Movies convey persistent artist stereotypes: idiosyncratic behavior, love affairs, self-destruction mystifying creative production, encounters with collectors/dealers/models/students. Artists appear almost solely as painters, reconfirming visual artists' inadequate representation.
Reframing the Artist resets fragments from ~50 artist movies, biopics, B-movies, and mainstream films (Pollock, Surviving Picasso, La Belle Noiseuse) in Shenzhen's Dafen Oil Painting Village—world's largest producer of mass-made oil-on-canvas copies. Dafen copy painters become amateur actors, reenacting scenes in their own unmodified homes, studios, and shops, using locally produced painting props from the reenacted films.
Mass-produced painting copies converge with mass media artist stereotypes and the Western art canon, overlapping fiction and documentary. The context shift questions views of the "other"—Western conceptual artist vs. Chinese copyist—challenging copy/original definitions amid global art economies. Structured in five chapters (artist/authenticity, market, crisis, student, model), the video's repetition lets viewers enter/exit freely.
Winner of the Principal Prize at the 58th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen 2012.
Video stills
Vincent and Theo 凡高与提奥 Robert Altman (1990), Tim Roth as / 饰 Vincent van Gogh (painter / 画家), Wladimir Yordanoff as / 饰 Paul Gauguin (painter / 画家)
Surviving Picasso 忘情毕加索 James Ivory (1996), Anthony Hopkins as / 饰
To Live and Die in L.A. 威猛奇兵 William Friedkin (1985), Willem Dafoe as / 饰 Eric ‘Rick’ Masters
Girl with a Pearl Earing 戴珍珠耳环的少女 Peter Webber (2003), Colin Firth as / 饰 Johannes Vermeer (painter / 画家), Scarlett Johansson as / 饰 Griet (model / 模特儿)
Art School Confidential 艺校的秘密 Terry Zwigoff (2006), John Malkovich as / 饰Prof. Sandiford (painter / 画家), Max Minghella as / 饰 Jerome (art student / 学生)
Exhibition views: Reframing the Artist, Lothringer 13 Halle, Munich, 2012
2010 ‚Convection’ Dafen International Contemporary Art Exhibition, Dafen Sub-Venue, Shenzhen Case Pavillion - 2010 Shanghai EXPO, Shenzhen, CN
screening and discussion in Dafen Village, 2016, organized by Ma Yonfeng
http://www.forgetart.org/
Oil Painting Props, various sizes
