The Modernist

My gallery Comment Tag Share
View comments
No comments have been posted yet.
Add a comment
Please log in to add comments.
Enter your LACMA Collections username.
Enter the password that accompanies your username.
New to our collections website? Sign up to create an account and start saving your favorites. Please note that this account is not the same as the MyLACMA account you may have for ticketing and membership transactions.
Current tags
This item has not been tagged yet.
Please log in to add tags.
Enter your LACMA Collections username.
Enter the password that accompanies your username.
New to our collections website? Sign up to create an account and start saving your favorites. Please note that this account is not the same as the MyLACMA account you may have for ticketing and membership transactions.
* Nearly 20,000 images of artworks the museum believes to be in the public domain are available to download on this site. Other images may be protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights. By using any of these images you agree to LACMA's Terms of Use.

The Modernist

Edition: Edition of 1, 1AP

2017
Installation Art
Projected channel HD video with 2 channel stereo sound, 21:44 minutes looped, with architectural plans by architect Michael Maltzan for the Catherine Theater.
154 × 600 × 305 in. (391.16 × 1524 × 774.7 cm) unspecified: 122 × 456 × 234 in. (309.88 × 1158.24 × 594.36 cm)
Purchased with funds provided by Steve Tisch (M.2018.169.1-.9)
Contemporary Art
Not currently on public view

Curator Notes

The Modernist—photographer Catherine Opie’s first film—presents a dystopian view of Los Angeles, a city that has figured prominently in Opie’s work over the years....
The Modernist—photographer Catherine Opie’s first film—presents a dystopian view of Los Angeles, a city that has figured prominently in Opie’s work over the years. The 22-minute, black-and-white film addresses the community’s fascination with mid-century architecture and design. Opie created the film in conversation with Chris Marker’s radical and iconic 1962 film, La Jetée, which utilizes still photography to tell a story of longing, time travel, and the terror of nuclear apocalypse. The Modernist continues this dialogue, employing similar formal and narrative structures to a different end. Focusing on contemporary issues like natural disasters, the breakdown of the American political system, global tragedies, and the Los Angeles housing crisis, the film stars Stosh—a.k.a. Pig Pen, a close friend of Opie’s who has appeared in many of her photographs—as a struggling artist who is obsessed with landmark mid-century modern architecture. Stosh clips newspaper articles about California fires and collages them with photographs of famous homes. Eventually he takes the next step, dousing two houses by John Lautner and one by A. Quincy Jones with lighter fluid and striking a match.The film is silent except for one brief moment when the arsonist lights a match. The sound—a sharp hissing and spitting as the flame appears—is startling.

Composed of over 800 still black and white images, the film unfolds with swift pacing. Each still captures the subject and his world from multiple angles and vantage points, creating a lyrical cinematic effect. Yet the film’s dreamlike quality forces the viewer to question whether what transpires is an act of destruction or a dream.
More...