CINE 407: Art History and Film

Fall 2005

 

Instructor: Aaron Kerner

Office: FA536

Telephone: 405 3972

Email: amkerner@sfsu.edu

Office Hours: TBA

 

[I]n modern life the movies are what most other forms of art have ceased to be, not an adornment but a necessity.

- Eriwin Panosfsky, "Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures,"1934

 

Course Description: Strange barriers have been erected between the so-called 'art world' and the mediums of popular culture, including the cinema. But despite these artificial boundaries artists have routinely used the cinematic medium as a mode of expression. In addition, artists and their lives have been used as subject matter for narrative films. This course takes two different approaches to the inter-relationship between artistic practice and the application of the cinematic medium by practicing artists:

  1. One of the most utilized modes of writing within art history is the monograph (i.e., a biographical analysis of the artist and their work); cinema has frequently adopted this approach depicting the lives of artists such as Vincent Van Gogh, Jackson Pollock, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Frida Kahlo. During this section of the course we will analyze the manner in which these artists are represented. Do the films adopt the 'mythological' tropes typically found in monographs? Do filmmakers add performative elements to the film to illustrate an artist's mode of expression (e.g., splashes of color, manipulated images), or do they offer a 'straight biopic'?
  2. The latter part of the course will survey artist and their use of the cinematic medium. Contextualizing these works within the discourse of art history (and film history) the course will survey works from fairly early appropriations of the cinematic medium by surrealists to contemporary artists such as Matthew Barney.

 

 

Course Requirements:

1.     Attend all class meetings

2.     Readings must be completed by the assigned dates

3.     All written work must be submitted on time

 

Course Assessment: Students will be required to write two papers (4 - 5 pages). Prompts for these two assignments will be handed out later in the course. You must incorporate one source from your reading material, in addition to one outside scholarly resource. There will also be two quizzes.

1.     First Paper
 30%
2.     Quiz One
 15%
3.     Quiz Two 
 15%
4.     Final Paper 
 30%
5.     Attendance  
 10%

 

Course Reading Material: All the reading material is available online either through electronic reserves, or an online database. If you are accessing a database like Project Muse or JSTOR through an online service provider other than the SFSU server, you will need a code to access this material. Any computer on campus should have no problem accessing these databases.


Suggested Reading:

Soussloff, Catherine M.  The Absolute Artist: The Historgraphy of a Concept. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
Vacche, Angela Dalle. Cinema and Painting: How Art Is Used in Film. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996.

 

Asked the instructor for the password for electronic reserve material.


NB:    

 

 

Citation Method - Chicago Manual of Style:

 

For assistance with citations see the online version of Diana Hacker's A Pocket Style Manual.


Introduction

 

Session 1: August 30, 2005

Screening:

The Shock of the New volume 1 and 2, Robert Hughes, 1970/80.

David Hockney: Secret Knowledge, Randall Wright, 2002. (Subject to availability)

 

The Biopics: Lives of the Artists

 

Session 2: September 6, 2005

Screening:

Lust for Life, Vincente Minnelli, 1956

Dreams, Akira Kurosawa, 1990

Vincent and Theo, Robert Altman, 1990

Reading:

  1. Griselda Pollock, "Artists mythologies and media genius, madness and art history,"Screen vol. 21, no. 3 (1980): 57 - 96.
  2. Catherine Soussloff, “Artist,” in The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, Michael Kelly, ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 130 – 135.

 

Session 3: September 13, 20005

Screening:

Caravaggio, Derek Jarman, 1986

Reading:

1.     James Tweedie, "The Suspended Spectactle of History: The Tableau in Derek Jarman's Caravaggio,"Screen, vol. 44, no. 4 (Winter 2003): 379 - 403.

2.     Paul Wells, "Compare and Contrast: Derek Jarman, Peter Greenaway and Film Art,"Art and Design 11 (July/August 1996): 24 - 31.

3.     OPTIONAL David Gardner, "Perverse Law: Jarman as gay criminal hero,"By Angels Driven: The Films of Derek Jarman, Chris Lippard, ed. (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1996).

4.     OPTIONAL Micheal O'Pray, "Introduction,"Derek Jarman: Dreams of England, (London: British Film Institute, 1996), 7 - 15.

 

Session 4: September 20, 2005

Screening:

Artemisia, Agnès Merlet, 1997

Reading:

1.     Linda Nochlin, "Why have there been no great women artists?"in Art and Its Histories: A Reader, Steve Edwards ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 152 - 161.

2.   Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz, "'Introduction,' from Legend, Myth, and Magic in the Image of the Artist: A Historical Experiment,"in Art and Its Histories: A Reader, 124 - 128.

3.     Christine Battersby, "'The Clouded Mirror,' from Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetic,"in Art and Its Histories: A Reader, 129 - 133.

4.     Susan Felleman, "Dirty Pictures, Mud Lust, and Abject Desire: Myths of Origin and the Cinematic Object,"Film Quarterly, vol. 55, no. 1 (Autumn, 2001): 27 - 40. Available via JSTOR.

 

Session 5: September 27, 2005

Screening:

Goya in Bordeaux, Carlos Saura, 1999

Reading:

1.     Carlos Saura interviewed by Linda M. Willem, "The Image of the Word: A Conversation with Filmmaker and Novelist Carlos Saura,"in Carlos Saura Interviews, Linda M. Willem, ed. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003), 156 - 166.

2.     Marsha Kinder, "Sacrifice and Massacre: On the Cultural SpecificBlood Cinema: The Reconstruction of National Identity in Spain,  (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 136 - 196.  READ  PAGES  136 - 160. 

 

Session 6: October 4, 2005

Screening:

Pollock, Ed Harris, 2000

Jackson Pollock, Hans Namuth, 1951

Reading:

1.     Clement Greenberg, "Towards a Newer Laocoon,"in Art in Theory 1900 - 1990, Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, ed. (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1995), 554 - 560.

2.     Fred Orton and Griselda Pollock, "Jackson Pollock, Painting and the Myth off Photography,"in Avant-Gardes and Partisans Reviewed, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), 165 - 176.

3.     OPTIONAL Jonathan Fineberg, "Jackson Pollock,"in Art Since 1940: Strategies of Being, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995), 88 - 98.

 

Session 7: October 11, 2005

First Paper Due

Screening:

Frida, Julie Taymor, 2002

Reading:

1.     Oriana Baddeley, "'Her Dress Hangs Here': De-Frocking the Kahlo Cult,"Oxford Art Journal vol. 14, no. 1 (1991): 10 - 17. Available via JSTOR

2.     Dina Comisarenco, "Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Tlazolteotl,"Woman's Art Journal vol. 17, no. 1 (Spring, 1996): 14 - 21. Available via JSTOR.

3.     Gannit Ankori, Imaging Her Selves: Frida Kahlo's Poetics of Identity and Fragmentation (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002), 137 - 147.

 

Session 8: October 18, 2005  

First  Quiz

Screening:

Basquiat, Julian Schnabel, 1996

Before Night Falls, Julian Schnabel, 2000

Downtown 81, Edo Bertoglio, 1981

Reading:

1.     Tony Shafrazi, "Basquiat: Messenger of the Sacred and Profane,"Jean-Michel Basquiat, (New York: Tony Shafrazi Gallery; distributed by Art Publishers, 1999), 8 - 21.

2.     Glenn O'Brien, "Dozens of Red Roses for Jean,"Jean-Michel Basquiat, (New York: Tony Shafrazi Gallery; distributed by Art Publishers, 1999), 30 - 37.

3.     Robert Farris Thompson, "Royalty, Heroism and the Streets: The Art of Jean-Michel Basquiat,"in Richard Marshall's Jean-Michel Basquiat, (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art; distributed by Harry N. Abrams, 1992), 27 - 42.

 

Session 9: October 25, 2005

Screening:

Love is the Devil, John Maybury, 1998

Last Tango in Paris, Bernardo Bertolucci, 1972

Reading:

1.     David Sylvester, "Images of the Human Body,"Francis Bacon: The Human Body, (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1998), 9 - 39.

2.     Sam Ishii-Gonzales, "Beyond the Pale: Francis Bacon and the Limits of Portraiture,"GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, vol 6, no. 4 (2000): 631-639. Available via Project Muse.

3.     Bernardo Bertolucci in Laurent Tirard, Moviemakers' Master Class: Private Lessons form the World's Foremost Directors, (New York: Faber and Faber, 2002), 47 - 55.

4.     Richard Stone, "It Ain't the Meat: Francis Bacon the Movie,"Art Forum, (September 1998): 137 - 138.

 

 

Cinema (and video) as the Artist's Medium

 

Session 10: November 1, 2005

Screening: The Female Body: Beauty, Violence and Sexuality

Operation Russie n. x, Orlan, 1994

Untitled Film Stills Series, Cindy Sherman,

The Semiotics of the Kitchen, Martha Rosler, 1975

Window Water Baby Moving, Stan Brakhage, 1962

Fuses, Carolee Schneemann, 1967

Reading:

1.     Laura Mulvey, "Cosmetics and Abjection: Cindy Sherman 1977 - 87,"in Fetishism and Curiosity, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 65 - 76.

2.     Jeanie Forte, "Women's Performance Art: Feminism and Postmodernism,"Theatre Journal vol. 40, no. 2 (May, 1988): 217 - 235. Available via JSTOR

 

Session 11: November 8, 2005

Screening: The Male Body: Masculinity, Violence and Virility

Blow Job, Andy Warhol, 1963

Selected works Chris Burden

Selected works Paul McCarthy

Malaution, Hermann Nitsch, 1962

The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes, Stan Brakhage, 1971

Cremaster Cycle, Matthew Barney, 1995 - 2002
Megalomania, Kenji Yanobe, 1969 - 2003

Reading:

1.     Russell Ferguson, "Beautiful Moments,"in Art and Film Since 1945: Hall of Mirrors, 138 - 187.

2.     Calvin Tomkins, "His Body, Himself: Matthew Barney's strange and passionate exploration of gender,"The New Yorker (January 27, 2005), 50 - 59.

3.     OPTIONAL Matthew Barney, interviewed by Hans Ulrich Obrist, in Interviews Volume I, Thomas Boutoux, ed. (Milan: Charta, 2005), 69 - 77.

 

Session 12: November 15, 2005

Screening:

A Zed and Two Noughts, Peter Greenaway, 1985

Pillowbook, Peter Greenaway, 1996

Reading:

1.     David Pascoe, "Medical Experiments and Art Theory,"in Peter Greenaway: Museum and Moving Image, (London: Reaktion Books, Ltd., 1997), 92 - 120.

2.     Peter Greenaway interview with Marcia Pally, "Cinema as the Total Art Form: An Interview with Peter Greenaway,"in Peter Greenaway Interviews, Vernon Gras and Marguerite Gras, eds. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000), 106 - 119.

 

Session 13: November 22, 2005

Screening:

Navel and A-Bomb, Eiko Hosoe, 1960

The Face of Another, Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1966

Pitfall, Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1959

Woman in the Dunes, Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964

Reading:

1.     Barbara London, "Experimental Film and Video,"in Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky, catalogue, Alexandra Munroe, ed. (New York: H.N. Abrams, 1994), 284 - 305.

2.     Chigusa Kimura-Steven, "The Otherness of Women in the Avant-Garde Film Woman in the Dunes,"in Gender and Power: In the Japanese Visual Field, Joshua Mostow, et al. eds. (Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 2003), 155 - 178.

 

Session 14: November 29, 2005

Screening:

Love and Pop, Hideaki Anno, 1998

Shiki-Jitsu, Hideaki Anno, 2000 [Ritual]

Cutie Honey, Hideaki Anno, 2005

Reading:

1.     Murakami Takashi, "Super Flat Manifesto,"Super Flat, (Tokyo, MADRA Publishing, 2000), 4 - 5.

2.     Murakami Takashi, "A Theory of Super Flat Japanese Art,"8 - 25.

3.     Murakami Takashi, "Love and Pop,"122 - 123.

 

Session 15: December 6, 2005

Submit final paper in class
Second Quiz

 

Session 16: December 13, 2005

Finals Week No Class.