A world apart | 22 November 2012

Although the starving artist in the garret is no longer the favourite public stereotype, painters and sculptors remain something of a mystery even to those who spend time looking at their work. So a film that helps to explain their assorted motivations can only be a good thing, and one as lucid and entertaining as Jake Auerbach’s latest offering, The Last Art Film (available on DVD at £16.99), should be welcomed with open hearts and minds.

Jake Auerbach is a distinguished film-maker with a string of successful artist documentaries behind him (his subjects have included Sickert, Freud, his father Frank and Allen Jones), and he has distilled all his experience of the strange ways of artists into this 94-minute film. It is thematically arranged, exploring the practicalities of art training and studio practice, juxtaposing interviews with various living artists (Tom Phillips, Michael Craig-Martin, Grayson Perry, Tracey Emin, Joe Tilson and his son Jake, Gary Hume, Celia Paul) with quotes from the dead great (Delacroix, Degas, Matisse, Titian, Gauguin).