Spike Lee’s “Lights, Camera, Fantasy” for Playboy Legacy Edition 34 of 75

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David Levinthal
Spike Lee’s “Lights, Camera, Fantasy” for Playboy Legacy Edition 34 of 75
2004

About the Item

Original 16"x20" archival photograph titled "Lights, Camera, Fantasy" by David Levinthal and director Spike Lee. Featured models are Ruby Campbell, Vanessa Davidson, Dormarys Este-Pan, Gwendolyn Rostant, Jayde Steele, and Bertha Vega. Image was shot in 2004 as a collaboration between Spike Lee and David Levinthal with the inspiration being Lee's first film, "She's Gotta Have It". Both the director and photographer deal with social and political issues in their work. The image was part of the Playboy Legacy Collection produced by International Images and released in 2007. About the Playboy Legacy Collection The Playboy Legacy Collection is 48 museum quality prints dating back to the inception of Playboy that were selected for their timeless beauty and historical significance in Playboy history. The collection was available in two sizes, 16"x20" and 20"x24", in limited editions of 75. A certain number of prints were signed by Hugh Hefner at the launch of collection. The collection was produced and distributed by International Images worldwide. About the Artist Since the early 1970’s, David Levinthal has been exploring the relationship between photographic imagery and the fantasies, myths, events, and characters that shape contemporary American’s mental landscape. His work has been a touchstone for conversations about theories of representation in photography and contemporary art as he has investigated the overlapping of popular imagery with personal fantasy through all of his major series including Hitler Moves East, Modern Romance, Wild West, Desire, Blackface, Barbie, Baseball, and History. In 2018, the George Eastman Museum presented David Levinthal: War, Myth, Desire, the largest retrospective of his work to date accompanied by the most comprehensive publication ever produced on his work. He has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His work is exhibited widely and part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Whitney Museum of American Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, The Menil Collection, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Spike Lee was born Shelton Jackson Lee on March 20, 1957, in Atlanta, Georgia. At a very young age, he moved from pre-civil rights Georgia, to Brooklyn, New York. Lee came from artistic, education-grounded background; his father was a jazz musician, and his mother, a schoolteacher. He attended school in Morehouse College in Atlanta and developed his film making skills at Clark Atlanta University. After graduating from Morehouse, Lee attended the Tisch School of Arts graduate film program. He made a controversial short, The Answer (1980), a reworking of D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915), a ten-minute film. Lee went on to produce a 45-minute film Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads (1983) which won a student Academy Award. In 1986, Spike Lee made the film, She's Gotta Have It (1986), a comedy about sexual relationships. The movie was made for $175,000, and earned $7 million at the box office, which launched his career and allowed him to found his own production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks. His next movie was School Daze (1988), which was set at a historically black school, focused mostly on the conflict between the school and the Fraternities, of which he was a strong critic, portraying them as materialistic, irresponsible, and uncaring. With his School Daze (1988) profits, Lee went on to make his landmark film, Do the Right Thing (1989), a movie based specifically his own neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. The movie portrayed the racial tensions that emerge in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood on one very hot day. The movie garnered Oscar nominations for Best Original Screenplay, for Danny Aiello for supporting actor, and sparked a debate on racial relations. Lee went on to produce and direct the jazz biopic Mo' Better Blues (1990), the first of many Spike Lee films to feature Denzel Washington, including the biography of Malcolm X (1992), in which Washington portrayed the civil rights leader. The movie was a success, and garnered an Oscar nomination for Washington. The pair would work together again on He Got Game (1998), an excursion into the collegiate world showing the darker side of college athletic recruiting, as well as the 2006 film Inside Man (2006). Spike Lee's role as a documentarian has expanded over the years, highlighted by his participation in Lumière and Company (1995), the Oscar-nominated 4 Little Girls (1997), to his Peabody Award-winning biographical adaptation of Black Panther leader in A Huey P. Newton Story (2001), through his 2005 Emmy Award-winning examination of post-Katrina New Orleans in When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006) and its follow-up five years later If God Is Willing and da Creek Don't Rise (2010). Through his production company 40 Acres and A Mule Filmworks, Lee continues to create and direct both independent films and projects for major studios, as well as working on story development, creating an internship program for aspiring filmmakers, releasing music, and community outreach and support. He is married to Tonya Lewis Lee, and they have two sons, Satchel and Jackson.

Creator:
David Levinthal (1949, American)
Creation Year:
2004
Dimensions:
Height: 16 in (40.64 cm)Width: 20 in (50.8 cm)Depth: 0.02 in (0.51 mm)
More Editions & Sizes:
20x24 edition of 75Price: $2,495
Medium:
Archival Paper
Movement & Style:
Modern
Period:
2000-2009
Condition:
Item in in as new condition.
Gallery Location:
Los Angeles, CA
Reference Number:
Seller: PLCS1-111stDibs: LU107823752131