Welcome back to Moment of Truth, Movieline's new weekly spotlight on the best in nonfiction cinema. This week, we hear from the director of The Art of the Steal, opening Friday in New York and Philadelphia, March 12 in Los Angeles and currently available for on-demand viewing via Sundance Selects, iTunes and Netflix.
If, as its subject has said, the tightrope-walking exploits detailed in Man on Wire were the "artistic crime of the century," then the skulduggery reported in Don Argott's new documentary The Art of the Steal might be the artistic crime of the 21st century. The film orbits around the Barnes Foundation, a venerated 90-year-old arts repository and educational center just outside Philadelphia, and the home of billions of dollars worth of post-impressionist and early-Modern work by Renoir, Picasso, Matisse, Cezanne and other masters. Before dying in 1951, its founder, Dr. Albert C. Barnes, left a will explicitly stating the collection was not to tour, be relocated or sold by the Foundation. In comprehensive and wholly entertaining terms, Art of the Steal shows how Philadelphia's art establishment and political leadership colluded to vanquish that dying wish and take control of a world treasure. Argott (who previously had doc hits with Rock School and Two Days in April) talked to Movieline about following the money, the trick(s) to making an exposé and relearning how to look at art.
When did you first become aware of the Barnes Foundation?
Actually, Lenny Feinberg -- our executive producer -- approached us about making a film about the Barnes saga. I didn't know anything about it prior to that. Once he came to us with this idea and kind of pitched it to us that there was this amazing art collection five miles outside Philadelphia that was supposed to preserved there, but the current trustees were planning to move it to the [Benjamin Franklin] Parkway, that was sort of the original story. What we uncovered from just that to where we wound up was miles and miles away from the intent of telling the story. But as you see, it was a prety rich, giving story with a lot of twists and turns, a lot of interesting characters, and a lot of bigger themes that we wanted to explore. We wanted to take it out of the idea of a small, local story. We thought of it as much bigger than that.
What's that like while you're making the film, though? How do you adapt on the fly?
I think that's part of the joy and excitement of making documentaries. With scripted pieces, it's exactly that. You have your beginning, middle and end figured out before you even start the film. The discovery part of that is obviously the acting and performances. Doing documentaries, it does become this journey that you go on. If you immerse yourself in the work and in the story, than you keep yourself open for whatever direction the story wants to take you. it's amazing. It presents its own challenges; there are no guarantees. When you start out, you have no idea how it's going to turn out. What's going to happen? Are the things that will happen going to make the film worse or more confusing? It creates a lot of anxiety, frankly. But it's also what makes it so rewarding when it's done and it does work.
The Art of the Steal necessarily has a probing, exposé quality that your previous films didn't have. How did you also acquaint yourself with that mode of storytelling?
Every story has its own set of rules. With Rock School it was gaining the trust of the people we were shooting. Certainly with Paul and the kids, we needed them to open up and be as accessible as they could be. And the same with Two Days in April. I think the approach for this was pretty much the same. Making documentaries all comes down to access. It all comes down to the willingness to find people who will help you tell the story. This just happened to have more of a historical angle to it. But I think the rules are pretty much the same. We set out to tell the best story we could. The means are different, but you adapt quickly. You have to.
When we originally walked into it, we looked at it more a historical piece. There wasn't a lot of archival material that was available to us at the time. So that posed a challenge. But as we dug deeper, and the more people we found to interview, that would get us going in another direction. And they'd have some archival material they'd lend to us. Slowly but surely we were able to construct the film with not just the people who were willing to participate, but the materials we were able to dredge up. And once we had the linear story in place, it was just a matter of going back and putting a nice coat of paint.
Barnes himself (pictured above) seems to have anticipated a culture where people simply don't know -- or really even want to know -- how to look at and value art. As someone coming from a different background, what did making this film teach you about that?
Since I hadn't been to the foundation before making the film, we decided to make an appointment before determined if we wanted to make the movie. And walking into the Barnes totally challenges you to reconsider how you look at art -- how you feel about it. Up to that point, going to art museums and galleries, art is displayed in a very traditional way. You see the painting on the wall, and maybe there's a placard next to it that says who the artist was, when he painted it -- information that comes with the painting. That all becomes part of the experience. Even though you might not know the significance of why this art is great, it's great art. You get that all the time: "Oh, that's a Picasso, so it's a very important painting." But why? Because it's a Picasso? "Well, yeah." There's all this baggage that comes into how you look at art as opposed to having a subjective feeling about it.
Going to the Barnes for the first time kind of fucked me up because the only tools are you, your eyes and your feeling of it. There are no placards. Sometimes the artist signs the painting, sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes the name will be on the frame of the painting, sometimes it's not. You don't know -- so you can see the painting for what it is. The whole idea is that you can see the painting for what it is, and not what museums tell you look at. The Barnes isn't like that. The way he arranged the paintings is a work of art in itself. And there are reasons why he put African sculpture next to a Modigliani or Picasso. There are all these relationships in art, but they're relationships that make you draw the conclusions. The whole idea that they're going to move it -- or that they're going to keep the wall hangings how Barnes did them -- is, to me, just a guilt-ridden way of carrying this thing out. You're already destroying it, you know? You're not preserving it. Why act like moving it five miles away in a new building is still going to have the integrity of what Barnes originally intended?
There is indeed some infuriating stuff in this movie. In your estimation as an outsider who spent some time inside, does the entire art world work this way?
I can't speak for the whole art world. I can only speak to what happened in this story and in Philadelphia. The other thing that was eye-opening for me was the idea that charity is big business. You don't think of it that way, but it is, and they operate as such. They're non-profit corporations. They have a lot of money, they have a lot of power, and they do with that power whatever is in their best interests. To me, the whole idea of charity is that I want to help you. I'm giving you something, and I don't expect anything in return. But that's not how these charitable organizations operate. They'll say, "We'll come in and help you, but we want something in return." That's against the whole idea of what charity is! The attorney general says outright: They weren't going to give this money without getting some kind of control. Well, why not? Isn't that the whole purpose?
What kinds of reactions or discussions have you seen to these effects during Art of the Steal's festival run?
The response has been overwhelmingly positive -- to a certain extent. Taking it around to festivals has been amazing, because a lot of people don't know the story. It's a great way to discover this: Cold, without any baggage. But a lot of people do know the story, and then they're surprised about how much they didn't know. We get a ton of questions. It's really the most you can hope for when you make a film like this, where the idea is to get people talking and elicit some emotion -- even if it's a negative emotion. We get, "I don't agree; I think it should move." And that's fine. The worst thing you can make is one where people say, "Huh, OK. What's next?"
There might be one more thing you can hope for, which is that the documentary actually influences change. But is there anything left to change?
I guess part of me says that we weren't activists going into this. We didn't have a motive. We were just trying to tell a compelling story and an important story that explores larger themes than the literal story that's actually happening. Until they put first brick down, anything can happen. I'd lying if I said that if something changed because of this film getting out there wouldn't be an amazing thing. but I think it's dangerous to have those kind of lofty goals for a film like this. You're kind of setting yourself up. Part of the reason I think the film is so successful is that it's not preaching at you. It's not trying to get you involved to do something. But if its compels you to do something? Then that's great.
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