'Never Look Away' Asks: Why Make Art? Who Is It For?

The new film "Never Look Away" is about an artist, a painter, who's first exposed to modern art as a child growing up in Nazi Germany. He's taken by his aunt to an exhibit of modern art that was curated by the Nazis to show what degenerate art looks like - the kind of art the Nazis are banning. By the time the boy is an art student, the Russian Communists have taken over East Germany, where the boy lives. And all art is expected to be propaganda, showing images of happy, working people.

As a young man, he flees to West Germany and attends an art school known to be avant-garde. The artists there consider representational painting, the kind of painting he does, to be obsolete. Implicit in the movie are questions like, why make art? What is art for? And who is it for? The movie is inspired by the life of Gerhard Richter, one of the most famous German painters of his generation.

My guest is the film's writer and director, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. His 2006 film, "The Lives Of Others," won an Oscar for best foreign language film. That film was set in East Germany, about a playwright and an officer of the Stasi, the state secret police, who spies on the playwright. The new film "Never Look Away" was nominated for an Oscar.