ARTIST FILMS

ART LOVERS ALERT! I have for you a tremendous group of movies about artists. Tim’s Vermeer (2013) is an entirely fascinating look at the artistic process. Dutch genius Vermeer is known as the Painter Of Light. For centuries people have wondered how he did it- how he made his pictures absolutely glow with realistic light. Tim Jenison, a big fan but not an artist himself, theorized that Vermeer used a primitive but effective machine to help him achieve this result. And then Jenison set out to duplicate a Vermeer painting by using such a device. You can watch him build the machine and then try the painting, step by step. Marvelous stuff!
Pollock (2000), is actor Ed Harris’ cinematic dream come true about one of the true titans of modern art. Marcia Gay Harden won the Oscar as Best Supporting Actress, portraying Jackson Pollock’s long-suffering but supportive wife and number one fan. Mr. Harris (who also directed)  was nominated for Best Actor but lost out to Russell Crowe for Gladiator. Pollock is a splendid film about the artistic process and its grip on and development by the mercurial painter whose private life was as messy as his splatter-painting process. One leaves this film feeling that it has it exactly right.
There have been other good movies about the artistic process. One of the best is Joyce Cary’s The Horse’s Mouth (1958) featuring Sir Alec Guiness as the fictional painter Gully Jimson. This guy is one part genius and three parts pain-in-the-butt, not an unusual attribute for an artist and superbly played by Sir Alec. The painter’s attitude that the world owes him a living because he has talent is one most of us have encountered. You don’t know whether to laugh at him or shoot him.
Lust For Life (1956) is way better than most critics think. Kirk Douglas is really good as the tormented Vincent Van Gogh, and Anthony Quinn won an Oscar as his brother. The cinematography is just magnificent, especially the way the paintings of the master are segued into actual scenery for the film. 
The French painter Toulouse-Lautrec was born with defective legs and spent his life dragging his misshapen body around Paris’ Left Bank and painting chorus girls and saloons.  Jose Ferrer convincingly plays the tortured master in Moulin Rouge (1952). Lautrec’s portrayal of the Bohemian lifestyle of the time and his dwelling within it are accurately and dramatically portrayed in this movie. The 2001 musical of the same name is entirely different and not as good. 
George Sanders was always an interesting actor, sometimes appearing in very good films but usually in nondescript potboilers. But Mr. Sanders is fine as artist Paul 
Gaugin in Somerset Maugham’s The Moon And Sixpence (1942). The story of a man his acquaintances thought to be dull and ordinary, who runs off to Tahiti to lead the artistic life, is somehow convincing.  This film is now seventy-five years old but holds up nicely and may well be Mr. Sanders’ finest hour. 
All of the movies in this column are available on DVD. All except Pollock are OK for kids 10 and up.