Rating: NR
Genre:
Visual Arts [nf]
Theatrical Release: 03/28/2008(USA
Release Date: 07/29/2008
Dubbed: English
Sound: DD2
Run Time: 85 Minutes
Distributor/Studio: Arts Alliance Amer
New York City has long been regarded as the heart of the American art movement, but near the end of the 1940s, as the post-war rise of Abstract Expressionism became the new wave of painting in the United States, a small but determined band of painters, curators, and collectors on the West Coast were determined to make themselves known. Filmmaker
Morgan Neville examines the rise of the Los Angeles art scene and how it brought a new and vigorously American slant to contemporary painting in the
documentary The Cool School.
Neville profiles
Walter Hopps and
Irving Blum, owners of the Ferus Gallery, which championed the new school of Los Angeles art; sculptors
Ed Kienholz and
Larry Bell; and painters
Ed Ruscha,
John Altoon, and
Billy Al Bengston, all of whom were championed by the Ferus Gallery; architect
Frank Gehry, whose ideas dovetailed with those of the new L.A. artists; and
Dennis Hopper and
Dean Stockwell, actors and Hollywood bohemians whose love of the new L.A. art (and willingness to buy pieces) provided crucial support for a struggling movement.
Jeff Bridges serves as narrator.
~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
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