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Begun in 1985, Golub: Late Works are the Catastrophes chronicles two decades in the life and work of American artist Leon Golub, finally ending with his death in 2005.

Over-sized canvasses with screaming mercenaries and rioters urninating on a corpse; photographic fragments used as information and inspiration; the making of one of Golub’s death-squad series from start to finish with its exhibition in Derry, Northern Ireland; news footage from around the world: out of these disparate elements the film creates a dialogue between image and audience that reflects what Golub calls the "disjunctiveness" of modern life. In the wake of the atrocities of Abu Ghraib, the artist's nightmarish interrogations and scenes of torture remain prophetic, even as they give way to the darkly humorous erotica and meditations on mortality of his later work.

This film captures an historic artistic journey, shared with his wife and studio partner of 50 years, the prominent anti-war and feminist artist, Nancy Spero. In some wonderfully comic and touching scenes, we see them as each other's most valued critic and most ardent supporter. Golub continued in his later paintings to "report" on what's going on in the world, but he does it with the kind of dissonances and discontinuities that led Theodor Adorno in his essay on Beethoven to proclaim, "In the history of art, late works are the catastrophes."

LEARN MORE:
Visit Kartemquin Films to learn more about the film or to purchase the DVD.
Read an interview from 1992 with Leon Golub from the Journal of Contemporary Art.
To see work samples from Golub, visit the Ronald Feldman Gallery website.