Interview with Christian E. Klinger about Jock Sturges ….

The official filmwebsite:

LINE OF BEAUTY AND GRACE * A documentary about Jock Sturges

Here is a beautiful, silent and politically incorrect interview with our director Christian E. Klinger from John Lingan about women, Jock Sturges, filmmaking and love….

SPLICETODAY.COM: This is the second in a continuing series of Splice Premieres, articles that profile artists, musicians, and filmmakers that are making careers outside the mainstream media. Along with interviews and background information, these articles will contain samples of the artists’ work, including unreleased or newly debuting material. The first Premiere was Zach Kaufmann’s interview with St. Louis alt-country band Theodore.

Christian E. Klinger’s first documentary, Line of Beauty and Grace, concerns the controversial American photographer Jock Sturges, whose plaintive images of nude children and young women have attracted accusations of child pornography. Sturges shoots his photos in Montalivet, a town in coastal France noted for its hospitality to naturist vacationers, and Klinger traveled there to film the photographer and his models as he worked. Sturges typically works with the same models for years on end, and he brings his family to the shoots, as well. Line of Beauty and Grace therefore documents an artist who creates his own spare, comfortable worlds in both his work and life.

The movie aired on German television and is now available on DVD from the website for Klinger’s production company, Amadelio Film. It briefly mentions the controversies surrounding Sturges’ work (a phenomenon, Klinger points out, that only occurs in America), but begins with the assumption that his photography is inarguably important and viable artistically. Weiterlesen… »

These interview scenes are unused scenes from the documentary about Jock Sturges (not included in the DVD)

Interview with Jock Sturges (Quicktime-Video)

Deutsche Version

Official Filmwebsite (Trailer, Gallery, DVD, 99 minutes)

Jock Sturges and beauty
In the summer of 2007, we travelled to the French Atlantic Coast to meet an artist whose images stand out from the diverse pool of contemporary photography. His subject matter is the human being. His tool is a large format camera. His goal is the depiction of nothing less than beauty.

He demands the truth from his photographs. For over 30 years, the American photographer Jock Sturges has dealt with beauty and truth, an idea of art, unfortunately, which is often scorned today. In order to recognize and appreciate that, which distinguishes his work, we must focus on the definition of beauty.

Jock Sturges. Nikki. Montalivet. France. 1996.

Beauty is first and foremost an abstract definition, a concept, difficult to determine. It has always been governed by history and culture. However, there is a certain degree of global consensus concerning to the notion of beauty. Not only do we define physical matter, such as humans, animals, plants or objects as beautiful, but also abstractions, such as ideas or the notion of the soul. Even Schiller in his essay Weiterlesen… »

Interview with Hellen van Meene (Quicktime-Video)

Deutsche Version (Interview Sender in deutscher Sprache) 

Hellen van Meene, a global photographer.

Not everyone finds access to poetry. Sensual beauty appears useless to some of us. In times of controllers man is reduced to his function.

As man is a creature that reaches beyond his plain function in the society, he has – among other things – created art. Art is one of the highest achievements of mankind and describes ever again the core which represents humanity.

Photo by Hellen van Meene.

In the images of the dutch photographer Hellen van Meene fragility, beauty Weiterlesen… »

Interview with Maurizio Cattelan (Quicktime-Video)

What does the spectacle of a phallic pink costume, worn by the Parisian art dealer Emmanuel Perrotin, have in common with the spectacle of corpulent art dealer Massimo de Carlo being taped to the wall of his gallery? What does a wax pope, struck dead from a meteorite, have in common with a squirrel that committed suicide at the kitchen table? These works of art or jokes were all created by the Italian artist or fool Maurizio Cattelan.

He says that he became an artist because of the assured income and the attractive women. In fact, he came to art very late, at 30. His numerous and varied jobs have prepared him very well for the absurdities of the art world. Among other things, he has worked in the souvenir shop of a monastery, in a morgue, in a laundry and now as a world-famous artist. He frequently gets fired over his jokes. In his current work, he feels secure that he can do what he wants. This is what he is doing. Sometimes he does nothing, as for example when he opened one of his exhibititions with an empty gallery and no artist. Other times, he steals from an artist of a neighbouring gallery, claiming the artwork as his own. Has Maurizio Cattelan no ideas, a lack of creativity? No. The critics, art dealers and collectors say this is conceptual art. In conceptual art, you can create a wax grandma for a rich English art collector and put it in somebody’s fridge. There she will sit ’till the end of her days — or his days — or longer. If an art collector comes into a museum and appoints something “really cool” by Cattelan, she may get something cool, in the truest sense of the word. So what if Maurizio cut a caper as he got his pay? Anyway, he didn’t have to do that much work for the “Betsy” sculpture, because he always assigns professional craftsmen to make his works of art. In this way, the kneeling and praying Adolf Hitler, one of his most unsettling works, was made. Cattelan told the craftsman only that he wanted a 12-year-old boy with the head of Adolf Hitler. He not only employs others to sculpt, he also has someone else speak for him. In his rare interviews, he is sits beside his double, nodding to his answers. Sometimes there is only the double. Is Cattelan just shy, or is he suffering from psychosis?

Another conceptual art work by Cattelan looked like this: from November 10th to November 17th in 1999, he invited ten international artists to vacation in St. Kitts, West Indies. He declared this spectacle the “6th Caribbean Biennial”. Additionally, there was a little hurricane, which forced the group to stay longer. The participants showed nothing and discussed no art. They vacationed, exactly like Cattelan had announced.

Once again, the art critics, Weiterlesen… »