Shoot The Works

The latest art-onscreen movie fixes a gaze on British legend David Hockney.

- Russell Baillie

Phil Grabsky has spent many years putting art into the arthouse with the Exhibition on Screen series he started in 2011. Since, the English documentary director-producer has shown and explained the works of many of the world’s great painters – Manet, Vermeer, Munch, Matisse, Leonardo, Rembrandt and more – on cinema screens in more than 50 countries.

His latest, his company’s 19th, is the first to feature a living artist. In David Hockney at the Royal Academy of Arts, the veteran British painter is interviewed during two major exhibitions of new work: his 2012 A Bigger Picture, of landscapes from his native Yorkshire, and 2016’s 82 Portraits and 1 Still-Life. The film shows Hockney, now 80, still as prolific, energised, funny and dapper as the man who emerged in the 1960s pop art movement.

After 18 documentaries about great artists at last, you’ve got a live one.