Acclaimed American artist Ross Lee Gordon has had a long and prominent career in the international art world, until now. Seemingly overnight his paintings and the influence they’ve had on other artists, even the $100 billion global art market itself, have been devalued in the face of changing tastes driven by a new breed of wealthy art collectors who regard Gordon’s paintings as hopelessly retrograde if not passé.
To arrest his decline, Gordon succumbs to the lure of a powerful Parisian art and antiquities dealer, Nicole Renard, who promises renewed fame and riches if he’ll conform to the dictates of the market. When Nicole delivers on her promise, she snares Gordon in her and her husband Jacques’ trade in stolen and fake antiquities, a scheme that leads to Jacques’ murder by a collector who discovers he’s been cheated.
With Gordon at his lowest ebb, Alissa Sutherland, an alluring woman from his past, helps free him from his entanglement with Nicole. Though Nicole vows revenge and threatens to destroy everything Gordon has achieved, Alissa spurs him to reclaim his reputation not through conformity, but by creating a series of unique and eerily prophetic paintings. Titled Illuminations, their sheer magnitude and visual power vault him to the pinnacle of his achievements.
Across the paintings’ narrative breadth, Gordon’s turbulent depictions of human destiny, especially his own, merge with scenes of a spectral afterlife. Mystifying yet unambiguous, Gordon’s ominous portrayal shatters the twin illusions that reality is immutable and immortality is unattainable.
Genre: Horror
To arrest his decline, Gordon succumbs to the lure of a powerful Parisian art and antiquities dealer, Nicole Renard, who promises renewed fame and riches if he’ll conform to the dictates of the market. When Nicole delivers on her promise, she snares Gordon in her and her husband Jacques’ trade in stolen and fake antiquities, a scheme that leads to Jacques’ murder by a collector who discovers he’s been cheated.
With Gordon at his lowest ebb, Alissa Sutherland, an alluring woman from his past, helps free him from his entanglement with Nicole. Though Nicole vows revenge and threatens to destroy everything Gordon has achieved, Alissa spurs him to reclaim his reputation not through conformity, but by creating a series of unique and eerily prophetic paintings. Titled Illuminations, their sheer magnitude and visual power vault him to the pinnacle of his achievements.
Across the paintings’ narrative breadth, Gordon’s turbulent depictions of human destiny, especially his own, merge with scenes of a spectral afterlife. Mystifying yet unambiguous, Gordon’s ominous portrayal shatters the twin illusions that reality is immutable and immortality is unattainable.
Genre: Horror
Used availability for Peter Sasgen's Illuminations