In this documentary, director Emile de Antonio examines the New York School of painting from 1940 through 1970 in interviews with artists, art critics, dealers and collectors. The paintings are shot in color and juxtaposed with black-and-white interviews, which appear in chronological order reflecting the painters’ emergence into art world. The artists interviewed are Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Hans Hoffman, Jasper Johns, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Phillip Pavia, Jackson Pollock, Larry Poons, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella and Andy Warhol. Also interviewed are art dealer Leo Castelli, Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art curators Henry Geldzahler and William Rubin, art critics Clement Greenberg, Tom Hess and Hilton Kramer, architect and art collector Philip Johnson and art collector Robert Scull. The interviews begin with a discussion of how the modern art movement came to New York after repression in Stalin’s Russia, Mussolini’s Italy and 1930s Germany had forced it into Paris, leading to an exodus by the French avant-garde when Hitler invaded the city. Geldzahler states that the New York School produced the first American painting to command international attention. The interviewees go on to discuss the influence of the Works Progress Administration on American artists and how it led to associations that became the important forum known as “the Club” in the late 1940s. Newman talks about the disillusionment after World War II and Motherwell explains that some artists wanted to break with European Abstract Expressionism, while other wanted to carry it forward. The early days of the movement are recalled as de Kooning, Newman and Motherwell recount their first one-man shows, talk about the influence of abstract painter and teacher Hans Hoffmann in the 1940s and Castelli, Hess and Kramer discuss the New York artists’ use of extremely large canvases. The development of modernism is described by Geldzahler as a “group research project” in which the advances made were shared by all artists. Noland talks about the terms invented to describe modern art, noting that “color-field” might be the best and he and Frankenthaler give detailed descriptions of their methods of painting. In Rauschenberg’s first interview, he compares himself to the “pessimistic” Abstract Expressionists, describing his artistic reputation as evolving from being the “charlatan of art world” to its “satirist” and Castelli confirms that no one understood Rauschenberg’s early work. Castelli goes on to describe “the great event of his career” as meeting Jasper Johns and seeing his work for the first time in 1957. After Johns describes his intention to be artist from childhood, Castelli discloses that the Abstract Expressionists did not like Johns’s work. Next, the “art establishment” is discussed and Kramer says that it exists, but is hard to define. The complicated relationships between talent, curators, dealers and critics are then explored. The emergence of Pop Art and reaction from the Abstract Expressionists is examined and Gelzahlder talks about meeting Andy Warhol for the first time. When Warhol is interviewed, he states that painting is dead and claims that Brigid Polk, who is also known as Brigit Berlin has been doing his paintings for three years. After Warhol’s photographic portraits of Ethel Scull are discussed, Pavia talks about the tradition of artists making a living from doing portraits. Stella is introduced, saying that “all good paintings have lives of their own,” and proceeds to discuss his work, as do Castelli and Rubin. Then Stella, Poons and Olitski describe in detail how they work. The difficulties of being an artist and art’s relationship to politics and society are discussed and Hess enigmatically states that the vitality of American art might continue or stop completely. Finally, Poons, Frankenthaler, Motherwell, Johnson, Castelli, Scull and Johns refute Warhol’s assertion that “painting is dead” while de Kooning says that it always was dead, but that he never worried about it.