Showing posts with label Hollywood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hollywood. Show all posts

3.20.2017

LOS ANGELES BILLBOARD EXHIBITION: Mona Kuhn + Alex Prager + Jennifer Steinkamp

She Disappeared into Silence, 2017
Mona Kuhn

"For this billboard exhibition, my intention is to expose privacy and intimacy on a collective and public scale. My hope is to transport the audience away from the collective and into the private, and vice versa.” – Mona Kuhn

Mona Kuhn is a highly acclaimed artist and longtime Californian, attending the San Francisco Institute of the Arts before moving to Los Angeles, where she has resided for over 10 years. Known for her large-scale dreamlike images of the human form, her work often references classical themes, though recent works have begun explorations with abstraction. For this exhibition, she has contributed a collage from her upcoming series and book She Disappeared into Silence with text by curator Salvador Nadales, Museo Reina Sofia, to be published Spring/Summer 2017 by Steidl.

(click images to enlarge) 

 Orchestra Center (Intermission), 2016
Alex Prager

“I chose this work for the billboard because it juxtaposes the audience and viewer, provoking the questions who is the performer and who is the audience? Where does reality end and artifice begin?”– Alex Prager

Alex Prager is a Los Angeles-based artist whose elaborately staged scenes tap into a shared cultural memory. She frequently references Hollywood cinema in her photography and film, using it as a tool for manipulating realities. “The construction of the images is intentionally loaded” says MoMA curator Roxana Marcoci. “It reminds me of silent movies – there is something pregnant, about to happen, a mix of desire and angst.” The work shown, Orchestra Center (Intermission), 2016, was recently presented at a solo exhibition of her work entitled La Grande Sortie at Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York.

 Impeach, 2017
Jennifer Steinkamp

Jennifer Steinkamp is an installation artist who works with video and new media in order to explore ideas about architectural space, motion, and perception. She completed her BFA, MFA and an honorary PhD from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California, and is currently a professor at University of California Los Angeles. Jennifer’s work has been internationally recognized for pushing the boundaries of synesthetic and experiential artwork, particularly as our technological achievements and access increases.
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The Billboard Creative (TBC) announced the debut of its first spring edition featuring artworks by three leading contemporary artists: Alex Prager, Jennifer Steinkamp, and Mona Kuhn. This exhibition is the first in a series of micro-initiatives aimed at keeping the mission of TBC activated throughout the year. These artists were selected for their unique dialogue with film and photography, two of the quintessential artistic mediums of Los Angeles. All three artists live and work in Los Angeles and play a vibrant role in the cultural community, fostering learning and supporting emerging artists. The artworks will be displayed on three prominent billboards across the city, with two billboards located in downtown Los Angeles, and another across from Paramount Studios in Hollywood. The goal of this exhibition, as with all TBC initiatives, is to broaden the reach of public art — transforming the streets of Los Angeles into an open-air museum, accessible to all. 

The billboards are on view the month of April 2017.

1.05.2017

JEFF BRIDGES: Set Shots Exhibition at the Academy Archive in Hollywood

Jeff Bridges and Peter Bogdanovich, "Set Shots" Exhibition
© 2016 Richard Harbaugh/A.M.P.A.S. 

Jeff Bridges with Gil Combs, "Set Shots" Exhibition
 © 2016 Richard Harbaugh/A.M.P.A.S.

Jeff Bridges opens his "Set Shots" Exhibition
at the Academy Archive, Hollywood through January 31
© 2016 Richard Harbaugh/A.M.P.A.S. 

Co-Curator, Loretta Ayeroff, in front of “Let’s Do the Drop Shot” Tom Sigel, cinematographer, lines up John DeSantis, actor, SEVENTH SON © 2014 Jeff Bridges. "Set Shots" Exhibition, Academy Archive, Hollywood

  Jeff Bridges at his "Set Shots" Exhibition
© 2016 Richard Harbaugh/A.M.P.A.S.

"Jeff Bridges: SET SHOTS" exhibition at the Academy Archive, Hollywood, closes January 31! Stop by and see it asap! Pickford Center, 1313 Vine Street, Hollywood, CA 90028  

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The Academy presented Jeff Bridges: SET SHOTS, an exhibition of 14 behind-the-scenes photographs taken by Oscar-winning actor Jeff Bridges with his Widelux cameras. An avid photographer, Bridges has long been taking still photographs to document production of his films. Beginning in 1984 with Starman, Bridges started making small, self-published books of his pictures to give to the cast and crew as wrap presents.

This exhibition, co-curated by Loretta Ayeroff and Matt Severson, includes images contained in these books, from Bridges’s earlier films such as The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989), The Fisher King (1991), The Big Lewboski (1998) and Fearless (1993), and from his more recent productions, including Tron: Legacy (2010), R.I.P.D. (2013) and The Giver (2014). Bridges’s award-winning photography – often playful, sometimes poignant and always mesmerizing – offers unique insights into how movies are made. The installation is on display in the main corridor of the Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study.

through January 2017
Open to the public during public events
Pickford Center
1313 Vine Street
Hollywood, CA 90028

 
 Jeff Bridges, Loretta Ayeroff and Susan Bridges
"Set Shots" Exhibition
 © 2016 Richard Harbaugh/A.M.P.A.S.

Matt Severson
Jeff Bridges "Set Shots" Exhibition to January 31, 2017 
© 2016 Richard Harbaugh/A.M.P.A.S.

 

10.12.2011

GARY COOPER: powerHouse Books

Gary, Van Nuys, California, 1934. From Gary Cooper: Enduring Style
by G. Bruce Boyer and Maria Cooper Janis (powerHouse Books)
(click on images to enlarge!)

Gary Cooper: Enduring Style
By G. Bruce Boyer and Maria Cooper Janis (powerHouse Books)
Introduction by Ralph Lauren

Rocky and Gary, Southampton, New York, 1934
From Gary Cooper: Enduring Style
by G. Bruce Boyer and Maria Cooper Janis (powerHouse Books)

GARY COOPER: ENDURING STYLE
By G. Bruce Boyer and Maria Cooper Janis
Introduction by Ralph Lauren

"When Cooper played a cowboy, you really believed he was a cowboy, and when he played an international man of sophistication, he was just as believable...The real life Gary Cooper was just as authentic."–Ralph Lauren

"Gary Cooper: Enduring Style is the first monograph focused on the timeless fashion and allure of this leading man who was a fashion inspiration to his Hollywood peers, clothing designers then and now, and generations of stylish men of every social strata, across the globe. Compiled of unpublished, never-before-seen personal photographs, shot primarily by his wife Rocky, Gary Cooper captures the cars, the mansions and ranches, the guns and gear, and of course the endless outfits for every occasion that this Hollywood icon ensconced himself in throughout the years. Whether hunting with close friend Ernest Hemingway, lounging with Cary Grant, horseback, poolside, or on the beach, on-set or after-hours, in the company of royalty or cowboys, Cooper had the perfect outfit for every occasion, embodying a type of refined masculinity rarely seen and in high demand to this day."–powerHouse Books


Gary, Malibu California, 1937
From Gary Cooper: Enduring Style
by G. Bruce Boyer and Maria Cooper Janis (powerHouse Books)

Gary wearing a leather shirt he made by hand, Brentwood, California, 1937
From Gary Cooper: Enduring Style
by G. Bruce Boyer and Maria Cooper Janis (powerHouse Books)

Gary, Phoenix, Arizona, 1934. From Gary Cooper: Enduring Style
by G. Bruce Boyer and Maria Cooper Janis (powerHouse Books)

Dressed up like a million dollar trouper
Trying hard to look like Gary Cooper
Super-duper

Puttin’ on the Ritz, lyrics by Irving Berlin

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Gary Cooper made almost a hundred films during his career as top box office star and won his first Academy Award for Best Actor in 1942 for Sergeant York. That same year he was directed by Frank Capra in Meet John Doe (rent it!). Ingrid Bergman collaborated with Cooper on For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), based on Cooper's friend Ernest Hemingway's novel. He made a Western comedy, Along Came Jones (1945) and starred in the original version of the Ayn Rand novel, The Fountainhead (1949) with Patricia Neal. In 1953, Cooper won his second Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in High Noon.

In 1933,
Cooper wed socialite Veronica Balfe, known as "Rocky," after several affairs with famous actresses and co-stars. Their only child, Maria, now Maria Cooper Janis, married classical pianist Byron Janis. As co-author of Gary Cooper: Enduring Style, Ms. Janis shared her parents personal photographs from their collection to create this (elegantly designed by Ruth Ansel) cloth-bound and slipcased album of 150 photographs. A Must: Watch Gary Cooper DVD's and gift this book for the Holidays.

GARY COOPER: ENDURING STYLE
By G. Bruce Boyer and Maria Cooper Janis
Published by powerHouse Books

3.27.2011

JACK B. WOODY: Twin Palms Photography Book Publisher


Jack Woody, NYC. Photograph by Duane Michals
read profile on
Le Journal de la Photographie


Helen Twelvetrees Photographed by Edward Steichen

Jack Woody's Twelvetrees Press, named for his grandmother, early Hollywood movie star Helen Twelvetrees (above), includes her beautiful portraits in his exquisitely printed book, Lost Hollywood, along with Lillian Gish, Jean Harlow, Charlie Chaplin, Theda Bara, Erich von Stroheim, Greta Garbo, and Rudolf Valentino by photographers George Hurrell, William Mortensen, Clarence Sinclair Bull, and Edward Weston.


Jack Woody's Grandparents 
Film star Helen Twelvetrees and Frank Woody, actor and stuntman in John Ford movies, 1933. From 1929-1939, Twelvetrees starred in movies with Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable and John Barrymore. Her initials “HT” are still inset in stained glass above the original front door of her Brentwood home on Mulholland Drive and Outpost, now home to a current movie star. 

"Walk of Fame Star" on Hollywood Boulevard © Stefano Paltera

Robert Mapplethorpe, Self Portrait, 1984
(Twin Palms 1985)
  
"...the Robert Miller Gallery did an exhibition of George Platt Lynes prints and after the exhibition they gave a big party. A guy comes up to me, all in black leather, and starts talking to me. It was Robert Mapplethorpe. He said he really loved the book, thought it was great and wanted to know if I’d be interested in working with him on a book...We ended up doing a book together, “Certain People: A Book of Portraits by Robert Mapplethorpe", with gravure plates printed in Spain. He’s on the front cover in leather and the back cover in drag. Susan Sontag wrote the text."
 
 Matt Mahurin (Twin Palms 1999)


"Matt Mahurin’s book was the ultimate book for gravure printing. That’s a beautiful book. Beautiful, rich, dark – there’s a whole school of people who copy his work now."

 
Disfarmer: 1939-1946 Heber Springs Portraits
(Twin Palms 1996)
"The first book I published was Christopher Isherwood’s beautiful journal called “October” (Twelvetrees, 1980). Don Bachardy, Christopher Isherwood’s lover, was a portrait painter. He did a portrait everyday in the month of October, and every day Christopher would do a journal entry, so we paired each journal entry with Don’s portraits of Gore Vidal, Joan Didion and everybody who was anybody in L.A. Then I found a little printer in the valley, Cunningham Press. A couple of old guys ran it and took pity on me. That was about 1978 or 1979."