Artists on Camera
What goes into producing a work of art? This is the question these films pose, plumbing into the personal lives and political commitments of a wide variety of artists from various disciplines, as well as observing their subjects at work in order to shed light on their process. A collection of perceptive, engrossing films about some of the greatest artists of today and yesteryear, each one of them a work of art itself.
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Matthew Barney: No Restraint
Directed by Alison Chernik | 72 mins | 2006
Shot during the development of Barney’s massively ambitious film Drawing Restraint 9, made in collaboration with Björk, Chernick’s behind-the-scenes documentary offers a first-hand account of the artist’s artistic process, as well as the logistical chal... -
A Day On The Grand Canal With The Emperor of China
Directed by Philip Haas and David Hockney | 46 mins | 1988
David Hockney leads the viewer on a charming and illuminating guided tour through 17th-century China as depicted in the 72-foot scroll The Kangxi Emperor’s Southern Inspection Tour (1691-1698), the work of painter Wang Hui and his assista... -
!Women Art Revolution
Directed by Lynne Hershman Leeson | 83 mins | 2010
Multimedia art pioneer Leeson’s eye-opening documentary combines archival footage and original interviews collected over the course of 40 years to provide a “secret history” of feminist art from the 1960s to the 21st century. Features such lumina... -
Beuys
Directed by Andreis Veil | 107 mins | 2017
A rich trove of never-before-seen archival footage shows how the charismatic and controversial German artist Joseph Beuys’s teachings, installations, happenings—such as covering himself in honey and gold leaf in How to Explain Paintings to a Dead Hare—an... -
Beyond the Visible: Hilma Af Klint
Directed by Halina Dyrschka | 94 mins | 2019
The Swedish painter and mystic Hilma af Klint was, for decades after her death, a nearly forgotten figure, but her coterie of admirers swelled to an army after a blockbuster 2018 exhibition. Dyrschka, in her assured debut, continues the crucial work of... -
In The Mirror of Maya Deren
Directed by Martina Kudlacek | 103 mins | 2001
Using footage from Deren’s groundbreaking experimental films of the 1940s—among them Meshes of the Afternoon and At Land—and interviews with Deren’s contemporaries, Kudlacek’s film provides penetrating insights into the mind of its legendary subject ... -
Helmut Newton: the Bad and the Beautiful
Directed by Gero von Boehm | 93 mins | 2020
Released on the centenary of its late subject’s birth, von Boehm’s fascinating documentary investigates the German-born photographer and provocateur Helmut Newton’s complicated legacy as the maestro of “porno chic” through interviews with muses like Cha... -
A Bigger Splash
Directed by Jack Hazan | 106 mins | 1973
Jack Hazan’s intimate and innovative film about English-born, often California-based artist David Hockney and his work honors its subject through creative risk-taking. The improvisatory narrative-nonfiction hybrid features Hockney—a wary participant—as wel... -
Downtown 81
Directed by Edo Bertoglio | 72 mins | 2000
In 1980, writer and Warhol associate Glenn O’Brien, Swiss photographer Edo Bertoglio, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, a graffiti innovator and noise music artist who’d just begun to exhibit his paintings, hit the streets of lower Manhattan to make a movie abou... -
William Eggleston in the Real World
Directed by Michael Almereyda | 87 mins | 2005
Eggleston, the man who did more than any other single individual to legitimize color photography as an artform, gets a fittingly daring film portrait from Almeredya, seen at work and out and about in his home base of Memphis, Tennessee. “Uncannily re...
