Who Gets to Call It Art?

During the '60s, New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, under the supervision of contemporary art curator Henry Geldzahler, showcased and made "respectable" the controversial works of artists Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, David Hockney, and others. Geldzahler was an early proponent of the culture-savvy fringe movement dubbed "Pop Art" (which includes such timeless works as Warhol's soup cans paintings and Lichtenstein's large-scale recreations of comic-book panels) and other art forms that, in their own bizarre way, celebrated the plastic and the banal in American life. Peter Rosen's documentary, compiled from archival footage and contemporary interviews, chronicles that exciting yet pretentious period, with Geldzahler emerging as both star and protagonist—his assembly and presentation of the massive Met exhibit, "New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940-1970," is shown to be the culmination of a tumultuous 10-year period that found the art world totally upended. Much of the work from that period now seems so dated as to be irrelevant, but that doesn't make this film any less entertaining. DVD extras include additional artist interviews, an audio Q&A with the filmmakers, and a 1961 short by Claes Oldenburg called “Fotodeath.” Aud: C, P. (E. Hulse)