Art, from its very beginning, has been connected with the mysterious, the uncontrollable, and the ephemerality of our earthly lives. It’s sometimes easy to forget that — or at least pay so little attention to those aspects that the deeper, more primeval dimensions of art are pushed under the rug. But for James Grashow, the sculptor of the “corrugated fountain” at the center of The Cardboard Bernini, the relationship between art and mortality as always been on his mind. And when he decided to embark on this 4-year project, he desired to confront that relationship head on. No matter the pain.
Directed by Olympia Stone, The Cardboard Bernini follows Grashow as he constructs, showcases, and then purposely lets his dear sculpture fade away as it sits outside an art museum in Connecticut. Rain, wind, storms… whatever might come. Glued together cardboard doesn’t stand much of a chance against the harsh realities of nature. And that’s kind of the point.
Cardboard, muses Grashow, is a lot like us: “We aspire to be something more, to be holy, to be grand, to be eternal, but we’re tied to mortality.”
Many years ago Grashow happened to see one of his past exhibitions fade away on the lawn of his art dealer. It served as a kind of wake up call to the shocking and severe impermanence of things. Including ourselves.
But even before that humbling sight, those dark thoughts had been restlessly rolling around in Grashow’s mind. Grashow’s wife, Guzzy, who appears in the film just about as much as he does, tells us of those darker sides. So does his daughter, Zoe. She recalls, for example, an exhibition of monkeys that her father once built; many viewers thought they looked adorable, but to him they expressed life’s meaningless. It’s no wonder, then, that both daughter and wife worry throughout the project about Grashow’s emotional and mental well being after he’s witnessed his years-long creative journey be destroyed with his own allowance.
But one might rightly ask, is this all a bit absurd, a bit overblown?
How you answer that probably depends (at least in part) on whether or not you are an artist. Not just a sometimes dabbler of creating something, but a committed, deep-in-the-mud artist. That said, it’s still a mighty tall task to make an emotionally affecting film about someone who’s going to intentionally destroy something he spent years making. Most of us tend not to do that kind of thing.
Unfortunately, The Cardboard Bernini doesn’t often help itself make a case for Grashow’s journey. There’s no doubt that there’s a good story here — and certainly the relationship between art and the fragility of life can help illuminate the poignancy of that story. But the film just never succeeds in bringing the necessary elements together in a smooth, coherent way.
One reason is that, shockingly, for a film about an artist and his project, viewers see little of the process. There must have been countless hiccups as Grashow designed this massive and intricate sculpture; and it must have been an extraordinarily difficult thing to do. While many viewers will surely be aware of Grashow’s immense abilities in the back of their minds, it’s less certain that they’ll viscerally feel it and fully appreciate it — because they certainly don’t see it. The number of scenes showing Grashow actually work on the project are quite few, and many of them merely show Grashow doing something kids can do — like running a pencil down the edge of a ruler.
It’s odd, too, that The Cardboard Bernini only cursorily even mentions a man named Gian Lorenzo Bernini: that 17th-century artist who, well, created the very thing that James Grashow is replicating with cardboard. Yet viewers hear merely a peep about Bernini or his fountain. Strange.
The story of James Grashow is still worth watching, however. And viewers will find moments of inspiration and depth within it. But it’s hard not to feel that this is a film which could have achieved so much more.
Spectatio 