Artists Who Inspired Film Directors

Sep 8

3 min read

Ten directors and artists who shaped exactly how their films look.

Christopher Nolan / Francis Bacon Triptych - Oil on canvas, 1972

Nolan has cited Francis Bacon's paintings as an influence since he was young, drawn to how Bacon distorts memory and the human face. That distortion carried directly into the makeup for the Joker in The Dark Knight, an attempt to put the same bleakness onto Heath Ledger's face that Nolan sees in Bacon's canvases.

Sofia Coppola / William Eggleston Untitled, from Graceland, 1983

Coppola used William Eggleston's 1983 Graceland photographs as reference for the film's opening, before piecing in images from Priscilla Presley's own life. Eggleston had been commissioned by the Presley estate to document the house, and his muted palette shaped how Coppola shot the film.

Spike Jonze / Todd Hido Untitled #2653, 2000

Jonze built the look of Her around a single Todd Hido photograph, which he described in an interview as feeling like a memory rather than a specific place or time. The muted, blurred quality of Hido's image carried into the film's own color palette and its sense of emotional distance.

Guillermo del Toro / Francisco Goya Saturn Devouring His Son, 1820–1823

Mixed method, mural transferred to canvas Del Toro has pointed to Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son as a direct source for the Pale Man in Pan's Labyrinth, a creature with eyes set into its palms instead of a face. Goya painted the original directly onto the wall of his own house, one of the darkest works from what's now called his Black Paintings.

Ridley Scott / H.R. Giger Necronom IV, 1976

Giger designed the Alien creature himself, adapting the biomechanical style he had already built in his own sculptures and paintings, including Necronom IV. Scott hired Giger directly after seeing his work, giving the film's monster a look no in-house designer could have produced on their own.

Claire Denis / Joan Mitchell La Grande Vallée XVI, Pour Iva, 1983

Denis and Juliette Binoche looked to the painter Joan Mitchell while shaping Isabelle, the lead character in Let the Sunshine In. Mitchell's own photographs appear on screen inside the film, and her example as a working woman painter became the model Denis and Binoche used to shape the character.

Andrei Tarkovsky / Pieter Bruegel the Elder Hunters in the Snow, 1565

Tarkovsky put Bruegel's Hunters in the Snow directly into Solaris, holding on the painting long enough that it becomes its own meditation on memory and home. The 16th-century work is something the film's characters study on screen, the way the audience studies the film itself.

Wes Craven / Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893

The mask in Scream started with a Halloween costume the crew found in a shop, itself based on Munch's The Scream. Munch's twisted, hollow face has become one of horror's most reproduced images, stripped of its original context and turned into a costume-shop staple.

Wes Anderson / Jacques Henri Lartigue, Zissou’s bobsled with wheels, after the bend by the gate, 1909

For Rushmore, Anderson and his crew studied photographs by Jacques Henri Lartigue, whose way of seeing reminded him of his own lead character, Max Fischer. Prints of Lartigue's work appear taped to a classroom blackboard early in the film, and Lartigue's nickname for his brother, Zissou, later became the surname of the captain in The Life Aquatic.

Mike Leigh / J.M.W. Turner, The Fighting Temeraire, 1839

Leigh's admiration for J.M.W. Turner went far enough that he made an entire film about the painter, Mr. Turner. In an interview for Tate, Leigh pointed to specific paintings, including The Fighting Temeraire, as direct touchstones for scenes he built into the film.

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Image credits:

Todd Hido, Untitled #2653, Wirtz Art

Spike Jonze portrait, courtesy of the artist William Eggleston,

Untitled, from Graceland, Artsy.

Sofia Coppola portrait, Establishing Shot, Indiana University

Francis Bacon, Triptych, 1972, Tate Museum

Christopher Nolan portrait, Alamy

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Saturn, Museo del Prado

Guillermo del Toro (with Dan Laustsen) portrait, John Wilson/Netflix

H.R. Giger, Necronom IV, WikiArt

Ridley Scott portrait, courtesy of the artist

Joan Mitchell, La Grande Vallée XVI, Pour Iva, Joan Mitchell Foundation

Claire Denis portrait, courtesy of the artist

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Hunters in the Snow, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Andrei Tarkovsky portrait, IMDb

Edvard Munch, The Scream, National Gallery of Norway

Wes Craven portrait, The Film Stage

Wes Anderson portrait, Focus Features/Kodak

J.M.W. Turner, The Fighting Temeraire, National Gallery, London

Mike Leigh portrait, unitedfilm.cz

crtry.