Writing Sample 1: (Untitled) • by: Levi Barringer • 11.9.

09 1

In the new satirical film (Untitled) by Jonathan Parker and Catherine DiNapoli, the

tagline for the piece is “Everyone’s got an opinion.” However, the question that always

remains with any work from, about, or within the contemporary art world is, whose

opinion matters? Who gets to decide what is art? (Untitled) begs the question through

the dialogues of the seemingly disparate characters, all functioning at various levels of

talent and taste. Adrian Jacobs (Adam Goldberg) is a brooding, morose composer of

atonal symphonies that are ill-received by most folks with an ear, especially his own

Russian vocalist. His brother, Josh, (Eion Bailey) produces innocuous, identical abstract

paintings of dots and blurry color fields, which attracts the attention of local gallerist

Madeleine Gray. (Marley Shelton) She manages to market the paintings to commercial

institutions, a back-room practice that serves as the primary financial support for her

gallery. The gallery front-room, however, is a mise-en-scéne of contemporary avant-

garde artist individuals who suit Gray’s neurotic palette. Vinnie Jones plays the arrogant,

egomaniacal artist, Ray Barko, whose ostentatious installations of taxidermy animals,

coupled with household objects like vacuums, chandeliers, and cosmetic mirrors, are

vacuums in and of themselves. While Shelton’s character’s wardrobe is composed of

ninety percent sonorous material that shifts and vibrates every time she moves, Barko

comments that it is not an “eye for art” that Gray possesses, but an ear.

To the viewer’s delight, both Madeleine’s eye and ear are clouded upon witnessing

Adrian and his band of misfits (including Lucy Punch as the Clarinet) in concert for the

first time. Adrian, who has resolved to commit suicide in three years if he doesn’t make it

big, is constantly in search of his own inspiration. David Lang scores the music of the
Writing Sample 1: (Untitled) • by: Levi Barringer • 11.9.09 2

film, punching up and incorporating every quotidian, percussive sound imaginable, (i.e.

shoes, clothing, cell phones, paper, glass) which always registers with the audience, yet is

somehow overlooked by Adrian in his desperate search for big inspiration. The viewer

begins to realize as the film progresses, however, that what inspires art most of all may

come from that which one does not see. In other words, that which is so embedded in

everyday life, petite and undetectable without a necessary merging of the senses.

(Untitled) draws heavily on this theme of experiencing art with more than just one

sensory mode of perception. With shelves of books and moleskins lining his bed mantle,

Adrian meticulously records notes throughout the film. He samples the sounds made by

some of Madeleine’s borrowed clothing, yet he is still unable to draw inspiration from

her in the present moment. When they are together in her apartment, surrounded by the

tongue-in-cheek pop artifice of signs, (a blue walrus sculpture with glittery tusks, LSD-

inspired smiling flowers, and a type painting that boldly asserts, NO YOU SHUT UP) and

in Gray’s gallery where he is commissioned to perform, Adrian still remains alienated by

the disconnect between the perceptible world and his own artistic sensibilities.

Further complicating the angst of alienation is Josh’s discovery of his brother’s love

affair with the gallerist, along with the discovery of the nature of Gray’s commercial

transactions of his back-room paintings. When Josh demands a show at Gray’s gallery,

she resolves to keep her front and back rooms (respectively, metaphors for collectors and

clients) separate. Gray eventually has no choice but to show the horrid dot paintings, at

which point the reversal of front and back room demographics works in her utter

disfavor. Another distinction between the world of art and truth occurs when Barko
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claims, “Critics love theory. Collectors love beauty.” Some viewers may read this

statement as a symptomatic reassertion of the experience of contemporary art’s

disconnection from truth. Barko’s entire ideology relies on his disinterest and inability to

produce any real meaning by his art. Whether or not the art does well appears to hinge

only on the prices asked for it amidst the present scene of collectors, rather than assuming

any meaning in an historical context. The film plays up themes of death and immortality

heavily through the taxidermy and suicidal contemplations, but by doing this only further

demonstrates the split in the characters where personal history gets lost in the art making

process. Even with Josh’s fluid ability to rattle off jargon about the growth of his artistic

vision of color and form, he and his body of art still lack real, intersubjective narratives

with the world. What falls into this void between art and the truth of the personal

experience of art, underscores the entire film throughout.

After viewing this movie at San Francisco’s Embarcadero this past weekend, we had a

Q+A session with co-writer Catherine DiNapoli, who graciously fumbled through ninety

percent of the questions with as much hype as possible about the individuals who worked

on the film. One question she could not quite answer, however, came from a vexed critic

who asked her to speak to the disjointed direction of the piece in contrast to its fluid

writing style. DiNapoli was thrown for a loop and tried to shrug off the question as best

she could. This was much to my dismay, as she may well have been able to solidify the

claim to work in the film’s favor. We gather that Parker and DiNapoli’s film intends to

represent an experience of meaningless contemporary art leading only to a world

disconnected from significant meaning. We should recognize and interact with that
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particular aspect of the piece; doing otherwise can lead only to the reinforced dominance

of its guiding void.