Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis (2007)

An intriguing, and profoundly frustrating, view of the New York underground hero.

The intoxicating documentary Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis, directed by Mary Jordan, is a love poem to the New York City of the '50s and '60s, when Smith, the visionary of camp, more or less invented performance art.

It's gratifying when an influential underground artist is profiled in an accessible documentary. For that reason alone, Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis is worth seeing.

In some ways Smith's art became commodified only after he died and his estranged sister gained control over his work, though that did lead to this documentary, a fascinating introduction to his special world.

Helmer Mary Jordan does an extraordinary job sorting through extensive material and gathering a who's who of collaborators and disciples, offering an insightful and incisive portrait of a self-destructive paranoid artist.

Smith's own work, here montaged for easy digestion, is already too rich and sumptuous to require any further frosting.

In Jordan’s documentary you see the roots of camp as distinctly melancholy and yearning, a world of the spirit that can never be made flesh.