{"id":12420,"date":"2022-05-27T15:09:25","date_gmt":"2022-05-27T15:09:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/?p=12420"},"modified":"2022-06-01T16:23:30","modified_gmt":"2022-06-01T16:23:30","slug":"art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/spring-summer-2022\/art\/","title":{"rendered":"ART"},"content":{"rendered":"

Art of the Hollywood Backdrop<\/h3>\n

O<\/span>nce computer-generated technology (CGI) in movie making exploded, film production was changed forever. Early CGI productions like Star Wars (1977), Alien (1979), and Jurrasic Park (1993) likely amazed you while simultaneously changing an industry.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the art of creating enormous painted backdrops for features will not be forgotten. And it\u2019s all on display for you to see. The first museum show dedicated to Hollywood\u2019s painted backdrops, the grandest illusions ever created for the movies, has made its world premiere in South Florida until January 2023 at the Boca Raton Museum of Art.<\/a><\/p>\n

Art of the Hollywood Backdrop: Cinema\u2019s Creative Legacy<\/a> honors the unsung heroes who created these monumental canvases for the camera, going back almost 100 years. These artists were the backbone of the film industry.<\/p>\n

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Pictured above: a film still from The Sound of Music, showing the actual location which was recreated with one of the iconic backdrops that will be seen by the public for the first time in this exhibition, 20th Century Fox (1965). Photo: Courtesy of Boca Raton Museum.<\/p><\/div>\n

The exhibition was originated by the Boca Raton Museum of Art<\/a> and is co-curated by Thomas A. Walsh and Karen L. Maness<\/a>, who played pivotal roles among a group of passionate Hollywood insiders to salvage these American treasures.<\/p>\n

The result in the Museum\u2019s galleries is a magical portal that takes the terms \u201clarge-scale,\u201d \u201cimmersive,\u201d and \u201cvirtual reality\u201d to a whole new level.<\/p>\n

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Warner Brothers scenic artists (ca. 1930). (Left to right) Verne Strang, Bill McConnell, Frankie Cohen, Charley Wallace, Jack Brooks, James McCann, Emmett Alexander (Ed Strang Collection, from the book The Art of the Hollywood Backdrop<\/em>, by Karen L. Maness and Richard Isackes.<\/p><\/div>\n

This exhibition of 22 scenic backdrops, made for the movies between 1938 and 1968, celebrates an art form nearly forgotten.<\/p>\n

This is a well-deserved moment in the spotlight for the dozens of unidentified studio artists. Their uncredited craftsmanship made scenes of Mount Rushmore, Ben-Hur\u2019s Rome, the Von Trapp Family\u2019s Austrian Alps, and Gene Kelly\u2019s Paris street dance possible.<\/p>\n

The show\u2019s immersive components include interactive video reels created in Hollywood specifically for this exhibition, telling the stories behind each backdrop.<\/p>\n

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1946 group photo of MGM group backdrop artists (from the collection of Jean Gorrindo-Gibson).<\/p><\/div>\n

Soundscapes have been engineered to surround visitors in the Museum, including atmospheric sound effects related to the original movies and scenic vistas.<\/p>\n

Irvin Lippman, the Boca Raton Museum of Art executive director, said, \u201cIt is miraculous that these historic monumental paintings were not lost forever, as so many Hollywood treasures have disappeared. The concept for this show had its genesis with a CBS Sunday Morning segment that called attention to the campaign to preserve scenic backdrops that had laid rolled up in the basement of MGM\u2019s studios.\u201d<\/p>\n

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1946 group photo of MGM group backdrop artists (from the collection of Jean Gorrindo-Gibson).<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cLynne Coakley, Karen L. Maness, and Thomas A. Walsh<\/a> have played a significant role in preserving this inventory from Hollywood\u2019s golden age. Their vision and partnership with the Boca Raton Museum of Art made this exhibition possible,\u201d added Lippman.<\/p>\n

Lynne Coakley heads J.C. Backings Corporation, which acquired over two thousand backdrops from MGM storage in the 1970s. In 2012, The Art Directors Guild Archives, then under the direction of Thomas A. Walsh, the Guild\u2019s president, launched the Backdrop Recovery Project, a partnership with J.C. Backings.<\/p>\n

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An American in Paris, MGM (1951). Backdrop: Montmartre, Paris, 20\u2032 x 15\u2032. Photo: Courtesy of J.C. Backings.<\/p><\/div>\n

Their goal was to preserve the backings and make them available for study. One of the recipients of this cache of gigantic paintings was Karen L. Maness, University of Texas at Austin and Associate Professor of Practice.<\/p>\n

She saw the opportunity to use the artifacts as part of a learning laboratory where students could use them for visualization and inspiration to succeed in high-realism scenic painting.<\/p>\n

With Walsh and Maness agreeing to be the co-curators of this first major exhibition of the Art of the Hollywood Backdrop, the Museum project began to take shape.<\/p>\n

They accepted an invitation to visit the Boca Raton Museum of Art in the fall of 2021 by Irvin Lippman, who had seen the television segment on CBS Sunday Morning<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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This scenic backdrop is from the 1959 MGM film North By Northwest. Produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, the film starred Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint.<\/p><\/div>\n

Twenty backdrops, including the famous Mount Rushmore, are being loaned by the Texas Performing Arts Hollywood Backdrop Collection at the University of Texas.<\/p>\n

In addition, a 1952 backdrop for Singin\u2019 in the Rain and the tapestry backdrop for Marie Antoinette (1938) are on loan from the Motion Picture Academy in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

Donald O\u2019Connor danced his brilliant comic performance of Make\u2019 Em Laugh in front of the backdrop from Singin\u2019 in the Rain. The 1938 tapestry backdrop interestingly was reused in the North by Northwest (1959) auction house scene, a relatively common practice in the film and television industry of the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was essential to capture these artists\u2019 stories before they disappeared,\u201d Maness said.<\/p>\n

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Museum visitors can take selfies in front of this original backdrop from Singin\u2019 in the Rain, including a recreation of the sofa and mannequin from the famous scene..<\/p><\/div>\n

Some of these artists came from a family tradition of the craft, with lineages spanning three generations of painters. The craft stayed within the family.<\/p>\n

Most were trained as professional artists, yet they remained uncredited, sometimes because of union agreements. The studios wanted to keep a firm grip on the secret techniques that were handed down from master to apprentice on the backlots.<\/p>\n

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Backdrop created by MGM Scenic Art Studio; Scenic Art Supervisor – George Gibson; Production Designer – Robert Boyle. Karen L. Maness is pictured above, recently working on the backdrop to prepare it for the upcoming exhibition at the Boca Raton Museum of Art. This involved cleaning, sealing, touching up paint, and repairing tears.<\/p><\/div>\n

The physicality of painting across these giant canvases was often overwhelmingly difficult. Some artists even suffered tragic consequences in the early years of this craft before the studios developed more sophisticated working platforms: John Coakley\u2019s father fell to his death from a perilously high scaffold while painting a backdrop.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has become my passion project, to tell their stories. I will be their champion in this lifetime,\u201d Karen L. Maness said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHistorically, as a woman, I would have never been allowed to work alongside them in that era. As a teacher, they have now become my masters. When you choose your mentors as ghosts, they can\u2019t say no,\u201d Maness said.<\/p>\n

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Photo by Jen Reel, University of Texas at Austin, College of Fine Arts.<\/p><\/div>\n

These creations were painted for the camera lens itself, not the human eye. It is a very impressionistic style of painting \u2015 not really photo-realism, but it snaps together as photo-realistic when viewed from a distance.<\/p>\n

Up close, they look totally different. When visitors to the Museum take selfies with their phone cameras, the resulting image will look very different from what they see in person in the gallery.<\/p>\n

This unique concept of \u201cphoto-realism for the camera\u201d was spearheaded by George Gibson, who took scenic art to an entirely new level of artistry. In the heyday of MGM, they had three shifts of scenic artists working day and night, non-stop.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis show is about the joy of re-living something you grew up with that you always thought was real. It\u2019s about getting as close to that magical moment in time as you can. Being in the same space with that giant, familiar scene. It is difficult for people to get their minds around the awesome size of these magical spaces, until they see them in person. People are often shocked and surprised by the scale and visual impact of these massive creations,\u201d Walsh said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are literally some of the largest paintings ever created in the world, similar to cyclorama paintings. Aside from the technicians working in the soundstages, no one else has set eyes upon this collection,\u201d Walsh said. This is the first time the public can see this collection in person,\u201d adds Walsh.<\/p>\n

\u201cCredit went to everyone in these classic films except the scenic artists who made these cinematic moments possible by creating the backdrops,\u201d Irvin Lippman said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe heroic efforts by these preservationists to recover the singular artistic knowledge of these masters is the heartbeat that underlies this exhibition at our Museum. Hollywood\u2019s most closely guarded creative secrets can finally be revealed through this never-before-seen exhibition that we are proud to debut here in South Florida.\u201d<\/p>\n

The show also features an Education Gallery created especially for this exhibition, showcasing historic tools of the trade used by these artists in Hollywood.<\/p>\n

One of the most memorable experiences for visitors to the Museum will be the opportunity to see up close the actual brushstrokes and dynamic hand-painted techniques that these artists used to create the necessary effects they developed for the camera lens.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this form of painting, the deadlines and physicality required speed and confidence. The canvas was attacked with wild abandon, not courted,\u201d Thomas A. Walsh said. \u201cTheir unique industrial techniques permitted them to be Norman Rockwell at one moment, and then Turner, Rembrandt or Vermeer at another.\u201d<\/p>\n

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As artists, they made motion picture artworks \u2012 whether with brush, roller and sponge, spray guns and Hudson tanks, brooms, or just sheer tactile aggression \u2012on a massive Ford\u2018s River Rouge type of industrial-scale and output schedule.<\/p>\n

\u201dBold, efficient brushstrokes pull forms into a loose realism that breathes with the energy of the artists who laid the marks on the canvas,\u201d Karen L. Maness said. \u201cThese monumental witnesses to cinematic history vibrate with impressionistic optical blending techniques, applied with pneumatic guns, to deliver fine points of color that pull together and hold up as realism for the camera\u2019s eye,\u201d Maness said.<\/p>\n

The Museum will present a series of events and educational presentations for the community throughout the exhibition\u2019s run. Learn more about this special programming at Boca Museum<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boca Raton Museum of Art celebrates Hollywood backdrops in new exhibit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12458,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[154,156],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spring-summer-2022","category-spring-summer-2022-columns"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12420"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12784,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12420\/revisions\/12784"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}