Peter Greenaway S Post Cinematic Art World

Peter Greenaway has an international reputation as one of the most innovative, stylish and intelligent of contemporary film-makers. His eight feature films, from The Draughtsman's Contract to The Pillow Book, have variously, and sometimes simultaneously, prompted controversy, infamy, acclaim and delight. However, Greenaway is an artist whose work also includes painting; collage; experimental TV; the novel/opera Rosa; and numerous exhibitions/installations, including The Stairs, a continuing series of ten projects in ten cities exploring the basic components of cinema. Being Naked Playing Dead explores the complete oeuvre, but centres firmly on Greenaway's insistence that his is 'a cinema of ideas not plots'. Each film is discussed within a thematic analysis of the full range of Greenaway's output and the wider contexts within which it is conceived. In conclusion there are two extended interviews, making this book essential reading for all Greenaway enthusiasts.

Since the 1960s, British multi-media artist Peter Greenaway has shocked and intrigued audiences with his avant-garde approach to filmmaking and other artistic ventures. From early experimental films to provocative features, Greenaway has deployed strategies associated with structuralist cinema, only to challenge or critique the very limits of that cinema and of film in general. In this collection of essays, scholars from a variety of disciplines explore various postmodern and poststructuralist aspects of Greenaway's films, starting with his early shorts and delving into his feature-length works, including The Draughtman's Contract, The Belly of an Architect, A Zed and Two Noughts, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, The Baby of M%con, and The Pillow Book. Other artistic productions, including his paintings and installations are also discussed. These essays examine the filmmaker's position within British and avant-garde cinema and his interest in constructing and deconstructing representational systems. In the years since the first edition of this book, Greenaway has enjoyed continued success in creating hybridized media projects for the stage and screen, as evidenced by additional essays for this revised edition. A new chapter addresses how Dutch political events and Dutch art have been crucial in shaping Greenaway's aesthetic, focusing on The Draughtsman's Contract, the 1991 opera Writing to Vermeer, and Nightwatching, the audio-visual installation and 2007 film of the same name, which were inspired by Rembrandt's Night Watch. Also new to this collection is an essay that examines Greenaway's most ambitious endeavor to date, The Tulse Luper Suitcases, which exists as four feature films, multiple websites, an online game, several books and installations, and a number of theatrical events. Peter Greenaway's Postmodern/Poststructuralist Cinema, Revised Edition explores the cultural, historical, and philosophical implications of this hybrid artist whose paintings, drawings, exhibitions, installations, and operatic productions are an intrinsic part of his work in film. This collection of diverse essays, which includes two texts by Greenaway, two interviews with the director, and a revised filmography, will interest students, teachers, critics and lovers of both postmodern art and cinema.

Peter Greenaway is one of the most distinctive and provocative personalities to emerge in European cinema in the last two decades. This extensively illustrated critical study examines Greenaway's vision from a number of perspectives.

Twenty-one interviews with the controversial director of films such as Prospero's Books and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover

Trans/actions: Art, Film and Death explore the representation of art, artists and art history in film through two primary questions. The first: why are there so many representations of stereotypical mad artists, particularly psychopathic killers and suicidal artists in film when there are so few clearly documented cases of such artists within the history of art? And the second question, with two components: is there a political meaning that is able to be assigned to the proliferation of such films in contemporary society, and what does this say about the producers of such material and the consuming interest in art, death, and crime, of the cinema going public? Employing Jacques Derrida's "four times around" deconstructive process, the author takes the philosophical injunction to explore the surrounds and approaches to his chosen subjects -- the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, Roger Corman, Tim Burton, Peter Greenaway, among others -- paying specific attention to "the work, frame, passe partout (key), title, signature, museum, archive, discourse, marketplace -- in short, wherever there is legislation by marking of the limit" (Derrida, 1987). Each of the chapters move beyond the two original questions and their related components, across and through - trans/acting - various theoretical, historical and critical fields into specific domains of philosophical and political enquiry; for example, the question of the other in the construction of social stereotypes, and the political and libidinal economy of various types of humour: parody, irony and satire. Employing the post-Freudian phantasmatic models developed by Giorgio Agamben, the author discusses the historical construction of various stereotypes for artists, particularly the manner in which these have been ideologically inscribed into the cultural dominant, and thereby become available for reproduction, both in terms of artist's presentation of self in everyday life, and also in terms of cultural representations within the domains of mass and popular culture, specifically cinema. Bruce Barber is an interdisciplinary artist based in Halifax, Nova Scotia where he directs the MFA Program at NSCAD University. He is the research coordinator at the European Graduate School, EGS and the editor of Essays on Performance and Cultural Politicization; Conceptual Art: the NSCAD Connection 1967-1973. Co-editor, with Guilbaut, S., and O'Brian J., Voices of Fire: Art Rage, Power and the State. Editor, Conde + Beveridge: Class Works (2008); author of Performance [Performance] and Performers: Essays and Conversations edited by Marc Leger (2008).

British filmmaker Peter Greenaway says life offers only two subjects: “One is sex and the other is death.” Greenaway uses both and romanticizes neither; indeed, his goal is the antithesis of the sanitary and sentimental portrayal of humanity. Although his films have met with outrage from some viewers, cult audiences praise them for insightful messages: that people are detached from violence because they fail to see others’ bodies as identical to their own; that predatory capitalism has caused humans to lose sight of our shared physicality and mortality; and that taboos are simply a system allowing people to exercise power over others. This book examines nine of Greenaway’s feature films, dedicating a chapter to each: The Draughtsman’s Contract; A Zed and Two Noughts; The Belly of an Architect; Drowning by Numbers; The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover; Prospero’s Books; The Baby of Mâcon; The Pillow Book; and 8 1⁄2 Women. The author examines the characters and plot, studies the structure and elements of the story, explores Greenaway’s motives and reactions, and reveals audience reactions, including comments from viewers. A filmography lists films written and directed by Peter Greenaway from 1962 to 2004.

"Art history after modernism" does not only mean that art looks different today; it also means that our discourse on art has taken a different direction, if it is safe to say it has taken a direction at all. So begins Hans Belting's brilliant, iconoclastic reconsideration of art and art history at the end of the millennium, which builds upon his earlier and highly successful volume, The End of the History of Art?. "Known for his striking and original theories about the nature of art," according to the Economist, Belting here examines how art is made, viewed, and interpreted today. Arguing that contemporary art has burst out of the frame that art history had built for it, Belting calls for an entirely new approach to thinking and writing about art. He moves effortlessly between contemporary issues—the rise of global and minority art and its consequences for Western art history, installation and video art, and the troubled institution of the art museum—and questions central to art history's definition of itself, such as the distinction between high and low culture, art criticism versus art history, and the invention of modernism in art history. Forty-eight black and white images illustrate the text, perfectly reflecting the state of contemporary art. With Art History after Modernism, Belting retains his place as one of the most original thinkers working in the visual arts today.