No voiceover, no talking heads, no personalities, no obvious narrative arc. Is there anything to enjoy in the documentaries of Frederick Wiseman? I can say on the evidence of National Gallery, a study of the inner workings of London’s National Gallery, filmed in 2012, the answer is a resounding ‘yes’.
The (now) 83 year old Wiseman invites us to think about what an organisation, in the case an art gallery predominantly free of use to visitors, is doing: how it conducts itself, its relationship to its public, its ambition, image, and how it seeks to preserve itself. These ideas aren’t tethered to individuals. Rather the idea of the institution, its (perhaps) unwritten mission statement, infects the behaviour of the many people who work within it. Some of these are administrators. Some are guides. Some restore paintings, or chisel and decorate new frames. Some are visiting lecturers. All of them respond to the work within it with erudition. This is a place where people know stuff.
These learned individuals are, to a fault, white. They have regional accents (including Scottish). Some are middle-aged, others young. Some are American. One is Australian. Women are well-represented. There are no black or Asian faces lecturing to the public. ‘White’ authority contrasts with the multi-cultural school pupils who visit the gallery. This gives the title National Gallery a secondary meaning. Wiseman is displaying to his audience an image of the English ‘establishment’; it isn’t as diverse as the people might like.
At this point, you might be wary of the film. But wait: there is humour. An old fellow, one of the visitors, is prompted by a picture, to explain. ‘Moses came from the mountain with a stone tablet. ‘I’ve just spoken to God,’ he says. ‘Good news. I got him down to ten. Bad news – adultery is still among them.’’
Wiseman doesn’t appear in the film. His camera is trained indiscriminately on staff and the public (I only caught one wary glance towards it). No one is captioned, so you have to work out who is talking to whom. The only individuals identified in the end credits are Nicholas Penny, Director of the National Gallery, the poet Jo Shapcott (who performs a piece based on a painting of Calista), a musician and two ballet dancers. There is also no incidental music either.
It begins with an exterior shot, naturally, telling us that the National Gallery is located in Trafalgar Square – you may have seen it in the third Night at the Museum movie and in Edge of Tomorrow. Then we see a cleaner buffing the wooden floor. The first exchange is between Penny (bespectacled, arms crossed in front of his chest, in a gesture that is the opposite of receptivity) and his head of publicity, who is telling him that the gallery needs to reach out more. The argument is put without comparators. It is not that visitor numbers are down or that those entering its doors are older. The woman puts forward a hypothetical argument. Penny is adamant: ‘I don’t want a gallery that appeals to the lowest common denominator.’ What he projects is clear: a gallery that sees no need to apologise for itself or to adapt. It hosts specialist exhibitions that attract paid visitors (of the works of Rembrandt, Titian and J M W Turner). We see the queues. There is no pressing need for change.
But who is Penny to make this (implied) claim? We next see him in a Board meeting discussing - well complaining - about the decision to end a road race outside the gallery. The film was made in the run up to the 2012 Olympics. He seems upset by the idea that the building should be appropriated by Sport Relief, an organisation that advocates participation in sport through charitable activity and raises money for disadvantaged young people. ‘What do we say to the other charities?’ ‘The response is cut and dry’, says an employee in external relations. Penny is reluctant for the building to be appropriated by others. ‘It doesn’t help us.’ At no point does anyone say that the predominately state-funded gallery should, on occasion, be appropriated by the nation, if Sport Relief could be said to be an expression of the popular will.
Wiseman intersperses set-pieces with shots of people looking at paintings, contemplative, perhaps indifferent, young couples drawing each other close. By set-piece, I mean paintings being restored, preparations for an exhibition, a guided tour, discussions with representatives for a foreign gallery. Many scenes show the guides explaining a given painting. One artwork, of Delilah leaning over Samson as his hair – the source of his strength – is snipped off while he sleeps, with Philistines waiting to pounce huddled in a doorway, is featured twice. In the first, the emphasis is on the narrative of the painting; ‘paintings tell stories’ is a recurrent refrain. ‘Delilah is a spy,’ the (young female) guide tells us. ‘She has slept with Samson and now oversees his death.’ The guide explains that Delilah has feelings for him, expressed by the artist in the positioning of left hand on his back. Her right hand is away from his body, indicating her reticence (or ambiguity). Yet she is acting for her country, putting love for her people above this one man. The scene (of the guide explaining the picture) becomes a statement that sums up the whole institution: when you act for your country you must put personal feelings aside.
The second time the painting is discussed is in relation to the way it was displayed, that artists knew that the left side of the painting would receive most light and concentrated detail and colour on that part of the canvas. The right side (which features Philistines in a doorway waiting to pounce) was rendered dark because it received less attention. Paintings were not created for gallery lighting conditions, rather displayed above chimneys and viewed in a certain way.
The relationship between the visitor and the artwork is discussed constantly. There are other ideas too, notably the dangers of financial restraint. There is another meeting in which the gallery’s 2012-13 budget is under discussion. The finance officer notes a £2.6 million budget cut offset by reduced costs (that is, fewer staff), the end of redundancy payments made in 2011-12 and no plans for any major new work in the coming year. Wiseman cuts from this to a description of a painting that shows (according to a guide) ‘the end of empire’. The inference is clear: in the UK’s ‘austerity’ climate, that with fiscal responsibility and minimised outgoings, the UK can make no claim to be a great power. Although the London 2012 Olympics challenged that point, Wiseman, who had long since packed up his camera, does not contradict it.
It is possible, watching the film, to identify names of the artist and the work - but not always. On more than one occasion we see film crews at work. Wiseman records experts at work explaining an artwork to a second camera. Wiseman’s film makes for extremely detached viewing. You feel no emotional involvement. This does have an effect on how you watch the film. I felt myself stretching, struggling to maintain interest (which the film mostly rewarded), wanting it to end quickly, since there was no obvious climax on the horizon.
Do I begrudge Wiseman his method (scenes that can run for up to seven minutes) and the three hour running time? Not really. One or two scenes are dull – notably one involving restoration - but I was interested in the various ‘voices of authority’ explaining ideas. There is a particularly good scene in which Penny talks about his favourite painting to a VIP visitor. It is a painting that was intended to be displayed alongside sculpture; the artist depicted torsos and three dimensional objects attempted to prove that painting was the superior art form. ‘This painting is undoubtedly elitist,’ says Penny with something like pride in his voice. The film shows elitism as technical excellence and poses it as a question: this is what is being preserved here. Do you still want it?
There are other ideas too: that restoration is not true to the artist’s vision of the work. When lacquer is removed and then reapplied, how do we not know the artist did not want lacquer (a protective agent) applied heavily at certain parts of the painting for effect? There is a horrifying admission that all restorations which are painstaking and can take hundreds of hours can be reversed in fifteen minutes. A restoration represents a subjective version of a work; there is no absolute in art, no definitive explanation. It is only important that art inspires explanation.
Towards the end of the movie we see the gallery appropriated for other art performances: a piano recital, a poetry reading and contemporary dance. The interplay of setting and art becomes important. During the recital, there is an associative montage of horrified faces from the various canvasses. The audience listening to the music is oblivious to the depictions of horror around them. The gallery is a sanctuary away from contemporary reality, but one that features reminders of the outside world, should you care to look.
Reviewed at the National Gallery, London, Friday 9 January 2015, 19:30 special screening, introduced by Frederick Wiseman (pictured); with thanks to Picturehouse Cinemas
