Independent.com – by Charles Donelan
Exhibition Shows Influence of Visual Art on Film Genre
From its beginnings, Los Angeles has generated ambivalence. Every booster selling the sea and sun would appear to conjure the shadow of an equally enthusiastic conspiracy theorist peddling some darker version of what makes L.A. tick. The city’s split personality was perhaps most fully elaborated in the films and novels of the genre known as film noir. In this thoughtful and surprising exhibition at Sullivan Goss, a strong case is made for the influence of the visual arts on what previously has been understood as primarily a cinematic and novelistic phenomenon.