How do artists fare on the silver screen?

Photograph: Getty

By Jessica Lack

Jake and Dinos Chapman are making a feature film and speculation is rife regarding its subject matter. The Independent suggested it might be a comedy about the art world. How tantalising - a lacerating satire on the British art scene over the past 20 years. And with the Chapmans' unrivalled talent for biting the hand that feeds them, it's hard not to imagine a scene in which art world notables are hung out to dry like rotting corpses on a blackened tree. Yet, if we know one thing about the Chapmans, it's that they are predictably unpredictable. Conjecture is futile.

By choosing to direct a film, they are following an increasingly popular route for artists. Ever since the dadaists saw the potential for experimenting with the silver screen, artists have been tempted to make feature films. Salvador Dalí collaborated with the filmmaker Luis Buñuel on Un Chien Andalou - infamous for the gory eye-slicing scene - and L'Age d' Or, which sees a grim-faced Max Ernstplay a bandit chief.

For some artists the appeal of film is financial - particularly in the case of Dali. Paradoxically Andy Warhol found film to be a respite from the commercial demands of the art world for his silk-screen idols. Yet, the financial aspect is perhaps why fewer directors are lured the other way. The notable exception is Peter Greenaway, whose installations have all the suspense of the cinema. His magnum opus, Flying over Water at the Malmö Konsthall in Sweden, felt like a frightening thriller, with metal baths bolted to the floor as cascades of water plunged into the gallery.

It is not a seamless transition, though. For every Steve McQueen (who just won the camera d'Or at Cannes for Hunger), there's a Tracey Emin with her frankly boring film Top Spot. There is a danger that artists treat the feature film like a video installation, forgetting that their audience sit through the entire two hours and will want a decent script and story line. Whatever the Chapmans come up with, it will certainly be worth seeing just how their warped vision of the world translates onto screen.