Gestures of creation. The artist at work in process film

Abstract

Traditionally, the artist’s creative activity has remained hidden in his studio. Cinema, however, has represented since the beginning of the XX century an important tool to register gestures and processes involved in the artistic creation. During the Fifties, within the wider framework of the documentary on figurative arts, the processual film emerged: its goal was to document the genesis of a work of art created in front of the camera, and in doing so to offer an essential contribution to art criticism. This essay aims to investigate the problematic relationship between the processual film and the creative action it should document. The first part is dedicated to the “screen-canvas”, adopted by some directors in the Fifties to film the painter at work: a specific dispositif in which painting and screen, pictorial surface and cinematographic vision coincide. The second part focuses on a specific case (the films related to the Belgian painter Pierre Alechinsky), able to clarify and at the same time problematize the tight connection between artistic gesture and filmic process. By means of these analyses the article questions the possibility of objectively documenting the creative process through film and reveals the performative nature of any artistic action made in front of a camera.