For no real reason, I've been compiling a list of "fictional" art in films that have made an impression on me and I'm looking for more examples. Let me set the boundaries: it has to be fictional to a certain degree, like a Chuck Close painting wouldn't count because it's still would register as our world's art piece. It has to be art that is exclusive to some degree to the movie world. Here is my partial list so far.
-Ghostbusters II, Painting of Vigo the Carpathian
-Beetle Juice, The sculptures from the new owner's house
-Royal Tennenbaums- Eli Cash's Paintings (this is Caleb's find)
-Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian Gray (this one was painted by Ivan Albright but was painted specifically for the movie so I'm going to say this fits in the movie world).
- New York Stories, Nick Nolte's character's painting-
Dinner For Schmucks, Painting by the artist named "Keiran" ( I didn't make it through this movie but I did watch the brutal art opening scene)
-Amityville Horror - I remember this as a kid but there is this horrifying sculpture where the viewer would sit in a chair and watch themselves on a tv and above it was a video camera filming them and above that was a shot gun that was set to go off anytime in the next five years or something. Ofcourse it goes off but this sculpture was just horrifying and art schoolish but also pretty interesting. I couldn't find a photo.
So you guys get the idea for this project. I'm interested in all sorts of examples and I feel the more it relates to the content of the film in some way, the better the example. Can you help me think of some more?
Anders--love the topic but might challenge both the Tenenbaums paintings (by a real artist named Miguel Calderon who showed those pieces at Andrea Rosen) and your Nick Nolte character, because those paintings were painted by the real painter Chuck Connelly who ended up being the feature of that documentary "The Art of Failure". Anyway, we'll see what the judges have to say...
ReplyDeleteBUT, more importantly I would like to add Viggo Mortensen playing a tortured painter who slings buckets of paint and scrubs his paintings with his hands and horse brushes in "A Perfect Murder" (with Michael Douglas and Gwyneth P). The resulting paintings are pretty horrible "messy-paint-over-silkscreened-photo catastrophes. And, how about Max Von Sydow inadvertently playing a retired IU art professor as an old-school figure draftsman in "Hannah and Her Sisters"? But that's more for the role than the art...similarly for John Malkovich's triangle paintings in "Art School Confidential".
Anyway, as for the actual work, how about the wretched figure drawings Ethan Hawke pumps out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69riGmktE00
And there was Greg Kinnear playing another portrait painter in As Good As it Gets, but I can't find images. That's all I can contribute right now...
Chris,
ReplyDeletethese are great candidates. I just watched Hannah and her Sisters to check out Von Sydow's drawings and they totally work. I forgot about art school confidential as well. I would defend the Chuck Connelly paintings based on the fact that they were presented as if painted by Nick Nolte's character, making them fictionalized. It was not really explained weather the Miguel Calderon's were made fiction or not so I think that one might be up for debate. I still have to watch "A Perfect Murder" and check out Viggo's paintings. If they are anything like his poetry....
Thanks for the great examples!