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By Karen Hedeen Choudhury for Splash Magazine

 In her new exhibition “Art Meets Hollywood” showing at the Boca Raton Museum of Art through August 21, 2022, Bonnie Lautenberg compares art as it captures the mood of a particular time period. It is a visceral examination of two artistic presentations via a snapshot in time though a creative use of diptychs, an ancient writing tablet form using two flat plates which make a pair often attached by hinge. It is a history of art from 1928 to 2020 seen though film and painting.

Through these 28 diptychs, Ms. Lautenberg compares a film and a painting created within the same year as each depicts the culture, fashion, and emotional tenor of that year. Although it is just the moment in time that they share, the viewer can see the influence on both the filmmaker and the painter. Three examples:

1957 – Funny Face/Clyfford Still

The bold red Givenchy dress worn by Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face and the large bold color of Clifford Still’s painting PH971. (1957) Clyfford Still was considered a pioneer of Abstract Expressionism that refers to an American art movement after World War II that became prominent in the 1950’s. An immersive form of painting, Clyfford Still’s PH971 gives the viewer a large dose of rich color as glamorous as Audrey Hepburn’s spirited walk down the stairs in the Louvre Museum.

1938 - Jezebel/Henri Matisse, Lady in Blue

A dramatic lace neckline worn by Bette Davis in the movie Jezebel juxtaposed with the regal lace detail on the robe worn in the painting by expressionist French modern artist Henri Matisse titled Lady in Blue (1938). A contrast of culture showing a Bette Davis’s determined beauty versus an elegant lady lost in thought.

1928 - The Mysterious Lady/Rene Magritte, The Lovers

A smoldering look by Greta Garbo in The Mysterious Lady and the dramatically covered faces in the painting by Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte titled The Lovers giving the impression of passion and the irresistible attraction of the unknowable. (1928) Ms. Lautenberg’s creative journey and excitement in finding the right pairings that is Art Meets Hollywood – Artistica! is captured by the opening night video in her conversations with Executive Director of the Boca Raton Museum of Art Irvin Lippman, wife of the late Gene Kelly and creative Director of the Gene Kelly Legacy Project in Los Angeles Patricia Ward Kelly, and the Assistant Curator of the Museum Kelli Bodle produced by News Travels Fast: Jose Lima & Bill Spring. The video also showcases several of the diptychs and the synergy between the film still and the painting. (“Art Meets Hollywood” is showing at the Boca Raton Museum of Art through August 21, 2022.

About Bonnie Lautenberg:

Bonnie Lautenberg is an artist, photographer and writer. Her work was recently shown at the Jean Albano Gallery in Chicago, and at David Benrimon Fine Art in New York, in the show Rethinking America alongside works by Warhol, Lichtenstein, Longo, Kass, and Ed Ruscha. To view her artworks and photography, visit BonnieLautenberg.com featuring images she has taken in Israel, Antarctica, Cuba, and around the world for the past 25 years.

She is the widow of the late Senator Frank Lautenberg, one of Washington DCs longest-serving Senators. He served in the U.S. Senate from 1982 to 2001, and then again from 2003 until his death in 2013.

She has been described as “having enough Washington insider stories to fill a book.”(Lautenberg is working on her new book to be released by Rutgers University Press next year, with her co-writer Dick Olin, about her 25 years of political photography).

Lautenberg is co-producing a new Broadway musical about the life of Andy Warhol with her current partner Steve Leber. The show is in development and is slated to be directed by Sir Trevor Nunn with book by Rupert Holmes. The new Broadway show has been approved by the Warhol Foundation. Her partner Steve Leber is a well-known entertainment agent who has worked with some of the biggest acts of the last half-century, including the Rolling Stones, Diana Ross, Aerosmith, Simon and Garfunkel, the Jackson Five, AC/DC, and Joan Jett, among others.