Film screening and discussion: Fall into Ruin

Friday, May 13, 2022 at 5:00pm

Klarman Hall, Atrium
232 East Ave, Ithaca, NY 14853

Fall into Ruin tells the story of artist William E. Jones’s relationship with Alexander Iolas (1907-1987), a Greek art dealer from Alexandria active in New York and European cities from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s. Iolas had close connections to the Surrealists, to artists associated with Nouveau Réalisme, and to American artists such as Ed Ruscha, Harold Stevenson, and Paul Thek. At the height of his career, he maintained galleries in New York, Paris, Madrid, Geneva, Milan, and Athens.

After Iolas’s death from AIDS in 1987, the art collection in his house disappeared; this collection included Egyptian, Greek, and Roman antiquities, as well as works by artists Iolas represented, including Max Ernst, René Magritte, Man Ray, Victor Brauner, Matta, Yves Klein, Takis, and Niki de Saint Phalle. The empty house was later vandalized extensively. For Fall into Ruin, Jones returned to a place he first visited when he was 19 years old. The film includes not only contemporary images of the site in its ruined state, but also photographs Jones took in 1982 of Iolas’s house in its glory.

The screening is part of a series events related to the exhibition The Sculpture Shoppe at Ithaca Mall (open May 5-30). It will be followed by a discussion and Q&A with the exhibition’s curators (Annetta Alexandridis, David Nasca, and Verity Platt), after which attendees are invited to a reception in the History of Art gallery.