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Art

ETERNITY HAS NO DOOR OF ESCAPE: ENCOUNTERS WITH OUTSIDER ART

By Arthur Borgnis

"Outsider art" challenges established historical categories and transcends artistic movements. A translation of the French term art brut, a phrase coined by the painter and sculptor Jean Dubuffet in the aftermath of World War II, this label was applied to works produced by artists suffering from mental illness, practitioners of Spiritism, and self-taught visionaries. Their work compels viewers to question aesthetic and cultural norms, and the place attributed to those with disabilities in our society.

Drawing its title from a celebrated exhibition of the work of collectors Jean-David Mermod and Philippe Eternod at Switzerland's Gottardo Art Gallery, ETERNITY HAS NO DOOR OF ESCAPE traces the tumultuous history of art brut and introduces us to its pivotal figures, including psychiatrist and art collector Dr. Hans Prinzhorn; curator Harald Szeemann; and Surrealist artist and writer Andre Breton. Its expert interviewees adding context and background to the history of art brut include writers Deborah Couette, Laurent Danchin, Savine Faupin, Thomas Roske and Michel Thevoz; curators Lucienne Peiry and Carine Fol; artists Michel Nedjar; psychiatrists Beatrice Steiner and Andreas Altorfer and more.

Using a treasure trove of rare archival footage, much of it previously unseen, the film brings viewers to the places and institutions in France, Switzerland, Germany, and Belgium where the history of "Outsider Art" unfolded and continues to unfold today.

DVD (French, German, With English Subtitles, Color, Black and White) / 2017 / 80 minutes

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CHINESE LIVES OF ULI SIGG, THE

By Michael Schindhelm

Art world sensation Ai Weiwei credits him with launching his international career. Renowned pianist Lang Lang describes him as a mentor to Chinese artists. Curator Victoria Lu believes that his taste and influence as a collector has been felt around the world.

But when Swiss businessman Uli Sigg first went to China, art was far from his mind. The year was 1979, and Sigg-working for the Schindler escalator and elevator company-was hoping to set up one of the first joint ventures between the Chinese government, seeking international investment in the post-Mao era, and a Western company. At the time, even the fanciest hotels had rats, boardrooms were so poorly heated you could see your breath, and the government still regulated hairstyles (five different kinds of perm allowed).

Uli Sigg is not a man who does things by halves. "My ego, my way" says a t-shirt he wears at one point in the film. When he took up rowing, he went to the world championships. When he negotiated a joint venture, he wanted to create a model for future partnerships. And when he became interested in Chinese art, he built a world-class personal collection.

Sigg championed the artists he admired, working tirelessly for their international recognition and to preserve their artwork as a record of China's tumultuous and historic changes. Eventually, Sigg became the Swiss ambassador to China and a consultant on major Chinese art projects, including the construction of the Bird's Nest stadium for the Olympic Games.

THE CHINESE LIVES OF ULI SIGG, directed by art historian and scholar Michael Schindhelm (Bird's Nest) and produced by Marcel Hoehn (Dark Star: H. R. Giger's World, The Knowledge ofo Healing, Monte Grande, Santiago Calatrava's Travels, The Written Face) is a history of China's recent opening to the West, and of the West's embrace of Chinese contemporary art, through the eyes of Sigg and the artists he championed. Artists including Ai Weiwei, Cao Chong'en, Cao Fei, Gang Lijun, Feng Mengbo, Shao Fan, Wang Guangyi and Zeng Fanzhi are interviewed along with curators, diplomats, architects and business colleagues in this colorful documentary survey of contemporary Chinese art.

DVD (Color) / 2016 / 93 minutes

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BELTRACCHI: THE ART OF FORGERY

By Anne Birkenstock

For nearly 40 years, Wolfgang Beltracchi fooled the international art world and was responsible for the biggest art forgery scandal of the postwar era. An expert in art history, theory and painting techniques, he tracked down the gaps in the oeuvres of great artists - Max Ernst, Fernand Leger, Heinrich Campendonk, Andre Derain and Max Pechstein, above all - and filled them with his own works. He and his wife Helene would then introduce them to the art world as originals. What makes these forgeries truly one-of-a-kind is that they are never mere copies of once-existing paintings, but products of Beltracchi's imagination, works "in the style of" famous early 20th-century artists. With his forgeries, he fooled renowned experts, curators and art dealers. The auctioneers Sotheby's and Christie's were hoodwinked, just like Hollywood star Steve Martin and other collectors throughout the world.

In BELTRACCHI: THE ART OF FORGERY, Wolfgang and his wife Helene Beltracchi chat openly - and with great wit and charm - about their quixotic adventures in an overheated art world ruled by blind greed, and in which apparently no one has an answer to the question as to what is an original, and what is a forgery... Beltracchi is an engaging rogue, a warm-hearted husband and father, and an impossibly self-confident artist. Full of witty dialogues, the film shows Beltracchi's incredible talent as a painter and reveals his expertise in forging paintings from the early 20th century, which were so masterfully done that art experts, museums and auction houses around the world were duped and exposed.

DVD (Color) / 2014 / 93 minutes

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NEXT BIG THING, THE

By Frank van den Engel

Prices for contemporary art are going through the roof despite the lousy economic situation in general. Internet, the growing number of rich individuals and globalization have changed the art market beyond recognition. Has contemporary art become a commodity in the hands of the super rich private collectors?

This film investigates the ins and outs of the soaring art market and the consequences for artists, dealers, museums and for art history.

With among others: artists Chuck Close, Jack Whitten and Adrian Ghenie, Top 200 art collectors under which Bert Kreuk, Martin Z. Margulies and Thomas Olbricht, museum directors Udo Kittelman and Benno Tempel and Christie's Chairman NY.

DVD (Color) / 2014 / 57 minutes

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SOL LEWITT

By Chris Teerink

"Conceptual artists leap to conclusions logic cannot reach," Sol LeWitt (1928-2007) said in a rare audio-interview from 1974. Notoriously camera-shy, Lewitt refused awards and rarely granted interviews, yet in Chris Teerink's sensitive cinematic portrait, the pioneering conceptual American artist comes alive.

LeWitt's artwork can be seen as obsession pushed to the limit of paradox and absurdity: simple ideas, communicated simply - often with a set of instructions sent by fax - lead to overwhelming visual and intellectual complexity. For example, to create Wall drawing #801: Spiral, a white line spirals down the black wall of a cupola 3.2 miles long. The film documents the piece's 2011 installation in Maastricht, the Netherlands, which takes eight assistants 30 days to complete. When the painstaking work is done and the scaffolding taken away, the result is the transformative.

Using extensive interviews and documentation of artwork installed around the world, in the acclaimed documentary Sol LeWitt, director Chris Teerink explores the artist's work and philosophy.

DVD (Color) / 2012 / 72 minutes

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ANATSUI AT WORK: EIGHT SHORTS FOR MUSEUMS AND CLASSROOMS

Directed by Susan Vogel

A swift instructive look at the artist demonstrating his process, and discussing his theories. Eight short, pointed sequences are designed for use in classrooms and museums either as stand-alone shorts, or as a 28-minute film. "Anatsui at Work" was shot on three continents over two years with "Fold Crumple Crush" with little duplication aside from condensed sequences of the studio work. The eight shorts explore specific media and follow Anatsui creating art in Nsukka and installing one of his most ambitious works on the facade of the Palazzo Fortuny Museum in Venice. The sections are:

Materials - From the Environment. In Nsukka, Nigeria, we hear Anatsui talk about his relationship to materials and his use of "things that have been used before." The camera follows the artist to a teeming Nigerian recycling market, then to the modest distillery where he buys liquor bottle-tops, and to the rural yard where he found old mortars. Two of his Nsukka University colleagues enlarge upon Anatsui's philosophy. (4:54)

Pottery - Tradition and Modernity. Handling three of his seminal "Broken Pots," and showing them to the camera, the artist describes his technique and talks about pottery as a metaphor for life. (2:43)

lWood - The Non-fixed Form. Anatsui walks through a Nigerian lumber market and talks about his work with chainsaw and wood. His wood wall reliefs are deliberately composed of separate boards that are not joined together. Back in the studio, while deftly rearranging the boards of a wall piece, he says his hope is to bring out creativity in others. Gazing at the wall piece he has radically transformed, Anatsui admits that most people don't have the courage to do this. (3:55)

Outdoor Sculpture - University of Nigeria Nsukka. On the campus Anatsui walks around two monuments he created around 1980 which expressed his thoughts about the benefits - and risks - of science. (1:48)

Tin Can Lids - Shaping and Reshaping. Taking a single sheet of lids from his "Peak Project" sculpture, Anatsui twists and props it up this way and that till it takes a "Fairly OK" form. He explains that there is no permanent form. (3:26)

The Studio Process - Many Hands. Inside the Nsukka studio, assistants explain how they are organized, and how they make the labor intensive "blocks" with which Anatsui constructs his hangings. They demonstrate and name many of the different treatments that Anatsui has invented to create rich and varied textures. (4:42)

Composing - Shifting and Arranging. Working on the studio floor we watch the culmination of the creative process. Anatsui orchestrates a dozen assistants and scores of "blocks" out compose what will become a huge hanging. (3:52)

The Nomadic Aesthetic - Freedom to Move [Palazzo Fortuny]. In Venice we watch Anatsui shifting and changing the vast bottle-top sculpture he has draped over the entire facade of the Palazzo Fortuny Museum. He explains how his thinking takes shape in his art and ruminates about the connection between his philosophy of art and his life. Shot in Venice and Skowhegan, Maine. (3:33)

DVD (Color) / 2011 / 28 minutes

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FOLD CRUMPLE CRUSH: THE ART OF EL ANATSUI

By Susan Vogel

FOLD CRUMPLE CRUSH: THE ART OF EL ANATSUI gives an insider's view of the artist's practice, the ingenious steps and thousands of hours of labor that convert used bottle tops into huge, opulent wall hangings. Here Anatsui explains how his artworks have become a marriage of painting and sculpture, objects that speak of African history but also reach for the ethereal - and he talks about his aspirations for artworks he has yet to make.

Behind the charming, easy-going artist we discover a man who remains mysterious even to his dearest friends. The film circles around Anatsui, drawing ever closer to a deep understanding of the man and his surprising bottle top hangings. We see the celebrated artist installing work on the great world stage of the Venice Biennale; we follow him back to the small town of Nsukka as he goes about his daily life, then watch him inside the hive of his studio directing assistants as they stitch together bottle tops into a vast metal hanging. Finally, Anatsui admits us to the privacy of his home where he tells us about his formative years, and reveals a youthful discovery that clouded his life.

DVD (Color) / 2011 / 53 minutes

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VIEWS ON VERMEER

By Hans Pool and Koos de Wilt

Johannes Vermeer died nearly 350 years ago, but his work continues to evoke inspiration and passion.

Shot largely in New York (home a third of the world's Vermeers) Views on Vermeer also travels to Holland, France, London and Washington - introducing us to artists, writers and photographers whose lives and work have been touched by the painter from Delft.

Vermeer has long been admired for the sense of peacefulness that infuse his work. Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf says what he has learned about portraiture from Vermeer is that "nothing really happens." One woman reads a letter. Another pours milk. Both their actions are captured in a moment of stillness. "A life is being lived in those paintings - a small moment." says photographer Joel Meyerowitz. "That small moment is where Vermeer and photography meet."

The film highlights artists whose work is directly inspired by Vermeer, and others for whom the connection to the old master is less direct - yet no less vital.

London-based painter Tom Hunter's work depicts friends and neighbors facing eviction from their homes in compositions drawn from Vermeer. Meanwhile, photographers such as Meyerowitz and Philip-Lorca diCorcia draw on Vermeer more indirectly. diCorcia's "Hustlers" series features male prostitutes posed in tableaus whose lighting and compositions are reminiscent of Vermeer's. And as in Vermeer's work, diCorcia's images "reveal themselves slowly."

One of the more striking sequences in the film juxtaposes the work of Girl with a Pearl Earring novelist Tracy Chevalier with that of Steve McCurry - the photographer who shot the famous Afghan girl photo that appeared on the cover of National Geographic. For Chevalier, the Vermeer painting on which she based the book was not simply a portrait; it captured a moment in a relationship. McCurry compares the Afghan girl - seeing a western male for the first time - to the girl with the pearl earring. Each demonstrates a moment when "the mundane becomes magical."

Despite the peacefulness of his work, Vermeer lived in a world wracked by violence. Writer Lawrence Weschler (Vermeer in Bosnia) notes that the sense of calm in a painting of Vermeer's hometown - where a recent explosion had killed hundreds - is akin to a portrait of post-9/11 Manhattan. The sense of peacefulness filling the work is not simply aesthetic. It is a political statement wrenched from a world at war.

Many of those featured in the film point to the lack of verisimilitude in much of Vermeer's work. Bricks may not really look the way Vermeer paints them. Certain reflections and highlights may be physically impossible. Yet his work captures something fundamental about reality - something beyond the purely physical. We are surrounded by inexpensive digital equipment that offers the illusion of instantly photographing or filming reality. The work of Vermeer and the artists he has influenced is an invitation to the opposite approach. As artist Chuck Close says, "Vermeer painted the situation of bricks, rather than individual bricks."

Featuring interviews with painters Tom Hunter, Chuck Close, and Jonathan Janson; photographers Erwin Olaf, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Joel Meyerowitz and Steve McCurry; writers Tracy Chevalier, Lawrence Weschler, and Alain de Botton; architect Philip Steadman; curators Walter Liedtke, and Arthur Wheelock; art historian Geoffrey Batchen, and art dealer Otto Naumann.

DVD (Color) / 2009 / 52 minutes

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SECRET MUSEUMS

By Peter Woditsch

Throughout the ages, erotic art has been created by some of the world's best-known artists, but it is rarely on public display. Whether it is held in private collections, or kept under lock and key in museums and libraries worldwide, erotic art and literature remains censored. But when graphic, even extreme sexual imagery is freely available on the Internet, why is erotic art considered so dangerous that it must be prohibited?

Filmed in England, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and the U.S., SECRET MUSEUMS explores the locked rooms, warehouses, museum cellars, bank safes and private homes where erotica is hidden, from the British Museum and the National Library of France to Munich's National Graphics Collection and the Vatican, home of the world's largest collection of pornography. Gaining access to carefully guarded collections with names such as "Secretum," "Gabinetto Segreto" and "L'Enfer," the film reveals books and images never before filmed or photographed.

SECRET MUSEUMS features interviews with wealthy collectors, museum curators and guides, librarians, authors, gallery directors, art restorers and experts in erotic art, who discuss the reasons for the cultural suppression and control of erotic art; how institutional gatekeepers, as the protectors of public morality, decide what is acceptable; the difficulty of some in accepting sexuality as an appropriate subject for art; the compulsion to assemble private collections; and how many erotic masterpieces remain hidden today.

DVD (Color) / 2008 / 77 minutes

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BETWEEN MADNESS AND ART: THE PRINZHORN COLLECTION

By Christian Beetz

What is the link between psychological states and the creative process? Is there a relationship between psychosis and the artistic impulse? What can art works produced by mental patients tell us about artistic genius? Can art therapy be helpful in the treatment of the mentally ill?

BETWEEN MADNESS AND ART examines these issues through the story of Dr. Hans Prinzhorn (1886-1933), a German student of psychiatry and art history. As Director of the Heidelberg Psychiatric Clinic in the 1920s, he was fascinated by the beauty and expressiveness of the drawings, paintings and sculptures of his schizophrenic patients. He began to study and preserve this art, eventually writing a seminal study, Artistry of the Mentally Ill, and by the time of his death had organized the largest collection of its type in the world.

After Prinzhorn's death, the Nazis displayed some of his patients' works for their 1937 exhibit of "degenerate art." Forgotten for many years, the Prinzhorn Collection was rediscovered in 1963, toured Europe, Asia and the U.S., and has led to a reevaluation of what today is known as "outsider art."

The film tells this remarkable story through archival footage, profiles of Prinzhorn's patient-artists, footage of their art works, and interviews with psychotherapists, doctors, artists, curators, two contemporary outpatient artists and the collection's current director.

In its examination of the relationship between mental states and the creative urge, BETWEEN MADNESS AND ART raises serious questions about our current definitions of both art and illness.

DVD (Color) / 2007 / 75 minutes

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STOLEN ART

By Simon Backes

In New York City in 1978, an unknown Czech artist by the name of Pavel Novak held an exhibit at WX Gallery entitled "Stolen Art," which featured paintings by Rembrandt, Courbet, Van Gogh and other great masters, all reproduced with astonishing accuracy by Novak. Following the claim by a private collector that one painting, Courbet's "The Calm Sea" was actually an original stolen from his home, the FBI shut down the exhibit and Novak disappeared without a trace.

In investigating the scandal created by this outlaw artist, filmmaker Simon Backes learns that few today are aware of the event while those who are refuse to speak about it. His search takes him worldwide-from New York to Prague, Leiden, Paris, St. Petersburg, St. Moritz and Rome-as he visits leading museums and interviews art experts, curators, collectors, journalists, and critics, including Karel Michalik, a colleague of Novak's, who wrote a provocative essay for the exhibit's program.

In the course of its investigation-which includes Super 8mm footage of the 1978 exhibit (with Andy Warhol, among others, in attendance) and journalist Barbara Lorey's tape-recorded phone interview with Novak-the film discusses his philosophy of the "reappropriation" and "redistribution" of great art, how authentic art can be distinguished from reproductions, the relationship between artists, critics and collectors, the role of memory in art appreciation, and the role of art forgers.

In trying to determine whether Novak was a brilliant art forger or a remarkable thief, however, the mystery merely thickens and the question becomes not so much who created what, but who created whom?

DVD (Color) / 2007 / 56 minutes

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HIDDEN GIFTS: THE MYSTERY OF ANGUS MACPHEE

By Nick Higgins

HIDDEN GIFTS explores the mysterious relationship between artistic expression and mental illness through the story of Scotsman Angus MacPhee, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1946 and sent to the Craig Dunain Psychiatric Hospital near Inverness.

Although MacPhee was a patient there for fifty years, in a case of elective mutism he spoke not a single word to any of the hospital staff. The sole expression of "the quiet big man" was his solitary weaving of clothes-including coats, gloves and boots-from grass, samples of which are seen on display in an art gallery.

The film discusses MacPhee's work as an example of art produced by someone who has escaped social conditioning and who, because he lives in a dream world, has direct access to his unconscious mind, and is therefore intuitively creative, who, indeed, has a compulsion to create.

In addition to video footage of MacPhee late in his life, HIDDEN GIFTS features interviews with Joyce Laing, an art therapist, who discovered his work, staff members at the psychiatric hospital, and Peggy MacPhee, Angus's sister, who recount their experiences with this creator of what Laing refers to as "art extraordinary."

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2005 / 26 minutes

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CFH SEMINARS IN MODERN ART: BREAK WITH TRADITION (IMPRESSIONISM)

From the Impressionism of the 1800s through the experiments of the last decade, this colorful program analyzes the most important trends of the last two centuries.

Unit One: The Break with Tradition introduces students to the origins of modern art. Explains one of the most revolutionary aspects of Impressionists painting-its use of color-as seen in the works of Monet, Pissarro and Renoir.

DVD (With Teacher's Guide) / 1975 / 20 minutes

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CFH SEMINARS IN MODERN ART: CONTEMPORARY TRENDS

From the Impressionism of the 1800s through the experiments of the last decade, this colorful program analyzes the most important trends of the last two centuries.

Unit Four: Contemporary Trends describes the American art scene in the 1940s when painters in New York developed Abstract Expressionism. Among the artists represented are Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Adolph Gottlieb and mark Rothko. Brings the discussion up to the present by examining the Minimal, Pop, Conceptual and Photo-realist movements.

DVD (With Teacher's Guide) / 1975 / 20 minutes

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CFH SEMINARS IN MODERN ART: EXPLORING THE HEART & THE MIND (EXPRESSIONISM)

From the Impressionism of the 1800s through the experiments of the last decade, this colorful program analyzes the most important trends of the last two centuries.

Unit Three: Exploring the Heart & the Mind discusses the Expressionist and Surrealist artists who sought to reveal deep feelings and subconscious thoughts in their paintings. Includes work by Rousseau, Redon, Roualt, Matisse, Nolde, Kirchner, Kandinski and others.

DVD (With Teacher's Guide) / 1975 / 20 minutes

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CFH SEMINARS IN MODERN ART: THE RECONSTRUCTION OF SPACE

From the Impressionism of the 1800s through the experiments of the last decade, this colorful program analyzes the most important trends of the last two centuries.

Unit Two: The Reconstruction of Space highlights a major category of modern art-Cubism-and traces the influence of Cezzane's cubistic style on Picasso and Braque.

DVD (With Teacher's Guide) / 1975 / 20 minutes

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METROPOLITAN SEMINARS IN ART: COMPOSITION

The Metropolitian Museum Seminars In Art:

Unit Three: Composition

A Chronological exploration of the elements of composition, focusing on the element of pattern, from Gozzoli to Matisse; structure from Pollaiuolo to Cezzane; and expression from Sassetta to Degas. Students study two-dimensional and three-dimensional compositions and learn the similarities and differences between the two.

DVD / 1972 / 25 minutes

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METROPOLITAN SEMINARS IN ART: EXPRESSIONISM / ABSTRACTION

The Metropolitian Museum Seminars In Art:

Unit Two: Expressionism / Abstraction

Defines Expressionism as the distortion of form and color for emotional interpretation. It defines Abstraction as seeking to reduce solid objects to the flat plane surface. Students contrast Mondrian's highly intellectual approach with Kandinsky's emotionalized abstractions.

DVD / 1972 / 23 minutes

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METROPOLITAN SEMINARS IN ART: TECHNIQUES

The Metropolitian Musuem Seminars In Art:

Unit Four: Techniques

A detailed description of the technical aspects of working in various media: fresco, tempera, oil, watercolor, pastel, woodcut, etching and lithography.

DVD / 1972 / 26 minutes

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METROPOLITAN SEMINARS IN ART: THE ARTIST AS SOCIAL CRITIC/VISIONARY

The Metropolitian Musuem Seminars In Art

Unit Five: The Artist as Social Critic/ Visionary

Show how painters have expressed their ideas about relationships, protested vice or injustice, commented on human folly and achievement. Includes examples of social criticism by Botticelli, Goya, Hogarth and Riveria, Blake, Bosch, Dali, DeChirico

DVD / 1972 / 25 minutes

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METROPOLITAN SEMINARS IN ART: WHAT IS A PAINTING? REALISM

The Metropolitian Museum Seminars In Art:

Unit One: What is a Painting? Realism

Introduces the fundamental principles of art appreciation and explains technique, composition and personal expression. Students trace realism from Van Eyck to Hopper.

DVD / 1972 / 24 minutes

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ART WITH A MESSAGE: PROTEST & PROPAGANDA, SATIRE & SOCIAL COMMENT

This program investigates the ways various art forms are used to sway minds and to argue political causes. Examples include Napoleon and Hitler; artist such as Daumier, Hogarth and Shahn; writers Dickens, Swift and Orwell; and pop artists who mock popular ideals.

DVD / 1971 / 35 minutes

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