A. Sitney states that Warhols art is "anti-romantic" because Warhols method in creating his art involves no romantic thought what so ever. Romanticism stresses emotion as a source of aesthetic experience. Warhols pop art was not based in emotion but rather in creation. Warhol basically said "look what I can take, do a few things too, and then BOOM: its art." Rather than find beauty in emotion, Warhol finds beauty in mundane, commercial objects. Stephen Kock says that Warhol wanted to eliminate himself from the stressful world of human existence and become beautiful like the objects and scenes he filmed.
B. The distance between Warhol and Snow/Gehr cannot be reconciled because the artists have completely different motivations. Warhol came from a lucrative painting career to film only to lambaste the original traditions by pointing a camera at something and letting it roll. The structural filmmakers take their films more seriously in terms of planning and execution.
C. "Conscious ontology of the viewing experience" means that the viewer is constantly questioning or analyzing the nature of existence. Warhols films are actually studies in ontology themselves. What else is going on in films like Sleep or Empire because one object or being existing. This is furthered by the idea of duration. The audience does not just see a shot of a man sleeping and then something else. Nor does the audience see many different man sleeping. The audience see's one man sleeping for 6 hours. The man sleeping is exists on the screen in the same time period as the audience exists watching it.
Structural films work in the same way except they concentrate on the total existence of one space over a period of time versus one object or being.
D. Structural film is related to the psychodrama/mythopoetic/ and lyrical tradition because even though it radically simplified the process and took cinema away from the dream metaphor, it is still in itself trying to create a metaphor for film. Instead of trying to show a dream through the eyes of the filmmaker it shows a space or a object as it actually exists or could actually exist.
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A. Emotion is part of it but not quite right here. Brakhage is not necessarily rooted in emotion. But you're close. Think a bit more about Sitney's overall argument about the American A-G.
ReplyDeleteB. Yes, but what are the structural filmmakers tying to plan and execute?
C. Not all of existence. Replace the end of your definition with "nature of the viewing experience"
D. You're right about leaving the dream metaphor, but what is it replaced with? Look at the other questions for help.