Sag Harbor Cinema is proud to present “Movie Art and Artifacts from a Private Collection,” an exhibition that mixes contemporary art incorporating imagery from movies with artifacts of the movie-making process, such as set designs and props from Apocalypse Now, The French Connection, Psycho, Bullitt, Double Indemnity, The Searchers, Belle de Jour, and other classics. The gallery exhibit will open on Saturday, May 25th, and feature a screening of Vanishing Point (Richard C. Sarafian, 1971) and a book signing of Vanishing Point Forever (Robert M. Rubin, 2024).
“The icons of the Golden Age of Hollywood have richly circulating afterlives in the realms of contemporary art: painting, photography, even performance. A lot of this art is directly fabricated out of or appropriated from the process material of filmmaking,” explained Robert M. Rubin, the show’s curator. “This eclectic gathering of art and artifacts demonstrates that, even though the golden age of celluloid cinema is allegedly over, in the end these movies and the screen personalities that animate them are strong enough to survive and even flourish in our digital cultural imaginations.”
“I have been an admirer of Bob Rubin’s collecting philosophy and his passion for cinema,” says SHC’s Artistic Director Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan. ”It is a vision where film intersects the other arts and permeates the way we interpret the world that I strongly identify with and draws from some of my favorite endeavors of Hollywood history, both sophisticated and irreverent. I am thrilled to exhibit a portion of his collection on the Cinema’s third floor.”
Among the actors who grace this show in one form or another: Steve McQueen, Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Catherine Deneuve, Louise Brooks, and Faye Dunaway.
Among the artists whose work is represented in the show are Richard Prince, Richard Avedon, Martin Kippenberger, Fiona Banner, John Divola, John Bock, Pierre Bismuth, and Agnieszka Kurant.
Rubin, a Wainscott resident, will also be present at the Cinema on Saturday, May 25th for a screening of the 1971 road movie Vanishing Point, followed by a Q&A and book signing. His latest book, Vanishing Point Forever (Film Desk Books, 2024), is a deep dive into the film, its pseudonymous screenwriter Guillermo Cain (in reality the celebrated Cuban novelist Guillermo Cabrera Infante) and the long tail of its influence on art, music, and cinema (notably Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof).
Rubin’s previous books include Richard Prince Cowboy (Prestel, 2020) and Avedon’s France: Old World, New Look (Abrams, 2017). He has also published books and essays on Pierre Chareau, Alexander Calder, Buckminster Fuller, Bob Dylan, and other cultural icons.
A version of the exhibit at Sag Harbor Cinema appeared at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City in 2015.
