Villa Rospigliosi


Rental Format(s): 16mm film

Music by Elisabeth Bartfai.

"No less complex are referential films like Villa Rospigliosi and Gallery 3, which consciously evoke the ironic antithesis of exhibition in a museum/gallery and exhibition in a movie theater. The outline of Villa Rospigliosi (a fictional Italian museum) remains on screen throughout the film, reminding us (like the mirrors in representational paintings, or like the serial imagery of 'Black Windows' in Engel's own paintings of the 1960s) continually of the viewing space (as a doubly-coded self-reference, or displacement) which can show equally the ascetic calligraphy of Cy Twombly, the naïve 'magical' charm of the bird trapped in an illusory Thaumatrope cage (or is it a real pigeon whose liveliness outside the gallery window distracts from the 'nature morte' paintings inside?), and dazzling Post-Modern collages (simultaneously referencing painters Rosenquist and Rauschenberg as well as filmmaker Pat O'Neill) in which repetitive cycles of representational figures brush shoulders with non-objective forms. Elizabeth Bartfai's ravishing and clever collage of moments from Respighi's 'Botticelli Pictures' brilliantly reinforces this meditation about Art and how we see it."
- Dr. William Moritz

Rental Fees

  Fee  
16mm film $35.00  

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