Pierre Bismuth - Following the Right Hand of Louise Brooks in Beauty Prize

Just coming to auction is Pierre Bismuth's "Following the Right Hand of Louise Brooks in Beauty Prize," a 2009 mixed-media piece. The piece, which will be featured in a live auction on September 30,  is permanent marker on Plexiglas with digital print on Dibond and measures 29.5 h × 39.3 w in (75 × 100 cm). The auction estimate is $2,000 - $3,000, with an opening bid of  $1,400. More information about the auction HERE.

Pierre Bismuth (b. 1963) is a French artist and filmmaker based in Brussels. His practice can be placed in the tradition of conceptual art and appropriation art. His work uses a variety of media and materials, including painting, sculpture, collage, video, architecture, performance, music, and film. He is best known for being among the authors of the story for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2005 alongside Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman. Bismuth made his directorial debut with the 2016 feature film Where is Rocky II? Among the other artists he has collaborated with is the late Clash guitarist Joe Strummer. This 2014 article in Document helps explain the artist's approach.

To create this works from the Following the Right Hand series, the artist projected a feature film on a Plexiglas sheet and followed the movement of the lead actresses right hand with a marker from the beginning of the film until the frame that seen behind the drawing appears. The piece is signed and dated to lower left 'Pierre Bismuth 09'. 

Provenance: Team Gallery, New York | Acquired from the previous in 2009, Important New York Collection 

Literature: Pierre Bismuth: Things I Remember I Have Done, But Don't Remember Why I Did Them-Towards a Catalogue Raisonne, Bismuth, Pinto and Schafhausen, pg. 171, no. 1013

A Google image search using the artist's name as keyword turned up a few other similar pieces featuring films stills depicting Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford, Ingrid Bergman, Lauren Bacall, Audrey Hepburn, Sophie Loren and others. I also noticed a variant of the above pictured piece. The variance is apparent when one compares the tip of Louise Brooks' nose.

I also came across another manipulated image of Brooks, this time a still from Pandora's Box. 

If the artist, Pierre Bismuth, reads this blog, the two questions I would like to ask are "Why Louise Brooks?" and "Why her right hand?" He may answer those questions, or at least suggest his strategy, at the very beginning of this unrelated interview.