Leading up to Oscar Sunday, we’ll be sharing exclusive portraits from the annual Oscars Lunch. Here, Best Supporting Actor nominee Willem Dafoe (“The Florida Project”), Best Actress nominee Sally Hawkins (“The Shape of Water”), and Best Adapted Screenplay nominee Dee Rees (“Mudbound”).
Painting,Film or Photograph, the Extraordinary American Photographer Gregory Crewdson
Gregory Crewdson works within a photographic tradition that combines the documentary style of William Eggleston and Walker Evans with the dream-like vision of filmmakers such as Stephen Spielberg and David Lynch. Crewdson’s method is equally filmic, building elaborate sets to take pictures of extraordinary detail and narrative portent.
When he was ten, Crewdson’s father, a psychoanalyst, took him to see a Diane Arbus exhibition at MoMA, an early aesthetic experience that informed his decision to become a photographer. Work includes the Natural Wonder series, dioramas created by the artist with insects, animals and body parts in small-town settings both mundane and menacing. Recent series include Twilight and Beneath the Roses, everyday scenes with charged, surreal moods that hint at the longings and malaise of suburban America. These pictures are like incomplete sentences, with little reference to prior events or what may follow. The artist has referred the ‘limitations of a photograph in terms of narrative capacity to have an image that is frozen in time, (where) there’s no before or after’ and has turned that restriction into a unique strength.
crssPainting,Film or Photograph, the Extraordinary American Photographer Gregory Crewdson
Gregory Crewdson works within a photographic tradition that combines the documentary style of William Eggleston and Walker Evans with the dream-like vision of filmmakers such as Stephen Spielberg and David Lynch. Crewdson’s method is equally filmic, building elaborate sets to take pictures of extraordinary detail and narrative portent.
When he was ten, Crewdson’s father, a psychoanalyst, took him to see a Diane Arbus exhibition at MoMA, an early aesthetic experience that informed his decision to become a photographer. Work includes the Natural Wonder series, dioramas created by the artist with insects, animals and body parts in small-town settings both mundane and menacing. Recent series include Twilight and Beneath the Roses, everyday scenes with charged, surreal moods that hint at the longings and malaise of suburban America. These pictures are like incomplete sentences, with little reference to prior events or what may follow. The artist has referred the ‘limitations of a photograph in terms of narrative capacity to have an image that is frozen in time, (where) there’s no before or after’ and has turned that restriction into a unique strength.
A native New Yorker, I graduated from Rice University in 2002 with a BA in Art and Art History and a BS in Astrophysics. Afterwards, I moved to Florence, Italy, where I spent four years studying thetechniques of classical drawing and painting. Science taught me how to observe the world, and art has allowed me to express my relationship to it.
Since 2006, I have focused on creating paintings that combine the physical world that people see every day with imagery from mythology and dreams.
My work is not intended to be viewed as fantasy or as allegory, but rather as a blend of every-day experiences and the subconscious.
My paintings are enigmatic, and they create dream-like worlds that invite viewers to form their own interpretations of the imagery presented.
I paint in a highly realistic manner, derived from my studies of 19th-century French Academic painters, and I use this visual language to craft modern narratives. I place my subjects in urban settings: trains, gritty alleyways, and cosmopolitan cityscapes; then introduce a twist to create a mix of rational and irrational elements.
My work is often humorous, and it straddles the divide between the serious and the bizarre. via Saatchi Art
Follow him on Facebook.
crssA native New Yorker, I graduated from Rice University in 2002 with a BA in Art and Art History and a BS in Astrophysics. Afterwards, I moved to Florence, Italy, where I spent four years studying thetechniques of classical drawing and painting. Science taught me how to observe the world, and art has allowed me to express my relationship to it.
Since 2006, I have focused on creating paintings that combine the physical world that people see every day with imagery from mythology and dreams.
My work is not intended to be viewed as fantasy or as allegory, but rather as a blend of every-day experiences and the subconscious.
My paintings are enigmatic, and they create dream-like worlds that invite viewers to form their own interpretations of the imagery presented.
I paint in a highly realistic manner, derived from my studies of 19th-century French Academic painters, and I use this visual language to craft modern narratives. I place my subjects in urban settings: trains, gritty alleyways, and cosmopolitan cityscapes; then introduce a twist to create a mix of rational and irrational elements.
My work is often humorous, and it straddles the divide between the serious and the bizarre. via Saatchi Art
Follow him on Facebook.
