Considering that it’s the dominant visual medium, it’s crazy there are relatively so few good theatrical movies about art and artists, and fewer still about the contemporary art world.
Michael Walker’s “Paint” looks to change that, following the travails of a trio of young New York painters who recently graduated from art school, and their various efforts to survive, let alone be successful in an art world twisted by trends, uninterested in newbies and deeply corrupted by money.
It’s made worse by the unaccountable success of one classmate they consider less talented, so the cynicism grows among the three — Dan (Josh Caras), Kelsey (Olivia Lucardi) and Quinn (Paul Donahue).
Of them, Dan is still bankrolled by his wealthy suburban parents; Kelsey makes ends meet by waitressing; and Quinn lives in a studio so realistically small it looks like a closet.
Though we really don’t get a good look at any of their work, Dan is told his work needs to be edgier, so he considers hard drugs and embarks on an ill-advised project doing nudes of his mother (Amy Hargreaves). That his friend Quinn is hired to do preliminary photos complicate relationships all around.
Kelsey becomes a fangirl around a grizzled barfly who is a celebrated painter she studied and copied in school — and who ends up betraying her.
It’s all pretty fast moving and credible in Walker’s vivid condemporary New York landscape. It helps that the writer-director is an indie movie pro whose work goes back to “Chasing Sleep” 20 years ago.