Journal 1 - 'Beautiful Losers'
 |
| Poster designed by Keith Scharwath in collaboration with Aaron Rose |
Beautiful Losers (2008) is a documentary film, made by Director Aaron Rose, and co-directed by Joshua Leonard.
The film looks at the work and lives of a group of artists who 'came together' during the early 1990's. During the film, in a series of interviews, they begin by citing their artistic influences as resting in subcultures such as skateboarding and graffiti, and in their own individual life experiences. Harmony Korine (Producer/Director and Screenwriter), for example, is filmed being interviewed in Dragons Park, where a friend of his was murdered. He gestures to the children playing happily in the background and almost gleefully tells them that they are playing exactly where his friends severed head was found. I felt this was his way of trying to demonstrate how experience influences your perception and portrayal of the environment around you, and explain how this influences an individual artists work.
 |
| Mike Mills |
As the interviews progressed, it seemed like all the artists had a common theme of backgrounds that had shaped them into a group who felt 'out of step', 'angry' and perhaps, 'different' - at one point, Mike Mills (Film Maker, Graphic Designer, Artist) says "If not dispossessed, why make art?".
This same attitude of anti-establishment and feeling out of step with 'ordinary' people could be said to be an attitude that has given rise to or developed as a common theme of many forms of subculture - the punk rock movement, for example. In fact, several of the artists featured in the documentary listed the whole punk and hip hop pop culture as being of influence in their early work.
So, you have this group of young people, drawn together by interests in, and influences from various sub cultures, and by their shared enjoyment of expressing themselves in various art forms, from Graffitti to photography, from painting to music. There seemed to be common denominators in that they saw what they were doing as a form of communication between 'kids' like themselves - and 'kids like themselves' were, by their own varying yet similar definitions, the 'nerds', the 'geeks', the 'rebels', and the 'outsiders'. As is said in the film at one point, they were 'speaking a language common to all' of them, despite the differences in how and why they created their art. Ed Templeton, one of the artists, says in the film , "Have fun, and make it for your friends.", which also seemed to sum up a fairly large part of what the artists were saying was a reason for what they were doing in the beginning.
Aaron Rose, one of this group of young artists, is also the founder of the Alleged Gallery, where they first began to exhibit their work. In an interview with CircleCulture Magazine, written by Johann Haehling von Lanzenauer on 13th February 2002, he describes how he came to be in New York, and how without any real plan, and more by chance, he came to start the Gallery.
 |
| Aaron Rose, photograph from CircleCulture Magazine |
"I was playing in a band when I was here, a duo called Cat Furniture, and my partner was insane. We thought: let‘ s get out of here; I got friends over there in NY. We took a Greyhound bus to NY and I slept through it. It was only supposed to be for a short trip, but I stayed. NYC is the best place for a young person in America. It’s the best place to spend your 20‘ s. So that‘ s how I got to NY. I was 19 when I got there. After a few months, the band broke up. My partner got crazy. He thought he was Jesus Christ and took all his clothes off and got arrested and put into a hospital. I never saw him again. So I was alone there and didn‘t know what to do there. I met this woman and she offered me a store space.
It was very cheap in a bad area of town. The neighborhood was just heroin and crime etc. We opened this art gallery not knowing what we wanted to do. I never wanted to be an art dealer. I didn‘t have any art world experience. I just had a space and so we started putting up shows and we called the gallery Alleged after these (alleged) good luck candles that they sold in the Puerto Rican grocery stores. It was an Alleged gallery, not really a gallery. At the time I was in LA I was really into the punk and skateboarding world. And then when I got to NY I was skating and met some graffiti artists and we just started doing some shows along those lines over the years."
 |
| Alleged Gallery |
All this points to a group that started off with no ambitions or designs on commercial, or any other form of success, or with any idea of how - or even if - their group would develop or grow.
 |
| Barry McGee |
Watching the film, I found I had a variety of responses to what I was seeing and hearing, throughout. Barry McGee's (Twister) graffiti and other art work, and his description of it and his influences, I found credible and interesting
 |
| Barry McGee at work |
 | |
| Chris Johanson, pictured here with his wife, Jo Jackson, also one of the artist |
But although I like some examples of Chris Johanson's work, what he had to say struck me as pretentious in the extreme, and actually left me wondering exactly what they guy was on! Or perhaps he was working just a little too hard at appearing 'cool and edgy' ?
I initially hung the same label of 'pretentious' on Mike Mills, as he described how the angst of a long ago breakup still affects his work to the present day - but then, his comment about 'why not be funny', and his attitude as the film progressed, made me consider that he was actually being very tongue in cheek and perhaps making fun of 'pretentious' attitudes. Far more truthful, in my perception of what he had to say, was his comment that making films allowed him to express issues and feeling that he was discouraged from expressing when young.
This quote is taken again from The CircleCulture Magazine interview with Aaron Rose
"...At the beginning it was considered kid stuff or not real art because most of it is unschooled. Some artists maybe had a small art education but very few master degrees,"
As the film progressed, it charted how gradually, the work of the artists involved, and the artists themselves, began to be more accepted by the 'mainstream' art world, as opposed to the attitude that Rose outlines in the quote above.
Geoff McFetridge is an example of just how commercially acceptable some of the artists featured have become. His work has featured in everything from Pepsi advertising campaigns . .
. . . to this range of Nike dunks
Similar success for many of the artists involved, have led to the group's collective activities and achievements as being described in such terms as they ...
"became the benchmark for a movement that transformed both the art establishment and popular culture." ( From an article on www.bainspiration.com, By Paula Alvarado)
In the film, several of those featured talked about the affect of commercial success on their work and on their attitude and motivation. Some artists went to great lengths, it seemed to me,to justify their work becoming so commercially viable, as though they had to excuse it being so, lest it be considered 'uncool', or in case anyone might think that they had 'sold out' by becoming successful. There were a few comments about the money not 'mattering' and insisting that they work for 'arts sake' alone. I felt rather cynically that they maybe protesting too much - well, it appears that they took the money, doesn't it? And, to be honest, I can't really see what is wrong with becoming successful and even wealthy from the art that you create. Surely, as long as you remain honest to your influences and believe in what you are creating, accepting money and/or gaining success and recognition for it shouldn't change the integral value of what you produce?
Some admitted that it made them feel more valuable to have their work appreciated on a wider level, and one view expressed was that commercial success was like 'getting back at all the mainstreams who originally dist (dismissed) the artists'.
I found it somewhat inspirational that at the end, the one thing that they all seemed to have consensus on was that despite what many of them saw as the pitfalls of commercial success, the group to this day maintain close contact. Most claimed that this kept them 'grounded' and ensured that art remains the focal point of their association and work - and it seems likely that it does.
I enjoyed this film - despite the odd moments of frustration at some of the more pretentious and outlandish comments. Some of the art work shown really appealed to me, and I felt a lot of the artists (though not all!) were articulate and interesting to listen too. It was a slightly different slant on the old argument about success negating happiness and integrity, and I liked the way it was filmed and presented.
However, whilst I have no objections to watching films as part of lectures, a session spent just watching a film, with no real time given to discussion/direction or information giving, either during or after it, isn't really what I would call a 'lecture', any more than if we had walked in, sat down, been told to read a book - and then write about it. I would have liked, especially as I did find the films content and theme to be interesting, to have maybe been presented with specific questions/opinions about aspects of it, that would have raised issues that I maybe didn't consider just from viewing it, for example - the film was 90 minutes long, surely there was something more substantial that could have been said at the end of it, to provoke response and give us some starting point to 'get our teeth into'?.
No comments:
Post a Comment