| Andy Goldsworthy may be the world's ultimate sustainable artist. |
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| written by humorme |
February 24, 2008 - 5:36 PM PST |
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1 out of 2 members found this review helpful
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[Note: Please don't read if you want to be surprised by the art Goldsworthy creates because I discuss some of it.] As the biography states, "Using a variety of materials including leaves, twigs, flower petals, pine cones, sand, snow and stone, his work addresses the idea that artwork too has a natural life that eventually must end."
That ebb and flow of nature and human life is masterfully illustrated throughout this compelling and perhaps unnerving film as the impermanence of everything, including rock, is explored.
A dome-like stick structure is built where the river meets the sea and the current carries it almost gently away as if it were "taken off into another world". This interaction of his work with natural forces changes his creation and he says makes it more than it was, sort of like how upheaval and transition in our human lives create opportunity for making more of what we were. At one point, he says, "The real work is the change."
The film is made even more powerful by being in Goldsworthy's own words because he has an amazing sense of the deeper meanings. "Art for me is a form of nourishment...I want to understand that state and that energy that I have in me that I also feel in the plants and in the land."
Visual imagery and symbolism repeat, both in Goldsworthy's art and in the natural landscape around him. Goldsworthy twists leaves and pins them with thorns creating a spiral. And the serpentine form represents flow and energy in the amazing wall at the Storm King Art Center in New York. Goldsworthy speaks of the interrelationships and states he is "interested in understanding the processes of change and growth". Those trees that originally found protection in the old stones will eventually destroy the wall and he says, "Growth is stronger than the stone".
Goldsworthy also explores color, which is shocking and dramatic in his use of ground red rock, as well as red clay water 'bombs'. Throwing snow in the air creates white spirit-like shapes. The artful cinematography combined with Goldsworthy's wisdom, and mood-enhancing music by Fred Frith make this a profound, beautiful and mesmerizing film. (And I really like those cute alpine cows.) |
| Art & Life as Transitory |
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| written by talltale |
October 6, 2004 - 2:01 PM PDT |
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1 out of 4 members found this review helpful
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| Does art imitate life, and if so, should it also imitate life's mortality--its transitory nature? DaVinci and his peers may have been able to view his "Mona" in her later years, but for us today she remains as youthful and mysterious as ever. And she's still here. These thoughts occurred to me as I watched RIVERS AND TIDES, the award-winning documentary about Scot artist Andy Goldsworthy, whose creations are as impermanent as life. In fact, they tend to self-destruct/disappear much faster than most lives. Watching as this artist creates his beautiful, disappearing pieces (some last longer than others)--in an amazing range of media--is interesting for a while, and he seems to be able to speak intelligently about his work (something a number of artists simply cannot do--and maybe it's better they don't). Seeing Goldsworthy almost finish a piece and then have it go to pieces involuntarily and accidentally is shocking and upsetting, but this seems to happen almost as often as not. I'm glad I saw this film but I must admit growing tired of the artist's drone and his somewhat masochistic creation of phantom art. While this choice reflects his genuine concern for the ways in which art and life are transitory, the movie finally made me most grateful for artists who work in more permanent media. Nothing lasts forever, but a few centuries ought to count for something, no? To each his own... |
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