BOOTLEG FILES 876: “The Challenge: A Tribute to Modern Art” (1974 Oscar-nominated documentary narrated by Orson Welles).
LAST SEEN: On YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: There might be a right issue that is unresolved.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: A re-release on DVD and Blu-ray is not likely at this time.
Question: How can anyone encapsulate the history of modern art in roughly 100 minutes? The answer: You cannot, although Herbert Kline gave it a spirited try with his 1974 documentary feature “The Challenge: A Tribute to Modern Art.” Perhaps the key word in the film’s title is “tribute” – as with any tribute, it provides a celebratory overview of achievement without plumbing the depth and scope of the subject with any great intensity.
Viewed today, “The Challenge: A Tribute to Modern Art” is strictly an old-school documentary feature: pedagogic and a bit plodding, but also well-researched and often surprising. To its credit, the film is rich with rare archival footage and then-contemporary interviews with the titans of the field. Yet key figures and events in modern art history are either too-briefly considered or are omitted.
And the film is also burdened or enlivened (depending on your patience level) by the presence of Orson Welles as an on-screen narrator. Encased in a black overcoat that only emphasizes his girth against the white walls of the art galleries while carrying an oversized hat behind his back, Welles is an XL-sized distraction – for a contemporary viewer, it is obvious that he is going through this presentation in a half-hearted manner just to snag enough money to finance more footage of another self-funded film that would never be completed. But when he’s off-camera, his peerless oratory enhances the production in a stylish yet unobtrusive manner.
“The Challenge: A Tribute to Modern Art” begins its journey by focusing on Pablo Picasso – he wasn’t the first modern art star, of course, but he was the first to resonate with the general public. Picasso is viewed in historic film clips, and other modern artists including Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Max Ernst and Jackson Pollock are glimpsed in vintage footage.
To its credit, “The Challenge: A Tribute to Modern Art” offers original color footage of the modern art legends who were still active when the film was made. Marc Chagall, Roy Lichtenstein, Alexander Calder and Willem de Kooning make rare on-camera appearances to show off their work and offer insight on the creative process.
The film also acknowledges the importance of art collectors in gathering modern art and making these works accessible to the public. Collector Peggy Guggenheim is accorded an on-screen interview that considers her role in bridging the gap between modern art’s often enigmatic imagery and the public’s appreciation of its challenge to cultural protocol.
Of course, there is only so much that can be squeezed into the film’s running time, and the film has some gaps that could have been addressed in a longer running time. The role of women and people of color in modern art is conspicuously underplayed – and while new interviews with Lousie Nevelson and Romare Bearden are included, the contributions of Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot and Henry Ossawa Tanner at the dawn of the modern art movement are ignored. Likewise, the controversies of the 1913 Armory Show and the 1937 Nazi-sponsored Degenerate Art Show don’t raise a blip in this film.
And, strangely, John Lennon and Yoko Ono turn up as examples of then-contemporary modern art. While a tenuous argument could be made for Ono’s inclusion, Lennon’s presence is wrong.
“The Challenge: A Tribute to Modern Art” was a last hurrah for filmmaker Herbert Kline, who earned prominence for his on-location 1930s war documentaries “Heart of Spain,” “Return to Life” and “Crisis.” His career was derailed by the McCarthy-era blacklist and he was absent from screens until the 1970 documentary “’Walls of Fire”’ about the Mexican artists Diego Rivera and David Alfaro – that film received an Oscar nomination and won a Golden Globe.
“The Challenge: A Tribute to Modern Art” was also Oscar nominated, but lost to the groundbreaking “Hearts and Mind.” The film had a scattershot theatrical release in 1975 and again in 1977, but didn’t click with moviegoers. To date, there has been no U.S. commercial home entertainment release, although there was a European DVD in 2003 under the title “Modern Art: A Complete Guide.” A decent print is on YouTube in an unauthorized posting (although it is hard to explain why it is an “age restricted” offering, unless paintings of naked ladies is a bit too risqué for today’s online crowd).
IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.
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