Jack Levine: Feast of Pure Reason Backdrop Blur
Jack Levine: Feast of Pure Reason Poster

Jack Levine: Feast of Pure Reason

"This peach of a collaboration between subject and Sutherland displays both their geniuses."

This bold and unconventional film portrait reveals America's foremost Social Realist painter doing what he does best: skewering corrupt politicians and police, raging over social injustices, and satirizing the petty foibles of humankind. Jack Levine got his professional start during the Federal Art Projects of the WPA, and quickly became world famous for his brilliantly painted, brutally ironic vision of America and the world. He is the only American artist who never stopped painting as a Social Realist, even when it went out of vogue in the 1950's and 1960's. "I'm alone at the old stand. . . I feel I still have something to say. . . Let the avant garde go hang-the human condition is what interests me." A self-imposed 'outsider', Levine has deliberately cut himself off from the mainstream: "I'm like the little dog at the circus who runs the wrong way under the hoop."

Top Cast

  • Jack Levine

    Jack Levine

    Himself

Overview

This bold and unconventional film portrait reveals America's foremost Social Realist painter doing what he does best: skewering corrupt politicians and police, raging over social injustices, and satirizing the petty foibles of humankind. Jack Levine got his professional start during the Federal Art Projects of the WPA, and quickly became world famous for his brilliantly painted, brutally ironic vision of America and the world. He is the only American artist who never stopped painting as a Social Realist, even when it went out of vogue in the 1950's and 1960's. "I'm alone at the old stand. . . I feel I still have something to say. . . Let the avant garde go hang-the human condition is what interests me." A self-imposed 'outsider', Levine has deliberately cut himself off from the mainstream: "I'm like the little dog at the circus who runs the wrong way under the hoop."

Rating

9.0 / 10
1 Reviews
0 Popular

Recommendations

Night Will Fall

When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".

Night Will Fall

7.6 2014