Synecdoche, New York

Okay. So ultimate theatre/reading experience in the form of a film? Maybe. Trip into madness – definitely? I recently watched the film Synecdoche, New York, and I have still—after about ten days—been digesting it and thinking about it. I have already told several people about my experience of watching it, which was basically sheer laughter. I felt like I was experiencing hysteria, or possibly some other form of neurosis, as I was watching the film. Having said that, you might think I thought it was awful, but in fact, I thoroughly enjoyed the “film” in that it provided a very nice phenomenological experience. In fact, it was in many ways a wonderful cap to the past two years of my academic career.

One of the reasons I decided to finally rent the movie was because of this article by Hermione Hoby from Guardian about Synecdoche, New York the film as the postmodern novel. I was intrigued by the title, and Hoby’s analysis of it is all the more intriguing. She starts by stating that: “A few days ago I airily declared to a colleague that cinema never really did it for me, not as much as fiction, in any case. I'd always rather read a novel than watch a film. That snooty belief in the superiority of the written word has been as happily shaken up as my boggled brain itself since I emerged from a screening of Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York.” She goes on to talk about a Q & A after the screening in which many people asserted that Kaufmann was influenced by such-and-such novel only to be told no. Hoby continues, “Likewise, these perceived novelistic borrowings are most likely just that - perceived: any good piece of art probably reminds a million people of a million different things.” And I had the same sort of response. The fact that this so psychological and cerebral lends itself to this extreme multivalency in which the film radiates and reverberated everywhere.

For another review/resource to talk about the film, I checked out my friend’s blog and his entry on the film from a while ago. I think what he was to say is quite true: “Unfortunately, and I know how elitist this sounds, most people don't like movies because they don't respect them as a living, breathing thing, and Synecdoche, New York is nothing if not that.” The film is that—“a living, breathing thing.” Its essence smacks you in the face when you watch, and my own reaction to the film echoes his reading of the film. “When I recommend it, I'm recommending it not as a film, but as an experience that no two people will receive in the same way. It's kind of a miracle that it exists at all, and if you like movies, you should see it.” I sort of felt the same way when I read Ulysses…that this book was all about experience and that trying to control that experience or mold it into someone else’s reading would be detrimental because the whole point is to have that original, untainted (if there can be such a thing) experience.

Here’s a trailer for the film:

Writing / Blog Discovery

I found this really awesome blog that I wanted to share with everyone. It is called "The One-Minute Writer." (http://oneminutewriter.blogspot.com/2009/01/todays-writing-prompt-time.html) I thought it was quite serendipitous that today's entry was "Teach: What information would you like to teach to others?"

Here is my 60 second writing:

I think it is interesting that the one thing that Beamish wished for was world peace. How can you teach world peace? It seems that so many people like to teach hatred and live by fear that to teach others to love one another. And yet, as I write that last sentence, I already know examples that contradict that and know people who want to love and to create love. To change the world and teach others to live not in fear but rather in

--

So that was about how far I got with just 60 seconds. This blog seems like a really great thing for those of us that do teach writing to use as an activity in class. To get students to think about writing. I can already see from what I wrote that I did not even necessarily write about my ideas. But the restriction of just having 60 seconds to write makes me want to write more. Perhaps five is more reasonable, but I have always found that with the free-writing exercise things go too far astray.

I hope others enjoy this blog and maybe even use it.

Also, I think it would be cool to know how some of you would answer this questions, too? What would you want to teach others? I immediately wrote about what Beamish wished for, but I guess I wouldn't even really want to teach people that. It is was just what was on my mine. I guess what I would teach is a motto I drilled into my 3 year old cousin several years ago, "Difference is good."

Response to The Waves by Virignia Woolf

"It was a pretty boring day," said Michael. "There was lots of self-reflection and sleeping. Northing actually. Just voids of time spent doing things. Things over and again. Things done before, things done now, things to do later. Abstractness personified. Personality erased and abased. Tons of thinking about life and experiences. Lies to the self and to others. I can't believe I told my mom that I was having a good day. It was more of an average day. I did this and that. Nothing special. Nothing every really that special when it is all just the routine. Can anything ever stand out from a routine."


"Get up, sit down, move around. Actions repeated over and over again with little to no concious deliberation. Sadness, happiness, interest, and boredom all on this mathematical wave expansion table that the computer in the brain moves around and around on the x-y axis grid of my conciousness. Feel this, feel that. Cold, hot, anger...where does all of it come from? Why does looking at the window produce this feeling of loneliness and sterility inside? I can't create the world around me. I can't create anything material, just words on the page, words on the screen, words in my head, words in conversation. The condensed nature of my production swings laboriously over and around my thoughts."

Web Art from the Cabinet

Everyone should check out this awesome web-art feature on the Cabinet's website. It's called "There There" by Jackie Goss. It's very informative, and the graphics are kinda awesome.

http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/art/webart/jackie_goss/index.php

I hope you enjoy and feel free to post your favorite factoids. Mine happens to be: "In a map of 1900 you see the Philippines tucked under California" or maybe "Henry Garnett, chief cartographer and pizza lover, chooses 'souvenir'--a font he recognizes from Pizza Hot menus."

I never really think about space or place really all that much outsides of wanting to find places to go out for vacation. But in reading this, I remember a really interesting West Wing episode where some people tried to convince Leo or Sam that the United States should back this organization that wanted to redraw the map of the world. We very rarely think about the world at large in a geographical sense...or so I think. Although of course as of late we have been obssessed with ecological issues. Look at films like Wall-E or The Happening.


There really is such a large space out there, but it is seriously dwindling each day. We are not only losing space and resources at an alarming rate, but we are increasingly destroying the Earth with our horrible habits. How many times have we kept the lights on too long? Wasted food? Or abused our access to gas and water? In ecofem, I remember reading an article about how women in some countries walk five hours a day to reach available water sources.

Girl With a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer

Time for some art talk.


I recently watched the 2003 film based on the 1999 historical novel by Tracey Chevalier based on the painting by Johannes Vermeer (circa 1665-1675). I was really moved by the film and touched by the rather personal performances of Colin Firth as Vermeer and Scarlett Johansen as the maid and subject of the painting, Greit. The film also sported a rather early cameo by Cilian Murphy, and of course, no one other than the Tom Wilkinson played the weird villain-patron. I haven't read the book, but after watching the film this time, I am quite tempted to make it one of my many upcoming purchases.


Wanting to know more of course, I perused wikipedia and imdb.com for a chance of finding out more about the film, but it wasn't until researching the book that I came across this great website: . To put it simply, I was kinda amazed by this guys in-depth study of the painting and had some of my own thoughts, of course. This is his website <http://girl-with-a-pearl-earring.20m.com/> if you are interested in this painting and want to know much more than I do about it or will be able to write about in the rest of this blog.


What really stirred me was the comment that Vermeer's (aka Colin Firth's) wife said when she was finally able to get her greedy eyes all over the painting, which is that it was "obscene." So maybe there is a lot more going on in the novel/film that I can figure out because I don't exactly see how that painting is obscene. It a portrait of a fully clothed girl. Is it some class thing? Is this way too poor girl not supposed to be sporting these pearls and glossy fabrics?

It's just kind of interesting that this is now one of his more famous paintings because supposedly it was never sold during his lifetime is apparently moderately different from more of his other works. Jonathan Janson says that we know the less about this painting than any of Vermeer's others, which is just how this works of course (the one you really want to know the most about is the one its too hard to find information on). Some people call this painting the "Dutch Mona Lisa," and I kind of find that appropriate since there is something quite enigmatic about her. What is she looking at? Why capture just her? In a lot of Vermeer's other's paintings, you see the workroom studio he used (and which is captured brilliantly in the film). I wander how much of Chevalier's speculation/Griet's lines in the film about the chair making the model feel trapped influenced this painting. Is that why she is painted with just the background? To give her more freedom. Is she the pearl? The expensive symbol of virginity, vanity, and femininity...

I rather like what Arthur Wheelock writes, "As this girl stares out at the viewer with liquid eyes and parted mouth, she radiates purity, captivating all the gaze upon her. Her soft, smooth skin is as unblemished as the surface of her large tear-drop shaped earring - like a vision emanating from the darkness, she belongs to not specific time or place. Her exotic turban, wrapping her head in crystalline blue, is surmounted by a striking yellow fabric that falls behind her shoulders, lending an air of mystery to the image." (taken from Janson's website).

However, there is also something quite critical that can be said about her dress and the pearl. Some of the stirrings of Orientalism and the fascination with the East. Apparently, Vermeer owned quite about of Turkish materials, and the turban was quite a commonplace headdress in paintings (see Jan van Eyck's Man With a Turban, 1433).

I think what moves me most about this painting is that it demands the imagination rather than controls it. Unlike some paintings like say Starry Night or La Grande Jette, with Vermeer's Girl you have to use your own mind and imagination to see what is going on underneath the surface, to see what is being expressed on the canvas. All that we have before us is this girl looking at us, but it is up to the viewer/us to create the rest, whereas with other paintings, with so much material presented for the viewer, commands the mind rather than allows it to move more. I hope that makes some sense.

Peace out.

Could a Four Year Old Paint That?

So, I've been working on this blog for a while, and I've just gotten around to finishing it. Like I said in the opening, I knew that my posting would be erratic. Maybe now that school is coming around the bend, I might post more regularly since I will need to find ways to procrastinate. I also think I have some ideas to post more.

Anyways....

I watched this really awesome documentary the other day that really had me thinking about aesthetics and forgery and creation and the personality/identity/construction of the artist. Amir Bar-Lev's My Kid Could Paint That showcases the rise of infant painter, Marla Olmstead.

I think two of the most important questions that the film posed (and that it left rather open ended for all intents and purposes, which I find is a good thing) are the following:
1) Is art about truth or about lies? (Especially when displayed for the public eye/consumer)
2) Is the story that a painting tells the story of the artist or of the painting?

What slowly develops from this neat, little documentary about an avant-garde prodigy is this sick, twisted interrogation of truth and lies and art. Is Marla the real painter behind the beautiful canvases that are marketed under her name? Are people "buying" (into) the Olmstead's ruse? It becomes rather clear to the filmmaker, who at about twenty minutes into the film, starts to realize that he has not been able to actually film Marla painting at all. [Aside: Before showing her paint, there is a scene with her in the bath tub, in which she puts four lines on the wall and calls it a purse. Child's play or genius imagination or both?]. The filmmaker prods her on the subject, asking her to paint for him, and at several points, he asks the parents to get her to paint. It culminates in the placement of hidden cameras and the filming of one canvas that is certainly painted by Marla albeit a very different type of painting. (The difference is hard to describe with words but is definitely noticeable to the eye.)

Marla's father, Mark, was an amateur artist for years, and like any good parent, (along with the mutual support of his wife), he "enabled" Marla's gifts for painting. They definitely treat her like a child, and it is clear that the mother attempts to protect Marla. However, want to talk to a 40 year old. They sell her first canvas for $250, and her parents said if it would have ended there would have been happy. Yet, the dad secretly books shows behinds the mother's back and wishes/dreams that Marla can get a show in Europe....selfish, much? Could the father perhaps be painting Marla's canvases? It does become very strange when you see him giving her directions on which colors to use and how to move the brush. In fact, he's a constant presence in her painting. Mark has to be there to help her set up. She couldn't just go off and paint. (She would be painting the walls. Why, does she need to be told to paint on the canvas? Is she inherently desiring to do this or being directed to?) Why does she need help really? He's on the phone making plans, while she's being interviewed and saying how she makes joint decisions and then they show him in the house with people filming her painting (yet she is painting a canvas all one color). Mark constantly asserts that this is not normal.

"She reacts differently when the cameras or around."

Is Marla being manipulated?

Certainly the answers to this question enter into the film-maker's mind as he has this on-camera dilemma. He wonders why he cares and about the ethics of film-making? Does he have a truth that he must uphold? And if he does, why doesn't Marla or Mark or Mamma Olmstead (whose name escapes me).

By watching Marla in this video, and the video of her painting that the family markets her and her genuine-ness, makes her in some sense inescapable because you are caught up in these representations of her paintings and her painting, even if some of them are fake and some of her actions are rehearsed. And in some senses, isn't that what art is doing, asking you to come and be a voyeur? To suspend belief and believe lies?

For me, a lot of how I feel about this film and concept is wrapped up in that previous questions and in a comment that the mom says towards the end. "We've put our selves here." It's quite the double entendre. Not only have they littering created the idea Marla as the artist, they have also helped to create her art. Perhaps my prejudice comes out here, but I really don't think that she painted most of those canvases alone. Surely she painted them, maybe started all of them. But finished them? I'm highly suspect of her involvement. Would it really be the first time that a parent has manipulated their own child to gain status or money or achieve personal ambitions?

Surely art is about the suspension of disbelief. Even realism, the most realistic of the real, asks us to use our immagination, to believe lies, to believe truths, to use representations and symbols that have been created for us rather than by us. But could a four year old paint that? I say a heavy maybe, leaning towards no. But who am I to say?