Checking in on James Franco’s artistic efforts, the actor/artist/curator/writer/human-meta has just premiered his exhibit Rebel at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, featuring the work of Ed Ruscha, Terry Richardson, Paul McCarthy, Damon McCarthy, Harmony Korine, Aaron Young, Douglas Gordan, Galen Pehrson, Ed Ruscha and, of course, James Franco. The show interprets Nicolas Ray’s 1955 classic Rebel Without a Cause — one of Franco’s very well known obsessions — through sculpture, short film, and mixed media. Hosted at a pop-up annex location inside a 20,000 furniture exhibition space on Highland Avenue, it clusters in and around Paul McCarthy and his son Damon McCarthy’s recreation of Bungalow 2 at the Chateau Marmont, where Ray wrote and rehearsed Rebel Without a Cause with James Dean and Natalie Wood. One disturbed visitor described the experience as being “stranded in the psychotic maze of a serial murderer’s madhouse — as the environment incorporated circus tent colors, street graffiti, and disturbing raw sexual and murderous noises.” Here are a few press images of Bungalow 2’s contents. You’ll have to imagine the “noises.”
Some Rebel Without a Cause reinterpretations are more or less direct, like the Griffith Observatory knife fight via filmmaker provocateur Harmony Korine — a six-minute video set in a downtown parking garage as machete-swinging “real girl gangs” on BMX bikes battle it out with Franco, who also wields a severed prosthetic James Dean head. There are other, thematic connections — to American car culture (and an ode to Dean’s death in a Porsche crash from Aaron Young), to father and son dynamics (in madly scrawled drawings by Paul McCarthy), to the notion of idolatry (in Franco’s own short, Brad Renfro Forever). See the Franco-curated love letter to James Dean’s most epic role in the slideshow. Are you feeling it?
James Franco, still from Age 13, 2011. 30 minutes. Super-8 film transferred to digital with sound. Courtesy of the artist
Harmony Korine, still from Caput, 2011. Featuring James Franco and Eddie Peel. Scored by Ho Ho Click and IO Echo. 6 minutes, digital video with sound. Photo courtesy of the artist
Harmony Korine, still from Caput, 2011. Featuring James Franco and Eddie Peel. Scored by Ho Ho Click and IO Echo. 6 minutes, digital video with sound. Photo courtesy of the artist
Douglas Gordon, Self Portrait of You + Me and Me + You + You + Me + Me + You (02), 2011. 45.25 x 40 x 2 inches, three individually framed images and one framed mirror. Prints and burned print. Smoke and Mirror © Studio lost but found / Katharina Kiebacher
James Franco, still from Brad Renfro Forever, 2011. Featuring James Franco, Scott Haze, Mark Mahoney, and Jim Parrack. 26 minutes, projection with sound. Photo courtesy of the artist
James Franco, still from Death of Natalie Wood, 2012. Various lengths, four-channel film with isolated sound. Courtesy of the artist
Aaron Young, still from Grapevine, 2011. 1 minute or 10 seconds. Phantom video. Courtesy of the artist & Bortolami Gallery. Photo courtesy of the artist
Aaron Young, still from Grapevine, 2011. 1 minute or 10 seconds, phantom video. Courtesy of the artist & Bortolami Gallery. Photo courtesy of the artist
Terry Richardson, James Franco in Drag #2, 2011. 40 X 26 inches. C-Print. Courtesy of the artist and OHWOW Gallery
Terry Richardson, James Franco in Drag #1, 2011. 40 X 26 inches. C-Print. Courtesy of the artist and OHWOW Gallery
James Franco, still from The Blind Run, 2011. 30 minutes, projection with sound. Photo by Doug Chamberlain
Paul McCarthy, Rebel Without a Cause Drawings, 2011. Marker on paper 14 x 17 inches each. Courtesy of Paul McCarthy and Hauser & Wirth. Drawings photographed by Landon Wiggs. Photography by Joshua White
Paul McCarthy, Rebel Without a Cause Drawings, 2011 Marker on paper 14 x 17 inches each, Courtesy of Paul McCarthy and Hauser & Wirth, Drawings photographed by Landon Wiggs. Photography by Joshua White
Aaron Young, still from Life’s a Drag, 2011. 6 minutes, digital video. Courtesy of the artist
Ed Ruscha, REBEL, 2011 Acrylic on canvas, 20 in. x 24 in. Courtesy of the artist