Documentary Film Series Highlights Famous Public Art

A film highlighting the career of iconoclastic California artist Robert Irwin opens the second season of the Public Art Documentary Film Series.

The free screenings are sponsored by the Palm Desert Art Department and the University of California, Riverside Palm Desert Graduate Center.

“Robert Irwin: The Beauty of Questions,” directed by Leonard Feinstein, won the Grand Prize at the sixth International Biennale of Films on Art presented in Paris in 1998. Irwin spent his life breaking down public perceptions of art and artists, provoking observers of his work to be in ‘the moment of discovery.’  

The film, which covers a five-year period of the artist’s life as he journeys from Paris to New York to L.A., also presents his body of work as a painter and designer of public spaces. He designed and developed The Central Garden at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, which was built in 1997.

The film screens Thursday, Jan. 20 at 6 p.m. and will be followed by a question and answer session with Joan Silver an adjunct professor with the College of the Desert.

The film series continues in February with a screening of “Creative Nature”, the work of glass artist William Morris.  

In March, “Third Ward, TX” will be shown. This film follows a group of African-American artists in Houston who take over a neighborhood of abandoned homes to make an artistic statement.  

In April, the screening season ends with the film “The Trial of Tilted Arc”, chronicling the heated debate surrounding the public installation of Richard Serra’s controversial sculpture in New York City.

The screenings will be held the third Thursday of every month through April at 6 p.m. at UCR Palm Desert, 75-080 Frank Sinatra Drive in Palm Desert.

Film screenings are free, but reservations are required.  To reserve a seat, call 760-837-1664.