In the film Provenance, Amie Siegel represents the global trade of furniture from an Indian city to various parts of the world. The piece of furniture that she mostly focuses on is the chair. At the beginning of the film, we saw photographs of some very old buildings in India that serve as factories for the production of furniture. The factory looks practically dark and abandoned; however, the same photographs also reveal color and light, specifically sunshine. In one of the images that I have attached, it is possible to see a single chair standing outside in the sunlight. From that point, we begin to recognize its significance and value. Throughout the rest of the film, we see all sorts of chairs in different colors and different positions, sometimes surrounded by other chairs standing upright, and sometimes overturned on top of each other.
As the film progresses, we begin to see other styles and forms of chairs in distinguished shapes and colors, though the focus is always on the basic structure of those chairs, which remains the same all throughout. As the film begins to take a more modern setting, we are introduced to a myriad of other pieces of furniture that are capable of replacing that one, old traditional chair. In a series of photographs, we see couches, sofas, beach chairs, stools and a bed, but the one aspect the remains common to all of these photographs is the fact that the same chair is always present as well. In one of the scenes, a man takes an old looking, half-broken chair and begins to break it apart even further, leaving only its fundamental wooden structure. After destroying it completely, we suddenly realize that the chair has been transformed into a newer, modernized piece of furniture. It was absolutely amazing to notice the transformation of something so dull into something so beautiful.
At the final stages of the film, those pieces of furniture that were produced in the Indian factory are being transferred to other countries as merchandise. Once they arrive to auction houses in Paris, New York and London, I was surprised to discover that their monetary value is as high as $70,000 (!!!) Although this seems surprising at first, we quickly realize that the meaning behind this film is to represent the historical and artistic values that are hidden within those pieces of furniture. The film’s unique demonstration of the movement of the furniture around the globe points at its unique history, which consequently influences its fluctuating value. This film made me realize that something as simple as a chair may, in fact, have such high artistic significance that people often fail to acknowledge it with the proper recognition and admiration. The conclusion: don’t ever judge a book by its over.
My all time favorite form of art is music, and by living in NYC we experience A LOT of it. From the street performers to the musicians at Madison Square Garden, music is everywhere.
Last night, I saw Grouplove in Central Park. I’ve seen them once before at a music festival in Delaware, but something about the beautiful park with the lit up buildings as the backdrop made the night magical.
The music was awesome, but they were also displaying their art. Singer Hannah Cooper had her art in a pamphlet that was handed out at the entry. Since it was the Honda Civic Tour, they were raffling off a new car painted with Hannah’s art. (See images below!)
Overall, the experience was amazing as I got to listen to great music while viewing cool pictures and drawings.
Here’s a video of their opening song!
Amie Siegel’s Provenance sheds light on the relationship between art and capital. The furniture’s value was determined by the setting. First, in Chandigarh the chair was tattered and unwanted as it sat in different workplaces unnoticed. As the film went on, the furniture was refurbished to a more desirable, profitable form. With this, it could be sold for thousands of dollars at auctions, or sit in lavishing homes as a symbol of the family’s wealth.
The aesthetics used in the film were important in Siegel’s message. The perfectly clear images, as well as the surround sound makes you feel as though you’re part of the journey. To add to this, there wasn’t a typical frame to the film, it was simply projected onto a white wall. This made it more personal, like you were travelling to each stage with the furniture.
Lighting played a key role in Siegel’s film. The lighting was dark in the warehouses of broken chairs to signify worthlessness. On the other hand, the lighting was piercingly bright in the beautiful homes and the attractive yacht. This technique made the furniture more appealing and desirable as its value increased.
The unique form of storytelling backwards served the purpose of tracing the value of the chair from its original decrepit beginnings. In this journey, Siegel captures capitalism in the art market. Showing the furniture in exquisite homes, and then being sold at outlandish prices at auctions demonstrates the materialism in today’s art world.
It was interesting that we saw the film from the ‘end’. In our eyes we saw the chair being constantly upgraded from its original shabby state in the first setting in an orderly fashion. Overall, I found that film as a form of art was more captivating, and the lack of narration made the message mysteriously powerful.
“Stylish aesthetics and fashionable conceptualism trump documentary realism in “Provenance,” an extremely suave film by Amie Siegel.” I could not agree more with Ken Johnson from The New York Times, Art and design (click here for the full article!).
When we started watching Provenance I was actually a little bit confused. I could not figure out what we were looking at, where everything was taking place, and why we were so obsessed with all this furniture! It took me some time to figure out what was going on: we were actually starting at the end of the film, as Prof. Eversley noted, we watched the film in a non-linear way! The irony was that the film is already non-linear to begin with, because it was made in reverse chronological order.
After reading up on the film, I can truly appreciate how interesting and provoking this art is. The NYTimes continues to describe Siegel’s piece as “an art genre that tries to expose and subvert the workings of the capitalist art market.” I completely agree! When watching the film, traveling on a journey with all of the rustic, original and unique furniture, I actually felt uncomfortable watching it become these commercial items, fixed and positioned by people transforming the chairs to a synthetic prize. Prof. Eversley pointed out that we all jumped up when the chairs went up for auction. The truth was (especially because we were watching the film kind of backwards) that until the auction, I did not realize these chairs were so special! I actually turned to the person next to me and said, “What?!?” After traveling with the chairs from India in workplaces, boats, classrooms I was so confused by the transition of this chair from being stored up in a seemingly dirty area to becoming a fancy coach settled in a beautiful home.
Throughout the film, the warm colors of the chairs and all of the furniture really caught my eye, which is why I manipulated the pictures I took, to highlight those colors.
Overall, with a greater understanding, I think provenance offers some very insightful and important messages about capitalism and art in our world.
Taking the Subway everyday to work and now to school has made me lose sight of the many different aspects of art there are in my daily routine. Upon taking a step back to reflect about where I encounter art, I noticed that there is a moving picture of many different colors creating an image while the train is moving. This is called the Masstransiscope. There are 228 hand painted panels in the area between Dekalb Avenue and Canal Street, and when these panels are seen as a cohesive unit, it is a spectacular scene. As the train moves, an illusion of an animated movie forms. Now I see my daily life as more than just the “routine.”
I took a video of it, but the file was too large to send, so here’s a 30 second Youtube clip of what I see every day.
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