JOEL SCHILLER, ARTIST

    Joel Schiller, was an established art director/production designer on over forty films. As an artist he assisted Jackson Pollack with his painting in Ted Dragon’s studio, a friend of both of them. He was a protégé of De Kooning. Schiller never felt completely comfortable in the movie world but was thought well enough

to have had Barbra Streisand make him a surprise birthday party on the stage of the film, Nuts, become friends with Jeff Bridges, American Heart, illustrations for Cecil Beaton for My Fair Lady, Marty Ritt, Hud, Norma Rey, Bob Fosse, Cabaret,  and be aquatinted  with Cher among others.

In his first film The Illustrated Man, he  was inspired

by Gustave Klimt for the design of the entire body  tattoos  of  “Carl“ (Rod Steiger).  According to the Guinness Book of World Records this film has the record  for the  longest time, twenty hours, applying make-up. He also did designs for the Film, My Fair Lady.

Schiller was the art director on The Graduate, creating a fish bowl environment of glass partitions  for  “Benjamin” (Dustin Hoffman). In  Rosemary’s Baby, on a sound stage at Paramount studios, to give the New York City influence he designed the interior of a Manhattan Dakota apartment with live pigeons in the  courtyard set.

Being an avid figure skater Schiller, for the film Ice Castles, auditioned the  leading female skaters. In his design for The Big Bus, had the bus interior furnished with Colonial decorations and the bus was used to lead the real-life Los Angeles Bicentennial parade  of 1976.

 

  Schiller designed the Muppet Movie, which was the first time  the muppets would be filmed on real-life locations instead of studio sets.

He was the production designer on,  Murphy’s Romance, starring Sally Field and James Garner  and Stanley and Iris, starring Jane Fonda and Robert De Niro. Schiller has now returned to his passion for painting with his paintings currently  displayed in the Art  Gallery of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, located in the basement level of the museum.

  “I’m  only  ten feet below the Picasso's and Van Gogh's   and  can only go up from here", he quips.

     Previously to Schiller's film profession, he had several one man exhibitions at the Paideia Gallery in Los Angeles.  It won first prize in the Barnsdall City of Los Angeles competition. When back into the  art world Schiller went to France and lived and painted in  a Paris studio. He returned with a series of paintings of Paris which embody his expressionistic style.

    Schiller has developed several bodies of work.  In his series, "Then And Now," very representative style paintings, he contrasts perceptions of people from the past to the present.  Another direction he has taken is to utilize his expressionistic style in relatively large landscapes and still life.

Among them he has done an extensive study of water lilies.  He painted  a series of painting after returning from his trip to South America.

    His newest body of work is designed to communicate raw emotion.  It is an exceptionally  creative and unique concept. In order to achieve this he has limited himself to black and white phantom figures whose gestures are abstracted to convey emotions such as joy, fear, grief, prayer, family, searching, etc.