Week Thirteen Video Review

The first film I chose for this week’s video review was “Andy Warhol: Images of an Image”. This was fairly interesting, I’ve of course heard of Andy Warhol and this film had some good insights into his work. The “Ten Lizes” is an interesting piece. I’ve seen his work before but did not know it was done with silk screen. I liked how he was interested in making art to make money. The details on how the silk screen images were made are something new that I was unaware of.  And I like his famous quote about everyone being famous for fifteen minutes. I’m still waiting for mine.

The second film I chose was “The Power of Art: Rothco” about the life and works of American Mark Rothco. We’ve read about his works that were intended for the Four Seasons restaurant and how he painted them to make everyone sick. This went into more detail about his distaste for the wealthy people who would frequent this restaurant and why he made the paintings the way he did. The film itself I hated. What a bunch of over dramatized nonsense. Did the narrator really call him an “omnipotent sorcerer”? One of the things I’ve found that I do not like about some of the films that we’ve watched is this over dramatization of the artists and their works.

With that being said, the last two films I watched were two of the best I’ve seen this year. The first one “Hockney on photography” was really good. I like that the artist himself is narrating and gives good insight into the creative process without all the hype. I really like his Polaroid montages that he called drawing with a camera. As a child, cinema had a big influence on him. He was fascinated by perspective and his works with reverse perspective are very unique. The Grand Canyon piece is awesome. I really like the photo collage but I’m not to fond of the painting. I thought this was an excellent film.

The last film I watched “Isamu Nogchi: The Sculptor of Spaces” is probably the favorite film I’ve seen this year. Like the Hockney movie, this was narrated by the artist himself and gave great insight into his motivation and vision. He said he dad a vision of the earth as a sculpture and he wanted to turn landscapes into participatory works of art. The park he designed in Miami is beautiful and I Really liked the slide he made. His dealing with the Miami town board was a good insight on how he was unwilling to compromise his art. The stone sculpture garden in Jerusalem is beautiful as well. All of the works that were shown in this film were beautiful and I really liked getting the artists perspective.