How to Draw a Bunny
Starring:Roy Lichtenstein, Judith Malina, James Rosenquist, Ray Johnson (VIII), Chuck Close
Director: John W. Walter
Studio: Live / Artisan
Product Type: DVD
Average customer rating:
- How to Draw a Bunny
- Was his death a performance piece?
- eccentricity and genius
- Life (and Death?) As Art
- Documentary about an Underappreciated Artist
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How to Draw a Bunny
Starring: Roy Lichtenstein , Gerald Ayres , James Rosenquist , Judith Malina , and Ray Johnson (VIII)
Director: John W. Walter
Manufacturer: Palm Pictures / Umvd
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Similar Items:
- Who Gets to Call It Art?
- In the Realms of the Unreal - The Mystery of Henry Darger
- Art: 21: Art in the Twenty-First Century
- Art: 21 - Art in the 21st Century (Seasons One & Two)
- Ray Johnson: Correspondences
ASIN: B0004Z31M0
Release Date: 2004-10-19 |
Customer Reviews:
How to Draw a Bunny.......2007-06-26
This movie is just the thing that fits inside you and never goes away. I first heard of this movie at the Museum of Fine Arts. It was playing there and I missed it, but it looked interesting. So I ordered it on Netflix and then promptly forgot what it was about or why I ever wanted to see it. So I kept sliding it down on the list (trust, mistrust) until, finally, I forgot to manage my list and it came to the house. That can happen, as you know.
John Waters and Andrew Moore put together a film about the artist, Ray Johnson, that leaves you wondering which is better--Ray Johnson--or the movie? The answer is --both. Okay, Ray Johnson was, well, Ray Johnson. The movie is a Ray Johnson motico. On one level it plays as a retrospective of Ray's live and his art. On another level it plays out as a totally noir B detective movie. More like a noir detective documentary. (Remember Dragnet?) It's Dragnet in an exquisitly "Ray" way. Ray Johnson was not an outsider artist. He knew everyone in the arts, and everyone knew him. But in an important sense he was an outsider artist. He was outside of everything. Hilarious interviews with friends who tried to buy some of his art work. The negotiations over the sales became bigger than the art. And the art is stunning. Film footage of Ray at a suburban garden party-episodes and also on his "foot" period. He drew and collaged feet for a long time. Finally he rented a helicoper and dropped "foot-long" hot dogs over Long Island. What a fabulous movie this is.
Was his death a performance piece?.......2007-03-31
Ray Johnson was born in Detroit in 1927 and as an only child he was always focused on art and drawing. Rather than attend regular school, he attend Cass Tech and studied art. He want to an experimental college called Black Mountain where he was exposed to some of the leaders of the then avant garde. He headed to New York in 1948 and became a part of the central art scene there. He was admired by artists from many fields there and became friendly with many of them.
One of the very interesting things we learn in this film is that friendship is a very strange word when talking about Ray Johnson. Everyone who knew him cared about him and had affection for him. They all have stories about him. However, Johnson never let anyone, that is ANYONE, into who he really was. What that means is for you to decide.
He became a very fine and original collagist and even a performance artist. Some of the stuff seems quite pointless and silly. It probably is. Not everything works in art. However, the stuff that does is terrific.
Johnson never sold much and was difficult to work with. Not because he had a band temper, but because he had his own views of reality. A particularly nice story is a friend telling how he wanted to buy a collage he liked from Johnson who told him it was $2,000. The friend offered $1,500. Johnson said OK but that he would take it home and send it to him. When he got it from Johnson it had the entire lower right quarter of the collage removed ($500 worth).
The movie is itself a kind of collage and quite interesting. There is some footage of Johnson, many interviews with friends, and since Johnson's death is a mystery (probably a suicide as a performance piece) we also get an interview with the detective who looked into the death after the body was found floating in a river.
If you are interested in 20th century avant garde art and artists, you will likely find this film as interesting as I did. If you don't appreciate the stuff, you still might find this a doorway into the stuff. However, if artists drive you crazy you will probably not enjoy this at all because it is full of fascinating people you won't like.
eccentricity and genius.......2007-01-25
Pop artist, prankster, and provocateur extraordinaire, Ray Johnson (1928-1995) had many acquaintances, but to a person no one claimed to know who he really was. His life, his death from suicide, and his prolific work were a single, seamless performance act. This documentary interviews curators, his agent, collectors, the police that investigated his death, his first cousin, fellow artists like Christo, and even, appropriately, his mail carrier (Johnson mailed thousands of pieces of his "mail art" to people around the world). The same semantic range of words emerges from them all -- enigmatic, elusive, isolated, underground, and mysterious. In one "work" he dropped sixty foot long hot dogs from a helicopter. In another, we see him hopping around on one foot as he beats a cardboard box with a belt. "He kept so much of himself to himself," remarked one person. "No one ever seemed to know what he did, or what he thought he was doing," observed another. But upon his death a veritable treasure trove of Johnson's work surfaced--paintings, drawings and especially mixed media collages pasted on the cardboard inserts of laundried shirts (he once told a friend he did "chop art" and not "pop art"). The film, much of which is shot in black and white, begins and ends with consideration of his theatrical death on Friday, January 13th, 1995. His body was found floating under a bridge in Sag Harbor, New York, by buoy number 13. The night before Johnson had stayed in room #247 (= 13) of a motel. He was 67 (= 13). A few days later people discovered his house meticulously staged with transparent clues. Johnson was clearly an extraordinary and eccentric genius, once referred to in the The New York Times as the "most famous unknown artist." His works which spanned nearly 50 years are now exhibited in museums around the world.
Life (and Death?) As Art.......2005-12-24
A fascinating look inside the New York art scene and the predecessor class to Warhol. I confess that I knew absolutely nothing about this artist before watching this documentary, and yet I couldn't get enough of it. Truly a man who lived his life as art. And his death? That's the central guessing game of this film, and it makes for a captivating and vaguely haunting biopic.
Documentary about an Underappreciated Artist.......2005-11-07
The subject of this film is a lesser-known artist Ray Johnson, who was an extremely private person. While he knew everyone in the New York pop art scene, no one knew him very well at all.
Moreover, in the documentary, at least, he seldom seems to sell a work of art, yet all he does is create art. He became a constant presence in the New York art scene from the early 1950's till his suicide in 1995. He is credited with creating the first happenings when he displayed his collages on a city street. He began to concentrate on creating elaborate collages.
He is so shy about his art that even as his friends, maybe all his friends, get shows at well-known galleries and even at the Museum of Modern Art, he never allows MOMA's curators to judge whether to admit his works to the museum's collection. Instead, he mails his art to many friends, collectors and MOMA's library. The library, as is its custom, duly catalogs and keeps the mailed art. In that way, he gets in the back door of the museum.
So when his friend Chuck Close wants a piece by Ray exhibited in Close's own exhibit at the museum, the MOMA library shows the "mail art" that Ray sent.
His address book is a Who's Who of modern art: Chuck Close, Roy Lichtenstein, Christo, Robert Rauschenberg, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol. All these artists knew and respected Ray Johnson and his work.
His house was a living space unfurnished except for shelves and shelves of his art works: small collages which he called moticos, drawings and paintings.
The film does not solve the puzzle of Ray Johnson, but it certainly presents what anyone knows of this oddly private artist. In fact, he was known as "the most famous unknown artist in the world."
Average customer rating:
- How to Draw a Bunny
- Was his death a performance piece?
- eccentricity and genius
- Life (and Death?) As Art
- Documentary about an Underappreciated Artist
|
How to Draw a Bunny
Starring: Roy Lichtenstein , Judith Malina , James Rosenquist , Ray Johnson (VIII) , and Chuck Close
Director: John W. Walter
Manufacturer: Live / Artisan
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD
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Malina, Judith
| ( M )
| Actors & Actresses
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Similar Items:
- Who Gets to Call It Art?
- In the Realms of the Unreal - The Mystery of Henry Darger
- Art: 21: Art in the Twenty-First Century
- Art: 21 - Art in the 21st Century (Seasons One & Two)
- Ray Johnson: Correspondences
ASIN: B0002J58FQ
Release Date: 2004-09-21 |
Customer Reviews:
How to Draw a Bunny.......2007-06-26
This movie is just the thing that fits inside you and never goes away. I first heard of this movie at the Museum of Fine Arts. It was playing there and I missed it, but it looked interesting. So I ordered it on Netflix and then promptly forgot what it was about or why I ever wanted to see it. So I kept sliding it down on the list (trust, mistrust) until, finally, I forgot to manage my list and it came to the house. That can happen, as you know.
John Waters and Andrew Moore put together a film about the artist, Ray Johnson, that leaves you wondering which is better--Ray Johnson--or the movie? The answer is --both. Okay, Ray Johnson was, well, Ray Johnson. The movie is a Ray Johnson motico. On one level it plays as a retrospective of Ray's live and his art. On another level it plays out as a totally noir B detective movie. More like a noir detective documentary. (Remember Dragnet?) It's Dragnet in an exquisitly "Ray" way. Ray Johnson was not an outsider artist. He knew everyone in the arts, and everyone knew him. But in an important sense he was an outsider artist. He was outside of everything. Hilarious interviews with friends who tried to buy some of his art work. The negotiations over the sales became bigger than the art. And the art is stunning. Film footage of Ray at a suburban garden party-episodes and also on his "foot" period. He drew and collaged feet for a long time. Finally he rented a helicoper and dropped "foot-long" hot dogs over Long Island. What a fabulous movie this is.
Was his death a performance piece?.......2007-03-31
Ray Johnson was born in Detroit in 1927 and as an only child he was always focused on art and drawing. Rather than attend regular school, he attend Cass Tech and studied art. He want to an experimental college called Black Mountain where he was exposed to some of the leaders of the then avant garde. He headed to New York in 1948 and became a part of the central art scene there. He was admired by artists from many fields there and became friendly with many of them.
One of the very interesting things we learn in this film is that friendship is a very strange word when talking about Ray Johnson. Everyone who knew him cared about him and had affection for him. They all have stories about him. However, Johnson never let anyone, that is ANYONE, into who he really was. What that means is for you to decide.
He became a very fine and original collagist and even a performance artist. Some of the stuff seems quite pointless and silly. It probably is. Not everything works in art. However, the stuff that does is terrific.
Johnson never sold much and was difficult to work with. Not because he had a band temper, but because he had his own views of reality. A particularly nice story is a friend telling how he wanted to buy a collage he liked from Johnson who told him it was $2,000. The friend offered $1,500. Johnson said OK but that he would take it home and send it to him. When he got it from Johnson it had the entire lower right quarter of the collage removed ($500 worth).
The movie is itself a kind of collage and quite interesting. There is some footage of Johnson, many interviews with friends, and since Johnson's death is a mystery (probably a suicide as a performance piece) we also get an interview with the detective who looked into the death after the body was found floating in a river.
If you are interested in 20th century avant garde art and artists, you will likely find this film as interesting as I did. If you don't appreciate the stuff, you still might find this a doorway into the stuff. However, if artists drive you crazy you will probably not enjoy this at all because it is full of fascinating people you won't like.
eccentricity and genius.......2007-01-25
Pop artist, prankster, and provocateur extraordinaire, Ray Johnson (1928-1995) had many acquaintances, but to a person no one claimed to know who he really was. His life, his death from suicide, and his prolific work were a single, seamless performance act. This documentary interviews curators, his agent, collectors, the police that investigated his death, his first cousin, fellow artists like Christo, and even, appropriately, his mail carrier (Johnson mailed thousands of pieces of his "mail art" to people around the world). The same semantic range of words emerges from them all -- enigmatic, elusive, isolated, underground, and mysterious. In one "work" he dropped sixty foot long hot dogs from a helicopter. In another, we see him hopping around on one foot as he beats a cardboard box with a belt. "He kept so much of himself to himself," remarked one person. "No one ever seemed to know what he did, or what he thought he was doing," observed another. But upon his death a veritable treasure trove of Johnson's work surfaced--paintings, drawings and especially mixed media collages pasted on the cardboard inserts of laundried shirts (he once told a friend he did "chop art" and not "pop art"). The film, much of which is shot in black and white, begins and ends with consideration of his theatrical death on Friday, January 13th, 1995. His body was found floating under a bridge in Sag Harbor, New York, by buoy number 13. The night before Johnson had stayed in room #247 (= 13) of a motel. He was 67 (= 13). A few days later people discovered his house meticulously staged with transparent clues. Johnson was clearly an extraordinary and eccentric genius, once referred to in the The New York Times as the "most famous unknown artist." His works which spanned nearly 50 years are now exhibited in museums around the world.
Life (and Death?) As Art.......2005-12-24
A fascinating look inside the New York art scene and the predecessor class to Warhol. I confess that I knew absolutely nothing about this artist before watching this documentary, and yet I couldn't get enough of it. Truly a man who lived his life as art. And his death? That's the central guessing game of this film, and it makes for a captivating and vaguely haunting biopic.
Documentary about an Underappreciated Artist.......2005-11-07
The subject of this film is a lesser-known artist Ray Johnson, who was an extremely private person. While he knew everyone in the New York pop art scene, no one knew him very well at all.
Moreover, in the documentary, at least, he seldom seems to sell a work of art, yet all he does is create art. He became a constant presence in the New York art scene from the early 1950's till his suicide in 1995. He is credited with creating the first happenings when he displayed his collages on a city street. He began to concentrate on creating elaborate collages.
He is so shy about his art that even as his friends, maybe all his friends, get shows at well-known galleries and even at the Museum of Modern Art, he never allows MOMA's curators to judge whether to admit his works to the museum's collection. Instead, he mails his art to many friends, collectors and MOMA's library. The library, as is its custom, duly catalogs and keeps the mailed art. In that way, he gets in the back door of the museum.
So when his friend Chuck Close wants a piece by Ray exhibited in Close's own exhibit at the museum, the MOMA library shows the "mail art" that Ray sent.
His address book is a Who's Who of modern art: Chuck Close, Roy Lichtenstein, Christo, Robert Rauschenberg, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol. All these artists knew and respected Ray Johnson and his work.
His house was a living space unfurnished except for shelves and shelves of his art works: small collages which he called moticos, drawings and paintings.
The film does not solve the puzzle of Ray Johnson, but it certainly presents what anyone knows of this oddly private artist. In fact, he was known as "the most famous unknown artist in the world."
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