“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.