Although not officially released as of yet, two Hollywood films are creating quite a buzz in the art world and inspiring audiences and artists with their themes about the love of art. Both are on my must see list this year. Local Color.. Local Color, the new movie by award-winning writer, director and painter, George Gallo has been garnering accolades and awards, including taking Best Cinematography, Best Screenplay and Star on the Horizon at the Ft. Lauderdale International film festival among others. The semi-autobiographical piece about "one master, one student, one summer to dream," follows a young 18-year-old-artist (Trevor Morgan) in his search to find aging painter, Seroff (Armin-Mueller-Stahl) in an attempt to apprentice with the master and learn to paint in the tradition of the great impressionists. Gallo painted all of the oil paintings in the movie and those seen in the beginning scenes are the exact ones he showed to the person on whom the Seroff character was based. Check out the trailer at http://www.localcolormovie.com and look for its release in New York on June 26, 2009. The Maiden Heist... The Lonely Maiden, a painting by Jeremy Lipking plays the title role in the film The Maiden Heist starring Christopher Walken, Morgan Freeman, and William H. Macy. The film is a comedic caper with an underlying message about a visceral reaction to art that people of all backgrounds can experience. Christopher Walken plays a security guard, Roger whose favorite painting The Lonely Maiden is sold along with other traditional works of art to make room for an installation of modern Dung art. Roger and two other guards devise a plan to steal the painting along with other favorites and replace them with reproductions. I met Jeremy this past summer when I attended one of his workshops at The Grand Academy of Art, NYC and subsequently wrote a feature on him, "Drawing Out the Riches" for the November, 2008 issue of the Artist's Magazine. As mentioned in that article, Lipking is widely recognized for his compelling paintings of women. It's easy to see why director, Robert Hewitt chose to make one of his paintings the film's intriguing centerpiece. The Lonely Maiden painting, by the way, was completed under a tight deadline. Says Jeremy: "When I first met with the director he opened up the Gabriel Weisberg book Beyond Impressionism: the Naturalist Impulse, (which is probably the most worn out book on my shelf) and said, 'We need something like this, a painting in the manner of Natural painters George Claysen, Emile Friant and Jules Bastien Lepage.' I had to finish the painting in 7 days. It normally would have taken me a month or longer to do something this size." |
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