The Wisconsin Film Festival launched one day earlier this year, in festival director Meg Hamel’s tentative steps in expanding the scope of WIFF to five days rather than the typical four.  This is the twelfth year of the festival and it’s been growing in popularity each year; I moved to Madison from Salt Lake City, so it’s nice to have exchanged one film festival (Park City’s Sundance) for another that, who knows, one day might be just as big (we did get the world’s second Sundance Cinema, so at least Robert Redford has faith in us).  At WIFF I’ve watched Roger Ebert introduce A Hard Day’s Night and Laura; I’ve seen giant spiders crush Buicks beside fellow Wisconsinite and B-movie auteur Bill Rebane; I’ve solved Timecrimes and watched Sita sing the blues.  This year brings the New York Times’ Manohla Dargis to the festival (introducing Michael Mann’s Collateral); an extensive Bong Joon-ho (The Host, Mother) retrospective; the U.K.’s much-praised Red Riding Trilogy; a Wisconsin film starring Tony Shalhoub and another directed by The Straight Story’s screenwriter Mary Sweeney; and more – but my list was compromised from the start.  Of course everything you really want to see if playing only once and at the exact same time.  That’s how it always works.  You make the sacrifices, you take some risks, you end up seeing a lot of films with a number of extremely enthusiastic local film buffs.  It’s become one of the major events I look forward to every year.  And this year, on WIFF’s “bonus day” (as Meg called it in her introduction), I began my cluttered program with one of the most controversial documentaries of the last year.  (I’d wanted to start with Historias Extraordinarias, the 4-hour-long Argentinian film, but…not on a Wednesday night, and not at the campus’ Play Circle Theater.  Just couldn’t do it.)

The Art of the Steal (U.S., 2009)
D: Don Argott

There was a small uproar when Don Argott’s The Art of the Steal opened a few months back in select cities, particularly from certain persons in Philadelphia portrayed in a very negative light.  That’s because the documentary is an exposé of the underhanded, and quite possibly illegal, methods applied to uproot and violate one of the most distinguished art collections in the world: the Barnes Foundation, an art school and museum, featuring an astonishing array of key works of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Modern Art as collected by Dr. Albert C. Barnes in the first half of the twentieth century.  Barnes fought to keep his collection intact and as he had arranged it: and as the film shows us, the arrangements did not just display exquisite taste, but were astonishing, clustering together disparate works into an unexpected harmony.  He also insisted upon the Foundation operating primarily as a school, closed to the public for most (but not all) days of the week.  Located in Merion, PA, about four miles from Philadelphia, Dr. Barnes’ collection was misunderstood at first - but soon his purchased works by Matisse, Cézanne, Picasso and others would become invaluable as the art world caught up with him; it would be the source of envy of Philadelphia’s art museum and bitter scorn from Barnes’ political enemies.  And the film is never better than in its first half, as it illustrates the battles Dr. Barnes fought to keep his collection intact – he drew up a will which seemed flawless in its foresight and rigidity.  The museum would not be moved, the collection would remain together, the paintings would not leave the walls, and the primary function of the Barnes Foundation would be as a school.  How this will was slowly undermined and then completely undone is the subject of the second half of the film.  In recent years, the Barnes Foundation has fallen back under the sway of Philadelphia, and key players, including Governor Ed Rendell, found a way to undermine the Foundation’s core principles so that it could be appropriated to become, as one interview subject puts it, a “McBarnes.”  The politics so carefully dissected in this half of the film are fascinating to a point – it’s like a how-to guide for using power, influence, and money to get what you want no matter what the obstacle - but ultimately are either maddening or just dispiriting.  That’s the point, naturally.  The Art of the Steal is an Argument Film, a polemic that’s been the fashion of the documentary for the last ten years or so, with a score that pushes all your buttons, sometimes with head-smacking obviousness (keep an ear out for the electric guitar anytime someone’s up to no good); it’s a film about great art that can be accused of being quite inartful.  Much of the last portion of the film is spent hanging out with protesters wielding angry wooden signs.  This film can sometimes be just another one of those screaming signs.  But on the other hand, I can’t help but admire the cause behind the transparent manipulation; this is an Argument Film making a very strong case for something which is actually quite subtle, or - well, not easily comprehended by moneymen and power brokers.  Art resists commodification.  What Dr. Barnes did with his Foundation was to create, essentially, a new work of art, one that could only be appreciated the way he intended it, in the building that had been constructed by his design, with his original displays, in Merion, PA.  It was a school because in the presence of the art you were to be the student.  This is why Matisse called the Barnes Foundation the only “sane” way to appreciate art in America.  The artist’s stamp is important, because he recognized the institute as a work of art in itself.  You cannot, for example, pack up Taliesin or Fallingwater and relocate it inside the walls of a museum – that would betray the essence of Frank Lloyd Wright’s intentions.  The “new” Barnes building being constructed, currently, in downtown Philadelphia, is glimpsed only by its outdoor “under construction” facade, with paintings of representative artwork slapped on in pale representation - paintings of paintings, essentially.  And there, as the final irony: a painting of a portrait of Dr. Barnes.  They needn’t have gained his approval – he’s dead, after all.  They only needed to steal his image for their own wallpaper.