8 films about painters for fine arts students

"What I am looking for is neither the real nor the unreal, but the unconscious..."

-Amedeo Modigliani.

Setting the world of cinema apart from what we consider art is like trying to separate life from death. A pointless exercise that would do a disservice to the seventh art and to every artistic discipline as a whole. In its day, cinema was the direct descendant of photography and as such it had to be tied to painting, of which, after all, it was a distant relative. Today the performing arts seem so foreign to the pictorial ones that we tend to pull them apart and place one above the other, but there is one fact that goes beyond any subjective judgement: we are children of cinema. It doesn't matter how many books we read or write, how many paintings we create, because we'll always be thinking of the thousand and one images we've seen at the movies while we do it. And the thing is, art shouldn't be cut to the pattern of a definition, but to the breadth of the artistic whole.

Inspiring art in 8 essential films about painters

Si has empezado a estudiar Bellas Artes, es muy probable que ya hayas visto algunos de los largometrajes que siguen o es probable que puedas añadir otros que no están en esta lista. En todo caso el objetivo de este artículo es tan fácil de adivinar que simplemente hay que añadir: ¡Vive el arte como lo vivimos en Artelista!

1. Klimt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbbaU5P0lL4

The Austrian painter is one of the most famous in Europe and, quite possibly, the main attraction of the Belvedere Museum (Vienna). Based on the artist's life, this feature stars the immense John Malkovich in the role of the controversial artist. The film is filled with an obsessive personality, obsessed with the female body. Gustav Klimt lived a relatively comfortable life despite his character, which was what condemned him while he was still alive.

2. Frida

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOUzQYqba4Y

Salma Hayek had already carved out a film career when she decided to star in Frida. The feature covers everything from Frida Kahlo's high school years to the last moments of her life, though it skips over interesting episodes she lived through with Chavela Vargas. Hollywood things. The surrealist painter was the first to discover the benefits art brings when you suffer from a physical illness, not because it removes the external pain, but because of the anaesthetic power of emotional suffering. Today you can visit the Frida Kahlo House Museum in Mexico City and, on top of that, there are numerous travelling exhibitions in internationally famous museums such as MoMA (New York) or the Pompidou (Paris).

3. Renoir

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Cv9KxLIHAE

Unlike the two previous features, Renoir isn't a film designed to entertain. Nor was it born to have a breakneck Hollywood-style rhythm. It doesn't even tell the story of the great impressionist's best years, what it goes into is the genius's decline. Yet even though the director sets a slow pace and lingers on the aesthetic side of things, Renoir comes across as an example of a love for art taken to levels that border on masochism (Auguste Renoir suffered from arthritis all his life and the pain in his final years was unbearable, but he kept painting until he couldn't any more). And that isn't the only reading you can take from the film, since it gives well deserved prominence to the figure of the painter's models, who had always appeared in film reproductions as accessories in the act of creation, passive muses with nothing to do with the artistic work.

4. La Banda de Picasso

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPh1FQ_a0g0

In 1911, the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre Museum. The gang of foreign thieves who took Da Vinci's lady had, in theory, been led by the painter Pablo Picasso. It was never proven, but that didn't spare Picasso a night in the cells. Even so, it's an interesting contribution that shows another of art's faces: its market value and the many thefts of great masterpieces that have been carried out throughout contemporary history. There are other features as recent as La Banda de Picasso (2012) that show the intrigues art stirs up, as happens with Danny Boyle's film Trance.

5. Big Eyes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMWMIjID4js

This film isn't only appealing from a cinematic point of view, being directed by Tim Burton and promising, at the very least, entertainment. There's much more. It shows one of the most famous cases of artistic identity theft in the history of the 20th century. The story of the famous painter Margaret Keane is the story of many women who throughout history had to take cover behind a male figure in order to be taken into account. This artist, who currently has one of the biggest fortunes of any 20th century painter, was in her day brushed aside because her ex-husband Walter Keane claimed authorship of her artworks for decades. In a way, this list of films, short on women, has a lot to do with the large number of women painters being rediscovered in recent years after having been condemned to obscurity for the simple fact of being women.

6. Arts and Crafts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gseZBhZqvb0

I saw this documentary recommendation so long ago that I barely remember the details, but the central theme revolves around the figure of William Morris and his disciples. They created the Arts and Crafts movement in the 19th century and, today, their paintings are still going strong. The documentary looks at the techniques they used as well as the ups and downs that come with wanting to lead the life of an artist (on commission).

7. Modigliani

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmdan-yuvQc

If there was one painter who gave art more than he got back, it was Amedeo Modigliani. His paintings, packed with messages and visual rhetoric, made him a figurehead of the bohemian artist's life at the start of the century, while his magnetic (and troublesome) personality earned him as much hatred as passion. Until very recently the 20th century didn't realise what an oasis his work was in the middle of the impressionist, cubist and expressionist boom. The truth is that Modigliani was the example of an artist who lives his life the way he paints his artworks.

8. Girl with a Pearl Earring

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R2X-lJFkng

Who doesn't know one of the most famous Dutch painters of all time? Or rather, who hasn't seen a cheap replica of his most famous painting Girl with a Pearl Earring in a doctor's waiting room or a bookshop? I bet it's already come to mind, hasn't it? In this film you'll get to know more about the story behind the painting.

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