art

THE TRUE STORY OF TAMARA DE LEMPICKA & THE ART OF SURVIVAL: a daring icon revealed.

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Photo caption: Tamara de Lempicka (right) in Julie Rubio’s THE TRUE STORY OF TAMARA  DE LEMPICKA & THE ART OF SURVIVAL. Courtesy of Mill Valley Film Festival.

The Mill Valley Film Festival is hosting the world premiere of The True Story of Tamara de Lempicka & the Art of Survival, a biodoc that reveals an astonishing life. The art deco artist de Lempicka was as groundbreaking in her lifestyle and self-invention as in her art.

De Lempicka painted her female subjects as confident and comfortable with their sexuality, and her highly-stylized nudes are striking. A de Lempicka has sold for over $20 million, the third-highest price ever paid for a painting by a modern female artist.

De Lempicka lived substantial parts of her life Russian-ruled Poland, France, the US and Mexico. Her adventurous personal life, dotted with rich husbands and affairs with celebrity lesbians, brazenly disregarded all the prevailing societal mores of the first half of the twentieth century. She said, “I live life in the margins of society and the rules of normal society don’t apply to those who live on the fringe.” Although de Lempicka didn’t care what anyone thought of her sexual behavior, she constructed much of her own image, sometimes embracing fiction as fact.

The True Story of Tamara de Lempicka & the Art of Survival is the third feature and first documentary from Bay Area director Julie Rubio, the producer of East Side Sushi. Rubio’s extraordinary research has uncovered that, in building her flamboyant persona, de Lempicka obscured much of her identity, including her heritage and her real name. Bringing birth and baptism certificates, 8mm home movies and the testimony of family members to light for the first time, Rubio completes a new and accurate understanding of de Lempicka.

The True Story of Tamara de Lempicka & the Art of Survival plays the Mill Valley Film Festival on October 11 at the Sequoia Cinema and October 13 at the Lark.

GEOFF MCFETRIDGE: DRAWING A LIFE: creativity without self-indulgence

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Photo caption: Geoff McFetridge in GEOFF MCFETRIDGE: DRAWING A LIFE. Credit: Andrew Paynter; courtesy of Gravitas Ventures.

The thoughtful documentary Geoff McFetridge: Drawing a Life examines a great artist who is decidedly not tortured. No ear-slicing, overdoses or bratty rampages here, just a guy whose disciplined lifestyle and commitment to his family subvert the stereotypes of an artist fueled by torment.

Where’s the interest in a movie about someone who creates without turbulence? This is a guy who is unusually fierce with both his artistic and family lives. He refuses to compromise his art; his attitude is, take it or leave it (although, as a good Canadian, he is polite about it). Just as tenaciously, he safeguards his family time.

At one point in Drawing a Life, McFetridge makes it explicit. He sees it as too easy to make everything else – good behavior, responsibilities – subservient to art. The achievement is to do great art while maintaining life balance.

You may not know McFetridge’s name, but you’ll recognize his art. McFetridge has exhibited in major cities around the world, collaborated with filmmakers like Spike Jonz and Sofia Coppola, and designed for brands like Apple, Hermes, Vans and Patagonia.

Director and co-writer Dan Covert has filled Drawing a Life with McFetridge’s art, and viewing the film is to be immersed in the art. The editing, by Covert and co-writer Eric Auli, is magnificent. Geoff McFetridge: Drawing a Life won the 2023 Audience Award for Documentary Feature at SXSW.

Geoff McFetridge: Drawing a Life opens in NYC theaters tomorrow, in LA next week and digitally on July 2.

THE LOST LEONARDO: is it a hustle? does it matter?

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THE LOST LEONARDO

The insightful and thought-provoking documentary The Lost Leonardo starts out as a mystery. We learn that there are “sleeper hunters” in the art world, who seek unrecognized or mislabeled art and buy them on speculation. Our two sleeper hunters buy a beat up, old painting for $1100 to find out if is a long lost original Leonardo da Vinci painting, “the male Mona Lisa”. So, the initial question is, is this a real Leonardo painting, of which only 15 are known to exist?

Around 1500, Leonardo painted a Jesus portrait titled Salvator Mundi (The Savior of the World), of which many copies were made by others. The speculators send their painting to the world’s top restorer of Renaissance masterpieces to query whether this could be the original. Then they approach the National Gallery of Art, which has the painting scrutinized by three leading world experts in Leonardo’s work.

The initial findings are promising. The transition between the lip and the upper lip resembles only one other painting – the Mona Lisa. Removal of patchwork paint reveals that Jesus’ thumb has been repositioned, which was a common practice by Renaissance masters, but is never is seen in a copy.

But questions remain for some. Why would Leonardo, who was meticulous, choose a piece of wood with a knothole that would assuredly eventually cause a disfiguring crack? Worse, how could a 600-year-old Leonardo show up in New Orleans with no provenance?

Both the proponents of the painting’s authenticity and those who would discredit it agree that the restorer contributed up to 85% of the actual paint on the current painting. So, even if Leonardo painted it in 1500, is it now just a masterpiece by the restorer?

The story diverts to an amazing con job that is unrelated to the painting’s authenticity. A shrewd and audacious French businessman bilks a Russian billionaire out of $45 million by pretending to be negotiating the purchase of a painting that that he has already bought. And, as the Frenchman later notes ruefully, you don’t want to piss off a Russian oligarch.

At this point, The Lost Leonardo takes us into a record-breaking $450 MILLION art sale (in which the purchaser is revealed by the CIA – yes, the CIA) with implications for global politics. Implicitly, The Lost Leonardo poses a second question – does it matter whether the Salvator Mundi is real or not? It certainly doesn’t need to be proven to those who would benefit from it being a real Leonardo – the sellers, the National Gallery of Art, Christie’s auction house – or to those who are emotionally moved by it as a piece of art.

The Lost Leonardo peels back the onion on an ever surprising tale of discovery, scholarship, fraud, commerce and politics in the refined and pretentious art world. It’s a good watch.

WYETH: what is a muse?

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Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World, featured in WYETH

Wyeth, the latest documentary in the PBS American Masters series, takes on the odd case of the great painter Andrew Wyeth and explores the question, what is a muse?    And how can great art come from the most unlikely and obscure subjects?

Every artist has a source of inspiration, and it’s amazing that Wyeth was able to find his while living an unusually parochial life.   Choosing not to “see the world”, Wyeth spent his entire life in two rural settings – his childhood home in  Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. and his summer coastal home in Cushing, Maine.  Fortunately, some of his neighbors allowed him to hang around and watch them in their daily lives.  Wyeth would then pad along home to his studio and churn out hundreds of finely detailed paintings from what he remembered.

In doing so, he rendered iconic some very unlikely subjects by painting them again and again – a disabled neighbor woman, a stolid farmer, an alcoholic eccentric.

We learn that Wyeth could spend all of his time on his two obsessions – studying the locals and painting them – because of his wife Betsy.  From age 17, Betsy managed Wyeth’s business, household and family, freeing him to devote every thought to the artistic process.

That’s why it was so shocking when Wyeth revealed fifteen years’ work – over 200 paintings, many erotic – with a subject Betsy had known nothing about.

Wyeth draws upon rich source material, including never-before-seen family photos and artifacts, and we meet Wyeth’s family members, neighbors and subjects, and visit the actual homes where Wyeth studied his subjects.

Wyeth will be airing on the PBS American Masters series beginning on September 7.