Do You Really Want It That Much? ...More

Exhibition Run: 30 January 1998 - Sunday 1 March 1998

Artist: Volker Eichelmann (D), Jonathan Faiers (GB), Roland Rust (A)

How are art spaces projected in mainstream cinema? What does cinema want to tell us about the function of these spaces? Why does the cinematic representation of museums and galleries differ so much from the real? The video-sampler ‘Do you really want it that much ? … More!’ explores manifestations of art spaces as sites of sex, crime, comedy, and corporate play among others. This sampler produces a network of recurring themes and transformations that challenges established notions of museum and gallery going.

How is it that James Stewart gets a free catalogue?
Why does Clifton Webb regard something as ‘stiff as a sculpture’ not worth collecting?
How can a Jackson Pollock fuck up Woody Allen’s date?
Will Pepe le Pew ever catch his ‘object of art’?

In ‘heist’ movies such as ‘How To Steal A Million’ the museum is presented as an impregnable glittering fortress only to be reduced to a self-service shop window for the master criminal’s picking. These films subvert the museum’s function as custodian of the priceless cultural artefact. Does the sanctified space of the museum provide the perfect setting for anti-social behaviour only on film?

In many films the love of art is intermingled with the love of flesh. As in ‘Pleasure Seekers’ art spaces seem to provide the perfect stalking ground for sexual predators stimulated by the act of looking. With art spaces transformed into meeting places does the love of the object and the love object become irretrievably blurred?

Does Audrey Hepburn ‘really want it that much ? …More!’