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6 ‫ﱜ‬ Art, Politics, and Painters Painting Perspective AfterbeingaminorplayerintheNewYorkartworldfor almost two decades, de Antonio decided to make it the subject of his next film, after America Is Hard to See.1 The decision came as something of a surprise, if not a disappointment, to those who expectedhimtocontinueexploringthepressingpoliticalissuesofthe late 1960s and early 1970s.2 Why would a radical filmmaker make a “feature-length commercial for the art establishment?” asked one critic who viewed Painters Painting (1972) as an aberration in the development of de Antonio’s film career.3 This interpretation, however, does justice to neither the filmmaker nor the film, which was better characterized by one of its participants, gallery owner Leo Castelli. While de Antonio’s camera explores the famous Castelli Gallery, we hear its proprietor speaking on the telephone: “I have de Antonio here. . . . He’s making a film, you know, like the McCarthy film but without McCarthy.” Or, as the filmmaker wrote to one of his critics: “Painters Painting is more political than you seem to think. Art is power.”4 De Antonio had a complex view of this power. He loved the painting of the New York School and its offspring as the “one thing that makes me comfortable in postwar America,” the one place where alienation and dissent were intelligently and passionately expressed. Yet at the end of the sixties de Antonio’s favorite 155 156 Art, Politics, and Painters Painting paintings were increasingly accused of sins—elitism, apoliticism, commodification—that were at odds with his political radicalism. The problem was an old one: as the artist Robert Smithson said in 1970, the rat of politics always gnaws at the cheese of art. Caught between art and politics, taste and conscience, de Antonio responded with a personal film that walked the tightrope between these polarities rather than give in to one or the other. While Painters Painting does not pretend to resolve this dilemma, de Antonio’s experience with the project sheds light on one of the thorniest issues confronting a political filmmaker during this period.5 The idea for the film came from Terry Moore, the young poet who married de Antonio in the mid-1960s.6 Part of the avantgarde scene in New York, she had acted in Claes Oldenburg’s happeningsandwasaclosefriendofpainterssuchasFrankStella. When de Antonio was at a loss for what to do after In the Year of the Pig (1969) and America Is Hard to See (1970), and before he had the materials that sparked Millhouse (1971), she suggested he make a film about painting, clearly one of his favorite topics. Few filmmakers had the background and the connections to make a serious and personal film about art in New York in the fifties and sixties. What other filmmaker had dated Helen Frankenthaler , produced concerts for John Cage and Merce Cunningham, arranged commercial jobs for Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, helped Frank Stella find a gallery, and been credited by Andy Warhol with inventing pop art? Warhol had even made a film about him (Drink, 1963), and de Antonio’s portrait was one of Stella’s “Purple Series” of abstract paintings (D, 1963). But de Antonio was reluctant and relented only when Moore pointed out the perfect locus for such a film.7 Henry Geldzahler, then curator of twentieth-century arts at the Metropolitan Museum, was planning a major show of American painting from 1940 to 1970 as part of the museum’s centennial celebration. De Antonio obtained the exclusive rights to film the show by drawing on his friendship with Geldzahler, as well promising the curator $3,000 up front and 10 percent of Art, Politics, and Painters Painting 157 the profits.8 Important paintings had come from collections all over the world in a journey made precarious by their enormous size, fragility, and insurance costs. For these reasons de Antonio believed “Henry’s show,” as the press referred to it, was the last best chance to survey the accomplishments of the New York School. From October 18, 1969, to February 1, 1970, Geldzahler adorned the walls of the Metropolitan with “New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940–1970,” which included 408 works by fortythree artists, among them Barnett Newman, Frank Stella, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, and Robert Rauschenberg. With excitement de Antonio wrote: “Where once the Rembrandts and Titians hung, now hangs the School of N.Y.; one painting by Frank Stella is 42 feet wide.”9 De Antonio’s agreement with the Metropolitan was to film at night...

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