In the late 1950's, Jasper Johns emerged as force in the American art scene. His richly worked paintings of maps, flags, and targets led the artistic community away from Abstract Expressionism toward a new emphasis on the concrete
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EXHIBITION ON SCREEN open its fifth season with Canaletto & the Art of Venice, an immersive journey into the life and art of Venice’s famous view-painter. No artist better captures the essence and allure of Venice than Giovanni Antonio Canal, better known as Canaletto. The remarkable group of over 200 paintings, drawings and prints on display offer unparalleled insight into the artistry of Canaletto and his contemporaries, and the city he became a master at capturing. The film also offers the chance to step inside two official royal residences - Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle – to learn more about the artist, and Joseph Smith, the man who introduced Canaletto to Britain.
Widely considered Britain’s most popular artist, David Hockney is a global sensation with exhibitions in London, New York, Paris and beyond, attracting millions of visitors worldwide. Now entering his 9th decade, Hockney shows absolutely no evidence of slowing down or losing his trademark boldness. Featuring intimate and in-depth interviews with Hockney, this revealing film focuses on two blockbuster exhibitions held in 2012 and 2016 at the Royal Academy of Art in London. Director Phil Grabsky secured privileged access to craft this cinematic celebration of a 21st century master of creativity.
Dedicated to the portrait work of Paul Cézanne, the exhibition opens in Paris before traveling to London and Washington. One cannot appreciate 20th century art without understanding the significance and genius of Paul Cézanne. Filmed at the National Portrait Gallery in London, with additional interviews from experts and curators from MoMA in New York, National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, and Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and correspondence from the artist himself, the film takes audiences to the places Cézanne lived and worked and sheds light on an artist who is perhaps one of the least known and yet most important of all the Impressionists.
Klaus Kinski has perhaps the most ferocious reputation of all screen actors: his volatility was documented to electrifying effect in Werner Herzog’s 1999 portrait My Best Fiend. This documentary provides further fascinating insight into the talent and the tantrums of the great man. Beset by hecklers, Kinski tries to deliver an epic monologue about the life of Christ (with whom he perhaps identifies a little too closely). The performance becomes a stand-off, as Kinski fights for control of the crowd and alters the words to bait his tormentors. Indispensable for Kinski fans, and a riveting introduction for newcomers, this is a unique document, which Variety called ‘a time capsule of societal ideals and personal demons.’
Man Ray, the master of experimental and fashion photography was also a painter, a filmmaker, a poet, an essayist, a philosopher, and a leader of American modernism. Known for documenting the cultural elite living in France, Man Ray spent much of his time fighting the formal constraints of the visual arts. Ray’s life and art were always provocative, engaging, and challenging.
Sam Roddick explores the enduring appeal of Botticelli's masterpiece The Birth of Venus, one of the most celebrated paintings in western art. A joyous celebration of female sexuality, its journey to worldwide fame was far from straightforward and it lay in obscurity for centuries. Artist and entrepreneur Sam explains why Botticelli's nude was so revolutionary, and explores its impact on contemporary culture with artists such as Terry Gilliam, who memorably reinvented Venus for his Monty Python's Flying Circus animations.
Alan Yentob profiles the most successful female architect there has ever been, the late Zaha Hadid, who designed buildings around the globe from Austria to Azerbaijan.
A documentary made for Konrad Mägi exhibition "The Light of the North" in Torino, Musei Reali (2019-2020), about Mägi's life and his legacy.
How the art in the Detroit Institute of Art connects to life's experiences and the neighborhood.
56-year-old artist Mindy Alper has suffered severe depression and anxiety for most of her life. For a time she even lost the power of speech, and it was during this period that her drawings became extraordinarily articulate.
This film tells Jean-Michel's story through exclusive interviews with his two sisters Lisane and Jeanine, who have never before agreed to be interviewed for a TV documentary. With striking candour, Basquiat's art dealers - including Larry Gagosian, Mary Boone and Bruno Bischofberger - as well as his most intimate friends, lovers and fellow artists, expose the cash, the drugs and the pernicious racism which Basquiat confronted on a daily basis. As historical tableaux, visual diaries of defiance or surfaces covered with hidden meanings, Basquiat's art remains the beating heart of this story.
The Whitney Museum of American Art presented the landmark exhibition Jeff Koons: A Retrospective from June 27 to October 19, 2014. It was the largest, most comprehensive survey of Koons’s art ever assembled, spanning four decades of his career and displaying 145 works from every series, including 13 new pieces exhibited publicly for the first time. The film follows Koons and Whitney Chief Curator, Scott Rothkopf, who conceived and organized the show, through every gallery of the exhibition. In addition, insightful interviews with Adam Weinberg, the Whitney’s Director, Robert Storr, Dean Emeritus of the Yale School of Art, and Michelle Kuo, Editor of Artforum, help to deepen the investigation into Koon’s art and process.
2012/HD/Color/19min/
Quest for Beauty is a film documentary on the life and prolific art career of William Schickel who was a prominent 20th century Catholic artist. Schickel had a very prolific art career spanning sixty-plus years; he produced a large body of mostly commissioned work in painting, sculpture, stained glass, and architectural design. He is most well-known for his renovation of the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, where he worked personally with Thomas Merton. His works can be found in numerous private collections and museums, including the Vatican Museum. The film explores his Quest for Beauty and the challenges he faced, and his vision for the Church and his heart for unity in the Body of Christ.
Through interviews and guerilla footage of graffiti writers in action on five continents, the documentary tells the story of graffiti from its origins in prehistoric cave paintings thru its notorious explosion in New York City during the 70’s and 80’s, then follows the flames as they paint the globe.
Lifting the lid on the fascinating last decade of Andy Warhol's life and the legacy he left for future artists, through never-before-seen footage and interviews with insiders.
Described in Art Review as the world’s most influential and expensive living artist, the German painter Gerhard Richter was enjoying enormous success in London with his retrospective show at Tate Modern entitled Panorama in 2011. This particular film was made some years ago at the time of his equally successful American retrospective at MOMA entitled “40 Years of Painting” and charts his entire artistic career. Born in Dresden in 1932, the year before Hitler came to power, Richter later grew up in communist East Germany, before escaping to the West just before the Wall went up in Berlin. Since then he has produced a large diverse body of work from his blurred photobased paintings to his gigantic abstractions, from his Baader Meinhof pictures to his perceptual installations using sheets of glass. Gerald Fox’s film caught up with the artist at his home in Cologne where he was undergoing a period of quiet reflection and preparation before beginning a new series of paintings.
What does it mean to be Black in America in the 21st century? The recently formed Black American film group TNEG™ has set out to elucidate this very question. Hearing from the likes of fine artist Kara Walker and musical artist Flying Lotus, the film is based on a deceptively simple approach -- asking a refined list of black 'specialists' as well as 'uncommon folks' questions about what they think, and more importantly as lead director Arthur Jafa states, 'What they KNOW' -- the film is an unprecedented 'stream of the black consciousness' and a strikingly original and rarefied look at black intellectual and emotional life. What's so unorthodox about this simple approach is that the interviews were recorded separately from the images in the film. What results is a breathtaking, kaleidoscopic look of American black life from the dawn of three original filmmakers.
Enlightened by her biographer Roxana Robinson and art historian Barbara Buhler Lynes, co-founder of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, this documentary unfolds the fascinating trajectory of the artist who became an icon of American art. Featuring her works, her confidences - between interviews and excerpts of correspondence read by Charlotte Rampling - and her husband's photographs, this film explores the two inseparable passions that marked Georgia O'Keeffe's life and career: Alfred Stieglitz and New Mexico, which she never ceased to travel through, like a pioneer, in order to immerse herself in its Indian culture and its grandiose landscapes.