Art in the Cinema

The Mid-Century Art Documentary

Steven Jacobs, Birgit Cleppe, Dimitrios Latsis, Steven Jacobs, Birgit Cleppe, Dimitrios Latsis

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350160316
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Médias et arts de la scène
• Subtopic: Histoire et critique du cinéma

In the 1940s and 1950s, hundreds of art documentaries were produced, many of them being highly personal, poetic, reflexive and experimental films that offer a thrilling cinematic experience. With the exception of Alain Resnais's Van Gogh (1948), Henri-Georges Clouzot's Le Mystère Picasso (1956) and a few others, most of them have received only scant scholarly attention. This book aims to rectify this situation by discussing the most lyrical, experimental and influential post-war art documentaries, connecting them to contemporaneous museological developments and Euro-American cultural and political relationships. With contributors with expertise across art history and film studies, Art in the Cinema draws attention to film projects by André Bazin, Ilya Bolotowsky, Paul Haesaerts, Carlo Ragghianti, John Read, Dudley Shaw Aston, Henri Storck and Willard Van Dyke among others.

1

The institutional breeding grounds of the post-war film on art: key figures and networks behind the first International Conference on Art Films

BIRGIT CLEPPE

From 26 June to 2 July 1948, the French art circle Les Amis de l’Art (Friends of the Arts) organized the first International Conference on Art Films.¹ For the organization of the conference, Les Amis de l’Art managed to gather an impressive list of co-organizing partners: UNESCO, the International Council of Museums (ICOM), the Cinémathèque française and the French Ministries of Education and Foreign Affairs. Held at the Louvre and the Musée de l’Homme, the conference was also supported by two leading French museums. Moreover, the conference coincided with two other major events within the art world. From 21 to 27 June, the first International Conference of Art Critics was held in Maison de l’UNESCO in Paris, while from 28 June to 3 July, ICOM organized its first general conference in the Louvre.² The conference on art films was attended by a variety of filmmakers, artists, museum officials, film archivists and art historians, who had already shown interest in the genre of the film on art. The event, with film screenings and lectures, was presented to all the attendants of the other two conferences. At the end of the conference, the organizers provided a long-term institutional endorsement of the film on art by establishing the Fédération International du Film sur l’Art (FIFA, or the International Federation of the Film on Art).

This chapter aims to uncover the roots of this outspoken interest by prominent cultural and political authorities in the fairly new film genre of the art documentary. By mapping who was involved in the organization of this first conference, it unravels a heavily intertwined network of institutions and individuals that supported the foundation of FIFA. By tracking down how the film on art fits alongside their other activities, it will not only bring to light the divergent ambitions behind the institutional infrastructure of the film on art, but also investigates whether there are common interests and concerns to be found within this chaotic amalgam of personal opinions and ambitions, and institutional agendas. More particularly, this chapter will demonstrate the dominance of the museum world in the development of the post-war art documentary and FIFA. In addition, the ambitions of the attendants of FIFA’s first conference in 1948 will be discussed in the light of FIFA’s 1966 report entitled ‘Problems of the Film on Art’, included in FIFA’s final publication, the film catalogue Dix ans du film sur l’art (Ten Years of the Film on Art).³ In so doing, I will question if and how the origins of this institutionalization enhanced, delimited or to some extent even predetermined the future production, diffusion and promotion of films on art. After all, the interest in film was far from an unconditional love for a new art form, as most museums reduced art documentaries to functional tools, serving their own agendas.

Joining forces: who founded FIFA?

In a brief report on the conference, Henry de Morant, director of the Fine Arts Museum in Angers, stated that ‘until now, the film on art was the result of isolated directors working with limited resources and without any link between them’.⁴ These isolated initiatives, Morant added, ‘were highly unfavorable for the proliferation and even the creation of films on art’. According to Morant, the principal result of the conference was ‘to make those interested aware of their common strength and group them into a Fédération internationale du film d’art et du film expérimental.⁵

‘The organizers of the first FIFA conference, and first and foremost Mr Diehl’, Morant added, had modelled themselves on ‘the scientific film, that started to become well-known and appreciated thanks to the initiatives of Jean Painlevé, D. Commandon and others’.⁶ In 1947, Painlevé had established the International Scientific Film Association (ISFA) under UNESCO’s patronage and as part of the Fondation de l’Union Mondiale du Documentaire with, among others, Joris Ivens, Henri Langlois, Iris Barry and Henri Storck. Its goal was ‘to join scientific, technical and film circles’.⁷ Painlevé had attributed a central role to UNESCO, because ‘this organization could allow to regulate efficiently the participation of all member states and particularly facilitate the circulation of educational films’.⁸ The association strengthened its ability to distribute films worldwide by also inviting organizations such as the Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film (FIAF) and the Fédération Internationale des Ciné Clubs (the latter directed by Painlevé since its creation in 1947) to participate at its first conference in October 1947.⁹ Similarly, with the foundation of FIFA, ‘the objective of the federation is to group the persons and institutions interested in art and cinema. It tries to encourage the realization and diffusion of the film on art […] through the rapprochement among its members’.¹⁰ It will, therefore, consciously use their institutional structures and networks. As a result, Morant concludes, ‘it is not said that the films will always remain unknown to the big masses’, while admitting in a footnote of his report that ‘currently they are definitely! And if I say that I have never seen a single one of them, it is not to distinguish myself of my brother historians.’ For the international dissemination of art documentaries, the patrongage of UNESCO was fundamental.

Les Amis de l’Art

One of the speakers at the conference was French art historian and critic Gaston Diehl, who explicitly referred to ‘...