One of our favourite pastimes is watching movies that feature artists in their plots. We love the depiction of artists and their bohemian lifestyle, the making of art, the cruel art market and the discovery by artists of their own tortured creativity. From Kirk Douglas as Vincent Van Gogh in Lust For Life to Nick Nolte as Lionel Dobie in New York Stories, from Six Feet Under to Ghost World, Great Expectations, The Doors and The Horse’s Mouth we’re suckers for every last cliché of the cinematic art life.
Until now we have been struggling along, building up our own personal selection of movies that feature art and artists without much help. That is until we discovered two excellent sites. Art History In The Movies is a collection of film titles and DVD jackets describing films about art or artists with a couple of lines on each. It’s pretty straight forward but it’s as exhaustive a list as you’re going to find outside the Internet Movie Database.
Of a much higher order of detail is The Art Historians Guide to The Movies a reader compiled compendium, not just of movies about art, but also movies that coincidentally include art as décor. You’ll find all the usual art films listed (Lust For Life etc) but also reader submissions about some unlikely art related content such as this posting regarding art found in Ferris Buellers Day Off:
Thought I’d mention though there are many more artworks shown in the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off than Seurat‘s Sunday on La Grand Jatte. There’s a long sequence at the Art Institute of Chicago, starting with Ferris, his friend & girlfriend holding hands with a lot of kids walking past Gustave Caillebotte‘s large Paris Street; Rainy Day (1877),then a still shot of Edward Hopper‘s Nighthawks (1942), still of two Kandinskys, (Improvisation 30 (Cannons) (1913) and Painting with Green Center), five Picassos (Nude under Pine tree, Old Guitarist, The Red Armchair, Portrait of Sylvette David, Seated Woman), also shows Jacques and Bethe Lipchitz by Modigliani and Day of the Gods (Mahana No Atua) by Gauguin, Greyed Rainbow by Jackson Pollack, Bathers by a River by Matisse, and in the shot of the three of them lined up you can see In the Circus Fernando: The Ringmaster by Toulouse-Lautrec in the background, also shots with Rodin and Moore sculptures, Matthew Broderick & his girlfriend kiss in front of the blue America Windows by Chagall, before it finally ends with the sequence of the large Seurat.
The site doesn’t as yet contain anything about what has become one of our most favourite recent artist films, Max. The film’s depiction of the early art career of Adolf Hitler (Noah Taylor) and his relationship with his Jewish art dealer Max Rothman (John Cusack) and meetings with artists such as Georg Grosz (Kevin McKidd) – not to mention one of the single worst depictions of performance art this side of Legal Eagles – makes Max a must see if you’re into heavy handed symbolism and you enjoy a romp through the early days of Fascism.
A subgenre of the artist film is the film made by an actual artist. We don’t mean “artist film” in the tradition of artists getting a hold of a camera and making a movie or experimenting with “film as art”, we’re talking about artists actually directing Hollywood style movies with cast, crew and high end production values. Among the most conspicuous of artists making films over the last decade has been New York painter-turned-director Julian Schnabel and his two bio-pics, the first of which, Basquiat, is a spiritually if not factually accurate recreation of the NYC 80s art scene and its most famous deceased son.
Robert Longo, another almost forgotten American 80s artist, directed his first and only feature film Johnny Mnemonic in 1995. Attempting to create a science fiction film based on the unfilmable work of William Gibson and starring Keanu “I can shout!” Reeves, it’s little wonder that Longo returned to making art after this stinker was released. Now available on DVD for under $10, it’s worth watching if only to see a supremely untalented director waste the talents of both Takeshi Kitano and Ice T.
From David Salle’s Search & Destroy, 1995.
Another artist film is Search & Destroy directed by David Salle that’s readily available in bargain bins for less than $8. Also released in 1995, but unlike Longo and other unfortunate artists-turned-directors, Salle’s film is actually an overlooked low budget masterpiece. Starring Dennis Hopper, Illeana Douglas, Griffin Dunne, Martin Scorsese, Rosanna Arquette, John Turturro, Ethan Hawke and the incomparable Christopher Walken, the film artfully combines Salle’s trademark visual stylings with a biting satire on the mid-90s mania for Iron John style male bonding. If you’ve ever wanted to see Walken try on some Rodney Dangerfield one liners before a tap dance number in a Japanese restaurant, or see Hopper as a televangelist, this is the movie for you.
There haven’t of course been as many Australian artists who have made feature films. There was Davida Allen’s eye watering confessional short film Feeling Sexy but we’re struggling to think of any others. That was until we read Antonella Gambotto’s piece Words In Motion in The Australian’s Forum section in Review on May 21.
Gambotto is one of Australia’s leading self publicists who forged an early career interviewing pop stars in the UK for Australian street press before graduating to the grown up world of novels, newspaper columns and her own self aggrandising web site. Although officially “a babe” and a member of MENSA, Gambotto’s writing goes a long way to prove that just because you’re a genius and very sensitive, it doesn’t then follow that you can write.
Gambotto is the author of some duff novels, short stories and a non fiction account of her brother’s suicide. By some quirk of fate, it now turns out that Adelaide based artist David Bromley is turning some of Gambotto’s stories into a feature film, as the author recounted in her piece for The Australian:
It was as if Alexander and I had been hit. On screen, Hugo Weaving — haltingly, and with such elegance — read from a sheet. (I have never met Weaving. Some years ago, our glance briefly interarched in Sydney’s Ariel Bookshop. His eyes were lamps. He was taller than I had imagined, and his fingers formed a loose love-weave with those of his young daughter.) There he suddenly was, forever captured in the act of reading my words of love to my fiancé, Alexander. The pressure on my heart as I watched was unexpected. Alexander, too, said he could barely breathe. I had first read this poem to him on the telephone from the bed that would soon be ours; now the poem was part of a film I Could Be Me, made by the artist David Bromley. The film, based on a series of stories that I wrote, does not conform to traditional cinematographic formulas. Instead it flows seamlessly from image to original image, with words and music delicately superimposed. It is the most beautiful film I have ever seen, not because of my own involvement in it but because the spirit in which it was created defies the sterile modern gods of market research, profit margins, brand reinforcement and demographic merchandising.
Our heads are swimming in the detail, coming a’ cropper on the big rock that is the word “interarched” before being swept away in another mixed metaphor.
We have confessed here before that we had a thing against David Bromley based on the fact that we had him mixed up with West Australian critic David Bromfield and we apologise to both for the ongoing embarrassment. Of course, how a flat cap wearing Yorkshireman with a penchant for Imants Tillers and Mike Parr could ever have painted the bare breasted beauties of David Bromley’s canvases, we don’t know, but we live in shame at our mistake. Bromley is a successful artist with a very nice house that’s been featured many times in life style magazines and his illustrative painting style has proven very attractive to many buyers. As to how he will fare as a film director, especially one who does not bow to the wishes of the market place and the dreaded demographic merchandisers, we don’t know, but Gambotto has this to say on the process of turning words into images:
Words are my means. I wrote: “Her words had changed the shape of me … I breathed her skin. And all I wanted was a boat and an afternoon like this to sail her away in.” This year I’m 40 and I have yet to understand how my love can indirectly work a stranger’s jaw. How did Weaving became a vessel of my love for Alexander? How did Bromley summon from me words? And how is it that Alexander inspires in me this sea? Are writers and artists alchemists or the alchemical process itself?
Consider this. In 2001, my brother Gianluca committed suicide and in his memory I wrote The Eclipse; through Gianluca’s death, I met Alexander and the man who introduced me to Bromley’s work; on my first date with Alexander, we attended the opening night of Bromley’s exhibition; my stories about Alexander helped shape I Could Be Me; Bromley is now painting Gianluca’s portrait, and shots of me with Alexander are in the newly published book of Bromley’s film.
When Bromley and I were in discussion about the film, he emailed me this jumpcut of opinion of my stories: “I find them to be beautifully multi-dimensional … they are at once straightforward & complex … I adore the poetic scenarios & would love to use those as echoes & dialogue throughout the film to reinforce the short stories … I hope when you see/hear/feel your words in the film you’ll get goosebumps … a film can be great but the energy surrounding its entry into the world can make such a difference to its momentum … I’m now off to the studio to hopefully turn my pumpkin into a paintbrush & easel … much love.”
