An Exciting View into the Real Life of a Great Contemporary Artist
I have been following the career of El Anatsui for a few years since I first saw his astonishing tapestry-like works constructed from discarded metal. I have experienced numerous shows at his New York gallery and in academic and museum venues. During his retrospective at Wellesley College, I heard him speak and participate in a discussion about his work. I have read scholarly essays about his art, its antecedents, cultural influences, method of working, etc., but this video is the first time that I have been able to gain insight into what his life at home and in his studio is actually like. It was a revelation to me since I am so much a product of my American cultural conditioning and lifestyle that I think everyone lives the way we do here. Now that I see Nsukka, where he has lived and taught for so many years, I find it overwhelming that his works found their way into the upper echelons of the bigtime art world even though they are so inventive and fabulous . How did it ever happen...
great artist, fine video
The celebrated Africanist, Susan Vogel, does a careful, sensitive job exploring the stupendous "cloth" hangings by Africa's foremost visual artist, El Anatsui. She surveys his methods of construction of meticulous, creative, and dazzling "mosaics" of liquor bottle caps and sleeves, stitched together with copper wire, and shows how a huge relief hanging was installed in the 2007 Venice Biennalle. The video has interviews with the modest yet articulate artist and his colleagues in Nsukka, Nigeria, and with the American critic and curator, Robert Storr.
An important addition to films on African artists.
The subject dwarfs the film
The art of El Anatsui is revelatory and imposing. The film is monotonous, repetitive, and ends by trivializing the methods and diminishing the monumentality of the artist's vision. It is worth seeing only for the glimpses of El Anatsui's works that someone - like this viewer - might otherwise not have had the opportunity of seeing in person. Subtitles would have helped to strain the often incomprehensible thickness of the spoken comments.
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