Philip Haas has made films with some of the most acclaimed artists working today including David Hockney, Boyd Webb, Richard Long and Gilbert & George. By finding the “theatricality” in each artist, Haas constantly surprises and delights the viewer. In A Day on the Grand Canal with the Emperor of China, or: Surface is Illusion but so is Depth (1989, 43 minutes), legendary English artist David Hockney, discoursing on a seventeenth-century Chinese scroll painting, delightfully explores one of his signature interests: spatial perspective and its fluctuating role within painting and the photographic arts. The Singing Sculpture (1992, 20 minutes) documents the revolutionary living sculpture made by Gilbert & George. Standing together on a table, their faces covered with metallic paint, they dance and sing the Flanagan and Allen standard "Underneath the Arches." The Butcher’s Shop (2008, 7 minutes) is a meditation on the sixteenth-century Annibale Carracci painting of the same name, the artist's work and life, and on the depiction of meat and human flesh in art from the Italian renaissance to Rembrandt through to Francis Bacon.
Programmed by Richard Herskowitz, curator of media arts, Schnitzer Cinema brings the best of experimental, documentary, and arts-focused films and videos to the JSMA each year. Programs are free, with popcorn and refreshments provided.
