Two critically acclaimed documentaries about art, Finding Vivian Maier and Tim’s Vermeer, have recently been released on DVD. The holds list for those titles is a bit long, so while you wait for your copy to come in feel free to check out these other fascinating documentaries about art and the lives of artists.
Like Vivian Maier, the art of the reclusive Henry Darger was not discovered until after his death. Darger lived alone, making his living as a janitor. Once he passed, his unique 1,500 page masterwork was uncovered. His story is told in the film In the Realms of the Unreal.
Mark Hogancamp, subject of the film Marwencol, didn’t set out to be an artist. His work constructing and populating a model town was created as a means of coping with the trauma he suffered after being brutally attacked. However, the raw power of his emotional photographs caught the attention of the art world.
While these documentaries are cropping up with more frequency nowadays, few films have surpassed the unflinching portrait of underground comics artist Robert Crumb in director Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb. The film was released twenty years ago and can be seen as the template for many of the documentaries that followed. It’s a work of art in its own right.
~posted by Mike
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