TALKING THROUGH YOUR ARTS – HOW SHOULD WE BEST VIEW HIGH ART?
This winter Norway celebrates the 150th anniversary of Edvard Munch by presenting an exhibition at the National Museum & Munch Museum in Oslo. Recently one of Munch’s four versions of one of the world’s most pictorial symbols, The Scream was auctioned off for the highest recorded sale of $120 million! [Insert scream].
The expense of a sojourn to Norway, for us other hemispherians, is a cause for hands to grip heads and wide-eyes and mouths to gape with horror. A much more affordable option is to experience the major exhibition through the eyes of veteran British docmentarian Phil Grabsky and the curators as a cinematic experience.
Although not strictly art history, Exhibition: Great Art on Screen is as much history as spectacle. It’s set to introduce audiences to the greats of art and to the world’s greatest art.
For the last 30 years Grabsky has worked in the specialised area of biography, creating accounts on other greats like Beethoven, Muhammad Ali and Mozart.
Grabsky admits that often the constraints of the conventional means of producing documentaries are hampered by the costs of clearing rights and restrictions on how many paintings are able to be used. He sites further points of difference that there is no presenter in front of the paintings.
“The thing that we do is we give you the opportunity to look at the paintings and actually have time to look at them on a big screen,” he says.
I wonder if the result may just be another room and another frame that demands a prescribed way of seeing? There are problems in studying artworks by artists that no longer exist. We attempt to reconstruct their reeling past life in our minds-eye from often unreliable sources. This is a projected story told, a biographical interpretation of a great artist and of great art, but I’m not certain if it can be described as a replacement or the next best experience to being there. Neither am I sure if the pages of a monograph at home in your private space can be turned over and put down. However, I am open to view this theatrical art experience from my local cinema.
This is the second in a series of three captured exhibitions to be screened this year by Grabsky, the first Manet: Portraying Life and the third to be released in October, Vemeer and Music: The art and love of leisure. (AS)
Exhibition: Great Art on Screen, Until Oct 20, Various locations, $25, exhibitiononscreen.com
BY ANGELA STRETCH
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