SUNDAY NIGHT MOVIES

SUNDAY NIGHT MOVIES LEANNE SHAPTON

Ethereal illustrations expand on a New York Times series by an acclaimed author and artist Ethereal illustrations expand on a New York Times series by an acclaimed author and artist Sunday Night Movies features Leanne Shapton's watercolors of resonant moments in black-and-white cinema. Selecting a brief fragment of each chosen film, she creates an indelible image that is both a hand-painted movie still and a personal response to a fleeting celluloid moment. Together, the seventy-eight paintings create a valentine to the world of cinema. Shapton's journey through film history becomes a wistful celebration of the subtle moments in stories, which can often slip by unnoticed. What could be a simple title, still life, or portrait of an actor becomes both illusive and allusive through the medium of these personal paintings. Shapton's bestselling Petit Livre book The Native Trees of Canada took a decades-old government catalogue and reimagined it, employing bold colors and stark shapes to represent familiar trees in their majestic glory. The book was a sleeper hit and went through multiple printings. With Sunday Night Movies she brings her love of film to light, and the effect is restrained and fanciful, familiar and all new.

LEANNE SHAPTON

Leanne Shapton is an illustrator, author, and publisher based in New York City. She is a cofounder of J&L Books. She has been the art director of the National Post's Avenue page and Saturday Night magazine, and from 2008 to 2009 was the art director for the New York Times op-ed page. Shapton is the author of six books: Toronto; Was She Pretty?; Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry; The Native Trees of Canada; Swimming Studies, which won the 2013 National Book Critics' Circle Award for autobiography; and Sunday Night Movies.