My fictional Renaissance ‘masterpiece’ Boy with Apple will be on display for the first time in the UK in a major new London exhibition of the archives of film director Wes Anderson at the Design Museum, London. A commission from Anderson for his Oscar winning movie The Grand Budapest Hotel, the painting has been rather drolly mounted behind bullet proof glass (“Essential protection…” Anderson).
As well as finished props and sets, the exhibition features work-in-progress material and maquettes, and looks at the variety of traditional and hand-made film-making techniques that the director continues to celebrate through his work.
The Museum website states: This landmark exhibition will chart the evolution of Wes Anderson’s films from early experiments in the 1990s to recent productions as well as collaborations with key long-standing creative partners. Over 700 objects will bring together the director’s meticulous craft of film-making through original storyboards, Polaroids, sketches, paintings, handwritten notebooks, puppets, miniature models, and dozens of costumes worn by much-loved characters’
Open now until the 26 July at the Design Museum, Kensington High Street, London W8 6AG.
Elsewhere you can find Boy with Apple, the fictional Renaissance portrait by the equally fictional Johannes van Hoytl the Younger that is the plot driver in The Grand Budapest Hotel. Painted over four months by the British artist Michael Taylor, who discussed with Anderson everything from the boy’s clothes to a piece of paper on the wall behind him, it may be the most meticulously created MacGuffin in cinema history.
THE TIMES *****
