Collected Michael and Christian Blackwood documentaries offer long-term studio visits with some of the leading artists of the 20th century. Work and conversation with minimal frills, including painter’s paintings, sculptor’s sculpture, and jazz genius Thelonious Monk burning towards the piano (and later instructing band members to drop their “favorite notes”). Introducing the artists who are doing jazz. If you’ve seen too many art and music documentaries similar to Wikipedia’s entries, a movie that goes back to these basics is a real tonic based on the essence of art production.
Born in Berlin before World War II and later settled safely in the United States, the Blackwood brothers began making films in the 1960s at the height of the nonfiction storytelling revolution. For years, their novella hasn’t caught the attention of direct cinema pioneers like Robert Drew (“Primary”) and DA Penebaker (“Don’t Look Back”).However, the art-friendly version of Blackwoods in your filmmaking rarely has a comparable subject range, and free sampling is available. Streaming online via Pioneer WorksBrooklyn Cultural Center.
“Monk” / “Monkin Europe” (1968) is one of the best opening shots in the documentary. A jazz giant dances in a unique style, spinning in the dark. From there, Blackwoods’ chronicles are turned off, running, showing Monk’s hands gliding across the piano with some long performance excerpts, and behind the scenes with him and his supporters (Rothschild’s heirs). , Panonica de Königswarter) and hang out. Blackwood — Christian Shooting, Michael’s Director and Produce — cleverly set the documentary at Monk’s time, rather than splitting the documentary into bite-sized pieces. He plays — he’s rushing to another gig all over Europe — he’s calm — he shakes off the producer’s request to record “something freeform” and “people do it. I like to play something simpler so that I can dig.
The revealed off-hand exchange is a characteristic moment of spontaneity in this style of documentary, and Blackwood is also powerful when it lasts for a long time. “Robert Motherwell: Summer 1971” (1972) belongs to a subset of New York School films, some fascinating times with self-managed detailed reading and some art history lessons. It is a capsule. The stately Robert Motherwell takes another brush to his latest Elegy to the Republic of Spain and looks back on how this repetitive theme seems to be a lifelong relationship with his lover. He tags his visit to a classy gallery in St. Gallen, Switzerland, but what remains in his mind is Motherwell’s self-awareness of the simultaneity of the art movement. Picasso, Arp, Matisse and Degas are all alive and (almost) kicked in the 1910s. This is an insight that illuminates other intersections throughout history.
“Christo: The Wrapped Coast” (1969) may feel like a reversion with the narration of the voice of God. “If Cristo decides to wrap part of the continental coastline …” But this 30-minute movie of Cristo’s project in Little Bay is in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia, where workers drape rocky shores. , The viewpoint of the undulating fabric changes. White wrapping looks delicate, dangerous, glorious and stupid. When a strong wind cuts it all into a ribbon, the art instantly turns into a ruin. Although Cristo isn’t short of chronicler, the film is a good example of Blackwood’s documentation mission. One of their favorite camera moves is, for example, Philip Guston: A Life Lived (1981), enthusiastically panning around studios and galleries as if they were incorporating everything for posterity. That is.
Michael and Christian Blackwood began working independently in the 1980s, but neither was curious. Covering composers Laurie Anderson, Tania Leon, Meredith Monk, and Pauline Oliveros, “Sensual Sound Nature (1993)” is studded with performance and rehearsal sit-down interviews in a relatively routine manner. However, the bright vitality of musicians is anything. Their work rewires the brain from Monk’s opera-like and spoken “Atlas” production to the magnificent Oliveros’ deep listening spirit.
Looking at these documentaries, a recent “Get Back” movie about the Beatles recording session came to my mind because of the meticulous attention to the process. But the thrill of the project is to see the first fragment of a pop song that has been played millions of times. Blackwood often draws us deep into the abstract and the unknown. Listening to the artists reveals their intentions, and dangerous guesses about reality open up fresh conversations and thoughts to the viewer.
French artist Jean Dubuffet may have the best last word here. In “The Artist’s Studio: Jean Dubuffet” (2010), in response to Michael Blackwood’s prompt, “culture was created” (that is, already completed) and “art is being created”. doing. It’s an interesting and controversial distinction, but the radical term applies neatly to Blackwood’s careful art documentary: they’re about art and culture, and both are pleasing.
