- Artist or Maker
- Catherine Opie
United States, Ohio, Sandusky, born 1961, active Los Angeles - Title
- The Modernist
- Date Made
- 2017
- Medium
- Projected channel HD video with 2 channel stereo sound, 21:44 minutes looped, with architectural plans by architect Michael Maltzan for the Catherine Theater.
- Dimensions
- 154 × 600 × 305 in. (391.16 × 1524 × 774.7 cm)
unspecified: 122 × 456 × 234 in. (309.88 × 1158.24 × 594.36 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2018.169.1-.9
- Collecting Area
- Contemporary Art
- Curatorial 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 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.
