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Using the innovative technique of clay painting, artist, filmmaker and winner Joan Gratz takes the viewer on an amazing colorful journey through the development of modern art from Van Gogh to Warhol. Included among these four short films is the 7 minute Academy Award® winning short that uses claymation to seamlessly follow the major roads of the roots of modern art. It’s a gorgeous piece, and definitely worth your time. Joan was a long time artist with Will Vinton Studios and has created many films and commercials with her clay painting technique.
| Catalog Number: MC-947 |
Type: Shorts Compilation |
Genre: Animation |
| Copyright: 2004 |
Length: 25 minutes |
Format:
DVD Region: 0 (All) |
| TV System: NTSC |
ISBN: |
UPC: 759731409322 |
| Label: Gratzfilm |
This title is available in Europe for Wholesale - List Prices: £13.99 / 19.95€
This is a Microcinema Exclusive title.
Wholesale Purchasing:
Program MC-947 is available for wholesale from Microcinema DVD. Contact info[at]microcinema.com or call at +1-415-447-9750
Exhibition:
Program MC-947 may be licensed for Exhibition.
Films In Compilation
Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase directed by
Joan
Gratz
USA,
Animation,
2004,
Color,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:07:00
"Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase is a tour de force that compresses the history of modern art into seven minutes..." - Steven Holden, New York ...
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Dowager's Feast, The directed by
Joan
Gratz
USA,
Animation,
2004,
00:05:00
...
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Pro and Con directed by
Joanna
Priestley
USA,
Animation,
1993,
Color,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:09:00
Pro and Con is a brief but excellent exploration of the thoughts and emotions of those working and living in our prison system." -Rebecca S. Albitz, Pyramid Film and ...
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Dowager's Idyll, The directed by
Joan
Gratz
USA,
Animation,
2004,
00:05:00
...
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2009-06-02 DVD Talk
By Phil Bacharach
The DVD Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase spotlights the imagination and craft of Joan C. Gratz, a Portland, Oregon-based animator whose aforementioned film snagged the 1992 Academy Award for Best Animated Short. The disc is a modest but worthwhile collection that explores the surreal frontiers of animation.
The centerpiece of the collection, Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase, is a knockout. Gratz employs her unique approach of "clay-painting" to take viewers on a journey through the works of 35 iconic artists.
Don't mistake clay-painting for Rankin/Bass-type Claymation. First developed by Gratz in the late Sixties, the process involves using small bits of clay as if they were oil or acrylic paint. Gratz blends the colors to form flowing lines and forms -- creating, in essence, a moving painting.
"Within the realm of animation I am most interested in the metamorphosis of images, not in smooth mindless computer-generated metamorphosis, but those which can communicate another aspect to a film," Gratz says in liner notes accompanying the DVD.
"I am interested in creating a 'visual onomatopoeia' in which line, color movement and rhythm create the feeling of a particular experience without illustrating it."
The approach is dazzling in the seven-minute Mona Lisa, which explores commonalities and connections in various art movements by seamlessly linking masterpieces from the likes of Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, Edvard Munch, Andy Warhol and Chuck Close. The film is visually arresting and thematically fascinating, and the images are buoyed by Jamie Haggerty's original music.
The other four shorts also have their charms, albeit more modest in scope. The Dowager's Feast (5:23) and its sequel, The Dowager's Idyll (5:53) are symphonies of shapes, patterns and vibrant colors. 3 Leg Torso provides nifty musical accompaniment on both shorts.
Pro and Con is decidedly less abstract. A collaboration with Joanne Priestley, the eight-minute, 18-second short is divided into two parts. In "Pro," Priestley provides Rotoscoping-styled animation of a real-life female corrections officer who offers a monologue on the prison system. There are some overly literal illustrations along the way (people being ground into meat and the like), but Priestley keeps any preaching to a minimum.
"Con" is Gratz's contribution. It is built around the voiceover narrative of an evidently fictitious (maybe a composite?) 32-year-old inmate who muses on life behind bars. The result is a bit didactic -- if chiefly because the voice actor relies on too much affectation -- but not as much as one might expect. And the flurry of imagery is as compelling as it is innovative.
The DVD
The Video:
The full-frame picture is excellent quality, with no discernible problems. The images are crisp and colorful.
The Audio:
The 2.0 mix is clean and clear, with no distortion or drop-out. No subtitles are available, although it's worth noting that Pro and Con is the only short with actual dialogue.
Extras:
None, aside from liner notes on the cardboard keepcase.
Final Thoughts:
Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase features a handful of occasionally incredible animated shorts by Joan Gratz. Whether the quartet of shorts is enough to warrant a purchase depends on your level of enthusiasm for painting. It is interesting viewing but, with the exception of the title short, perhaps not destined for repeated screenings.
| 2009-05-21 Educational Media Reviews Online
By Sebastian Derry
“Clay-painting” is a unique process that blends film and painting, and an innovation that garnered Joan Gratz’s Mona Lisa Descending A Staircase a 1992 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. In this true landmark of animation, numerous famous and iconic paintings from 20th century art are “reproduced as exactly as possible but the transitions between these paintings [are] used to communicate the relationship of artistic movements” as Gratz has stated. “In the clay painting technique, which I began developing in 1966, I work by painting directly before the camera, making changes to a single painting, shooting a frame, repainting and shooting, etc. In the end there is one painting with the process recorded on film, the product is the process.”
Pro and Con is in two parts; the first (Pro) is animated by Joanna Priestley, where a line-drawn female corrections officer talks candidly about her work, and her reflections on crime and punishment. Within her animation Priestley incorporates various craft elements that are actual confiscated contraband from Oregon correctional facilities. An inmate narrates the second half (Con), describing what life in prison is really like, with Gratz’s animation seamlessly blending and transitioning in perfect counterpoint to the narration.
With The Dowager’s Feast a colorful musical score of accordion, violin and cello is wedded to equally colorful abstract shapes, endlessly twisting, turning, blending and transforming. In its sequel The Dowager’s Idyll the clay-painting is more symmetrical, the metamorphosis suggesting a view as through a rotating kaleidoscope.
The four works on the disc: Mona Lisa Descending A Staircase/1991 (6:58), The Dowager’s Feast/1997 (5:22), Pro And Con/1992 (8:18), The Dowager’s Idyll/2001 (5:52). This is a disc that belongs in every library.
Highly recommended for all libraries.
| 2009-01-08 New York Times
By Stephen Holden
“Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase” is a tour de force that compresses the history of modern art into six minutes.
| 2009-01-08 San Francisco Chronicle
By Michael Snyder
“Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase” is a crash-course history of art by Joan Gratz, who uses Claymation to mutate famous canvases. It’s the sort of eye-boggling work that could put Mickey Mouse in the unemployment line.
| 2009-01-08 The Oregonian
By Shawn Levy
Dowager’s Feast is a lush and transporting work, a ballet of fluid abstractions that transmits an authentically tactile and sensual feel. Scored with knavish, tangoish music by local sensation Three Leg Torso, the film is sprightly, buoyant and charming.
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Mona Lisa Revealed: Secrets of the Painting
MC-854, 2008
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On October 19, 2007 the news circled the globe that photographer/inventor Pascal Cotte succeeded in photographing Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” at a resolution of 240 million pixels, 8 times higher than any professional camera to date. His... more >
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Mystery of Picasso
MC-655, 2003
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Like a matador confronting a bull, the artist approaches his easel. As he wields his brush, the painting dances into being before our eyes. Pablo Picasso, the most influential artist of the 20th century, is making art, and famous French director... more >
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Picasso: The Man and His Work, Part 1
MC-669, 2001
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This Cannes Film Festival selection takes a comprehensive and fascinating look at the life and art of the legendary Pablo Picasso. During the last 22 years of Picasso's life, film maker Edward Quinn had complete access to the artist. Through a... more >
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Picasso: The Man and His Work, Part 2
MC-670, 2002
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This Cannes Film Festival selection takes a comprehensive and fascinating look at the life and art of the legendary Pablo Picasso. During the last 22 years of Picasso's life, film maker Edward Quinn had complete access to the artist. Through a... more >
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Who Gets to Call it Art?
MC-542, 2006
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Featuring never-before-seen footage of legendary artists, exclusive interviews and an elite variety of the ‘Who’s Who’ New York entertainment scene. The film explores one of the most creatively fertile periods of American Art, profiling Andy... more >
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