There's a PBS (i think) show on French painters right now.
Other, older, forms of art, & the people who made them, can be inspirational & useful for filmmakers I think.
I've learned a lot from indie rock (some aesthetic stuff, lots of bidness stuff), maybe I can learn stuff from painting too.
So in July & August I am going to blog about painters & I would like you to comment & tell us about your favorite painters & other interesting stuff about painting.
Painting is thousands of years old. Filmmaking is a little over 100 years old. US Indie filmmaking as we know it is perhaps a little over 50 years old (w/ the beginning somewhere around the time when the Cassavetes generation got its inspiration/started work). Us new indie filmmakers - the digital/web/DIY generation, can probably learn a lot by taking a look at/getting to know, painting & other older art forms.
I'll start w/ Edward Hopper. Here's page w/ a lot of info on him. His most famous painting is probably nighthawk at the Diner. There's the 50's icons version of that painting, w/ Monroe & Dean, that a lot of people have seen. Wim Wenders has used imagery inspired by Nighthawks in I think in The End of Violence. Jarmusch's Down By Law has some moments that look like they came out of a Hopper painting. I think Hopper is a favorite of a lot of cinematographers.
Your turn, tell us about your favorite painters & paintings.
- Sujewa
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2 comments:
I discovered this painter in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico a couple years ago when I was there for my sister's wedding. His name is Juan Ezcurdia and his work has a real sense of fun. He has a web site at http://www.ezcurdia.com/. I also learned about a lot of street artists while researching a screenplay and Banksy http://www.banksy.co.uk is probably my favorite. Also, a pair of Brazilian twins who go by "Os Gemeos."
As for more famous artists whose pieces are likely to be found in museums, I love Joan Miro, Roy Lichtenstein, and Marc Chagall, just to name a few.
When I was in high school I worked in a book store and we had in stock a book about Piet Mondrian that included full-color prints of all of his paintings in chronological order. This book was a revelation to me because it allowed me to experience the full arc of Mondrian's career, to watch his style change very gradually, to consider the ebb and flow ofinfluences like naturalism, impressionism, and cubism.
It put the later abstract, geometric paintings for which he is renowned into a extraordinarily interesting context. I credit my encounter with this book at such a relatively young age with my receptiveness towards, and my subsequent appreciation of, first these paintings and later modern art in general.
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