Hasta La Ideas

A cinema legend’s left-behind photos make up an enticing new book

Known for his impressive film career that spanned four decades and included prolific pictures like “The Ten Commandments,” “The King and I” and “The Magnificent Seven,” Russian-born actor Yul Brynner has most recently been in the public eye for his beautifully fascinating photos of fellow stars captured at unguarded moments.

Put together by the late actor’s daughter Victoria Brynner, publisher Edition 7L released a four-volume anthology of these images called Yul Brynner: A Photographic Journey earlier this month. Each volume is dedicated to a different portion of Brynner’s life.

Volume 1—Life Style—depicts images from his friends, with photos like Frank Sinatra getting out of his private helicopter with a whiskey glass in hand and Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin horsing around at the Hollywood Bowl. Volume 2—Life On Set—shows the behind-the-scenes photos of the films he starred in, while Volume 3—dubbed 1956—highlights the busiest year of his career and includes a foreword from the esteemed Martin Scorsese. For the full picture, Volume 4—Man Of Style—shows the man himself with images that “illustrate his love of photography, individuality, family, friends, and, quite simply, the art of living.”

The photos from the book have also been on display at NYC’s Lehmann Maupin Gallery. Exhibiting 70 works (those chosen by Victoria Brynner from the 8,000 her father left behind), the show is a sensational portrayal of a time without paparazzi documenting every celebrity’s move.

“Yul Brynner: A Photographic Journey” is on view through 25 September 2010 in NYC before moving to Paris in October 2010. The book of the same name is available for pre-order from Amazon and will sell at stores like Colette, Steidlville and Book Soup.

The career trajectory of Milwaukee, WI-born artist Mathew Cerletty is a curious one. In the early 2000s, the Boston University graduate made a precocious impact on critics and curators with a technical skill lending his surreal figurative paintings and drawings an unnerving air of realism. More recent work however, since his move to New York City in 2003, uses logos and text as a springboard into abstraction—though the symbolic weight of a 2009 pencil drawing of
Philip Seymour Hoffman, or a painting of New York Times columnist David Brooks from the same year, bridge the painter’s seemingly divergent approaches.

Cerletty’s portrait for “Stuff,” an upcoming short film from the creative team behind the Kid America Club, cartoonishly reprises his early works. (Click image at right for detail.) Director and writer Frank Sisti Jr. approached Cerletty to do a painting of the titular live-action character, the imaginary monster friend of Felix, who’s a 30-something burnout from Queens. The domineering Stuff forces Felix (played by Kevin Corrigan) to do several projects, including the portrait.

“He was a little worried that I’d be offended that a painting was being treated as a joke, but I think he knew that that’s exactly what would make me want to do it,” Cerletty said in an email. “He said the Stuff character was a dick, and being familiar with the Kid America Club, I had a good sense of what that might mean.”

Sisti instructed Cerletty to paint Stuff in a Revolutionary War getup and set it in a gold frame, getting photos together of the costume created by Jeff Roberts, who also plays him in the movie. While the oil on linen portrait likely won’t go on exhibit, it may not be a one-off.

“No plans to show it,” Cerletty said. “I’m waiting for Frankie to give me enough ideas for an entire show.”

For the month of May, Toronto’s Studio Gallery presents the work of world-renowned artist Richard Kern with his first solo exhibition in Canada and his first full-career retrospective, “Kern: A Retrospective Exhibition Featuring the Photography and Films of Richard Kern.”

Kern, a photographer, occasional pornographer, former filmmaker and video director, is most importantly a portrait artist. The retrospective documents his works over the past two decades, from his early short films to photographs from the ’90s, which illuminate the early stages of his voyeuristic style of photography.

Kern has published nine books to date and regularly contributes to a variety of international publications such as Purple, Vice, V Magazine and Italian GQ. His work has been featured in numerous books and exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of Art and in more than 30 solo shows around the world.

The show runs through 30 May 2010. In addition to the print works, Studio Gallery will screen films by Kern 15 May and 22 May 2010. The $5 admission includes the full exhibition and curator introduction and runs 7pm – 10pm.

Written and directed by filmmaking team Corey Adams and Alex Craig, the new adventure comedy “Machotaildrop” tells a story positioning skateboarding not just as merely a trivial pastime of the young, but rather as a noble pursuit worthy of the highest cultural recognition.

Winners of Fuel TV‘s two-year competition “The Fuel Experiment” for their short film “Harvey Spannos,” the duo used the one million in prize money to produce the feature-length farce in Budapest.

The film follows lead character and amateur skateboarder Walter Rhum on his journey to go pro for the world’s greatest skateboard company. Beginning with an invite to Machotaildrop’s headquarters, the tale unfolds as he uncovers the dark underbelly of what initially seems a benign operation.

Walter’s fantasy life dissolves into a dizzying nightmare as he uncovers the company’s owner The Baron’s exploitative schemes and delusional antics, forcing him to ultimately face the reality of the company’s downfall—all with plenty of skating.

Now playing in selected cities across North America, Machotaildrop premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and will screen at Tribeca Cinemas on 21 May 2010. Pick up tickets from the Tribeca site for the screening.

Humorous and provocative, the much-anticipated film Exit Through the Gift Shop by the U.K.’s leading street artist Banksy is impressively on par with his captivating artworks. After its surprise premiere at Sundance last year, the well-edited movie opens in select cities across the U.S. on 16 April 2010.

Don’t expect to watch a revelatory documentary on the elusive British artist. Instead, the film revolves around French-born L.A. resident Thierry Guetta, or Mr. Brainwash— an obsessive vintage store owner whose preoccupation with filming street artists in the late ’90s led him to a chance friendship with Banksy through the equally legendary street artist Shepard Fairey.

In an exclusive interview Fairey discussed with CH how his relationship with Guetta has changed since his breakthrough show in L.A., which Fairey subsequently criticized. “I think it’s important to be honest, because I know he respects me and I’m not just a hater. I think he has potential to evolve into a good artist if he takes some of this constructive criticism to heart. He came out with a big bang without the same sort of period of gestation that other artists have. It’s not an open and closed thing. Everyone has the potential to evolve if they work at it.”

Much of the film’s footage comes from Guetta, who was planning on creating his own documentary chronicling the history of graffiti. From accompanying Fairey and Guetta’s cousin Space Invader as they put up their pieces in the middle of the night to becoming Banksy’s right-hand man in L.A. and helping him pull off the infamous stunt at Disneyland, Guetta filmed it all. When Banksy saw the finished film, however, he took all 10,000 hours of footage, re-edited it, and shifted the focus on Guetta himself.

In his typical extreme style, Guetta set about mounting a show as loud and hyped—if not more, even—than Banksy’s own “Barely Legal” in the abandoned CBS Studios in L.A. in 2008, propelling him into the spotlight overnight.

Most of the film’s commentary is by Fairey and Banksy himself, who discuss Guetta’s artistic merit in a dry manner. Without spoiling the ending, we will tell you that there is a twisted conclusion about street art as a whole that will have you contemplating the medium for days.

Fairey, whose new show “May Day” opens at Deitch Projects 1 May 2010, explains “People now look at street art as a legitimate form of expression and a good way to get attention. Even if the artwork is pointless, the medium is still a pretty powerful message.”

Los Angeles, NYC, San Francisco, Berkeley and Palo Alto will see the film first, followed by Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago and Seattle on 23 April 2010. Check banksyfilm.com for dates in other cities.