James Franco grabs another role with MOCA show on ‘Rebel Without a Cause’
James Franco is an actor-turned-artist-turned-author-turned-actor-playing-an-artist-named-Franco in the soap opera “General Hospital” — who has made a movie, “Francophrenia,” that documents the experience. He’s about as “meta” as it gets.
Now Franco has brought his knack for melding pop culture and fine art in unorthodox ways to a new exhibition for Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art. “Rebel,” which opens Tuesday, is a high-concept group show that is a loose, interpretive ode to the 1955 James Dean film “Rebel Without a Cause.”
It brings together paintings, sculpture and multimedia works by Ed Ruscha, Harmony Korine, Paul McCarthy, Damon McCarthy, Douglas Gordon, Terry Richardson, Aaron Young and, of course, Franco, who organized the show and is feverishly present throughout it, both directing and appearing in multiple pieces.
He calls “Rebel Without a Cause” “the first mainstream American movie that dealt with teenagers on their own terms.”
“And it still, in a lot of ways, is the prototype for the teen films we see today,” Franco says. “[The exhibition] is an extension of the film. It’s not about being loyal to it, as much as it is using the film as a source for inspiration and building off that to create new work.”



Oz: The Great and Powerful (2013)
Lovelace (2012)
Cherry (2012)
The Broken Tower (2011)
The Stare (2012)
Maladies (2011)
Rise of the Apes (2011)
Rebel (2011)
As I Lay Dying (2012)
Sal (2011)


















