Some summers ago JV was visting us on the Cape and the husband decided we must watch "Pineapple Express". Since then we have been a house divided - I am convinced that the movie is a large bong of nothing, he is certain it is a great comedy. Why am I brining it up, ye ask? Well, it was a movie James Franco got a Golden Globe nomination for. And James Franco, you see, is now no longer just stoner auteur - he is a visual artist.
Pace Gallery in NY (not an unknown venue by any standard) is hosting Franco as 'artist in residence' and his work is right now on view. What work, ye ask? Well, photography. And a 'critical take' on Cindy Sherman. Which means that Franco dresses and poses in a similar way to Sherman's now-iconic "Film Stills" series and gets photographed doing so.
Like so:
James Franco
James Franco
It almost pains me physically to give you the originals on the same page as these 'takes' but for the sake of argument here we go:
Cindy Sherman, Unititled Film Still #14, 1978
Cindy Sherman, Unititled Film Still
Now, don't get me wrong. I don't hold any artwork sacred and inviolable. It is fine to draw a mustache on a reproduction of a Mona Lisa; it is fine to restage Sherman's stills. The question is one of motivation and message. What is the point of Franco's masquarade? When Sherman produced the first "Film Stills" (greater, to my mind, than any others she attempted since) she managed to ask biting questions about gender roles, constructions, and stereotypes by turning cliches onto their heads (so to speak, since it was her own head she was using in the process). Her commentary was sly, and it was sullen, and it screamed in its silence. And while she wanted to make a name for herself, the fact that she used her own image was not an act of visual self-promotion. Franco, conversely, evacuates any social commentary out of the images, drains the questions they raise, and leaves only one thing - James Franco himself. You could counter and claim that his images are packed with humor. Sure, a bearded man posing as a woman is hilariously funny. If you are four years old. This kind of humor cannot even count as sophomoric. It is infantile, and infantalizing.
Here are two cogent reviews of the Franco idiocy. Shame on Pace for giving this nonentity the limelight and the space.
Everybody Is Playing Somebody Else Here
‘James Franco: New Film Stills’ Arrives at Pace Gallery
Perhaps James Franco should just stick to acting. He remains embarrassingly clueless when it comes to art.
In his latest art world foray, following previous outings in galleries and commissions for Performa, Mr. Franco is filling a celebrity artist slot at Pace Gallery, similar to the one that Bob Dylan occupies at Gagosian. His Pace debut is “New Film Stills,” a series of his photographs that restages some of Cindy Sherman’s seminal “Untitled Film Stills” of 1977-80 with what is supposed to be respectful transparency but comes across as uncomprehending cynicism.
In her film stills, Ms. Sherman all but disappeared into various female stereotypes bestowed upon women by film: the new-to-the-city secretary, the put-upon housewife, the sex kitten, the single glamour girl. Mr. Franco, in contrast, is never less than Mr. Franco, his mustache, beard or hairy legs in full view, his face in an expression of studied vulnerability or simply a look-at-me smirk.
Maybe he sees what he’s doing as reverse feminism, an act of empathic dislocation — which is the argument made by the poet Frank Bidart in the catalog essay. Mainly, we sense Mr. Franco once more playing himself, dipping a toe simultaneously in the waters of art and demi-drag.
And it only gets worse. In addition to reproducing the 25 or so images presented in the show, the catalog contains 65 excruciatingly sophomoric poems written by Mr. Franco in reaction to nearly all the Sherman film stills. Often written from the woman’s point of view, these are either printed on their own or paired with the appropriate Franco do-over image.
The deep content here, beneath the entitled narcissism, is a confused desperation that seems to drive Mr. Franco’s pursuit of visual art. It’s hard not to feel some sympathy for him, while also wishing that someone or something would make him stop.
2) Jessica Dawson in The Daily Beast: - I don't think her tagline: "Is James Franco really an artist" means anything. I don't care who is, or can be, a real artist. It is that what he produced is NOT art. But everything else stands:
Why Does the Art World Coddle James Franco?
The mutually beneficial relationship began around 2010, when Franco, who played a performance artist in a small role onGeneral Hospital, arranged for both the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and its then-director, Jeffrey Deitch, to make cameos on the soap. Though Franco had made some artworks in the late 2000s, he wasn’t embraced by the likes of Alanna Heiss, the founder and former director of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, until the summer of 2010, when she curated Franco’s first solo show in New York. There was also a stint in a “performance art music-based duo” with legit artist Kalup Linzy, a turn in a group pop-up show called “Rebel,” in collaboration with LA MOCA, in which Franco presented what art critic Hunter Drohojowska-Philp called a “chaotic deconstruction” of the film Rebel Without a Cause, a video called “My Own Private River” in collaboration with filmmaker Gus van Sant, a turn in highly legit artist Isaac Julien’s lavish film “Playtime,” and a so-called gallery exhibition last summer, curated by the genuinely talented Turner Prize-winning artist Douglas Gordon.
Franco’s flirtation with the museum and gallery system seemed okay, even funny, in an eye-rolling kind of way. As for write-ups of these efforts, you’ll only find Q and As and features; no art critic has taken him seriously enough to actually write about his work.
But Franco’s latest endeavor, on view at New York’s Pace Gallery through May 3, thumbs its nose so glaringly at the art world, and from a stance of such entitlement, that all the artists, curators, and dealers that have been photographed alongside him might want to rethink their position.
For his Pace exhibition “New Film Stills,” Franco re-creates art world luminary Cindy Sherman’s iconic “Untitled Film Stills,” a series begun in 1977 that’s now recognized as one of the smartest, slyest, and most meaningful feminist critiques ever made. As Sherman herself starred in that series, so Franco stars–in drag–in his re-dos.
For “Untitled Film Stills,” Sherman dressed and posed like the clichéd images of women that she saw on film and TV. She put her ordinary self inside pictures that a movie studio might release: here was the starlet on vacation, in her kitchen, enjoying a cocktail. Over three years, Sherman enacted more and more types—there are 69 pictures in all—from the snappy career girl, a la Mary Tyler Moore, to the brawny housefrau. In each image, Sherman embodies a new role, with a wardrobe and makeup job to match every occasion. Sherman took the pictures herself using a shutter release cord that she didn’t bother to hide: it winked at the constructions behind popular imagery.Franco sophomorically re-creates Sherman’s poses, some more faithfully than others, dressed in a kind of noncommittal drag. He dons kerchiefs and wigs, housedresses and lingerie, but his transformation stops there. His signature scruff—the goatee, the hairy legs—remains front and center, reminding us that he’s a manly man who’s playing at womanhood. Like a frat-boy prank, the series looks as if Franco had a fun afternoon in New Orleans (where many of these pictures were shot).
In a gallery press release, Franco claims he’s criticizing the celebrity-making machine from the inside, just as Sherman critiqued it from the outside. “These photos allow me to take a step to the side, look back, and refashion the work I do in Hollywood,” he says. But by playing for a laugh–because that’s what Franco gets when he’s in drag–he both undermines Sherman’s efforts and obfuscates the fact that he is making no point at all. What we’re left with is pictures of James Franco, a powerful white guy having a good time being famous.
The blog Gallerist NY recently asked Sherman what she thought of Franco’s efforts. “I was flattered,” Sherman is reported to have said. “I don’t know that I can say it’s art, but I think it’s weirder that Pace would show them than that he would make them.”
It is really weird that Pace would show them. And it just might tell us how far adrift that gallery—and a good chunk of the art world—really is.
No comments:
Post a Comment