Mark your calendars for a very special art/film event.
On Saturday, February 19, from noon to 5:30 p.m., Clark Art Institute will present a continuous marathon screening of five documentaries made by Albert Maysles and associates over three decades, about the massive but ephemeral art projects of Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The latest environmental project of this challenging pair of artists, “The Gates” in New York City’s Central Park, is scheduled to unfurl on February 13 and transform the center of Manhattan for two weeks.
These five films represent an extraordinary sustained collaboration between artists and filmmakers, and they are the most immediate record imaginable of some of the very greatest works of contemporary art. The Maysles brothers were pioneers of direct cinema, best known for Gimme Shelter and Salesman, and the combination of their intimate access and subtle storytelling skills offers an unprecedented perspective on an immensely complicated artistic process.
The Maysles have noted: “The Christos come up with an idea that at first seems impossible, then let it grow; so do we. . . The Christos’ projects and our films are both outrageous acts of faith.”
Each of these acclaimed films stands as the permanent record of lengthy planning and fleeting beauty, of political wrangles and emotional commitments, and of the transforming effect of the Christos’ projects on their varied sites and various viewers, both rural and urban, both art sophisticates and ordinary skeptics, across many different cultural divides.
The Clark’s program will begin at noon with a brief introduction to Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s career by Lisa Green, Clark assistant director of communication and design. An excerpt will be shown from the Maysles’ film in progress, about “The Gates,” and the lineup of films will follow:
12:30: Christo’s Valley Curtain. (1974, 28 minutes.) Academy Award-nominated short about the hanging of a huge orange curtain between two Colorado mountains.
1:00: Running Fence. (1978, 58 minutes.) The building of a 25-mile, 18-foot-high fence of white fabric across the hills of northern California.
2:00: Islands. (1986, 57 minutes.) The political and physical struggle to surround eleven islands in Miami’s Biscayne Bay with acres of bright pink fabric.
3:00: Christo in Paris. (1990, 58 minutes.) The wrapping of the Pont Neuf across the Seine provides the occasion for Christo and Jeanne-Claude to revisit the history of their relationship.
4:00: Umbrellas. (1995, 81 minutes.) Thousands of immense umbrellas are opened simultaneously, blue in a rice-farming valley of Japan, yellow across the arid hills of southern California.
Admission to film programs at the Clark is always free. “5 Films about Christo and Jeanne-Claude” is available in a boxed set of 3 DVDs with an informative booklet, and is for sale in the Clark Museum Shop.
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