Christian Marclay’s twenty-four-hour masterpiece, The Clock, unfolds in real time (photo courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery and White Cube)
CHRISTIAN MARCLAY: THE CLOCK
MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art
11 West Fifty-Third St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Through February 17, $17-$30
www.moma.org
In 2010, the Whitney presented “Festival,” a thrilling interactive retrospective of the work of Christian Marclay, featuring multiple multimedia site-specific installations and live performances. The New York–based multidisciplinary artist followed that up with a supreme work of utter brilliance, the captivating twenty-four-hour video The Clock, which premiered at White Cube in London, then won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale. Over the years in New York it has screened at the Paula Cooper Gallery, the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center, and in 2012–13 at the Museum of Modern Art; it is now back at MoMA, where this must-see experience will be on view through February 19. “I can’t believe a decade has gone by since The Clock was last shown at MoMA,” Marclay said in a statement. “We’ve all aged except the actors on the screen, who never age. They may die but on the screen they live forever.”
Time is of the essence in Christian Marclay’s dazzling film The Clock (photo courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery and White Cube)
The film, always presented in a large, dark space with roomy, comfortable seats, unfolds in real time, composed of approximately twelve thousand clips from movies and television that feature all kinds of timepieces showing the minutes ticking away. Masterfully edited so that it creates its own fluid narrative, The Clock seamlessly cuts from romantic comedies with birds emerging from cuckoo clocks to action films in which protagonists synchronize their watches, from thrillers with characters battling it out in clock towers to dramas with convicted murderers facing execution and sci-fi programs with mad masterminds attempting to freeze time. Marclay mixes in iconic images with excerpts from little-known foreign works so audiences are kept on the edge of their seats, wondering what will come next, laughing knowingly at recognizable scenes and gawking at strange, unfamiliar bits.
Christian Marclay’s The Clock premiered at White Cube Mason’s Yard in London in 2010 (photo by Todd-White Photography)
Part of the beauty of The Clock is that while time is often central to many of the clips, it is merely incidental in others, someone casually checking their watch or a clock visible in the background, emphasizing how pervasive time is — both on-screen and in real life. Americans spend an enormous amount of time watching movies and television — and now addictively glued to social media platforms and videos on their phones — so The Clock is also a wry though loving commentary on what we choose to do with our leisure time as well.
The Clock is open during MoMA’s regular hours, with members getting priority. It is not necessarily meant to be viewed in one massive gulp, but it will be shown in its entirety on December 21 at 7:00, in conjunction with the Winter Solstice, and again on New Year’s Eve; ticketing will be announced soon. Since the film corresponds to the actual time, midnight should offer some fascinating moments, although you might be surprised how exciting even three o’clock in the morning can be. Expect huge crowds whenever you go — capacity is limited, on a first-come, first-served basis, and you can stay as long as you want — so be prepared to do something with all that valuable time spent on the digital line. But wait you should — it’s well worth every second.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]