(Untitled)
Deep within (Untitled) lies an insightful critique of the way art appreciation sometimes fails to go beyond the superficial, be the works worthy or not-so-worthy. But the nuance is mostly lost.
Like its close cousin the fashion world, the art scene—a hermetic, quasi-incestuous and moneyed institution free to wallow in any potential ridiculousness—is an easy target for jokes. Here’s a gag you’ve seen a million places: Someone takes a random, anonymous object—let’s say a thumbtack. They stick it into a gallery wall. Then they call it art. Zing! Take that, conceptual art.
That bit crops up in the seething art satire (Untitled), and it’s every bit as fresh and trenchant as when it turned up, with mild variation, in an episode of 227. But director Jonathan Parker is after something loftier than a mere sitcom—supposedly.
In one corner you have Adam Goldberg as Adrian Jacobs, a brooding, humorless composer of atonal music involving shrieking women and dudes kicking metal cans tied to strings. In the other you have gallery owner Madeleine Gray (Marley Shelton), attracted to such noncommercial art, as well as to that of the aforementioned gag. Somewhere in the middle is Adrian’s brother Josh (Eion Bailey), whose super-bland paintings of warm colors and dots Gray houses in the back room to sell to hotels, solely to finance her own otherwise money-losing business.
At least for the first half, all three are one-note jokes—pretentious, delusional caracatures that fit in well with the rest of the gallery of grotesques, including Vinnie Jones as an artist trading in tarted-up animal cadavers. At some point, however, Parker decided Adrian, while still apparently silly because he thinks kicked cans constitute music (whatta boob!), was the true hero, and Gray the arch-villainness. In (Untitled)’s view, it’s a case of a pure artist briefly seduced by mean old profiteers, who wouldn’t know “real” art if it bit them on the ass, which is no doubt encased in an unsensible outfit.
Deep within (Untitled) lies an insightful critique of the way art appreciation sometimes fails to go beyond the superficial, be the works worthy or not-so-worthy. Whatever nuanced exploration gets muddled and subsequently squashed by the kind of barndoor broad, witless satire that wrecked the similarly tiresome Art School Confidential. Perhaps all gallery owners really are parasitic phonies, but that doesn’t excuse the hateful, potentially vengeful reductionism of Gray’s character, so evidently evil she owns a tree of designer glasses that, of course, aren’t prescription, and she dresses in either noisy clothing or Sarah Lawrence tees. After awhile you stop pondering “But is it art?” (an asinine question the film naturally brokers) and instead wonder if conceptual art ran over Parker’s dog or something. C-
COMMENTS
ADD COMMENT
MORE
Article:
Liam Neeson Is a Badass Who Fights Wolves in the Wildnerness in "The Grey"
Article:
"Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close": It Will Always Be 'Too Soon' for a 9/11 Movie
Article:
Roman Polanski's "Carnage" Is a Delectable & Hilarious Slice of Misanthropy
Article:
The Top 10 Worst Films of 2011
Article:
Newest "Sherlock Holmes" Is Bigger, Louder—and Not as Good
Article:
Siblings Reconnect Over Shared Trauma in "Shame"
Article:
"The Other F Word" Shows What Happens When Men Trade Rock 'n' Roll for Fatherhood
