Between canvas and celluloid: Painted films and filmed paintings

This article investigates how artists’ attempts to inject a time element to painting through cinematic means expanded the aesthetic and affective possibilities of both mediums. These approaches include ‘painted films’ wherein the artist applies paint directly onto the celluloid in an exploration of an alternative material support for painting, as well as ‘filmed paintings’, films that display the act of a painting being made. The article surveys the historical development of these intermedial concepts and methods before offering close readings of films by José Antonio Sistiaga, Francis Lee, David Haxton, in order to demonstrate how these works simultaneously complicate the notion of medium specificity as they present new modes of, and encounters with, painting.