Summertime, Jackson Pollock, China, 2009
16mm (painted by Chen Shun Zheng, Xiamen, music by
Morton Feldman)
In China there are oil painting villages where you can order
your own van Gogh or Rembrandt, which they will exactly
copy for you from the catalogue. Here I gave the painter an
impossible assignment; to exactly copy a Jackson Pollock.
The chosen painting is Summertime, which is the painting that
was adorning the cover, with Jackson Pollock at the peak of
his fame, of Life Magazine in 1949.
The short film is a reference to the famous documentary
Jackson Pollock 51, made by Hans Namuth and Paul
Falkenberg. During fiilming Namuth told him when to start
and stop painting and it is said that after filming there was a
big argument between Namuth and Pollock shouting to
each other they were ‘phony’. From then on, Pollock
reverted to a more figure-oriented style of painting, leading
some to say that Namuth’s sessions robbed Pollock of his
rawness and made Pollock come to feel disingenuous about
doing things for the camera that he had originally done
spontaneously. |
Open Folders below
2009
