Berlinale Dispatch. 3.

Julian Cole's documentary With Gilbert & George (2006) takes us through the schooling and early days of the art duo, and then into a successful career which is based on the notion of two people being one artist. The team bases its approach on giving the public works of art that will entertain and not intimidate them, hence everything from large format multiculturalism to homo-erotic pictures (they don't use the word "gay"), to pretty young boys, to ordinary young men depicted as "patriots" during the days of the National Front, to AIDS activism, to the depiction of their own shit. All of it sells, and it's been selling for four decades.

Bear in mind that the fundamental basis for Gilbert & George's work is self-portraiture. They began as sculptors, and as sculptures, painting their faces with a metallic color and singing like animated statues. Later came the pictures, which turned out to be a lot easier and profitable to produce in series than the singing sculptures were.

There is much that Gilbert & George anticipated in art world trends. British multiculturalism was one trend, as was self-portraiture. Drawing from photographs put a twist on the Warhol approach, and performing as living sculptures prefigured, for better or worse, the kind of performances that we now have from Vanessa Beecroft (see The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins, which was at Sundance.) At first, the British art establishment ignored them, but we see the couple winning the conservatives over - indeed, they call their brand of libertarianism "conservative anarchism" - and representing the Crown at the 2005 Venice Biennial. They also conquer China.

All of this we learn from the artists themselves, and from art world insiders, none of whom has the slightest criticism of the duo, nor the slightest mention of any other artist working simultaneously. Did the duo spring fully formed from the brow of Zeus? Zeus isn't mentioned, either. How can that be? Is every film about an artist a valentine, or an info-mercial, like this one?

Later last night, the Forum expanded showed a selection of footage by Jack Smith (1932 - 89), the filmmaker/performer/photographer/artist who inspired everyone from Andy Warhol to Federico Fellini. For all we know, Smith may have inspired Gilbert & George, but they don't admit to any inspiration in Julian Cole's doc. Introduced and restored by film specialist Jerry Tartaglia, the clips and a complete version of Sinbad in Baghdad that Smith shot in Coney Island in the mid-70s show once again that Smith had an odd ability to transform ordinary objects and people into something fantastical.

Footage from Smith in costume in Chinatown in Manhattan from more than 30 years ago show him leading little children around in the shadow of New York's Criminal Courts, an ominous building known as the Tombs. The images we see are the products of Tartaglia's many years of preservation work. He told the audience that he has now completed work on everything from Smith's estate that could be called a film, and noted that there is much footage left to preserve, much of it wonderful.

With Smith's estate, there is a problem. Smith left his apartment a mess when he died of AIDS in 1989, and the material that was saved was salvaged by friends who were working in spite of the indifference of Smith's family, who had spurned him for his homosexuality decades before that. Performance artist Penny Arcade and Village Voice film critic J Hoberman, as what would later be called the Plaster Foundation, sifted through cat shit and years of newspapers to save the materials in the 6th floor walkup, and put enough order into the mess to create several books and a museum exhibition. Within the last five years, however, Smith's sister reappeared, at the prodding of the filmmakers behind Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis, a bio-doc that played in theaters in 2006, which served the interests of its filmmakers more than it served Smith's memory. Courts in New York have declared that the sister who abandoned Jack Smith is now the owner of the materials in his apartment that she abandoned when she saw them and recoiled in disgust in 1989. Now Smith's sister is asking for those materials back, and the filmmakers of Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis are demanding access to the archive, and suing the Plaster Foundation for that access, which they say was promised them for the making of the film. It's an object lesson in the notion that no good deed goes unpunished.

One consequence of this battle is that there isn't money to carry on the complicated restoration of Smith footage by Tartaglia, so there's a limit to what we'll see by Smith in the future. The Forum, with other foundations, has made a commitment to showing the restored Smith work. Now there's a need for a lager institution to step in to deepen that commitment.

Posted by dwhudson at February 11, 2008 2:30 PM