The Best Art Documentaries of All Time

When two talented artists collaborate, the results can be extraordinary. This is exactly what happens when someone picks up a video camera and points it at a particular member or aspect of the art world. The subject can be a renowned artist in his or her own right, like Banksy, who has so far directed two documentaries, or a celebrated filmmaker, like Terry Zwigoff of Ghost World and Bad Santa fame.

What is important is whether the film in question offers new insight into the subject at hand and the art-making process. When it comes to the hundreds of nonfiction films that have been made about art, these are The Best Art Documentaries of All Time.

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Director: Banksy
Year released: 2011

This 2011 UK television documentary isn’t solely about art. It’s about the way in which behaving badly in public has become almost an art form unto itself, from graffiti to activism. The film delves into the mindset of the people who have perpetrated some of the most recent attention-grabbing acts of civil disobedience, like the man who broke into the Queen of England's bedroom.

The Antics Roadshow is directed by the ringleader of them all, Banksy, who explains his interest in the project: “Basically I just thought it was a good name for a TV program, and I've been working back from there.”

Director: Charles Atlas
Year released: 2002

Leigh Bowery is the type of artist whose work really must be seen to be believed. As one of the most influential figures in both the London and New York art and fashion scenes in the 1980s and ’90s, the creative provocateur has been cited as an influence on everyone from David LaChapelle to Lady Gaga. This in-depth documentary explores Bowery's art and influence, as told by everyone from Boy George to Damien Hirst.

Director: Scout Shannon
Year released: 2012

Think the gig poster for that indie band you saw last week was just scribbled and photocopied? Think again. There’s an entire community of dedicated artists behind many of these posters—artists who attempt to create a sense of atmosphere, place, and sound through imagery on a simple piece of letterhead. While not everyone believes in the gig poster as true art, director Scout Shannon has gathered up an impressive lineup of artists, gallery owners, and musicians to share their views to the contrary.

Director: Doug Pray
Year released: 2005

Doug Pray—director of Surfwise, Scratch, and Hype!—travels from the South Bronx to San Francisco to film six of America’s most influential graffiti artists to find out why (and how) they’re willing to risk so much in order to make their mark in public places. Honest, funny, and at times heart-pounding, Infamy doesn’t attempt to make a statement about whether what these artists are doing is right or wrong. It simply puts you in the moment with them. And it’s a thrilling ride.

Director: Arne Glimcher
Year released: 2008

Cinema meets art, appropriately enough, in this art documentary. Martin Scorsese narrates (and also produces) a journey through the evolution of technology, which makes the case that cinema as we know it today is actually rooted in the work of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. An array of scholars and artists, including Chuck Close and Julian Schnabel, help Scorsese make his point in this fascinating film.

Directors: Tom Donahue and Paul Hasegawa-Overacker
Year released: 2008

One person who was not a huge fan of Guest of Cindy Sherman? Cindy Sherman. Sherman was the former paramour of its director, Paul Hasegawa-Overacker, who uses his romantic relationship with the world-renowned photographer as the basis for this moving film on the nature of ego and celebrity. Culled from intimate moments between the two plus more than 70 interviews, the making of the film itself—in which Hasegawa-Overacker must come to terms with being the less successful half of one couple—led to the breakup of the relationship.

Director: Scott Willis
Year released: 2010

As tragic as it is moving, this Emmy Award-winning documentary recounts the life of photographer Francesca Woodman, whose black-and-white portraits—many of them self-portraits, most of them faceless—continue to be analyzed and praised, more than 30 years after she committed suicide at the age of 22. The film incorporates interviews with Francesca’s parents—Charles and Betty, both also artists—as well as images of her work and excerpts from her diary to illustrate the cutthroat nature of the art industry.

Director: Werner Herzog
Year released: 2010

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Werner Herzog puts 3D technology to groundbreaking use when he is given special access to the Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave in Southern France, home to some of the world’s earliest known cave paintings, which date back 30,000 years. Because of the delicate nature of these paintings, Herzog’s access to the cave came with a number of restrictions, including being allowed just three companions. To make the most of out of this once-in-a-lifetime experience, Herzog—who was never a fan of 3D filmmaking—developed customized cameras to capture every angle of the Cave as a tribute to the artists that created the paintings.

Directors: Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen, and Nicole Newnham
Year released: 2006

Before George Clooney donned military attire for The Monuments Men, this Emmy-nominated documentary showcased the extent to which Adolf Hitler and the Nazis plundered priceless works of art across Europe and the efforts the Monuments Men undertook to reclaim them and protect many more.

Director: Corinna Belz
Year released: 2011

There’s not a lot of talking in this documentary. Instead, viewers get a rare and intimate glimpse into the studio of abstract artist Gerhard Richter, and the painstaking process by which he creates his work. There are squeegees aplenty, key tools in the creation process for one of the world’s most celebrated (and profitable) living artists.

Director: Don Argott
Year released: 2009

Greed may be what lures some to the art world, but for others it truly is about the art. This was very much the case for Albert C. Barnes, a Philadelphia-based collector of Post-Impressionist paintings whose will dictated that his home be turned into an invitation-only museum for serious art collectors and students. Although his instructions were clear—he intended for his vast collection, which included works by Van Gogh, Renoir, Picasso, and Cézanne, to never leave the grounds of his foundation—improper management led to the “theft” of his $25 million collection.

Director: Harry Moses
Year released: 2006

The art documentary for non-art lovers, Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock? is an often funny look at the American art market. The film offers an up-close look at those viral stories you read about all the time, where an unassuming buyer stumbles across a rare work of art at a flea market or yard sale. In the case of Harry Moses’ documentary, that buyer in question is Teri Horton, a tough, 70-something, former long-haul truck driver who finds what may or may not be an original Jackson Pollock at a thrift store for $5. In addition to providing an in-depth look at the process of establishing provenance, the film is also a sometimes frustrating expose of the elitist way in which art is valued, and the way in which non-connoisseurs are treated.

Director: Zachary Heinzerling
Year released: 2013

Ushio Shinohara, whose unique style of painting requires him to don a pair of boxing gloves, may be the more commercially successful member of this artist couple, who have been married for 40 years. But his wife, Noriko, emerges as the victor in this touching portrait of art, love, anger, family, and sacrifice, which earned director Zachary Heinzerling a well-deserved Oscar nomination earlier this year.

Director: Neil Berkeley
Year released: 2012

Finding one’s niche in the world is one of an artist’s greatest challenges. For Wayne White, the quirky puppeteer behind Pee-wee’s Playhouse, that’s easier said than done. Though he has had the great fortune to work on Emmy-winning kid’s shows—plus music videos with Smashing Pumpkins and Peter Gabriel—the market for giant puppets is not always a bustling one. White shares his story and struggles with humor in this comedic documentary that features many of his past collaborators.

Director: Alison Klayman
Year released: 2012

The cover image of Alison Klayman’s 2012 documentary—where notorious Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei is giving a middle finger to his country—is an appropriate summary of the film, which follows the artist’s life from 2008 to 2011. This is the same time frame of Ai's frequent clashes with the Chinese government, where he was assaulted by the police, detained at an airport in Beijing, and eventually imprisoned. None these harrowing events seem to have any impact on quieting the outspoken artist, however.

Director: Megumi Sasaki
Year released: 2008

By now, the story of Herbert and Dorothy Vogel has leaked far beyond the art world. Despite the fact that he worked as a mail clerk and she as a librarian, the New York City couple—who lived in a one-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side—amassed one of the world’s most important art collections, totaling nearly 5,000 pieces from the likes of Roy Lichtenstein, Cindy Sherman, and Richard Tuttle. In 1992, they donated their collection to the National Gallery of Art so that it would forever belong to the public. Sasaki’s 2008 documentary is an intimate portrait of their life and love, and was followed with Herb & Dorothy 50x50 in 2013, a year after Herb’s passing.

Director: Lucy Walker, Karen Harley, and João Jardim
Year released: 2010

Two-time Oscar nominee Lucy Walker has a way of making what seems like two films at once—documentaries which seem to be about one thing on the surface, but underneath reveal a whole other layer of meaning and importance. In the case of 2010’s Waste Land, which she co-directed with João Hardim and Karen Harley, Walker takes yet another hybrid approach as she follows Brazilian artist Vik Muniz into the world’s largest landfill, where he works with a group of trash pickers to turn refuse into high art.

Director: Tamra Davis
Year released: 2010

Though objectivity is often an essential tool for a documentary, in the case of Tamra Davis’ 2010 biography of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the filmmaker’s friendship with the renowned New York City artist is one of the film’s clear strengths. In addition to interviews with Julian Schnabel, Larry Gagosian, and other art world giants, it’s Basquiat himself—captured in conversation with his friend at the moment his star was rising—that reveals the most about the artist, his work, and the challenges of finding success.

Director: Terry Zwigoff
Year released: 1994

Though he has been making movies for nearly 30 years, Terry Zwigoff has directed just five feature films, which stands as a testament to the importance he places on subject matter and execution. Zwigoff has a unique ability to blend the worlds of art and film in new an interesting ways, as he did in adapting Daniel Clowes’ Ghost World and Art School Confidential to the big screen.

In the case of Crumb, Zwigoff spent nearly a decade following underground cartoonist Robert Crumb, creator of Fritz the Cat, and his family to gain a deeper understanding of the tumultuous upbringing that fueled Crumb’s strange obsessions, leading to his unique career. The film was universally acclaimed, so much so that its Oscar snub led to a change in the way in which Best Documentary Oscar nominations are made.

Director: Banksy
Year released: 2010

The movie’s subject starts behind the camera in this documentary, where Los Angeles-based French ex-pat Thierry Guetta sets out to capture footage of some of the world’s best-known graffiti artists at work, only to encounter the most mysterious of them all—Banksy. Though he agrees to let Guetta film him, Banksy isn’t impressed with Guetta’s cinematic skills. Banksy takes over as the director and, in the ultimate case of role reversal, convinces Guetta to try his hand at street art. The result is the birth of Mr. Brainwash and an Oscar nomination for this fascinating film about what happens in the shadows of the street art community.