Review of
-- a 75-minute movie / video of Picasso at work, made in 1956,
directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot. Available from Amazon.com on VHS (NTSC format)
and on DVD.
Although
we get to see very little of Picasso himself in this movie, what
we do see is extraordinary: his vitality, humour and
upbeat attitude come across in the most fascinating way. The artist and filmmakers rigged up a system using inks which
bled through the paper, and special lighting, which enabled the
paintings to be filmed from the back, so that you don't see the
painter's actual hand & brush, but you do see the painting in
the process of being made, stroke by stroke. When Picasso got
tired of ink and switched to oil on canvas,
they used a system of successive or semi-animated stills. There
are two or three short but riveting sequences of Picasso himself, and he turns out to be an astonishingly
unassuming, regular sort of guy -- notwithstanding the charisma, of
course. "Ça
va mal", he says of a big canvas-in-progress; "ça
va très
très
mal ...".
Picasso made
some 20 paintings and drawings specially for the movie, many of them
vintage stuff, but by the terms of the contract most of them were later destroyed. His process-oriented methods, so vividly
demonstrated here, have had a profound influence on the
subsequent theory
and practice of art.
[In French with English subtitles].
See more
on
Amazon:
The Mystery of Picasso,
DVD
See more on
Amazon:
The Mystery of Picasso,
video VHS
(NTSC format)
M.A.
October
12, 2004
Modified
November 14, 2004
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