31: Essential Art

It's easy to say that art can change the world. It's the kind of short, declarative sentence that goes down smooth over an Instagram filter, the kind of thing I wouldn't be caught dead saying usually because it sounds so corny, but the kind of thing I also believe down to my bones, because I'm a critic. The sentence is a trap. No one's going to fight with you about it. You can say it and you can forget it. It's functionally meaningless.

Art isn't easy. Neither is changing the world. Laura Petras' new documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed understands both of these things. In her film, Petras traces Nan Goldin's heritage as a photographer and an addict, drawing on her personal life and public work to ground Goldin's activist fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for their part in the opiod crisis. Petras presents Goldin's protests as the art installation Goldin intended them to be, framing prescription pill bottles floating in a pool in the former Sackler wing at The Met as though they're drops in a bucket, untethered from each other when considered on an individual level, but overwhelming in their scale when considered as a whole. Petras never lets us forget the sense of loss held in each empty orange bottle, nor does she let us forget the real people those bottles represent.

Petras–and Goldin–frame Goldin's work to bring the Sacklers to justice as another in a long series of battles that Goldin has had to fight throughout her life and her career. Here, the AIDS crisis and the opiod crisis are made out to be sibling issues: impolite to talk about, much less confront. In both battles, the ones in power who had the ability to end suffering did nothing, and got away with it. Petras does not attempt to calculate the losses from either epidemic. Neither does she lose sight of the real people who were lost, or who lost someone, or who lost everyone. She keeps her focus tightly on Goldin's life, and on her circle.

Goldin doesn't fight alone. She's part of a conglomeration of activist groups, all of them keenly aware of the injustices they face, and of the fact that they're fighting a losing battle. They'll fight anyway. It's something Nan Goldin has always done, whether documenting her own abuse, or making and curating art with the people she found in New York City. Petras does justice to Goldin's life and work and art by letting it speak for itself, asking Goldin to explain the context only where necessary. We hear Goldin's history through her own words, and we see it through her own eyes through her photography. Petras presents the images in the manner of one of Goldin's own slideshows, repeating shots of photographs we've seen before, but in different orders, in a way that lends additional gravity with each repetition.

Goldin's art doesn't manage to bring the Sacklers to justice. The Sacklers are simply too rich to fail; it's possible to scrub their names off the side of an art building, but it's impossible to strip the wealth from a family who's wealthy enough to defend themselves for generations to come. Petras shows Goldin's work–especially her losing battle–as vital anyway. It's a thread in a tapestry full of rich color and life, something that the stark white of an Oxycontin pill can't blot out.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is in limited theatrical release. It will expand throughout the month of December.

What I talked about:

This week on Seeing & Believing, Kevin and I reviewed Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio and Park Chan-wook's Decision to Leave. I wrote about Pinocchio for this very newsletter a few weeks ago, but you should tune in to the pod: I'm mixed on the movie, but Kevin's more positive, and he gives some good reasons why it's a movie worth paying attention to.

What I watched:

I rewatched Mad God for a forthcoming issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room. I maintain that it's one of the best movies of the year, and it's still just as upsetting the second time around. More coming–watch this space.