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My new favorite movieIt's far smarter than many other films about the art world. Kill Room(2023). Movies about the art world are a lot better than this one. Legal Eagles (1986) and improved cinema, which can be thought of as one aspect of influence over artists. There are better films out there, but this one is entertaining and realistic enough in its suggestion of how finance capital in the art world can overlap with the informal economy.
“The Kill Room” begins with hulking Reggie (Joe Manganiello) walking down the street listening to a true-crime podcast. He goes into a liquor store to complain about bad coffee, but the combative owner tells him to leave. Reggie throws him to the ground, and the skid marks under the breathless man's heels fade like a painting painted with the same broad brushstrokes. It's a clumsy start that gives way to an even clumsier opening plot twist, but the second-year directorNicole Paone's “The Kill Room,” a broad, comedic critique of the art world delivered through the lens of a crime thriller, gets even better.
The story gets back on track when Gordon (Samuel L. Jackson), a black Jewish deli and bakery owner with ties to the gang, approaches Patrice (Uma Thurman) with a tempting proposal: Gordon's silent hitman, Reggie, will create a painting for a high price, purely as a way to launder money. All Patrice has to do is place the work in her gallery and ensure it never actually sells. In return, she'll get a nice cut. For a cash-strapped Patrice who's in danger of losing her gallery and all her clients, the deal is too good to turn down. But after her intern publicly shares photos of the painting, it becomes an art world sensation. Soon everyone is clamoring to buy Patrice's work, an artist she calls “the bag man.”
As a critique of the art business, The Kill Room surpasses Velvet Buzzsaw in sharpness. Patrice's gallery is struggling because she believes in quality and ethics over profit. She despises paying for reviews, relying on paid marketing, and putting up with misogynistic male artists. “When you make big sales, you have the power to control the narrative,” she explains to an intern. By contrast, other scenes see rival dealers bragging about selling to arms dealers, the son of an African dictator, and a Russian oligarch. They're ready not just to bend but to ignore the rules, so Patrice now finds herself at a great disadvantage, and her ethics begin to grind.
www.rogerebert.com/…
A little boy named Kurt (Kai Kohls) and his free-spirited aunt Elisabeth (Saskia Rosendahl) stand in a group and listen to the tour guide (Lars Eidinger) point to a Kandinsky painting and sneer with disdain, “Is this supposed to elevate the soul?” This question resonates throughout the film Never Look Away, which spans a period of 40 years and is loosely based on the life of German painter Gerhard Richter, often called the world's greatest living painter. The boy's “engagement” with art is interrupted by a world war, but more importantly, by conflicting political ideologies. www.gerhard-richter.com/…
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Also, you can't park in front of MOCA!!! In one scene, a woman from the museum parks her convertible on Grand Boulevard and gets out! No kidding!
The gallery will be opened by Iwan Wirth and Manuela Wirth, known for their huge contemporary art gallery Hauser & Wirth.ManuelaIt's just around the corner from Wooster Street's SoHo branch of Hauser & Wirth, which is set to open this fall at 130 Prince Street. (The store marks the company's fourth exhibition space in Manhattan; Hauser & Wirth debuted in Zurich in 1992. The restaurant is a standalone entity.)
The first Manuela opened in downtown Los Angeles as an urban farm space with live chickens attached to a gallery. Jonathan Gold reviewed the restaurant in 2017.forLos Angeles Times“You might imagine a restaurant where the food is as conceptual as art, and the boundaries as fragile as an unfinished wall. Within that context, Manuela's well-defined, homey atmosphere…may be avant-garde in its own way.”
The New York menu will be different from the Los Angeles one, in large part because it won't feature live animals. The kitchen, overseen by Sean Froedtert, “serves freshly prepared food, presented simply, cooked purely… in charcoal or wood-fired ovens and with a strict focus on locally sourced ingredients,” a spokesperson said. Gallery visitors were drawn to the chef's Buvette background.
