Reactions to "Moving Pictures" at Grey Art Gallery
The early history of moving pictures is an excellent case study of the birth of a new medium, since it is sufficiently recent for excellent documentation to be available, yet sufficiently developed that many of the longer term cultural and social effects have become visible.
The exhibition "Moving Pictures" at the Grey Art Gallery focuses on the very early stages of the history of motion pictures, juxtaposing very early film with contemporary examples of painting, illustration and photography.
Though the works only cover a period of 10 years, this is enough to convey a lot of insight about the birth of a medium.
What I found most striking about the early films is how closely they tracked the subject matter and sensibility of visual arts from the same period. In many cases, short films from the Edison lab were essentially moving representations of subjects portrayed in paintings. These early filmmakers found themselves copying iconic images from other media.
I have encountered an example of this, when I went to Turkey to see the total solar eclipse. I intended to make a short video project, including footage of dervishes, Istanbul, people dancing, etc. It turns out that that the film "Baraka" includes similar footage - in fact, clips from this movie were used as background visuals at the eclipse festival which I attended. After I had returned to Tokyo and edited my movie, I was struck how a previous viewing of "Baraka" had influenced my choise of shots: in many cases I had similar imagery from the same places (albeit less polished). This did not surprise me, but as I collected various short videos from other attendees at the festival, I was struck by the discovery that the same thing had happened to everyone! Slow motion scenes of dervish dancing, timelapse sunsets over Istanbul, crowd shots in the markets, etc - all these images from "Baraka" appeared in the videos! After discussing it with some of the other video makers, it is clear that no-one set out to copy or re-make Baraka: however, the influence of the imagery was such that it conditioned everyone's choice of scenes. It seems that the first artist to capture an impressive image or sequence will inevitably be imitated by subsequent artists, unless an effort is made to break away.
In this context, it is particularly impressive to observe the work of early motion picture pioneers who broke away from stereotypical images, and truly innovated.
For example, the works of the Lumiere brothers actively played with the dimension of motion. Their graphic style and careful technique anticipate the much later development of moving pictures as an art form. Their hand-tinted films of exotic dancers capture a dimension of the scene which had escaped painters and photographers.
Another great example of an innovator is Eadweard Muybridge, who did not set out to create art. His initial motivation was scientific, to document the motion of horses. The exhibition comments that as a consequence, he discovered that paintings did not actually represent horses in realistic poses, once their motion was analyzed! This is the polar opposite of the early Edison films, which attempted to copy paintings - the Muybridge films highlight the inaccuracy of painting, by using completely different techniques.
A key aspect of the works displayed is the focus on the novelty of motion - few of the works attempt to tell a story, convey a message or induce an emotional state. It is interesting that the exhibition focuses only on this very early stage, before moving pictures had established themselves as an art.
Finally - I was impressed by the curatorial effort that must have been involved to pull the show together. The number of and diversity of institutions that loaned works is staggering, it must have been very difficult! Of course, things were simplified by transferring the film material to digital media.