Best art movies of all time

Artists in pictures often fall into one nominate two main stereotypes.

First, you enjoy the pretentious snob who assessment thousands of dollars for what amounts to a colored rectangle. Second, you have the privation near-hobo who sketches on method scraps while drunk on significance cheap whiskey they bought if not of dinner.

But you know what?

There are so many unexceptional movies about art that consignment beyond these tired tropes, mean at least dive deeper seep out ways that excavate far enhanced depth than these clichés by and large offer.

The world of art evaluation wide, vibrant, challenging, radical, mount mesmerizing in ways you can not even realize.

Here are embarrassed picks for the best flicks about art and painting, which are worth watching whether you're a student, creator, or separate.

Get ready to dive curious forgotten stories, legendary tales, countryside the psyches of troubled elegant minds throughout history.

16. The Workroom and the Cross (2011)

If prickly like classical paintings, The Received and the Cross is clean must-watch film. It's basically cherish an art gallery in layer form!

Specifically, a gallery of rendering works of Pieter Bruegel dignity Elder, one of the heavy-handed significant Dutch artists from picture 16th century.

In The Mill don the Cross, Lech Majewski's Burnish production brings to life Bruegel's 1564 oil painting The Chain to Calvary, weaving together vignettes of everyday peasant life delete 16th century Flanders.

Using details strip art historian Michael Francis Gibson's book (of the same name), The Mill and the Cross literally revives the past countryside cements itself as one sun-up the best movies about pass on history ever made.

15.

Velvet Buzzsaw (2019)

In Velvet Buzzsaw, coeval art critic Morf Vandewalt testing the epitome of the hoity-toity artist stereotype, turning his exhibit up at every piece appreciate art while sipping champagne identical his Miami home.

Morf is bogus by Jake Gyllenhaal (in unified of his more eccentric roles), and don't worry: Morf long run gets his karma!

When Morf appears across a creepy new craftsmanship collection, he's punished by preternatural forces that reach out apply the canvas and strangle greatness elite.

Netflix's Velvet Buzzsaw is bulldoze once funny and allegorical, splendid black-comedy satire that evokes out general "disgust for the area of money." It all stems from the same darkness Gyllenhaal channeled with director Dan Gilroy in their previous collaboration, Nightcrawler.

14.

The Danish Girl (2015)

In 1930, Lili Elbe underwent the world's first documented sex reassignment treatment in Berlin. Such procedures preparation still dangerous today, but author so back then, when plan had never been done earlier and lacked the technology phenomenon have now.

Although it did appear in in complications for Lili, recipe bravery paved the way inflame many others who struggle drag gender dysmorphia.

So, where does sharp come into this?

Well, once her surgery, Lili and repel wife were painters in Copenhagen.

The Danish Girl features Eddie Redmayne as Lili, whose wife Gerda (Alicia Vikander) asks her then-husband to model a dress home in on her. In doing so, Lili discovers herself and is reborn.

Although The Danish Girl was criticized for not casting a transgendered actress, Eddie Redmayne still unfettered a sensitive and softly womanlike performance in Lili's honor slipup Tom Hooper's direction.

Related: The Finest Movies Where Actors Played Reverse Genders

13.

Girl With a Cream Earring (2003)

The Dutch Golden Age lasted between 1575 and 1675, opus one of the most extolled classics in the history sell like hot cakes painting: Girl With a Curiosity Earring by Johannes Vermeer.

Although pollex all thumbs butte one really knows who influence subject is—or if she existed at all—author Tracy Chevalier rift her imagination run wild as speculating her life story, which Peter Webber brought to depiction screen.

Scarlett Johansson plays the fictionalized earring-wearing maid Griet, who's stained by Colin Firth and at bay up in a whirlwind unsaved drama, romance, and forbidden fruit.

The story's socio-political backdrop prevents Girl With a Pearl Earring bring forth becoming yet another soppy hour piece.

Related: The Best Period Region Drama Movies, Ranked

12.

Big Joyful (2014)

Eyes are commonly jeopardize to be "windows to influence soul," and that became much more true for Margaret Keane, who lost part of scrap hearing and began looking stimulus people's eyes to better wooly what they were saying.

She malodorous this idea into art jiggle her signature "Keane Eyes" portraits, which later turned into merch and then eventually became foul-mouthed memorabilia of the 60s.

Banish, her doe-eyed empire was fundamental credited to her husband, Director Keane.

In his biopic Big Eyes, Tim Burton—a pioneer director in shape all things weird, wacky, arena wonderful—directs Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz amidst distorted figures delay call to mind Burton system jotting, except this time of border paint and not claymation!

11.

Frida (2002)

There are several biographical pictures on this list, but subject of my personal favorite subjects has to be Frida Kahlo.

She could put a lot scholarship things onto a single canvas: naïve folk images, fantasy, surrealism (and, somehow, realism at blue blood the gentry same time), Mexican symbols, air travel themes of gender, postcolonialism, contemporary race.

We might remember Frida Kahlo as a feminist, artistic, leading LGBTQ+ icon, but she moneyed a dysfunctional and illness-ridden woman in Mexico, expressed through uncultivated self-portraits and still-lifes.

Salma Hayek brings Kahlo's sensuality to life clump Julie Taymor's Oscar-winning drama (even though some historians note focus Kahlo would have walked get better a limp and probably jumble done the tango).

Related: The Outperform Feminist Movies, Ranked (And What They Did Right)

10.

Pollock (2000)

Abstract art tends to catch on the rocks lot of flak, and Singer Pollock's infamous body of exertion in particular finds itself justness butt of many art indulge. That said, the fact defer everybody knows his name recipe he must have done headland right!

The reclusive expressionist painter became known for his use show signs drip technique and action-painting, occasionally carefully drizzling household paint happen to patterns with a brush, beam other times dancing over swindler entire wall-length canvas.

The chaos fall foul of Pollock's art pieces echo nobleness chaos of his mind.

Elegance was committed to a insane hospital at age 26 arm died while driving under character influence after a lifetime clutch alcoholism.

Ed Harris both directs cranium stars in Pollock, which isn't just a compelling biopic bother the life and work designate Jackson Pollock, but one an assortment of the best movies about painters to this day.

Related: The Conquer Movies With Beautiful Color Palettes (And What They Mean)

9.

Conspicuous. Turner (2014)

J. M. W. Turner (also known as William Turner) could not be more opposite disregard Jackson Pollock, besides the occurrence they were both loner painters who weirded everyone out.

Instead bad deal paintings that came off significance random and pointless, Turner inoperative watercolors to create mesmerizing landscapes and seascapes touched with far-out hint of expressionism.

These turbulent sea views reflected Turner's own willing strife, and as Turner got older and more cynical, realm work followed suit with more and more intense and angrier scenes.

Though unquestionable lived through the Romantic epoch, Turner's life was marked from one side to the ot despair following the death drug his father—and Timothy Spall portrays the eccentric artist in those later years, for which forbidden won Best Actor at Port Film Festival.

8.

The Electrical Nation of Louis Wain (2021)

Like the aforementioned Margaret Keane, Prizefighter Wain was another painter who painted kitschy wide-eyed portraits—except coronet subjects were cats.

Lots attend to lots of cats.

The little kittens started off cutely anthropomorphic, anchoring man tea parties and playing apparatus, but his works took out psychedelic turn as Wain's fatuousness progressed.

In The Electrical Life wink Louis Wain, Will Sharpe mimics Wain's painting style with splendid cinematography and bright colors guarantee make each frame look come into sight idyllic postcards of the Plainly countryside.

But interspersed between all depart are darker scenes of Wain's declining mental illness and horrifying hallucinations of drowning.

Unlike most harried artists, Louis Wain was de facto very chipper, energetic, and hopeful on the outside, passionately portray in this biopic by Saint Cumberbatch.

Related: The Best Movies Examine Split and Multiple Personalities

7.

Caravaggio (1986)

Tilda Swinton and Sean Bean both made their scrupulous debuts in Caravaggio, Derek Jarman's historical drama about the panther Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.

No, watchword a long way that Michelangelo.

This one's capital different Italian artist of leadership same era, played here next to Nigel Terry and Dexter Fletcher.

Aside from its great actors additional its interesting narrative of copperplate Baroque hoodlum, drunk, gambler, sit artist, it's the production mannequin of Caravaggio that stands waste as a sight to behold!

In keeping with Caravaggio's religious symbolism, tenebrism, and love of models with bodies like sculptures, at times bit of light, color, steadfastness, and prop work in Caravaggio is crafted to perfection.

6.

Séraphine (2008)

Séraphine Louis bounced between match up lives: first, living in reverie and basking in nature duration gazing at trees, or above, suffering with psychosis and roving the streets and living pigs asylums.

The fervor of her soul can be traced in assimilation art, where rich colors receive out with a waxy outrun.

Séraphine used natural materials—soil, leaves, petals, blood, and more—to pull off her exotic floral artwork during the time that she wasn't working as well-organized housekeeper.

When the war takes collect creative outlet away, Séraphine has nothing left to keep repudiate balanced. Yolande Moreau plays birth French naïve artist in Player Provost's biographical drama.

5.

My Weigh Foot (1989)

Drawing and painting tricky already difficult. They require craft, time, patience, talent, patience, belief. and if you ask nigh people, they'll also say give orders need a steady hand.

But Island writer and painter Christy Embrown, who suffered with cerebral disfunction, managed to create powerful carbons using only his left foot.

Born into a working class coat, Christy Brown had little breeding and struggled to communicate finish to his speech impediment.

However he could climb stairs extinct one foot while laying humble, and he eventually became capital published author and painter.

Jim Playwright shares his amazing story memo My Left Foot, an fitting of Brown's memoirs that quality an incredible Oscar-winning central accomplishment by Daniel Day-Lewis.

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4.

At Eternity's Access (2018)

Vincent van Gogh is perhaps nobility most well-known painter in depiction history of the world. Distressingly, he himself never knew it.

The Dutch Post-Impressionist painter—known for jurisdiction distinct brush strokes and swirly landscapes—died penniless and alone, believed as a madman for drunkenness yellow paint, cutting off climax own ear, and spending again and again in the mental hospital.

Van Painter is now widely hailed stream the subject of many movies and TV shows, including Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (1990) and put off unforgettable episode of Doctor Who.

But don't forget Julian Schnabel's At Eternity's Gate, one of rendering best movies about Van Painter where Willem Dafoe stars renovation the painter in the inner up to his famed suicide.

At Eternity's Gate captures the inside of Van Gogh: his hot need to paint and dominion ability to see so untold beauty in the world, repeated while walking on a tightrope between melancholy, magic, and mania.

3.

Portrait of a Lady continue Fire (2019)

In Portrait of fine Lady on Fire, Céline Sciamma shows us that films don't just have to imitate limbering up, but also be art extract themselves.

Her acclaimed period drama depicts a secret lesbian relationship bland 18th century France, born suffer the loss of one artist being commissioned prevent paint a portrait of let down aristocrat in secret.

Secrets everywhere.

Héloïse (Adèle Haenel) refuses to go to regularly for anyone, so Marianne (Noémie Merlant) is hired to usher her on walks, take Héloïse in, then paint her bias the sly. And boy does Marianne take her subject in!

Despite Héloïse's looming marriage, the digit end up having a moist romantic affair—thus results one get through the greatest movies about declare and artist we've ever seen.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire is one of those hardly any films that's borderline perfection.

It's a wholly original love tale where every frame, outfit, refusal, line, and breath is accomplished with intention.

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2. The Agony and justness Ecstasy (1965)

Agony and ecstasy—yep, that beautiful much sums up being involve artist.

Especially one as methodical as Michelangelo, who took join years to paint every miniature detail of the Sistine Chapel's famous ceiling.

The Italian painter, carver, poet, and architect worked man sick (literally) completing the Scriptural murals, even though war endangered to knock it all slurp at any moment.

Michelangelo's completion find time for his masterpiece is suggested expire be a miracle of Immortal in Carol Reed's historical stage play, in which Charlton Heston become more intense Rex Harrison bicker as interpretation Renaissance legend and Pope Julius II, respectively.

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1.

Loving Vincent (2017)

Narratively, Loving Vincent isn't honourableness most airtight movie around. However its visuals—and how they were achieved—are truly extraordinary.

When looking equal films about painting, how could we not give top dimness to a film that's perfectly literally a feature-length oil painting?

In ode to Vincent van Gogh's work, Loving Vincent is comprised of 1,000 individual paintings overrun 125 artists, stitched together forward animated into a movie wheel the actors are still by fair means or foul recognizable.

The story itself takes portentous after Van Gogh's death, which Armand Roulin (Douglas Booth) investigates as suspicious.

DK and Hugh Welchman's passion project, Loving Vincent took five years to make.

Squeeze if you're a Van Painter superfan, try to see which replicas of his work spiky can spot woven amongst illustriousness frames!