by Jamie Uhler
After the fun piece on ‘Who is the Greatest Genius the Cinema Has Ever Produced’ that Sam queried a few weeks back, I thought it fun if these sort of general conversation inducing questions become a sort of mini series around here. After (sort of) asking the following question in the tumultuous Film Socialisme thread, I sort of thought why not do it here more formally.
In thinking about Godard, one often thinks Contempt from 1963 to be his greatest triumph, but Sight & Sound critic Colin MacCabe took it even further in his essay on the film. He called Contempt “the greatest work of art produced in postwar Europe.”
Which got me thinking as it’s so broad. What is the Greatest Work of Art Produced post World War II (from any geographical region— lets open it up beyond Europe) to you? Anything is open from a 3 minute pop song, to a comic book, to an opera, a painting, or a novel, a poem. Hell even a signature suit by say, Coco Chanel, is in the running.
Oh, and obviously films. Only your mind will limit, you just have to make the case.
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Fratres by Arvo Part. The 12 cellist version from the Berlin Philh that is the third composition on the Tabla Rasa CD released by ECM.
Beyond Europe….. King Tubby and Lee Perry, 2001 A Space Odyssey…
ARVO PART is magnificent!!!!!
Yeah I could of just mentioned the whole Tabla Rasa album.
Other non T.Rasa compositions like Fur Alina, Summa For String Orchestra, Festina Lente, and Silouanas Song are also masterpieces.
Music For Airports by Brian Eno is also worth noting.
Axion Esti – Mikis Theodorakis
Tony, I can’t wait to check this out!
Piqued my interest – I’ll try to download this on iTunes if it’s available. Or get it at my local record shop, though I can’t seem to walk in there without dropping way too much cash on multiple items, so that might be a mistake…
Good grief – Peanuts?
Damn, I forgot comic-strips. If pressed, I’d say “Doonesbury” or “Krazy Kat”, but Schultz is unquestionable.
You could make a good case for Doonesbury – it’s been going 40 plus years, is going strong – has even had a noticeable revival in the 00s…. The case for Krazy Kat would he harder, given the post-WWII timeframe… Herriman, though, has to be on the short list of the 20th century’s geniuses. You could make a pretty good case for Pogo too, I think.
Comics do change the scale of the question, though – Peanuts is what, an illustrated joke a day for 50 years – beautifully executed, with a rich cast of characters, a broad, humane outlook – it’s a great career, treated as one work of art. Like Ozu, if you count all his work as one film…
Good point on KK being too early. I suppose I could say “Calvin and Honbes”, instead.
I love that choice there “weepingsam” and just checked out your very interesting blog (which I will now add to our blogroll)
With a comic strip, can you pick the entire series, or does it have to be one strip? I assume with TV series, we’re counting all episodes together. On the other end of the spectrum, what about fragments? I think Zabriskie Point overall is a mess but I’d consider the final five minutes among the finest moments in Western art in the 20th century.
The head, the tail, the whole damn thing.
This could all change for me tomorrow but….
Film- The Third Man (1949) – Carol Reed
Album- London Calling (1979) – The Clash
Novel- East of Eden (1952) – Steinbeck
More great choices. Jon, my Steinbeck would have been GRAPES, but that was pre-1945. THE THIRD MAN is a spectacular choice methinks, and who can argue with LONDON CALLING!
Yes picking only one is nearly impossible for me. Like picking a child or something. Even picking one film is hard and has changed over the years. It used to be 2001: A Space Odyssey, then Persona, now it’s The Third Man.
I think The Grapes of Wrath probably would have taken the whole thing, but again too old.
For a moment there, I thought the option of novels would be scrapped, but then I saw I could choose one. Then I’d go with the best novel on the best medium (written), since I’m not an expert on paintings or comics or modern sculpture, and I think film is just too fascist as an art form for me to hail it as the best (even if in there are my favorite works of art of my life). I’s like to put a videogame (the only post-WW2 art expression) and make you all shifty, but I can’t
I’ll go with “Pedro Páramo” a short novel (but not a novella) by mexican author Juan Rulfo. It manages to confuse you, give you a compelling chart of characters, interesting situations, and just be one of the closest novels to my modern sensibilities.
Juan Rulfo never received the nobel, even if they wanted to give him one, because he just wrote this book and another one full of short stories (all based on stories his uncle told him, but when his uncle died, he stopped writing, simple as that). The short stories are also among the best written in the history of the language.
I do recommend, specially to those english-based and international audience to seek this book (and the short story compilation) to read, even if it will lack the strenght and harshness of the spanish language (and mexican centered words), it will blow your mind away, it’s just about the best modern spanish-written novel since El Quijote (who’s also a modern novel).
Jaimie: I suspected you would go with literature here, and I applaud you. Interesting that you went with Rulfo over Marquez, but fair enough.
A terrific continuation of the greatest cinematic genius post, Jamie, and one that is even more difficult to firm up.
I narrowed my own final choice from a field of 12, and to be honest, it was close to impossible to make that single choice. The field of art is the one that was tough to nail down, as there isn’t a single work from Rothko, Pollack, Basquiat and Warhol that stands definitely above others.
1. Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris (1968; Village Gate Theatre; songs and lyrics by Jacques Brel)
2. One Hundred Years of Solitude (novel; Gabriel Garcia Marquez; Columbia; 1970)
3. Symphony Number 3 a. k. a. “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs” (Henryk Gorecki; Poland, 1970)
4. Tokyo Story (film, 1953, Y. Ozu, Japan)
5. Death of a Salesman (play; 1949, Arthur Miller, USA)
6. Peter Grimes (opera, June 1945, Benjamin Britten, UK)
7. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (album; The Beatles, 1969; UK)
8. The Temple of the Golden Pavillion (novel; 1956; Yukio Mishima; Japan)
9. Kind of Blue (jazz album; Miles Davis; 1959; USA)
10. Sansho the Bailiff (film, 1954, Kenji Mizoguchi; Japan)
11. Charlotte’s Web (children’s novel; 1953; E. B. White, USA)
12. Au Hasard Balthazar (film, 1966; Robert Bresson, France)
I ultimately went with Brel’s life-cycle review, which is a work of defining scope, a work of beauty and poetic resonance, and one which projects passion, melancholy, pain, nostalgia, loneliness, old age, death, all with the full gamut of human emotions. The songs rank among the greatest ever written, the singing in the original show was sublime, and the presentation stays with you for a lifetime.
A few others like Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird” and Kenneth Graham’s “The Wind in the Willows” almost made the final cut.
Willows doesn’t qualify, Sam (1908)! Kudos for mentioning it though.
Ok, looks like the store it is as I’ll have multiple items to pick up (see above comment under Tony’s pick).
Yes, Yes, Sam; am so glad someone included Brel, and for we English-only folks without French, the wonderful translation by Eric Blau for that off-Broadway performance and subsequent recording, which may even be better than the original. (But only a French speaker would know, and I would still disagree). I finally got a copy of the DVD, available only fairly recently, apparently of the American Film Theatre film version. Someone on this site suggested Annie Dillard’s “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, also a great choice, as is her short story “Aces and Eights”; and, in the same bitter-sweet sense as Brel, work by the now deceased psychiatrist Allen Wheelis, esp. “The Illusionless Man”. Picasso’s “Guernica”, does that qualify as post WWII? Hemingways short story “Fathers and Sons”? A little of Phillip Larkin’s poetry, esp “Aubade”? The art that speaks with eloquence of the realities of life, and death.
Great stuff so far guys. Over lunch I have an order just waiting to hit ‘confirm’ on Amazon that includes: ‘Fratres’ by Arvo Part (the exact version— ECM Records— that you speak on), ‘Axion Esti’ by Mikis Theodorakis (I made special attention to get edition sang in the native Greek), ‘Pedro Páramo’ by Juan Rulfo (in english), and ‘Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris’ (original cast recording). I await all with much fervor.
I must say Sam, I’m sort of shocked we’ve known each other this long and it’s never came up how much you like ‘The Temple of the Golden Pavilion’. It’s not a book I’d think you’d like straight away, but it’s a personal favorite of mine as well. I like seeing ‘Peter Grimes’ on here too, an opera I’ve seen thanks to you, that I like a great deal.
Jamie, I applaud you for this post and for that resolve. Looks like some stupendous stuff. I have always been a huge fan of the Mishima since it was assigned to me in the undergraduate days. For some reason I guess I never had reason to broach it here until now. Great we are on the same wave-length. Thanks for those kind words on PETER GRIMES, which may well be the last operatic masterpiece written.
Love that ‘Sgt Pepper’s choice Sam! I would countpropose Revolver and ‘Love in the Age of Cholera’ as my Marquez pick.
As it is I am now torn between Dylan’s ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ and the novel ‘The Remains of the Day’ by Kazuo Ishiguro.
Peter:
Great alternate choices with Marquez and The Beatles!
And I adore that Ishiguro too!
—a live performance of the Who sometime between 1967-1970. I’d lean more to the earlier side of that timeline as it would include the smoke bomb/auto-destruction finale, which would provide another level of art to the proceedings.
—Robert Rauschenberg’s 34 illustrations (one per canto) for Dante’s ‘Inferno’. Worked on over the course of 18 months spanning 1959-60, all part of MoMA’s permeant collection.
—Gerhard Richter’s ‘Ice’ series (1988/1989).
—Martin Ritt’s ‘Hud’ film from 1963.
—Novels are just incredibly hard for me to nominate one. There’s Murakami’s ‘The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle’, DeLillo’s ‘White Noise’ or ‘Underworld’, Percy’s ‘The Moviegoer’, Bolano’s ’2666′, Mishima’s ‘Confessions of a Mask’, Dazai’s ‘No Longer Human’, JG Ballard’s ‘Crash’, Vonnegut’s ‘Dead Eye Dick’, and on and on.
—Then there are the poetry books, Pavlova’s ‘If There is Something to Desire (There Will be Something to Regret)’, Larkin’s ‘High Windows’, or the weird hybrid of poetry/literature/mythology of Carson’s (drop dead brilliant) ‘Autobiography of Red’.
—Pulp’s 1998 album ‘This is Hardcore’, The Jam’s album ‘Setting Sons’, Manic Street Preacher’s album ‘The Holy Bible’.
—Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘Pierrot le Fou’ from 1965.
—I also think the majesty of many early rock and roll singles greatly define the post-WW2 era, such as Frankie Lymon’s ‘I’m Not a Juvenile Delinquent’, Buddy Holly’s ‘Maybe Baby’, The Crystals’ ‘Please Hurt Me’ (from 1962′s ‘Twist Uptown’), Eddie Cochran’s ‘Something Else’, etc.
all those were rehashed in my mind to which I culled the top/final four:
David Carson’s ‘End of Print’ book,
Guy Debord’s ‘Society of the Spectacle’,
Harold Pinter’s ‘The Homecoming’ and
The Clash’s 1980 album Sandinista!’
to which today I’d probably pick the Pinter as number one. The filmed version from 1973 is a great place to start with it.
_ _ _ _
And I say all this just knowing something has slipped my mind.
Jamie, that Raushenberg pick is revelatory!!!!! But your entire presentation is spectacular, if I may say so.
“And I say all this just knowing something has slipped my mind.”
Yes, something did. Seinfeld.
Jamie, if you HAD to pick one Who performance from that period, gun to your head, what would it be? I only have legits (I might have to solicit some booties from you eventually, if I’m feeling greedy) but I prefer the Isle of Wight ’70 to Live at Leeds, personally.
I have a bootleg from Gergetown University England 1969 (I’d have to look on my Who concert guide for the exact date) that is the best I own (from the era I speak on, I own about 10 or 15). It’s not the complete set (just 6 Tommy cuts) but the drum parts to a blistering ‘I Can’t Explain’ make it my favorite (not to mention the first minute or so of ‘Heaven and Hell’). Not sure what the guys took preshow that night but they cook.
Of released ones, I prefer Leeds to Wight (easily), and the new Hull addition to Leeds the most of all (Hull was always said to be one of the best gigs of the era, certainly better then the other released ones).
Oh, and the Rock N Roll circus version of A Quick One While He’s Away is a top contender for your above question imo
They don’t even break the instruments at the end because, well, it’s not even necessary (more likely, because of the tight confines of the set, or they were just getting sick of it, but I like my conclusion better)
Film– The “Star Wars” series. It encompases tremendous scope and visual imagination, spellbinding mythmaking, fever-pitch action set-piece design and master-class cinematic metatextual pastiche. The only thing it lacks, frankly, is nudity.
Television– “Histoire(s) du Cinema”. Probably the most progressive and experimental piece of non-narrative cinema I’ve had the pleasure of seeing, and ones that takes tremendous advantage of the long-form nature of video and television. Cinema as pop-art.
Comics– “Akira”. The usual votes go to the works of Alan Moore or Frank Miller, but for my money there’s no greater long-form work than Katsuhiro Otomo’s original six-volume mega-story, that fully fleshes out that which his own anime only gives us in broad strokes. Dave Sim’s “Cerebus” gets a close runner-up, and might’ve beaten out Otomo if only if it weren’t for the Canadian cartoonist’s sickening misogyny throughout the later portions of the series.
Animation– “Evangelion”, easily. It’s the best blend of mainstream and experimental sensibilities I’ve ever seen in animation or live-action, and the fact that it’s gone on to influence an entire medium’s worth of creators with some of the most progressive and surreal sci-fi imaginable is nothing short of exambplary. A close second would be the collected works of Rene Laloux, but Anno still gets my vote for sheer balls-to-the-walls weirdness.
Literature– “Underworld”. Don DeLillo is something of a poet laureate of the intricacies of the 20th century’s absurdities, and seeing him confront pretty much the entire post-War period in the space of this epic novel is a very welcome thing indeed, as though you’re watching Picasso finally step to to the wall to paint “Guernica” after years of experimenting with cubism, at long last plying his stylistic art to a cause worthy of his talents.
Architecture– The Guggenheim. Really, almost any of Frank Llloyd Wright’s post-War pieces coould be included here, but this is the iconic work, the one he’ll be remembered by, along with the brick-and-mortar poetry of FAlling Water. It’s one of the few buildings that stands out in an urban landscape to become a work of art along with anything housed inside of it. An essential piece of imaginative whimsy in the grim Cold War period.
Theater– “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes”. By all logic, I should really be putting “Godot” here, or some other work of bleak 20th century absurdism. But against all odds, I find the more optimistic, and equally creative and challenging prospects of Tony Kushner’s masterpiece to be worthy of championing even above the iconographic work that Becket put on stage.
Video-Games– “The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time”. Again, part of me feels I should be giving this to a more obscure, challenging entry, like the work of Hideo Kojima, or Fumito Ueda, both of them designers who have by and large picked up the lessons learned from Shigeru Miyamoto and plied them in ways that even the master himself could scarcely imagine in his wildest design sessions. But there’s something so magical and wondrous about this, the most fully realized of the “Zelda” games, a work that rewards creative thinking and problem solving and encourages the player to develop a generosity of spirit and deed like few other works. Also, it’s just plain fun.
Music– I don’t know, something by Sting.
Bob, I share your love of DeLillo as we’ve discussed, I think you should read (if you haven’t) two books I list above: ’2666′ and ‘The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle’. You’ll adore both, just to many of your sensibilities at display there.
I’ve actually got the Murakami somewhere, and I’ve been meaning to read it. Ironically, it’s from reading a Tim Rogers review of a “Metal Gear Solid” game. The other writer whose work I’d consider for a list like this would be Frank Herbert, but I’ve only just started the penultimate book.
Bob, I suspected that top choice, but fair enough. The theatre piece is a very great one!
It’s not necessarily a top choice, merely my top choice for live-action theatrical cinema. Furthermore, if I were to limit my picks to stand-alone efforts, instead of serial ones, I really don’t know what I’d put there in its stead. The same goes for “Histoire(s)”, which is something of a cheat.
I’m not sure how I’d rank these if I were to put them into numerical order, and what other examples from their respective mediums I’d put up there alongside them.
yeah, Bob makes some fun picks but damn if the Sting nod doesn’t ruin it!
Jamie, you can make fun of my love of “Star Wars”, of anime, of video-games or all kinds of sci-fi action movie fluff. But don’t you dare mock Sting.
I don’t really have to, he does a much better job himself then I ever could.
I will admit that Sting’s time with THE POLICE yielded some exceptional work.
Um, I know this is an opinion matter, but in that era defined by punk/post-punk/ska-dub hybrids in Britain of which the Police were both a part of and practitioners of, I could (and am in the process of in the Beatles series) name about 40 to 60 bands that produced better, more challenging artistic music.
Sting is a world class douche bag, of which only Bono (from that era) can approach. Sting’s best work remains either acting role in QUADROPHENIA or RADIO ON. Both films are masterpieces.
Sting is the greatest adult contemporary artist ever. He should be slotted right above Bonnie Raitt and Michael Bolton. The Kenny G of rock bass.
Spend a day alternating between bands like Wire, Gang Of Four, The Fall, The Police, Joy Division, The Specials, Comsat Angels, Throbbing Gristle, and Mekons from their late 70′s to early 80′s work. One of these groups stands out as a complete fraud and rather laughable with their wannabe Jamaican “groove”. Bono looks like a genius in comparison.
Yeah, but the whole reggae/ska cast-off period isn’t really the stuff I dig in Sting. Yeah, the Police’s first two albums are fun, but mostly nothing special. “Zenyatta Mondatta” has some good steps in the right direction towards darker stuff, but it’s still mainly just three guys jammin’ in between trying to kill one another. “Ghost in the Machine” and “Synchronicity” are both pretty much golden, as far as I enjoy them, and his solo jazz period starting with “Dream of the Blue Turtles” is where it really gets kicking. “The Soul Cages” is especially a great concept-album, as far as those things go. “Ten Summoner’s Tales” is a little light, I’ll admit, but has a handful of great singles. Since then he’s been more middling (“Mercury Rising” is flat out boring) but still, I’ll take him over pretty much anything else in the period, especially any shit with “punk” in its description.
Sade’s cool, too. Granted, the only album of hers I actually own is “Diamond Life”, but still. She’s someone I’d dig into more deeply if I weren’t content to mostly just tune in whenever I hear her on the radio.
“The only thing it lacks, frankly, is nudity.”
lol
Jabba’s in his birthday suit though.
Threepio is “naked” in TPM. “My parts are showing! Oh goodness!” And there’s always Chewbacca, if hair’s your thing.
We do get Carrie in the slave bikini and Natalie’s midriff bared in her battletorn skintight thing. Not to mention plenty of scantly clad Twi’leks, including Aayla Secura (the Jedi chick who gets gunned down in ROTS). So it could be worse. We get about as much sex appeal as Marvel comic-books.
What about “art” art – i.e. painting or sculpture?
Warhol.
Good Christ, Jamie, this is just too difficult. Off the top of my head, without thinking almost:
Any post-war Mahalia Jackson recording; Bellow’s ‘Herzog’; Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’; DeVries’ ‘The Blood of the Lamb’; a Francis Bacon triptych (maybe ’1973′); James Brown (‘Star Time!’); Ozu’s ‘Tokyo Story’; Fellini’s ’8-1/2′; Wire’s ‘Chairs Missing’; Roth’s Zuckerman novels; Brian Eno’s ‘Another Green World’; Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire’; and Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’; and Nico’s ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’ — this could go on, but I’ll stop here.
Almost went with STREETCAR Marc–it was practicallya toss up with SALESMAN, though I will readily admit that Williams is a greater playright than Miller.
Great we are on the same page with TOKYO STORY, though I know this is one of your absolute favorite films!
Well, if I had a gun to my head (please don’t make me choose), ‘Tokyo Story’ would top my all-time greatest list.
I was set to include Roth’s AMERICAN TRILOGY for novels (which reside in the larger theme of Zuckerman work’s), so I’m with ya.
I actually would say HAPPY DAYS for Beckett, but hell with him you have any number you can go with. I was set to put Sartre’s NO EXIT on my list, but its release isn’t technically post-WW2.
I also wanted to include more series, or individual paintings, but a few work well. If pressed I’d add a Twomby (probably something from his ‘Rose’ series), a Tapies, a Basquiat (MONA LISA), and a deKooning WOMAN. I think his Women paintings are as good as any ever painted.
I should give “No Exit” another go at some point, but there’s something so nakedly didactic about it that bothers me. The same themes are covered a little better in the “Don Juan in Hell” portion of “Man and Superman”.
There is an open quality to Sarte that’s nice, though. Open enough that somebody was able to parse his writings enough to come up with this without too much trouble:
I mention “Godot” above in my own considerations, but if I were going to include Beckett properly, I’d probably go with “Krapp’s Last Tape”. One of the smartest, saddest commentaries on technology and loneliness out there.
That ‘Samuel Beckett on Film’ 4 disc box set has a sublime version of ‘Krappe’ starring William Hurt directed by Atom Egoyan.
As for a Superman being better then ‘No Exit’ or any Sartre for that matter, I’ll just say ‘no comment’.
Jamie, you do realize I’m talking about the Shaw play, and not Kal El, right?
And… it’s John Hurt, you mean.
I knew I’d forget some things — Twombly and deKooning’s ‘Woman’ series (which I think I see a piece of right there below ‘Lolita’) for sure. And, stupidly, I forgot Heller’s ‘Catch-22.’
I need to get a woman painter in here and Helen Frankenthaler is just the ticket.
Women painters… hmmmm. Jenny Saville, maybe Rita Ackermann and Gillian Carnegie. (all English I believe, I know JS and GC are for sure). But over the past 70 years it’s hard to place any female above who you name. For female artists I’d add Siouxsie Sue and Catherine Briellat to my list, but at the top of the list (for me) would be Simone de Beauvoir. All her important works are post WW2.
More female artists
Film: Margarethe von Trotta
Rock: The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde
oh, I’m not a fan of Chrissie Hynde. Von Trotta’s great though.
Jamie, your photo-graphic is stupendous!!! LOVE it!!!!!
Great! It took all of 3 minutes to compile and execute over lunch.
TV series I Claudius BBC
Film Dr. Strangelove kubrick
Novel The General In His Labyrinth Marquez
record Revolver Beatles
photograph Piss Christ Serrano
literary humor Rush Limbaugh is A Big Fat Idiot Franken
non fiction The Fateful Triangle Chomsky
painting The Guggenheim Mural Polloch
play Inherit The Wind Lawrence and Lee
live rock performance Crossroads Cream
I prefer “Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them”, myself. I’ve always wanted to check out “Why Not Me?”, though, considering Franken actually has gotten elected office, since then.
Oh! The Things I know! had me putting the book down so I could catch my breath between guffaws
No no…I’ve changed my mind
Best TV show Dancing with the Stars
Best Movie The Human Centipede
Best record album The Archies Greatest Hits
Best Novel Anything by Tom Clancy
Best non ficition Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard
Best Play Bye Bye Birdie
Best Photograph Any photo of Lindsay Lohan smashed off her keister
Best Rock Performance Justin Bieber hit in the head with a bottle
Best Dance The Bump
Best Fashion creation Edible ladies’ underwear
Many people have chosen Gabriel García Márquez in their best works of all time whatever list, and I understand that he could possibly be the most attainable spanish writer around, but he’s not the best (not a chance). His 100 Years is among the best novels ever written, I’ll agree with that, and many of his other novels are extremely good, but they pale in comparison to something as boggling as Pedro Páramo. It’s like a maze, like the best work of Borges combined with the magic realism of Márquez and the harshness and boldness of years and years of mexican popular narative combined into ine tome that feels heavy in your soul and in your mind, but you just can’t stop reading it.
I’ve been planing for a while to take a deeper look into this novel, because I feel it has inspired me in ways I’ve never even imagined.
Now, what about the other categories? I couldn’t care less, but here they are.
Film: Donnie Darko… can’t help it.
Music: Mhhhh, with the rock music countdown in my hands I can’t help but to skip this one.
Comic: Sandman, Neil Gaiman.
Videogame: Silent Hill
Animation: The Simpsons (also counts as tv series).
Modern paint, sculpture and architecture, I couldn’t possibly be more ignorant.
I’ve always been intrigued by “Sandman”, but it never really grabbed me. A good, off-beat choice for comics, but it’s a little too heavy in the emo/goth sub-culture for me to take it serious. Granted, if I had an emo/goth girlfriend, I’d be singin’ a different tune, but there it is. By and large, I’m not nearly as enamored of British comics-writing as a lot of people are, actually. Moore’s good, but a lot of the others strike me as rather overwrought in their attempts to make the material artificially mature. There’s stuff that I like, sure (I really should try and finish reading the “Preacher” series at some point) but still, all of the stuff that gets published under the VERTIGO labeol comes with a caveat of sorts, for me.
And “Silent Hill”? Jaime, you FOXHOUND traitor, you. Granted, I put Miyamoto above Kojima, myself, but still.
“Sandman” is much more about how it mixes a mitology of its own with the mitology of the world, giving yourself a story about how inmortals pass eternity as years go by. The ending (The Wake is called) is maybe one of the most beautifully drawn and perfectly written arcs in a comic book in history. I won’t deny that there are many comics of the series that aren’t perfect, but if you follow the flow, you get more and more invested in the plot.
And I ain’t no emo or goth, as much as I like Donnie Darko.
And Silent Hill… well… you know, I’d love to put MGS, but the thing is that this videogame is more similar to Pedro Páramo and I do think that there may be some influence (the place in which the novel takes place is filled with fog and the dead are alive or viceversa).
I hear ya Jaimie. The post of course was to name the greatets works of art post 1945, and as you yourself acknowledge Marquez’ 100 YEARS is one of the greatest masterpieces in any form, regardless of where its author stands in the general pantheon.
If I were breaking this out by category – and since it’s harder than it looks to compare art forms, and because a 50 year comic strip almost feels like cheating, I think I will –
Novel = The Recognitions, William Gaddis. (Ellison’s Invisible Man a close second.)
LP record = John Coltrane, Live at the Village Vanguard
Song = Sympathy for the Devil or Tracks of My Tears
Film = It’s a Wonderful Life
Long form comic book = Love and Rockets, Los Bros Hernandez
Single Issue Comic book = Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
I don’t think I can come up with a single painting – a painter – probably Rothko.
Theater and poetry – there are things I like, but my knowledge of both is too shallow to put much stock in my opinions. Classical music, opera and the like, is well beyond my scope, alas… Video Games – I’m fond of PacMan…
Overall though, I’ll go with the longest and the shortest – Schulz and Smokey…
“Watchmen” was originally a twelve issue miniseries. It was planned out and limited to just twelve, but it’s only “single issue” in its collected TPB editiins. “The Killing Joke” is a better one-shot example.
That is all too true… I guess single “Volume” is the term I was thinking of. (Or Graphic Novel, if you could enforce only using the term for actual graphic Novels.)
I don’t know about greatest, but John Cage’s 4′ 33″ is probably the most definitive, for good or ill.
Jeez, this is insanely hard. I’m soo unqualified to make these decisions. I definitely won’t even attempt naming greatest work of architecture, modern classical music, or video games, like some here have done.
Many people have already named obscure-yet-no-doubt-brilliant works in theater, illustration, and other things that I am very impressed with. At the same time, some have suggested works that seem far too banal and unchallenging for a status of such vast import. If we were naming the greatest works of the first half of the 20th century, would we not be naming such seminally great, brilliant, and challenging works as Joyce’s Ulysses, Faulkner’s Sound and the Fury, Eliot’s Waste Land, Murnau’s Sunrise, Dreyer Passion of Joan of Arc, Renoir’s Rules of the Game, and Picasso’s Guernica? I certainly understand people naming their favorites, but shouldn’t there be some focus on works that have redefined their mediums, caught the spirit of the age, and shown the way forward for the rest of the artform and perhaps the culture at large? We need to be looking for genius here (SUPREME WORK OF ART), not just really good stories.
Anyway, having said that, my own choices may be disappointing. I can only submit things I have actually read/watched/seen/admired, and my experience is limited by, among other things, my mere 21 years of age. So, you know, feel free to disagree, disregard, etc.
Literature: The stories of Flannery O’Connor. (In novels, I’d say East of Eden by John Steinbeck, in nonfiction I’d say Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard)
Film: Andrei Rublev, by Andrei Tarkovsky (though I almost went with The Godfather Trilogy)
Comics: Peanuts, Charles Schulz (for narrative comics, I’d go with Art Spiegelman’s Maus)
Popular Music: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles
Painting: Woman Descending a Staircase, Gerhard Richter (or else something by Andrew Wyeth)
Nice call on “Maus”, even if it’s a runner up to Schultz. As time goes on I think I prefer Spiegelman’s more experimental stuff from the pre-RAW days, but that’s the big work. Essential in the comics form.
Good points Stephen, although I think it’s significant that the works you named here were produced within what is essentially a seventeen year period (1922-1939). Maybe that’s just a coincidence, maybe not, but it’s a lot easier to deal with and make sense of than the 65+ years since the end of World War II. And, I mean, O’Connor is a great writer, but I’m not sure what she was doing extends that much beyond telling “really good stories” (that’s even more true of East of Eden, a book that I was very affected by when I read it but remains an allegorical mess; I like Dillard a lot too, for what it’s worth). I think the post-war American writers that have approached redefinition of the medium have already been recognized by Harold Bloom, among others (McCarthy, Delillo, Pynchon, etc)–but whether or not any of their works are comparable to what Melville or Proust or Joyce or Faulkner were up to is an open question I think (and of course just focusing on American writers is deeply problematic on my part for obvious reasons). Personally I’d argue that the greatest post-war American art was produced by people with names like Charles Mingus and John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman–and I think their best work clearly meets the criteria you outline here.
post-war American art, to me is all about Abstract Expressionism. It was the first time America asserted itself on the world stage in terms of art, creating something uniquely American that had no European precedents. Up till then all American visual art had followed Europe’s lead, but after that movement New York became the center of the art world (stole the mantle from Paris) a position it has never relinquished. All the movements in art have followed in it’s wake… and its influence is so vast that it started gobbling up movements in cinema, literature, music (as you discuss here) as blind abstract expressionism became a way to think about music, language, etc. A few men (and select lucky talent women too) in paint splashed overalls painting in barns, empty apartments, and studios living rooms really did change the world.
I love this comment – and I’ve always loved how Abstract Expressionism tapped into that expansive, adventurous quality in the American spirit which (especially lately) doesn’t get tapped into enough, I think.
That said, I’ve heard it argued (can’t remember where) that Cubism and Pop Art were more influential/important to the history of art. Personally, I prefer Abstract Expressionism to both, but I can see why the thought might be that Pop Art did more to shape post-60s culture than Abstract Expressionism, gives its conceptual nature, its self-consciousness/irony/self-awareness, and its ties to modern consumer culture. What’s your take on that line of thinking, out of curiosity?
Yeah the shaping of post 60′s culture could certainly be said to have been shaped most by Pop Art visual aesthetic (plus titans of American post 1970 art like say Jeff Koons are clearly embedded to it) it terms of art, but culturally I’d argue that America doesn’t live that ironically in terms of consumerism and consumption. The suburbs boom has shown this no?
But, Pop Art is merely another movement that grew out of Abstract Expressionism, and it’s a rather easy timeline of influence to follow, using the (at the time painting together, living together, and probably romantically linked) Rauschenberg/Johns connection. Rauschenberg, heavily influenced by the initial NY School of Abstract Expressionism (to the point that he used to drink beers with them at their designated bar, then drive them to their studios as they were drunk and watch them paint into the night/morning over coffee– several wonderful accounts of time with De Kooning and Kline have been made [this is how he obtained the drawing for 'Erased De Kooning']), but realizing he was coming after the fact and was an avant-garde artist decided to seek a new form of art not relying on such emotionally charged signifiers (he has a great quote at Rothko: ‘how can Red mean anything other the Red? Red is Red’), thus came his Combine paintings. They are striking from Abstract expressionism but the application of paint is clearly indebted to several of the Action painters. Then John’s iconic symbols were a stylistic deathnail to the abstract expressionists (but their exact points are being made BECAUSE OF abstract expressionism). Now these two then greatly influenced Pop Art to the point that many tomes have classified them as Pop Artists (they’re not however). After all Warhol has been quoted as saying Raushenberg’s use of Coke bottles in paintings, and John’s bronzing of Petrol Cans led him to thinking about Pop Art. But none of this happens without Abstract Expressionism initial happenings (you could even argue that the AE boom led many top curators and galleries to NY/United States for the first time which gave an avenue for hundreds of American Artists that wasn’t there before).
So, sort of roundabout as to what has influenced post-60′s America more, but that’s a difficult proposition to debate as I’d argue a chief ideal of post-60′s America is a strict negligence/aloofness towards art (specifically ‘serious’ fine art), making the impact of Fine Art on life (and deciding which) rather trivial. Look through this thread, most can’t decide on Fine Art/Painting, or admit to being not scholarly enough to cite anything, but then most can easily name a comic….
In terms of relevance for the place it occupies in people’s lives, the stuff we think of as Fine Art is more or less dead. Mere oil paintings or works of sculpture aren’t the height of visual stimulation that they were in ages past. Print and theater had been slowly eroding their direct importance for generations, but cinema more or less delivered the coup de grace by supplying a medium that had equal potential for visual and dramatic expression. Traditional arts live on today only by their willingness to go to more extreme forms of expression that the newer mediums don’t yet have the comfort-zones to explore yet, but even that stuff mostly just represents the death throes. The institutional life-support systems of museums and universities are all that’s left keeping new work flowing through the status-quo’s veins. Classics from the past deserve to be cherished, this is true. But I dare say you’re better off having instant recall for the last great comic book you read than the last great painting you saw hanging on a wall.
Spoken like a true Philistine, Bob. Serious art will never go away, nor it is in the ‘death throes’. Yes, the culture is largely indifferent, but this is more a statement on the eroding values of said culture, not beauty, or brilliance (or abundance) of created art.
Besides, your statement leaves no room for the actual reality of current patronage in the serious arts. As long as people inhabit homes, apartments, and condos, will they want beauty to adorn it’s walls. Granted, these isn’t the crowd you rub elbows with at a comic book convention, but it’s still the reality of the contemporary world.
If a comic book does more for you then a new painting, all this tells me is that you don’t seek out or have seen (or care to) much new painting. This is fine of course, but it doesn’t really give license for stating ignorance as fact. To stand within an 8 foot Twombly or Saville and be close enough to be completely engulfed by it is quite an experience, something ‘The Watchmen’ can’t hope to attain.
It also says that, in the mass-media age, people are looking for art that moves them with something more than a passive experience, and there’s nothing much more passive than just standing and looking at a picture on the wall (except, say, listening to music). I’m also not sold on the notion that the traditional arts are kept alive by the fact that people will always want wallpaper or knick-knacks for their homes. That kind of patronage is merely art as a kind of bourgeois status-symbol, or even worse a kind of vacant interior decoration. Simply put, the ways that people were moved by paintings and sculptures back in the day, they are now moved by works produced for cinema, television, print and electronic media. If you really want to reach people, there’s little point in sticking with obsolete forms just to have the bonus prestige of the ivory pedestal. The only times that new traditional artists ever mannage any real attention in the modern age is when they break the rules of their form, and following guys like Pollock and Warhol it’s gotten harder and harder to do that. Now, after the likes of Damien Hirst, I’m not sure exactly where there’s left to go. It all has to be some form of conceptual art (a horse of a very different color) to make an impact.
Bob, no one is more class conscious then me, but again, how a culture consumes art isn’t a statement on the quality of art. The bourgeoisie status seeking of art isn’t a new enterprise, rather it’s as old as created art by man is. The only thing that’s changed slightly is who has the money (before it was the kings, then the church, then merchants, now business leaders). But, it’s just the consistent re-framing of the argument that you seek to do (with each new statement) in conversations of this sort. It makes it more difficult for me to stay on task, but I refuse to take the bait.
This is really the central crux of my points: you live in NYC. The art capital of the world (though in the last 15 years London has emerged as sort of a kissing cousin), so to claim that their isn’t worthwhile new art being made is just a statement of your laziness. Yes, you don’t like the ‘rich’, ‘status’ seeking stuff (again all fluff not about actual art) so avoid Castelli and Gagosian (a gallery that has an ipad app now on it’s main page, which shoots your ‘standing still’ argument to shit) and head to the Bowery, or the Bronx. You’ll find plenty of ‘true’ (whatever that means) class-conscious art bought and embraced by middle to lower classes there. It’s all a 3 dollar train ride away (or whatever).
And, as an after-thought, funny the commercial, crass, bourgeoisie ‘Serious’ art world bothers you, and leads you to condemn the (more often then not) innocent artists, but you have no problem that the guilded classes wasting resources to fund the next status-quo defending big-budget comic/sci-fi/star wars yarn. I guess when the money uses us and speaks down to us to dumb down our culture you can at least use it to argue your low art=high art talking points.
Jamie, the art world you’re describing is indeed nice to get into, but I tend to find that the most intriguing stuff is the work that has evolved beyond the static painting-and-scultpure formula of traditional works. Maybe we’re just talking at different points here, but when I do occasion to visit a gallery in Manhattan or Brooklyn, there tends to be more digital and new media work on display than anything else. So there’s stuff to appreciate within the gallery venue, which is possibly what you’re really talking about, but it’s not really what I’d call “traditional art” anymore.
Re: the Gagosian iPad app– wouldn’t that kinda defeat the purpose of “standing within 8 feet of a Twombly or Saville and be close enough to be completely engulfed by it is quite an experience”? Would viewing it on a screen really give you the same experience? Granted, watching a film on a television gives you the same kind of diminished experience, but at least the theatrical viewing opportunities are more open, there.
As for your teasing little remarks at the end about “the next status-quo
defendingbig-budget comic/sci-fi/star wars yarn”– again, you corralled the countdown on movies about women being stabbed to death and heads being shotgunned off, so don’t whine to me about privileging low-art.RE: IPad art. Sure it’s a diminished experience, and I’d never view art this way, but here is the damned if you do damned it you don’t way in which you argue. You say art (traditional) is too ‘static’, to which I say galleries are adapting to speak to how people now view art, to which you swing to the other side and argue it’s a ‘diminished’ experience. But it’s an experience you said about three posts ago wasn’t even as worthy as flipping open a damn comic book. So essentially there is really nothing I can say here.
As for the Horror countdown, which you love to use against me, I’ll help you out; the 4 of us each had to write about 25 films (a fourth of the total 100) and we picked which one we wanted to write about. Here are the 25 I chose to personally put my name to/stamp of approval on:
Don’t Look Now Roeg 1973
Deep Red Argento 1975
Henry: Portrait of a serial Killer McNaughton 1989
Tenant, The Polanski 1976
Audition Miike 1999
Vampyr Dreyer 1932
Diabolique Clouzot 1955
Inside Maury/Bustillo 2007
Dead Ringers Cronenberg 1988
Torso Martino 1973
Hills have Eyes, The Craven 1977
Begotten Elias 1991
AntiChrist Von Trier 2009
Lost Highway Lynch 1997
Onibaba Shindo 1964
Alexandra’s Project De Heer 2003
Habit Fessenden 1997
Possession Zulawski 1981
Collector, The Wyler 1965
In My Skin De Van 2002
Trouble Every Day Denis 2001
Strange Circus Sono 2005
Rubber’s Lover Fukui 1996
Atermath/Genesis Cerda 1994
Kwaidan
Only perhaps 2 films on that list (the two giallos) are guilty of what you say here, but even that isn’t true. TORSO avoids the massacre scene as one of it’s central points, and DEEP RED is working on a theatrical level level quite beyond mere ‘slasher’. So essentially your charges here are more applicable to another.
Jamie, for the most part, I don’t see much of anything in your list that doesn’t in some way live down the torture-porn aspect of horror, which is what I’m referring to with “women being stabbed to death/heads blown off” (different strokes for different folks). Even the most chaste horror stuff out there has the violence sexualized in some capacity, and while that doesn’t bother me morally, I think it’s borderline ludicrous to see a lot of this held any higher than your average piece of pulp.
“Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer”? Give me a break.
Only modern sculpture really offers anything that’s worth visiting in person nowadays in a capacity that hasn’t yet been supplanted by any of the newer media. As for painting– if you have the talent to do it, you’re better off plying your abilities in some other capacity that uses your art, instead of just creating stuff to hang on walls. Is having your entire vision taken up by a painting cool? Sure, but for my money the most impressive piece of painting I’ve yet to see in my life is Dali’s “Persistence of Memory”, and that’s practically the size of a postcard. Part of mass media means that, as more people are able to view and judge art in its various guises, the demand for art is going to be shaped more by plural voices than singular, elitist patron-based systems. We’re living in a more democratized realm of art, which I can’t see as anything other than a good thing.
““Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer”? Give me a break.” Ah, but remember that review? I used it as a jumping off point to discuss what was really on my mind (The German ‘Angst’ from 1982 or so, a masterpiece from the Extreme Art genre). The rest of what you say is woefully shortsighted, ‘Inside’ and ‘Saw’, or ‘Hostel’ are not the same. If you can’t see this then it’s not worth discussing– part of these subcultures are that you have to be in them to understand them, which you aren’t. This is OK, it is a ‘different strokes for different folks’ type of thing, but again you don’t approach it as such. Rather, you attempt to place your outsider and incorrect readings (opinions) on these as fact. Plus, it’s all coming after I objected to a very specific realm of action fare, rather then throwing it all under the bus as you do with horror here.
But this is just an appetizer for the creme de la creme of bull shit:
“As for painting– if you have the talent to do it, you’re better off plying your abilities in some other capacity that uses your art, instead of just creating stuff to hang on walls.”
So lets follow the train of logic: I say serious art, i.e. painting (I’ve used Jenny Saville as a contemporary reference point) you say it isn’t as it’s more or less just used as status symbols for yuppies (which is beside the point to the actual art at stake). Which I could assume that you seek art to fulfill a larger role in a cultures conscience, but then it’s you that reduces it here (as ‘just creating stuff to hang on walls’). Whether capitalism or we in conversation marginalize art is hardly different in my eyes.
The reason why serious art is reduced in our culture isn’t because aloof yuppies or big business (though this doesn’t help), no it’s because our younger generations are dominated more by people like you (the ones who need every quickly disposable, and quickly moving) then me (those that are willing to stop everything and succumb to a work). Art takes patience (to be viewed and created), not a slippery ever changing slope of talking points and droids (mobile device and CGI created ‘thing’), rather then asserting– not jamming– low art in place of high art, why don’t you actually take in some high art? It might alter your perspective.
“This is OK, it is a ‘different strokes for different folks’ type of thing, but again you don’t approach it as such. Rather, you attempt to place your outsider and incorrect readings (opinions) on these as fact.”
And this is different from how you bash comic-book/space-opera films because why, now? The very fact that you’re asserting that an opinion is synonymous with an “incorrect reading” is just continuing the whole nonsense objectivity thing.
When it comes to high art, I’m of the opinion that it should be something that seeks to approach the audience itself, rather than always ask that the audience come to it. “Sullivan’s Travels” illustrates perfectly that sometimes a high-concept message movie can be outdone by a mere Disney short. If there’s an audience out there already taking in viable, vibrant new art forms, why not go to them, instead of waiting for them to make all the effort just to see your work, themselves? Working in the mass-media forms makes it easier for people to recieve your work, and actually makes it more possible to engage in comprehensive experiments with them. Godard’s latest films may be the high-art equivalent of cinema, but they’re still movies, and easy to approach on those terms. He famously said that the best way to do film criticism is through filmmaking itself– had he stuck with just writing articles in Cahiers du Cinema, he might’ve gained a big reputation over the years internationally as a premier film commentator, but he’d never have made the impact he did on the face of modern cinema itself.
Perhaps it is a generational difference on one regard, because the very way you describe yourelf as “succumbing to a work” is everything I try to avoid when taking in art of any medium. I look for work that engages and invites an implicit conversation with the artist, that allows for a more interactive approach to the work, either through literal means (remember, I come from the gaming-art scene, something I occasionally participate within myself) or by more traditional or implicit ones that require more attention over time. Cinema, in my view, sits at a rather anxious cross-roads in terms of how an audience is supposed to process their experience– it can be stimulating on every level when we’re asked to follow complicated plots, dramas, emotions or on-screen action of any kind, but it can also provide so much stimulation that we’re reduced to merely acting as passive recievers for the ongoing passion plays on the screen.
Orwell was right when he portrayed the three-minute hate as a pure movie-going experience, because he recognized that at its heart cinema was a medium that would almost always produce some kind of propaganda or another. Godard also seems to recognize this in “Histoire(s)”, and even appears to be reaching towards it in the Dreyer sequence from “Vivre Sa Vie”– movies have the power to overpower us, to leave us vulnerable to all kinds of emotions and experiences that we ourselves may not always be in control ovf, because we don’t have any influence over what we see on the screen. That passive quality with which we have to submit to what we see on the screen, to succumb to it, and the degree to which we can be invited to resist its influence and think for ourselves actively while we remain in our seats is part of the give and take that makes the medium such an intersting one, and I suspect why it’s an art form that the two of us, from our different generational perspectives, are equally drawn to.
“And this is different from how you bash comic-book/space-opera films because why, now? The very fact that you’re asserting that an opinion is synonymous with an “incorrect reading” is just continuing the whole nonsense objectivity thing.”
No, I’m not asserting that an opinion is an ‘incorrect reading’, but I’m saying if you don’t understand what a work seeks to attain, or accomplish it’s foolish to state factually if it’s good or bad. This is specifically true in low art/subculture/camp things, where the works context within it’s group is often as important as what the work says or how it looks. Now I assume with ‘space-opera’ you mean STAR WARS, which I chuckle at as Lucas has left the subculture a long time ago, but when something costs upwards of 100 million to create I sort of took this as a common sense assumption.
And besides, the original point of all this tangent was in relation to the economic realities of the world of painting. Which you couldn’t get over to view the actual paintings.
“Perhaps it is a generational difference on one regard, because the very way you describe yourelf as “succumbing to a work” is everything I try to avoid when taking in art of any medium.”
A few points: First, ‘generational difference’. Jesus, how old do you think I am (we’re the same generation, and besides a non-passive reading of art came along many, many generations before you or I were even a glint in our parents eyes)? Second, you completely misunderstand what it is to ‘succumb’ to a work of art, because you probably view art works as objects (something you think you don’t do). When two things, or objects meet and one succumbs to the other it generally means that one has become subservient to the other, which is clearly how you’ve read this. But, when approaching and experiencing art on its own terms isn’t the domineering experience you think it is, after all ‘submit =/= passive’. This is seen in all forms of art. To approach and submit to a painting is to accept it’s activity of brush work, it’s hum of color selections, it’s mental activity (and this doesn’t account for paintings such as Rauschenberg’s ‘White Paintings’ where audience shadows and movements were the actual works [your assertions on what paintings are-- and what they accomplish-- just point me to the conclusion that you don't follow modern painting]). It’s succumbing and seeing this work as alien to all others, thus an ability to judge it is open and honest to what it seeks. In the written word like literature or poetry, where poetry is especially apt, approaching and succumbing is necessary to embrace it’s rhythms, meter and word play. Not succumbing here means to actively distort or manipulate the poem into something the poet didn’t intend. If we respect or cherish the artist at all we openly succumb. And in this we approach avenues we wouldn’t have as it’s a mind operating different then our own.
Heck maybe you are a generation younger then I, because to not understand these concepts is to have an incredibly easy, immature view of art (activity with an artwork isn’t just a physical experience!). The activity you think you have in playing a video game is false, you’re being given a finite set of options in which to go, or do. You think this equates an active interplay between audience and artist? How daft!
And lastly, just look at the work(s) you and I have put as what we consider the greats of the post-WW2 era. I put live music (hardly a passive experience for either the creator or audience, only a Kenny G/adult Sting fan can call music a ‘passive’ experience), action painting, a Pinter (that was famous for what it asked the audience to fill in in order to complete the play), highly charged Graphic Design (that would take several degrees of interactivity to understand), Debord (who is asking exactly what you think I don’t do!), and poetry (that I already spoke of above). To me, these seem to break the spectacle more then STAR WARS or anime. Even the artist you do name further down in the thread, Warhol, rubbed our passivity in our faces. He, like the art you’ve cherished, didn’t offer an out for our minds to roam and be active.
“No, I’m not asserting that an opinion is an ‘incorrect reading’, but I’m saying if you don’t understand what a work seeks to attain, or accomplish it’s foolish to state factually if it’s good or bad. This is specifically true in low art/subculture/camp things, where the works context within it’s group is often as important as what the work says or how it looks. Now I assume with ‘space-opera’ you mean STAR WARS, which I chuckle at as Lucas has left the subculture a long time ago, but when something costs upwards of 100 million to create I sort of took this as a common sense assumption. ”
Again, I fail to see any difference between my opinion on horror and your “incorrect reading” on “space-opera” other than the fact that you believe yours gives you the right to act entitled. There’s just as much common sense in writing off half the films you include on your little list as nothing more than masturbatory sex-as-violence drivel. And don’t try and put words into my mouth with all this “subculture” nonsense after the fact. To quote Paul Newman in The Verdict– “If you’re going to try my case for me, I wish you wouldn’t lose it.”
“A few points: First, ‘generational difference’. Jesus, how old do you think I am (we’re the same generation, and besides a non-passive reading of art came along many, many generations before you or I were even a glint in our parents eyes)?”
You raised this yourself with “it’s because our younger generations are dominated more by people like you (the ones who need every quickly disposable, and quickly moving) then me (those that are willing to stop everything and succumb to a work)“.
Your description of the active experience of “submitting” to a piece is interesting, but I’m not seeing a contradiction between what you’re talking about and my points– you’re just adding more personal detail to the mix as evidence. Still, the state of mind you’re conjuring is an apt one. It’s the kind of sublimely alive, yet utterly constrained kind of thinking people tend to describe when having any kind of genuine religious or spiritual experience, something that risks obliterating their sense of self in the face of the overpowering work in question. It’s what happens when we say something “worked a spell over us”, or kept us in “rapt(ure) attention”. Works that hold us in a trance that all but obliterate identity even as we push ourselves further into its many folds and facets.
There’s risk to be found in anything that succeeds in really making you forget yourself for however brief a time and removing your intellectual barriers from the experience– everything I cherish prompts me in and our of this kind of state, at different points, and most of all I enjoy the give-and-take between the gravity of surrender and the flight of independent intellectual effort, those moments when the work prompts you onto a stream of consciousness that runs parallel to its content, but does not engulf it, like a dreamer attempting to regain his lucidity without waking up in full. I can’t help but see a problematic nature to it, a discomfort I feel that you’re alluding to without openly addressing it– “If we respect or cherish the artist at all we openly succumb. And in this we approach avenues we wouldn’t have as it’s a mind operating different then our own. ”
A mind operating different than one’s own? Sounds an awful lot like brain washing, to me. That may be a leap too far, but in the end, all art which is successful is either expressing something that the artist him/herself is not entirely aware of (in which case one can’t help but view and interpret it in a way they didn’t intend, because there are no conscious intentions) or is an attempt to consciously guide the audience into a predetermined set of responses. If art has intentions to follow or rebel against, then that art by definition is manipulative.
Are games offering nothing more than a “finite” field of choices that bottleneck into whatever the designer is aiming for you to perform? That’s a discussion for another time, and considering the degree to which you treat games with open scorn, a discussion you’re not exactly about to be very helpful in. Suffice to say that there are plenty of open questions as to how “free” players are in modern games, and where the most freedom really is in the games that are being offered– whether all those Triple-A brass-ring non-linear narrative networks that people try to impose upon their titles are really more constraining than the pure, abstract sense of play that people find in the sandbox experience itself. But beyond that, even if there really is just a finite field of choices in that kind of interactivity, that’s only the first layer of it all, that comes before the actual heavy-lifting of communing with a work, in full. I’m not saying that games are inherently more interactive than other mediums because of this first-step, but you have to admit that the experience of play is, on an immediate level, more active an experience than focusing your eyes or listening to something. The act of processing a work remains active, no matter what it is, but the act of receiving that work will of course be more or less of an engagement depending upon the medium in question, and while I tend to think personally that all media is equal in terms of validity and worth (cultural norms notwithstanding), I do think that the activity asked of the audience in the reception of a work is bound to encourage more or less activity in the process of it.
Wherever we fit in the age range, I do think that generational difference can account for our differing perceptions on the nature of how one receives and processes a piece of art, simply because we’ve both exposed ourselves to a different set of media experiences, and the nature of those mediums are bound to affect the ways we interpret them, whether we know it or otherwise.
Oh, and calling me out on Sting? Kenny G? Anime? Keep throwing insults around like those if you like, but don’t get mad when somebody does the same for you.
“You raised this yourself with “it’s because our younger generations are dominated more by people like you (the ones who need every quickly disposable, and quickly moving) then me” ”
If you quickly, or slowly, reread that you’ll notice I’m putting US BOTH in the category ‘younger generations’ as we’re both 30 and below. I didn’t think I wasn’t clear there.
““If we respect or cherish the artist at all we openly succumb. And in this we approach avenues we wouldn’t have as it’s a mind operating different then our own. ” ”
To read this statement, in it’s context as ‘brainwashing’ is ludicrous. I’m saying that when we perceive a piece of art we think about things differently then we normally would because a different mind (the artist’s) is presenting, stating or showing us a world we hadn’t (and couldn’t) thought of, just as we could create one for him/her to experience that he/she couldn’t as all minds are uniquely different. This is the beauty, not the ‘brainwash’.
The rest I’ll leave as it’s a rather bastardization of what I’ve said, (what’s the point?) connecting that I’m speaking about art in a religious/spiritual sense, when in fact I’m speaking in the exact opposite; total reconnecting/heightening/reevaluation of the Self through art (a thoroughly secular and physical connection to art not mystic), to still calling the Horror films on my list as ‘sex-as-violence’ films. This last one is especially dubious as I HAVE TO think you haven’t seen most of the films as to say IN MY SKIN, ALEXANDRA’S PROJECT etc, ‘sex-as-violence’ films is downright asinine. Say what you will about my Kenny G, Sting, and Star Wars comments I’m at least versed in these to call them out for the garbage they are.
“Generations”– avec un “s”. The plural denotes separate instances, and your comparison furthers that. If that isn’t what you intended, it’s not a misread, it’s a mistype.
“Brainwashing”– I did qualify that right after as “a leap too far”, didn’t I? Don’t get your hair mussed up in the rhetoric. My point on the manipulative nature of art-with-intentions stands.
As for your list– I did say “half” of them were more or less “sex-as-violence”, not all. You’re still betraying a rather awful double-standard with your own garbage, which is the thing I really object to on “Star Wars” at least (at least you don’t champion obviously equivalent escapism from the same genres over it, just different ones). I’ll cheerfully admit to being a philistine when it comes to music (yeah, I’ve got genuine misgivings about the potential for it as a medium for art as pacifying entrapment, but I honestly don’t give a shit about it, so whatever).
A larger issue on the matter of traditional art that bothers me nowadays, although it’s sort of a separate thing– you cite Rauschenberg and Twombly as examples of great modern painters, and that’s all well and good, except for the fact that one of them’s in his 80′s and the other one’s dead. Forgive me if I’m mistaken, but the contemporary gallery-art world isn’t exactly getting any younger nowadays, is it? Granted, there’s plenty of young turks trying to establish themselves in smaller indie-venues in different cities to varying degrees of success. But none of them are making the same kind of splashes that artists did in decades past– the last ones who really caught the art-world by the throat would probably be Hirst and Maplethorpe, whose stuff goes so far beyond the reaches of the mainstream it’s difficult to categorize it while doing it justice. Hell, speaking as a New Yorker, the last art show that really caused a stir here was the Brooklyn event with the portrait of the Madonna adorned with dung, and that was more than ten years ago. Plenty are working in illustration, design and advertising (if they’re insanely lucky, anyway), but how many big artists are there in the contemporary gallery scene at the moment under 30? Is that because there are fewer people who want to break into art, or fewer and fewer chances for them to do so? There are examples of younger directors, writers, recording artists and whatnot– gradually there’s less and less of them as people get older, too. Opportunities are aging out in this economy, though in the traditional-art world, it seems the clock’s already done.
“A larger issue on the matter of traditional art that bothers me nowadays, although it’s sort of a separate thing– you cite Rauschenberg and Twombly as examples of great modern painters, and that’s all well and good, except for the fact that one of them’s in his 80′s and the other one’s dead. Forgive me if I’m mistaken, but the contemporary gallery-art world isn’t exactly getting any younger nowadays, is it?”
I’ve cited Rauschenberg a few times in this thread (mostly in reference to MovieMan and I’s topic), the time I used him to you was to show how painting isn’t a stationary artform (I could have used countless examples). The Twombly I mentioned stands, as his ‘Nature’ series enthralled me in Chicago during 2009/10, and that’s a series that was painted roughly 2003-2007/8. However old he is is irrelevant as he’s still ahead of the curve.
But this avoids the painter I’ve mentioned the most, Jenny Saville, whom I even went so far as to say “(I’ve used Jenny Saville as a contemporary reference point). But on this you’ll say, ‘she’s just another over 30′. Which is beside the point, as the majority of famous artists in painting are regularly over 30 when they reach prominence (she reached it in her mid 20′s around 1995). Basquiat is the exception not the norm. But still saying this there are a few, more then you’d think (and I say this with a degree of certainty as MovieMan just asked me to compile a list of my favorite artists to emerge in the last 20 to 25 years so there’s been a significant amount of research lately by me). But you’ll run out a new argument rather then just simply saying “I don’t follow contemporary painting (or painting at all for that matter)”.
But this beside the point is even beside the point. As originally you said Serious art is dead, then it was static painting that was dead, now it’s serious static painting done by artists under 30. I’m supposed to debate points as you change literally from post to post. Your argument is like nailing jell-o to a wall.
And I remain where I was at the start, saying serious art (and thank god painting) is being made and desired by people and always will be.
First, I still think it’s rather sad that “Serious” art only really stands for “Gallery Art” in your estimation– new technology and media have given us cinema, television, and whatnot, but if it ain’t in a museum, it still doesn’t deserve the capital “S”?
At any rate, when I said it was dead, I was talking about the traditional painting/sculpture establishment that’s been added to by the likes of more progressive installation and conceptual art since then (those are both rather insular, but I’m more interested in them). But for the most part, “Serious” art is going to stay dead until it gets a legitimate injection of new blood. Basquiat is the exception, instead of the rule? In the past we were more likely to see artists make big splashes and die young than wait until their 30′s or 40′s to even get noticed. Never mind which there’s also the cost involved to finance an education/career in the more formal arts, which tends to price out potential budding talents in ways that digital media aren’t, quite as much. Video, computers and the internet are effectively democratizing so many avenues of expression in ways that the museum establishment remains impervious to, so it’s hard to take the old ivory tower pedigree as seriously as it used to be. Painters and sculptors don’t change the world in the ways they used to anymore. Writers still do, though as print slowly dies (I love literature as much as you do contemporary art, but as much as I’d like to deny it, I can read the writing on the walls, and even stuff like eBooks is going to change what we think of as the novel or “poetry”) you’ll see more and more of the most talented gravitate towards other mediums. Filmmakers, musicians and cartoonists have, for some time now. Sooner or later even game-designers are going to get mainstream appreciation beyond token names like Shigeru Miyamoto. After them, who knows?
And frankly, I’m getting a little annoyed at your “quit changing the subject” complaints, when I haven’t left the central premise that established and institutional venues for art (ie, the gallery scene) is no longer as relevant, important or viable as the so-called “younger” forms of media. You’ve made this complaint before, and I’ve never really understood it– what, am I supposed to just keep repeating myself again and again, and not inject some kind of variety into the argument? I’m posting comments on a thread, responding to things in the moment, not aggressively outlining and annotating an entire essay for structural cohesiveness or continuity. Just because new points get raised and integrated into an argument doesn’t mean the original is negated or contradicted. Debates expand instead of contract, and rise to new horizons– that’s how you can tell they’re full of hot air.
“First, I still think it’s rather sad that “Serious” art only really stands for “Gallery Art” in your estimation– new technology and media have given us cinema, television, and whatnot, but if it ain’t in a museum, it still doesn’t deserve the capital “S”?”
Where did I say this? Serious art is art that is seriously minded, dealing with serious topics. Hell as recently as my last post I make this distinction clear as I close my thought with “And I remain where I was at the start, saying serious art (and thank god painting) is being made and desired by people and always will be.” Painting is just one one of the many avenues. I’ve discussed poetry, theater, pop music, and the work of David Carson in this thread. All stuff that isn’t necessarily found (if ever) in a gallery.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have said you haven’t stayed on topic, you just haven’t stayed on consistent argument. Narrowing it at every turn, or altering it altogether, to help your points. So I should have stated it a little differently, so potato/potatoe. Either way staying on the original topic wouldn’t lead to hot air, it would lead to a deeper understand of points/topic at hand (maybe we’d actually get to discuss post-1990 painting so that in the future you wouldn’t shoot your mouth off that it’s ‘dead’!?), not the eventual discussion of Lucas et al that inevitably always comes.
I’m not even sure how you define “staying on topic” in conversation anymore. What, are all arguments supposed to lead to the other person agreeing with you, without question? If I like to bob and weave during a discussion, course-changing as new details and inspiration sees fit or even altering course to help make a better argument than I’d framed before (it’s called “rhetoric”), then you’ve still got this awful objective estimation of your own opinion as scientific fact that gets in the way of any meaningful give and take.
As for “Serious Art”– you yourself called it that when I said that painting/sculpture was in its “death throes”, and you rebutted. But to take the stance you’re not taking– you say that “serious art is art that is seriously minded, dealing with serious topics”, and yet you’ve complained if I try to talk about Lucas, anime, or games in ways that show them as seriously minded, dealing with serious topics. I can understand saying you don’t enjoy something, but denying its status as art is just plain ignorant.
“In the past we were more likely to see artists make big splashes and die young than wait until their 30′s or 40′s to even get noticed. Never mind which there’s also the cost involved to finance an education/career in the more formal arts, which tends to price out potential budding talents in ways that digital media aren’t, quite as much. Video, computers and the internet are effectively democratizing so many avenues of expression in ways that the museum establishment remains impervious to, so it’s hard to take the old ivory tower pedigree as seriously as it used to be. Painters and sculptors don’t change the world in the ways they used to anymore.”
Since this is more or less your central crux, I’ll rebut that this is all false. It’s all (false) art history revivalism (not to mention the point on financial aspects; you act as if digital media talents aren’t being honed by expensive educations). The only time artists regularly broke through before 30 was centuries ago, when life expectancies made 20 what 35 or 40 is today. But since American 20th century art is the topic consider:
• De Kooning was 42 when he started his ‘mature works’, to which his star was born (such as ‘Excavation’), his ‘Women’ followed a few years later–he was around 48 then.
• Kline was 39 when he started (as De Koonings urging) looking at his sketches through a projector which led to his breakthrough.
• Pollack was 33 when he married Krasner, after which they moved upstate and he started creating his signature drip works.
• Rothko was 35 at the time of his first one man show (that didn’t gain much attention), it wasn’t another three years until he was actually legally painting as ‘Mark Rothko’. After this did he create the works we now attribute to him.
• Hans Hoffman was 52 before he even came to America.
• Arshile Gorky, 40 when his painting started creating a stir.
• Robert Motherwell was 28 when his first paintings were exhibited (there’s your Basquiat-like exception to the rule).
• Clyfford Still was 42 when he first premiered as a solo artist on his own, with mature works.
• Adolph Gottlieb was 32 when he showed his work publicly for the first time, but it wasn’t until another 10 years before he settled into his known style.
• Philip Guston was 37 in 1950, the decade he finally made head way as a serious artist.
• Andy Warhol didn’t think about creating Fine Art until the mid 50′s (when he was in his upper 20′s), and his first solo show was in 1962 (when he was 34).
Do I have to continue? This is what I face, a number of erroneous claims piled upon by others, taking unnecessary time to sort out and correct. Making the obvious ones (like Lucas being called a ‘serious artist’, a claim George Lucas wouldn’t even make about George Lucas) stand. I mean hell you start by saying ‘Serious art is dead’ (more or less) but now want to assert Lucas as a Serious artist. If the club is that easy to get into (that a hack like Lucas is a member) Serious art will never die.
Look at that! In a completely wrong and bastardized way we’ve agreed. Serious art lives! Thank god I get Saville instead of Lucas. And the topic is finally on Lucas, it’s a record it took this long.
Jamie, I said before that the age thing was a separate argument, and actually explicitly stated that so you wouldn’t conflate it with the previous thing as before. You’ve cited a fair number of late bloomers, yeah, but you can name just as many artists in history whose careers started mostly their 20′s. Granted, it covers a lot of time (Renaissance to the likes of Picasso) and furthermore covers ground where life expectancy complicates the discussion a bit, but since you’re talking about post-WWII artists mostly I’m not pushing it any further than that. I might included Yayoi Kusama as another who jump-started a little earlier (seemingly so, anyway– I can’t tell when her first shows were in Japan, and her initial time in New York was with the avant-garde, where the lines get blurry as to when somebody is “established”).
“Making the obvious ones (like Lucas being called a ‘serious artist’, a claim George Lucas wouldn’t even make about George Lucas) stand. I mean hell you start by saying ‘Serious art is dead’ (more or less) but now want to assert Lucas as a Serious artist. ”
First of all– I didn’t call it “Serious Art”. You did. When mentioning Lucas, I was applying the face-value rules you were invoking for what you were then calling “Serious Art”, that being “art that is seriously minded, dealing with serious topics”. This has nothing to do with whether or not anybody considers themselves a “Serious Artist” or not (more power to them, if they’re humble enough not to add pretentious titles to themselves like that), nor does it have anything to do with what one subjectively feels about the art in question. Your definition speaks only to the intentions, the motives of the artist in question– all that matters is whether or not it is “seriously minded” and deals with “serious topics”. Granted, those terms themselves can fall under all kinds of personal interpretation, but if that’s all it takes, then anybody who creates art with an eye for expressing anything politically or morally has the right for their work to be treated seriously, no matter how low one’s opinion of it might bet. There’s plenty of films, works, etc. that I don’t like out there, but even if I think it’s shit, I’m not going to write it off as art, entirely. In that case, it’s just art I don’t like.
I’m not entirely sure I buy this definition myself (Sam Fuller would be out of consideration, as he was charmingly motivated by baser stuff– “If a story doesn’t give you a hard-on in the first couple of scenes, throw it in the goddamn garbage”), but I’m just playing by its rules, there.
And as for bringing up Lucas– you’ve got your own bushes that you beat around (at least you haven’t mentioned philosophy yet, for all I can tell), so please quit whining that I bring up one or two of my own. I’d spend just as much time talking about anime in conversations like these, if it weren’t for the fact that hardly anybody would know what I was talking about.
And come to think of it, you’re the one who first mentioned Lucas/SW in this particular conversation, in your own insulting way. So really, why complain?
I think the next popularity contest should be “Greatest Potsherds Of the Third Millennium B.C.E.”
Can we, as a blog, collectively take up a fund to buy this for Andrei
It’s desperately needed; never have I seen so many attempts to be funny dive like lead balloons. Though were it’s a silent vacuum of cyberspace, you can still hear the crickets of no laughter every time he mounts a ‘joke’…
Quick, bring up Sam’s love of the Archies ‘Sugar, Sugar’ that’ll get ‘em rollin’!
True, I liked “Sugar Sugar” in 1969 when I was 14 years old, and when it finished that year as the #1 pop song during a 12 month period when some of the greatest songs of the rock era were released. I know that adolescent infatuation has always fascinated Andrei to no end for some reason.
Spoiled sport…
What is very funny is that the “writer” whom I have been needling about his silly concept series doesn’t find me amusing in a comical sense. That’s funny ha ha but not so funny strange.
I have forgotten every piece of art except the sound of my own voice and Prospero’s Books, therefore the former wins by default and the latter comes in a close second.
That’s a classic response Jean!!! Ha!
You have exceedingly excellent taste with PROSPERO’S BOOKS, I’ll stand with you on that one!!!
I’m a little bit late but its an interesting discussion. Here are my two cents:
top ten:
Étant donnés: 1° la chute d’eau / 2° le gaz d’éclairage – Marcel Duchamp
For the Union Dead – Robert Lowell
Nine Stories – J D Salinger
Accidental Death of an Anarchist (Morte accidentale di un anarchico) – Dario Fo
F for Fake – Orson Welles
Patriotism (Yūkoku) – Yukio Mishima
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall – Maya Lin
The Son of Man (Le fils de l’homme) – René Magritte
Every Man for Himself (Sauve qui peut (la vie)) – Jean-Luc Godard
Like Decorations in a Nigger Cemetery – Wallace Stevens
For my music pick:
(tie) In a Silent Way – Miles Davis
(tie) Wish You Were Here – Pink Floyd
My comic pick:
David Boring – Daniel Clowes
Honorable Mentions:
Hapax Legomena I: (nostalgia) – Hollis Frampton
Music in Twelve Parts – Philip Glass
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
Ugetsu (Ugetsu monogatari) – Kenji Mizoguchi
Breathless (À bout de souffle) – Jean-Luc Godard
Shadows – John Cassavetes
Nice pick with the Salinger collection, Annu. Is that the one with “For Esme, With Love and Squalor”?
I like how many people here are mentioning a favorite comics work.
Yea, “For Esme, With Love and Squalor” included in Nine Stories. As is “Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes,” “The Laughing Man,” and, what might be the strongest work Salinger has ever written, “A Perfect Day for Bananafish.” I’m also enjoying comics getting their due as great artworks. Works like Alan Moore’s From Hell, Charles Burn’s Black Hole and Jeff Lemire’s Essex County all deserve praise as some of the strongest works of fiction of the 20-21st century (as well as works from Chris Ware, Grant Morrison, Jeff Smith, Craig Thompson, Harvey Pekar etc.). Also great to see Television works mentioned. Works like The Decalogue, France/tour/détour/deux/enfants, and television films from Mike Leigh, Alan Clarke, and Agnieszka Holland are just as artistic as anything produced in film or literature. I’d also put the Wire in that discussion as well.
I been milling this over, off an on, for the last few hours…sorry I missed the original discussion a few days ago. I just had a chance today to see the post. My initial reaction was Whoa!- An impossible task. My next inclination was to create a list of top choices in multiple categories: film, album, poem, book, etc. I then became frustrated with myself as I could seem to pick one for each. More then once, I cursed Jamie and his impractical topic. I then, pulling myself in, thought: if I know James (and I think that I do) his intention is less about seeking a consensus “Greatest piece of art” (If I may be so bold as to presume that, any single piece of art that could be declared the greatest piece of art since WWII, would then, in Jamie’s mind, be unequivocally, the Greatest Piece of Art of All Time), rather it is about, creating interesting exchange, reading different people’s choices and more importantly…their argument. Realizing this, my challenge then became: Pick one- and only one and to hell with any type of consensus. So here goes…..
The Title: Twin Peaks
The Medium: Television Series
The Creator: David Lynch (and Mark Frost)
The Timing: Originally aired 1990 – 1991
The Argument:
1) It is the type of self-reflective, metaphoric, and challenging art that moves and grabs me. It is also, quite frankly, the type of art that is rarely (and by rarely I mean never) found in a network television series. For me, this type of is critical to a piece of art having any real impact on me. That every single character in the seemingly quite little town has a double-life/identity each webbed together hits deep for a viewer like me. That is to say, someone consistently looking for depth and meaning in art/life.
2) It is a visual recording. Once I settled on picking a single piece of art, it quickly became a clear parameter for me that it would be visual and just as quickly that it needed to be recorded (rather than live). When I first started thinking about this, I began to focus on my top choices in multiple categories. Several books an albums came to mind as masterpieces but their lack of dimension limited them (in my mind) as less
Additionally, the TV/film medium is so potent because in addition to the obvious stimulation of moving pictures it allows, as is so synonymous with “Lynchian” style, the manipulation as well as the implementation of graphic enhancement (even with the obvious limitations of the era compared to today’s standards), elaborate stage sets/locations, and simply multiple edits (As opposed to the unforgiving one-take you get on the stage).
3) It is boundless and reality-defying (surreal). Particularly after the end of season 1, the show abandoned any earthly limitations and took its audience to deeper and deeper places by crossing dimensions (both literally and within the psyche of its characters). This ability to balance the common story-line of small town murder with a tolerable (or addictive) level of impossible fantasy more than anything makes the series uniquely lynch’s and all the more impressive.
4) It was a tremendous pop-culture phenomenon. Certainly this was not a requirement for me. I concur that the greatest piece of art since WWII may be much more unknown. That the series enthralled a massive audience, won countless awards, made significant impacts to the medium adds at least some validity (I think) to my selection. Today, it remains not only relevant but applicable (See the blatant rip-off of Twin Peaks in the current Television series The Killing on AMC). Additionally, it continues to have an extremely loyal cult following even today.
5) It was created by a bona-fide genius…Again, this was certainly not a requirement for me. I think thought it is appropriate that, given the hugeness of the question at hand, my selection come from an undeniable talent with multiple other important works.
Jamie, thank you (and damn you) for the topic!!
Arguably every major show of the 00s was heavily influenced by Twin Peaks, either aesthetically, thematically or both. Think Lost with its mystery hook, Scrubs with its quirky humor, The Office with its deadpan are-we-supposed-to-laugh style comedy, Monk (and dozens of other “detective/criminal with a _____” shows) with its eccentric main character, The Sopranos with its trippy dream sequences, and on and on and on, those were only the first few that came to mind. TP took everything that had come in TV before, synthesized into something more, and then transformed everything that came after it.
Though purely as a work of art, I think I actually prefer the movie.
Absolutely. The influence isn’t just on American television, either (you did mention “The Office”, but whatever). Von Trier has gone on record as saying that “Homicide” was a bigger influence on “The Kingdom” in terms of visuals, but in terms of story and surrealness, it’s hard not to see a resemblance. The recent AMC “The Killing” and its Danish forebear also owe a huge damn debt to Lynch’s series– it’s basically “Who Killed Laura Palmer?” without all the dreams and supernatural whatnot. Even films like “Insomnia” take the small-town crime angle in ways that this show really opened peoples’ minds to.
A big reason I don’t like “Mulholland Dr.”– I genuinely believe that Lynch works best in the long form afforded by television, and it’s just painful to watch a pilot of his converted into a feature, no matter how accomplished.
Because I’m me, though, here’s an obligatory “Star Wars” thing– apparently Kyle MacLachlan was Lucas’ first choice for Qui-Gon Jinn in “The Phantom Menace”, and James Marshall, who played the hog-riding secret boyfriend James Hurley, was an early pick for Anakin back in the early 90′s (so for anyone who thinks the acting in the Prequels couldn’t have gotten any worse, there you go).
Re-Posting my prior with edits (typos corrected)
I been milling this over, off an on, for the last few hours…sorry I missed the original discussion a few days ago. I just had a chance today to see the post. My initial reaction was Whoa!- An impossible task. My next inclination was to create a list of top choices in multiple categories: film, album, poem, book, etc. I then became frustrated with myself as I couldn’t seem to pick just one for each. More then once, I cursed Jamie and his impractical topic. I then, pulling myself in a bit, thought: if I know James (and I think that I do) his intention is less about seeking a consensus “Greatest piece of art” (If I may be so bold as to presume that, any single piece of art that could be declared the greatest piece of art since WWII, would then, in Jamie’s mind, be unequivocally, the Greatest Piece of Art of All Time), rather it is about, creating interesting exchange, reading different people’s choices and more importantly…their argument. Realizing this, my challenge then became: Pick one- and only one and to hell with any type of consensus. So here goes…..
The Title: Twin Peaks
The Medium: Television Series
The Creator: David Lynch (and Mark Frost)
The Timing: Originally aired 1990 – 1991
The Argument:
1) It is the type of self-reflective, metaphoric, and challenging art that moves and grabs me. It is also, quite frankly, the type of art that is rarely (and by rarely I mean never) found in a network television series. For me, these elements are critical to a piece of art having any real impact on me. That every single character in the seemingly quiet little town has a double-life/identity each webbed together hits deep for a viewer like me. That is to say, someone consistently looking for depth and meaning in art/life.
2) It is a visual recording. Once I settled on picking a single piece of art, it quickly became a clear parameter for me that it would be visual and just as quickly that it needed to be recorded (rather than live). When I first started thinking about this, I began to focus on my top choices in multiple categories. Several books an albums came to mind as masterpieces but their lack of dimension limited them (in my mind)….again, keeping in mind the scope of the questions.
Additionally, the TV/film medium is so potent because in beyond to the obvious stimulation of moving pictures it allows, as is so synonymous with “Lynchian” style, the manipulation of sound. It also permits implementation of graphic enhancement (even with the obvious limitations of the era compared to today’s standards), elaborate stage sets/locations, and simply multiple edits (As opposed to the unforgiving one-take you get on the stage).
3) It is boundless and reality-defying (surreal). Particularly after the end of season 1, the show abandoned any earthly limitations and took its audience to deeper and deeper places by crossing dimensions (both literally and within the psyche of its characters). This ability to balance the common story-line of small town murder with a tolerable (or addictive) level of impossible fantasy more than anything makes the series uniquely lynch’s and all the more impressive.
4) It was a tremendous pop-culture phenomenon. Certainly this was not a requirement for me. That the series enthralled a massive audience, won countless awards, made significant impacts to the medium adds at least some validity (I think) to my selection. Today, it remains not only relevant but applicable (See the blatant rip-off of Twin Peaks in the current Television series The Killing on AMC). Additionally, it continues to have an extremely loyal cult following.
5) It was created by a bona-fide genius…Again, this was certainly not a requirement for me. I think it is appropriate that that, given the hugeness of the question at hand, my selection come from an undeniable talent with multiple other important works.
Jamie, thank you (and damn you) for the topic!!
Bob Taylor – I like your line of thought here. Twin Peaks almost transcends all art-forms too…as it was both television and film…photographic and moving (almost as a moving painting as some who know Lynch well would say)…and was accompanied by a now iconic music score. It mesmerized on all levels, as a conventional story (the murder mystery), as a surrealist nightmare and mirror into our darkest desires and fears, as visual medium, as a piece of timely pop-art, and as a timeless work of artistic collaboration (the cast, multiple directors trying to evoke the same “feel”, the music score, the set designs and costumes and on and on an on). And over twenty years later is still provokes thought and debate and devours new fans.
I don’t know, but I love that image!
Oh, and I don’t know what Colin MacCabe was thinking. Contempt isn’t even Godard’s greatest film (if I was feeling saucy, I’d say it’s probably not even his best film of 1963, but honestly I think it’s better than Les Caribiniers).
Wow, Sam!
You sure know how to toss out an impossible challenge – and generate some fascinating discussion on the comments thread.
In all honesty, if I had to pick one post-WW2 work of art as the greatest – my gut reaction is to pick Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd.” (NOT the Tim Burton film – the stage musical.)
Can we have a special award for Brigitte Bardot’s arse? Not created postwar per se, but certainly first seen postwar, and once seen never forgotten. One is reminded of the quote about Werther’s Originals; “sweet and creamy and uncommonly good.”
Special award to for Wojciech Kilar’s score to Life for Life, later expended to be Father Kolbe’s preaching. Epiphanal.
How about most symptomatic work of art postwar? Surely Rothko’s chapel, a journey into the void. The perfect representation of the late 20th century’s obsession with absolute nothingness, from celebrity to art.
It certainly is the best evidence to cite “Contempt” as the greatest post-war artwork. One can definitely nominate it as the greatest nude since the days of the Renaissance.
I also enjoy Kilar’s music quite a bit, as well. Neither Coppola’s “Dracula” or Polanski’s “The Ninth Gate” are perfect movies, but they have near perfect scores, for what they demand. Lovely balances of dread, romance and gallows humor.
Absolutely, two of the great scores for mediocre movies.
Perhaps that should be a future WitD poll; greatest movie nudes. Sponsored by Mr Skin
I’ve been pondering this for awhile (great topic, Mr. Clark!) and as much as I love Bob Taylor’s TWIN PEAKS train of thought -
I have to go on record with Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” not just for its painstaking artistry, but for it’s expansiveness of thought.
Hmmm, what a delightfully weird topic! I find myself unable to pick any ONE work by Beckett, so for now I’ll go with The Savage Detectives (although I only know this and Bolano’s other magnum opus 2666 in translation). To my mind, no other work I’ve read captures the wistfulness of youth (more accurately the wistfulness of the retrospective glance back at that moment) quite like this one. Not to mention that the idea of a quest for a person/goal that is by now diminished, i.e. the quest is already belated, seems to me to fit the era we live in. 2666 is perhaps the more impressive work formally (certainly the more mysterious work), but its pleasures are colder. I’ll always be grateful to Satyam for introducing me to Bolano a few years ago…