Entertainment
Camille Claudel's hand, not her trauma, is at the center of a magnificent Getty Museum show
A notable similarity marks a subcategory of once woefully under-recognized female artists of the past. Their resolute endurance of trauma is proposed as a primary reason to reassess their work today.
At age 18, Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653) survived the abusive manipulations of rape by the painter Agostino Tassi, a colleague in her studio. Public humiliation followed the private ordeal when she courageously took his assault to trial.
Frida Kahlo (1907-54) endured decades of grueling pain after a bus she was riding in — also at age 18 — smashed into a trolley and forced a long metal rod to rip through her midsection. The vehicular wreck caused internal injuries that would plague her throughout her life.
Then there is Camille Claudel (1864-1943). Her trauma came later, when mental and emotional deterioration led to her confinement in a psychiatric institution, far from the Paris studio of Auguste Rodin, in which her own brilliant work as a sculptor had blossomed. The cause for the internment was said to be paranoid psychosis. She was 48 and remained hospitalized for 30 years, the remainder of her life.
“Camille Claudel,” a fascinating exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum, unwinds the traumatic tale, and in the process refocuses the story in important ways. In the popular telling, Claudel is to France what Gentileschi was to Italy and Kahlo to Mexico: the overlooked artist as victim — a casualty not just once, but twice. The active personal trauma experienced in life was joined by passive negligence after death from the culture at large.
Camille Claudel, “Crouching Woman,” about 1884-85, patinated plaster
(J. Paul Getty Museum)
The welcome revival of interest in the paintings and sculptures of Gentileschi, Kahlo and Claudel since the 1970s and ’80s was led by second-wave feminists, and it represented an effort to transform victimhood into survivorship in the cultural sphere. Which sounds good, but has a catch. The narrative focus tends to linger on the artist, not the art.
Biography, framed by dramatic events, often overwhelms the paintings and sculptures, which are admired for the reductive ways in which they illuminate the artist’s tumultuous life. It can lead to travesty, such as a current Gentileschi exhibition at the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa, Italy, reported to feature what some critics have witheringly described as a “rape room” — a darkened chamber with a bloodied bed in the center, surrounded by projections of Gentileschi’s often gory paintings.
It’s no accident that multiple movies and plays have been produced about Gentileschi, Kahlo and Claudel, with various incidents vividly sensationalized to court pop culture success. A lead actress Oscar nomination, for example, deservedly went to Isabelle Adjani for the 1989 film “Camille Claudel,” and then to Salma Hayek for the 2002 movie “Frida.” The talented actors were given lots of cinematic scenery on which to chew.
In the case of Claudel, a subtle but opportune correction of the narrative arrives in the new museum show.
Curators Anne-Lise Desmas at the Getty and Emerson Bowyer at the Art Institute of Chicago, where the show was seen last fall, make no bones about articulating the sculptor’s very real travails. Outlined in the superb and detailed catalog are the artist’s sometimes difficult personal affair with Rodin, 24 years her senior and a commanding figure in the art life of late 19th century Paris; a rapidly industrializing society in flux, for artists as for others, that nonetheless saw exceptionally high fences erected around a woman’s potential for success as a sculptor; and internal family issues that left Claudel without much immediate personal support when she very much needed it.
“This biographical miasma,” the curators write in the catalog introduction, “has tended to obscure — or even excise — the sculptor’s art and agency.” Those subjects get put in appropriate context by an enlightening exhibition.
Camille Claudel, “The Age of Maturity,” 1890-99, bronze
(Christopher Knight / Los Angeles Times)
Fifty-eight sculptures have been assembled, including works in clay, plaster, marble and bronze. They include the major 1890-99 ensemble “The Age of Maturity,” a large, three-figure allegory of aging that unfolds in multiple bronze sections, in which youth gives way to the inevitability of old age and death. There’s a stunning and compact portrait-bust of Rodin, in which the focused concentration of his life-size head seems to rise up out of a tumult below, represented by his lengthy, swirling, thickly tangled beard. And, for contrast, we get Rodin’s winsome portrait of Claudel, the lowered gaze of her intensely alert but ethereal head emerging from a hefty block of chiseled white marble.
At first, her portrait appears unfinished, but that’s a misperception. Rodin titled his sculpture “Thought.” Perhaps he recognized what emerges from encounters with Claudel’s art. Repeatedly, her figures stoop, crouch, look down or away, resulting in a concentrated bodily sense of intense interiority. Experiential subjectivity forms the essence of her human forms.
In a beautiful installation, many works are smartly shown on a pedestal positioned atop a circular base, which wordlessly leads a viewer all the way around — ideal for an art that needs to be seen in four dimensions of space and time. Revealing labels are sometimes nicely tucked away, as in one on the far side of “The Age of Maturity” informing that the baroque flourish of drapery billowing at the apex is actually a precise facsimile, the original bronze piece currently undergoing conservation back in Paris.
The number of works is relatively modest — understandably so, given the comparative brevity of her career (barely two decades, while Rodin’s was more than twice as long) and her need to devote years as a studio assistant. They range from a remarkably adept terracotta portrait bust of an elderly household member, “Old Helen,” made when Claudel was 21, to a complicated state commission for a mythological subject in bronze, “Wounded Niobid,” dated 1907, near the end of a tough career that had left her nearly destitute.
Claudel was born into a solidly middle-class family in 1864, daughter of a registrar of deeds in a small medieval town 60 miles from Paris. Her mother bore four children, one of whom — Paul — would go on to become a well-known poet and an influential diplomat posted to China, Brazil, the United States and elsewhere. With her father regularly being transferred to various provincial towns, Claudel and her siblings settled in Paris with their mother in 1881. There she began her serious study of sculpture, met Rodin during student critiques and within three years was employed in his studio.
Auguste Rodin gave the title “Thought” to his 1895-1901 marble portrait of Camille Claudel
(Christopher Knight / Los Angeles Times)
Rodin relied on his assistant’s formal skills, especially Claudel’s talents with the difficult task of successfully rendering expressive hands and feet. She’s credited with work on major commissions, including the monumental bronze sculptural group “The Gates of Hell” — the one with the “Thinker” poised on the doorway’s head jamb like an inquisitive crow, puzzling over humanity’s infernal chaos on its way to eternal doom — and, most important, “The Burghers of Calais.” (Check out the animated hands of those sacrificial citizens!) Perhaps the show’s most riveting small work is a little bronze study of a hand, just 10 inches wide, no doubt informed by Claudel’s careful scrutiny of her own. A curved index finger rises up from the rest like a speaker separating from a crowd and preparing to expound.
The exhibition was inspired by Getty and Art Institute of Chicago acquisitions in recent years. (Only 10 Claudel sculptures are in American museums, according to press materials.) Chicago’s is a plaster portrait bust of Camille’s brother Paul, made when he was a teenager and layered in thin glazes of paint to create an illusion of the patina on an ancient Roman bronze head. The Getty’s is one of the show’s knockouts.
A sculpture as fresh and contemporary as anything you’ll find in a gallery crawl today, the dark bronze “Torso of a Crouching Woman,” about three feet tall, is a headless, armless figure surely inspired by a famous Greek example of Aphrodite emerging from the bath, which the artist would have known from prowls in the Louvre Museum. Feet squarely planted, center of gravity low, Claudel’s version rests firmly on the ground while twisting in space. The movement pulls skin taut over the ribs, spine and musculature of her back, enlivening the subject’s tactile sensuality.
With one notable exception, the sliced off body parts allude to the fragmentary quality of the ancient original, which has lost its head and arms from time’s vicissitudes. The exception is the missing left knee. Gone is most of the leg.
Camille Claudel, “Torso of a Crouching Woman,” modeled circa 1884-85, bronze cast about 1913
(The J. Paul Getty Museum)
Cut off just above the ankle all the way to mid-thigh, the omission isn’t found in the classical Greek original or its many Roman copies, where the leg is a prominent protrusion. The vivid erasure also seems different from just being overkill in a nod to history by a young sculptor earnestly figuring things out. (Claudel is thought to have made the sculpture when she was about 20.) Instead, the radical cut reads as a determined compositional move. You imagine the jutting knee was there in her clay model, thought better of, then given a chop.
The result further exposes the torso in its most vulnerable feminine places, while accelerating the figure’s spatial turn. Claudel’s visceral cut invigorates the form — a seeming contradiction for a removal to accomplish, but one that is as modern as will be found in any contemporaneous bather painted in oil or drawn in pastel by Edgar Degas.
It’s also hard to imagine Rodin doing something like that. Claudel surely benefited from her artistic relationship with the revered sculptor. But he benefited from it as well, modeling some of his work on her inventive forms, plus using all those eloquent hands and feet. A good bit of the scholarship around Claudel in the last few decades has been directed at correcting attributions to him for sculptures she made but did not sign.
A modern cliché has it that an artist must suffer to achieve true success in their art, and Claudel, like Gentileschi and Kahlo, surely did. But for female artists throughout history, the marvelous Getty exhibition handily demonstrates that there’s much more to it than only surviving trauma. Everyone needs to labor to get through the day. A powerful artist needs to do more, and Claudel does.
‘Camille Claudel’
Where: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Brentwood
When: Through July 21; closed Mondays
Info: (310) 440-7300, www.getty.edu
(Credits: Far Out / Elevation Pictures)
Maxime Giroux – ‘In Cold Light’
The action is relentless in the complex thriller In Cold Light, a tense combination of crime and fugitive tale and family drama. It is the third feature and first English language film by Maxime Giroux, best known for a very different kind of film, the critically acclaimed 2014 drama Felix & Meira.
The tension and high energy of In Cold Light almost overwhelm the film, but are relieved, barely, by moments of character development and introspection that keep the audience pulling for the restrained and outwardly cold main character.
Speaking at the film’s Canadian premiere, director Giroux admitted he found creating an action film a challenge. Part of his approach was using very minimal dialogue, especially for the central character, letting the action speak for itself, and allowing silence to intensify suspense. Giroux has said he likes the lack of dialogue and speaks highly of the importance of silence in cinema; he prefers using “physical aspects of communication” in his films.
Young Ava Bly (Maika Monroe) is a competent and businesslike drug dealer, working in partnership with her brother Tom (Jesse Irving) and a small team. As the film begins, Ava has just been released from a brief prison sentence. She is hoping to return to her former position, but her brother’s associates consider her a risk due to her recent incarceration. While she works to re-establish herself, a shocking encounter with a corrupt police officer sends Ava’s life into chaos and forces her to go on the run.
Ava’s fugitive experience introduces a new character, to whom Ava turns for help: her father, Will Bly, played by Troy Kotsur, known for his excellent performance in CODA. Their first interaction is handled in a fascinating way, as Will is deaf and the two communicate through sign language. This, of course, provides another form of the silent interaction the director prefers; he explained that much of the father-daughter interaction was rewritten with the actor in mind. Their conflict is nicely expressed through a scene in which their initial conversation is intermittently cut off by a faulty light which goes out periodically, making communication through sign momentarily impossible, nicely expressing the rift between father and daughter.
As Ava continues to evade danger, her escape becomes complicated by new information, placing her in a painful dilemma. We gradually learn more about Ava, her background, and her character through occasional flashbacks and glimpses of her dreams. The plot becomes more complex and more poignant, and gains features of a mystery as well as an action tale, as she is pressed to choose from among equally unacceptable alternatives.
The climax of her efforts to protect both herself and those close to her comes to a head as she meets with the director of a rival drug gang. Veteran actress Helen Hunt is perfect in the minor but significant role of Claire, the rival drug lord, who plays odd mind games with Ava in an intriguing psychological fencing match. It’s an unusual scene, in which Ava’s personality is made clearer, and Claire’s understated dominance and casual speech do not quite conceal the threat she represents.
The frantic pace and emotional turmoil are enhanced by the camera work, which tends to focus tightly on Ava, and by a harsh, minimal musical score that sets the tone without distracting from the action. Giroux chose to shoot the film in Super 60; he describes digital as “too perfect” for the look he was going for, and since “Ava is rough,” the film portrays her better. The director describes the entire movie as “rough,” in fact, and deliberately chose a dark, washed-out look for much of the footage, occasionally using light and colour, in the form of fireworks, lightning, or a colourful carnival, to both relieve and emphasise the darkness.
The dynamic, intense story holds the attention in spite of the lengthy, sometimes repetitive chase scenes and subdued dialogue. Ava’s predicament, and the difficult decisions she is forced to make, are made surprisingly relatable, from the initial disaster that starts the action to the surprising flash-forward that concludes the film, on as high a note as the situation could allow. Fans of action movies will definitely enjoy this one.
The House of Pies, a Los Feliz institution, is bustling on a chilly January morning.
It wouldn’t be shocking if some of the patrons here for breakfast were casually chit-chatting about the cultural behemoth that “KPop Demon Hunters” has become. After all, the 2025 animated saga about three music stars fighting otherworldly foes is now the most-watched movie ever on Netflix; “Golden,” its showstopping track, has since become the first Korean pop song to ever win a Grammy.
But for Danya Jimenez, 29, who sits across from me sipping coffee, the reception to the movie she began writing on back in 2020 isn’t entirely surprising, but certainly delayed.
“When we first started working on it, I was like, ‘People are going to be obsessed with this. It’s going to be the best thing ever,’” she recalls. But as several years passed, and she and her writing partner and best friend Hannah McMechan, 30, moved on to other projects. They weren’t sure if “KPop” would ever see the light of day. Production for animation takes time.
It wasn’t until she learned that her Mexican parents were organically aware of the movie that Jimenez considered it could actually live up to the potential she initially had hoped for.
“Without me saying anything, my parents were like, ‘People are talking about this’ — like my dad’s co-workers or my aunt’s friends — that’s when I started to realize, ‘This might be something big,’” she says.
“But never in my life did I think it would be at this scale.”
“KPop Demon Hunters” is now nominated for two Academy Awards: animated feature and original song. And that’s on top of how ubiquitous the characters — Rumi, Mira and Zoey — already are.
“Everyone sends me photos of knockoff ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ dolls from across the border,” Jimenez says laughing. “My friend got me a shirt from Mexicali with the three girls, but they do not look anything like themselves. She even got my name on it, which was awesome.”
After graduating from Loyola Marymount University in 2018, Jimenez and McMechan quickly found their footing in the industry, as well as representation. But it was their still unproduced screenplay, “Luna Likes,” about a Mexican American teenage girl obsessed with the late chef and author Anthony Bourdain, that tangentially put them on the “KPop” path.
“Luna Likes” earned the pair a spot at the prestigious Sundance Screenwriters Lab, where Nicole Perlman, who co-wrote “Guardians of the Galaxy,” served as one of their advisors. Perlman, credited as a production consultant on “KPop,” thought they would be a good fit.
Jimenez didn’t see the connection between her R-rated comedy about a moody Mexican American teen and a PG animated feature set in the world of K-pop music, but the duo still pitched. Their idea more closely resembled an indie dramedy than an epic action flick.
“If [our version of ‘KPop’] were live-action, it would’ve been a million-dollar budget. It was the smallest movie ever. Our big finale was a pool party,” Jimenez says. “We had all of the girls and the boys with instruments, which obviously is not a thing in K-pop, and everyone was making out.”
Even though their original pitch wouldn’t work for the film, Maggie Kang, the co-director and also a co-writer, believed their voices as two young women who were best friends, roommates and creative collaborators could help the movie’s heroines feel more authentic.
“Maggie had already interviewed all of the more established writers, especially older men,” Jimenez says. “She knows the culture. She knew K-pop, she’s an animator. She just needed the girls’ voices to come through, so I think that’s why we got hired.”
Kang confirms this via email: “It’s always great to collaborate with writers who are the actual age of your characters! Hannah and Danya were exactly that,” she says. “They were very helpful in bringing a fresh, young voice to HUNTR/X.”
Neither Jimenez nor McMechan were K-pop fans at the time. As part of their research, they both started watching K-pop videos, but it was McMechan who got “sucked into the K-hole” first. Still, it didn’t take long until the video for BTS’ “Life Goes On” entranced Jimenez.
“K-pop is a river that you fall into, and it just takes you,” Jimenez says. BTS and Got7 are her favorite groups. For McMechan, the ensemble that captivates her most is Stray Kids.
In writing the trio of demon hunters, the co-writers modeled them after themselves. The characters’ propensity for ugly faces, silliness and a bit of grossness too, stems from the portrayals of girlhood and young womanhood that appeal to them. Jimenez, who says she was an angsty teen, most closely identifies with the rebellious Mira.
“I have a monotone vibe,” says Jimenez. “People always think that I’m a bitch just because I have a resting bitch face,” she says. “But as you can see in the movie, Mira cares so much about having everyone be really close. I feel like that’s how I’m with all my friends.”
Characters with strong personalities that are not simplistically likable feel the truest to Jimenez. In “Luna Likes,” the prickly protagonist is directly inspired by her experiences growing up, as well as the bond she shared with her dad over Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown” show.
“There’s a pressure to show that Mexicans are nice people and we’re hard workers. I was like, ‘Let’s make her kind of bitchy and very flawed,’” Jimenez says about Luna. “She’s a teenager in America and she should be given all the same opportunities — and also the forgiveness for being an ass— and [as] selfish at that age as anybody else.”
Hannah McMechan, left, and Danya Jimenez, co-writers of “KPop Demon Hunters,” met in college.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
Though their upbringings were markedly different, it was their shared comedic sensibilities that connected Jimenez and McMechan when they met in college. The two were close long before deciding to pen stories together. “Having a writing partner is the best. I feel bad for people who don’t have a writing partner, no offense to them,” says Jimenez.
McMechan explains that their writing partnership works because it’s grounded on true friendship. And she believes they would not have gotten this far without each other. While McMechan’s strong suit is looking at the bigger picture, Jimenez finds humor in the details.
“Danya is definitely funnier than me,” says McMechan. “It’s really hard to write comedy in dialogue versus comedy in a situation because if you’re putting the comedy in the dialogue, it can sound so forced and cringey. But she’s really good at making it sound natural but still really funny.”
Though she had been writing stories for herself as a teen, Jimenez didn’t consider it a career path until as a high schooler she watched the romantic comedy “No Strings Attached,” in which Ashton Kutcher plays a production assistant for a TV series.
“He is having a horrible time. But I was so obsessed with movies and TV, and I was like, ‘That looks incredible. I want to be doing what he’s doing,’” she recalls. “And my dad was like, ‘That’s a job.’”
Danya Jimenez grew up in Orange County.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
As an infant, Jimenez spent some time living in Tijuana, where her parents are from, until the family settled back in San Diego, where she was born. And when she was around 5 years old, Jimenez, an only child, and her parents relocated to Orange County. Until then, Jimenez mostly spoke Spanish, which made for a tricky transition when starting school.
“I knew English, but it just wasn’t a habit,” she recalls. “I would raise my hand and accidentally speak Spanish in class. My teachers would be like, ‘We’re worried about her vocabulary.’ That was always an issue, so it’s really funny that I turned out to be a writer.”
As she points out in her professional bio, it was movies and TV that helped with her English vocabulary, especially the Disney sitcom “Lizzie McGuire.”
Jimenez describes growing up in Orange County with few Latinos around outside of her family as an alienating experience. She admits to feeling great shame for some of her behaviors as a teenager afraid of being treated differently and desperate to fit in.
“I would speak Spanish to my mom like in a corner because I didn’t want everyone else to hear me speak Spanish,” Jimenez confesses. “If my mom pulled up to school to drop me off playing Spanish hits from the ‘80s or banda, I was like, ‘Can you turn it down please?’”
Like a lot of young Latinos, she’s now taking steps to connect with her heritage, and, in a way, atone for those moments where she let what others might think rob her of her pride.
“During the pandemic I cornered my grandma to make all of her recipes again so I could write them down,” she recalls. “Now I have them all written down on a website. Or if my mom corrects me for something that I’m saying in Spanish, I now listen.”
At the risk of angering her, Jimenez describes her mother as a “cool mom,” and compares her to Amy Poehler’s character in “Mean Girls.” Raised in a household without financial struggles, Jimenez doesn’t often relate to stories about Latinos in the U.S. that make it to film and TV. Her hope is to expand Latino storytelling beyond the tropes.
“That’s very important to me, to just tell Latino stories or Mexican stories in a way that’s just authentic to me and hopefully someone else is like, ‘Yes, that’s me,’” she says. “A lot of people have certain expectations for Latino stories that I’m not willing to compromise on.”
Though they still would like to make “Luna Likes” if given the chance, for now, Jimenez and McMechan will continue their rapid ascent.
They’re “goin’ up, up, up” because it is their “moment.” They recently wrapped the Apple TV show “Brothers” starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson that filmed in Texas. They are also writing the feature “Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman” for Tim Burton to direct, with Margot Robbie in talks to star.
“I feel like I’ve just been operating in a state of shock for the past, I don’t know how many months since June,” says Jimenez in her signature deadpan affect. “But if I think about it too much, I’d be a nervous wreck.”
PopHorror had the chance to check out Anacoreta (2022) ahead of its streaming release! Does this meta-horror flick provide interesting story telling or is it a confusing mess.
Let’s have a look…
Synopsis
A group of friends heads to a secluded woodland cabin for a weekend getaway, planning to film an experimental horror movie. As the shoot progresses, the project begins to fall apart—until a real and terrifying presence emerges from the darkness.
Anacoreta is directed by Jeremy Schuetze. It was written by Jeremy Schuetze and Matt Visser. The film stars Antonia Thomas (Bagman 2024), Jesse Stanley (Raf 2019), Jeremy Schuetze (Jennifer’s Body 2009), and Matt Visser (A Lot Like Christmas 2021)
My Thoughts
Antonia Thomas delivered an outstanding performance as the female lead in Anacoreta. It was remarkable to watch her convey such a wide range of emotions with authenticity and depth. I was continually impressed by her ability to switch seamlessly between different dialects. I absolutely loved her delivery of the dialogue of telling The Scorpion and the Frog fable.
Anacoreta employs a distinctive, meta-horror style of storytelling. The narrative follows a group of friends creating a “scripted reality” horror film, and as the plot unfolds, the boundary between their staged production and their actual lives becomes increasingly blurred. This was interesting, but at the same time frustrating as a viewer.
Check out Anacoreta on Prime Video and let us know your thoughts!
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