Sometimes the most colorful moments at the Sundance Film Festival happen off screen.
French painter Georges Seurat employed small, distinct dots of paint. Abstract expressionist bad-boy Jackson Pollock deployed the entropy of drip painting. Japanese artist Ushio Shinohara, Neo-Dadaist legend and subject of Sundance documentary "Cutie and the Boxer," scores his artistic knockouts on canvas with a good pair of gloves and all the color of a good fight.
The Tokyo-born artist has lived and worked in the United States since 1969, when a Rockefeller grant brought him to New York City. The 81-year-old Shinohara offered a staged creation of his work Jan. 21 before a rapt, ringside crowd at downtown Salt Lake City's Central Utah Art Center (175 E. 200 South, Salt Lake City) after a Sundance Film Festival screening of "Cutie and the Boxer" at the Broadway Centre Cinemas. Directed by Zachary Heinzerling, the world-premiere documentary was five years in the making. It explores the give-and-take in the painter's relationship with Noriko, his wife of 40 years.
Ben Fulton
'Cutie and the Boxer'
The documentary about the Japanese painter Ushio Shinohara and his 40-year-marriage with his wife, Noriko, is screening in the U.S. Documentary competition at the Sundance Film Festival.
Saturday, Jan. 26, noon • Egyptian Theatre, Park City
Need a ticket • Most screenings are sold out, so try hitting the box office at 8 a.m. to seek day-of release tickets (Trolley Square, 700 E. 600 South, Salt Lake City; Gateway Center, 138 Heber Ave., Park City; or Peery's Egyptian Theater, 2415 Washington Blvd., Ogden). Or get in the wait-list line at the theater two hours before the screening.
More Sundance news • www.sltrib.com/Blogs/sundanceblog
Also • See Rick Egan's photo gallery of the painting-in-progress at sltrib.com/entertainment.