{"id":70677,"date":"2014-05-02T13:01:53","date_gmt":"2014-05-02T17:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=70677"},"modified":"2014-05-02T17:33:24","modified_gmt":"2014-05-02T21:33:24","slug":"the-dark-galleries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/02\/the-dark-galleries\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dark Galleries"},"content":{"rendered":"<script>\/* <![CDATA[ *\/ portfolio_slideshow.slideshows[939] = {\"timeout\":\"4000\",\"autoplay\":\"false\",\"trans\":\"fade\",\"loop\":\"true\",\"speed\":\"400\",\"nowrap\":\"true\"}; \/* ]]> *\/<\/script><div id=\"slideshow-wrapper939\" class=\"slideshow-wrapper clearfix portfolio-slideshow-centered\">\n<div id=\"slideshow-nav939\" class=\"slideshow-nav\">\n\t<a class=\"pause\" style=\"display:none\" href=\"javascript:void(0);\">Pause<\/a>\n\t<a class=\"play\" href=\"javascript:void(0);\">Play<\/a>\n\t<a class=\"restart\" style=\"display:none\" href=\"javascript: 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href=\"javascript:void(0)\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"psp-active\" data-img=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/vi.16-portrait-of-a-murderer-a+1.jpeg\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP\/\/\/yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7\" height=\"450\" width=\"600\" alt=\"Slide 10\"><\/a>\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t<\/div>\n<div class=\"slideshow-meta\">\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<p class=\"slideshow-caption\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\n\t\t\t<div class=\"slideshow-description\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<p class=\"slideshow-caption\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\n\t\t\t<div class=\"slideshow-description\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<p class=\"slideshow-caption\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\n\t\t\t<div class=\"slideshow-description\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<p class=\"slideshow-caption\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\n\t\t\t<div class=\"slideshow-description\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<p class=\"slideshow-caption\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\n\t\t\t<div class=\"slideshow-description\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<p class=\"slideshow-caption\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\n\t\t\t<div class=\"slideshow-description\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<p class=\"slideshow-caption\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\n\t\t\t<div class=\"slideshow-description\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<p class=\"slideshow-caption\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\n\t\t\t<div class=\"slideshow-description\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<p class=\"slideshow-caption\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\n\t\t\t<div class=\"slideshow-description\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<p class=\"slideshow-caption\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\n\t\t\t<div class=\"slideshow-description\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\n<\/div><\/div><!--#slideshow-wrapper-->\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The noir and gothic films of the forties and fifties often feature beguiling portraits, paintings that possess a strange power; they inspire acts of fraud, forgery, theft, murder, and obsession. Think of <em>The Woman in the Window<\/em>, <em>Laura<\/em>, or <em>Vertigo<\/em>: in the first few scenes of each film, a kind of investigator becomes enraptured with a woman who also appears in a painted portrait\u2014and, often, the twist reveals that she\u2019s not who she seems to be. In <em>Laura<\/em>, the portrait itself stands in for the woman who\u2019s supposedly disappeared, as Detective Mark McPherson investigates the crime\u2014until, that is, Laura walks into her old apartment, where the detective is sleeping beneath the portrait that so intrigued him. The portrait serves as a kind of false look, or false double, that only can really be appreciated on film.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The artists who created these portraits\u2014usually just large-scale photographs slapped with varnish\u2014typically went uncredited; today most of the portraits themselves have gone missing. In <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/9491775197\/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=9325&#038;creativeASIN=9491775197&#038;linkCode=as2&#038;tag=theparrev0f-20&#038;linkId=PBYUPHPN7N5Y7MXY\" target=\"_blank\"><i>The Dark Galleries: A Museum Guide to Painted Portraits in Film Noir Gothic Melodramas and Ghost Stories of the 1940s and 1950s<\/i><\/a>, the art and film historians Steven Jacobs and Lisa Colpaert have created a guide to an imaginary gallery of these imaginary paintings, which often took imaginary people as their subjects.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">What interested Jacobs most was not so much the portraits themselves, but the roles they played in their respective films: they reflected how people thought they should behave in front of pieces of art. The plots of these films often came from classic literature or standard noir fare, but it was film techniques that brought the paintings into more direct conversation with the narrative. <!--more--><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Jacobs noticed that cinematographers used editing methods like reverse-shot patterns to make it appear that the portrait was looking back, as in <em>Laura<\/em>\u2014in which a portrait has to stand in for the missing character in McPherson\u2019s mind. They also used eye-line matches between the portraits and characters in tracking shots\u2014or special effects with color and sound. For example, Bernard Herrmann\u2019s well-known refrain \u201cCarlotta\u2019s Portrait\u201d plays as Scottie follows Madeleine into an art gallery, where she stares at a portrait of a woman eerily similar to her\u2014an eeriness conveyed by the camera\u2019s glide between their shared features, to the sound of an unsettling score.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Jacobs has also published <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/9462080968\/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=9325&#038;creativeASIN=9462080968&#038;linkCode=as2&#038;tag=theparrev0f-20&#038;linkId=ZCRZUBGXHVMMI2BQ\" target=\"_blank\">a book of the real and imaginary architecture in Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s films<\/a>. His book with Colpaert, designed to resemble a forties- or fifties\u2013era catalog, offers an encyclopedic collection of portraits, organized by categories like the \u201cGallery of Matriarchs and Female Ancestors\u201d (Lady Caroline de Winter in <em>Rebecca<\/em>), a \u201cGallery of Ghosts\u201d (Carlotta Valdes from <em>Vertigo<\/em>), and the \u201cGallery of Dying Portraits\u201d (Norma Desmond in <em>Sunset Boulevard<\/em>). There\u2019s also an illustrated survey of noir and gothic art, devoted to film stills of the made-up artists, museums, galleries, critics, and connoisseurs from these movies\u2014and shots of \u201cPaintings Concealing Safes\u201d or \u201cModern Art in the Homes of Criminals.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Even though the plots of the films hinge on these artworks, surprisingly little information exists about many of them\u2014which is all the more surprising in light of the fact that some of the artists who painted them were certifiably famous. Of the more than ninety works in the book, only one is credited to an artist: to Ivan Albright, who painted the titular portrait for <em>The Picture of Dorian Gray<\/em>. Man Ray painted the portraits in <em>Pandora and the Flying Dutchman<\/em>, but those works can no longer be found. He was credited only as \u201cstill photographer\u201d for the film. Similarly, Robert Brackman received acknowledgement for his work on <em>Portrait of Jennie<\/em>, but there\u2019s no specific credit for his portrait.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Of the works included in the book, Jacobs estimates that only about five exist today. Two are at museums: Albright\u2019s grotesque <em>Picture of Dorian Grey<\/em> is at the Art Institute of Chicago and Brackman\u2019s <em>Portrait of Jennie<\/em> can be found at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California. The portrait by Albert Ferren for <em>Vertigo<\/em> is owned by one of the restorers of the film, and the Decker paintings from <em>Scarlett Street<\/em> have whereabouts unknown. One wonders what an exhibition of these paintings would look like in real life, but then again, that might spoil the fun: as <em>The Dark Galleries<\/em> suggests, most of the allure in these paintings derives from their roles in imaginary spaces.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/alipechman.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Ali Pechman<\/a> is a writer living in New York City. She has written about art for <\/em>Artforum<em>, <\/em>Artnews<em>, and <\/em>The Awl<em>, among others.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The noir and gothic films of the forties and fifties often feature beguiling portraits, paintings that possess a strange power; they inspire acts of fraud, forgery, theft, murder, and obsession. Think of The Woman in the Window, Laura, or Vertigo: in the first few scenes of each film, a kind of investigator becomes enraptured with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":217,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2384],"tags":[13767,13771,13770,7676,4383,6735,13769,1828,8306,13768,13766],"class_list":["post-70677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-look","tag-art-in-film","tag-fifties","tag-forties","tag-galleries","tag-ghost-stories","tag-gothic","tag-lisa-colpaert","tag-noir","tag-portraits","tag-steven-jacobs","tag-the-dark-galleries"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Dark Galleries<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Ali Pechman on the painted portraits in film noir gothic melodramas and ghost stories of the 1940s and 1950s.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/02\/the-dark-galleries\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Dark Galleries by Alexandra Pechman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"May 2, 2014 \u2013 The noir and gothic films of the forties and fifties often feature beguiling portraits, paintings that possess a strange power; 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