13, avenue du Président Wilson 75116 Paris Open 12h-21h FREN Eco Mode
  • What’s on
  • Visit
    • Getting Here
    • Admission
    • The Palais de Tokyo
    • The Friche
    • The Bookshop
    • The Restaurants
    • The Yoyo
    • Your Needs
  • Explore
  • Outreach
    • Tours & Workshops
    • Learning
    • Inclusion
    • Innovative Outreach
    • Glossary
  • Shop
Palais de Tokyo
Buy tickets
  • Corporate
    • Private Hire
    • Corporate Partnerships
    • Palais Durable
    • Tokyo Art Club Entreprises
    • Cultural Engineering
    • Thank You
  • TOKYOPASS

SEARCH THE ENTIRE SITE

Popular searches :
  • Echo Delay Reverb
  • Melvin Edwards
  • Tokyopass
  • Naomi Beckwith

Termite art

Manny Farber (1917-2008), the American film critic*, especially loathed all those canonised authors with a frilly aesthetic and films which make us say, “Oh, what a lovely movie!”. By defending directors who were scorned by the critics (Hawks, Fuller, Siegel), he drew out the contours of what might termed “termite art”, as opposed to “white elephant art”, with a stylistic and moral heaviness, films without bite – and thus without interest – with each centimetre of their reels pretentiously displaying the word “ART”.  

*Manny Farber was also a painter. He painted all-overs of everyday objects seen from above. “The point in both cases [the cinema and painting] is to redistribute the angles of attack, to privilege the details of a work, to wander across the surface, to plug it into the surrounding world, to sum up, to advance horizontally, in every possible direction.” (“Manny Farber, a critic in permanent imbalance”, Le Monde des Livres, 2004) 

  

Related words

Tout-Monde
Artification
PRM

Related products

Magazine P L  S #35

See all products

Exhibitions

Vous les entendez ?

Exhibitions

L’être, l’autre et l’entre

Exhibitions

Morphologies souterraines

Exhibitions

Il morso delle termiti

Exploring the Tokyotheque
Palais de tokyo

Open

13, avenue du Président Wilson 75116 Paris

You are

  • Accessibility
  • Families
  • Groups
  • Teachers or Facilitators
  • Outreach Professionals
  • Health Professionals
  • Corporate
  • Press
  • Les Amis du Palais de Tokyo
FR EN
  • Contact
  • Join our team
  • Credits
  • Requests for proposals
  • Legal
  • Privacy Policy