Rhetorical question: Why is animation one of the most visually appealing art forms at the moment? And its answer: When has it not been? It's so easy for human eyes to be mesmerised by a picture in motion. We like to follow a ball of yarn as it unfurls, so to speak, and animations, in their uncanny mixture of the real with the imagined, their often unintelligibly quick pace and tendency toward eyecandy facture, have an added element: frivolous fun, or at least many people's idea of it. Perhaps there's just more animation going around, and being shown, these days than ever before, with more here not necessarily implying better, whether in immediacy, depth, beauty or sophistication, but rather a range reflecting a wider array of subjects and representation, an unprecedented self-awareness, certainly a range that is entering the gallery space for the first time. Actually there is so much animation making the rounds at the moment perhaps the medium, historically a highly private, underground, labor-intensive, visionary thing when used for artistic means, is close to running the risk of becoming, how should I say it, boring. It could be argued there is so much of it that patterns, repetition, oversimplification and predictability (as is the case with your regular, all purpose tv animation) are becoming alarmingly associated with the very art form which from its very beginnings, and at its very core, is the embodiment of illusion, artifice, and experimentation - of leaving the viewer, jaw-dropped, contemplating not just the subject but the very genesis and magic of the artist's inventiveness and superhuman patience, the whole and each of its painstaking frames. But I for one think this mainstream-isation of artists' animation isn't altogether a bad thing - the more one sees, the more discerning and appreciative one may become - thus ultimately the more pleasure that may be stumbled upon.
'Fantasmagoria', the new show at Madrid's ICO Foundation (to 18 March) is a case in point. Here we have a selection of more than thirty animations made over the last eight years by artists from a wide array of countries, so there's a lot to compare and contrast. The films' subjects and techniques reflect each artist's aesthetic and interests. Kara Walker's gorgeous vintage-looking films are made with manipulated cut-outs, like her signature installations, of Antebellum stereotypes investigating African-American identity; Shahzia Sikander's use image-accretion and collage to explore cultural and political divisions between East and West; Pia Ronicke's moving computer montages try to answer the what if's of a familiar, failed modernist utopian project. Binding all the works is the common denominator of simplified process, an adherence to what some have termed 'poor animation' - we're talking about artists, and their assistants, making short, uncomplicated, highly looped animations mostly as one-off projects, not the whole Aardman animation studio devoting a whole year to a feature-length film. Disappointingly, much of the work seemed to tread on that danger zone I was describing earlier, totally devoid of that inscrutable magic I love about animation - over half of the films seemed too easy, pretty, programmed, passionless, like baby steps, sadly not exploring the medium's potential. The pieces that worked best were not necessarily the most polished ones, but those which conveyed a highly developed sense of wonder at the flickering image. Simplification is effective in some cases - Gu Dexin's naive-looking stick figure vignettes, depicting killings, punishments and other acts of extreme cruelty associated with totalitarian regimes, offer a powerful critique of preconceived notions of action and reaction, visually as well as politically. Watching these animations, crude as they may look, actually makes you realise the medium is as significant as the content. Francis Alys' 'Song for Lupita', a installation combining a loop of a small animated line-drawing of a mysterious figure pouring water between two glasses next to a turntable holding a 7-inch which at some point has ostensibly been played, is like a concrete poem, simple but the most original piece in the whole show. It works by using animation to change everything about time and place - watching the loop and imagining the song the viewer is for a moment immediately transported to someone else's environment and given someone else's imagination, the sound like a memory and the animation, like a fragment of a dream, an inexplicable composition. Much like Emil Cohl's 'Fantasmagorie', the 1908 1min 13sec animation (which many call the first) of a simple white line's progress into form and action, where nothing is left buried, or explained. Which explains why I had to stand and watch it twenty times in a row, remaining as perplexed and enamoured afterward. Trust me, the more you see, the more pleasure you'll stumble upon.
From Kara Walker's '8 possible beginnings or: the creation of an African-America', 2006.
(see above)
Still from animation by Gu Dexin, 2001-03.
Still from animation by Gu Dexin, 2001-03.
Still from animation by Pia Ronicke.
From Raymond Pettibon's 'Repeater Pencil', 2004.
Still from Shahzia Sikander's 'Nemesis', 2003.
Still from J. Tobias Anderson's '879 Colour', 2002.
Still from Emil Cohl's 'Fantasmagorie', 1908.
FANTASMAGORIA - DRAWING IN MOTION
Museo Colecciones ICO
Zorrilla 3
28014 Madrid, Spain
Lupe Nunez-Fernandez.
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