Andy Goldsworthy's Rivers & Tides

If you don't know Andy Goldworthy's art, I think you're in for a treat. This is also QUITE child-friendly.HIs basic brief is to go out into the world and make something from what he finds there. Then he photographs it, and then lets it return to what it was. Some of his installation pieces in galleries have been pine-cone shaped stacks of slate, or other naturally occurring building material. Tori Amos stood in one of the slate stacks, as if it were a skirt, for the cover of one of her early records. Once he made a collection of snow balls with various contents, stored them, and the put them out in the gallery to melt and reveal their content.Its all about using what's actually there, but also all about time and how impermanent the world is. Nothing we see, not the rocks, not the mountains, not even the sea, will last for ever. Ok, ok, and the point is???? Ok. The first piece in this film is filmed before dawn, in Newfoundland. Goldworthy is out with a little bowl of water, and he's collected a bunch of carrot-sized icicles, and he's breaking them into segments and using the water to stick them back together to make an arc that starts and ends on the side of a big rock down by the ocean- like a letter C stuck to the rock as if: / C| / then the camera pulls back and you can see he's made a series of these, like the old arrow-though the head gag, a series of loops on both sides of the rock.........I.........L/ \........./.....D......C/......\......./........D....C/..........\so it looks like the icicle is threaded back and forth through the rock and the at the top it turns and goes up a couple of feet straight up. Nice. He's got gloves but he's working with bare fingers because he gets better control of the ice pieces that way. It looks COLD. Just as he's about to take the picture, the sun comes up, its been twilight as he's been working, and the sunlight falls on the icicle pieces and they turn on with the golden light as if they're neon tubes or something like that... completely unexpected.I find this charming, and it may not be the best piece in the film. Maybe the failures, the stack of rocks that keeps collapsing, the screen of sticks pinned together with thorns that a tiny breeze destroys, are the best. Good lesson for kids- some ideas don't work out- give it your best, and if it isn't going to happen, do something else. Its like going back 50,000 years to when art and engineering and science were more or less the same thing... What happens to the gallery wall he covers with mud is so cool I'm not going to reveal it. Suffice to say, its really, really, cool. Goldsworthy is playful, but also thoughful and direct.In Berkeley, California, this was the Star Wars of documentaries- it ran for 6 months in a theater on Shattuck. That's whare I first saw it.

I first discovered Andy Goldsworthy almost 10 years ago when, in high school, I visited the Getty Museum in Los Angeles with my friend Alex. Alex's aunt was a curator at the museum, so we were afforded a behind-the-scenes tour. Deep within the recesses of the research library I discovered one of Goldsworthy's clay dome pieces, slowly drying and cracking under a shaft of natural light from the roof above.Fast-forward to this week and the latest installment in the City Arts and Lectures series here in San Francisco. Andy Goldsworthy was giving a slide lecture on his work and I just had to be there because between this week and that first moment of discovery, I had watched a wonderful documentary on Goldsworthy called "Rivers and Tides". Before watching the documentary, I had never realized that the clay dome at the Getty was created by Goldsworthy, but after watching this beautiful, lyric work from Thomas Riedelsheimer, I could understand why that sculpture enchanted me in the manner that it did.Riedelsheimer formulates his vision by framing simple, locked-down shots, using time-lapse and an orchestration of organic sounds. But what he does best is to allow the power of Goldsworthy's transformations of nature to take center stage.Goldsworthy is the kind of artist that makes you feel small about whatever silly profession it is to which you've decided to devote your life. His work (if that word does justice to his transformations) is both gasp-inspiring and playful. On one occasion, he covers an entire gallery wall with local clay and allows it to slowly crack in the dry air. In another place, Goldsworthy builds huge rock Cairns by stacking stones together vertically like a massive 3-D puzzle. His latest work, at the De Young Museum, is a very tongue-in-cheek piece- a simple crack in the granite that snakes its way from the roadway through the courtyard of the museum. When the De Young opens this week to great fanfare, a lot of people might not even notice the subtle work running through the courtyard- but I assure you the ones who do experience it, along with this documentary, will be rewarded for it.

Rivers and Tides is a superb documentary, a unique collaboration of artist Andy Goldsworthy and filmmaker Riedelsheimer. This review is for the Special Collector's Edition, which adds 7 short pieces shot during the making of the film, focussing on specific Goldworthy pieces and overlapping with the main film somewhat. The second disk features an illuminating 45-minute interview with Riedelsheimer, where he describes the process of making the film and reflects on Goldsworthy and Evelyn Glennie as subjects and as artists. (His next film after Rivers and Tides was Touch the Sound, which follows Glennie in the same way that the earlier film follows Goldsworthy, and is equally fascinating; another link between the two is Fred Frith, who collaborates with Glennie in the second film and did the music for Rivers and Tides.) Riedelsheimer is very thoughtful and articulate (his English is impeccable), and the interview is well edited, with some footage from the film inserted to give it more visual interest. The other bonus on the second disk documents a more recent Goldsworthy project involving giant snowballs in London on Midsummer Day; it's interesting, but both sound and video quality are crude compared to the rest of this Special Edition. It's all worth seeing, but the price is rather high for what you get, unless you can get it at a deep discount. That's the only reason i'm giving this package less than 5 stars. At $20 this would be a great buy if you like contemplative cinema.

Having one of Andy Goldsworthy's books, A Collaboration With Nature, this DVD added another dimension to his art: seeing the process. Viewers are shown that there are many fails before one piece succeeds. Goldsworthy's landscape art brings to a sharp focus the intrinsic qualities of an element in the particular way he reorganizes or reforms it. At the same time he is completely at the mercy of those qualities. For example, in his ice sculptures, water that is clear and structured in its solid form still melts and breaks so easily. In another instance, where time lapse is employed, the DVD trumps the book in showing his wall project and what is revealed after the mud has dried. It is pricier than most DVDs, but still worth seeing if you are a fan of Goldsworthy.

It has been a few years since this purchase -- I didn't notice the "review" opportunity til now, so my comments are not fresh. I can say this, though, with certainty -- it is a stunning experience, and has had an influence on my own creative work. I loan it frequently. One neighbour immediately bought 5 copies of his own to give to friends and family. I'm guessing it is an "old standard" by now, familiar to many. But, if you are new to it and are pondering the purchase, I could not encourage you enough to buy it. (And when you do, be sure not to miss the extra features -- they play an important part in understanding this artist.)

My entire concept of 'art' was expanded by this film. The earth is his canvas. He creates miracles of imagination that never intrude on the Nature in which they take place.Many of his creations last only moments before they are swept away by wind or tide. Somehow, this ephemeral quality of his art adds poignancy and depth to the fleeting beauty of what it was.It's not surprising that he is the inventor of rock balancing. But that doesn't stop him from using snow and petals either. Nor miles of curving cairns that will last for hundreds of years.Andy's inner child is completely out in the open. Playful and exploring, but with the patience and persistence of a man.Kudos to his possibly long-suffering wife who lives with such a spontaneous person.

The beautiful work of Andy Goldsworthy... Will make you think about time and the ephemeral nature of life while looking at gorgeous landscape from different locations.