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A Portrait of the Artist: Films about Painters
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It’s hardly surprising that filmmakers are inspired by the lives and careers of creative artists and painters, they are all essentially playing with the same toys: colour, movement, light and character. Here are ten films about visual artists that are themselves, works of art.
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Lust for Life
Vincente Minnelli was the first director to bring the life of Vincent Van Gogh to the screen, but he wouldn’t be the last. Kirk Douglas gives an Oscar-nominated performance as the tortured genius in this 1959 film, with Oscar winner Anthony Quinn providing muscular support as his contemporary and sometime-flatmate Paul Gauguin. Filmmakers are irresistibly drawn to Van Gogh’s extraordinary talent and his doomed life story, with Paul Cox’s Vincent, Robert Altman’s Vincent & Theo and Maurice Pialat’s Van Gogh among a gallery of biopics.
Caravaggio
Avant-garde film-maker Derek Jarman’s most accessible film tells the story of a love-triangle between the tempestuous Renaissance painter and a poor young couple in Rome at the end of the 16th century. Jarman worked for seven years to complete the film which brilliantly recreates some of Caravaggio’s best known paintings.
Nightwatching
You could fill a list like this with films from English director Peter Greenaway, who originally trained as a painter. Artists and art recur regularly in his films, from The Draughtman’s Contract to The Pillow Book and Belly of an Architect but the standout is his comparatively straightforward biopic of the 17th century Dutch artist Rembrandt, with a riotous performance from Martin Freeman as the free-living, free-loving Grand Master.
Pollock
Ed Harris directed and starred as the American Abstract Expressionist artist Jackson Pollock in this Oscar-winning biopic which focused on the anti-social and self-destructive habits of a tortured genius and his struggles with the art establishment. Harris, who did all of the painting seen in the film, struggled for a decade to get the film made.
My Left Foot
Daniel Day-Lewis gives an indelible performance as Christy Brown in Jim Sheridan’s celebrated biopic, which marked the beginnings of a new wave of Irish cinema in 1989. Born in poverty with cerebral palsy and only able to control his left foot, Brown overcame his physical handicap to become an accomplished artist and writer. Among a host of international awards, Day-Lewis won the Best Actor Oscar for the role with Brenda Fricker, who played his mother Bridget, winning Best Supporting Actress.
Basquait
Painter turned filmmaker Julian Schnabel’s debut film tells the story of the meteoric rise of New York graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, who starts out as a homeless street artists before being discovered by Andy Warhol and becoming an internationally feted star of the art world. But his rise to fame has a high price, with the troubled Basquiat paying for success with friendships, drug addiction and, eventually, his life.
“A film about a man who tried to make a film about me” is how British artist Banksy describes his outstanding debut documentary. The secretive graffiti artist was originally the subject of French shop-owner Thierry Guetta’s film, but eventually turns the tables as he examines Guetta’s attempts to transform himself into an artist known as Mr Brainwash. Hilariously funny and surprisingly philosophical, the film was nominated for Best Documentary at the 2010 Academy Awards.
The Agony and the Ecstasy
English director Carol Reed’s film told the story of Charlton Heston’s passionate Michelangelo panting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel for Rex Harrison’s impatient Pope Julius in the first decade of the 16th Century. The actual chapel was not available for filming so Reed built an exact replica on a sound stage at Cinecittà Studios at enormous cost. Now regarded as a classic, the film lost more than $6m on release in 1965.
Frida
Salma Hayek and director Julie Taymor chronicle the life of Frida Kahlo in this visually splendid biopic, which traces the life and loves of the iconic Mexican artist as a creative, political and sexual revolutionary. One of the few films about artists that is, in itself, a work of art, Taymor uses colour, movement, animation and recreations of Kahlo’s surrealist paintings to create a vast, vibrant canvas.
Love is the Devil
John Maybury’s impressive portrait of Francis Bacon concentrates on the Irish artist’s doomed love affair with petty-thief George Dyer in London in the early 1970s. As Dyer becomes Bacon’s lover and muse for some of his most intense paintings, the film tells a dark story of unhinged genius, addiction and betrayal. The real Bacon would no doubt have approved.
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