A few weeks before the start of Tate Modern\u2019s ambitious extension works, the space which used to shelter the oil tanks of the former Bankside Power Station offered a scenic backdrop to the last in a series of specially \u00adcommissioned artistic projects. On four consecutive days, to coincide with the Frieze art fair, this part of the building, normally inaccessible to the general public, hosted John Baldessari\u2019s \ufb01lm installation Five 1968 Films (New)<\/em> from 2000 alongside his retrospective Pure Beauty<\/em> (on display until January 10, 2010).<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The \ufb01ve-screen projection by the artist, cast in the retrospective as one of the pioneers of conceptual art, takes as its starting point all the US-produced \ufb01lms shown in cinemas in Los Angeles on August 21, 1968, the day of the invasion of Czechoslovakia by armies of the Warsaw Pact, which stopped the Prague Spring in its tracks and thus effectively marked the beginning of the end of the Socialist utopia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From a total of 130 \ufb01lms, Baldessari \ufb01rst chose four which he thought epitomised both the zeitgeist and Hollywood\u2019s recurring genre \u00adstereotypes: Planet of the Apes<\/em> (science-\ufb01ction), Rosemary\u2019s Baby<\/em> (horror), The Green Berets<\/em> (war) and The Thomas Crown Affair<\/em> (love story). He then split the images of each movie into four equal frames, from which he selected one to be \u00adprojected as a full image on a large screen. The four resulting projections each show a different square\u2009\u2014\u2009top left, top right, bottom left and bottom right, respectively\u2009\u2014\u2009of the individual \ufb01lms. This is where the \ufb01fth screen, the dramatic climax of the installation at Tate, comes into the picture. Here, the four fragments are reunited in a split-screen projection, forming a kaleidoscopic condensation of the dominant (Western) \ufb01lm typology of that era, while the combined soundtrack of the four blockbusters furthermore underlines their formulaic structure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Five 1968 Films (New)<\/em> re\ufb02ects Baldessari\u2019s lifelong interest in \u00adtypologies and ordering systems of the world, which he previously pursued in other media\u2009\u2014\u2009notably the series of works on paper entitled Blasted Allegories<\/em>, based on complex verbal-visual statistics informed by structuralist \u00admethodologies. More to the point, this particular installation stages a \u00adconfrontation of utopias, in which the political reality of one (East), despite or because of its conspicuous absence, is re\ufb02ected in the ideological vision of the other (West). Ironically, it was the latter which survived, proving Baldessari\u2019s implicit point that fantasy might well be stronger than reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The screening of this hard-edged conceptual demonstration in the cavernous, \u201cauratic\u201d halls of the oil tanks might have appeared like a bit of a gamble. As it turned out, its audacious staging by Tate Modern \ufb01lm curator Stuart Comer, assisted by Gil Leung, was a welcome addition to the scholarly but arguably somewhat conventional presentation of Baldessari\u2019s retrospective on the upper \ufb02oor of the building.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tate Modern Oil Tanks,<\/strong> London, UK
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