Music videos: Art's new star - Cincinnati.com |
| Music videos: Art's new star - Cincinnati.com Posted: 29 Feb 2012 07:41 AM PST The time has come to welcome A-Ha, Michael Jackson and their MTV pals into the world of high art. Jonathan Wells and Meg Grey Wells, a husband-and-wife team of art curators, are serious about music videos. While others might look at the medium as a promotional tool to sell records or a diversion from junior-high homework, the couple calls music-video-making an artistic pursuit on the same level as any other type of filmmaking. "Music video has remained for the most part this secondary genre, like you're a music video filmmaker to become a feature filmmaker, you're a music video filmmaker so that you can break into that next commercial," says Meg Grey Wells. "And we're saying, no, you should see that the music video is where these processes, these tricks, these new ideas started. They all came together and were incepted here. They broke out, people developed them, and they became highly copied." The Los Angeles-based couple has created "Spectacle: The Music Video," a new exhibit opening Saturday at the Contemporary Arts Center. The Wellses and the CAC are calling it the first exhibit of its kind in a contemporary-art museum, and it has already drawn the attention of other museums before its opening. Two museums have signed up for the show after it leaves Cincinnati. The idea of debuting "Spectacle" at the CAC came about two years ago. The Wellses curate a screen series at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles that showcases short films and music videos. The series came to the attention of the CAC, and after the couple visited Cincinnati and the museum to explore the idea of bringing a similar series to the CAC, the idea for "Spectacle" took shape. "The museum inspired us," Meg says. "The architecture of the Zaha Hadid-designed museum really inspired us," Meg says. "We saw the museum and we said, "Oh, this is spectacular, we would like to do something bigger." The show consists of eight different sections occupying the CAC's two largest galleries on the fourth and fifth floors and part of the sixth floor. Titles of the sections include "Remix," a look at how music videos have evolved from television to the internet era, and "Epic," which examines music videos as short feature films, such as Jackson's "Thriller." Another section, "Art House," concentrates on the type of conceptual videos in which the band often doesn't appear. This section includes many animated videos, including the work of Michel Gondry, the director of the White Stripes' "Fell in Love with the Girl." Original Lego pieces from that video are on display. James Frost's video for Radiohead, "House of Cards," which was shot entirely with a laser, is presented in an interactive form using a touch screen. A standalone piece that the Wellses single out as a highlight of the show is the video for Bjork's "Wanderlust," the first stereoscopic 3D music video. "What's nice is that, though it's very popular online, not many people have experienced this video the way that it should be seen in 3D," says Meg Grey Wells. "And we have original artifacts and illustrations from the video shoot that we're particularly proud of." Something that might catch the attention of an older generation of MTV fans is an installation featuring A-Ha's iconic 1985 video "Take On Me," a breakthrough in its combination of illustration and live action, created without the help of digital tools. The installation takes visitors inside that music video, and there are illustrations and the ephemera related to that video on display for the first time. The video has nostalgic qualities that appeal to the first wave of MTV viewers, but Meg Grey Wells thinks it appeals to a younger crowd as well. "It's not your traditional process of just going, 'Oh, I'm going to be confronted with a video on a screen, and all I'm gonna do is watch,'" she says. "I think we've endeavored to really provide different displays so that you're drawn in, and you want to ask, 'Wow, how did this happen? Why did this happen? I can't believe it happened so long ago and it's still cool.'" This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks. |
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