WHAT WE LIKE

The Improvisational Filmmaking of Godard

The French and Swiss filmmaker and “provocateur extraordinaire” was known for making a lot of his films without a finished screenplay. While commercial studios pre-plan their projects down to the smallest detail, Godard used only vague outlines, giving his actors room for improvisation and spontaneity. Dialogues were often developed in a more impromptu style – on the spot – giving the impression of interviews, of documentary realism. As one of his chief collaborators – Jean-Pierre Gorin puts it – “We think the split between documentary and fiction is false”.

Working with a bold dose of chance, his approach was quite in contrast with the preconceived ideas coming out of Hollywood. He managed to perfectly catch the spirit of the generation of 1968 – its rebellion, romance, anti-materialism and the new style of life. Godard made it his mission to shake up established formulas as radical as possible, e.g. by “liberating sound from the tyranny of sight”, as he put it, and to challenge and provoke the viewer out of the passive viewing habits.

The Guitar Quintets of Boccherini

Luigi Boccherini was a much-underrated Italian chamber music composer and a formiadаble cello virtuoso who lived and worked during the buoyant Rococo era in 18th century Spain. What makes his music so extraordinary and appealing to us is the fact that he was greatly influenced by the music tradition of his adopted country, Spain, to the extend that he wrote several guitar quintets. He masterfully infused the traditional Spanish folk instrument (the guitar), popular melodical and rhythmical motifs (fandango and seguidilla) and local musical nodes (Andalusian scales) of the lower classes of the society into the “aristocratic” string ensemble music, which was a musical form imported from abroad and was intended for consumption by noble audiences. This was rather an innovative approach for its time and it added a new, richer texture to the classical model.

The Hyperreal World of Baudrillard

Jean Baudrillard was a French philosopher whose theories on key cultural and sociological phenomena of the epoch played a crucial role in the articulation of the semiotic concept of hyperreality and foresaw the rapid emergence of “virtual reality” and “AI”. In one of his best-known works, “Simulacra and Simulation” (written in 1981), he discusses the blending of the “real” with the representation and the inability of our consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality. “The Matrix” trilogy that acquired a cult following heavily borrowed from his ideas.

According to Baudrillard, we have entered the age of simulation, where codes, models and signs are the organising forms of new identities and a new social order. Products are sold even before they exist. Simulacra are ecstatic imitations of copies (of copies of copies) of originals to the extend that the resemblance to those originals is completely lost. They refer only to themselves, like a house of mirrors with its myriad of reflected reflections. Hyperreality, simulation and simulacra became so ubiquitous in our high-tech society that we hardly pay any attention to the destructive impact of the endless proliferation of images, information and signs produced by seductive new technologies like social media and AI – technologies that overpower us with consumer values, ideologies and role models and take control over our thoughts and behaviour.

The Greediness for Life of Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon was one the last great “anti-illustrational” painters of the 20th century known for his unsetlling images of the human condition. Having drifted as a bon vivant and gambler until his late 20s, the chance and risk-taking trait of his character became the leading force in his creative process and his philosophy as an artist, because “the moment you know what to do, you’re making just another form of illustration”. In a way, he uses spontaneity and accident to produce disturbing and emotionally charged images of “appearances that are conditioned as little as possible by the accepted standards of what appearance is”, as one critic put it. Bacon believed that the change of instincts from generation to generation is what urges artists to try new things and prevents them from being intimidated by the achievements of the great artists of the past.

Reniassance And Baroque masters painted from life in their studios but only whatever was physically possible to drag in and place in front of their easels. For everything else, they used sketches and their artistic license to make things up. The Impressionists likewise painted from life – outdoors scenes “en plain air” but also portraits indoors. But Bacon never painted from life. Instead, he used a variety of visual source materials for inspiration and as a base for his work – photographs, stills from movies, medical textbooks – to further distort and abstract the human figure.
He drew on the tradition of the old masters – Rafael, Rembrandt, Velasquez – and he would typically start with a fairly realistic depiction of a figure but then physically brutalise it by smearing it or wiping away parts of the paint while still wet.

“And it’s partly my greed that has made me what’s called live by chance – greed for food, for drink, for being with the people one likes, for the excitement of things happening. So the same thing applies to one’s work”.