Documenting the Visual arts Bringing together an international range of scholars, as well as filmmakers and curators, this book explores the rich variety in form and content of the contemporary art documentary. Since their emergence in the late 1940s as a distinct genre, documentaries about the visual arts have made significant contributions to art education, public television, and documentary filmmaking, yet they have received little scholarly attention from either art history or film studies. Documenting the Visual Arts brings that attention to the fore. Whether considering documentaries about painting, sculpture, photography, performance art, site-specific installation, or fashion, the chapters of this book engage with the key question of intermediality: how film can reframe other visual arts through its specific audio-visual qualities, in order to generate new ways of understanding those arts. The essays illuminate furthermore how art documentaries raise some of the most critical issues of the contemporary global art world, specifically the discourse of the artist, the dynamics of documentation, and the visuality of the museum. Contributors discuss documentaries by filmmakers such as Frederick Wiseman, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Jia Zhangke, and Trisha Ziff, and about artists such as Michael Heizer, Ai Weiwei, Do Ho Suh, and Marina Abramovic´. This collection of new international and interdisciplinary scholarship on visual art documentaries is ideal for students and scholars of visual arts and filmmaking, as well as art history, arts education, and media studies. Roger Hallas is Associate Professor of English at Syracuse University. He is the author of Reframing Bodies: AIDS, Bearing Witness, and the Queer Moving Image (2009) and the co-editor of The Image and the Witness: Trauma, Memory, and Visual Culture (2007). Documenting the Visual arts Edited by Roger Hallas First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Roger Hallas; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Roger Hallas to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hallas, Roger, 1970- editor. Title: Documenting the visual arts / edited by Roger Hallas. Description: London ; New York : Routledge, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019033567 (print) | LCCN 2019033568 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138565999 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138565982 (paperback) | ISBN 9781315123301 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Documentary films--History and criticism. | Art and motion pictures. Classification: LCC PN1995.9.D6 D5824 2020 (print) | LCC PN1995.9.D6 (ebook) | DDC 070.1/8--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019033567 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019033568 ISBN: 978-1-138-56599-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-56598-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-12330-1 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Swales & Willis, Exeter, Devon, UK contents List of figures vii Acknowledgements ix List of contributors x Introduction 1 Roger Hallas Part i historical foundations 21 1 Henri Storck’s Le Monde de Paul Delvaux and Pygmalionist cinema 23 Steven Jacobs 2 A sculptor’s life on screen: John Read’s film portraits of Henry Moore for BBC television 34 Katerina Loukopoulou Part ii representing the artist 51 3 A portrait of the artist as automaton: creativity, labor, and technology in Tim’s Vermeer 53 Stephan Boman 4 Flesh and vision: Jia Zhangke’s Still Life and Dong 68 Amy Villarejo vi Contents 5 Globalizing Ai Weiwei 82 Luke Robinson Part iii Questions of documentation 97 6 Film and the performance of Marina Abramovic´: documentary as documentation 99 Chanda Laine Carey 7 Gained in translation: site-specificity in recent documentaries 113 Vera Brunner-Sung 8 The wages of !W.A.R.: activist historiography and the feminist art movement 128 Theresa L. Geller Part iV museum gazing 143 9 When art exhibition met cinema exhibition: live documentary and the remediation of the museum experience 145 Annabelle Honess Roe 10 Museum movies, documentary space, and the transmedial 160 Asbjørn Grønstad 11 “Seeing too much is seeing nothing”: the place of fashion within the documentary frame 174 Matthew J. Fee Part V art worlds and film worlds 189 12 Challenging the hierarchies of photographic history 191 Trisha Ziff, interviewed by Roger Hallas 13 On the history (and future) of art documentaries and the film program at the National Gallery of Art 205 Margaret Parsons, interviewed by Marsha Gordon Index 221 Figures 2.1 Advertisement for the 16mm print of Henry Moore, as published in Art News Annual 53, no. 7 (1955). 40 2.2 Henry Moore: The Language of Sculpture (John Read, 1974). 43 2.3 Henry Moore: The Language of Sculpture (John Read, 1974). 44 2.4 Henry Moore: The Language of Sculpture (John Read, 1974). 44 3.1 David Hockney tracing a live projection within a camera obscura. David Hockney’s Secret Knowledge (Randall Wright, 2002). 56 3.2 Tim Jenison painting within his optical apparatus. Tim’s Vermeer (Teller, 2013). 62 3.3 Jenison’s perspective as he copies the image reflected in his shaving mirror. Tim’s Vermeer (Teller, 2013). 64 3.4 Jenison using a computer to analyze perspective cues in Vermeer’s The Music Lesson. Tim’s Vermeer (Teller, 2013). 65 4.1 The director’s signature. Still Life (Jia Zhangke, 2006). 70 4.2 Workers’ flesh. Still Life (Jia Zhangke, 2006). 72 4.3 Liu Xiaodong painting Han Sanming. Dong (Jia Zhangke, 2006). 73 4.4 Detail of painting by Liu Xiaodong. Dong (Jia Zhangke, 2006). 77 5.1 Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (Alison Klayman, 2012). 89 5.2 Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (Alison Klayman, 2012). 89 5.3 Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (Alison Klayman, 2012). 91 6.1 Seven Easy Pieces (Babette Mangolte, 2007). 105 6.2 The Artist is Present (Matthew Akers, 2012). 107 6.3 The Space In Between: Marina Abramovic´ in Brazil (Marco del Fiol, 2016). 110 7.1 Fallen Star: Finding Home (Vera Brunner-Sung and Valerie Stadler, 2016). Courtesy of the Artist and Stuart Collection, University of California, San Diego. © Do Ho Suh. 119 viii Figures 7.2 Fallen Star: Finding Home (Vera Brunner-Sung and Valerie Stadler, 2016). Courtesy of the Artist and Stuart Collection, University of California, San Diego. © Do Ho Suh. 120 7.3 Levitated Mass (Doug Pray, 2013). 123 7.4 Interview subjects in multiple shots from Levitated Mass. 124 8.1 !Women Art Revolution (Lynn Hershman Leeson, 2010). 129 8.2 !Women Art Revolution (Lynn Hershman Leeson, 2010). 137 8.3 !Women Art Revolution (Lynn Hershman Leeson, 2010). 139 9.1 Presenter Tim Marlow discusses the exhibition’s layout with curator Luke Syson. Leonardo Live (Phil Grabsky, 2011). 150 9.2 The British Museum’s Twitter feed emphasizes the liveness of their forthcoming Pompeii Live broadcast on June 18, 2013. 155 10.1 National Gallery (Frederick Wiseman, 2014). 165 10.2 The Great Museum (Johannes Holzhausen, 2014). 168 10.3 Museum Hours (Jem Cohen, 2013). 171 10.4 Museum Hours (Jem Cohen, 2013). 171 11.1 The First Monday in May (Andrew Rossi, 2016). 181 11.2 The First Monday in May (Andrew Rossi, 2016). 182 11.3 The First Monday in May (Andrew Rossi, 2016). 182 11.4 The First Monday in May (Andrew Rossi, 2016). 185 12.1 Chevolution (Trisha Ziff, 2008). 194 12.2 The Mexican Suitcase (Trisha Ziff, 2011). 195 12.3 The Man Who Saw Too Much (Trisha Ziff, 2015). 199 12.4 Witkin & Witkin (Trisha Ziff, 2017). 202 13.1 Poster for the first Films on Art program at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1979. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art. 206 13.2 De Artificiali Perspectiva or Anamorphosis (The Brothers Quay and Roger Cardinal, 1991). 211 13.3 Parabeton: Pier Luigi Nervi and Roman Concrete (Heinz Emigholz, 2012). Courtesy of Grasshopper Film. 217 acknowleDgements I would like to express my warmest gratitude to all the contributors for their rich ideas and rigorous scholarship that brought this collection together. Additionally, Steven Cohan, Matthew J. Fee, Marsha Gordon, Frances Guerin, Chris Hanson, Will Scheibel, Shawn Shimpach, and Patricia Zimmermann all gave sage advice along the way. I am very grateful for the research leave supported by the College of Arts and Sciences and the Humanities Center at Syracuse University, which enabled me to develop this project. I would also like to thank the College for providing subvention to support the publication of this book. I thank T.J.West for indexing, Andrew Melvin for copy-editing, and Natalie Thompson for managing the production of the book. Natalie Foster and Jennifer Vennall at Routledge have both been incredibly helpful, supportive, and patient throughout this process.