Michael Mann’s Last of the Mohicans. The film overwhelmed me; it was like a 112-minute oil painting. I called Michael from my car and said I had three words for him. The first was brilliant. The second and third were Albert Bierstadt, the nineteenth-century painter of luminous landscapes of the American West. Michael was surprised and pleased: “How did you know?” He said Bierstadt was an inspiration for him to make the movie. I felt happy, hearing that, because it ratified an idea I’d had for some time. As I’d become more involved in the New York art scene, I’d begun to see parallels between
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