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Visual Arts Curated Video Collection

Visual Arts Videos: A Closer Look
by Nadine Covert




 The time is right
Library Media Project on the Visual Arts
What art videos offer
What makes a "good" film about art?
Programming
Acquiring art videos
Museum/Library collaboration
Acknowledgements



The Time is Right
This is an ideal time for the Library Media Project to offer a selection of Visual Arts videos. Museum attendance continues to grow, as do museums. According to an article in the New York Times, there are now more than 1,200 art museums in the United States, an increase of 50 percent over the past thirty years ("Glory Days for the Art Museum," October 5, 1997). In a recent survey conducted by the Association of Art Museum Directors, 134 responding museums reported almost a ten percent increase in attendance in 1999 over the preceding year.

A 1997 survey commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) indicated that visiting art museums was the most popular of seven arts activities: almost thirty-five percent of American adults made at least one visit to an art museum that year. With an average of 3.3 visits per year, that represents a total of 225 million visits. Of particular interest to media librarians, the NEA survey also collected information from 6,070 respondents on their participation in the arts through broadcast and recorded media, finding "substantially higher participation rates … than for live event attendance." Here again, visual arts outranked other art forms: 45.1 percent (88.2 million) of adults reported using a visual arts video at least once in the past year, topping dance (39.4%), classical music (32.2%), jazz (30.7%), musical plays (25.0%), non-musical plays (23.4%), and opera (15.0%).

(#39, 1997 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts; available at (www.nea.gov)
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Library Media Project on the Visual Arts
I come to this project with some fifteen years experience working with the Program for Art on Film, which began in 1984 as a joint venture of the J. Paul Getty Trust and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. My principal responsibility was to oversee the compilation of an international critical inventory of films and videos about art. This culminated in the launching of the Art on Screen Database, an annotated and indexed list of more than 26,000 productions from some 70 countries, which can be searched on the Internet (www.artfilm.org). The Program's other major activity was a Production Laboratory, headed by my colleague Joan Shigekawa and Program executives Karl Katz and Wendy Stein, which operated from 1987 through 1990 and produced fifteen short films. This project challenged filmmakers and art historians to collaborate in developing innovative approaches to presenting art on film. These shorts have been compiled into a video anthology called Art on Film/Film on Art. The Program ceased active operations in 1998.

Over the years, I've screened and evaluated thousands of films about art, and have formed a lot of opinions on the subject! For the Library Media Project, I was asked to make a selection from the catalogue of one distributor, Home Vision/PMI, which specializes in visual arts productions. Their catalogue lists more than 200 titles, covering all periods of art history, from such sources as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the National Gallery (London), and other European museums, as well as BBC and PBS television productions. The catalogue--and my selected list--emphasizes films on Impressionism and twentieth-century art. This does not represent a bias so much as the reality of production. Our research at the Program for Art on Film revealed that about 85% of films/videos about art focus on the late nineteenth century through the twentieth century.

From the catalogue I've made a very personal selection of productions that I think are exemplary or that will be of interest to general audiences, while also trying to include titles that cover European art from the Renaissance through today and three centuries of American art, as well as African, Asian, Latin American, and Native American art, plus a selection of videos on Photography. (I hereby confess my bias in including the series of short films produced by the Program for Art on Film.)
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What Art Videos Offer
Libraries can facilitate the burgeoning interest in art by building collections of videos that enable visitors to better comprehend and appreciate the works they see in museums and galleries. Film and video can offer the viewer experiences that can't be achieved through a book or lecture. The camera lens can reveal more than the human eye: see, for example, De Artificiali Perspectiva, a sly and witty exegesis of the concept of anamorphosis by the noted animators the Brothers Quay, or Gene Searchinger's sensitive study of Velazquez' Portrait of Juan Pareja, or David Thompson's absorbing analysis of the work of pointillist painter Georges Seurat…. Camera movement and editing techniques can provide new experiences of the art, as in 1867, a visually stunning meditation on the various versions of Manet's Execution of the Emperor Maximilian, or the leisurely perusal of Pierre Bonnard's intimate paintings, or the insightful melding of film form and content in Monsieur René Magritte.

Film can transport the viewer to distant locales and situate the art in time and space: we can journey to Africa (African Art) or China (Meishu…), revel in the exquisitely filmed Art of Indonesia, or explore twelfth-century Byzantine Christian cave paintings in Window to Heaven. Archival film footage can provide valuable documentation of sites rendered inaccessible by time or political events: In the Shadow of Angkor Wat takes us to the ancient Khmer temple in Cambodia which endures in spite of wars and the ravages of time.

Special effects and video graphics can peel away the surface of a painting to reveal preliminary sketches, while computer graphics can reconstruct a ruined building or archaeological site or a damaged painting: Feast of the Gods is a fascinating detective story that uses the latest scientific techniques to uncover previously unknown facts about a sixteenth-century painting; while Leonardo's portrait of Ginevra di Benci is reconstructed with the aid of computer technology (Ginevra's Story). Comparisons can be made effectively through dissolves or superimpositions as well as side by side, as in Monet--Legacy of Light, which includes a sequence of dissolves on various paintings of haystacks to show the effects of the changing light as the artist captured his subject at different times of day; or the thoughtful comparisons between live images and paintings in Edgar Degas…. The judicious use of sound (music, voices, effects) can lend ambiance and emotional tone: in the Fayum Portraits, for instance, the camera focuses on a series of Egyptian funerary portraits, against a complex sound track of multiple voices reading historical texts and an original score composed and performed by Meredith Monk. And for those who are unable to visit museums and sites abroad, films and videos can bring a taste of those far-flung riches to their living rooms: Art of the Dogon shows ritual ceremonies and masks of the Dogon people of Africa; Raphael is a scholarly but absorbing in-depth study of this seminal Renaissance artist.

In the case of living artists, we are offered glimpses into the lives, minds, and creative processes of some of the outstanding artists of the twentieth century. Through video we can share an intimate chat with British painter Francis Bacon, watch Paul Cadmus demonstrate his egg tempera technique, observe Chuck Close at work on a painting, learn how Robert Rauschenberg conceives and constructs his found-art pieces, hear Robert Motherwell's first-hand reminiscences of the heyday of the Abstract Expressionists, and visit David Hockney in his home and studio or share his enthusiasm as he explicates the unusual perspectives in a seventeenth-century Chinese scroll. We can even see home-movie footage of such luminaries as Bonnard, Magritte, and Matisse.
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What Makes a "Good" Film About Art?
At the Program for Art on Film, we developed a three-pronged approach to evaluating films on art (see Resources: Art on Screen Handbook…, 1994), looking at: Content (concept, script/structure, art values), Production Values (cinematography, editing, sound, music, narration, direction), and Programming Potential (information or cultural values, purpose, entertainment values, uses, audiences). The programmer or acquisitions librarian must always ask: a good film for whom? a good film for what? We have found that the best films on art exhibit two essential characteristics: respect for the art, and effective use of the film/video medium.

Respect for the art: Whether the film focuses on formal qualities, historical context, the creative process, interpretation, or other ideas suggested by the art, the art itself must be represented as faithfully as possible. This requires careful attention to color, scale, texture, relation of details to whole, as well as attention to the accuracy of the information presented (both visually and verbally). A successful film about art is one that gives the viewer fresh insights into the art and stimulates a desire to see more and to learn more.

Effective use of the film/video medium: A good film about art must first of all be a good film. It must have strong production values, it must hold the attention of the audience, it must be enjoyable to watch. The filmmaker must find filmic solutions that enhance or complement the art without betraying its essential qualities. The most exciting films about art are those that exhibit some creative tension between the art concept and the filmic approach.
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Programming
While the videos in this selected list deal primarily with the visual arts, they also lend themselves to a wide variety of thematic programs. Many of the featured artists lived long and productive lives (see, for instance, the videos on Paul Cadmus, Marc Chagall, Louise Nevelson, Georgia O'Keeffe). These profiles can be presented in programs on Aging. There are a number of exciting productions that explore the intersection of Art and Science: the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC) has made several outstanding films on conservation that make effective use of the latest scientific techniques and computer graphics (Feast of the Gods, Ginevra's Story, Masters of Illusions). Art and Labor is another interesting theme to explore, beginning here with Ming Garden, which emphasizes the mutual respect of American workers for the Chinese workers who came to build a Chinese rock garden in the Metropolitan Museum, or Sebastiao Salgado, the Brazilian photographer who has documented the displacement of manual labor by technological advances. Artists throughout history have commented on political issues of their time, from the painters of revolutionary France (David, Géricault, Delacroix) to the Mexican muralists (Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros) to W. Eugene Smith's World War II photographs. There are many outstanding films about women artists (see especially those on Georgia O'Keeffe, Frida Kahlo, Lee Miller). Other films help us to see in new ways: in the film on Georges Seurat…, artists Henry Moore and Bridget Riley provide revealing insights into Seurat's technique and its influence on them and others; the film on Caillebotte is all about the adventure of the gaze; and Two Faces of the Seventeenth Century allows us to spend fifteen minutes studying a single portrait--one by Velazquez and one by Rembrandt. (In galleries, the average time spent looking at a single work of art is measured in seconds.) The Topics Index will suggest many other programming ideas.

Most of the videos in the Home Vision catalogue are aimed at adult audiences, but there are a number of titles that may appeal to younger viewers (junior high-high school). These are indicated in the Artist/Title Index, the Topics Index, and in a special Younger Viewers Index. Some examples: Teenagers captivated by special effects movies will be intrigued by the comparison of today's special effects with the use of perspective in Renaissance art in Masters of Illusion. The jazzy rhythms and coolly abstract lines of the paintings of Piet Mondrian also have a youthful appeal. The lush colors and tragic history of Vincent Van Gogh in Arles will resonate with many teenagers. And Architecture of Transcendence proved a surprise hit with incarcerated teenage boys who related to the soaring camera work in this wordless exploration of a French Gothic cathedral.

Architecture by the way, is another very popular topic with both general and professional audiences. The Home Vision catalogue does not cover architecture but the Resources section cites other distributors that do have architecture videos in their catalogues.
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Acquiring Art Videos
There are thousands of films/videos about art. How do you go about selecting from this vast universe the best videos for your collection? What should be your focus? Which artists or periods are most relevant to your patrons? Start by finding out what your local museums have to offer: What do their collections cover? What special exhibitions are coming up? Check the Web sites of the museums, get on their press lists, visit other online sites such as Excalendar, an exhibition calendar of leading art museums (see Resources) to learn about upcoming exhibitions. Museums often present film/video programs that relate to exhibitions and sell videos in the gift shop, but most do not circulate videos to the public. This is the public library's role. By keeping abreast of the offerings of their local museums, librarians can anticipate patron requests for related videos.

Once you have a handle on the artists, periods, or topics of interest to your patrons, then you begin your search for the best titles to meet those needs. In addition to the usual finding tools (Booklist (www.ala.org/booklist), Library Journal (www.libraryjournal.com), Video Librarian (www.videolibrarian.com)), you can consult the Art on Screen Database (www.artfilm.org). Regrettably, this project concluded in mid-1998 and the Database has not been updated since then; nevertheless it is still a unique and valuable source of carefully researched, detailed information about some 26,000 productions.

Another excellent source of information is the annual Montreal International Festival of Films on Art, which publishes a handsome illustrated catalogue with distributor contacts for the approximately 170 productions they present each year. These selections are also listed on their Web site (www.artfifa.org).

The Resources section lists additional online sources of information, including a list of other distributors with extensive visual arts catalogues.

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Museum/Library collaboration
Building your collection of visual arts videos offers an excellent opportunity to build relations with your local museums, and perhaps to develop collaborative projects. The Institute of Museum & Library Services funds such projects; their Web site (www.imls.gov) provides valuable information about library/museum projects they have funded and also lists publications and other library and museum resources.
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Acknowledgements
I'm grateful to my former colleagues at the Program for Art on Film, who worked with me to compile the Art on Screen Database (www.artfilm.org). My thanks to the Program for access to its data in preparing this selected list.

Nadine Covert's Bio
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Copyright 1996, 2001, Library Media Project, Chicago, IL info@librarymedia.org