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9 - Art and History in Woman in Gold (2015), The Monuments Men (2014), and Francofonia (2015)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2022

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Abstract

This chapter analyzes films that share a narrative concern with Nazi art theft and an aesthetic approach defined by deliberate archaism – the practice of visually replicating past media forms. Specifically, I examine how Woman in Gold (2015), The Monuments Men (2014), and Francofonia (2015) appeal to heavily mediated visual palettes to contextualize canonical artworks embroiled in “real” historical situations. With reference to Alison Landsberg's concept of “affective historiography,” I analyze the limitations and critical potential of this approach to engage broader questions about history and representation. In doing so, this paper accounts for some of the general tendencies that characterize the representation of art in historical film during the twenty-first century.

Keywords: Nazi art theft, World War II, deliberate archaism, historiography, historical representation

In Real Objects in Unreal Situations, Susan Felleman considers the material, economic, and political histories that surround art objects in fiction films. Through her examination of these contextualizing forces, she raises important questions about the relationship between the narrative world of the film and the works of art mobilized within. In doing so, she investigates how historical resonances accrue around these works and inflect the interplay of different image registers and representational forms. What I propose here is a recalibration of Felleman's focus to address real artworks in ostensibly real (historical) situations. Specifically, I analyze films that feature art in the context of historical events, both narratively and aesthetically: Woman in Gold (dir. Simon Curtis, 2015); The Monuments Men (dir. George Clooney, 2014); and Francofonia (dir. Alexander Sokurov, 2015). These films share a narrative concern with Nazi atrocities and the plight of canonical paintings and statues. They also share an aesthetic concern with generating a visual palette that draws heavily on the dominant production design schemes of films set in World Ware II, the restaging and colorization practices of archival footage, photography, and the paintings in (narrative) question. Some also adhere to the visual tropes of the multiple genres they cite: war films and heist movies, for example. As such, they abide by the logic of Marc LeSueur's “deliberate archaism” – the practice of visually replicating the look of past media, one typically aligned with a postmodern sensibility that, at best, challenges our capacity to access history except through its textualized remains as Linda Hutcheon argues and, at worst, evacuates “real” history in favor of depthless pastiche as Fredric Jameson contends.

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Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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