Painting No. 8, 1986, oil on canvas, from the collection of Tyler Museum of Art.

DANNY MOGLE, IN Magazine

When Caleb Bell started thinking about what to feature at Tyler Museum of Art, he was intrigued with summer as being the season of big-budget movies featuring larger-than-life characters who define pop culture.

“I was following this idea of the summer blockbuster and started playing around with that,” the museum’s curator said.

It led Bell to Texas artist Ed Blackburn, whose subjects simultaneously inhabit the worlds of fact and fiction, reality and myth. Bell was a fan of Blackburn’s large-scale paintings of scenes from 1950s’ and 1960s’ cinema.

From private and museum collections, Bell assembled Blackburn’s cinema art into “Double Take – Works by Ed Blackburn.” It will be on view May 14 through Aug. 20, the exhibition marks the first time these works have been seen together.

The museum also is displaying movie-inspired art by Blackburn’s wife, Linda.

POP CULTURE

Ed Blackburn was born in Amarillo in 1940. He earned a degree in art from The University of Texas at Austin in 1962 and a master’s degree from The University of California at Berkeley a few years later.

Throughout his long career, Blackburn has painted images and made prints based on people from politics, news, cinema and popular culture.

His art is in numerous private collections and the permanent collections of Houston Museum of Fine Art, Dallas Museum of Art, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and Tyler Museum of Art.

“He (Blackburn) has a prolific body of work and over his career has been interested in a lot of things,” Bell said. “Much of his work has pop cultural references but he’s always exploring many ideas.”

For his cinema series, Blackburn painted scenes from movies that star Hollywood icons, such as Elvis Presley, Hopalong Cassidy, Marilyn Monroe and Gregory Peck The painting of Peck comes from “Marooned,” a 1969 movie in which he plays an astronaut stranded in space. Elvis is depicted in a scene from “Tickle Me,” a 1965 musical in which he plays a singing bullrider working at a dude ranch.

Blackburn sometimes inserts the unexpected. In “Elvis/Blue Boy Still Life” he superimposed “Blue Boy,” a portrait painted in 1797 by Thomas Gainsborough, on top of Elvis in a fight scene. The art is displayed as an installation. In front of the painting is a wooden table holding objects that seem to mimic a Cezanne still life.

Blackburn said he combines things that don’t go together in order to create tension. “I think that’s what good art always does in a way,” he said. “(It) makes you see things different.”

CINEMA AS FLAT ART

Blackburn said he is attracted to images from cinema because they hold multiple layers of meaning and create different responses based on the viewer’s knowledge and feelings about the movie and actor.

“All the choices – the particular scenes, with the particular actors – are to establish a certain esthetic identity when the (movie) image exists as a painting.  … I think also in a painting of a movie that works well, you don’t really forfeit any aspect of the movie but just connect with it by a different route,” he said. Those unfamiliar with the movie or actor can still appreciate the image as art. Blackburn said. “Any visual image has the ability to explain itself completely. (That) might even be what a visual image actually is. The trick though is you have to be able to see it.”

“Double Take” challenges people to look at sometimes familiar images and see them in a new way.

Movie Series

Some of the movies from which Blackburn depicted scenes will be shown at Liberty Hall, 103 E. Erwin St. The movies are free and will begin at 7 p.m.

The dates and movies are:

— “False Colors,” June 1

— “The Tender Trap,” June 8

— “Marooned,” June 15

Gallery Talk

Blackburn will talk about his work at 2:30 p.m. June 25 at the museum. Admission is free; reservations are encouraged.

The Museum

Tyler Museum of Art is located at 1300 S. Mahon Ave. on the Tyler Junior College campus. It is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday. For more information, call 903 595-1001 or go to tylermuseum.org.

IN Magazine

IN Magazine, features the people and culture of East Texas. It can be picked up for free throughout the region and is on line at inmagtexas.com.