If you want to find inspiration for all the new art supplies you've stocked up on, or you're simply wanting to delve into a history lesson in a more interesting way, now's the perfect time to stream an art documentary.
Whether it's carousing the bars and bedrooms of the Lower East Side with Nan Goldin in the 1980s, smoking with David Lynch, or staring into the eyes of Marina Abramović, getting to know the work of someone who's spent their life investigating visual and experiential ideas is a valuable use of time — or, at the very least, something to look suddenly knowledgeable about.
SEE ALSO: The 30 best documentaries on NetflixThe best documentaries about artists give you more than a PowerPoint presentation of the artist’s portfolio, instead letting you into their studios and homes, interviewing their friends and enemies, and dredging up as much old and new footage as possible, digging into the history and context of the artist and how it affects their work.
It’s actually kind of hard to track down some of the best to stream online — they appear at film festivals or are available to buy, but aren’t available to stream that often. So we’ve tracked some of the best art documentaries and where you can stream them. Get into it.
1. Kusama - Infinity
Credit: Tokyo Lee Productions, Inc.One of the world’s most instantly recognisable, influential, and successful artists — and the top-selling living female artist in the world — Yayoi Kusama has not had an easy road to fame. The Japanese artist known for her extraordinary Infinity Mirror Rooms, installations covered in polka dots, and her obsessive, repetitive pattern-work, Kusama shared press attention with Andy Warhol during the '60s in America, and worked through a time of unbridled sexism and racism in the art world (and beyond it).
This documentary film takes a look at the artist’s long life from her tough, conservative Japanese upbringing to her move to the U.S. post-WWII, through career success and battles with mental health, up to her time spent living in a psychiatric institution in Tokyo. — Shannon Connellan, UK Editor
How to watch: Kusama - Infinity is now streaming on Prime Video.
2. The Andy Warhol Diaries
Credit: Andy Warhol Foundation/Courtesy of NetflixSix hours doesn’t seem enough to cover the life and impact of the most influential artist of the 20th century, but director Andrew Rossi (Page One: Inside the New York Times) makes every minute (or should we say every "15 minutes") count. And this only really covers Andy Warhol’s final decade of life! Don’t look for too much on The Factory here.
For 11 years from 1976 until the artist's death in 1987, Warhol would dictate his day's events over the phone to writer Pat Hackett, who later edited and published them posthumously (and controversially) in 1989. This doc adapts that book's structure, using actor Bill Irwin (slightly manipulated by A.I.) to uncannily narrate important passages in Warhol’s "own" voice. Still, the more important insights generally come from those interviewed who were in Warhol’s circle.
But the most revolutionary aspect of Rossi’s take is his insistent reframing of Warhol as a sexual being. Not the weird wispy sexless creature the pop art icon usually outwardly presented himself as, using that asexuality as a shield in still-unfriendly times, but a flesh-and-blood man with longtime lovers and a voracious sexual appetite. That ultimately makes these Diaries king. – Jason Adams, Entertainment Reporter
How to watch: The Andy Warhol Diaries is now streaming on Netflix.
3. Faces Places
Credit: Agnes Varda/JR/Cine Tamaris/Social AnimalsAn unlikely friendship between two artists forms the core of Faces Places, with truly beautiful results for everyone. Nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary, Faces Places follows a large-scale project rolled out in small villages across rural France formulated by the late and great director Agnès Varda and muralist/photographer JR. The artworks themselves are stunning portraits of people they meet, transforming and honouring the installation locations, but the true beauty of this film is the friendship between the two artists — yes, literally the friends we made along the way. — S.C.
How to watch: Faces Places is streaming on AMC+, Mubi, and Kanopy.
4. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
Credit: NeonFilmmaker Laura Poitras (Citizenfour) delivered one of the most vital artist documentaries of our age in 2022 with All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, focused on photographer and professional shit-stirrer Nan Goldin — and it’s only apt too, given what a vital presence Goldin remains to this day. Creating a triple portrait of Goldin’s professional, personal, and political life, Poitras masterfully weaves the story of a woman who’s been to hell and back, but keeps charging into the flames when needed.
Goldin’s vibrantly scuzzy portraits of the '80s downtown NYC scene give way to her current-day activism demanding punishment from the billionaire Sackler Family who got rich off the opioid crisis. But the genius of the film (which won the Golden Lion in Venice and was nominated for an Oscar) lies in the way this all winds into Goldin’s life and her art. It’s a film with a firm grasp on what drives an artist, and how to get that across to an audience in simple and profoundly moving terms. – J.A.
How to watch: All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is now streaming on Max.
5. Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat
Credit: Magnolia PicturesBefore you watch the exceptional, life-spanning Jean-Michel Basquiat documentary, The Radiant Child, take a look at the New York artist's younger, formative years in director Sara Driver's illuminating documentary, Boom for Real.
Rather than looking at the New York artist's sadly brief and wildly famous years, the documentary looks squarely at the influence of his time as an 18-year-old making ends meet and moving with the artist crowd on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the late '70s. The sheer involvement of the scene in Basquiat's early development as an artist is laid bare, with plenty of awesome old footage and photographs to dig into, and fascinating interviews with close friends, former flatmates, and contemporaries including Kenny Scarf, Fab 5 Freddy, and Jim Jarmusch, all of whom describe him with as much love, admiration, and subtle digs as old friends do. — S.C.
How to watch: Boom for Real is now streaming on Kanopy.
6. Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures
Credit: DogwoofInfamous '80s provocateur Robert Mapplethorpe managed to turn even the stems of flowers into something libidinous and perverse, and director Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey’s 2016 doc on his photography is the best way to see how he managed it. Certainly no other biopic has reached the core of the artist's style like this, even if this is formally a pretty standard birth-to-grave portrait.
What takes it that extra mile are the vintage clips of Mapplethorpe himself and the interviews with those who surrounded him (although the absence of musician Patti Smith, who wrote the hit book Just Kids about her relationship with Mapplethorpe, is noticeable). Look at the Pictures is more than willing to stare straight into the abyss of Mapplethrope’s flaws too, which seem legion. And yet his images, simultaneously terrifying and funny, still linger differently to the rest. – J.A.
How to watch: Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures is now streaming on Max.
7. Marina Abramović — The Artist Is Present
Credit: Andrew H. Walker/Getty ImagesTake a seat in front of the self-described "grandmother of performance art" for an hour or so — Marina Abramović did this exact thing for hours in her iconic performance at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Lending its name to the documentary film too, The Artist Is Present is the work that usually sets off furious debates, but is nonetheless one that changed performance art forever, and saw hundreds of thousands of people turning up to the experience in 2010. For 736 hours, Abramovic sat across from each participant, not saying a word. From start to finish, this fascinating documentary goes behind the scenes of this intimate, now legendary feat of endurance and pushing one's limits. — S.C.
How to watch: Marina Abramović — The Artist Is Present is now streaming on Max.
8. Brillo Box (3¢ Off)
Credit: Santi Visalli/Getty ImagesIf you still haven’t gotten enough Warhol, this 2016 documentary from director Lisanne Skyler is highly recommended, taking as it does an entirely different tact at approaching the icon. Skylar follows a single piece of Warhol’s iconic pop-art sculpture (the so-called “Brillo Box” on the title) across the decades, looking at the people who own it each step of the way.
Starting with a modest family who just wanted to own something cool (the director’s own family, as it were), and winding us through to the astronomical prices the box would eventually fetch in an auction forty years later, this doc captures everything from the way our relationship with art has changed over the years, to the somewhat stomach churning mega-millions beast the market has become today. It’s a shockingly vivid picture of the last century and a half of art history all under a simple soapy label. – J.A.
How to watch: Brillo Box (3¢ Off) is now streaming on Max.
9. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
Credit: IFC FilmsFilmmaker and journalist Alison Klayman's exceptional 2012 documentary about prolific dissident artist Ai Weiwei is one of the best you'll watch. Featuring interviews with Ai and those closest to him, Never Sorry is an intimate, as-it-happens portrait of the political artist and activist who quite literally flips the bird to power, censorship, police brutality, and injustice. A Sundance special jury prize winner, the film spends significant personal time with the artist after he was assaulted by Chengu police in 2009 and around his detainment for 81 days by Chinese government authorities in 2011. Klayman became a key voice speaking out about Ai's arrest in 2011, speaking to news outlets from CNN to the Wall Street Journal.
"The reason I wanted to make a film about Ai Weiwei," Klayman's director statement reads, "was because I wanted to make a movie about a creative and principled artist, willing to make calculated risks to push society to grapple with its own shortcomings."
How to watch: Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry is now streaming on AMC+ and Kanopy.
Featured Video For You Dissident artist Ai Weiwei recreated a Monet masterpiece entirely in Lego10. David Lynch: The Art Life
Credit: Scott Dudelson/Getty ImagesWhat is "The Art Life", according to the director David Lynch? "You drink coffee, you smoke cigarettes, and you paint, and that’s it."
Of course, Lynch has done a load of other things with his own "art life" — like direct movies, the thing that he’s best known for. But he’s also a talented painter and sculptor who channels his dream-world onto a still-life canvas in between the times when he’s projecting his nightmares into our living-rooms, and this 2016 documentary from filmmakers Jon Nguyen, Rick Barnes, and Olivia Neergaard-Holm focuses mostly on that aspect of his life. We sit alongside Lynch in his studio, and we watch him drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, and paint. And he talks a lot about what drives him. Ultimately it’s a rare, intimate portrait of a man who’s notoriously slippery about assigning meaning to his work. – J.A.
How to watch: David Lynch: The Art Life is now streaming on The Criterion Channel.
11. Finding Vivian Maier
One of the most celebrated of outsider artists, Vivian Maier was a nanny and housekeeper for her entire solitary life in Chicago — one who just happened to carry a camera with her everywhere she went. Like fellow Chicago outsider artist Henry Darger, Maier’s work was only uncovered and appreciated after her death in 2009. The story goes that a year after she died the filmmaker John Maloof discovered a box of her photos in an auction, he scanned the images online, and a mystery unfurled before him — one which this Oscar-nominated documentary of his follows. Maier’s work is extraordinary, and her story perhaps even moreso, and Maloof tells the mystery of it all with riveting precision. – J.A.
How to watch: Finding Vivian Maier is now streaming on AMC+.
12. Laerte-se
Credit: NetflixLygia Barbosa and Eliane Brum's documentary about Brazilian cartoonist Laerte Coutinho is quiet, frank, and intensely personal on her own terms. Alongside animations which bring her lauded comic strips to life, Laerte has countless open conversations on the couch, around the dinner table, and while doing errands with the documentary makers about being transgender and the experience of transitioning, alongside broader discussions around identity, gender, desire, politics, discovering our true selves, and our relationship with our bodies.
How to watch: Laerte-se is now streaming on Netflix.
13. Master of Light
Credit: HBOAt the age of 19, George Anthony Morton was incarcerated for 11 years when he was busted with his mother’s cocaine. Years later, he’d find out just how involved she was in his imprisonment. But that extraordinary darkness is not the focus of Master of Light, Ruth Boesten’’s 2022 documentary about how Morton took the entirety of his twenties being torn away from him and turned it into an extraordinary skill with classical painting. A portrait of resilience in the face of trauma, Master of Light is itself an object of art, gorgeously captured by the cinematographer Jurgen Lisse, seemingly taking to heart what Morton says at one point: “I am not what has happened to me, but what I choose to become.” This doc makes true beauty out of the darkness. – J.A.
How to watch: Master of Light is now streaming on Max.
14. Exit Through the Gift Shop
Credit: Courtesy of Mongrel Media.If you haven’t seen this film connected to elusive street artist Banksy, you'll probably have heard about it. Hilarious, weird, and questionably real, Exit Through the Gift Shop hinges around the inimitable Thierry Guetta, a.k.a. Mr Brainwash, a French immigrant, shopkeeper, and insistent artist who lives in Los Angeles and never really puts his camera down. Without giving the game away, Guetta’s enthusiasm for street art and celebrity leads the film through a series of encounters with the biggest names in the scene: Invader, Shepard Fairey, Swoon, Neck Face, and Banksy themselves. And of Banksy’s work, you get to see some real fun. Although there’s been speculation that the film is fake, who really cares? — S.C.
How to watch: Exit Through the Gift Shop isn't currently streaming but it's available to buy/rent through iTunes etc.
15. Obey Giant: The Art and Dissent of Shepard Fairey
Credit: Vince Bucci/Getty ImagesIf you close your eyes right now you can no doubt picture the image of Barack Obama and the word “HOPE” written beneath in big block letters that became so iconic during the 2008 presidential campaign — that was the artist Shepard Fairey, and this 2017 documentary from Oscar winning director James Moll (The Last Days) tells the story of that image, along with Fairey’s many inspirations and intentions across his entire career. Indeed Fairey proves to be an invaluable resource on the latter, giving us in his interviews a whirlwind history lesson on street art and its meanings and best examples over the past several decades, which is where this doc best shines. – J.A.
How to watch: Obey Giant: The Art and Dissent of Shepard Fairey is now streaming on Hulu.
16. Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang
Credit: Hiro Ihara/NetflixIf you’d like to watch what it takes to install and successfully realise a large-scale installation work, the likes of which Cai Guo-Qiang has made his career on, watch Sky Ladder. The Chinese, New-York based artist specialises in event-based art using pyrotechnics and gunpowder...which is a roundabout way of saying he’s really into explosions. This documentary takes a look at some of the artist’s most show-stopping work to date, notably his Black Rainbow projects, but really focuses on one of his most ambitious, personal projects: the Sky Ladder, a 1,650-foot ladder of fire climbing into the heavens above the artist’s hometown. It’s highly emotional and a true testament to the creation of something beautiful...yes, through explosions. — S.C.
How to watch: Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang is now streaming on Netflix
17. Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal and Greed
Credit: NetflixIf there’s one subject that comes up time and time again amid these documentaries it’s the subject of commerce – in the last 50 years or so money has all but swallowed art. And so there is something inherently straight-to-the-chase about that with director Joshua Rofé’s 2021 look at the battle for the “empire” of PBS’ famous “fluffy little cloud” painter Bob Ross. Nobody ever mistook Ross’ landscape paintings for great art, no matter how comforting it was to watch him shape them on his PBS program, but they sure did turn into big money all the same. By cutting off all the fat (meaning “the art itself”, as a substantial thing), Happy Accidents Betrayal and Greed might just be the most honest portrait of the modern art world that there is. – J.A.
How to watch: Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal and Greed is now streaming on Netflix.
18. In the Realms of the Unreal
Credit: John Angelillo/UPI/ShutterstockPerhaps the most celebrated outsider artist of all time, all of Henry Darger’s writings and paintings were only discovered in 1973 while he was dying in hospital. In his small Chicago apartment, Darger’s landlords Nathan and Kiyoko Lerner found that he had squirreled away hundreds of drawings, paintings, and manuscripts, including his infamous 15,145-page fantasy novel called The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion.
That’s how in 2004 director Jessica Yu, working with the Lerners (who had taken over Darger’s estate since he’d had no known relatives or will at the time), came to tell Darger’s story, which is about as wild as they come. And once you’ve dived into the fascinating and disturbing alternate reality of the Vivian Girls, there’s no escape. – J.A.
How to watch: In the Realms of the Unreal is now streaming on YouTube.
19. Cutie and the Boxer
Director Zachary Heinzerling’s beautifully-shot, intimate, Oscar-nominated documentary takes you inside the studio, home, and 40-year marriage of Japanese artists Norika Shinohara and Ushio Shinohara. Cutie and the Boxer looks at the partnership between the pair, and how complicated love can be, especially when it comes to supporting each other's careers. Known for his boxing paintings, Ushio’s success comes long-supported and steered by Noriko, a multidisciplinary artist in her own right and a woman who put her own career on pause while her husband's soared. The film features brand new artwork created in front of your eyes — it is just so incredibly satisfying to watch Ushio punch the crap out of a canvas with his boxing glove "brushes", with paint splattering everywhere — and animations bring Norika’s work to life on screen in strange vignettes. — S.C.
How to watch: Cutie and the Boxer is now streaming on Cinemax via Prime Video.
20. Bill Cunningham New York
Credit: Gareth Cattermole/Getty ImagesA constant presence on the streets of Manhattan for decades, Bill Cunningham would ride up on his bicycle and photograph anybody who screamed stylish to him. Some people might have been branded invasive with this technique, but Cunningham turned it into an artform, not to mention two columns for the Style section of The New York Times. Photographing supermodels, celebrities, and college students with equal aplomb, the man has as much to do with the shaping of fashion from the 1970s on as did anybody — Anna Wintour herself will says as much here in Richard Press’s 2010 documentary. Still it’s the sections on Cunningham’s personal life that linger the most, especially his artist residence apartment inside of Carnegie Hall, in danger of being swiped out from under him. — J.A.
How to watch: Bill Cunningham New York is now streaming on Max.
21.The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography
Credit: Errol MorrisA good friend of Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan – as well as the documentarian Errol Morris, who directs this film about his friend – the photographer Elsa Dorfman took great big polaroids of her subjects using a now discontinued machine that delivers enormous 20 x 24 inch prints. And like those oversized photos, Dorfman is a big bundle of joy. A self-proclaimed “good Jewish girl” who nevertheless took plenty of nude self-portraits, she’s exactly the sort of character full of contradictions and personality that we come to these kinds of docs for. And beside her general amiability she nevertheless understands that “the meaning of the photograph [is] when someone dies.” A true artist and real character, one of a kind. – J.A.
How to watch: The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography is now streaming on Max.
22. F For Fake
Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesOrson Welles, the original king of Fake News with his infamous 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast that sent its convinced listeners into a tizzy, mines that predilection of his in this 1975 pseudo-documentary. What starts off as a portrait of world-renowned art forger Elmyr de Hory, F For Fake quickly becomes enamored with de Hory’s biographer Clifford Irving, who himself forged a so-called "authorized" biography of notorious recluse Howard Hughes. From there, Welles becomes enamored with all sorts of things, not least (as ever) himself, but nonetheless strives to probe questions of authenticity around the inherently inauthentic act of creative fiction. – J.A.
How to watch: F For Fake is now streaming on The Criterion Channel.
23. Leaving Home, Coming Home: A Portrait of Robert Frank
Credit: Patrick Downs/Los Angeles Times via Getty ImagesA searingly intimate documentary on the photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank, whose portraits of American loneliness in world class collections like The Americans and Cocksucker Blues remain unparalleled. So intimate that Frank himself delayed the film’s release (it was shot in 2004 but wasn’t released until Frank died in 2019), presumably because of the raw moments contained herein where the photographer discusses his son Pablo's death by suicide. Thankfully, director and friend Gerald Fox was able to eventually gift this portrait of his friend to the world, as it enriches the man’s already immeasurable legacy with inklings of what was happening in the empty spaces of his hauntingly gorgeous photos. – J.A.
How to watch: Leaving Home, Coming Home: A Portrait of Robert Frank is now streaming on Tubi.
24. Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski
Credit: NetflixThe biggest fan of the Polish sculptor and painter Stanisław Szukalski? No less than the star of Titanic himself, Leonardo Dicaprio. (You’d think that he'd have a thing for Da Vinci, but here we are.) Blame Leo’s dad George, an underground comic artist and co-producer on DiCaprio's 2018 doc about Szukalski, considered by many to be the "mad genius" of the 20th century. Besides sculpture and painting, Szukalski also invented a language called Protong and an entire concept of world history called Zermatism, which saw us all as descendants of the people of Easter Island. And oh yes, also there are Yetis? Just watch the doc and let them explain it — it’s really something! – J.A.
How to watch: Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski is now streaming on Netflix.
25. Eye of the Beholder: The Art of Dungeons and Dragons
Lest we encase ourselves in the amber of snobbery for this entire list, let’s give some love to the artisans who worked on a slightly different front — the decades of fantasy illustrators and designers who gave the world’s most famous role-playing game, Dungeons and Dragons, its iconic look.
This 2019 doc from directors Kelley Slagle and Brian Stillman interviews the artists about where their inspiration came from, and how these drawings enlivened the gameplay itself. Watching a bunch of people nerd out over Dave Trampier’s 1978 cover for the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook, with its jewel-eyed demon standing tall and terrifying over a pack of multi-colored scavengers raiding it, is literal geek nirvana. – J.A.
How to watch: Eye of the Beholder: The Art of Dungeons and Dragons is now streaming on Prime Video.
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