As an ageing artist, Bill Blaine has come to terms with the fact that he’ll never be the next Picasso. For Blaine, this gradual realisation has been artistically freeing, but, as he discusses in Bill Blaine: A Walk Around the House, it hasn’t made his creative life any less complicated. In the film, the US director Jakub Blank pays a visit to Blaine’s home and studio in Mount Dora, Florida, which is full of his original paintings and photographs. As Blaine offers his unguarded thoughts on a range of topics related to the generative process – including what it takes to be ‘great’, and why he lacks it – Blank intercuts the interview with still images of these pieces, born of decades of work and artistic evolution. The result is a refreshing and disarming portrait, with an artistic resonance of its very own.
Director: Jakub Blank
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Knowledge
An Indigenous myth and a geological survey elicit two ways of knowing one place
4 minutes
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Technology and the self
How the magic of photography brought Victorian England closer to the spirit realm
16 minutes
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Home
An artist endeavours to bring the Moon down to Earth in a ritual of yearning
5 minutes
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Information and communication
An animation built from road signs is a whirlwind study of flash communication
2 minutes
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Art
Creating art that was aware of itself – and the viewer – made Manet the first modernist
15 minutes
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War and peace
A century later, can poetry help us make sense of the First World War’s horrors?
9 minutes
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Life stages
What Michelangelo’s late-in-life works reveal about his genius – and his humanness
13 minutes
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Biography and memoir
Preserving memories of a Japanese internment camp, and the land where it stood
8 minutes
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Making
Trek to a remote Himalayan village where artisans craft teapots fit for kings
11 minutes