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On Jean-Luc Godard's second skin

Video as a mode of being

John Conomos
Eyeline 26
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Jean-Luc Godard is, unquestionably, one of the most innovative and searching image-mak­ers in the history of twenty century art. One is forced to state the obvious about his pivotal role in post-war European cinema, simply because too often we ignore his presence as though he were an (in)visible given; we may mistakenly think that his "revolutionary" questioning of cinema's past, present, and the future, took place only in the sixties during the heady days of the French New Wave and the events of May '68. Nothing could be further from the truth. The interviews and the best of the essays by American and European critics and scholars of Godard's work in the recent Museum of Modern Art catalogue indicate the labyrinthine enormity of Godard's passionate quest to create cinema, video and television as "a writer–painter" (Bellour) who is always seeking to extend our understanding of the image.1 A reading of this catalogue, alongside one's own familiarity with the Godard oeuvre, reinforces the realisation that to speak of Godard's films, tapes and television programmes is to deal (as Junior Cat recently reminded us) with a rhizomatic Godard.2 

Of which Godard do we speak? The Godard of the fifties at the Cinematheque and writing for Cahiers du Cinema? The Godard of the sixties before or after his collaborations with Jean­-Pierre Gorin? Or the Godard of the seventies with his (then) companion-collaborator Anne­-Marie Mieville living in Grenoble? Or the "soli­tary" Godard of the eighties living at Rolle?3 To speak of "periods" in Godard's work belies the intricate intertextuality and referentiality of his multifaceted oeuvre. Though we may charac­terise his life as an image-maker into seven broad episodes... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline

Jean-Luc Godard in his Soigne Ta Droite, 1987. Image courtesy of ed . Raymond Bellour with Mary Lea Bandy (eds.), Jean-Luc Godard:Son +Image, 7974-1991, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Abrams, New York, 1992.

Jean-Luc Godard in his Soigne Ta Droite, 1987. Image courtesy of ed . Raymond Bellour with Mary Lea Bandy (eds.), Jean-Luc Godard:Son +Image, 7974-1991, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Abrams, New York, 1992.

From Historie(s) du cinema, 1989. Image courtesy of ed . Raymond Bellour with Mary Lea Bandy (eds.), Jean-Luc Godard:Son +Image, 7974-1991, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Abrams, New York, 1992.

From Historie(s) du cinema, 1989. Image courtesy of ed . Raymond Bellour with Mary Lea Bandy (eds.), Jean-Luc Godard:Son +Image, 7974-1991, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Abrams, New York, 1992.