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Butler to Screen Whistler Documentary Sunday
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- The Butler Institute of American Art and Western Reserve PBS will present a preview of the documentary, “James McNeill Whistler and the Case for Beauty,” at 2 p.m. Sunday in the Beecher Center Auditorium of The Butler, Lou Zona announces.
Zona, executive director of The Butler, will offer a tour of Whistler’s works in his museum before the documentary is shown.
The film, produced for PBS, examines the life of Whistler, a dandy and radical artistic visionary, Zona says. Whistler (1834-1903) introduced ideas and forms that were avant-garde in their time and paved the way for today’s notion of modern art.
Two winners of the Academy Awards, Kevin Kline and Anjelica Huston, provide voices in the film, Kline as Whistler and Huston as narrator.
“The Butler welcomes this opportunity to highlight the enormous art world contributions by James McNeill Whistler,” Zona said. “One of the most popular of the legendary painters of the late 19th century, he created works that are unparalleled in American art history.”
The film includes nearly 200 etchings, paintings and historical photographs of Whistler and offers insights into the artist’s flamboyant personality.
Re-enactments depict scenes from Whistler’s life and how he created “Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1,” better known as “Whistler’s Mother,” and “The White Girl,” “The Balcony” and “The Peacock Room,” a masterpiece of decorative arts. Digital animations offer a 3-D journey through Whistler’s etchings of the French countryside and capture how he revised his etchings in Venice.
More than 100 museums and galleries in 35 states have Whistler works in their collections.
Pictured: A painting by J.M. Whistler from the Butler’s collection. It is a self-portrait of the artist painting on the Thames in London.
SOURCE: Butler Institute of American Art.
Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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