Post by Ace on May 26, 2003 20:29:52 GMT -5
True fakes
Producing copies of art masterpieces is a lucrative - and legal - trade for Hollywood's scenic artists.
FAKING IT: The replica paintings for the movie "Pollock" were praised by the art community.
By ANDREW MARTON
FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM
www2.ocregister.com/ocrweb/ocr/article.do?id=40556§ion=SHOW&subsection=MOVIES&year=2003&month=5&day=26
Tucked in the old Long Island, N.Y., artist enclave of The Springs lies Jackson Pollock's well-preserved home and studio - along with a study center - glorifying the tempestuous painter's work. Not long ago, this modest repository added two new Pollocks to its collection.
Each one of the canvases is a superb, accomplished example of the artist's work. Each is also fake.
Which was fine with Helen Harrison, director of the Pollock- Krasner House and Study Center. The mimicked works were created for the film "Pollock," the 2000 biopic about the abstract expressionist many dubbed "Jack the Dripper." Harrison was so impressed with "Pollock's" "amazing" replicas of the painter's work that she built an entire exhibit around them. And she wasn't the only art aficionado impressed by the works' quality.
"Within the context of 'Pollock,' the paintings were remarkably good, as I definitely knew which real works they were referring to," says Michael Kimmelman, chief art critic of The New York Times. "That the artists had the ability to imitate something like that was very impressive."
So who do Hollywood producers turn to when they need to realistically fabricate some of the most famous art in the world? A legion of people you've never heard of.
Most of Hollywood's scenic artists, supremely gifted brush and chisel copycats, freely admit they were unable to eke out even a Spartan living creating their own art. But though the pay is better in Hollywood, the recognition isn't - even, sometimes, for the art itself.
"As scenic artists, you do your work figuring the camera will linger on every precious stroke of the brush," says Jon Ringbom, charge scenic artist on "Pollock." "Then, of course, you think again and realize that at the last moment, the camera might just decide to shoot the other way."
Nevertheless, over the past decade, art mimics have been in serious demand in Hollywood. More than 110 of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo's works were copied for "Frida," last year's cinematic homage to a famous, tortured artist. A handful of Edward Hoppers, along with some luminous John Singer Sargents, adorned Mel Gibson's swank Manhattan apartment in the 1996 thriller "Ransom." Ignoring art history in his Oscar- winning epic "Titanic," director James Cameron shows Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" going down with the famously doomed ocean liner - leading to a copyright infringement lawsuit from the Picasso estate, which was settled out of court. (Because most great artworks from the 20th century are not in the public domain, studios must seek permission for their reproduction from the estates or legal guardians of the work.)
The trend continues with current and coming movies such as "The Last Samurai," "Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde," "Down With Love" and "The Boss's Daughter."
For a select few talented, if anonymous, artists and faux-art providers, this can make for a nice living. Born in New York, raised in France and speaking with a trace of a French accent, Christopher Moore has been at the helm of Manhattan-based Troubetzkoy Paintings since 1989. His debut in the movie art duplication business was 1993's "The Age of Innocence."
Since then, Moore's assembly line (one artist in New York, four in Paris) produced most of the Picassos, Gauguins and Toulouse-Lautrecs seen in 2001's "Ocean's 11," the Chagall that so transfixed Jennifer Connelly in "A Beautiful Mind" and the literally hundreds of copies of Degas, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir and van Gogh filling the museum galleries and private pads of "The Thomas Crown Affair."
The painters working for Moore aren't just talented artists in their own right. Many have backgrounds in art restoration, which allows them to distinguish fine gradations of paint pigments and nuanced techniques emblematic of any artistic school. They also have the ability to copy meticulously from color-transparency versions of the original works.
For the scenic artists, certain styles of painting are inherently more challenging to copy than others.
Wassili Kandinsky's slightly more representational works are easier to grasp than the correct saturated color blend of blue and green in a Mark Rothko, for example.
A particular favorite of many scenic painters is John Singer Sargent, with his lusciously fleshed-out watercolor sketches and translucent drawings showing glowing skin tones.
"I actually think a Sargent is easier to copy than a Renoir, which has such highly exposed rhythmic brush strokes and a lively painting surface," says Joe Garzero, a New York- based scenic artist, whose father helped produce many of the rich artworks seen in the "Godfather" movies, "The Exorcist" and "Midnight Cowboy."
The team of scenic artists from "Pollock" enjoyed breaking away from the artist's frenzied canvases by knocking off pieces by Willem de Kooning or Edward Hopper.
"Hoppers were always favorites because of their color and their lovely composition," Ringbom recalls. "The fact that they included human figures, well, everyone liked that. Pollock's style was certainly not my favorite, but I now know what went into it, and it's a lot harder than at first glance."
For "Frida," in order to imitate Kahlo's fastidious miniature brush strokes, production designer Felipe Fernandez del Paso and his team of 30 Mexico City artists sought out every Kahlo work he could find in three major repositories throughout Mexico.
"Sometimes, I would bring down one of the finished paintings to the set and get a completely different reaction (from different people), with the director saying it looked nothing like the original and the cinematographer claiming it was a perfect copy," Fernandez del Paso recalls. "But when it came to reproducing Kahlo's colors, me and my team were born with them, so they came very natural to us."
A scenic artist's palette contains a variety of techniques to execute subtly effective fakery. To create that aged look of a gilt-framed antique, scenic artists apply rabbit-skin glue to paintings' frames and add a wash of raw umber (an amalgam of green and brown) to give a coffee- or tobacco juice-stained cast to the canvas. A crackle glaze can mimic the mottled surface of an aging oil work.
"The goal is to rub a wash of color on the work that will produce a browning or a blackening, automatically connoting age," says David Dies, who produced a 20-foot mural based on the 18th- to 19th-century German romantic-naturalist painter Caspar David Friedrich for the brooding motel scenes in "The Insider."
Dies, a scenic artist for 25 years, received his art degree from Stanford. By his own admission, he simply "fell into" scenic art work.
"I didn't know it even existed 25 years ago," admits Dies, who tapped into his extensive knowledge of the cubism practiced by Picasso, Braque and Juan Gris to construct a series of stained-glass paintings for 1998's "Pleasantville." "What separates decent from not-so-great scenic artists is whether they know color or not. You are either good at that or not."
Garzero underscores the importance of establishing a certain distance, almost an interpretive numbness, between the artist and the task of generating facsimiles of great art.
"Fundamentally, scenic artists must demystify the great works they work on," says Garzero, who says he spends nearly all of his free time coaching his kids' lacrosse and soccer teams and never paints for himself. "They have to identify what you have to do, eliminate the big 'struggle of the artist' and just control your raw craft. Make it happen and just walk away."
For all the mechanical quality of its production, scenic artists can still flush with pride at one measure of how good their work is: the number of movie cast and crew members who ask for one of their pieces as a parting souvenir.
After "The Thomas Crown Affair" wrapped, Pierce Brosnan put in an order for an ersatz Monet and van Gogh done by Christopher Moore's studio. From the set of "Ocean's 11," Andy Garcia requested a Gauguin knockoff. And Val Kilmer walked away from "Pollock" with one of the scenic designers' better pseudo Pollocks.
But the ultimate review of how well a scenic artist has done his work can come from owners of the original works. If the copies are good enough, they often ask that the work be destroyed once filming is completed (that's what happened to a series of copied Kandinskys from 1993's "Six Degrees of Separation"). The owners don't want any convincing fakes circulating around the art world. For the stewards of the genuine art, they want the fraud to end the moment the film does
Producing copies of art masterpieces is a lucrative - and legal - trade for Hollywood's scenic artists.
FAKING IT: The replica paintings for the movie "Pollock" were praised by the art community.
By ANDREW MARTON
FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM
www2.ocregister.com/ocrweb/ocr/article.do?id=40556§ion=SHOW&subsection=MOVIES&year=2003&month=5&day=26
Tucked in the old Long Island, N.Y., artist enclave of The Springs lies Jackson Pollock's well-preserved home and studio - along with a study center - glorifying the tempestuous painter's work. Not long ago, this modest repository added two new Pollocks to its collection.
Each one of the canvases is a superb, accomplished example of the artist's work. Each is also fake.
Which was fine with Helen Harrison, director of the Pollock- Krasner House and Study Center. The mimicked works were created for the film "Pollock," the 2000 biopic about the abstract expressionist many dubbed "Jack the Dripper." Harrison was so impressed with "Pollock's" "amazing" replicas of the painter's work that she built an entire exhibit around them. And she wasn't the only art aficionado impressed by the works' quality.
"Within the context of 'Pollock,' the paintings were remarkably good, as I definitely knew which real works they were referring to," says Michael Kimmelman, chief art critic of The New York Times. "That the artists had the ability to imitate something like that was very impressive."
So who do Hollywood producers turn to when they need to realistically fabricate some of the most famous art in the world? A legion of people you've never heard of.
Most of Hollywood's scenic artists, supremely gifted brush and chisel copycats, freely admit they were unable to eke out even a Spartan living creating their own art. But though the pay is better in Hollywood, the recognition isn't - even, sometimes, for the art itself.
"As scenic artists, you do your work figuring the camera will linger on every precious stroke of the brush," says Jon Ringbom, charge scenic artist on "Pollock." "Then, of course, you think again and realize that at the last moment, the camera might just decide to shoot the other way."
Nevertheless, over the past decade, art mimics have been in serious demand in Hollywood. More than 110 of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo's works were copied for "Frida," last year's cinematic homage to a famous, tortured artist. A handful of Edward Hoppers, along with some luminous John Singer Sargents, adorned Mel Gibson's swank Manhattan apartment in the 1996 thriller "Ransom." Ignoring art history in his Oscar- winning epic "Titanic," director James Cameron shows Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" going down with the famously doomed ocean liner - leading to a copyright infringement lawsuit from the Picasso estate, which was settled out of court. (Because most great artworks from the 20th century are not in the public domain, studios must seek permission for their reproduction from the estates or legal guardians of the work.)
The trend continues with current and coming movies such as "The Last Samurai," "Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde," "Down With Love" and "The Boss's Daughter."
For a select few talented, if anonymous, artists and faux-art providers, this can make for a nice living. Born in New York, raised in France and speaking with a trace of a French accent, Christopher Moore has been at the helm of Manhattan-based Troubetzkoy Paintings since 1989. His debut in the movie art duplication business was 1993's "The Age of Innocence."
Since then, Moore's assembly line (one artist in New York, four in Paris) produced most of the Picassos, Gauguins and Toulouse-Lautrecs seen in 2001's "Ocean's 11," the Chagall that so transfixed Jennifer Connelly in "A Beautiful Mind" and the literally hundreds of copies of Degas, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir and van Gogh filling the museum galleries and private pads of "The Thomas Crown Affair."
The painters working for Moore aren't just talented artists in their own right. Many have backgrounds in art restoration, which allows them to distinguish fine gradations of paint pigments and nuanced techniques emblematic of any artistic school. They also have the ability to copy meticulously from color-transparency versions of the original works.
For the scenic artists, certain styles of painting are inherently more challenging to copy than others.
Wassili Kandinsky's slightly more representational works are easier to grasp than the correct saturated color blend of blue and green in a Mark Rothko, for example.
A particular favorite of many scenic painters is John Singer Sargent, with his lusciously fleshed-out watercolor sketches and translucent drawings showing glowing skin tones.
"I actually think a Sargent is easier to copy than a Renoir, which has such highly exposed rhythmic brush strokes and a lively painting surface," says Joe Garzero, a New York- based scenic artist, whose father helped produce many of the rich artworks seen in the "Godfather" movies, "The Exorcist" and "Midnight Cowboy."
The team of scenic artists from "Pollock" enjoyed breaking away from the artist's frenzied canvases by knocking off pieces by Willem de Kooning or Edward Hopper.
"Hoppers were always favorites because of their color and their lovely composition," Ringbom recalls. "The fact that they included human figures, well, everyone liked that. Pollock's style was certainly not my favorite, but I now know what went into it, and it's a lot harder than at first glance."
For "Frida," in order to imitate Kahlo's fastidious miniature brush strokes, production designer Felipe Fernandez del Paso and his team of 30 Mexico City artists sought out every Kahlo work he could find in three major repositories throughout Mexico.
"Sometimes, I would bring down one of the finished paintings to the set and get a completely different reaction (from different people), with the director saying it looked nothing like the original and the cinematographer claiming it was a perfect copy," Fernandez del Paso recalls. "But when it came to reproducing Kahlo's colors, me and my team were born with them, so they came very natural to us."
A scenic artist's palette contains a variety of techniques to execute subtly effective fakery. To create that aged look of a gilt-framed antique, scenic artists apply rabbit-skin glue to paintings' frames and add a wash of raw umber (an amalgam of green and brown) to give a coffee- or tobacco juice-stained cast to the canvas. A crackle glaze can mimic the mottled surface of an aging oil work.
"The goal is to rub a wash of color on the work that will produce a browning or a blackening, automatically connoting age," says David Dies, who produced a 20-foot mural based on the 18th- to 19th-century German romantic-naturalist painter Caspar David Friedrich for the brooding motel scenes in "The Insider."
Dies, a scenic artist for 25 years, received his art degree from Stanford. By his own admission, he simply "fell into" scenic art work.
"I didn't know it even existed 25 years ago," admits Dies, who tapped into his extensive knowledge of the cubism practiced by Picasso, Braque and Juan Gris to construct a series of stained-glass paintings for 1998's "Pleasantville." "What separates decent from not-so-great scenic artists is whether they know color or not. You are either good at that or not."
Garzero underscores the importance of establishing a certain distance, almost an interpretive numbness, between the artist and the task of generating facsimiles of great art.
"Fundamentally, scenic artists must demystify the great works they work on," says Garzero, who says he spends nearly all of his free time coaching his kids' lacrosse and soccer teams and never paints for himself. "They have to identify what you have to do, eliminate the big 'struggle of the artist' and just control your raw craft. Make it happen and just walk away."
For all the mechanical quality of its production, scenic artists can still flush with pride at one measure of how good their work is: the number of movie cast and crew members who ask for one of their pieces as a parting souvenir.
After "The Thomas Crown Affair" wrapped, Pierce Brosnan put in an order for an ersatz Monet and van Gogh done by Christopher Moore's studio. From the set of "Ocean's 11," Andy Garcia requested a Gauguin knockoff. And Val Kilmer walked away from "Pollock" with one of the scenic designers' better pseudo Pollocks.
But the ultimate review of how well a scenic artist has done his work can come from owners of the original works. If the copies are good enough, they often ask that the work be destroyed once filming is completed (that's what happened to a series of copied Kandinskys from 1993's "Six Degrees of Separation"). The owners don't want any convincing fakes circulating around the art world. For the stewards of the genuine art, they want the fraud to end the moment the film does
