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Stan Douglas: the Inconsolable Melissa Lam

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Stan Douglas: the Inconsolable Melissa Lam Document généré le 27 sept. 2021 10:34 Vie des Arts Stan Douglas: The Inconsolable Melissa Lam Volume 52, numéro 214, supplément, printemps 2009 URI : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/61898ac Aller au sommaire du numéro Éditeur(s) La Société La Vie des Arts ISSN 0042-5435 (imprimé) 1923-3183 (numérique) Découvrir la revue Citer cet article Lam, M. (2009). Stan Douglas: The Inconsolable. Vie des Arts, 52(214), 5–5. Tous droits réservés © La Société La Vie des Arts, 2009 Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d’auteur. L’utilisation des services d’Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d’utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit. Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l’Université de Montréal, l’Université Laval et l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. https://www.erudit.org/fr/ FACES IN CONTEMPORARY ART STAN DOUGLAS THE INCONSOLABLE own mortality, he presents the viewer with a disturbing dichotomy between beauty By Melissa Lam and ugliness, the ethereal and the mortal. It all sounds wonderful, but is very difficult to apply to a bloody head of a middle-aged man. The artist plans to continue to make a new Self every five years, until he is inca­ Inconsolable Memories, 2005 Film Still pable of doing so. "The final one will be Image courtesy of the Artist done after I die, with blood drained out of my body," he told UK's The Art Newspaper. I wonder who will get that task... • the afternoon light re­ flecting patterns on his skin. The still reveals an action sequence; the man's steady gaze works in contrast with the woman's startled face caught by sur­ I am enraptured by a haunting prise. The tilted angle of the lamp on the still from Stan Douglas's 2005 work bedside table and the crumpled folds of Inconsolable Memories. A photographer the blankets contribute to the hurried turned filmmaker, Douglas came out of nature of the scene. The shadows created the Vancouver Photo-Conceptualist by the whiteness of the blanket contrasts School in the 1960s along with Jeff Wall, with the shadows of both the man and the Rodney Graham and Roy Arden. Douglas's women's white shirts. Even though the still work often challenges traditional narra­ captures all the brightness and light of the tives and the way in which we view outdoor sunshine and hotness of the advancement of plot. His films make use tropical country of Cuba, the photo plays of such structural techniques as Becketian with different layers of darkness - from repetition and miniscule incremental the dark wall contrasting against the thick differences in order to defy the viewer's darkness of the woman's hair, against the expectation of chronological plot in story­ blackness of the bedside table, the rect­ telling. 'Inconsolable Memories' takes angle of black on the floor against the place in post-revolutionary Cuba where richness of the man's skin. The viewer is the past is somehow present in the telling. interrupting a private moment between The black and white old-fashioned quality the two characters but the expression on image faces are being experienced by real of the film, the muted dark tone of the the woman's face indicates that she is living people - so many faces. I am looking wall and the faded polka-dot pattern of aware of the interruption, which is what at Luc Giard's face now... the face of the the woman's skirt add to the retro-quality makes the film still so interesting. The artist that captured Giacometti's face. Giard's of the scene. The chosen still reveals two viewer has become the intruder in this thick dark glasses that sit on his face have faces - a close-up of a man's grim profile photo who has created the interruption that same graphic intensity as the faces he and a woman in the background in and thus, in a way, created the action of draws - like this Giacometti in this text about the act of turning. The younger man is turning and surprise in the scene. • faces. Giacometti's face has an inquisitive hunched forward, eyes focused on a expressive quality. The faces in Giacometti's postcard of the New York skyline off art, on the other hand, are elongated, camera, his eyelashes strangely beautiful, stretched and have an archaic quality, a VIE DES ARTS N°214 .
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