Chuck Connelly, painter

The Chuck Show:

Storyville on BBC4

Expressionist American painter Chuck Connelly was once at the top of the New York Art scene in the 1980s, a contemporary of Julian Schnabel and Jean-Michel Basquiat who sold more than one million dollars' worth of art and who was the inspiration for the artist character played by Nick Nolte in Martin Scorsese's film New York Stories.This film, shot over six years, tells the story of his fall from grace told through interviews, family videos and representations of Connelly's work. Contains very strong language.

Last night's TV: A portrait of the artist as a failure
By Paul Whitelaw (Scotsman)
Storyville: The Chuck Show, BBC4

CHUCK Connelly is not a happy man. "I'm not happy!" he yells into the camera, just in case his drunkenly self-destructive behaviour wasn't enough to have already made this plainly self-evident. Chuck yells a lot. Chuck drinks a lot. Chuck also paints a lot, although people don't pay him as much for that as they used to. In the 1980s he sold more than a million dollars' worth of his art. These days, he's lucky if he can earn $500 on eBay from one of his paintings.

A contemporary of Julian Schnabel and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Chuck was once a rising star on the formidably hip New York art scene. People called him a genius, described him as "Van Gogh reincarnated". Martin Scorsese was such a fan that he used him as the inspiration for Nick Nolte's character in New York Stories (Chuck's madly daubing hands doubled for the actor's). Except Chuck hated the film, lambasted it in the press, and dismissed Scorsese as a mediocre director. And that, apparently, was that for Chuck. He hasn't hosted a major exhibition of his work in nearly 20 years.

Shot over six years, Storyville: The Chuck Show followed the dilapidated artist as he struggled to reignite the career he ruined simply by being himself. Unfor-tunately, his personality is troublesome to say the least. Arrogant, abrasive, loud, obnoxious, Chuck is obviously impossible to deal with. It's no wonder he managed to alienate virtually everyone in the art world. The attack on Scorsese was just the tip of the iceberg. On the one hand, I admire Chuck's refusal to kiss ass and his fervently held belief that art should be a raw expression of the soul. On the other, he had no-one to blame but himself for his painfully reduced circumstances. Or had he? This otherwise engrossing film failed to explain why Chuck's work is no longer in favour with buyers. He's still a prolific and gifted artist, and yet his agent – an asinine fool with the demeanour of a cut-price game show host – could hardly give his paintings away. Perhaps it's simply because the art world is cruelly fickle, a fact that Chuck clearly couldn't accept. He could have earned a small fortune had he sold en masse the 3,000 paintings gathering dust in his attic, but he refused on the grounds that each individual painting would be sold for a pittance. This offended Chuck's towering sense of pride. Prone to bellicose, self-pitying rants, he cut a pathetic figure as he stumbled drunkenly around his home. It was no surprise when his long– suffering wife (who captured Chuck at his worst with her camcorder) eventually decided to abandon him. At his lowest ebb, Chuck decided to hire an actor to portray an alter ego in an attempt to sell some paintings. Gallery owners soon began queuing up to investigate the work of this hot young painter, but unfortunately, for reasons unclear, Chuck failed to stage a comeback. The closing montage of his unsold paintings appeared to be a justifiably blatant attempt to drum up interest. Chuck obviously doesn't care what people think of him, otherwise he surely wouldn't have agreed to take part in this unflinching profile. But he also desperately wants to be famous and revered again, and probably hoped this film would grant him some exposure. Unfortunately, it exposed him as an uncontrollable, hard-drinking lunatic who had almost completely lost control of his life. And yet, despite his rages, Chuck is obviously a sensitive, vulnerable man whose talent deserves further recognition. I hope he finds it.