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More than four decades into his career Frederick Wiseman remains the most prominent invisible man of American documentary film. His movies offer no voice-over, no talking heads, no graphics or intertitles: in other words, none of the cues and signposts we have come to expect from nonfiction films. Mr. Wiseman, who turns 80 in January, has likened his approach, to “getting rid of the proscenium arch in the theater.” This dictum applies even when his subjects are on an actual stage, as in “La Comédie-Française,” his 1996 study of that venerable repertory company, and his latest film, “La Danse,” another French cultural immersion, this time with the Paris Opera Ballet.via kc
—until one audience member pointedly read out the advertised copy for the talk, which promised a discussion of the fate of modernism and modern art history. A round of applause followed. Krauss bit back by declaring that she wasn’t saying farewell to modernism just yet, and Bois admitted he didn’t believe in postmodernism. The fireworks finally arrived when someone from the Open University asked if the book was meant as a riposte to the OU’s own textbooks on twentieth-century art. Krauss tried to unravel their different understandings of modernism and theory and the implications of each for pedagogy but concluded: “Those OU books are inept and confusing, voilà!” The session finished up with an assessment of how important it is that the fab four are also critics. Krauss: “My conviction that Richard Serra is the greatest living artist affects my art history.” Bois gave an ironic thumbs-up to the audience—voilà indeed.
-y-a b "...irony is a crude tool." (pdf warning)
mid century modern diy furniture books at populuxe books
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things
Not everybody can live on a secluded parcel of land in the Hollywood Hills. But for a long time, Shulman's potent images helped convince Southern Californians that their goal should be to live in a single-family house with a private garden somewhere -- even if it were to be built by companies like the Irvine Corp. on property a lot more than two miles from Hollywood Boulevard.via things
For all those reasons, the documentary operates, however indirectly, as a long proof in support of what might be called Shulman's Law of Unintended Consequences.
Shulman's best photographs undoubtedly qualify as art. But he was very much an artist for hire, and his work was in nearly every case patently promotional, as he was happy to admit. What remains out there, waiting to be tackled, is the question of what, in the broadest sense, he was promoting -- and what the runaway success of that effort has meant for architecture and for Los Angeles.