I’m never quite sure what I make of artists or filmmakers being commissioned to do works for corporate brands. It seems a bit strange, counter-intuitive or inartistic to have your freedom of expression clipped by an external design brief, especially one driven by financial incentives. But at the same time restriction is always necessary in the creative process: a surplus of freedom often leads to bloated or directionless work and many artists (Matthew Barney, Raymond Queneau, Arnold Schoenberg) are famous for creating huge, sprawling, beautiful oeuvres using restriction as a guiding principle. So I suppose every work has to be judged singularly.
This is the new film by The Brothers Quay commissioned by Comme des Garçons for their new perfume Wonderwood. It’s nice, although not their finest, and does a pretty good job at getting the fashion brand’s message across. Most of all though it’s a damn clever way of generating some free publicity in what I presume CDG’s marketing department deem to be ‘the right circles’. Feel like a target market? I do.
Bit of an interview on the Dazed website if you’re interested in further reading:
http://www.dazeddigital.com/ArtsAndCulture/article/7578/1/Quay_Brothers_x_Comme_des_Garcons
And some biog and vid links to past works on the BFI site:
