On Art and Artists: Artist Portraits

This section of the On Art and Artists collection highlights a number of experimental portraits of artists, and documentaries about the artistic process, from intimate one-on-one close-ups and dialogues, to full studio production studies. These works do not follow a traditional interview format, but are often intended as artworks in their own right. The artists and makers of these Artist Portraits draw artistic inspiration and stylistic license from the collaborators and interlocutors they depict.

 

This video was produced as a part of Eiko & Koma's exhibition Time is not Even, Space is not Empty which opened at the Zilkha Gallery in Wesleyan University in the fall of 2009. Edited by Eiko with assistance of Tara Kelton and Shoko Letton, 38 Works shows the trajectory of Eiko & Koma's career through short excerpts of most of their works created between 1976 (the year they arrived in the US) and 2009 (the year they started the Retrospective Project).

Eiko & Koma, 38 Works

Mexican video artist Ximena Cuevas documented the preparations and opening of the Marina Abramovic Videoinstalaciones exhibit at Mexico City's Laboratorio Arte ALameda, the first Abramovic exhibition ever to take place in Mexico, in November of 2008.  Cuevas captures the self proclaimed "performance grandmother" in a number of personal and performative moments as she readies for the opening.

Marina Abramovic, From Tuesday to Friday

It is a tribute of hyperkinetic colors to the Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro in times of pandemic vortex and post-Cubist quarantine. This is Altazor's color drop. Part of the Harmonic and Hyperkinetic Color Film Series.

Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, Altazor

An intimate portrait of the artist at his home in San Francisco, this film delves into Mike Kuchar's life and work. The artist portrait explores, among other things, Kuchar's movie/music collections, his mysterious Casablanca editing system and the comic books, religious iconography and sci-fi memorabilia that fill the apartment floor to ceiling.

An Afternoon with Mike Kuchar, Oscar Oldershaw

A musical portrait of Vic Chesnutt and company recording the song, CHAIN.

The piece was shot during the recording session for the album, At the Cut, at the Hotel2Tango studio in Montreal, and features appearances by musicians including Efrim Menuck, Guy Picciotto, Jessica Moss, and Chad Jones. CHAIN was written by Chesnutt after viewing Cohen's feature film of that name.

Anecdotal Evidence, Jem Cohen

In conversation with curator and educator Mary Jane Jacob, visual artist Ann Hamilton (b. 1956) talks about care, interactivity, and social relations — key concepts that preoccupy her practice — and why she feels compelled to revisit these issues under the Trump administration. Hamilton was trained in textile design and sculpture, and she received her MFA from Yale University School of Art in 1985.

Ann Hamilton: An Interview

A documentary about Holt’s public installation work Dark Star Park in Arlington, Virginia, this video is about the process of developing and building the park. It includes commentary from the architects, contractors, foremen, and engineers who worked on the project, as well as with people who frequent the park. Holt transforms a site of urban blight into an aesthetically stimulating spot that addresses environmental issues.

Copyright Holt/Smithson Foundation.

This video features California artists: drawer and painter Deanne Belinoff, sculptor and poet Sana Krusoe, wood relief carver and painter Palema Holmes, and New York-based video artist Shirley Clark.

The Artists: Part 1 was produced in concert with the exhibition Four Solo Exhibitions at the Long Beach Museum of Art in 1988. The artists are introduced by LBMA’s senior curator Josine Ianco-Starrels. The video presents and contrasts the diverse styles, media, and personalities of these four women artists.

The Artists: Part 1 (Belinkoff, Krusoe, Holmes, and Clark)

This video profiles the work and insight of California artists: sculptor, painter, and installation artist Laddie John Dill and painter and sculptor Clark Walding. It also includes a mini-documentary on Tony Delap’s The Big Wave, a public art sculpture that crosses Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica. 

Long Beach Museum of Art, The Artists: Part 2 (Dill, Walding, and Delap)

Part 3 profiles three California women artists: sculptor and lint and installation artist Slater Baron, mixed media installation artist Beverly Nadius, and book artist Sue Ann Robinson.

The Artists: Part 3 (Baron, Nadius And Robinson)

This tape compiles three profiles of performance artists: A Creative Synthesis: George Coates Performance Works (10:00), The Performance World of Rachel Rosenthal (16:00), and Paul Dresher Ensemble (08:00).

The Artists: Performance Art (Rosenthal, Dresher, Coates)

Part of the Long Beach Museum of Art’s Institute for Art and Urban Resources' Collectors of the Seventies series, this video focuses on the Betty Asher’s acquisitions. "I started collecting in 1939. I didn’t really start collecting per se," Asher says in this interview with David Ross, Virginia Dwan, and Alanna Heiss. "I bought things, and one morning I woke up and—all of a sudden—people were calling me a collector."

Betty Asher

This video reveals John Baldessari's thoughts and intentions for his work over the course of his career, providing clues to the understanding of his paintings, books, and photos. What emerges is a portrait of a rebellious artist who attempts to undermine the catagories and dogmas of the art world--with the full realization that in the long run, some catagory or other will be named to label his work.

John Baldessari:  Some Stories

An unorthodox essay film on the renowned but controversial painter, Philip Guston. Ballad interweaves Guston’s biography, influences, and philosophical approach to art with Cohen’s deeply personal engagement with the man and his work. Balancing elements as disparate as Krazy Kat cartoons, the 19th Century Russian author Babel, and Guston’s lifelong grappling with racism and injustice, the film is an unusual critical immersion and a free-wheeling celebration of painting’s radical potential.

Jem Cohen, Ballad of Philip Guston

Feminist artist Lynda Benglis is known for her sculptures, video performances, paintings, and photography. Her work in the 1970s was controversial, delving into issues of gender roles within and outside the art world. Produced in conjunction with her retrospective at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Dual Natures provides an introduction to Benglis’s work and includes excerpts from her videos of the mid-’70s and footage of the artist at work.

High Museum of Art, Lynda Benglis: Dual Natures