 2010

The Importance and Difficulty of Documenting Art

I came across a film called Umbrellas and after revisiting Deb Loewen's statement about the importance of documenting your work, this documentary seemed that much more impressive. Here is a description from IMDB:

The controversial story of the artist Christo's grand-scale environmental art project in Japan and California [Christo's Website] that ended in the tragic death of two of its spectators. At its world premiere in 1994 at the Berlin International Film Festival, Howard Feinstein of Variety praised the film as, "highly original and structurally flawless . . . an ambitious documentary about an ambitious project." Umbrellas won The Grand Prize at the Montreal International Film Festival. It was shown at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. and The Louvre Museum, Paris and on the European network ARTE.

You may remember or even have seen first hand Christo's Gates installation in Central Park in New York City. Capturing this type of installation artwork is difficult and the scale is always so grand that when compressing that size in any way through still or moving pictures some of the intent is lost. However the film Umbrellas and The Gates are collaborative efforts between installation artist and film maker. The outcome is truly another work of art that would not be possible without the talents of either contributor.

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