"Strangers are constantly photographing my ass. Not on purpose, though - I'm sure they would much rather my backside not be in the frame as I stand contemplating some artwork in front of which they're trying to pose. They fix their gaze on the camera, ignoring both me and the art itself."
"I've spent much of my life as a marathon looker. A morning in front of Théodore Géricault's "Raft of the Medusa" (1818-19), an ecstatic afternoon in the frescoed garden room from the Villa of Livia. Marcel Duchamp's 1918 piece titled "To Be Looked at (from the Other Side of the Glass) with One Eye, Close to, for Almost an Hour"? I've done just that."
"I used to feel a sense of sneaking guilt after one of these reveries, since they didn't result in any measurable product. I rarely emerged with material for teaching or writing; I rarely experienced much coherent thought at all. The Christophers (2026), a Steven Soderbergh-directed film about an encounter between two painters in modern-day London, Julian Sklar (Ian McKellen) and Lori Butler (Michaela Coel), makes the argument that courting and paying attention is precisely the point of art."
"True, The Christophers poses similar questions about why we make art, and at what cost. But where Tár is a gloomy, tendentious horror film, The Christophers is a twisty, delightful yet profound comedy. It might just be the best yet in the line of confections that raise deep questions whipped up by its writer, Ed Solomon, who also wrote Men in Black (1997), with its meditations o"
Strangers repeatedly photograph a person while the person stands contemplating artwork, creating a sense of being looked at rather than truly seeing. The person describes a long habit of marathon looking at major artworks, including Géricault and Duchamp, often without producing teaching material or coherent thoughts. The Christophers presents a modern-day London encounter between two painters, Julian Sklar and Lori Butler, arguing that attention and engagement are the point of art. The film raises questions about why art is made and what it costs, but it does so through a twisty, delightful, and profound comedy rather than a gloomy, tendentious horror tone.
Read at Hyperallergic
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