From Homage to Sample

Eve Sussman’s “89 Seconds at Alcazar” (2004) – the dreamy, 12-minute-long video loop that puts Velazquez’s “Las Meninas” (1656-57) to a screen test – is one of the more popular works currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art.The video, which attempts to recreate the studio-setting, events, costumes, and subjects (including the artist, two dwarfs, and the dog) “leading up to and following the moment captured” in Velazquez’s painting, was filmed over four days in a Williamsburg studio and received wide acclaim at the 2004 Whitney Biennial. It is now part of “A First Look,” MoMA’s inaugural exhibition of film and video works in the Yoshiko and Akio Morita Gallery.With its close-up, behind-the-scenes portal into another era, “89 Seconds at Alcazar” is like a 12-minute window on the family life of Philip IV, King of Spain. Yet it also purports to be a window into the making of one of the most famous paintings in the Western canon. I understand the video’s hypnotic, backstage appeal. I saw it at the Whitney; saw it again at MoMA’s press preview; and sat through three or four consecutive loops of it recently, where I observed crowds of onlookers who were quietly transfixed by its hauntingly blurry, familial-group-portrait mood.In the video, we witness the beautiful costumes, the primping, the restless wandering, the stoking of the fire, and the petting of the dog – as well as the artist cocking his head and wielding his brush – all submerged in a hushed and hazy, slow-motion atmosphere. We are voyeurs at the scene. At times it is almost as if we are the subject of Velazquez’s painting. And then we wait until the movement stops and the painting, frozen like a “photograph,” comes to life.Unlike many of MoMA’s offerings, Ms. Sussman’s video comes with built-in familiarity – both as subject and medium. Like a television show, it has a beginning, an end, and a payoff – the brief moment when the actors take their places on the stage of Velazquez’s painting. While I was watching “89 Seconds at Alcazar,” parents and children alike acknowledged each other’s growing recognition of the scene; but, more importantly, they appeared to take pleasure in the fact that the video was something in the museum they could all agree to watch for 12 minutes as a family. One boy repeatedly took snapshots of the video. Another, nestling up to his mother on the floor, whispered excitedly, “Mom, this is just like home.”Velazquez’s “Las Meninas” is one of the most copied paintings of all time: Picasso did dozens of related works; Goya made etchings; and numerous other artists have worked from and referenced the painting. Ms. Sussman’s video, then, is an updated copy of the Velazquez (and the tradition of copying), as well as an homage to “painting” – the “outdated” medium in which many contemporary artists no longer feel compelled to work. “89 Seconds at Alcazar” supposedly does the painting one better – through the medium of film, it brings the realism of Velazquez one step closer to reality.But an homage must do more than imitate or update. It must bring us closer to the original work – not distort, or force, that work to conform to our contemporary ways of thinking. Works by Goya and Picasso that are based on “Las Meninas” expand our experience of the Velazquez through the later artists’ experience and interpretations of the painting. Sussman’s video, though based on the painting, begins and ends with itself. It leaves behind – outright ignores – the genius and the pleasures of Velazquez in exchange for the pleasures of the magic of video.It has always been easier to reference a tradition than to extend it. Many artists today merely allude or nod to the art of the past rather than explore it on its own terms. Appropriating, covering, and sampling artworks – acts that advocate, but do not require, the understanding of a tradition – are in vogue not only in art but throughout our culture. Movie soundtracks and commercials, which replace dialogue with suggested moods, are the norm; repeating old songs is easier than writing new ones; and seeing everything through updated eyes (even if it is a lie) is preferable if it is entertaining – even honorable – because it makes our past that much more accessible.Ms. Sussman’s video, which treats the Velazquez as a painted photograph that it has brought to life, presents the painting through the lens of a camera rather than through the eyes of a painter. The result is that it reduces the Velazquez – a painting so metaphorically rich and complex that at a certain point all interpretation is subsumed by wonder – to a “snapshot” of a “moment in time.”In part, the allure of “Las Meninas” as a subject for artists, besides the fact that it is a tour de force, is that the painting, like a nest-of-boxes, exponentially opens. Filled with doorways, the back of the artist’s canvas, paintings within the painting, windows, and a mirror – in which we see the king and queen as if they were our own reflections – “Las Meninas” is a veritable treasure-trove that expands the acts of seeing and of picture-making, and of the layered realms of realism in art.Velazquez, through the mysterious interplay of shadow, light, and of spaces (some of which, though distant, shoot forward, and some of which, though close-up, drop back), and of figures (some of whom, though close-up, are too small, and some of whom, though far away, are too big), creates an elastic world of inner realities and mysteries. Yet it is all held together by the artist’s brush – by his woven fabrications that get at the truths, not of photography, but of human interaction.(11 West 53 Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, 212-708-9400).

From Homage to Sample

From Homage to Sample

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