Tag: Ali Ray

Exhibition on Screen:
My National Gallery

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 4 June 2024
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My National Gallery
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Director – Phil Grabsky, Ali Ray – 2024 – UK – Cert. U – 98m

*****

Employees, punters and celebrities choose their favourite painting in London’s National Gallery – out in UK cinemas from Tuesday, June 4th

There have been documentary films about the UK’s National Gallery before, notably the wonderful, three-hour-long National Gallery (Frederick Wiseman, 2014), so, in a way, it’s a brave subject for the Exhibition on Screen people to take on. And yet, as a British production company making movies about art in art galleries, it was inevitable that they would tackle the subject sooner or later. Their version commences with a likeable enough establishing montage of what one might call ‘behind the scenes’ and ‘footfall’ – shots of various National Gallery employees at work opening the door, looking after various aspects of the art housed in the gallery and even putting out tasty-looking croissants in the cafeteria.

There are satisfying little touches throughout. A shot of The Feast Day of Saint Roch, Canaletto, with out of focus people passing in front of it, makes it feel like you’re really there in the scene depicted.

Alan Allison, security officer and gallery assistant (pictured on the front of the trailer, below) wears black clothing with a striking, patterned blue tie.… Read the rest

Tags “the Python foot”, air raid, Ali Ray, animator, architect, aristocracy, art, art galleries, art history, ballet school, behind the scenes, bereavement, British Sign Language, British society, broken string, BSL, Canada House, Canaletto, celeb, children, classical piano concerts, closing announcement, collector, colonial bubble, Crown Estates, Dame Myra Hess, deaf, diplomacy, diversity, Edgar Degas, Exhibition On Screen, fathers and daughters, feminism, film festival, Florence, footfall, Giovanni Bellini, grandad, grandfather, grandma, grandmother, hang, Hetty Feather, horror film, horror movie, Houses of Parliament, Humphrey Jennings, Impressionists, Italy, Jacqueline Wilson, John Nash, Jonathan Conlin, Kenneth Clark, lack of representation, lute, Madonna, Michael Palin, monsters, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, mothers and sons, Narcotics Anonymous, National Gallery, Nelson’s Column, nineteenth century, occult, one-painting show, painter, parents and children, Phil Grabsky, Pierre-August Renoir, Public Record Office, punctuation, pyramid, Royal Academy, safe storage place, science fiction, seventeenth century, Sir George Beaumont, skull, slave trade, Stewart McAllister, Syphilis, Terry Gilliam, the City of London, The Strand, Trafalgar Square, Turner, twentieth century, university, venereal, Venus, Westminster, witchcraft, witches

Art Documentary Features Live Action Movies Music

Exhibition on Screen:
Klimt & the Kiss

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 30 October 2023
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Klimt & the Kiss
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Director – Ali Ray – 2023 – UK – Cert. 12a – 90m

*****

A look at one of the world’s favourite paintings, housed in Vienna’s Belvedere Museum, and the wider body of work of the artist who created it – out in UK cinemas on Monday, October 30th for one day only

All lovers of art have their blind spots. That’s partly why we go to exhibitions, to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss is one of those images everyone knows, since it’s been widely reproduced as prints, while movie buffs know it from the opening museum sequence of Bad Timing (Nicolas Roeg, 1980) and as a major influence on the visuals of The Thief And The Cobbler (Richard Williams, 1993). Beyond that, however, my knowledge of both Klimt and the painting itself are sparse. This latest entry in producer Phil Grabsky’s excellent Exhibition On Screen series about art is therefore most welcome since it proves highly informative about both.

Accompanied by a perfectly judged piano score of sequences of notes rising and falling, it opens on out of focus images of gold surfaces before showing us a detail of the two heads in the painting viewed not, as you might expect, straight on, but from a side angle.… Read the rest

Tags Academy style, Ali Ray, anti-Semitism, art exhibition, art gallery, art history, Art Nouveau, artists, artists’ community, Beethoven, Beethoven exhibit of 1902, Belvedere Museum, birth of Modernism, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, cultural historian, curator, Eastern European church icons, embrace, Emilie Flöge, exhibition, Exhibition On Screen, fashion designer, female experience, feminine, France, frieze, Gavin Plumley, gold, golden lacquer Japanese work, Gustav Klimt, Impressionism, Impressionists, Ivan Ristić, James McNeill Whistler, Japan, John Singer Sargent, Joseph Maria Olbrich, Jugendstil, kiss, Klimt Foundation, lecturer, Leopold Museum, lesbian, LGBTQ, life partner, Mag. Sandra Tretter, Mag. Stephanie Auer, Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh Jan Toorop, Matisse, Max Klinger. Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, medieval art, Modernism, motto, museum, mythology, naked, nude, nudity, offence, overwhelming, painting, Paris, partially clad, Phil Grabsky, porn, Rodin, Sabine Weiber, sculpture, Secession Building, Secession exhibition, sex, The Kiss, The Secession, the style of youth’, turn of the century, UK, University of Glasgow, Van Gogh, Vienna, working class women, World War 1, World War One, WW1

Art Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Exhibition on Screen:
Mary Cassatt:
Painting
the Modern Woman

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 8 March 2023
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Mary Cassatt:
Painting
the Modern Woman
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Director – Ali Ray – 2023 – UK – Cert. U – 93m

*****

A look at an often overlooked member of the Impressionists, a US-born, female painter and printmaker who moved from Philadelphia to live in France – out in UK cinemas for one day only on Wednesday, March 8th (International Women’s Day)

I had never heard of Mary Cassatt when I came to this documentary. I’m not really sure why not (apart from the obvious reason, the widespread exclusion of numerous women artists from the annals of art history until recently) and feel indebted to this remarkable study for introducing me to her work. It comes as no surprise that the film was produced by Phil Grabsky for his excellent Exhibition On Screen series about art, although what IS a surprise here is that all the interviewees in this instance are women. Nothing at all wrong with that if they have something of value to say, which they clearly do.

One could argue that the piece has a very strong feminist leaning with its emphasis on women being free to live their lives as they choose. It’s tempting to say that one could forget the gender bias here and simply say that all the interviewees have important insights to share and do a good job.… Read the rest

Tags A Bar At The Folies-Bergère, Ali Ray, America, aquatint, art collection, art exhibition, art gallery, artists, artists’ community, Bronwen Bradshaw, Carravaggio, Cézanne, coiffure, Correggio, Dejeuner Sur L’Herbe, drypoint, Ecouen, Edgar Degas, etching, exhibition, Exhibition On Screen, female experience, feminine, feminism, France, Franco-Prussian War, Gauguin, gender dynamics, Impressionists, Italy, Japan, Japanese print, Japanese woodblock, Manet, mirrors, mother, mother and child, Musée Des Beaux-Arts, museum, Napoleon II, Old Masters, painting, Paris, Parma, Pennsylvania Academy Of Fine Arts, performance, Phil Grabsky, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, priest, print, printmaking, Salon, Salon Des Refusés, seeing and being seen, Seville, space and mirrors, Spain, the Louvre, theatre, toilette, UK, US, Van Gogh, Washington DC National Gallery, wealth, women artists