Artistica!
Bonnie Lautenberg
Bonnie Lautenberg on ‘Artistica! Where Art Meets Hollywood’
Throughout history, artists have always been influenced by some force going on in the world around them. I started thinking about how artists who work in different art forms might have influenced each other.
When I started working on this project, I used a film still from one of my most favorite movies, Splendor in The Grass with Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty. Growing up, I was obsessed with both these stars and I adored this movie. I paired it with a Jasper Johns map of the United States, a series I always adored by Johns. Both projects were done in 1961.
There really isn’t a great connection between the two images but I was playing with the idea of using these two art forms and wanted to see what they looked like together. So, I used two images that were very familiar to me. As I kept working on this project, the pairings became more interesting, more intellectual, more intelligent, creative, and clever.
There were many film images that were in my stream of consciousness when I started thinking about using film images in this project. In Psycho, the images of Janet Leigh in that shower scene never left my mind from the time I saw it in 1960.
The film frame had to be an image that the viewer could relate to such as The Wedding Crashers with Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn which is such an ‘up’ and iconic, smiling image of these two wedding crashers. People adore that image. I paired it with a John Baldessari painting from the same year with two circles covering the two male faces. It was a perfect pairing.
For 1967, Dustin Hoffman and Ann Bancroft in The Graduate… People adore that image of them in bed and I paired it with a Roy Lichtenstein painting called Modern Painting with Sun Rays because the glow on the faces in that Graduate image is as sunny as the sun rays coming up on the Lichtenstein. 1976, with All The President’s Men paired with Jean Dubuffet’s Fete Villageoise. I paired these two because Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford are working in the newsroom and you can feel all the chaos of that newsroom in that image and the Dubuffet is chaotic as well with so many separate little images with two men in them or just the same sense of chaos as the film still image in the movie.
The image of Jack Nicholson and Diane Keeton walking on the beach in the film Something’s Gotta Give, was a scene I always loved because it was filmed not far from where I have a home. I related to that image walking on the beach and love both of these actors. John Travolta and Olivia Newton John dancing in Grease. Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in All the President’s Men. Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan in Katz’ Deli in NYC when the famous line “I’ll have what she’s having” was said as Meg Ryan acted out that fabulous moment of simulating an orgasm. Gene Kelly’s image of him Singin’ In The Rain was one of my early pieces because I loved that iconic image. Judy Garland and Toto in The Wizard of Oz…
Image credits: 1940 (The Philadelphia Story with Stuart Davis, Hot Still-Scape for Six Colors-7th Avenue Style); 1950 (Sunset Boulevard with Josef Albers, Transformation B); 1960 (Psycho with Franz Kline, Lehigh V Span); 1967 (The Graduate with Roy Lichtenstein, Modern Painting with Sun Rays); 1989 (When Harry Met Sally with Alex Katz, Roof); 1994 (Pulp Fiction with Kenny Scharf, Globe Glob)
Bonnie Lautenberg
Bonnie Lautenberg discussed her work with Remy Dean previously in Signifier.
Lady Liberty, A Bonnie Lautenberg Retrospective is on show at the Jewish Museum of Florida (Florida International University) from 16 November 2022 — 26 March 2023.
