‘Art Talent Show’ Review – The Monotony Of Art And Creative Spaces

For us cinephiles familiar with Frederick Wiseman’s documentaries, we know they are a myriad of things. They’re observational, non-interactive, funny, introspective, and chronicling a life within a life. Since Adéla Komrzý’s and Tomáš Bojar’s hilarious cinéma vérité works along the same vein, viewers anticipate more than a boring sampling admissions process.

Art Talent Show is about the tedious journeys to Prague’s prestigious, exclusive Academy of Fine Arts. In this documentary everything has life: the student letters and applications, the submitted artwork whether visual or paintings. The professors shine each on their own. Like Wiseman before them, the directors’ camera is objective and detached, but kind and intrusive. Both directors excel in creating the perfect environment for a camera close enough to its subjects not to alienate the audience while allowing them to revolve in its orbit.

We are thrust into the world of fine art. Professors are as curious and eager as the students they evaluate, but also cruel and cynical. Viewers don’t know whether to love them or flinch at their sharp comments at times. The beauty of the directors’ camera is how it takes us on a journey to identify with every particular professor and the different media and subdisciplines through which art can be expressed.

The mundane routine of life inside this academy is stretched out and played for our inquisitive eyes. Professors and students are shown at their most vulnerable and expressive verbally, physically, and creatively. It has been rewarding to go through the intricate selection and assessment process while reminiscing on the concept of assessing art. Who can say they know how to evaluate art? What makes an evaluation process superior to another? In one particular scene, the camera lingers as the professors prepare their morning coffee from grinding to pressing and brewing in such a tranquil, slow manner as if the filmmakers are taking us by the hand to guide us into normalcy rather than the faux sacredness associated with what lies behind closed doors in art academies.

The different ways through which students choose to interpret themes are also fascinating to watch. The documentary holds viewers captive within the walls of the Academy. It’s impossible to take our eyes off the screen when sometimes bizarre manifestations of creativity or, surprisingly, refreshing and inspiring interpretations of an aesthetic theme or assignment. Theological conversations intersect with random ramblings, the camera doesn’t leave its subjects and follows them around relentlessly. Viewers are invited to unveil the secret of a world that seems cold and detached, snobbish even from afar but turns out to be as familiar and sympathetic as any other baffling workplace dynamics.

Art Talent Show is not concerned with providing easy answers or solutions. The outcome of the assessment process is not the issue at hand, nor the pot of gold at the edge of the rainbow. But what lies between the painter holding a brush, the sculptor preparing the workspace, and the photographer adjusting the camera to capture a moment or a sensation, is a group of people talking and adjusting comfortably in their clothes, joking about daily activities, logging in and out during work hours. The artistic experience is diverse, unique, and intrinsic, and through Adéla Komrzý’s and Tomáš Bojar’s lens, we get to participate in the controlled experiment of their voyeuristic adventure.

Art Talent Show is currently available on Digital platforms courtesy of Film Movement. 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ_oLEw_1VQ]