One Hundred and Fifty Years of Painting

Cut flowers, a photograph, bookshelves, sunlight on a Hopi blanket. Over the course of a wide-ranging conversation between painters Luchita Hurtado (whose mural I Live Here is currently installed on BAMPFA’s Art Wall) and Julie Mehretu, the camera, like a relaxed but not inattentive friend, occasionally glances away from the women to objects on the table where they sit and in the room around them. Exquisitely rendered in 16mm film, the unfussy beauty of the domestic space is the perfect complement to the conversation, in which the artists compare notes about childhood and motherhood, their experience as immigrants, climate change and loss, their shared birthday exactly fifty years apart, and their lifelong practice of painting.

Dean’s One Hundred and Fifty Years of Painting was made to be shown continuously as a loop without a specific beginning or end, and it is normally shown in museum or gallery settings. The artist gave BAMPFA special permission for this theatrical screening.