VISIONARIES: ART ON FILM
April 2-8 @ the Vancity Theatre

Presenting a crash course in modern art, this week-long program of acclaimed documentaries affords unparalleled insights into the work of many of the twentieth century’s most celebrated visual artists, as well as the curators, dealers and collectors who sealed their reputations.

Kicking off with a fascinating examination of how moving pictures ignited Cubism (Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies), the series gives a kaleidoscopic account of the development of the modern art world, with special focus on the New York neo-expressionists of the 1950s and 60s, pop art, and intimate portraits of several of today’s most intriguing artists. One strand in the series explores the relationship between art and mental illness, while another exemplifies the recent interest in underground figures like Ray Johnson and outsider artist James Castle. Combining intellectual rigour with colour and wit, Visionaries: Art on Film promises to change the way you look.

Starring: Georges Braque, James Castle, Christo, Chuck Close, Chuck Connelly, Helen Frankenthaler, Henry Geldzahler, Clement Greenberg, David Hockney, Jean-Claude, Jasper Johns, Ray Johnson, Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein, Angus MacPhee, Robert Mangold, Jonas Mekas, Kenneth Noland, Pavel Novak, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollack, Larry Poons, Lucio Pozzi, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Julian Schnabel, Martin Scorsese, Frank Stella, Mark di Suvero, Richard Tuttle, Herb and Dorothy Vogel & Andy Warhol.

Filmmaker and gallery owner Glimcher (The Mambo Kings) delves into the connections between silent cinema pioneer Georges Melies and Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Charlie Chaplin,  with the help of Martin Scorsese, Julian Schnabel and Chuck Close, among other expert witnesses. Drawing on a treasure trove of archival sources, the film puts Cubism in the context of the technological revolution moving pictures represented, and shows how Picasso – a proud movie-nut – took inspiration from cinema. In film’s first decade, the way that artists thought about bodies, space, time and motion were all radically challenged.

A Day on the Grand Canal with the Emperor of China
David Hockney is our tour guide on a fascinating journey contrasting Eastern and Western ways of seeing in director Philip Haas’s playful A Day on the Grand Canal With the Emperor of China (1988), an up close look at a truly marvellous 17^th Century scroll painting by Wang Hui.

“A demonstration of the adventure of painting, the humanity of Art! Hockney is droll, perceptive, often fascinating.” – Michael Wilmington, LA Times.

Meet Herb and Dorothy Vogel, a postal worker and a librarian with one of the world's great collections of conceptual art – nearly 5000 pieces, including work by Christo and Jean-Claude, Jeff Koons, Julien Schnabel and Jackson Pollack, among many others - all contained within their one-bedroom, rent-controlled apartment. This is a charming portrait of two dedicated art lovers who got the jump on the dealers and the critics through gut instinct, tenacity, sagacity, and grace and then amazed the world with thir generosity.

Audience Award Winner: Silverdocs, Hamptons & Philadelphia Film Festivals

Chuck Connelly was one of the brightest stars of the 80s New York scene, a prodigious neo-expressionist who was the model for Nick Nolte’s painter in Martin Scorsese’s contribution to New York Stories. Yet with the world apparently in his grasp, his career plummeted almost overnight. Shot in part by Connelly and his (then-) wife Laurence, The Art of Failure is a raw, intimate portrait of a talented, but angry alcoholic, raging against the compromises and hypocrisy of the art world, but still painting like a demon. Desperate to revive his career, Connelly even hires an actor to play his invented alter-ego, Fred Scabado, and invite dealers to a private viewing of Scabado’s canvases, a ruse so crazy it might just work…

Emmy winner 2009: Outstanding Arts and Culture Programming

“Stunning” – The Washington Post

“Heroic… A great story of perseverance and destiny” – New York Times

Stolen Art
This fascinating documentary raises questions about authenticity and the true value of art by exploring the case of Pavel Novak, an unknown Czech artist whose 1978 New York exhibition “Stolen Art” purported to feature his reproductions of paintings by Rembrant, Courbet and Van Gogh. The exhibition was shut down by the FBI after a private collector claimed one painting was an original stolen from his home – and Novak disappeared without a trace. Was he a great forger, or a great thief?

"An investigation with the allure of a philosophical thriller... brimming with intelligence and erudition." — Philippe Simon, Cinergie

Emile de Antonio’s seminal 1973 film Painters Painting is like enjoying a private view with all the most important figures in the New York abstract expressionist movement – including Robert Rauschenberg, William de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Helen Frankenthaler and the critic Clement Greenberg. Esteemed for his politial documentaries (Rush to Judgment; In the Year of the Pig; Millhouse), de Antonio was friendly with many of these artists, and they speak with refreshing candour and seriousness about what abstraction means to them.

Rosen’s playful, unpretentious collage-film shines a spotlight on the 60's pop-art scene (Warhol, Stella, Lichtenstein, David Hockney, Larry Poons, etc.) and the hugely influential curator Henry Geldzahler. “A romp through the art scene of the ’60s—when acclaimed artists such as James Rosenquist and Frank Stella were puttering around downtown Manhattan, scraping together loose change for canvas, paint and beer. Centered on the life of , the adventurous Metropolitan Museum curator who championed the careers of Andy Warhol and his contemporaries, the film is a fascinating look at ... modern American art.” – Time

“One of the greatest art documentaries ever made. Through an imaginative mixture of rare footage, audio recordings and contemporary interviews with the living legends of modern art, Rosen has created a cinematic portrait which is, in itself, a work of art.” – Phil Hall, Film Threat

The film was produced for the recent and widely acclaimed James Castle retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Born deaf in Boisie, Idaho, in 1899, James Castle started drawing when he was six or seven years old. Without conventional art supplies, he used soot from a wood-burning stove on his parents’ farm and his own spit to make drawings; he reused the flyers and brochures that flowed through the post office his family ran. He made art from used paper of every kind automatically imbuing his works with the texture of the past. Unwilling or unable to speak or learn sign language, Castle refused manual labour but dedicated his life to creating art and it was often great art. Wolf’s film includes interviews with Castle’s relatives and art experts, but it’s the art pieces and the environment they reflect which will stay with you.

"Castle’s life is truly inspirational, and his art can be sublime: a fierce creative vision fueled by determination and endless patience. The life must emerge in the art, and in this film it does so eloquently." - Philadelphia Inquirer

Hidden Gifts: The Mystery of Angus McPhee
(also showing Weds 7 with Between Madness and Art)

Hidden Gifts explores the mysterious relationship between artistic expression and mental illness through the story of Scotsman Angus MacPhee, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1946 and sent to the Craig Dunain Psychiatric Hospital near Inverness.

Although MacPhee was a patient there for fifty years, in a case of elective mutism he spoke not a single word to any of the hospital staff. The sole expression of "the quiet big man" was his solitary weaving of clothes-including coats, gloves and boots-from grass, samples of which are seen on display in an art gallery.

Director of the Heidelberg Psychiatric Clinic in the 1920s, Dr Hans Prinzhorn (1866-1933) became fascinated by the beauty and expressiveness of the drawings, paintings and sculptures of his patients, many of whom were schizophrenic. He began to study and preserve this art, eventually writing a seminal study, Artistry of the Mentally Ill, and by the time of his death had organized the largest collection of its type in the world. After Prinzhorn's death, the Nazis displayed some of his patients’ works for their 1937 exhibit of ‘degenerate art.’ Forgotten for many years, the Prinzhorn Collection was rediscovered in 1963, toured Europe, Asia and the U.S., and has led to a reevaluation of what today is known as ‘outsider art.’ The film tells this remarkable story through archival footage, profiles of Prinzhorn's patient-artists, footage of their art works, and interviews with psychotherapists, doctors, artists, curators, two contemporary outpatient artists and the collection's current director.

“Fascinating” – Dox Magazine

Meet ‘the most famous unknown artist’ of the late twentieth century. ‘Ray Johnson mystified even fellow travelers in the Abstract Expressionist, Pop and Performance Art movements: He evinced little interest in the standard gallery/museum-show routes to fame, while his dealings with private collectors were highly eccentric. (Accepting a $1,500 counterbid to his $2,000 sale offer, Johnson surprised his buyer by delivering a carefully cut three-quarters of the original work.) Everything he did seemed to be part and parcel to a witty creative mindset. Mailing intricate, inscrutable cut-and-paste postcards to friends - perhaps the start of the "mail art" school - was as germane to him as assembling large multimedia collages or mounting a stunt in which he dropped foot-long hot dogs from a helicopter onto Riker's Island. Structured as a sort of biographical mystery, "Bunny" - Johnson's visual signature was a simply inked rabbit - finds greatest resonance in investigating the artist's 1995 drowning death in Sag Harbor at age 67. What at first seemed like a bewildering accident soon is interpreted as a climactic “performance”.’ - Dennis Harvey, Variety.

“Delightful… a seamless model of form and content”- Manohla Dargis, LA Times

An astounding portrait of the world’s leading portraitist. Close photographs his subjects, blows up the images to gigantic proportions, divides them into detailed grids, and then uses a complex set of colors and patterning to reconstruct each face. The genius of this film is not only to allow the artist to illuminate his methodology (he is wonderfully articulate), but also to feature his friends and colleagues (Brice Marden, Robert Storr, Dorothea Rockburne, Philip Glass, Arne Glimcher, Kiki Smith, Elizabeth Murray, Alex Katz, and Kirk Varnedoe, among others) who make important contributions to appreciating Close’s gifts.

‘If you are even remotely interested in the art world, this is a must-see.’ – Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York

‘Magisterial. A  major contribution from a cinematic master at the height of her powers. Inventive, endlessly fascinating…’ – Ronnie Scheib, Variety

‘Mesmerizing’ – Matt Zoller Seitz, New York Times