This website is about the intermedial [cross-genre media change, interaction between whole genres, specifically painting and film] use of paintings as an integral narrative part of feature films. Some TV films are included, and there will be a drift into the realm of music videos. While exceptions will inevitably be made for completion’s sake, the website does not primarily devote itself to films with fictional painters, films about the plastic arts such as sculpture, the visual arts such as photography or architecture. As regards documentaries, while they are not completely ruled out as such reference to them tends to be restricted to the biographical documentary when it illuminates a painter’s life above all by means of their paintings and/or shows them painting, which is then referred to as the Painter at Work genre, and the dramatised documentary if it has dramatised re-enactments from the artist’s life and preferably also featuring paintings and/or the act of painting. Nevertheless, such demarcations are inevitably fluid and blurred with a lot of overlap.
The website was inspired by Susan Seidelman’s 1994 short film The Dutch Master (1994) where the dental hygienist Teresa becomes fascinated by a Dutch painting in MoMa. The painting’s characters suddenly take on a life of their own and Teresa enters an erotic fantasy world of luxurious colours and sensual costumes. As a result of repeated viewings of this film the question gradually emerged as to how many other films made similar uses of paintings—and not just biographical films about painters, for example the project then expanded to include painters who have made films. To continue, please go to Inspirations and Speculations.