Painterly compositions

[drinkanddestroy]

Nice little quote from here from an article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2000/feb/19/1) in a UK newspaper:

"Frayling believes Leone's visceral grasp of imagery, the way he put together Ennio Morricone's music, sun and shadow, made him an artist of collages - the preferred surrealist technique. (He once saw a surrealist painting by De Chirico that Leone bought the year he made The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: high-contrast light on a colonnade and on a cow-catchered western locomotive - the whole movie on a small canvas.) That made Leone, in Baudrillard's description, the first postmodernist director, "the first to understand the hall of mirrors within the contemporary culture of quotations"."

p. 232 of STDWD:

About the time of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, Leone purchased a small de Chirico canvas: it shows an urban arcade or colonnade in a deserted space, a female figure lying horizontally in the foreground and a 'Western' American locomotive -- with smokestack and cowcatcher -- in the background. The extraordinary use of perspective is there, as is the odd sense of scale: and the painting does look as though the light comes from the sun directly overhead. It could well have been one of the paintings Leone showed Tonino Delli Colli before they started shooting the film. Another De Chirico, showing a piazza with a statue in high-contrast light -- with two arcades, one in the background and one to the side, plus some figures in silhouette -- was purchased later.  


 de Chirico certainly made quite a shitload of paintings during his "metaphysical" period that featured some combination of town squares, high-contrast light, collonades, arcades, locomotives, piazzas, statues, and figures in silhouette. Based on Frayling's above description, does any art lover care to chance a guess on which painting(s) Frayling is referring to?

[drinkanddestroy]

I just vsited Museum of Modern Art, (my first visit ever to an art museum!). A few Leone-related works that I saw:

Firstly, Edward Hopper's "New York Movie" (1939) , one of my favorite paintings (and the main reason I made this visit!) http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=79616 According to Frayling, this painting influenced the scene where Noodles visits the elderly Carol in the rest home


I also saw 3 paintings by Girgio de Chirico.  (Though Frayling didn't mention any of these 3 specifically), as discussed above Leone was very influenced by de Chricio's works.

The 3 I saw were:

Gare Montparnasse (The Melancholy of Departure) (1914) http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=80538

The Seer (1914-1915) http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=80589


The Serenity of the Scholar (1914) http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=79011

[cigar joe]

check out the Guggenheim it has some Hopper too. 

An while your delving into art check out the "Ash Can" school artists. 

[drinkanddestroy]

check out the Guggenheim it has some Hopper too. 

An while your delving into art check out the "Ash Can" school artists. 

Thanks, will do.

I recently read this book about Hopper, the Ash Can artists were mentioned. If I recall correctly, they were colleagues of Hopper's, though Hopper himself was not an Ash Canner, right?

[cigar joe]

not originally of the 8 but later he was included 

[drinkanddestroy]

okay, I created a thread for discussing art that's unrelated to Leone http://www.fistful-of-leone.com/forums/index.php?topic=11436.msg159579#msg159579

[drinkanddestroy]

Okay, looks like I've finally found out which de Chrico painting Leone owned: it was Ariadne (1913), currently in the Metrolopolitan Museum of Art in New York http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1996.403.10

Frayling says so at 25:21 of this vid http://www.watershed.co.uk/dshed/filmic-christopher-frayling-few-guitars-more

Frayling says "Leone referred to GBU as 'de Cjrico rides the range' "  

[Senza]

It would be awesome if Frayling himself organised a documentary where he tours Leone's home.

[cigar joe]

cool

[drinkanddestroy]

It would be awesome if Frayling himself organised a documentary where he tours Leone's home.

Leone is in Heaven. Only God can tour his home.

[Senza]

No doubt about it, he's probably making SW's and other masterpieces up there 

[drinkanddestroy]

Okay, looks like I've finally found out which de Chrico painting Leone owned: it was Ariadne (1913), currently in the Metrolopolitan Museum of Art in New York http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1996.403.10

Frayling says so at 25:21 of this vid http://www.watershed.co.uk/dshed/filmic-christopher-frayling-few-guitars-more

Frayling says "Leone referred to GBU as 'de Cjrico rides the range' "  

I'm not sure what's going on; looks like Frayling is wrong about Leone having owned  the de Chirico painting  Ariadne (1913) : If you look on Ariadne's page on the website of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA), which currently owns the painting http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/210006955 look at the bottom right, click on "Provenance." Leone's name is nowhere to be found; nor does it say "private collection." There are other people listed by name as having owned the painting all the way up to its being bequeathed to MMA in 1995.

So Frayling must be wrong about Leone having owned this painting.


Look again at this video at 25:21 http://www.watershed.co.uk/dshed/filmic-christopher-frayling-few-guitars-more
I am virtually 100% sure that the painting Frayling is showing, which he says Leone owned, is the painting calledAriadne . Frayling never states the name of the painting explicitly; he merely says that the painting features the statue Ariadne (and  de Chirico in fact made many paintings during his Metaphysical period that featured the statue Ariadne). But if you look at the painting Frayling shows on the screen, and then look at the painting called Ariadne (1913) on MMA's website, it is definitely that one.

So, assuming MMA's has the provenance of their painting accurately (and I would surely assume they do), it looks like Frayling is wrong about Leone having owned the painting Ariadne. (Maybe Leone owned a different one of de Chirico's Metaphysical paintings and Frayling confused them; after all, de Chirico made so many similar paintings during that Metaphysical period, featuring some combination of the statue Ariadne, an Italian town square, collonades, arcades, locomotive...)

[Senza]

Frayling can be wrong about certain things, I remember in the GBU commentary where he mentions LVC's finger during the final showdown being something done by the make up artists when in actual fact LVC had an accident where the tip of his right finger was cut off.

[drinkanddestroy]

Frayling can be wrong about certain things, I remember in the GBU commentary where he mentions LVC's finger during the final showdown being something done by the make up artists when in actual fact LVC had an accident where the tip of his right finger was cut off.

there's no doubt about that; when you're talking about stuff that went on 45 years ago, in many cases involving people who are dead, there are bound to be some mistakes.


But I find it strange that there could be a mistake on something as blatant as ownership of a painting that is worth tens of millions of dollars today. How can there be a mistake about that -- and provenance of fine art is so easy to trace??

Again, the only thing I can think of is that Frayling is confusing this with another of de Chrico's Metaphysical paintings, since so many of them were similarly composed.

[Senza]

I type in chrico's name and "ariadne" and there are quite a few of them.