R B Kitaj: A Life

Synopsis

A Documentary about Painter R B Kitaj. Though Kitaj was one of the most public of artists, making some of the most immediate, accessible and honest images of our age, he was also a very private man, determined to avoid the spontaneity of film. He finally relented in 1994 and the result is a remarkably candid look at his life and work. "My pictures had and have secret lives, and so there were things I did not tell, a lot of stuff I did not say back then which I'm saying now." R. B. Kitaj. The film transports us from the early years of baseball and girls in upstate New York, to his years as a merchant seaman on the Romance Run , through post war Vienna to London where he placed himself at the centre of 'The School of London' with friends David Hockney, Michael Andrews, Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff and Lucian Freud.