12 Great Art Movies and Shows to Stream Right Now

In a double win, Adrien Brody recently scored the Oscar for Best Actor for his powerful role in The Brutalist, and the film is available to rent or buy to view at home.

This news inspired us to ask Getty staff members which other films and TV shows they’re curling up with right now. Here’s a look at what’s on our screens this spring.

Velvet Buzzsaw

Netflix

With a stellar cast, including Jake Gyllenhaal, Toni Collette, and John Malkovich, Velvet Buzzsaw (2019) is a thriller that unfolds within Los Angeles’s contemporary art scene. It kicks off when the body of fictional artist Vetril Dease—and his body of work—are discovered by an art gallery assistant. After finding out the artist is without an heir, the assistant’s gallery snaps up the cache, and a feeding frenzy—and murders—ensue.

“Velvet Buzzsaw contains a corny horror plot about art that kills, but its satire about the contemporary art world—its fickleness, popularity contests, and greed—is spot on and hilarious!” says Lyra Kilston, senior editor, Public Affairs.

Portrait Artist of the Year

Amazon Prime and Tubi

In this long-running British TV series, amateur and professional portrait artists compete for a commission to paint an esteemed British celebrity. The resulting work will hang in a major British museum. In each episode, nine artists split up into groups of three to paint various British actors, musicians, athletes, and writers—and they only have four hours. Three judges—an artist and two art historians—choose one winner per episode, and that artist moves on to a semifinal and then final round.

“I love seeing the artists’ process: how they choose a composition and palette, capture a likeness or choose not to, how they know when to stop,” says Jennifer Roberts, head of Editorial. “I also enjoy hearing the judges’ rationale for choosing the winners—even though I’m sometimes shocked by their choices.”

Roberts also recommends streaming the show’s “equally engaging” companion series, Landscape Artist of the Year. In this series, artists set up their easels in idyllic locations around the UK.

F for Fake

Max and others

This 1973 Orson Welles film—his last—is a docudrama following four people: Elmyr de Hory, a professional art forger; Clifford Irving, de Hory’s biographer; Oja Kodar, a woman who claimed Picasso painted 22 portraits of her that she kept a secret; and Welles as himself.

“It’s a classic, and it’s relevant to the worlds of art collecting, art crime, art production, and more,” says Mark Pyzyk, data analyst and facilitator at the Getty Research Institute (GRI). “People have called it an extremely early ‘video essay’ in the YouTube style (about 40 years before such a thing was even possible). It’s a very thoughtful meditation on entertainment, illusion, performance, and art.” Welles also focuses his lens on France’s Chartres Cathedral and offers a poignant monologue on authorship.

Koyaanisqatsi

Tubi and others

This 1982 experimental indie film by Godfrey Reggio drew its title from the Hopi word meaning “life out of balance.” The movie focuses on the tension between the artificial and natural worlds.

“Koyaanisqatsi blew my mind when it came out in the ’80s, and I frequently return to it,” says Marc Grobman, designer, IT educational specialist. “Philip Glass’s soundtrack is mesmerizing and thrilling, and the time-lapse visuals are beautiful even when they are horrifying. Now, because it was so influential, you recognize pieces of it from the echoes it’s had in other films and shows. It feels very contemporary, but some details remind you that it is also a historical snapshot from 40-plus years ago.”

Official trailer for Problemista on YouTube

Problemista

Max and others

Centering around a Salvadoran immigrant who moves to New York City to fulfill his dream of becoming a toy designer, this 2023 film by Julio Torres is a surrealist’s ball of comedy with a huge heart. Tilda Swinton’s Elizabeth, an art critic whose artist husband is cryogenically frozen, is deliciously outrageous, and Isabella Rossellini’s narration lends a children’s bedtime story quality.

Problemista is based on Torres’s own story as a Salvadoran immigrant and is as much a meditation on creativity and dreams as it is on the US immigration system, which is brilliantly likened to an escape-room-style maze in the film.

Shirkers

Netflix

In 1992, teenager Sandi Tan and her friends shot Singapore’s first road movie with Georges Cardona, an American film teacher, as their mentor. When the footage was in the can (70 cans, to be exact), Cardona disappeared with it. Twenty-three years later, after receiving the lost footage from Cardona’s widow, Tan embarked on a mission to re-create the film as a documentary with the original footage included. She called it Shirkers (2018), the original title, as an homage to people who spurn societal norms.

“The filmmaker is reflecting on a failed movie she made as a teen because the final piece of work was stolen,” says Dominique Cojuangco, library assistant III at the GRI Interlibrary Loan department. “While presented as a mystery, it feels like a thriller for anyone who knows what it’s like to create art. The premise is already interesting, but what makes it captivating is how you can visually see Tan construct her memory, and therefore her emotions, of that experience.”

The Souvenir

Max and others

The title of filmmaker Joanna Hogg’s semi-autobiographical 2019 movie refers to a painting by 18th-century French artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard that the two main characters view together. The plot follows the pair—Julie, a young film student in early ’80s London trying to find her artistic voice, and Anthony, the charismatic and dangerous antagonist—as they form a romantic relationship that both threatens and pushes Julie’s intellectual and creative abilities. She is played by Tilda Swinton’s daughter, Honor Swinton Byrne, and actor, author, and filmmaker Richard Ayoade shines in a hilarious dinner scene. Will life imitate art for Julie, or will it be the other way around?

If you enjoy The Souvenir, you’ll probably love its sequel, The Souvenir Part II (2021), where Julie reflects on her relationship with Anthony (played by Tom Burke) and makes her graduation film. The scene where she debuts it is Michel Gondry-esque moving and dreamlike.

La Chimera

Hulu and others

Set in early 1980s Italy, this dreamlike 2023 film directed by Alice Rohrwacher follows a British archaeologist and tomb raider who has a supernatural ability to locate Etruscan graves. Blending action with magical realism, the line-blurring work has drawn disparate comparisons to films like Indiana Jones and Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma.

“I just watched La Chimera, and it’s a great meditation on the meaning and value of antiquities and archaeological excavation in the modern era (specifically Etruscan antiquities in this case),” says Heather Macdonald, senior program officer at the Getty Foundation.

Blown Away

Netflix

If you’ve ever been “blown away” by a Chihuly sculpture, you will love the creativity and artistry on display in this Netflix series. Glass blowers descend on “North America’s largest hot shop,” a custom-built facility in Ontario, Canada, to participate in challenges that turn ideas into tangible glass art. One of the most memorable challenges? Contestants turn glass into pieces inspired by one of the seven deadly sins.

“I love a good competition show, and the Netflix series Blown Away is one of my favorites,” says Cole Calhoun, senior communications lead. “Now in its fourth season, it features up-and-coming glass blowers competing for a residency at the Corning Museum of Glass. Each artist has their own unique style of glassblowing and fun backstories, so it’s a perfect wholesome binge.”

Related show: The Great Pottery Throw Down on Max

Each season a group of amateur potters competes in throwing and hand-building challenges in Stoke-on-Trent, home of England’s pottery industry.

The official trailer for The Brutalist on YouTube

The Brutalist

For rent or purchase on YouTube and others

Is artistic achievement worth the personal sacrifices it often demands? That’s the central question at the heart of Brady Corbet’s 2024 film about a Brutalist architect named László Toth (played by Adrien Brody). Marcel Breuer and Tadao Ando enthusiasts will love this film. And there are stunning scenes shot in the marble quarries of Carrara; you’ll think you can feel the alpine air from your seat. The Brutalist is one to watch in more ways than one: it recently took home three Golden Globe awards and three Oscars.