For 60 Minutes, American TV reporter Anderson Cooper interviews French artist JR (born Jene Rene). Cooper says the 35-year-old artist “shows dignity in ordinary people with his massive works of art.” JR applies large photocopies of photographs in outdoor urban public spaces. One of his most striking is the gigantic image of a baby peeking over the Mexican side of the border between the United States and Mexico. See below. (That’s the best view, from the U.S. side.)
JR tells Anderson that he believes people who have never gone to a museum, even those who are struggling to eat, care about art. That said, his works has been shown at the finest museums in the world including the Louvre in Paris. JR’s most recent project is the film Faces Places with Agnès Varda (see below), the 89-year-old French New Wave cinematographer. Face Places has been nominated for a 2018 Academy Award for Best Documentary. The 90th Academy Awards ceremony will take place on Sunday, March 4. When JR and Agnes are not together, JR brings a life-size cut-out of Agnes with him. Hollywood’s finest including Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese are big fans (see video below). If Agnes can’t make it to the Oscars ceremony, JR will likely bring the cut-out of Agnes, as he did at the Oscars Luncheon (see Agnes with Meryl Streep below). 60 Minutes airs Sundays at 7pm on CBS.
