Dissections Of Sexual Appetite

The cinema of Peter Greenaway, 1994

Programming Note: This was really the first long-form piece of writing I ever did, produced for the Department of Art History at Kingston University during my first year there. I’d taken a film studies class, which focused on some of the fundamentals of cinematic history, and introduced me to Greenaway in a really exciting way. Looking back, while primitive, the work I wrote here started to sow the seeds for ultimately changing my course after the first year, to a double honors course across Art History and Fine Art. I’ve retained the original text here, but gone back over everything and included more images and video, which were almost impossible to find at the time.

“Film resembles painting, music, literature, and the dance in this respect - it is a medium that may, but need not, be used to produce artistic results.”
Rudolph Arnheim

”Art is everywhere in Peter Greenaway’s films - inspiring lighting, color, and composition, costume and set design, and even major themes. While many of today’s film makers take their inspiration from other movies, Greenaway points to ‘2000 years of image making, in terms of draughtsmanship and painting’ as his chief source.”
Ronald De Feo: Fantasy In Crimson, Art News, March 1990

”Yet over and over again, Greenaway manipulates our response, checks it saying ‘Caught you!’ You know these are arrant cliches. How can you take them seriously?’ Or ‘You have made a fundamental error of confusing fiction with reality.’”
Jeanne Silverthorne: 'The Cave, Artforum, April 1990

”I am interested in discovering how we approach history, both in terms of how we think people lived at a particular moment in time, and what were the cultural and aesthetic imperitives in the textures of society. Also, more simply, what is and what isn’t true.”
Peter Greenaway in conversation with Don Ranvaud, Sight And Sound, Summer 1987

Introduction

”His earlier films are extremely verbal, even literary, drawing on a satiric tradition traceable back through Lewis Carroll to alexander Pope and Jonathon Swift. These films are also stunningly visual, rendering densely textured and painterly tableaux from a largely stationary and lingering camera.”
Coco Fusco: Requiem For An Architect, Art In America, February 1988

If we are to question Rudolph Arnheim’s quotation, is Peter Greenaway a film maker or an artist? I would argue that he is ambiguously neither one nor the other. He is not so much a film maker, but a ‘cinematic image’ maker (yet also in a different manner to video / installation artists such as Bill Viola, Gary Hill or Bruce Nauman). What are the differences between a film maker and an artist, or are they inseparable?

I would describe a film maker as someone who primarily concerns themselves with the themes of the cinematic vocabulary - narrative, montage, dialogue, character development and others (‘story telling’). Whereas I feel that the ‘cinematic image’ maker, whilst also being concerned with the same issues, associates himself / herself more with the ‘image making’ itself, as opposed to anything else. This is certainly true of Peter Greenaway’s cinema, which, by its experimental nature (the basic nature of artistic practice) is not going to be easy for an audience in the way that the Hollywood style of cinema he is reacting against would be. This is typified by the way he immediately confronts the viewer with a ‘bewildering visual and aural torrent of elaborate neo classical sets, gyrating dancers, computer generated video images, Elizabethan verse and booming sound effects’ at the beginning of ‘Prospero’s Books’. Another such example of this would be that Greenaway is well known for rejecting dialogue in favor of a more heightened form of language, using his characters as metaphors for ideas, even to the point where his characters have been critically referred to as ‘melodramatic mouthpieces’. It is aspects of his cinema that attempt to break the conventional norms of traditional cinema that I wish to investigate in this study.

If a ‘film’ maker such as Greenaway is working within an image - biased cinematic vocabulary, primarily with the themes of the reconsideration of the past and feelings of loss, producing obviously artistic results that break the norms of cinema, are these the criteria on which to judge him as an artist?

My study will concentrate on two of Greenaway’s films - ‘Drowning By Numbers’ and ‘Prospero’s Books’, relating them not only to their cinematic companions, but also their art historical ones. I will look at the relationship between cinema of this experimental nature and artistic practice, comparing them to related artists and questioning just how and why Greenaway’s cinema is used to produce artistic results.

The Importance Of Source Material: Raiding The Banks Of Art History

”Here we have a thrilling sense of film as Gesamtkunstwerk, omnivorously encompassing painting, music, dance, architecture and sculpture.”
Amy Fine Collins and Brad Collins: Drowning The Text, Art In America, June 1992

It could be said that, in working within his artistically ‘image based’ visual framework, which is as elaborate as it is sumptuous, that Peter Greenaway’s cinema is in part, a series of ‘moving paintings’, montaged or juxtaposed together. In reference to his film ‘The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover’, Greenaway says “We used the colors of the painting (one by Frans Hal) “th code the rest of the film”. This is also true or perhaps more apparent in Derek Jarman’s ‘Caravaggio’, where the actors and actresses play out their roles as prescribed by the brush mark on the canvas, arranging themselves into the formal arrangements of Caravaggio’s paintings.

I feel that, in reference to Arnheim’s quotation, this theme of source material and its subsequent transformation (a literal change in medium in Jarman’s case) is one which blurs the boundary between who can be called a film maker and who can be called an artist.

Greenaway’s cinematic raiding of art history has often in the past been criticized for containing ‘abstruse detail and references’, his imagery referring to many facets of art history, often at the same time. This has led to critical attacks on his ‘marshalled crowded canvas’. This is most apparent in his ‘Prospero’s Books’, whereby the decadence and the baroque nature of the performance combined with the architecture and set design, leads the viewer away from any thought of narrative and almost compels them to enter his escapist, superficially utopia like creation.

It is his formal use of the Baroque and Rococco which relates him to contemporary artists such as Jeff Koons. The Baroque was concerned with showmanship and theatricality, albeit a facade, fitting well into the painterly tradition of trompe l’oeil, or playing visual games with each other. Drawing on the same influences, yet with different goals in mind, leads us to believe that conceptually and through each using similar processes of working, they are not as far apart as one would initially believe.

This method in which art historical references, particularly decadent or extravagant ones like the Baroque is particularly apparent in ‘Drowning By Numbers’, where even Greenaway’s screenplay is written with specific references in mind.

”The skipping rope is white with japanned red handles ‘… 42 … Vega … 43 … Sirius … 44 … Nekkor …’ The girl is pale and could have escaped from Velazquez’s ‘Las Meninas’ … She looks unreal … her expression is much too old or too knowing for her age.”
Drowning By Numbers, extract from opening sequence screenplay

Other references combine contemporary or twentieth century pieces with those of antiquity or from the age of enlightenment. Other than the skipping girl’s link to Velazquez, we need look no further than Smut’s ritual for dressing in the morning compared with Yves Klein’s famous photograph of the jump into the void, or shots of the three Cissies together, with Regnault’s ‘Three Graces’. Of course, there are many more references, yet in portraying these events in the context of our own time, they become perverse and slightly out of touch with reality, which creates this escapist euphoric atmosphere so abundant in much of Greenaway’s cinema. The results of this cinema draw on many of the visual innovations of the twentieth century, for example the traditions of collage and photomontage are particularly linked to artists such as Schwitters, Warhol and Rauschenberg.

Greenaway also draws on many of the inherent themes of art history; detah, life, sex, violence and so on, to present his ideas, causing the references to particular artists to be immense. One particular artist I would single out as being especially linked to Greenaway would be Kiki Smith.

If we take ‘Prospero’s Books’ for example, the similarities are overwhelming. Andreas Vesalius is an obvious connection between the two. His sixteenth century mortuary dissections providing both of them with rich, influential material in which to present their own twentieth century version of the mortuary dissections of sexual appetite in the contemporary social context. Both use the power exerted over women as a dominant theme, as well as decorative aesthetics combined with horrifying degrees of violence.

Therefore, if Greenaway is so closely linked to an artist like Kiki Smith or Jeff Koons, does this make him an artist, whose only difference from them is that his medium is film?

Greenaway’s Relation To Artistic Practice: A Battery Of Ideas

”Cinema is far too rich and capable a medium to be merely left to the story tellers.”
Peter Greenaway, A White Horse With Black Stripes, Sight And Sound, Winter 1985/6

I feel that Peter Greenaway’s emotionally involved cinematic works function with the now established ‘postmodernist’ tradition of plunging into art history, removing certain aspects of particular imagery and combining them into a twentieth century context. In this he uses themes inherent in art history to produce performances inexorably linked to our own times. In this he uses a battery of ideas, all of which are crammed into the impossible space of the duration of the film. His ‘Drowning By Numbers’ can be said to be the kind of product of a cinematic recipe, mixing together Regnault’s ‘Three Graces’ with Brueghel’s game playing, Velazquez’s decadence with Gericault’s mortality and so on, to produce what could be described as a Pre-Raphaelite end product. Yet the overriding theme of the film, in Greenaway’s words is that ‘the good do not get rewarded, the bad do not get punished, and the innocent always get abused’.

In a less subtle sense, ‘Prospero’s Books’ is more of a literal plunging into antiquity with specific references to works such as Andreas Vesalius’ ‘The Fabrica’ and Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ (on which the screenplay is based).

I feel that it is this idea of producing a ‘post-modernist’ film that relates what Peter Greenaway does to the theme of artistic practice. The importance of image making through similar processes is paramount in comparing Greenaway to any other ‘artist’. This is perhaps where any kind of comparison can get lost.

What exactly does an artist do? Is Greenaway an artist? How does he differ from a Hollywood director like Steven Spielberg?

I would argue that Greenaway is producing artistic cinema, and the production processes of making a film are no different to the methods of working by someone like Jeff Koons. Both basically direct people into making the art for them. What Greenaway produces is the cinematic antithesis of a Seven Spielberg film. With a strongly different agenda, Greenaway, in reacting against this breed of cinema, has referred to it as ‘Mickey Mouse’ cinema, where violence is seen to have no cause and effect at all. Greenaway makes films in the same way as any other piece of art, setting up a dialogue between the work and the audience, and prompting questions on social, moral and personal issues.

Another problem lies in the disassociation of large screen ‘cinema’ with ‘art’. I feel this is because art has always had little or no relation to the entertainment industry (where film seems to operate) and as entertainment, art isn’t that interesting. I do not wish to answer the question ‘Are Greenaway’s films entertaining?’, but I do feel by the very nature of the medium of film, his cinema does blur the boundaries between cinema, entertainment and art.

One such art movement which did combine art with the world of the entertainment industry was Pop Art, one of its major themes being reproduction and its subsequent display. Greenaway is also very concerned with this, in both human and artistic terms. He uses the ways in which the human form has been reproduced through ‘art’ (painting, sculpture, photography etc.) to generate ideas of cloning and the actual methods of reproducing something (and of course, what happens to it afterwards).

In terms of artistic statements, Greenaway often shocks, drawing larger meanings out of discomforting detail. The detachment from the character in focus is performed in such a way as to be similar to the approach of American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. He has been described as treating his characters with a ‘cold, misanthropic detachment’ which is often as shocking as the action itself. Scenes such as Smut’s self-circumcision with a pair of scissors in ‘Drowning By Numbers’, or the ten-minute rape sequence from ‘The Baby of Macon’ explore the very edges of human experience, prompting the question, how far can a film director go without eventually alienating his audience?

In film, the audience are more or less fed information as to the development of the plot, whereas ‘art’ leaves the dialogue more often, the piece is often open to subjective opinion. I feel that Greenaway operates fluidly somewhere between the two.

The Production Of Artistic Results

”The good do not get rewarded, the bad do not get punished, and the innocent always get abused.”

”Remember the ecstasy of living”

”Remember when sleeping with your partner was contentment”

Peter Greenaway in conversation with Sarah Dunant, The Late Show, BBC

In utilizing themes central to the core of artistic practice, and its basic formal elements in the actual execution of the work, Greenaway produces ‘cinema’ which is visually, and perhaps more importantly, conceptually, rich. He uses the cinema not to tell stories but to ask questions. I feel that the reason why there would appear to be some debate about wether or not film can produce artistic results, is that in what I would generalizingly term ‘art’ or ‘avant garde’ cinema, little emphasis is given to basic cinematic concerns. This would include narrative, dialogue and other ‘stage like’ aspects, yet where the particular image and its subsequent juxtaposition come into play, then great emphasis is placed on using this device to produce as visually stunning / interesting a piece as possible.

One such example of where narrative is hardly used at all would be in Andy Warhol’s ‘Empire’ (1964), where a constant shot of The Empire State Building is filmed over a period of time, and ll that changes are the lights within the building. Greenaway does not operate at quite this extreme a level, but it illustrates the point that cinema does not need narrative to still be cinema.

This narrative idea is toyed with in ‘Drowning By Numbers’, with the notion of plotting a course through the film by placing the numbers one to one hundred on objects throughout the film. The immediately confronts the audience and forceably makes them try to look out for the next number in the sequence. It could therefore be argued that this method of game playing with the audience tends to obscure or drown the basic theme of narrative (hence the name of the film?).

So to produce artistic results, do you have to concentrate on the visual imagery alone, and its subsequent montage or juxtaposition? Can a Hollywood blockbuster film be ‘art’? I feel the gap where film ends and art cinema begins is already very blurred, yet if I were to make the decision, I would say that film ends when the audience’s coherent sense of a narrative, the ‘story telling’ becomes less important that what you actually see.

Another difference between Greenaway and mainstream cinema is the ironic detachment from the fate of his characters (and indeed, also from his audience), as demonstrated perfectly in ‘Drowning By Numbers’. This relates strongly to Bill Viola’s mother’s role in his film ‘The Passing’, where the shots of her dying fill us with a melancholic emotion, yet we are so far removed from that particular environment that a sort of ambiguous detached atmosphere is set up between viewer and video screen.

In conclusion, and also in reference to Rudolph Arnheim’s quotation, Greenaway’s films, whilst not concentrating on narrative completely, are therefore operating in the middle ground between two extremes on the cinematic spectrum. On the one hand, you have Warhol’s ‘Empire’, totally image based and devoid of narrative (although one could theorize about it in reference to his other work) and on the other, the Hollywood blockbuster, totally immersed in narrative, and with little emphasis or consideration given to ‘visual sumptuousness’. There, I would suggest that film, whilst not having to produce artistic results, can do by becoming less narrative based, and more concerned with the visual imagery itself.

Conclusions

“Of course, Greenaway’s antirealist film aesthetic provides him with an easy way to justify his obtrusive uses of art history sources. If they fit seamlessly into the narrative that’s fine; if they show up undigested, that’s fine too, because they will remind the viewer of the artifice of film making.”
Amy Fine Collins and Brad Collins: 'Drowning The Text' Art in America, June 1992

In drawing conclusions about Peter Greenaway’s escapist cinema in relation to the context of Rudolph Arnheim’s quotation, I feel that it is important to note that Greenaway’s cinema will always be seen in an experimental ‘avant-garde’ art film context. He differs from an artist such as Bill Viola in that the cinema he produces does not have the sense of ‘one man and his camera’, so abundant in many experimental films, rather, he produces lavish, ornate productions on a grand scale, executed with the pin point accuracy of an artist such as Jeff Koons.

On the other hand, he differs from a Hollywood director such as Lucas or Spielberg, who are more concerned with the relaying of stories rather than ideas based around the taboos of the visual imagery itself.

Greenaway’s cinema draws heavily on the art historical references in society yet not in a plageristic way, they are used to illustrate feelings, settings, and such like, they are metaphors for a state of mind.

Finally, I believe that Peter Greenaway’s experimental film does resemble painting, music, literature and the dance, but the dividing line between where a film does or does not produce artistic results is ambiguous, and I feel that it is this fine dividing line that Peter Greenaway’s cinema walks.