Present at the Creation: 'Of the Moment'

| Print Post This | Like (0) | Comments (0)

GALLERY-GOERS and museum-haunters are used to seeing the end products of an artist's time in the studio -- the results of hours spent daubing, cutting off ears and weeping on the shoulder of the muse.

Now we can witness the drama behind the result -- without having to tiptoe around a linseed oil-smelling room -- thanks to "Of the Moment: A Video Sampler From the Archives of American Art."

The film and video excerpts on display in the Reynolds Center's Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery are culled from decades of footage in which some of the greatest 20th-century artists turned the camera on themselves or appeared before one -- documenting their conversations, appearances and processes of creation.

Whether they're collaborating (as Liz Phillips and Nam June Paik do), cooking (as Chris Burden does), bopping with brush in hand (as Louis Bunce does, jazz in the background) or getting grumpy (watch Richard Serra blow his top in public!), the talents here demonstrate that the process can be as entertaining -- and as meaningful -- as the thing that hangs on a wall when it's all over.

» Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, 8th & F streets NW; through July 27, free; 202-633-1000. (Gallery Place-Chinatown)

Photo courtesy Archives of American Art