14 Best Art Movies That You Should Watching Update 04/2024

Best Art Movies

However, there are a handful of films that you must see at least once in your lifetime, including a film on the renowned Banksy and a documentary about Walt Disney’s early years.

Here are 15 must-see art films to add to your collection.

1. Have You Seen The Listers?

Have You Seen The Listers

Have You Seen the Listers? follows graffiti artist Anthony Lister as he tries to defy a conservative Australia in the documentary. Learn about the struggles he has had throughout his career and how his family has been a source of inspiration for him.

2. Frida

Frida, starring Salma Hayek, tells the story of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo’s domestic and professional life. She became one of the greatest surrealist painters of the 20th century through her victories. During the course of her connection with Diego Rivera and Leon Trotsky, the viewer is exposed to the extreme sufferings she endured.

3. Girl With A Pearl Earring

Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring is based on Vermeer’s iconic painting, which takes place in the 1600s and features Colin Firth as the artist who falls in love with Scarlett Johannson’s Griet. Vermeer and Griet work on the painting together as other members of the family begin to dislike the experience.

4. Mona Lisa Smile

Mona Lisa Smile

When Julia Roberts’ character, an art teacher at UCLA, begins teaching her pupils about art history, she discovers that most of them are more interested in becoming housewives. She intends to demonstrate to them the complexities of contemporary art forms in the hopes of motivating them to make better vocation choices for themselves. Roberts has to find a way around traditionalists in order to succeed.

5. Mr. Turner

Painting J.M.W. Turner’s final 25 years, the film demonstrates how this damaged guy was able to establish an amazing method of purifying our environment. Throughout Turner’s artistic career, you can see the depths of his dissatisfaction with his surroundings, especially his affair with a married woman. That Turner once clung to the mast of an ocean liner while painting a snowstorm was well-known to the general audience.

6. Pollock

Most people are familiar with the well-known abstract artist Jackson Pollock. Pollock, on the other hand, is based on the artist’s autobiography. How he got to be known as an accomplished artist in the United States. As a result of this video, audiences are better informed on how Pollock became a part of modern art in the 1950s.

7. Saving Banksy

Saving Banksy

Everyone knows the infamous street artist Banksy by now. There’s no doubt that he’s a household name around the world thanks to his prolific use of street art, which has made him both adored and reviled by the general people. The documentary Saving Banksy alludes to the fact that a New York gallery owner has made it his mission to remove Banksy pieces from the streets and bring them back to sell at record prices. Ironically, while his classic designs are critiquing just that.

8. Walt Before Mickey

Walt Disney is a well-respected member of society who revolutionized the field of animation. In Walt Before Mickey, Walt Disney’s early days in the industry are depicted, including the moment he discovered his love for animation. With the support of his brother Roy and other studio animators, he made it into the industry as a pioneer. This film is based on the novel of the same name. Seeing how many obstacles Mickey Mouse had to overcome in order to become the beloved character he is today.

9. Big Eyes

Big Eyes

Finding out more about an artist who created works depicting the subject with wide eyes in the 1950s, Margaret Keane Before they married in 1936, she met Walter Keane, who promised to help market her art while claiming it as his own. Defaming each other is how Margaret intends to pursue justice for her daughter’s sake and uncover the identity of the real artist behind the great works of art.

10. Exit Through The Gift Shop

When Exit Through the Gift Shop premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2010, it was Banksy’s first time behind the camera as a filmmaker. While trying to locate and film the street artist Banksy on camera, a French shopkeeper met the man and the camera was turned on him. The film features unique interviews and pieces by graffiti artists. This is basically the story of how one man set out to film the un-filmable. As a result, “and failed”.

11. Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child

Jean-Michel Basquiat The Radiant Child

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, a documentary about the late artist, features never-before-seen footage of him two years before he died. The neo-expressionist paintings of the prominent artist collided with the early hip-hop culture of Manhattan in the 1970s and 1980s. The 20-minute interview with director Tamra Davis is included in the feature-length film, which also includes interviews with persons who were close to Basquiat.

12. Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present

In 2010 Marina Abramovi exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and was featured in a documentary called The Artist Is Present. Waiting for someone to sit down and look at her, she sat at a table across from an empty chair. Over the course of three months, more than 1,000 strangers sat across from her, many of whom were overcome with emotion. Her work focuses on the relationship between the artist and the people she is trying to reach, encouraging them to take a risk and make a connection.

13. Whiteley

Whiteley

Brett Whiteley, an Australian artist, has made it his purpose to shock his viewers with his paintings. Take a look at how his artistic skills were passed down to the next generation through his wife, Wendy, through letters, interviews, and images. Observe how his ill-advised attempt at achieving greatness in the art world ended disastrously. Using his groundbreaking artworks as a model, the documentary shows how others might follow in his footsteps and shake things up in the community in the same way.

14. Struggle: The Life Of Lost Art Of Szukalski

Leonardo DiCaprio directed this film about the life of Polish artist Stanislaw Szukalski, who was well-known before World War II but faded into obscurity afterward. Szukalski’s works were tragically destroyed in a Nazi raid bombing. Only rarely did he produce works of art that corresponded to current events when he went to California in the 1940s.