An account of the many tribulations that Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, known for his subversive art and political activism, endured between 2008 and 2011, from his rise to world fame via the Internet to his highly publicized arrest due to his frequent and daring confrontations with the Chinese authorities.
CREMASTER 3 (2002) is set in New York City and narrates the construction of the Chrysler Building, which is in itself a character - host to inner, antagonistic forces at play for access to the process of (spiritual) transcendence. These factions find form in the struggle between Hiram Abiff or the Architect ...
CREMASTER 2 is rendered as a gothic Western that introduces conflict into the system. On the biological level it corresponds to the phase of fetal development during which sexual division begins. In Matthew Barney's abstraction of this process, the system resists partition and tries to remain in the state of equilibrium imagined in Cremaster 1.
Featuring collectors, dealers, auctioneers and a rich range of artists, including market darlings George Condo, Jeff Koons, Gerhard Richter and Njideka Akunyili Crosby, this documentary examines the role of art and artistic passion in today’s money-driven, consumer-based society.
A film exploration of the work and aesthetic concepts of Yayoi Kusama, painter, sculptor, and environmentalist, conceived in terms of an intense emotional experience with metaphysical overtones, an extension of my ultimate interest in a total fusion of the arts in a spirit of mutual collaboration. —Jud Yalkut
This animated short by Theodore Ushev is like a whirlwind tour of Russian constructivist art and is filled with visual references to artists of the era, including Vertov, Stenberg, Rodchenko, Lissitsky and Popova.
Walking towards the fire. In a ceaseless stream of light, people, landscapes and objects lead us to mysterious regions. French filmmaker Patrick Bokanowski’s work is hard to classify - and all the richer for it. Together with his wife Michèle, whose musique concrète compositions form the basis of the sound design, Bokanowski offers a prolonged, dense and visually visceral experience of the kind that is rare in cinema today. Difficult to define and locate, its strangeness is quite unique.
What happens when a group of international artists travel to North Korea to create art like the regime have never seen before? While the world is on the verge of nuclear war, a group of Western contemporary artists are invited into the eye of the storm. The aim is to collaborate with North Korean artists in a creative exchange project displaying new and challenging art in a country where abstract art is forbidden.
In 1983, Franz Paludetto acquired Rivara Castle at the foot of the Italian Alps. A century earlier, artists from all over Europe had gathered here to establish the Rivara School of Painting. We witness the story of Italy during the latter half of the 20th century.
Both a visit to a very peculiar exhibition at the Bundeswehr Military History Museum in Dresden, Germany, as well as an unprejudiced look at the artistic depiction of violence throughout history and the ways in which that depiction has been gendered.
Many twentieth century European artists, such as Paul Gauguin or Pablo Picasso, were influenced by art brought to Europe from African and Asian colonies. How to frame these Modernist works today when the idea of the primitive in art is problematic?
In between performance, dance and cerémonies, "The Ferryman” is a choreographic exploration of rituals and animistic roots, a luxurious visualisation of a bewitchment and an exorcism of a man-deer in the borders of the world.
"Before, it was like this; now, it is like that." This recurring phrase in the work raises the question: what was like this, and now is like that? Through this wordplay, we glimpse a recurring theme in Segal’s works: a subtler, less persuasive form of magic—the trick. Falso Sport is filled with visual games, presented as yet another instance of assembly and editing. In its persistent exposure of the artificiality of images—mostly cardboard models of intentionally precarious realism—the work reveals a power dynamic that dictates what is shown and what remains hidden.
Mock -documentary about a Finnish contemporary artist who took the world by a storm.
The film is a stage play hybrid showcasing dark and absurd sketches based on contemporary Hungarian news of the 2000's with campy, senseless musical interludes in-between. Highly experimental in nature that - like Marmite - will split its' crowd into ones that'll love it and others that'll loathe it. There's no middle grounds here. The topics included are: The Hungarian Olympians' doping scandal, political terrorism, the national elections... and more.
Lifting the lid on the fascinating last decade of Andy Warhol's life and the legacy he left for future artists, through never-before-seen footage and interviews with insiders.
Paintings, performances, experiments, electronic music sounding in the spaces of two old houses in a small Italian town, heated conversations about contemporary art, touching meetings with the closest people and places in Bulgaria after 50 years of separation. "Flying with Fins" is a film about the constant search for meaning in art and life. Alzek Misheff, artist - rebel and experimenter, leads us in this philosophical and aesthetic journey through time, space and ideas.
Contemporary artists describe their work and discuss why and how they do it. The programs are grouped according to themes of place, spirituality, identity and consumption. A PBS series, educational resource, archive, and history of contemporary art, Art21: Art in the Twenty-First Century premiered in 2001 and is now broadcast in over 50 countries worldwide. Premiering a new season every two years, Art21 is the only series on United States television to focus exclusively on contemporary visual art and artists.
A series of 6 Arts Documentaries, fronted by supermodel, actress and Cambridge Arts graduate, Lily Cole. Lily gets unprecedented access to some of today's most revered and successful contemporary artists. In the name of Art; she navigates the desert with 'wrap' artist Christo, learns the art of boomerang throwing with Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco, models for a nude portrait for Contemporary artist Fiona Banner, has a drawing lesson with the sculptor, Antony Gormley, touches down in Monaco for Marc Quinn's latest exhibition and paints pictures with the doyenne of celluloid film, Tacita Dean. These intimate portraits of artists at home and at play show a side to them rarely seen before. Largely observational documentary in style, there are also contributions from high profile curators, collectors and art commentators; from Ralf Rugoff, Director of the Hayward Gallery to Germaine Geer and, champion of public art, Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Rebellious, provocative and unapologetic. The Young British Artists crashed the 90s art scene, making Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst and others household names. This is their story.
