Around the world with Art on Screen

Filmmaker Phil Grabsky started the Exhibition on Screen series in 2011. He says it's part of a new genre he calls "event cinema" which he traces back to 2007 with the Met Opera theatrical screenings and also includes National Theatre Live and Bolshoi Ballet performances. These programs, usually featuring major artists, enable people all around the world to see high-quality cinema showings of exhibitions, concerts, ballets, operas and plays they might never otherwise be able to experience.

Grabsky is coming to Australia to introduce screenings of his latest film, David Hockney at The Royal Academy: A Bigger Picture 2012 and 82 Portraits and One Still Life 2016. As the title suggests it was filmed over a number of years and focuses on two major exhibitions by the man Grabsky calls "the most popular artist in Britain".

"My own view is as far as British artists are concerned he's the most popular and he's the best."

Grabsky says with living artists, popularity tends to be allied to character and Hockney, being a man who "doesn't talk in artspeak", is not off-putting.

"He's available, accessible."

As for his talent, Grabsky says Hockney is a bit like Vincent van Gogh in that his work is immediately appealing, unlike some older art where you have to understand Christian iconography, or some modern art which deals in the abstract and can be difficult to fathom.

"Half of it's landscapes and half of it is figurative or still life," he says of Hockney's work.

"It's clear and he uses realistic colour."

For the portraits, Hockney set himself a challenge: to paint each of them in three days, with people sitting for six to eight hours each day.

But, he says, like van Gogh, for those who want to spend the time and effort, there's more going on stylistically and narratively, beneath the colourful surfaces of Hockney's work.

"What's inspiring about Hockney is he's exploring new technology," Grabsky says, pointing out the artist's iPad and video work in recent years alongside more traditional forms, unusual for a man in his ninth decade.

Hockney is the first living artist filmed for Exhibiton on Screen and that has an obvious advantage in that he is available to talk about his life and work - in interviews with the artistic director of the Royal Academy, Tim Marlow - alongside the critics and historians who normally feature in such films. Grabsky says that in general  he has  been a little cautious in making films about the living rather than the dead.

"Some contemporary artists are so consumed with their persona; the persona is what sells them," he says, while not naming any names.

"Hockney doesn't care - he's established his reputation; he can be straightforward and honest."

One of the challenges, he says, in making films about the artists of today is wondering who among them will be regarded in a century or so as being among the greats. He names Tracey Emin as one British artist currently feted he isn't sure will be remembered as well as someone like Goya.

His filmmaking career began in 1985 with the formation of Seventh Art Pictures and has enabled him to pursue  his interests: classical music, art, social history.  He made a series of music documentaries on classical composers  such as Beethoven and Chopin that were released in cinemas.

"In Search of Mozart ran in some Australian cinemas for six months ... audiences had an appetite for culture."

The advent of digital technology with its pristine image and sound quality - "cinema doesn't need to get any better" - led him to focus on major artists and in 2011 he made the first of the Exhibition On Screen films,  about Leonardo da Vinci.

"It was shown in 30 countries, including Australia. Now we're in 60 countries and we've made 19 films and we're currently making numbers 20, 21 and 22."

Last year there was a film about Monet focusing on his letters; among the subjects coming up are  Cezanne and Michelangelo.

He says he has been keen to do something with an Australian gallery and while out here will be talking to the Art Gallery of NSW and possibly the National Gallery of Australia about possibilities for the future.

But it might be some time in coming to fruition. Grabsky says he has no shortage of international institutions eager to collaborate with him - quite the opposite, in fact; between the places that approach him and the ideas he comes up with he has more than enough to keep him going.

"To be honest there are too many possibilities  ... There's no shortage of ideas."

"One of the things television gets exceptionally wrong is ''People aren't interested in art.''

He says this is wrong for two reasons: "One, people are interested; two, you have to provide things so people become interested."

The two Hockney exhibitions covered in the film attracted a total of 750,0000 visitors, he says, and he adds that in a given week more people in Britain will go to art galleries than will go to a football match.

"That's not reflected on television in Britain," he says - nor in Australia, he adds, where even stations like the ABC and SBS, the latter formerly an avid purchaser of his films, seem as interested in the arts as they once were.

David Hockney at The Royal Academy of Arts is screening in Australian cinemas from May 3. Phil Grabsky will be appearing in Melbourne at Palace Balwyn on May 7 and Cinema Nova May 8, Dendy Canberra on May 9, and in Sydney at Hayden Orpheum May 10, and Dendy Sydney Opera Quays May 11. See cinema website for details or visit exhibitiononscreen.com