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Modern Art in Technicolor: Art, Film, and American Identity

Mel Bochner, Dispersed Perspective (One-Point) R.W.B., 1967(?). Spray lacquer on gelatin silver print cut into 16 parts and mounted on Masonite, and graphite on wall. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Purchase through the generosity of Martin and Deborah Hale, Carol and Sol LeWitt, Markus Michalke, Gabriella De Ferrari, Arthur M. Cohen, Kenneth L. Freed, Nancy B. Tieken, and the Richard Norton Memorial Fund in honor of Linda Norden, 2006.9.1–16. © Mel Bochner.

Film

Harvard Art Museums
32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA

Focusing on postwar American art and film, this series examines the formation of national identity. Each screening pairs a work from the museums’ modern and contemporary art collection with a film that speaks to its concerns. As in any dialogue, the conversation goes both ways: as the chosen artworks reveal hidden complexities in apparently simple films, the selected films use narrative to tease out and make apparent the aesthetic and social ambitions of art. The series is programmed by Harmon Siegel, a Ph.D. student in the History of Art and Architecture program at Harvard.

Today’s film:
Brian de Palma
Body Double, 1984 (114 min.; color)

Today’s screening is paired with Mel Bochner’s Dispersed Perspective (One-Point) R.W.B. This work is not currently on view, but may be requested for an appointment in the Art Study Center.

The screening will take place in Menschel Hall, Lower Level.

Free with museums admission

Support for this program is provided by the Richard L. Menschel Endowment Fund. Modern and contemporary art programs at the Harvard Art Museums are made possible in part by generous support from the Emily Rauh Pulitzer and Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., Fund for Modern and Contemporary Art.