Ed Solomon on Bringing the Art World to Life on Film

​6pm - Ed Solomon on Bringing the Art World to Life on Film

​This is the second talk in WSA’s evening program, part of Canvas on the Silver Screen: A Live Conversation Program, inspired by The Christophers, directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by Ed Solomon.

​Screenwriter Ed Solomon joins artist Ajay Kurian for a discussion at the intersection of cinema and contemporary art.

​Focusing on The Christophers, the conversation traces the personal origins of the project, Solomon’s research process, and the challenge of translating the inner lives of painters to the screen. How do you render artistic process—often solitary, psychological, and abstract—into narrative form?

​Together, Solomon and Kurian explore the tension between authenticity and storytelling, and what it means to depict artists without reducing or romanticizing their work.

​Moderator: Ajay Kurian (artist; founder of New Crits; participant in the 2015 Whitney Biennial)

​About The Christophers
A mainstay of the London art scene since his starry breakout in the creative explosion of the 1960’s, Julian Sklar (Ian McKellen) has drifted into a cluttered, self-imposed seclusion. His two estranged children (James Corden, Jessica Gunning) enlist Lori (Michaela Coel), a young painter and sometime-forger, to pose as a prospective assistant and gain access to a fabled series of unfinished canvases Julian has buried deep in his home studio, in a deceptive bid to secure an inheritance for themselves.