Liz Goldner, Editor

UNTITLED THE MOVIE

"Untitled, the Movie" not only addresses contemporary art, postmodern and performance art. The film’s players present messages that go beyond their attractive and eccentric artistic personas, creating a film that is itself a conceptual artwork.

The movie's New York art world scenes are imbued with beautiful people, glamorous settings and edgy assemblage and minimal works.

But this is not a fashionable, escapist film, as its underlying message challenges our conventional perceptions about what art is. Dialogues about and presentations of artworks range from the satirical to the confrontational to the obscure.

SEAMLESS WORK OF ART

"Untitled" is a seamless work of and about art, questioning what the medium is and is not, without defining it or drawing conclusions. Discussions are on minimal art, schlock art and pieces so conceptual - such as pushpins stuck into gallery walls - they could be the artistic equivalent of the Emperor's New Clothes.

In one scene, focused on the nature of music, a dinner party guest asks what is the difference between music and noise. The response in part is that Beethoven’s "Ninth Symphony" could be noise if you don't like it. Questions are posed but not answered.

The film often pokes fun at the New York visual art world, artists, supporters, patrons and wannabees, as well as at musical artists who provoke and amuse the viewer with hilarious arrangements that include breaking glass and kicking a bucket.

THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE UGLY

The actors in "Untitled" are beautiful (Marley Shelton), handsome (Eion Bailey), sublimely morose (Adam Goldberg), as well as those portraying eccentric artists and wealthy, fawning supporters. The performances are understated with spare dialogue complimented by body language and facial expressions.

Madeleine (Marley Shelton) as the erudite Sarah Lawrence graduate/Chelsea gallerist has blonde coolness, reminiscent of Grace Kelly in "To Catch a Thief." With slicked back hair, a wardrobe including black vinyl, ersatz prescription eyeglasses and exotic jewelry, she is a work of art herself.

Madeleine exhibits only emergent art, even as others question her aesthetic tastes. Of one artist, whose minimal artwork is a light bulb going on and off, she says, "He sees the mystery in the material world." She also sells production art on the side to support her venue, but hesitates to show it on the gallery walls.

At the end of the movie, Madeleine avoids the need to sell schlock by mounting an exhibit of a hunter/taxidermy artist who was crushed by his own enormous assemblage piece (who during his lifetime dismissed her as too low profile to continue to display his works). This exhibit is a coup, providing the opportunity to make money without compromising her principles.

Adrian (Adam Goldberg), the over-the-top musician/composer of cacophonous works, enters the film with a Faustian sense of arrogance. But through seductions and challenges by Madeleine, he softens to compose a more harmonious piece of music. Pedestrian artist Josh (Eion Bailey) leaves the big city for more bucolic environs where less sophisticated and informed art viewers appreciate his uninspired works.

CONCEPTUAL FILM

"Untitled" questions the nature art - without drawing conclusions. Unlike more conventional films based on plot, characters or narrative, this work explores contemporary visual and performance art, while personifying them in hyperbolic characters who often mirror the artworks. With the rest of the movie spun from this initial concept the film is conceptual.

"Untitled" opened last Friday in only three theaters nationwide - in New York City, Los Angeles, and in bland, beige Irvine, California. I rushed over to watch it in Irvine, thinking the theater would be packed, and was surprised to see a dozen other moviegoers, two of whom left before it was over.

The spare audience in suburbia was a curious but appropriate development for a sleeper. It is an inventive marketing approach for a film that explores the unexplorable. "Untitled" through its theme and by its nature confronts common perceptions about what art is and is not. Part of its message is to not be a blockbuster, to not appeal to the masses.

Perhaps that says a lot about contemporary art!

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