Reconstructivist Art: Examples of Reconstructivist Art

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Examples of Reconstructivist Art

by Chris Sunami

Contents

"Man of La Mancha" by Wasserman, Leigh and Darion

The success of this popular musical reflected the way it captured the spirit of imagination in allegiance to higher Truth of the classic novel "Don Quixote" (Cervantes).

Nod to Artifice: The play-within-a-play structure of the musical presents the story of Don Quixote as if it were being acted out by the author in front of an audience of prisoners. This cleverly invites the audience to suspend their disbelief as they enter the imagination of Cervantes (and through him, the imagination of his character, Quixote), while preserving a theatrical economy of minimal sets and props.

Classic Structure: The plotline of "Man of La Mancha" is loosely adapted from the aforementioned Don Quixote, which is considered the first modern novel, and an enduring classic of the form. The massive contents of that book, however, have been streamlined and reduced to fit the form of a romantic tragedy.

Transcontextual and Iconic Elements: The original book was itself a loving parody of Medieval romances, and is rich in iconic archetypes such as the "Brave Hero," the "Wicked Sorcerer," and the "Beautiful Damsel," all transcontextualized to the more mundane Spain of Cervantes’ era, and embodied in an ironic form by figures such as Alonso Quijana, the seemingly senile country gentlemen, and Aldonza, the local tavern whore. The musical adds another level of transcontextualization by inserting Cervantes himself into the narrative, and by having him and a ragged band of prisoners take on the already doubled roles of the characters from the book both as they are in "real" life and as they are in Quijana’s imagination.

Moments of Genuine Emotion or Significance: Considered a masterpiece of musical theater, "Man of La Mancha" has proved deeply moving and inspirational to the multiple generations of theater-goers. In particular, the emotional heart of the show is found in its trademark number "The Impossible Dream," with its paradigmatic reconstructivist message that imagination, belief and moral courage bring us closer to a higher and better level of reality than that inhabited by cold hard facts.

"The Warriors (Ultimate Director’s Cut)" by Walter Hill and David Shaber

I’ve been a fan of this cult classic movie for years, but it wasn’t until viewing the 2005 "Ultimate Director’s Cut" that I realized the movie was originally conceived in a reconstructivist mode.

Nod to Artifice: The re-release highlights the exaggerated sensibilities of the script by framing key scenes and transitions as panels from the page of a comic book.

Classic Structure: As is common in reconstructive art pieces, the movie is an adaptation of an adaptation, in this case taken from a novel that was itself inspired by the Anabasis, by the ancient Greek warrior, Xenophon, a (literally) classic tale of an outnumbered band of mercenaries making it home against all odds.

Transcontextual and Iconic Elements: Each of the movie’s many gangs is iconic and allusive in look, style and conception, including the eponymous heroes who represent mercenary warriors of Xenophon’s original, but with a look partially inspired by war garments from various Native American nations. Other transcontextualized gangs include the "Baseball Furies", who are named after the ancient Greek spirits of revenge, but who dress like zombie ball players; and the "Lizzies", a seductive-but-tough lesbian gang who represent the Ancient Greek Sirens.Perhaps not surprisingly, many of the film’s signature moments have become iconic images of popular culture themselves, most notably the "Can you dig it?" speech by messianic gang leader Cyrus, and the bottle-rattling taunt "Warriors, come out and play!" delivered by demented villain Luther.

Moments of Genuine Emotion or Significance: As cartoonish as the movie may seem, it carries a sociological and emotional weight that places it head and shoulders above the low-budget action films it outwardly resembles.

Alfonso Cuarón's "Y Tu Mama Tambien"

Cuarón’s movie broke records in Mexico, and was a worldwide hit, despite its racy and subversive material.

Nod to Artifice: The realism of the movie is broken periodically by weighty voice-overs which break into both the plot and the soundtrack.

Classic Structure: The movie at first glance promises a bundle of clichés, in that the premise features three shop-worn genres in one: The buddy-comedy, the road-trip movie and the sex-farce.

Transcontextual and Iconic Elements: The movie borrows some familiar props from the movies it deconstructs: the "Battered Car" that barely runs, the seductive "Older Woman", the "Fantasy Beach" that magically appears in reality. In addition to these, there is also a second, more disturbing and less familiar set of icons that barely impinge on the consciousness of the characters: the "Intersection Where Someone Was Run Over", the "Village Wedding", the "Fisherman Who Will Be Forced Into the Tourist Industry".

Moments of Genuine Emotion or Significance: What gives the movie its depth is how its seeming stereotypes reveal a core of messy reality that cannot be denied or ignored. The seductress’s secrets are revealed as decidedly unsexy --teenage heartbreak, a chronically unfaithful husband and a fatal disease. The two buddies unexpectedly confront the homoeroticism hidden beneath the surface of their friendship. Even the paradise-like beach turns out to have a dark fate of its own, as a sacrifice to economic exploitation. At the end, the fizzy joy of the movie’s early scenes gives way to hard emotional realities: People die, and friendships end.

Art Spiegelman's "Maus"

Experimental cartoonist Art Spiegelman shocked both his underground fan base and mainstream America with his emotional portrait of his parent’s lives during the Holocaust in graphic-novel (comic-book) format.

Nod to Artifice: Spiegelman appears as a character in the book(s) and comments on his troubles writing it.

Classic Structure: Unlike most prior graphic novels, "Maus" deals with a true story, told with gritty realism, and in a fairly straightforward fashion.

Transcontextual and Iconic Elements: Cartooning is by nature an iconic art, and Spiegelman makes defiantly non-ironic use of its many conventions, including the use of anthropomorphic animals to portray the story’s characters.

Moments of Genuine Emotion or Significance: Few were able to read Maus without being moved by the starkness of the book’s tragedies, and the humane qualities of its narrative.

George Lucas' "Star Wars"

One of the most popular and successful movies of all time, Lucas’ "Star Wars" represented a return to classic storytelling after the more deconstructionist narratives of the 1970’s.

Nod to Artifice: The movie begins with a famous image of scrolling text "Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away" that not only pays homage to the old serial melodramas, but also firmly establishes the movie as a fairy tale within a futuristic setting.

Classic Structure: Star Wars is patterned closely and consciously on the "Hero’s Journey" the ancient and universal story structure studied and described by folklorist Joseph Campbell.

Transcontextual and Iconic Elements: The Evil Emperor, beautiful Princess, Hidden Prince hero, Wise Old Mentor and Dark Father are all venerable archetypes translated to a space-age, science-fiction setting.

Moments of Genuine Emotion and Significance: Lucas’ decision to treat a potentially campy scenario with respect and affection paid off when the movie connected at a visceral level with millions of moviegoers worldwide. Memorable moments of the first movie include Obi-Wan’s self sacrifice, Hans Solo’s return, and Luke’s decision to "trust the force".

Jason Godeke's "Unstill Lives"

A series of paintings by Jason Godeke, exhibited variously as "Unstill Lives," "Construct Realities," and "Object and Figure."

Nod to Artifice: The paintings in this series focus on toy figurines, which are clearly artificial objects. (Example One)

Classic Structure: The paintings generally focus on classical themes or images, such as the Garden of Eden, and are painted in a mock-classic style. (Example Two)

Transcontextual and Iconic Elements: The toy figurines conjure up images of modern childhood and commercial playthings, while other objects within the paintings tend towards more standard subjects of still lifes such as vases of flowers. A third set of icons is drawn from classical art, and includes Greek sculptures and Roman Emperors(Example Three)

Moments of Genuine Emotion or Significance: Despite the artifice of the work, the dreamlike imagery provides a sense of emotional depth. (Example Four)
(Examples......)

Joss Whedons' "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog"

Watch This Movie

This internet-only mini-musical signals its reconstructivist leanings through the way it resists being dismissed as mere parody.

Nod to Artifice: The movie is framed by the conceit that it is a series of video blog entries being posted by an aspiring super-villain, while the use of the phrase "Sing-Along" in the title foreshadows the embrace of the artificiality inherent in any musical --that being the tendency of the characters to burst into fully orchestrated songs in the middle of mundane events.

Classic Structure: The compressed plot combines a textbook romantic storyline with the superhero genre's traditional "origin story" narrative.

Transcontextual and Iconic Elements: The main characters, with the exception of the female lead, are all parodies of standard comic book heroes and villains, the Mad Scientist, the Henchman, the Evil League of Evil, the musclebound Superhero, and so forth.

Moments of Genuine Emotion or Significance: The movie's stark ending, although broadly melodramatic and manipulative, still manages to carry the emotional weight of tragedy and the intellectual weight of an honest examination of what success looks like for someone for whom evil is an aspiration, both of which allow the movie to resonate at a deeper level than might seem likely.

Julie Taymor's "Lion King"

Experimental theater veteran Julie Taymor put together this commercial and critical smash hit musical-theater adaptation of a Disney movie.

Nod to Artifice: The show features fully visible puppeteers, and actors whose faces show beneath their animal masks, as well as an unashamedly theatrical use of stage magic.

Classic Structure: The structure comes directly from the conventional plot of the original children’s movie (which itself was supposedly inspired by the Shakespeare play "Hamlet").

Transcontextual and Iconic Elements: Julie drew on many different sources to create "Lion King" including the puppet and theater traditions of several different countries, including Bali, Japan and Greece.

Moments of Genuine Emotion or Significance: The Lion King is filled with such moments, including the courtship of Simba and Nala, the death of the old king, and the climatic restoration of Simba at the end.

Kutiman’s “Thru You”

Perhaps the first great Reconstructivist artwork of the “do it yourself” era, Kutiman’s labor-intensive You-Tube mashup transforms and elevates the work of countless amateur musicians. In a world where sophisticated digital remixing technology is at the fingertips of millions, and where overproduced, prefabricated pop-music idols can masquerade as artists, Kutiman’s work performs a paradoxical double feat:
By showcasing the work of otherwise anonymous and unnoticed you tube auteurs, he allows them (and by extension each one of us out there in cyberspace, performing alone in front of our webcams) to live the fantasy of being produced by a master producer, our voices echoing and magical, our melodies backed by a limitless orchestra of skilled musicians.
He raises his own tracks from the level of parlor trick to true art by through skillful use of a Real musician’s ear and skills.
Thus he gives us both the fantasy of instant stardom and the reality of skill and laborious effort all together in a single package.

Kutiman’s Site

Nod to Artifice: Kutiman's songs are presented exactly as what they are, cut-and-pasted assemblages of bands and songs that never existed in analog reality. The jerky editing, and the split screens all attest to the illusionary nature of what we cannot help but perceive as a unified collaborative effort.

Classic Structure: The music itself is not overly experimental in its form. Although several of the pieces are most akin to extended jams, they all present as recognizable songs in identifiable genres, and many even feature some variant of the familiar verse-chorus-bridge structure.

Transcontextual and Iconic Elements: Kutiman’s videos have some strong similarities to previous YouTube hits, including One Man Band (Watch on You Tube) which showcases a single musician, playing a multitracked piece with himself on splitscreen, Playing For Change’s Stand By Me (Watch on You Tube), which weaves together musicians playing "Stand By Me" all around the world, and Weezer's "Pork and Beans" (Watch on You Tube) which features the stars of many viral hit YouTube videos performing together over Weezer's song. The biggest difference, however, is that all the elements used in "One Man Band" and "Stand By Me" were created specifically for the use to which they were put. They were recorded in order to fit together into a larger whole. Similarly, while Weezer's video transcontexualizes the icons of viral video into a new setting, the performances of those icons are all recreated to match their new context.

In contrast, each performance used by Kutiman was intended purely by the original artist as a stand-alone presentation, with no foreknowledge of the use to which it would be placed. Thus, these audiovisual elements are truly and genuinely transcontextualized to create the rich fabric of the final presentations.

Additionally, although none of the original videos are widely known enough to be called "iconic", they are all used by Kutiman in an iconic fashion. Thus, the participants in the videos, especially those whose work forms the melodic or lyrical center of particular songs, become instantly iconic and recognizable --the Harmonica Playing Man in his living room, the German Rastafarian, the slightly scolding Just A Lady, and a host of others.

Moments of Genuine Emotion or Significance: What makes Thru You function truly as reconstructivist art in a way that its antecedents did not, is largely the caliber and the originality of the music and the way it grows directly and organically from the process that created it. One contributing factor is that Kutiman has located (during his hunt through You Tube) some real diamonds in the rough --scraps of music that have real flair, yet that otherwise lacked the context, the presentation or the completion to ever reach a wider audience in their initial form-- such as the spooky blues sung by the young mother in "Someday" or the clever rhymes laid down by the rapper of "I'm New". The other factor is that he has taken the digital editing era to its logical conclusion, using his own musicianship to synthesize entire riffs and melodies --sometimes a single note at at time. The result is songs that, like all good music, stick in the head and demand to be replayed.

Michael Ende's "Neverending Story"

Michael Ende’s international bestseller found an audience among children and adults alike, and should not be confused with the more juvenile movie adaptation. While the movie faithfully reproduced the conventional fairy tale that takes up the first half of the book, it ignored the novel’s reconstructivist second half, in which the world of the story is literally deconstructed and rebuilt from scratch.

Nod to Artifice: The book "The Neverending Story" appears within itself in several different ways --first as a work of fiction being read by a boy named Bastian; next as a book within a book (which contains Bastian’s own story along with its other contents); and finally as the boundary of an entire universe.

Classic Structure: Ende’s book has a unique doubled structure, in which the first half consists of a classic fairy-tale style "hero’s journey," while the second half examines a more psychologically rich version of the same theme.

Transcontextual and Iconic Elements: The first half of the book is filled with familiar tropes and archetypes of fantasy literature, from the zany band of non-human creatures to the ethereal Ivory Tower. The second half goes deeper, however, as elements from the first half are combined with new and more original archetypes that reflect and respond to things deep within Bastian’s psyche.

Moments of Genuine Emotion or Significance: Ultimately, the Neverending Story is about the redemptive power of art and imagination, and Bastian finds that love and friendship are real, even in a world where much of what he experiences proves to be illusionary.

R. Stevens' "Diesel Sweeties"

Computer artist R. Stevens has been producing the subversive webcomic "Diesel Sweeties" for over six years

Nod to Artifice: In Diesel Sweeties, the stylized pixelation of the artwork highlights the fact that it is created on a computer, while the large contingent of computers and robots among the strip’s main characters is another reference to the strip’s personal sense of artifice.

Classic Structure: Diesel Sweeties has experimental moments, especially in its web version, but generally stays within the "four-panel gag-a-day" format familiar to anyone who has ever read a comic strip in a newspaper.

Transcontextual and Iconic Elements: Diesel Sweetie’s characters are literally "icons," at least as that term is applied in computer circles. Each one is a figure taken from popular culture, distilled into its essence and rendered in the brightly colored boxy style of early computer graphics.

Moments of Genuine Emotion or Significance: The overall theme of Diesel Sweeties is love (in all its human irrationality!) and the subject is returned to again and again as the characters meet, mate, and experience lust, joy, jealousy, happiness, and all the other emotions that come from the relationship one person has with another.

The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

This ground-breaking work of psychedelic sound is considered by some to be "the best album ever released."

Nod to Artifice: The album is introduced through its first song as a concert being given by the fictional band of the title. In an inside joke, the second song is then presented as a solo by that band’s lead singer "Billy Shears," who is really the (mostly non-singing) Ringo Starr, drummer of the real band.

Classic Structure: Unlike "Abbey Road," another concept album recorded by the Beatles, "Sgt. Pepper" contains no side-length medley or (with the exception of the reprised title track) reoccurring musical themes. Instead, it largely keeps the standard format of any LP of the time (to such an extent that the Beatles even considered interchanging some of the songs with ones from other albums).

What makes the structure notable, however, is that the song order imitates a classic theatrical presentation, including an introduction (the title track), a first act finale ("Mr. Kite"), an "intermission" (the side change), a second act introduction ("Within and Without You"), a curtain call (title song reprise) and a coda ("A Day in the Life"). This makes "Sgt. Pepper" unusual among reconstructivist artworks in that the classic structure is also a transcontextualized element.

Transcontextual and Iconic Elements: Other than the theatrical structure, the most directly transcontextual elements in "Sgt. Pepper" are not found on the album, but in the cover art, which assembles nearly a hundred famous faces, collage-style, as members of the eponymous "Lonely Hearts Club."

At least three other sets of transcontextualized elements are present in the music itself, although two of them are only known for their connection with the album: the circus poster that inspired the lyric for "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!", and the children’s drawing that was the putative inspiration for "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." The third set is the stream-of-consciousness cultural references in "A Day in the Life."

Additionally, many of the characters in the songs are iconic in conception and realization. This is true not only of the dreamlike "Lucy in the Sky" and the theatrical "Mr. Kite", but also of more everyday figures such as "Lovely Rita, Meter Maid" and "She" (of "She’s Leaving Home").

Moments of Genuine Emotion or Significance: This album largely foregoes the social commentary that marked much of the Beatles’ later work, but it highlights the Beatlesí underlying spirituality and humanity.

Tailsteak's "1/0"

Tailsteak’s acclaimed webcomic "1/0" was brought to a close (at the end of a three-year run) in 2003.

Nod to Artifice: In 1/0, the strip’s creator is a very real presence within the strip, and his changing relationship with the strip’s characters is a key element of the strip’s overall storyline.

Classic Structure: The structure of 1/0 is a standard four-panel comic strip.

Transcontextual and Iconic Elements: In 1/0 many of the original characters and references were literally and explicitly "stolen" from other places.

Moments of Genuine Emotion or Significance: In 1/0, the theme is existence and the meaning or meaninglessness thereof, and the strip fearlessly explores profound questions of religion, morality and identity, all within its own self-delineated boundaries.

The Fugees' "The Score"

The landmark sophomore album that introduced the Fugees to a worldwide audience, and transformed many people’s conception of hip-hop.

Nod to Artifice: The album was conceived as the soundtrack to a fictional movie (a theme explored in the music videos), and is introduced theatrically ("Columbia/Ruffhouse Records Present, a Refugee Camp Production"). In addition many of the songs are introduced with a chime-like sound recognizable to Generation X as the sound used to cue the advance of a filmstrip or a read-along book. Within the songs, explicit references are made to the artists ("we used to be underrated") and to elements of the song structure ("take it to the bridge").

Classic Structure: Although the fact has passed unnoticed by most critics, "The Score" has the same theatrical structure as "Sgt Pepper", with an introduction ("Red Intro"), an intermission (side change), a second act introduction/reprise ("The Score"), a finale ("Manifest/Outro") and a post-curtain coda ("Mista Mista").

Transcontextual and Iconic Elements: As with any hip-hop album the samples used are inherently transcontextual elements of sound (and can be iconic if the source is recognizable and/or well-known). The Fugees take this one step futher by including mini-samples from the album itself during the second act intro ("The Score"). Other transcontexualized elements are the movie references in skits between songs (as in the parody of old kung-fu movies that introduces "Fu-Gee-La"), and the transgressive (for hip-hop) inclusion of covers of the songs "Killing Me Softly" and "No Woman No Cry".

Moments of Genuine Emotion or Significance: Contrasting sharply with the flashy, big-spending pseudo-gansta rap that surrounded it, "The Score" reintroduced hip-hop to melodic samples, intellectual lyrics, social commentary and heartful performances.

William Goldman's "Princess Bride"

Popular screenwriter and novelist William Goldman produced two beloved versions of his modern "classic," which was one of the first true reconstructivist artworks.

Nod to Artifice: Goldman appears frequently in the original novel, putatively as its "abridger." In the movie, Goldman’s presence is replaced by a grandfather character, who reads the book to his grandson. In both cases the book is clearly presented as fiction, although Goldman deliberately blurs the line between the real and the imagined.

Classic Structure: Goldman’s foundation in swashbuckling adventure comes to the surface in a plot that lovingly combines every possible trope of romance and action. In the end, the familiarity of the boy-meets-girl and quest-for-revenge storylines are a large part of what makes the movie so satisfying.

Transcontextual and Iconic Elements: Transcontextually speaking, the book and the movie are both laden with playful anachronisms, many of which are highlighted and deconstructed by "William Goldman" within the text. The film is also rich in icons, as all the characters are explicitly labeled with exaggeratedly archetypal descriptions: "The Greatest Swordsman in the World," "The Most Beautiful Woman," "The Best Hunter," and so forth.

Moments of Genuine Emotion or Significance: It is the core of heartfelt sentiment that makes "The Princess Bride" more than just an entertaining parody. When Inigo Montoya gets his long awaited revenge on the evil Count Rugen it never fails to evoke an emotional response from the movie’s audience, and the same is true when "Grandfather" repeats Wesley’s catchphrase "As you wish" at the end (since the audience already knows the phrase means "I love you").

Wyclef Jean's "Mona Lisa" (from The Carnival)

Hip-hop impresario Wyclef Jean reinvented one of his earlier hits as this sentimental ballad from his multiplatinum album "Wyclef Presents the Carnival."

Nod to Artifice: Wyclef comments (hip-hop style) over the lyrics with self-referential comments such as "I never wrote a love song before."

Classic Structure: Despite its inclusion on a hip-hop album, this standard-form love-ballad is lush with classic melody, harmony and instrumentation, as rendered by the Neville Brothers.

Transcontextual and Iconic Elements: The raw materials for this song all come from "Nappy Heads Remix", the first (minor) hit created by Wyclef’s former band, the Fugees. The sampled horns of the earlier song form the basis for the later song’s instrumental accompaniment, and the catchy hook of the earlier song (itself a reference to Nat King Cole’s hit "Mona Lisa", which in turn references DaVinci’s famous painting) is the presumptive inspiration for the song’s lyric.

Moments of Genuine Emotion or Significance: The song is filled with the bittersweet emotions of a troubled relationship.