Journeys in Art History film series opens Jan. 16

The Rehoboth Beach Film Society announced the 2023 Journeys in Art History - Exhibition on Screen film series will open with “Hopper: An American Love Story,” at 2 p.m., Monday, Jan. 16, at the Cinema Art Theater. A second screening is set for 6 p.m., Tuesday, Jan. 17.

EOS is the originator and pioneer of bringing exhibition-based art films to the cinema. Working with top international museums and galleries, EOS creates films that offer a cinematic immersion into both the world’s best-loved and most underrated artists, accompanied by insights from leading historians and arts critics.

The three-part series will continue with brand-new films each month through March. The focus of the Journeys in Art History series is to introduce the works of history’s greatest painters and provide opportunities to view blockbuster art exhibitions from galleries worldwide.

Artist Edward Hopper’s work is among the most recognizable art in America – popular, praised and mysterious. Countless painters, photographers, filmmakers and musicians have been influenced by his art, but who was he, and how did a struggling illustrator create such a bounty of notable work? “Hopper: An American Love Story,” takes a deep dive into his art, life and relationships, from his early career as an illustrator to his wife giving up her own promising art career to be his manager, and navigating his critical and commercial acclaim.

The film combines expert interviews, diaries and a startling visual reflection of life in America to reveal Hopper as a widely influential artist. Rothko, Banksy, Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch, and even The Simpsons have all been inspired by Hopper. The film was released to coincide with Edward Hopper’s New York, a major exhibition that continues through Thursday, March 23, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

“Cézanne: Portraits of Life” will be screened at 2 p.m., Monday, Feb. 13, and 6 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 21.

Exhibition on Screen reprises one of its most successful films, dedicated to the life and work of Paul Cézanne. One cannot appreciate 20th century art without understanding the significance and genius of Cézanne. Narrated by award-winning actor Brian Cox, the film was recorded at the National Portrait Gallery in London, with additional interviews of experts and curators from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and Musée d’Orsay in Paris. With correspondence from the artist himself, the film takes audiences to the places Cézanne lived and worked, and sheds light on one of the least known, yet most important of all the Impressionists.

“Cezanne: Portraits of Life” was released to coincide with a major Cézanne exhibition that continues through Thursday, March 23, at Tate Modern, the crown jewel of modern art galleries, in London.

“Mary Cassatt: Painting the Modern Woman” will be screened at 2 p.m., Monday, March 13, and 6 p.m., Tuesday, March 21. 

Cassatt made a career painting the lives of the women around her. Her radical images showed them as intellectual, feminine and real, which was a major shift in the way women appeared in art during the mid- to late 1800s. Presenting her astonishing prints, pastels and paintings, this film introduces viewers to this often-overlooked Impressionist whose own career was as full of contradiction as the women she painted. Originally from Pennsylvania, Cassatt lived most of her adult life in France. She printed, sketched and painted dozens of images of mothers and children, but she never married or had children herself. She was a classically trained artist but chose to join a group of Parisian radicals – the Impressionists – a movement that transformed the language of art. The world’s most eminent Cassatt curators and scholars help tell this riveting tale of great social and cultural change, a time when women were fighting for their rights and the language of art was completely rewritten. Cassatt and her modern women were at the heart of it all.

All EOS screenings take place at the Cinema Art Theater, 17701 Dartmouth Drive, Dartmouth Plaza, behind the Lewes Wawa.

Admission is $9 for RBFS members, $11.50 for general audience, $10 for seniors 65 and above, and $5 for students.To purchase tickets, go to rehobothfilm.com. If seats are available, admission can be purchased at the theater starting 30 minutes prior to each screening.