Art historical approaches – Dijana Metlic (Monday 15 July 2019)

Dijana Metlic is the author of many Stanley Kubrick related articles. Among them are: Stanley Kubrick and Hieronymus Bosch: In The Garden of Earthly Delights, Unmasking the Society: The Use of Masks in Kubrick's Films, Kubrick's approach to Burgess: The significance of costume in A Clockwork Orange, Nabokov, Kubrick and Stern: Who Created Lolita? She is currenlty an Associate Professor of Art History at the Academy of Arts, in the University of Novi Sad, Serbia. [8]

Dijana Meltic can be contacted via email: dijana.metlic@uns.ac.rs

Dijana Meltic presenting on Art historical approaches. Photo by Karen Ritzenhoff.

Presentation: 

Dijana Metlic presented on art historical approaches. Dr. Metlic suggested that art history is an important lens through which we should be able to understand Kubrick’s films better. She identified several research topics that would benefit from art historical approaches.

Composition, colour and lighting:

Kubrick’s composition, use of colour and lighting should be set in its art historical context. A typically Kubrickian composition is a one-point perspective with deep focus and symmetrical framing. This is shown, for example, with Bowman in the corridor in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Danny in the corridor in The Shining or Alex and his droogs in the Korova Milk Bar in A Clockwork Orange. This combination of a one-point perspective, deep focus and symmetry is a technique found in Renaissance art e.g. it was introduced by Brunelleschi in Florence (around 1425), developed by Leon Battista Alberti and subsequently applied in, to name some of masterpieces, Leonardo’s The Last Supper, Raphael’s Stanza Della Segnatura or Pietro Perugino's painting in the Sistine Chapel.

Kubrick’s lighting also invokes important moments of art history. For example, his use of light and shade in Paths of Glory resembles Baroque Illumination techniques. The gold fairy lights in the ballroom scene in Eyes Wide Shut  might be compared to the paintings of Gustav Klimt e.g. The Tree of Life or The Kiss. He uses the aerial perspective in Barry Lyndon. This is a technique applied by many Renaissance, Baroque and especially Rococo painters. Many of Kubrick’s compositions in the film, structured like tableau vivant, restage Gainsborough, Hogart or Joshua Reynold's paintings.

Dr. Metlic also discussed Kubrick’s colours. Kubrick most often returns to red, white and blue. For example in 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut. The red background for the opening title of A Clockwork Orange perhaps refers to Barnet Newman’s Vir Heroicus Sublimis. Art historical approaches can therefore help us understand the symbolic use of colour in Kubrick’s cinema. 

(Post)Modern Art:

Kubrick also uses compositions which draw on Modern art. Dr. Metlic gave examples of Kubrickian compositions which rely on modern art techniques:

·        Alex’s attack on the Cat lady in A Clockwork Orange is structured as a sequence of fragmented representations, rapid montage and resembles Dadaist collage technique.

Still from A Clockwork Orange. [2]

·        Killer’s Kiss uses the elements of Surrealism: the models in the final fight scene suggest Surrealist artworks, like Atget’s Boulevard De Strasbourg or Bellmer’s earie photographs from Die Puppe album. 

Hans Bellmer’s Die Puppe. [1]

·        Kubrick’s representations of the city in Killer’s Kiss or Eyes Wide Shut draw on Expressionist works of art e.g. by Georg Grosz or Emil Nolde. City offers no easy way out and is structured like a deviant stage full of wierd characters. 

George Grosz's Soirée. [9]

·        The Overlook hotel in The Shining and its architecture of appearently straight lines leading nowhere, resembles an Escher puzzle (Relativity).

M.C. Escher's Relativity. [4]

·        Kubrick also refers to hypnotic or digital OP art in 2001: A Space Odyssey’s Stargate sequence. 

Op Art Black White No. 258 by Drinka Mercep. [3]

·        The monolith might be compared to minimalist works of art or Malevich’s Black Square from 1915. It becomes a sort of tabula rasa, an empty screen which anounces a new stage in evolution, a new phase of human development. 

Malevich’s Black Square. [6]

·        The series of atomic bomb explosions at the end of Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb suggests Kubrick's interest in Cold war in a way similar to American contemporary Pop artist Andy Warhol and his time relative, the famous Atomic Bomb from 1965.

Andy Warhol’s Atomic Bomb. [5]

Dr. Metlic proposed that Kubrick's shot might be analysed through unusual, but relatively often applied juxtaposition of Modernist and Renaissance compositions. This creates a tension between Renaissance balance and Modern dynamism. In Dr Metlic’s words, Kubrick’s compositions give a sense both of the “harmonious structures of nature and the reality of the modern world in a state of constant flux.”

This leads to the question: Is Kubrick Modern or Postmodern filmmaker? Can we reach a consensus?

Popular Culture:

Kubrick’s influence on popular art can also be approached through an art historical lens. In particular, Metlic focused on the “Lolita look” in popular culture. She compared Bert Stern’s Lolita photographs made in Sag Harbour in 1962 to works which predate it (e.g. Balthus, Young Girl with a cat or Kirchner's Young girl with a cat) and gave examples of its influence on popular culture, from perfume advertising to pop album covers.

 Bert Stern’s Lolita in Sag Harbour. [10]

Kubrick in the Museum:

Dijana Metlic also raised an important question: How should we exhibit Kubrick? Can props from his films be displayed as "true" works of art, relying on the fact that during the previous decades some of them reached a cult status? How can we put a film director in the museum of still images? 

Photo of Stanley Kubrick : The Exhibition. Photo by Karen Ritzenhoff.

Kubrick and Contemporary Art:

Finally, the relationship between Kubrick and contemporary art could benefit from further research. The 2016 exhibition Daydreaming with Stanley Kubrick at Somerset House, London, is a good example of this. Contemporary artists engage explicitly with Kubrick’s films both as an act of interpretation and to highlight their own concerns. 

 Promotional image of Daydreaming With Stanley Kubrick. [7]

Panel:

The panel began with a discussion of the image and we talked about the primacy of the image in Kubrick’s work. The image comes first. For Kubrick it was a point of departure. Art history becomes a lens to understand both Kubrick and his films. The image is a crucial part of the development of meaning in the films.

We noted that this feeds into a discussion of post-modernism and Kubrick; the films constitute a ‘total work of art’, a Gesamkuntzwerk  – his films are bound together by a matrix of intertextual images.

We considered why Kubrick chose to ‘reconstruct’ the art of certain artists. Is his choice of canonical ‘Great Masters’ an attempt to align himself as a great master? Their work deals with humanity and reminds us of what it is to be human – this resonates thematically with Kubrick’s work.

We expanded the discussion to include music, theatre, amongst other art forms and noted how Kubrick responds to certain composers – his refusal to put Wagner in Eyes Wide Shut was because he felt he couldn’t do him justice (or could it be the anti-semitism linked to Wagner?). We considered the dramaturgical use of historical art images – they contain implicit meaning which work textually with the films.

We also considered Kubrick’s attachment to the 18^th and 19^th century and the relocation of "fin de siècle" Vienna to New York City in Eyes Wid Shut. New York also had numerous such moments of cultural change (Warhol for instance, was another adapter of Burgess).

We also considered the filmic nature of painting and how Kubrick uses Art History as a repository (as we might use the archive) – in order to evoke (post)modernity

Our discussion of the postmodernism of the image led us into a discussion of Full Metal Jacket and how there was a self-conscious deconstruction of the ‘Kubrickian’. We also considered the influence of futurism on A Clockwork Orange and discussed Marinetti’s glorification of violence in art.

We discussed performativity and choreography and the painting as a visual performance. This led us to discuss the presence of Samuel Beckett in Kubrick both ironically and intertextually (particularly in A Clockwork Orange). This followed from a discussion of Giacometti and Kubrick’s interest in modernism.

Kubrick’s work may be considered postmodernist due to its depiction of violence, irony, use of space, collaging of the art historical image and self-awareness.

We considered also how we consolidate the art historical influences of Kubrick in the archive (magazines and other such sources). We considered Kubrick as a film painter and a film like 2001: A Space Odyssey as a series of still images in motion. How does new technology (the ability to pause the image and single it out of the film) allow us to reappraise the image?

Finally, going forward – how do contemporary artists, art students and others respond to Kubrick as a moment of art history?”

Photo of (from left to right) Eliza Pezzota, Dijana Metlic and Ernesto R. Acevedo-Munoz after Dijana's presentation,

Bibliography:

1. Bellmer, Hans. “Die Puppe by HansBellmer.” Die Puppe by Hans Bellmer on Artnet, XiLingYinShe Auction Co. Ltd., http://www.artnet.com/artists/hans-bellmer/die-puppe-D1RmbmYTeEWrRTQUYb8pmQ2.

2. Kubrick, Stanley, director. A Clockwork Orange.

3. Mercep, Drinka. “Op Art Black White No.258. by Drinka Mercep.” Fine Art America, https://fineartamerica.com/featured/op-art-black-white-no258-drinka-mercep.html.

4. Pixelday. “M.C. Escher.” M.C. Escher – Relativity, https://www.mcescher.com/gallery/back-in-holland/relativity/.

5. Saatchi Gallery. “Andy Warhol.” Andy Warhol - Atomic Bomb - Contemporary Art, https://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/artpages/andy_warhol_4.htm.

6. Shaw, Philip. “Kasimir Malevich's Black Square.” Tate, Tate, 1 Jan. 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-sublime/philip-shaw-kasimir-malevichs-black-square-r1141459.

7. “Daydreaming with Stanley Kubrick.” Somerset House, 24 Jan. 2017, https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/whats-on/daydreaming-with-stanley-kubrick.

8. “Dijana Metlić: University of Novi Sad.” Academia.edu, https://ns.academia.edu/DijanaMetlić.

9. “Soirée.” Auktionshaus Lempertz, 7 Nov. 2014, https://www.lempertz.com/en/catalogues/lot/1078-1/225-george-grosz.html.

10. “The Search for Love and Lolita in Sag Harbor.” The Sag Harbor Express, 27 Sept. 2017, https://sagharborexpress.com/search-love-lolita-sag-harbor/.

Presentation by: Daisy Baxter.

Panel Discussion by: Matt Melia.

Images, Captions, Bio & Bibliography: Miguel Mira