Hollywood and other Myths

The exhibition Hollywood and other Myths at the Tel Aviv Museum of art focuses on the increasing affinity between video and cinema. The total rejection of Hollywood style and cinematic language of the 1960s and 1970s gradually turned in the 1990s to complex relations of enchanted fascination and dismissal. All the cinematic characteristics that made cinema into a thrilling medium are present here: high-volume emotions, high production value and a rich, all-encompassing soundtrack

This is an exhibition of video works that refer to cinema: they reflect the ever-growing affinity between video and cinema in terms of production value, contents and viewing experience. The medium, which developed in the 1960s and 1970s from the world of visual art and experimental cinema while rejecting popular cinema, began developing in the 1990s a relationship of fascination and rejection, of enchantment and criticism, of re-evaluation with mainstream cinema. To use a Freudian anthropomorphism, video is at the stage where it seeks another, more glamorous parent, that it previously rejected, i.e. Hollywood.

The video works at the exhibition, dating from 2002 onwards, reflect these dual relationships: adopting the cinematic toolbox, referring to the financial and ideological mechanisms of the cinema industry, using its myths, clichés, heroes and history, all the while observing them from aside. Hollywood as an allegory and a being with a mythical existence is present in the works as a removed testimony and an attempt at self-identification through a neighboring medium, a distant relative.

The works in the exhibition offer an observation of the complex link between video, cinema and art — not only theoretically but physically, too. The high-quality big-screen cinematography, the rich enfolding soundtrack — cinema’s qualities that have made it the most hypnotic medium — are present here as raw materials. One would like to surrender to them; one would also like to ponder over the way in which Hollywood conventions have molded our worldview about emotions and passion, the way in which memory is retained and the way in which a story is developed.

               Nummer veertien, home, 2012, courtesy of the artist

In our view, the most intriguing participant of the excibition is Guido van der Werve, a Dutch filmmaker and visual artist, "notable for producing works physically testing his endurance".This time he's representing Nummer veertien, home, 2012 — video, 4k, color, sound, 54 minutes, diverse locations and countries.

The materials comprising Nummer veertien, home are the incredible materials that beget myths or movies: eccentric heroes, unusual life stories, infinite romanticism. Van der Werve takes upon himself to swim, cycle, run, compose a Requiem, play the piano, jump into a canal wearing burning clothes, be tied to a crane, float in the air and make a film out of all these.

The film is dedicated to his two childhood heroes: composer and pianist Frédéric Chopin and warrior king Alexander the Great. Both left home at a young age, never to return.  The film begins at the Holy Cross Church, Warsaw, where Chopin’s heart is buried, and ends in Paris, by the grave where his body is interred. Between these two cities, 1,703.85 kilometers apart, an epic journey takes place, which Van der Werve traverses according to triathlon rules by swimming, cycling and running.

The film’s length, the world-wide production, the allusions to Chopin, to Alexander and to the artist’s own biography, all imbue Nummer veertien, home with a sense of a Homeric epos as well as a Hollywood road movie. 

Van der Werve’s films are always the result of some extreme, unnecessary, almost-impossible exertion. As such, they are reminiscent of Werner Herzog’s 1982 film Fitzcarraldo, a film synonymous with a megalomaniac, capricious and wonderful cinematic production. Another source of inspiration is Bas Jan Ader, a Dutch artist whose short life (1942–1975) and mysterious death engendered many rumors, tributes and myths in the world of art. Like him, Van der Werve’s tests his boundaries and endurance absurdly, to the extreme, surrendering to emotion in its most simple, deep and overflowing sense.

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Tel Aviv Museum of Art
Lily & Yoel Moshe Elstein Multi-Purpose Gallery and Laurence Graff Contemporary Art Gallery, Herta and Paul Amir Building 
Curator: Ruth Direktor