Interview with Antxón Gómez, art director: “Cinema is the most mendacious art form”

Abstract

Antxón Gómez (b. San Sebastián, 1952) is one of Spain’s most prestigious artistic directors at both national and international levels. A trained chemist, it was through his interest in collecting that he came into contact with the worlds of advertising and the cinema, in which he has enjoyed a long career. Over the last two decades, Gómez’s work has become a benchmark in the field of artistic direction, in particular, thanks to his collaborations with director Pedro Almodóvar in titles such as Todo sobre mi madre (1999), Hable con ella (2002) and La piel que habito (2011). In this interview, Gómez reflects on the frontiers of both architecture and artistic direction, the nature and the processes of the latter, and the main transformations and challenges involved in the transition towards a cinema in which craftsmanship is increasingly giving way to digital technology.