 Portrait of an Image (with Isabelle Huppert) Detail by Roni Horn, 110 C-Print, 13.5x11", 2005 Courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery |
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Huppert, a veteran in French cinema who is perhaps best known for her performance as Erika Kohut , a sexually repressed and self-destructive piano teacher in director Michael Haneke's 2001 psychological drama La Pianiste which earned Huppert a Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival. She has appeared in over 90 films and is still going strong. Her performances have shocked audiences worldwide. Even in New York City where at a showing of the film Ma Mère, she portrayed a mother ensconced in a twisted incestuous relationship with her son; about a quarter of the audience walked out one night at the Quad Cinema on 13th street. I stayed it was a dead-brilliant film. Perhaps better known to audiences in the United States Huppert appeared in director François Ozon's popular campy black comedy musical mystery 8 femmes, 2002. Susan Sontag described Isabelle Huppert as having five essential qualities which underlie her excellence as an actress; they are: Beauty, Talent, Intelligence, Fearlessness and Integrity. Through out her career Huppert has taken on some of the most challenging roles showing the versatility and range in her acting vocabulary. In the exhibition "Woman of Many Faces: Isabelle Huppert" Huppert is captured by many of the preeminent photographers of our time, including Sylvia Plachy, Roni Horn, Nan Goldin, Richard Avedon, Annie Leibovitz, Helmut Newton, Herb Ritts, Philip-Lorca Dicorcia and Hiroshi Sugimoto. The photographs show Huppert over a range of time through her career and life as well as a range of emotions, each capturing a facet of a fascinating woman. One image, by Patrick Faigenbaum captures the actress in a state of sorrow and solitude. Its grey tonality and Huppert's expressive gaze invites the viewer into an intimate familiarity while maintaining a cool emotional distance. Each photograph captures a different aspect of the same subject and qualifies what Sontag saw when she made her observations about Huppert's Beauty, Talent, Intelligence, Fearlessness and Integrity. By Andrew Cornell Robinson Exhibition Information:P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center Also see Roni
Horn Isabelle
Huppert, Film Screening Series |
 Isabelle Huppert by Nan Goldin, 2004, Courtesy of the artist  Isabelle Huppert by Peter Lindbergh, Courtesy of P.S.1 Museum |
