Average Rating: 7/10
Reviews Counted: 26
Fresh: 24 | Rotten: 2
A breezy and lively modern art documentary, revealing that LA is not a cultural wasteland when it comes to fine art.
Average Rating: 7.3/10
Critic Reviews: 8
Fresh: 8 | Rotten: 0
A breezy and lively modern art documentary, revealing that LA is not a cultural wasteland when it comes to fine art.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.4/5
User Ratings: 371
New York City has long been regarded as the heart of the American art movement, but near the end of the 1940s, as the post-war rise of Abstract Expressionism became the new wave of painting in the United States, a small but determined band of painters, curators, and collectors on the West Coast were determined to make themselves known. Filmmaker Morgan Neville examines the rise of the Los Angeles art scene and how it brought a new and vigorously American slant to contemporary painting in the
Unrated, 1 hr. 26 min.
Mar 7, 2008 Wide
Jul 29, 2008
Arthouse Films
All Critics (26) | Top Critics (8) | Fresh (26) | Rotten (2) | DVD (2)
Diverting.
The Cool School, a breezy, lively documentary about a thin slice of the Los Angeles fine art scene in the 1950s, is easy on the eyes, and the ears too.
Cool School is a must for anyone interested in 20th century American art.
Documentarian Morgan Neville takes an appropriately lively, left-field approach to The Cool School's eye-opening history of the Beat-era Left Coast art scene -- a lesser-known chapter in the story of American modern art.
All told, and well told, this is essential history.
No one emerges very well defined from this historical shuffle, but those who know the artists' works, or names such as Hopps and Blum, but have never heard them speak, will find The Cool School absorbing and informative.
The Cool School is a history of the LA art scene which will be most interesting for those who are involved in it.
Occasionally too reverent, this remains an effective evocation of a vibrant and interesting art scene, not to mention a touching paean to lost youth.
Morgan Neville's 'The Cool School' is a slickly packaged document of the burgeoning modern art scene in LA during the late '50s and early '60s which sadly submerges its fascinating subject matter in technical clutter and contrived set-ups.
Love their art or hate it, this is one of the best documentaries on the art world that I've seen.
An art scene flick which can be readily appreciated for its valuable lesson that one need not be dependent on the New York Establishment or any Ivory Tower critics for validation.
The Cool School is neither as lively nor as complete as it could be, but as an introduction to modern art, it's a fine freshman course.
Breezy doc lives up to its title.
Veteran documentarist Morgan Neville's illustrated history of the painters and sculptors associated with Venice's Ferus Gallery (1957-1967) is at once lively and analytical.
Makes the case that there's more than basket weaving and freeway driving going on in the seedbed of originality we know as the Great Basin of L.A.
Sweeps you off your feet with quick-witted visuals and cleverly used archival footage.
Definitely proves that, contrary to certain opinions, Los Angeles is not a cultural wasteland where fine art is concerned.
Surf's up in Southern California as the modern art world invades Nixonville and Reagan City in the 1950s. A fascinating look at the start of something big: modern art in Los Angeles.
Thoughtful and thought-provoking.
Smart, jazzy and unafraid to deflate egos, Morgan Neville's fast-paced, finely critical study makes for a pungent intro to a movement now esteemed as a key alternative to the New York AbEx stranglehold.
A lot of information, very well done, and made me wish I was not a sparkle in my mother's eye at that time. I think I would have gotten into it more if I was a part of that generation.
October 8, 2008
Besides being graced by the narration of Jeff Bridges...a must for anyone interested in the visual arts, particularly the artists who began to put CA art on the contemporary map...as well as for anyone interested in the times in which they live...not to mention good film-making...
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