Les Statues meurent aussi

Essentially this is an exhibition of African art with a commentary and supplemental material designed to render comprehension uncluttered by mistaken notions about cultural differences and æsthetic traditionalisms.

This is ironic after Picasso, Modigliani, Klee and Matisse, and lends an air of naïveté to the filmmakers’ transaction with the public, but they want a clear view unobstructed by any angles, so they cover them all one after another with a sort of diffidence toward the whole idea of appreciation. Every mental backwater is reached and abandoned, while at the same time the works are exhaustively shown. It isn’t the way you look at them that’s so important, it’s that you see them in themselves.

The additional material amusingly describes the decline into “bazaar art”, the dilemma of the artist between “iconoclastic Islam” and “idol-burning Christianity”, etc. “His work has lost its magic,” adrift betwixt old and new.

“Objects die when living eyes see them no more,” an observation expanded upon by Godard in Éloge de l’amour.