Barnett
Newman is not the most famous American Abstract Expressionist, but his work was
targeted in one of the most notorious cases of art vandalism. Essentially, his
large color field painting Who’s Afraid
of Red, Yellow, and Blue III was twice a victim, once when it was slashed while
on display in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and again when it was irrevocably
butchered (or so experts say, on-camera) by the very man hired to restore it.
The case of the much-abused canvas gets an ironic docu-essay treatment in
Barbara Visser’s The End of Fear (trailer here), the opening
night film of this year’s Panorama Europe at MoMI.
Newman’s
work is a lot like Ellsworth Kelly, but there were many different subtle shades
of red in the painting in question. Maybe that was rewarding to contemplate, or
maybe it was just pretentious hype, but we will never know, because Daniel
Goldreyer’s restoration completely ruined the effect. According to the film, he
already had a somewhat questionable reputation for a similarly controversial
Mondrian restoration, but the film declines to mention his mysterious involvement with a
Roy Lichtenstein painting that went missing after the owner sent it to
Goldreyer for a cleaning in 1970 and then suspiciously turned up at a Colombian
gallery on consignment for his widow, several years after his death.
Unfortunately
for the Stedelijk, Goldreyer bullied and fast-talked museum director Wim Beeren
into approving his restoration, as we can hear from surviving phone messages.
Alas, that left the Museum in a decidedly disadvantageous legal position.
There
will be further ironies compounding in this bizarre tale, so it easily could
have sustained a more conventional documentary. However, Visser adds various
meta elements, including a contemporary painter recreating Who’s Afraid III from scratch, but nobody seems to understand the
point to all that once its finished. Her talking head segments are also unusually
thoughtful and reflective, which certainly not a bad thing.
Frankly,
this is a terribly sad incident that impoverished human culture through the
loss of the Newman painting and the city of Amsterdam, to the tune of several
hundred thousand dollars misspent on a faulty restoration. As a work of cinema,
it would have much more effective if it had just been a little more grounded,
but it still shines a light on a fascinating historical episode. Recommended
overall, The End of Fear screens Friday
night (5/4) at MoMI, kicking off this year’s Panorama Europe.