Abstracts, those quick summaries that are prepared about each video to help viewers and researchers scroll through heaps of results, are intended to be clear, accurate and concise.
In my work as an abstract writer for NHF, I often begin with incomplete information provided by a videographer many decades ago attached to the footage. Sometimes a clip will carry a simple note like “interview” or the location of the footage and a year.
When I began with item Acc. 1619.0033, I noted that the film was digitized but not available for public viewing yet. As I write this blog entry, it still is not available on our public website, but will be soon, though all NEH funding was cancelled.
Other material about the film is viewable now. The film itself was simply labeled “Portland Museum of Art”, and dated 1969. There were some notes added and placed in the can about the interview, which was helpful to me, but I had no names for the artwork or the artists which is what I need to be concise and make the film useful for researchers and viewers.
So, I began watching the film. At this point I should add that I have a degree in art history so I enjoy footage of art museums. The art work in the frame, though from the 1960s, looked familiar to me, and I paused the film to study it a bit more closely.
The reporter talked directly to the camera about fathers and sons, and I just barely caught him saying “Laurent” as he turned to his first subject who was just out of the frame. The artist stepped forward, an older Frenchman, and who responded with explanations about his sculptures. I replayed the segment twice to be sure I had heard correctly, and then I was sure.
I knew this artist. It was the sculptor, Robert Laurent, whom I had studied long ago, when I fell in love with both Maine and France.
When I was a student I prepared a library exhibit on Laurent’s centerpiece, a fountain between my two academic homes at Indiana University, the art history building and the Lilly Library. My student display made reference to his Cape Neddick, Maine, home and his Concarneau, France, birthplace.
At the time it was all romance and imagery for me. But on this film that I was looking at right now, there he is, as students in the 1960s would have seen him when he worked there in the very halls I walked as I studied there. It took me back, and it took my breath away. I played the footage again.
But then the interviewer dismisses him with a turn of his head, and moves on to the younger Laurent, the son John.
Yes, there is a younger artist, also successful and without an accent or hesitation. The younger Laurent has much to say about his art and he says it with the aire of someone who is used to being heard. He has a faculty position at the University of New Hampshire, and a familiarity with all things Maine. He and the interviewer banter easily.
With this jolt of youthful attitude and modernity, more than 50 years ago now, I am reminded how fragile familiarity is. Their decades-old references are stale in the 21th century. I go back to work, and try to put aside my own attentions as I write a concise report of the film’s content.
Just for a moment, though, I am tossed into the wayback machine, and the be-kind/please-rewind patch is rubbing in my ears.
