📺 watched: mary heilmann: waves, roads and hallucinations (2023)

🎬 Mary Heilmann: Waves, Roads and Hallucinations: Directed by Matt Creed. A look at the life and influential work of pioneering abstract painter Mary Heilmann, who emerged from the minimalist and Beat Generation scenes in California. 🔗

I’d never heard of Heilmann before and her work doesn’t look familiar to me, but I still enjoyed this documentary because she’s such an interesting person.

It’s mostly direct interviews with her, with some tours of her studio and an exhibit she was doing at the time. They did a good job of going over her work from the 1960s onward, and sprinkling in bits about her life. She’s not afraid to say personal/emotional stuff and it doesn’t feel trite.

Early on she talked about how, when you think about being an artist, you never think of the business side of it. And she said nowadays art is so commodified, if you do it professionally you basically HAVE to sell out to actually make any money. People talk more about what a piece is worth than anything else, and art collectors are thinking of investments rather than pure artistic merit.

I also liked how she said that she did art to have an identity– refreshing!

A final good thing she says is: you have to find the good things about the new art world to be satisfied with your place in it. Smart!

💟 Her website / Public collections list (Wikipedia)