Traces of the Newport Beach Film Festival are ever-present throughout the year with Cinema Orange, NBFF's collaborative programming series with the Orange County Museum of Art. Cinema Orange celebrates ten years of serving culturally enlightening films to the public, showcased at OCMA's tiny but aptly decorative screening space. 2014's Cinema Orange summer season kicked off earlier in May at the end of NBFF with Impossible Light, and now makes a return with a film about minimalist and conceptual artist Sol LeWitt.
Sol LeWitt achieves what so few writers and journalists have been able to in the over fifty-year span of his career: get LeWitt to discuss his work. Notoriously shy and introverted, yet brilliantly innovative in his construction of radical three-dimensional structures, abstract paintings and drawings and numerous wall drawings all over the world, LeWitt's subtle and restrained creations have garnered him the distinction of being one of the founders of minimalist art.
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I can't remember the last time I studied the work of LeWitt, but like most art docs, this one partly takes a glimpse at the artist's ticks while chronicling a newer project; directed by Chris Teerink, this 2013 doc follows the installation of a 2011 exhibition in the Netherlands whilst recordings of past interviews with LeWitt become part of this overall study of this master's work. As restrained and structured as they are, LeWitt's work is also boldly wild in scope; wall paintings take up whole rooms, and are done with outlandish shapes, patterns and colors, meanwhile his sculptures, or 'structures' as he preferred to call them, were cube-like spectacles that would lay the foundation for his future architecture work. If anyone called to mind the term “controlled chaos” it would be to describe LeWitt's art.
While art nerds can revel in checking out the film and mingling with museum docents, don't forget Soho Tacos will be parked outside right before the screening (a favorite here at the Weekly offices, so I highly recommend arriving early for that). In the meantime, check out this suitably quiet and minimal trailer for the film, and at the same time marvel at the grandeur of his work. Find all the deets at this link, and see you there!
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Aimee Murillo is calendar editor and frequently covers film and previously contributed to the OCW’s long-running fashion column, Trendzilla. Don’t ask her what her favorite movie is unless you want to hear her lengthy defense of Showgirls.