Oscar winning director Francis Ford Coppola will receive the Praemium Imperiale, an annual art prize that is patronized by the Japanese royal dynasty. The Godfather director is one of five winners of this year’s prize.
The prize is worth 15 million yen, or $151,000, reports Bloomberg. The other members of this year’s class include sculptor Antony Gormley, Spanish opera singer Placido Domingo, architect David Chipperfield and painter Michelangelo Pistoletto.
According to Sky News Australia, the award is open to artists of any nationality and the winners were announced in London earlier today.
“We all know about the early influence of Japanese art on Impressionism and post-Impressionism,” Gormley said at his London studio, which was designed by Chipperfield. Both are British. Gormley added, “The traffic the other way has been equally extraordinary.”
Emperor Akihito’s brother, Prince Hitachi, will be handing out the awards next month.
Past recipients of the award include plenty others in the entertainment industry, including Oscar winning actresses Sophia Loren and Judi Dench and directors Federico Fellini and Jean-Luc Godard. Other past winners include artists Bill Viola and Gerhard Richter and composers Philip Glass and Leonard Bernstein.
Coppola is best known for his 1970s masterpieces, including The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part II and Apocalypse Now. His most recent film as director is 2011’s Twixt and he also acted as producer on daughter Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring. In 2010, he received the Irving G. Thalberg Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.
image: Wikimedia Commons
