About the Artist
Lucien Castaing-Taylor makes visceral, emotionally engaging, aesthetically rigorous, innovative, and spiritually moving films and installations, documenting our world with a spirit of openness, experimentation and adventure.
“There may be reasonings, but when they take an instinctive form, like that of animal forms and movements, they are poetry, they are fine; they have grace.”
John Keats, in a letter to his brother where he speaks of humans as animals, and of art/poetry
Irene Borger asked, via email, “How about including a list of films that you consider important dans ta formation et apprentissage?”
Here’s what Lucien sent back:
Jana Ševčíková made a big impression, maybe the biggest, and in more ways than I know; Jakub and Old Believers especially
Jean Rouch: He was brilliantly ludic and dialogical. Everything, particularly Les maîtres fous (The Mad Masters – 1955), Moi, un noir (1958) La Pyramide Humaine (1958), Petit à petit (1970)
Alice Oswald’s poetry, especially Dart
Claire Denis: everything, especially Trouble Everyday (2001), and Chocolat (1988)
Artavazd Peleshian: everything, especially Seasons (1975)
Steve McQueen, especially Girls Tricky and Western Deep.
Philippe Grandrieux: Un Lac (2008), Sombre (1999); above all La Vie Nouvelle (2002)
Sergey Dvortsevoy once upon a time, though not now — Paradise, Bread Day, Highway…
David and Judith MacDougall’s films for sure: To Live with Herds (1974), Under the Men's Tree (1970), Lorang's Way (1980), Wedding Camels (1974/1979), A Wife among Wives, (1974/1981), Tempus de Baristas (1993)
Kidlat Tahimik, the amazing Perfumed Nightmare (1977)
Agnès Varda, David Hammons, Luis Buñuel, James Herbert, Robert Flaherty, Maya Deren, Basil Wright, George Franju, Melissa Llewelyn-Davies, especially The Women's Olamal, Zacharias Kunuk, Stéphane Breton
Coda
“The difference between the esthetic and the intellectual is thus one of place where emphasis falls in the constant rhythm that marks the interaction of the live creature with his surroundings. The ultimate matter of both emphases in experience is the same, as is also their general form. The odd notion that an artist does not think and a scientific inquirer does nothing else is the result of converting a difference of tempo and emphasis into a difference in kind. The thinker has his esthetic moment when his ideas cease to be mere ideas and become the corporate meanings of objects. The artist has his problems and thinks as he works. But his thought is more immediately embodied in the object. Because of the comparative remoteness of his end, the scientific worker operates with symbols, words and mathematic signs. The artist does his thinking in the very qualitative media he works in, and the terms lie so close to the object that he is producing that they merge directly into it.”
John Dewey, Art as Experience
