Star Wars, Kubrick's 2001, modernism and awesomeness
Dec 09, 2008 in On-line
The Morning News pointed me to this great essay in art magazine Triple Canopy Jack Squad full on how George Lucas and Stanley Kubrick reacted and added to modernism and minimalism. Here’s a tease:
Wild Hogs on dvd In a 1967 essay on minimalism, Clement Greenberg, America’s most influential critic, could have been describing Star Wars: “Everything is rigorously rectilinear or spherical. Development within a given piece is usually repetition of the same modular shape, which may or may not be varied in size.” Greenberg rejected minimalism as pedestrian. “Minimal works are readable as art,” he wrote, “as almost anything is today, including a door, a table, or a blank sheet of paper.” Perhaps because of its fantastic nature, the Death Star has never been recognized as an essential work of minimalism—but it is one.4 Its destruction has never been acknowledged as a turning point for modernism—but it was one.5
The diptychs comparing screenshots from 2001, Star Wars and seminal works of modernist and minimalist art alone are worth the price of admission.
