Opie Burns Down the Modern Houses

John Lautner's Sheats-Goldstein residence, featured in The Big Lebowski, has a new film credit: Catherine Opie's The Modernist. Debuting at New York's Lehmann Maupin gallery, The Modernist has no dialog or conventional cinematography, being composed of 852 still photos in an homage to Chris Marker's La Jetée. San Francisco artist Pig Pen plays an arsonist targeting L.A.'s mid-century houses. Opie uses CGI to envision the destruction of Sheats-Goldstein, the Chemosphere, the Eames House—and the L.A. Times headlines.

Catherine Opie, Mural Study #2 (The Modernist), 2016