modern art
50 movies and shows
Exit Through the Gift Shop
Fri, 05 Mar 2010
Banksy is a graffiti artist with a global reputation whose work can be seen on walls from post-hurricane New Orleans to the separation barrier on the Palestinian West Bank. Fiercely guarding his anonymity to avoid prosecution, Banksy has so far resisted all attempts to be captured on film. Exit Through the Gift Shop tells the incredible true story of how an eccentric French shop keeper turned documentary maker attempted to locate and befriend Banksy, only to have the artist turn the camera back on its owner.
John Cage: I Have Nothing to Say and I Am Saying It
Tue, 18 Sep 1990
This 56-minute documentary on America's most controversial and unique composer manages to cover a great many aspects of Cage's work and thought. His love for mushrooms, his Zen beliefs and use of the I Ching, and basic bio details are all explained intelligently and dynamically. Black Mountain, Buckminster Fuller, Rauschenberg, Duchamp are mentioned. Yoko Ono, John Rockwell, Laurie Anderson, Richard Kostelanetz make appearances. Fascinating performance sequences include Margaret Leng-Tan performing on prepared piano, Merce Cunningham and company, and performances of Credo In Us, Water Music, and Third Construction. Demystifies the man who made music from silence, from all sounds, from life.
Looking for Modern Art: Rethinking Art History
Fri, 16 Nov 2018
Many twentieth century European artists, such as Paul Gauguin or Pablo Picasso, were influenced by art brought to Europe from African and Asian colonies. How to frame these Modernist works today when the idea of the primitive in art is problematic?
River of Fundament
Wed, 12 Feb 2014
Visionary artist Matthew Barney returns to cinema with this 3-part epic, a radical reinvention of Norman Mailer’s novel Ancient Evenings. In collaboration with composer Jonathan Bepler, Barney combines traditional modes of narrative cinema with filmed elements of performance, sculpture, and opera, reconstructing Mailer’s hypersexual story of Egyptian gods and the seven stages of reincarnation, alongside the rise and fall of the American car industry.
A Revolution on Canvas
Fri, 01 Dec 2023
In this hybrid political thriller and verité portrait documentary, Sara Nodjoumi, working with co-director and husband, Till Schauder, makes her directorial debut with this personal film, diving into the mystery surrounding the disappearance of more than 100 “treasonous” paintings by her father, seminal Iranian modern artist Nickzad Nodjoumi.
A Brief History of John Baldessari
Sat, 10 Mar 2012
The epic life of a world-class artist, jammed into six minutes.
Sick Film
Mon, 02 Jan 2006
Martin Creed has said that part of living is coming to terms with horrible feelings. 'The problem with horrible feelings is you can't paint them. But horrible vomit – you can film that.' And he has. It's a difficult piece to watch but highlights Creed's ability to provoke psychological reactions from his viewer, whether that be joy, despair, anger or as in this case, utter disgust.
The Kill Room
Thu, 14 Sep 2023
A hitman, his boss, an art dealer and a money-laundering scheme that accidentally turns the assassin into an overnight avant-garde sensation, one that forces her to play the art world against the underworld.
Die Brücke: The Birth of Modern Art in Germany
Sat, 01 Jan 1972
This movement marks the beginning of modern art in Germany. It is the German equivalent of French Fauvism, from which it draws its main inspiration, but it carries an Expressionist and social emphasis that is characteristic of Nordic 'angst.' The artists of Die Brucke were restless creatures, over-sensitive, haunted by religious, sexual, political or moral obsessions. Dramatic landscapes and nudes, mystical and visionary compositions, scenes of the countryside, the streets, the circus, the cafe-dansants and the demi-monde were their principal subjects. Their pure colours blaze in acid stridency, encompassed by rough, dry contours which show the influence of African art and primitive woodcuts. The work of the following is shown: Kirchner, Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, Schmidt-Rottluff, Otto Muller, Emil Nolde and Max Pechstein.
Cremaster 3
Wed, 15 May 2002
CREMASTER 3 (2002) is set in New York City and narrates the construction of the Chrysler Building, which is in itself a character - host to inner, antagonistic forces at play for access to the process of (spiritual) transcendence. These factions find form in the struggle between Hiram Abiff or the Architect ...
Manet: The Man Who Invented Modern Art
Sat, 13 Jun 2009
Manet is one of the main candidates for the title of the most important artist there has been. As the reluctant father of Impressionism, and the painter of Dejeuner sur l'herbe, he can probably be accused of inventing modern art. But his story is fascinating on many other levels. As a piece of compelling biography, Manet's is the unlikely tale of the stubborn son of the most highly placed judge in France who decides to become an artist and embarrass his father. The resulting family tensions are the stuff of legend. Then there was Manet's dramatic private life, including exotic romantic affairs and a particularly horrible death. Always cited as the father of the Impressionists, Manet stubbornly refused to show with them, and was careful to maintain an aesthetic distance from Monet, Renoir and the others. While they worshipped him, he looked down on them.
Francis Bacon in His Own Words
Sun, 11 Jan 2009
A collection of BBC archive material about painter Francis Bacon, including a previously unseen interview recorded in 1965.
Zaha Hadid... Who Dares Wins
Tue, 30 Jul 2013
Alan Yentob profiles the most successful female architect there has ever been, the late Zaha Hadid, who designed buildings around the globe from Austria to Azerbaijan.
Cremaster 2
Wed, 13 Oct 1999
CREMASTER 2 is rendered as a gothic Western that introduces conflict into the system. On the biological level it corresponds to the phase of fetal development during which sexual division begins. In Matthew Barney's abstraction of this process, the system resists partition and tries to remain in the state of equilibrium imagined in Cremaster 1.
Ray Kappe: California Modern Master - Forty Years of Modular Evolution
Thu, 01 Jan 2009
Explorations in 21st Century American Architecture Series: Ray Kappe has long been a cult figure in the architectural scene in and around Los Angeles. In 1972, he founded the influential, avant garde Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-ARC), where many of the younger-generation architects have studied or taught.
Joe Lycett: Summer Exhibitionist
Sat, 23 Jul 2022
Art-loving comedian Joe Lycett joins artists hoping to make it onto the walls of the RA Summer Exhibition 2022, the world’s largest open-submission art contest.
Pablo Picasso et Françoise Gilot : la femme qui dit non
Sat, 06 Jun 2020
Painter Françoise Gilot shared Pablo Picasso's life from 1943 to 1953. This union nourished their respective artistic creations.
Hanging from a Dream
Wed, 20 Feb 2013
The history of how the Museum of Spanish Abstract Art of Cuenca was created. In the mid-1950s, the Spanish collector and painter Fernando Zóbel de Ayala (1924-84) becomes fascinated by the young generation of Spanish abstract artists, so he begins to collect their works to show them to the public in Toledo. Until Gustavo Torner, a young forest engineer interested in art, proposes him to visit his city, Cuenca.
Modigliani et ses secrets
Sun, 20 Dec 2020
Sometimes reduced to the image of a cursed artist, Amedeo Modigliani, an admirer of the masters of the Italian Renaissance, has traced an unparalleled path in modern art.