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Rivers and Tides
Andy Goldsworthy Working with
Time
review by
Elias Savada,
4 April 2003
As this ninety-minute
English-dialogue, German-financed documentary continues to expand
its U.S. engagements (where it premiered in early January),
audiences are enjoying a naturally enchanting visit with a most
unusual artist. Thomas Riedelsheimer's award-winning film is a
spellbinding study of Andy Goldsworthy, a Scottish land-sculptor who
creates location-specific work using only the organic vegetation and
minerals found in his "studio." The film arrives courtesy of
American distributor Roxie Releasing, a San Francisco-based company
handling contemporary indie product (Henry Brommell's Panic
my favorite amongst these) and some unusual classic titles
(including Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor, The Naked Kiss,
and his obscure Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street).
This
temporary study of mostly temporal set pieces easily bonds with the
captive-time element of the audio-visual medium. Without
Riedelsheimer's constantly panning camera showing us Goldsworthy
unique artistic course of action/reaction, the only remnant of the
Goldsworthy's creative days would be relegated to their
two-dimensional reproductions through 35mm slides and still
photographs. Although Goldsworthy's art has been chronicled in
numerous collections, watching it evolve via a cinematic/digital
process adds a fascinating component. The numerous coffee-table
books may capture the shape, the scope, and the moment, but since
this particular artist sculpts on a chronologically demanding
canvas, the camera acts as the missing recording mechanism that,
save us being there at the time of creation, allows us at least the
ability to watch each birth as a near-metaphysical event. "Art, for
me, is a form of nourishment," comments the Scotsman early in the
film; we, the viewers, are allowed the share his meal.
Coupling
the moving images with an intoxicating score by Fred Firth, this
film is often mesmerizing. The changing process of sculpting (versus
the static viewing of sculpture) entrances as the camera
deliberately tracks the artist visually and figuratively. At first
Goldsworthy shares his innermost thoughts on conception, then
arranges the initial stages of preparation (think of a hobbyist
arranging all the parts of a model airplane before assembling them),
followed by the urgent states of birth and growth, through to the
ensuing, but not necessarily final, static condition. Even at this
culminating moment, the structure is capable of additional change in
the hands of nature, such as a large bleached driftwood beehive
caught up in the motion of a river's flow, or a conical piling of
rocks submerging in a rising tide. Hence the film's perfect
ebb-and-flow title. Sometimes there is stability in the art, often
not. Yet in those moments of failure (rocks shift, twigs break)
caused by "too many unknowns," we witness the enlightenment of the
artistic vision.
This is a
fascinating study, vibrant beyond the shade of the brilliant
coloring that might occur in a given imaginative occurrence.
Pigments could be the greens of leaves, the reds of crushed rock,
the whiteness of snow. Wood, stone, mud, dirt, roots, flowers,
foliage, moss, ice, water, even sheep's wool, are some of the
organic materials that comprise Goldsworthy's multi-dimensional
canvas. His bare, grizzled hands (and sometimes his teeth) are his
brushes; his bruised fingernails scream for your (or a doctor's)
attention. His easel could be a grassy field, a rock-strewn meadow,
a gravelly coastline, or other serene setting.
His
trademark squiggles and snakes, reminiscent of the meandering of a
river, are just a few of the artistic arcs present. Riedelsheimer's
contribution is an astute camera placement, brilliantly
complimenting the art and artist, whether capturing a pink sunset
reflected in the water or an aerial view showing us the cycle of
turning. On a more necessary level, Goldsworthy asks the filmmaker
to put his camera aside and help him with a rock formation. Someone
else catches this moment for us.
When not
at his home base with his wife and four blonde-haired moppets in
Penpoint, Scotland, the small pastoral village where he has resided
the last dozen years, Goldsworthy's at play in the fields and
streams of the lord. One huge installation during the last third of
the film is at Storm King Sculpture Park in Mountainville, New York,
where we witness the genius of an artist accustomed to observing the
way time has changed landscapes, the way nature balances each
changing moment, and how he can create a startling, fluid river of
stone that reflects a profound vision.
There's
something magical in Rivers and Tides. Let the artist play
on. |
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