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It’s been a while since I’ve had the time to devote to this
blog, but I’ve wanted for several weeks now to put up another Funhouse travel
piece. In this case the subject of discussion is a museum in Baltimore, Maryland.
(If all goes according to plan there will be a companion entry to this piece about
another unique Baltimore museum soon.)
I was in Baltimore for a work conference some weeks ago and
had been told to visit this particular museum — I was not disappointed. I
present a short write-up here and some photos I took but, as always, the pics
can only provide a cursory idea of what the museum is like.
The institution deserving of your time and attention is the American
Visionary Art Museum at 800 Key Highway (“at the base of historic Federal Hill”);
the museum’s website is here. Like many cult-movie buffs, I identify the
city of Baltimore with John Waters. The Visionary Museum underscores this
connection, as there are not just one but two tributes to Waters’ stars on display;
the gift shop called “Sideshow,” which is *heavily* recommended, contains, in
addition to a sublime collection of kitsch and oddball artifacts, exclusive
Waters-related items from official Dreamland photographer Bobby Adams.
At first I was apprehensive about the museum, as the dreaded
phrase “outsider art” has been used to describe its contents. I have big
problems with this phrase because it has become a money-making “brand” for
certain thoroughly unctuous individuals who take advantage of often mentally
impaired artists and performers for profit — and the right to be claimed as the
one who “discovered” their work.
I’m happy to report that the museum — which has clearly been
curated with both love and a sense of humor — is very respectful about its presentation
of the art. In other words, some of the items on display are very amusing (many
on purpose), but there is also a sense of sincerity about the place that contradicts
the “outsider” label.
This is best reflected in the exhibition “Esther and the Dream
of One Loving Human Family” by Polish Holocaust survivor Esther Nisenthal
Krinitz. Her simplistic, handmade embroideries truly do move the viewer, as the
subject is what happened when she (at 15) and her sister escaped being put in a
Nazi death camp and wound up surviving the occupation. In this case the perspective
is that of a young person, so her simplistic, untrained approach to art underscores
the raw emotion of the situations depicted.
The museum currently has a wonderful exhibition on called “Parenting:
An Art without a Manual,” now through September 1. If you are going to be
anywhere near the Baltimore area in the next two months, I heartily urge you to
check out this exhibit, as it says more about the American family than any
amount of “reality TV” and several bookcases’ worth of self-help books. Plus,
it’s more colorful.
The show features several striking images of kids and many
more of parenting. The pieces on kids deal with idealized notions of parenting
and the neurotic reality that lays within. Alex Grey’s psychedelic paintings in
the entryway to the museum are among the most wonderfully loopy that I’ve seen,
since one of them depicts “visible body” parents admiring their child, who seems to be a sort of space-Christ figure. (I believe the
artist’s intention was to depict the “aura” of the figures in the painting, but
the “visible body” aspect is the first thing that hits the eye.)
Some of the items in the exhibit present the feelings of
those who are – to put it mildly – ill at ease with their family. We thus see
imagery representing twin family trees by Robert Belardinelli. First the ideal one:
Two of the most unforgettable pieces are conveniently
situated right next to each other in one of the main rooms. Artist
Bobby Adams (yes, the same gent who has worked for John Waters) has put together a family scene that offers a grim view of
conventional domesticity:
The most disturbing item on display, though, comes in the
form of that most wholesome of toys, the dollhouse. New Orleans artist Chris
Roberts-Antieau created an idyllic little house and then situated in it a
real-life family murder case. Depending on the way that one views the house, one’s
eyes either light upon the ultra-grim contents of the living room first or, in my case, last.
The latter is, of course, the most disturbing way to view
the piece, as it reveals the “punchline” — that this happy house was where, in
1971, New Jersey’s John List killed his entire family and placed them in
sleeping bags in the living room (except his mother, who was apparently too obese
to be moved from her room).
To add to the dark aspects of the piece, one learns about the
murders from a discursive series of notes, handwritten on legal-pad paper by
Roberts-Antieau. After reading this, one realizes that one figure is
intentionally missing from the piece — List himself, who destroyed all
photographs of himself in the house. List was caught several decades later and died in
prison.
Again, if you’re thinking of a road trip and are looking for
a well-curated selection of art you won’t see anyplace else, visit the
American Visionary Art Museum. Preferably before September 1....
In 1970 Varda’s film Nausicaa was
considered unairable by ORTF, the network that commissioned it, and so we have
only a rough cut of the film to view. It is available to be seen on the Rarefilmm site.
It’s a blend of documentary and fiction that is very much
the sort of film being made by “radicalized” French filmmakers of the time —
this mixture was used wonderfully in two brilliant, controversial films,
Sweden’s I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967) and Makavejev’s
WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971). The rough cut of
Nausicaa definitely could have used additional editing, but
it appears to be a finished work, albeit without credits.
The film is Varda’s most overtly political, concerning the
military dictatorship of “the Colonels” in Greece in the Sixties; she referred
to Nausicaa as a “settling of accounts” with a “fascist”
government. Varda reconnected to her Greek heritage here (her father was
Greek), as she did in her short “Uncle Yanco” (1967). Talking heads, including
Vasilis Vasilikos (the author of the novel Z), speak about
being exiled outside of Greece.
Meanwhile, a fictional plot involves a Greek journalist
staying at the apt of two roommates named “Agnès” (France Dougnac) and
“Rosalie” (Agnès’ daughter’s name; played by Myriam Boyer, from Jonah
Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000). As with Lion’s
Love, the film is a time capsule of the late Sixties that is valuable
for its glimpse at Varda’s politics. One rather timely reflection on military
policy is passed on when a character intones that “torture is politics in
another form.”
In the book Agnès Varda: Interviews
(edited by T. Jefferson Kline, University Press of Mississippi, 2014). Varda
speaks in a 1975 interview with Mireille Amiel on the matter of
Nausicaa: “We shot the film… But in 1970 France sold a lot
of Mirage planes to the colonels, so… The film was never broadcast on French
TV. There were invitations from festivals but the film was never sent. No one
ever wrote to me about its status…. They paid me, but I didn’t have the rights
to the film…. That was the only time I’ve been politically censured.” [p. 72]
A young Gerard Depardieu in Nausicaa.
Varda’s only fiction film in the Seventies was One
Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1977), which I will review upon its
upcoming re-release on Criterion. One of her most interesting credits from this
decade was her credit on Last Tango in Paris (1972). She
wrote the French dialogue, which means that she refined the initial dialogue
between Brando and Schneider (which Marlon altered and dropped, in place of his
own, errant remarks) and between Schneider and Jean-Pierre Leaud, who plays a
wonderful satire on a New Wave cinephile-filmmaker who is not attentive to his
girlfriend (and future wife).
The very small in scope fiction film Documenteur
(1981) was based on her experience of living alone in L.A. (while her marriage
was to Demy was broken up) with her son Mathieu. It is available in the U.S. on
the Eclipse/Criterion box set Agnès Varda in California. I reviewed the contents of the box here on the Disc Dish website.
Varda’s last two movie masterpieces delved into homelessness
and loneliness. The first is the superb fiction film
Vagabond (1985), with Sandrine Bonnaire as Mona, a
hitchhiking drifter who is found dead at the film’s opening.
Varda directing Vagabond.
In an interview with Francoise Wera in 1985, Varda outlined
how she devised the film: “I went to scout out the terrain, if I may put it
that way. I picked up hitchhikers, I hung out at the train station, I went into
some of the homeless shelters at night, etc. One day I picked up a girl
hitchhiking and she was so extraordinary a character that I began to realize
how much more interesting it is to see a girl hitchhiking than a guy…. It
presupposes more physical courage, more endurance, more guts, a greater
capacity to say ‘up yours!’ to people, and that kind of thing.” [ibid, p. 120]
Varda uses a documentary frame for her drama — a device that
has now been done to death in “mockumentary” sitcoms but was more unique back
in the Eighties. We hear from people who have encountered Mona (Sandrine
Bonnaire) and have distinct opinions about her, emphasizing one of the film’s
unspoken themes — the ways in which one life affects others, even if that life
was lived on the margins (and some of the “witnesses” only meet her for a few
minutes).
The most moving aspect of the film is that Varda and
Bonnaire collaborated to make Mona a sympathetic character who has countless
flaws — among them that she can’t be trusted not to steal or disappear and that
she is, as one character puts it, “wild and unwashed.” Varda’s own description
of the character is that she is “not engaging” but is still very “touching.”
[ibid, pp. 142-43]
The film also picks up on the tone of
Cleo and Bonheur by exploring the sad and
lonely aspects of Mona’s personality. Her fate is predicted by a hippie farmer
she meets who reflects on his old friends that stayed on the road, noting that
“the loneliness ate them up in the end.”
The script is definitely Varda’s best, as it slowly weaves
the “witness" characters together. Thus, what could be a resolutely corny
device instead becomes a poignant statement on the fact that the world can be
quite small, even if you’re a drifter. And even though they are all, by
necessity, supporting characters, we get three-dimensional portraits of the
people who comment on Mona’s life. One of the most striking is a middle-class
tree expert, played by Macha Meril (Godard’s A Married
Woman). Varda commented on the character in a 1986 interview by
Barbara Quart:
“… later on she has a guilty feeling that she should, she
could, have done more. To tell the truth, I don’t know what more she could have
done. I don’t think she was ready to adopt that vagrant — who, by the way,
would not have been pleased to be adopted. So sometimes a film pushes toward
the wall where we have to face the limits of our vague understanding, vague
generosity, and vague not understanding what it’s all about. So I ended up
structuring the film into the shape of an impossible portrait.” [ibid, p. 136]
Varda made a few more fiction features, but
Vagabond is the last truly great one. One of the factors
that make it a timeless piece is Varda’s return to her neo-realist roots, with
non-professional actors being used for small parts. The use of such real faces
makes the documentary aspect click and attaches us emotionally to Mona, as the
dirtied-up Bonnaire fits perfectly among the rustics and fellow drifters she
plays against.
*****
Varda made entertaining documentaries and essay films for
the last quarter century of her life. The one that stands head and shoulders
above the rest is The Gleaners and I (2000), which has an
intimate visual style, a cast of colorful “characters,” curious tangents, and a
timeless theme. The advent of lightweight video cameras made it easier for
Agnès to hit the road and pursue her theme by looking for people who live a
lifestyle outside of society.
That lifestyle involves living off of the food cast off by
others, be they bourgeois in cities who waste large amounts of food (and obey
stringent expiration dates calculated to get the customer to buy more products)
or the rural landowners whose harvests leave behind lots of uneaten produce.
The theme is broad enough that she is able to discuss the
urban homeless problem in Gleaners while also tackling the
notion of those who live in trailers in the countryside and — her favorite
latter-day obsession, peculiar souls with unusual hobbies and artistic outlets.
As a result, she follows several unforgettably eccentric
characters whom another filmmaker would’ve depicted as “desperate” or “people
to be pitied.” Varda instead exults in their strangeness and never criticizes
them (even those who are clearly on self-destructive paths).
Gleaners struck a chord with viewers in
many countries and became the signature film of the last two decades of her
life. It also spawned a new fan base for her, who sent her letters and presents
and whom she acknowledged in the film’s sequel, The Gleaners and I:
Two Years Later (2002).
This sequel, which was included with the original feature on
DVD in many countries, led the way to Varda’s final “memoir” documentaries, in
which she presented us with an autobiography of sorts while also promoting the
work of artists she liked.
Like her trilogy of films about Demy — Jacquot de
Nantes, The Young Girls Turn 25, and The World of Jacques
Demy — the memoir films are charming but have much less emotional
resonance than the films examined above. They all are pleasant viewing experiences
but will unfortunately suffer if one plans to “binge” her work and starts with
the sublime fiction films, which are indisputably her finest work.
Of course, this is all relative to other filmmakers’ final
films, which cast an emotional look backward to youth or middle age, or ponder
the mysteries of life with metaphors for the Big Sleep (Fellini’s ladder to the
skies is one of the finer ones). Varda’s video memoirs concentrate on beaches
and the open road — which is as good a place to end as any.
*****
Two final videos. Both lack English subtitles, but the
second is fully comprehensible. The first finds Agnès with a fan — Isabelle Huppert
— being interviewed on the radio.
And a wonderfully assembled seven-minute montage of Varda’s
themes, visuals, and performers:
