Lars von Trier has put his cinematic scamming on hold and turned to fleecing the art world instead. After the failure of last year’s “The House That Jack Built,” the controversial director has mined one of his most praised films, 2011’s “Melancholia,” for use in a different medium. Here, he’s not using digital video or film like one would expect (if you can expect anything from him at this point); instead he’s working in diamonds, two of them fused into a giant beast of a stone, along with virtual reality.
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The New York Times calls the exhibit in Antwerp, Belgium, “puzzling.” If you can’t make the trip to Belgium (same), here’s their description: “A 12-carat white double diamond, crafted out of two raw stones, sat on a black plinth in a glass vitrine in the center of a nearly empty white-walled space in an Antwerp museum. Next to it, a museum visitor is invited to wear a virtual reality helmet and step inside an enlarged rendition of the same double diamond, and to stand for a moment inside its silent, glittering core.”
If you can’t visit the M HKA contemporary art museum before the exhibition closes May 5, that description will have to do since von Trier won’t allow photos of it. It took five years to cut the stone by hand, which takes the apocalyptic climax of “Melancholia” quite literally with its pair of smashed-together stones standing in for the Earth and the planet of the title, with the bonus initials of “LvT” on one side.
The “Melancholia” diamond isn’t his last foray into the medium. Next up is a piece inspired by “Breaking the Waves,” but hopefully the laser von Trier is planning to use will be faster than the old-school method for his first. Otherwise, how will we ever get to the diamond based on “Manderlay“?