Where the Wild Things Are trailer
Director Spike Jonze’s first feature film since Adaptation (2002) looks like a good time!
Small disappointments
After a Variety.com blog reported that artwork from a certain film I’ve been anticipating would be on display in Los Angeles, I was counting my blessings. But “Small Miracles: The Paintings of Adele Lack” was unworthy of my drive to Hollywood’s Montalbán Gallery. I have to pity anyone who bothered paying for parking to see this, an exhibition of miniature “paintings” by a fictional character. Yes, that’s right: a fictional character.
The concept for the show is not so far out when you consider that Ms. Lack belongs to the world of Synecdoche, New York, the directorial debut film of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, who previously scribed such meta-adventures as Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. A promotional tie-in for the whimsical, independent film-going crowd, “Small Miracles” represents a realm of squandered possibility. Having promised to wait to see Synecdoche with an out-of-town friend, I had hoped the art in this show would stand on its own.
It did not.
Upon entering the Montalbán Gallery — which is really a Nike Sportswear store with a second floor that resembles, at present, an elementary school art classroom — I was led upstairs by a young employee who directed me to a black cloth bag filled with cheap magnifying glasses. Classy. I had anticipated the presence of garish, bronze-looking magnifying instruments, such as the ones I had seen in the trailer and promotional images for Synecdoche, New York, but no joy.
I grabbed a clear plastic magnifying glass from the bag and began to inspect the 26 tiny pieces of artwork on the wall before me. Each painting was about one inch square in size — including wooden frame and white matting — and each painting had a title and year noted on a plaque affixed below it. (Intriguingly, these years ranged from 2005 to 2024). As I worked my way from left to right — my eyes straining to make out the salmon pink and sky blue images of buildings, nudes, and chickens — I noticed that some of the paintings with different titles were actually identical, and that one plaque was missing a corresponding painting altogether. How strange, it occurred to me, that the artwork had not been mounted behind glass. At least the exhibit could have been watched over by a docent. As I gestated my growing suspicions about these alleged “oil on panel” paintings, a gallery employee mounted a 27th piece where one had been missing.
These had to be — ugh — printouts. And why not? If the gallery notes didn’t list the real artist (or the real year) there was no reason to believe any of the other information provided.
(In fact, Adele Lack’s paintings are actually micro-scale versions of Alex Kanevsky’s paintings, which can be viewed here without the aid of a magnifying glass.)
What is insulting about this gallery show is not necessarily the way it has lured people to view a smattering of what I have to imagine were bad copies, but the way the gallery and the promotional team for Synecdoche have made no attempt to suspend our willing disbelief. The women and men who go to the Montalbán have taken the first step: They have agreed to see the work of a fictional painter. At the very least, the individuals behind the Montalbán exhibit could have encouraged the extension of this flight of fancy through the installation of more wondrous-looking magnifying equipment and by encasing the works as though they were priceless. After all, if you’re going to do something, do it. Otherwise, I’d rather not waste my time and fuel.
