Started as a comic strip (in Raw, an experimental Comix magazine, co-edited by Speigelman and Françoise Monly) on the subject of the Holocaust, Maus became a book and, on its completion, the Museum of Modern Art in New York dedicated a show to the artist. Over 1500 interlocking drawings tell the story of Vladek, the artist's father. The comic book convention was questioned as to its appropriateness for the tragic theme.
Milli Vanilli, the group that publicly acknowledged that the album Girl You Know It's True, for which it was awarded the Grammy for Best New Artist of 1989, was vocally interpreted by someone else. The prize winners, Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus, credited for the vocals, were hardly the first to take advantage of the new means for creating the illusion of interpretation. As the 'visual entertainment," they became the wrapper on a package containing the music of less video-reputed singers. Their producer, Frank Tarian (i.e., Franz Reuther) was on his second "fake." Ten years earlier, he revealed that the pop group Boney M. was his own "mouthpiece." Image-driven pop music sells the fantasy of teen idol to a musically illiterate public. Packaged music extends to simulations of instruments and orchestras as well.
Beauty and the Beast is the story of a handsome prince in 18th century France turned into an eight-foot tall, hideous, hairy beast. Unless he finds someone to love him before his 21st birthday, the curse cast upon him by the old woman he tried to chase away will become permanent. In a nearby village, Maurice, a lovable eccentric inventor, his daughter Belle, who keeps her nose in books and her head in the clouds, and Gaston, the macho of the place, go through the usual "he (Gaston) loves/wants her; she does not care for/shuns him, etc." As its 30th full-length animation, this Walt Disney picture is a musical fairy tale that takes advantage of sophisticated computer animation. Its over one million drawings (the work of 600 animators, artists, and technicians) are animated, some in sophisticated 3-dimensional computer animation. The technological performance, resulting from an elaborate database, provided attractive numbers, such as the Be Our Guest sequence (led by the enchanted candelabra, teapot, and clock characters, entire chorus lines of dancing plates, goblets, and eating utensils perform a musical act), or the emotional ballroom sequence. Everything is based on the accepted challenge: "OK, go ahead and fool us," once upon a time uttered by some art director to the computer-generated imagery specialists of the company. The story (by Mme. Leprince de Beaumont) inspired Jean Cocteau, who wrote the screenplay for (and also directed) La Belle et La Bête (1946), featuring Jean Marais, Josette Day, and Marcel André.
Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945). Seduced by the relation to history, he produces allegories in reference to myth, art, religion, and culture. His compositions are strongly evocative, not lacking a certain critical dimension, sometimes focused on art itself, which repeatedly failed during times of challenge (those of Nazi Germany included).
Terminator 2 is a movie about two cyborgs who come from the future, one to destroy, the other to protect, a boy who will affect the future when he grows up. It is reported to be the most expensive film made as of 1991 (over 130 characters are killed), costing 85 to 100 million dollars; cf. Stanley Kauffmann, The New Republic, August 12, 1991, pp. 28-29.
Kitsch: defined in dictionaries as gaudy, trash, pretentious, shallow art expression addressing a low, unrefined taste. Kitsch-like images are used as ironic devices in artworks critical of the bourgeois taste.
The relation between art and language occasioned a major show organized by the Société des Expositions du Palais de Beaux-Arts in Brussels. A catalogue was edited by Jan Debbant and Patricia Holm (Paris: Galerie de Paris; London: Lisson Gallery; New York: Marian Goodman Gallery). Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). Ästhetik (Hrsg. von Friedrich Bassenge). Berlin: Verlag das Europäische Buch, 1985.
Dadaism: Hans Arp defined Dada as "the nausea caused by the foolish rational explanation of the world" (1916, Zurich). Richard Huelsenbeck stated that "Dada cannot be understood, it must be experienced" (1920). More on this subject can be found in:
Raoul Hausmann. Am Anfang war Dada. (Hrsg. von Karl Riha &
Gunter Kampf). Steinbach/Giessen: Anabas-Verlag G. Kampf, 1972.
Serge Lemoine. Dada. Paris: Hazan, 1986.