The higgledly-piggledy format of this archive-based film offers little reflection or analysis about the charismatic art joker
The success of Asif Kapadia’s films Senna and Amy, which dispensed with talking heads in favour of generating narrative from archive footage alone, has opened up a new avenue for documentary. It is one along which the makers of Beuys proceed with some uncertainty.
They have at their disposal an abundance of material. After all, the groundbreaking German sculptor and performance artist Joseph Beuys, who died in 1986, was no shrinking violet. He staged numerous art happenings, such as the 1965 work How to Explain Paintings to a Dead Hare, for which he caked his entire head in honey and gold leaf and cradled the eponymous creature while whispering lovingly in its ear. Nine years later, an animal took a more active part when Beuys was placed in a room in New York with...
The success of Asif Kapadia’s films Senna and Amy, which dispensed with talking heads in favour of generating narrative from archive footage alone, has opened up a new avenue for documentary. It is one along which the makers of Beuys proceed with some uncertainty.
They have at their disposal an abundance of material. After all, the groundbreaking German sculptor and performance artist Joseph Beuys, who died in 1986, was no shrinking violet. He staged numerous art happenings, such as the 1965 work How to Explain Paintings to a Dead Hare, for which he caked his entire head in honey and gold leaf and cradled the eponymous creature while whispering lovingly in its ear. Nine years later, an animal took a more active part when Beuys was placed in a room in New York with...
- 2/15/2017
- by Ryan Gilbey
- The Guardian - Film News
There’s little doubt that Joseph Beuys, the German performance artist and sculptor, deserves a feature-length movie that explores his fascinating and complex body of work and his unique position in not only 20th-century art history, but also in German history in general (his work could be very political and he was part of the country’s nascent Green Party). But the documentary Beuys, directed by Andres Veiel, doesn’t do much more than scrape together bits and pieces of archive footage and photos into a cacophonous collage without a real structure and without a clear aim.
In its current edit, the film...
In its current edit, the film...
- 2/14/2017
- by Boyd van Hoeij
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Sales outfit is taking seven Berlin official selection titles to this year’s market.
Munich-based sales agent Beta Cinema has fleshed out its slate ahead of next month’s European Film Market in Berlin (Feb 9-17).
The company has three competition titles this year, as well as two in Berlinale Special, one in Panorama, and a TV series in Berlinale Special Series.
Having its world premiere in this year’s Berlinale Special programme, Beta has acquired In Times Of Fading Light, Matti Geschonneck’s historical drama starring Bruno Ganz (Downfall).
In Times Of Fading Light
Set in East-Berlin in 1989, the film is based on Eugen Ruge’s novel (which was translated into 23 languages) about an aging resistance fighter who celebrates his 90th birthday with his friends and family.
Also playing in Berlinale Special and now acquired by Beta is Julius Ševcík’s A Prominent Patient. Set in the build up to the Second World War, the film tells...
Munich-based sales agent Beta Cinema has fleshed out its slate ahead of next month’s European Film Market in Berlin (Feb 9-17).
The company has three competition titles this year, as well as two in Berlinale Special, one in Panorama, and a TV series in Berlinale Special Series.
Having its world premiere in this year’s Berlinale Special programme, Beta has acquired In Times Of Fading Light, Matti Geschonneck’s historical drama starring Bruno Ganz (Downfall).
In Times Of Fading Light
Set in East-Berlin in 1989, the film is based on Eugen Ruge’s novel (which was translated into 23 languages) about an aging resistance fighter who celebrates his 90th birthday with his friends and family.
Also playing in Berlinale Special and now acquired by Beta is Julius Ševcík’s A Prominent Patient. Set in the build up to the Second World War, the film tells...
- 1/26/2017
- by tom.grater@screendaily.com (Tom Grater)
- ScreenDaily
Michael Lee Nirenberg is an artist and filmmaker living in New York. His current documentary is Back Issues: The Hustler Magazine Story.
Bradley Rubenstein: Your most recent action, Redacted, involves overpainting your past works black, repeating this performance from canvas to canvas. Has the result of this performance series turned it into something like a trademark, a signature style based in old Suprematist methodology, a non-dialectical negation that might once have been witty but ultimately only guarantees its own recognition? A gimmick? Has it replaced your work as a filmmaker and documentarian?
Michael Lee Nirenberg: Originally the project began with the immodestly modest premise that, while my earlier paintings might not be worth preserving, the idea of my past history as an artist was. Therefore, by removing the imagery, as such, from the work, I was maintaining its conceptual integrity. In many ways I believe that this conceptual...
Bradley Rubenstein: Your most recent action, Redacted, involves overpainting your past works black, repeating this performance from canvas to canvas. Has the result of this performance series turned it into something like a trademark, a signature style based in old Suprematist methodology, a non-dialectical negation that might once have been witty but ultimately only guarantees its own recognition? A gimmick? Has it replaced your work as a filmmaker and documentarian?
Michael Lee Nirenberg: Originally the project began with the immodestly modest premise that, while my earlier paintings might not be worth preserving, the idea of my past history as an artist was. Therefore, by removing the imagery, as such, from the work, I was maintaining its conceptual integrity. In many ways I believe that this conceptual...
- 7/18/2012
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Is Germany the greatest European art nation of the 20th century?
Which country leads Europe in contemporary art? Britain, of course, you answer. Look at all those people flocking to Tate Modern. Wrong. The best artists in Europe today are German. The towering geniuses Gerhard Richter and Anselm Kiefer radically contrast in how they conceive art yet both, from their divergent perspectives, one super-cool, the other romantic, achieve a profundity that makes most British art look trite.
But to widen the question – which was the greatest European art nation of the 20th century? France? Wrong again. It was Germany. Only Germany has been at the forefront of modern art from the early 20th century right up until today. Paris declined as a creative capital after 1939, but German artists have been revolutionary for 100 years without missing a beat. The passion of expressionist painting and cinema, the fragmentation grenades of Dada, the...
Which country leads Europe in contemporary art? Britain, of course, you answer. Look at all those people flocking to Tate Modern. Wrong. The best artists in Europe today are German. The towering geniuses Gerhard Richter and Anselm Kiefer radically contrast in how they conceive art yet both, from their divergent perspectives, one super-cool, the other romantic, achieve a profundity that makes most British art look trite.
But to widen the question – which was the greatest European art nation of the 20th century? France? Wrong again. It was Germany. Only Germany has been at the forefront of modern art from the early 20th century right up until today. Paris declined as a creative capital after 1939, but German artists have been revolutionary for 100 years without missing a beat. The passion of expressionist painting and cinema, the fragmentation grenades of Dada, the...
- 11/29/2010
- by Jonathan Jones
- The Guardian - Film News
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