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Film has been talking about artists since before film could talk. There's an irresistible urge for filmmakers to share their creative process through their characters. And while film about filmmaking is interesting enough, what's really gripping is when the director talks through an artist in a different field. Artists, historically not the most-photographed bunch (as they are often the photographers) look great on celluloid, with their paint covered-shirts, their bare workspaces, and their tortured eyes. Some of their work is so good that you wish you could go downtown and see it, because these are The 10 Coolest Fictional Artists in Movie History.
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10. Norm Gunderson in "Fargo"
10. Norm Gunderson
Film: Fargo
Year Released: 1996
Actor: John Carroll Lynch
Norm isn't the most successful artist on this list, but he's a good solid painter of ducks for a while now, and he loves what he does. He's about to get one of his pieces put on a stamp, so when you think about inflation and such that's not exactly chump change his duck will be sitting on. It's enough for Burger King at least, dontchaknow.
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9. Lionel Dobie in "New York Stories"
9. Lionel Dobie
Film: New York Stories
Year Released: 1989
Actor: Nick Nolte
He may look and act a little rough around the edges, but he's got a basketball hoop in his loft, so you know he's ok. The aging New York painter has a weakness for pretty young assistants and an inability to tell them they have a future in art. This surprisingly deep performance by Nick Nolte in Scorsese's "Life Lessons" short, rounds out what is otherwise a fairly weak collection of stories. With his complex brand of damage and charm, he overcomes even the signature cliches like painting with his hands in anger, growing unkempt in creative periods, and using a trash can lid as his palette.
8. Chelsea Deardon in "Legal Eagles"
8. Chelsea Deardon
Film: Legal Eagles
Year Released: 1986
Actor: Daryl Hannah
If you were young enough when you saw Chelsea Deardon's performance art in the 1986 flop, it might just have been enough to make you want to go to art school. Well, at least it was pretty impressive(to Robert Redford), especially when Daryl Hannah is performing it. Though pretty dated now, this piece was a little bit of magic back in the day and made art seem a little sexier for a number of years.
7. Edouard Frenhofer in "La Belle Noiseuse"
7. Edouard Frenhofer
Film: La Belle Noiseuse
Year Released: 1991
Actor: Michael Piccoli
Aging artist, Edouard, finds his muse reborn, in the girlfriend of a fellow artist who comes to visit. After years of inactivity and lack of inspiration from his former model wife, the fetching Marianne reinvigorates his artistic career. The film is full of beautifully long takes of Edouard in his creative process as he restarts his masterpiece entitled, "La Belle Noiseuse." Which in French translates to the beautiful troublemaker.
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6. Johan Borg in "Hour of the Wolf"
6. Johan Borg
Film: Hour of the Wolf
Year Released: 1968
Actor: Max Von Sydow
Bergman's 1968 horror classic involves a tortured painter who has created a beautiful portrait of a past lover. His pregnant wife sees this portrait for the first time in the house of a neighbor and is shocked by the secret it keeps. In the twilight hours of the title, the painter, Borg, confesses to much more darkness than she can even imagine and soon finds himself possessed by the past, caught up in a party of strange demons, fighting for life and for sanity.
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5. Maude Lebowski in "The Big Lebowski"
5. Maude Lebowski
Film: The Big Lebowski
Year Released: 1998
Actor: Julianne Moore
Her work has been commended as being "strongly vaginal" which makes some men uncomfortable, but you can't argue with her artistic process. When you see her flying down the hallway wearing nothing but a harness and wielding two brushes loaded to the brim, you know Maude is a serious artist. She knows people in high places, she speaks her mind, and she makes enough money to buy Jeffrey his rug back.
4. Juan Antonio Gonzalo in "Vicky Christina Barcelona"
4. Juan Antonio Gonzalo
Film: Vicky Christina Barcelona
Year Released: 2008
Actor: Javier Bardem
The very sensual Juan Antonio isn't just lucky in the art world, but has a sensuality and forwardness that makes him irresistible to some of the very choicest ladies of the day (Penelope Cruz and Scarlet Johansson). He works in a small town in Spain, drinking, seeing his poet father, exploring the land, and generally acting as a fantasy to men and women alike. The movie is full of art, as his ex-wife, Maria Elena is also a painter, and Christina begins a serious photography career.
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3. Thomas in "Blow-Up"
3. Thomas
Film: Blow-Up
Year Released: 1966
Actor: David Hemmings
As a fashion photographer in mod London, Thomas is in high demand for his excellence with a camera. He shoots often in the movie, behind weird sets, in rendezvous with sex kittens off the street (including a young Jane Birkin as 'The Blonde,') or as in the iconic image of him shooting top model Veruschka Von Lehndorff, from only inches away. His mind, however, is elsewhere, leading him to accidentally shoot a suspicious scene in the park that leads him down a much more dangerous and less glamorous path.
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2. Adele Lack in "Synecdoche, New York"
2. Adele Lack
Film: Synecdoche, New York
Year Released: 2008
Actor: Catherine Keener
In probably the most realistic portrayal of a modern artist put on screen, Adele Lack's tiny paintings are not only made with, but meant to be viewed through, a magnifying glass. Her tiny works contrast her husband's, a playwright who is building bigger and bigger sets until he has built an alternate Manhattan in which he loses himself. As she goes on to acclaim in Berlin, her paintings approach invisibility in a commentary on conceptual art that creates a priceless reaction in the face of her estranged husband as he tries to understand what he isn't seeing.
1. David Wark in "Junebug"
1. David Wark
Film: Junebug
Year Released: 2005
Actor: Frank Hoyt Taylor
David Wark's fictional paintings say all the things on the canvas that he probably shouldn't out loud. Loosely inspired by the prolific shut-in artist Henry Darger(which is especially evident in the depiction of soldiers and naive sexual scenes), the quiet recluse paints large compositions of civil war soldiers in various states of racial violence often juxtaposed with men in sexual positions. The pictures include the all-inclusive composition of children's drawings, that add for some wonderfully adult details, like wolves eating the genitals of the dead, computers floating in the foreground, and an icon that looks like a nascar racer's portrait.
