The End of Fear (2018)

Directed by: Barbara Visser | 70 minutes | documentary

Amsterdam, March 21, 1986. An angry art lover enters the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, armed with a box cutter. The target is the painting ‘Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III’ by American artist Barnett Newman. When the dust has lifted, a canvas with deep incisions remains, broken but can still be restored.

The restoration of the painting is outsourced to the American Daniel Goldreyer. The restoration is not a cheap job and Goldreyer says it will take a lot of time. But once the painting is back in Amsterdam, it looks as if Goldreyer bought a few jars of paint from the Gamma and started working with a paint roller. Director Beeren is still enthusiastic about the restoration, but curator Bracht doesn’t like it at all. That is the prelude to years of legal wrangling.

This beautiful piece of Dutch cultural history forms the basis for Barbara Visser’s documentary ‘The End of Fear’. The maker takes the viewer at a gallop along archive images and recorded (?) telephone conversations. Visser also follows the young artist Renske van Enckevort, to whom she commissions a replica of the painting. Moreover, we hear from art experts and laymen what they think of the painting.

‘The End of Fear’ doesn’t provide answers but does ask the right questions. For example, what exactly that painting represents. We are none the wiser from the art connoisseurs, they hardly get any further than that the canvas (colossal red with narrow blue and yellow strips on the side) is amazing and crushing. They also say that the canvas is going to communicate with you (forgetting that a purple curtain or a yellow wall will also start chatting to you if you look at it long enough). Then we hear the sober comments of a group of school children.

Another question is about who actually belongs to the work of art. The artist? The museum? The big public? The destroyer, who creates a new work of art in his own way? That question comes up again later, when Visser and Van Enckevort discuss whether their version of the painting belongs to the filmmaker or to the artist. It becomes painfully clear that the painting has a much deeper meaning for the artist than for outsiders.

Then there is the matter of the value of the canvas. Since art has become an important investment object, prices seem disproportionate to the performance delivered. In ‘The End of Fear’ we see how the insured value of the colossal red spot increases year after year. Into the millions.

All these aspects come together in a documentary that lasts less than 70 minutes and that captivates and entertains over the full length. The style is playful and hopping, there is room for humor and nostalgia (Maartje van Weegen with earrings from a disappeared African civilization) and the documentary offers more than enough to talk about. Contrary to its much-discussed subject, ‘The End of Fear’ is therefore a work of art about which any discussion is superfluous.