'Movie Art and Artifacts' at Sag Harbor Cinema

Sag Harbor Cinema will present “Movie Art and Artifacts From a Private Collection,” an exhibition curated by Robert M. Rubin that mixes contemporary art incorporating imagery from the movies with artifacts of the movie-making process, such as set designs and props, from “Apocalypse Now,” “The French Connection,” “Psycho,” “Bullitt,” “Double Indemnity,” “The Searchers,” “Belle de Jour” and other classics.

“The icons of the Golden Age of Hollywood have richly circulating afterlives in the realms of contemporary art — painting, photography, even performance. A lot of this art is directly fabricated out of or appropriated from the process material of filmmaking,” explained. Rubin. “This eclectic gathering of art and artifacts demonstrates that, even though the golden age of celluloid cinema is allegedly over, in the end these movies and the screen personalities that animate them are strong enough to survive and even flourish in our digital cultural imaginations.”

“I have been an admirer of Bob Rubin’s collecting philosophy and his passion for cinema,” says the cinema’s artistic director Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan. “It is a vision where film intersects the other arts and permeates the way we interpret the world that I strongly identify with and draws from some of my favorite endeavors of Hollywood history, both sophisticated and irreverent. I am thrilled to exhibit a portion of his collection on the cinema’s third floor.”

Among the actors who grace this show in one form or another are Steve McQueen, Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Catherine Deneuve, Louise Brooks and Faye Dunaway. Among the artists whose work is represented in the show are Richard Prince, Richard Avedon, Martin Kippenberger, Fiona Banner, John Divola, John Bock, Pierre Bismuth and Agnieszka Kurant.

Rubin, a Wainscott resident, will be present at the cinema on Saturday, May 25, for a screening of Richard C. Sarafian’s 1971 road movie “Vanishing Point,” followed by a Q&A and book signing. Rubin’s latest book, “Vanishing Point Forever”(Film Desk Books, 2024), is a deep dive into the film, its pseudonymous screenwriter Guillermo Cain (in reality the celebrated Cuban novelist Guillermo Cabrera Infante) and the long tail of its influence on art, music and cinema (notably Quentin Tarantino’s “Death Proof”).

Rubin’s previous books include “Richard Prince Cowboy” (Prestel, 2020) and “Avedon’s France: Old World, New Look’ (Abrams, 2017). He has also published books and essays on Pierre Chareau, Alexander Calder, Buckminster Fuller, Bob Dylan and other cultural icons.

“Movie Art and Artifacts from a Private Collection” will be on view at the Sag Harbor Cinema until early August. A version of the exhibit appeared at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City in 2015. Sag Harbor Cinema is at 90 Main Street, Sag Harbor. For information, visit sagharborcinema.org.