Four new feature-length films in the Exhibition on Screen series examine the lives, times, passions, practices, and creations of some of the best-known and most influential artists in the Western canon. The current season offerings examine the Renaissance masters Hieronymus Bosch and Michelangelo and modern luminaries Claude Monet and the American Impressionists. Presented in select U.S. theaters through June 2017, the films enable movie audiences to take dramatic virtual tours of blockbuster exhibitions—including the historic Bosch presentation in The Netherlands earlier this year— and major international collections, and reveal the artists’ life stories. The series is enriched by interviews with art-world experts, unprecedented behind-the-scenes access, and compelling biographical details about the artists.
The fourth season of EXHIBITION ON SCREEN comprises:
• “The Curious World of Hieronymus Bosch” now in theaters, directed by David Bickerstaff
• “I, Claude Monet” in theaters from February 21, 2017, directed by Phil Grabsky
• “The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism” in theaters from March 21, 2017, directed by Phil Grabsky
• “Michelangelo: Love and Death” in theaters from June 13, 2017, directed by David Bickerstaff
These high-definition exhibitions on screen are being presented in select cinemas around the country through Seventh Art Productions. For a complete list of theater locations, visit the EXHIBITION ON SCREEN website (theaters and participants are subject to change). Tickets are available online here and at participating theater box offices.
Phil Grabsky, Executive Producer and Creative Director of Seventh Art Productions said, “We are delighted to present four new immersive documentary films that virtually place viewers inside blockbuster exhibitions and eminent museums around the globe. In addition to relaying fascinating stories about the artists’ lives, the films reveal the rarely seen process of conserving and displaying treasured artworks. This new season leads off with the wonderful Renaissance master Bosch whose brimming canvases have enchanted and mystified viewers for centuries. The exhibition on which the film is based was truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience that will never be replicated.”
“The Curious World of Hieronymus Bosch” is based on the critically acclaimed exhibition Jheronimus Bosch - Visions of Genius that was on view at Het Noordbrabants Museum in the Netherlands in spring 2016. Organized on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the artist’s death, the exhibition brought an unprecedented grouping of 20 paintings and 19 drawings of Bosch’s 44 surviving paintings and drawings together for the first time to his home town of Den Bosch. The exhibition attracted almost half a million art-lovers from all over the world. The Guardian called it one of the most important exhibitions of the century.
The film allows the audience to see in detail Bosch’s extraordinary visions of saints and sinners, monstrous demons, and half-animal half-human creatures interspersed with human figures. With his unconventional and timeless creations depicting bizarre fantasies and elements of the grotesque, Surrealists considered Bosch a forerunner.
With advance filming, the documentary also offers close-up views of several of Bosch’s works that were not allowed to travel, including the spectacular Garden of Earthly Delights in the Prado’s collection in Madrid. Also chronicled is the story behind how the exhibition reprised the original form of Bosch’s famous altarpieces, long separated and divided between several museums, and new discoveries made by the Bosch Research and Conservation Project during preparations for the exhibition.
Contributors include filmmaker and artist Peter Greenway, The Times’ chief art critic Rachel Campbell-Johnston, and Charles de Mooji, director of the Het Noordbrabants Museum.
Filmed on location in Paris, London, and Normandy, “I, Claude Monet” is a cinematic engagement with the artist—considered a father of French Impressionism—who created some of the most well-known scenes in Western art. Using over 2,500 letters exclusively for the narrative, the biographic documentary reveals new insight into the man who is among the most influential painters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Despite a successful and prolific career, Monet’s letters reveal that he suffered from depression, loneliness, and thoughts of suicide. It was during his time at Giverny, where he created his celebrated garden and painted the iconic water lilies series, that his humor, artistic insights, and joie de vivre are expressed.
“The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism” is based on the acclaimed exhibition The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism and the Garden Movement organized by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and presented at the Florence Griswold Museum, in Connecticut, its final venue in 2016.
The Artist's Garden exhibition told the story of American Impressionist artists and the growing popularity of gardening as a middle-class leisure pursuit at the turn of the 20th century through paintings, sculpture, books, and stained glass. Among the artists whose works were included are: Cecilia Beaux, William Merritt Chase, Charles C. Curran, Maria Oakey Dewing, Frederick Carl Frieseke, Childe Hassam, Violet Oakley, Jane Peterson, Jessie Willcox Smith, and John H. Twachtman. Filmed in studios, gardens, and museums throughout the Eastern United States, the United Kingdom, and France, the film is designed as a feast for the eyes.
“Michelangelo: Love and Death” presents a comprehensive examination of the man—an undisputed genius of the Renaissance—who created some of the most widely recognized and admired icons of Western civilization including the David and the Sistine Chapel. Its release coincides with the exhibition at the National Gallery of London, Michelangelo and Sebastiano (March 15‒June 25, 2017).
Michelangelo’s extraordinarily broad and prolific artistic practice included painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, and poetry and each is examined. The film chronicles the artist’s turbulent times and relationships with contemporaries like Leonardo da Vinci and his patron Lorenzo de Medici. It explores how his keen powers of observation, psychological insights, ambition, and personal intensity informed his extraordinary body of work.
