Christian Marclay’s art installation “The Clock” is a 24-hour-long film which assembles painstakingly sampled images from a vast range of movies to track the viewer through a full day in real time. The process of making the piece was so intense and took so long that Marclay developed calluses on his fingers in the editing process. But his hard work has not gone unnoticed as Marclay was awarded The Gold Lion top prize at last year’s Venice Biennale, the granddaddy of all art shows. The prize was announced in June 2011 by a five-member jury including Hassan Khan, Carol Yinghua Lu, Letizia Ragaglia, Christine Macel and filmmaker John Waters. Critics worldwide are heralding “The Clock” as one of the most prolific and groundbreaking achievements in both art and film in decades. New York’s Lincoln Center, which just wrapped up their exhibition of “The Clock”, describes the installation as such:
The Clock is a spectacular and hypnotic 24-hour work of video art by renowned artist Christian Marclay. Marclay has brought together thousands of clips from the entire history of cinema, from silent films to the present, each featuring an exact time on a clock, on a watch, or in dialogue. The resulting collage tells the accurate time at any given moment, making it both a work of art and literally a working timepiece: a cinematic memento mori. Marclay also composed the soundscape, driven by a racing and swelling symphony of ringing, ticking, footsteps, laughter, tears, and music. The Clock comes to Lincoln Center after recently being featured at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Hayward Gallery at London’s Southbank Centre.
Christian Marclay recently sat down with Charlie Rose for a fascinating interview about his painstaking passion project, and one needs not attend the installation in person to appreciate the genius of what he has done here.
TO WATCH CHARLIE ROSE’S INTERVIEW WITH CHRISTIAN MARCLAY FAST FORWARD TO THE 39:14 MARK.
