Text by Stéphane Bouquet, Benjamin Thorel, Bertrand Schefer, Stefano Boni. Interview by Matthieu Orléans.
From Drugstore Cowboy to Sea of Trees, Van Sant is both indie auteur and Hollywood subversive
Gus Van Sant: Icons offers insight into the world of filmmaker Gus Van Sant, published on the occasion of a major exhibition at the Cinémathèque française in Paris. This comprehensive monograph surveys the full range of Van Sant’s artistry from photography and painting to music, filtered through the perspective of his films. The exhibition and catalogue are a thoroughly original take on a distinctive filmmaker, bringing together all facets of his work for the first time and offering a fresh vision of his iconic filmmaking.
The heart of Gus Van Sant: Icons is a previously unpublished interview with Van Sant conducted in Portland in June 2015 by Matthieu Orléans, the exhibition’s curator. In a wide-ranging conversation, the two men discuss the whole scope of Van Sant’s work and inspirations. Van Sant connects himself to a lineage of other artists, citing William Burroughs, William Eggleston, Harmony Korine and Ed Ruscha as influences. The filmmaker offers firsthand anecdotes and in-depth appraisals of the production processes of each of his movies, from the experimental shorts of the 1970s to his most recent film, Sea of Trees, presented at the Cannes Festival in May 2015.
American filmmaker, photographer and visual artist Gus Van Sant (born 1952) has been lauded for his experimental, independent projects and mainstream productions alike--from the acclaimed Drugstore Cowboy (1989) and My Own Private Idaho (1991) to Oscar-winning films such as Good Will Hunting (1997) and Milk (2008).
Featured image is reproduced from Gus Van Sant: Icons.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Artnet
Eileen Kinsella
The book is a gold mine of images, artwork, essays, portraits, sketches, interviews, and first-person accounts, that offer insight into the inner workings of the iconic American filmmaker.
Elle Magazine
Coffee-table tome Gus Van Sant: Icons surveys the Oscar nominated filmmaker’s wide body of work, from photography (of, say, his To Die For leading lady Nicole Kidman) to watercolor and charcoal portraits.
Another Magazine
Presents a welcome opportunity to step inside Van Sant's mind courtesy of expansive interviews, influential artworks, visually arresting moodboards, diagrams plotting out scenes, on-set photographs, and perhaps best of all, the many Polaroids the director took early in his career to document the stars who passed through his studio, which acted as a key casting tool in the days before digital photography.
OUT Magazine
Julien Sauvalle
Van Sant never shied away from queering the moviegoing experience. Here, portraits of his muses past and present, including Matt Dillon, Keanu Reeves, and the late River Phoenix, and rare behind-the-scenes shots shed new light on the filmmaker’s career
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This 1991 photograph of River Phoenix is part of a series by Bruce Weber, shot to promote Gus Van Sant's haunting early masterpiece, My Own Private Idaho. Published that year in Interview magazine, the series is here reproduced from Gus Van Sant: Icons, Actes Sud's beautifully produced new monograph presenting Van Sant's photography, painting and music, filtered through the perspective of his films. Van Sant seeks to dissolve or infuse his world, Fréderic Bonaud of La Cinémathèque Française writes, "depending on his inclinations, experiences and opportunities. From this point of view, he adopts, with evident pleasure, all the casts-offs of the postmodern author, alternating between radical affirmation and deliberate—and feigned, of course—effacement." continue to blog
"I think I've always adopted different visions and made a collage out of them," Gus Van Sant is quoted in Gus Van Sant: Icons, released this week from Actes Sud. "Because I'll see something and be influenced by it really quickly, as opposed to not being influenced by anything and having my own direct strong vision. I think I have a soup of different influences all the time. And it just keeps changing… I think I eventually arrived at this feeling that the language of cinema had been hijacked by an industry that needed to use it for its own ends, not necessarily for experimentation, but for its own industrial ends." Featured image is Michael Pitt as Blake in Last Days, 2005. continue to blog
Join us Wednesday, May 11 through Friday, May 13 in Booth #2458 at the McCormick Center, Chicago. Come preview new titles on Paris’s famed bookstore Shakespeare & Co., Neverbuilt Architecture of New York City, Yayoi Kusama’s take on The Little Mermaid, Muhammad Ali training in 1974, Pablo Picasso's portraits, Gus Van Sant's films, Dennis Hopper’s Polaroids of Los Angeles and more. continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 8 x 12 in. / 256 pgs / 200 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $45.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $60 GBP £39.50 ISBN: 9782330060763 PUBLISHER: Actes Sud/Cinémathèque Française AVAILABLE: 6/28/2016 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: WORLD excl UK FR BE CH
Published by Actes Sud/Cinémathèque Française. Text by Stéphane Bouquet, Benjamin Thorel, Bertrand Schefer, Stefano Boni. Interview by Matthieu Orléans.
From Drugstore Cowboy to Sea of Trees, Van Sant is both indie auteur and Hollywood subversive
Gus Van Sant: Icons offers insight into the world of filmmaker Gus Van Sant, published on the occasion of a major exhibition at the Cinémathèque française in Paris. This comprehensive monograph surveys the full range of Van Sant’s artistry from photography and painting to music, filtered through the perspective of his films. The exhibition and catalogue are a thoroughly original take on a distinctive filmmaker, bringing together all facets of his work for the first time and offering a fresh vision of his iconic filmmaking.
The heart of Gus Van Sant: Icons is a previously unpublished interview with Van Sant conducted in Portland in June 2015 by Matthieu Orléans, the exhibition’s curator. In a wide-ranging conversation, the two men discuss the whole scope of Van Sant’s work and inspirations. Van Sant connects himself to a lineage of other artists, citing William Burroughs, William Eggleston, Harmony Korine and Ed Ruscha as influences. The filmmaker offers firsthand anecdotes and in-depth appraisals of the production processes of each of his movies, from the experimental shorts of the 1970s to his most recent film, Sea of Trees, presented at the Cannes Festival in May 2015.
American filmmaker, photographer and visual artist Gus Van Sant (born 1952) has been lauded for his experimental, independent projects and mainstream productions alike--from the acclaimed Drugstore Cowboy (1989) and My Own Private Idaho (1991) to Oscar-winning films such as Good Will Hunting (1997) and Milk (2008).
