Ben Lewis

Ben Lewis is an award-winning, interdisciplinary cultural critic and historian who works in mixed media of books, films and journalism. He is an documentary film-maker, author and art critic, whose books have been published by Harper Collins, Penguin Random House, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, Mondadori, Pegasus, Elephant Press and other publishing houses around the world, and whose films have been commissioned by the BBC, Arte and a long list of broadcasters from Europe, North America and Australia.

Ben studied history and history of art in Cambridge and Berlin. In his twenties he worked at MTV, Djed and briefly ran a record label before working on numerous magazine programmes for the BBC and Channel 4. In 2001 he established his own documentary and film production company, BLTV.

Lewis’ latest book ‘The Last Leonardo: Secret Lives of the World’s Most Expensive Painting’, a history and investigation of the $450m Salvator Mundi painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci was published by Harper Collins in the UK in April 2019 and by Ballantine, an imprint of Penguin Random House in the US in June 2019. His first book “Hammer and Tickle” a history of humour under Communism, based on his eponymously titled documentary, was published by Weidenfeld and Nicholson in 2008. It has so far been published in America, Germany, Portugal, Poland, Slovenia and Italy. Lewis has written monographs on contemporary British artists David Hepher and John Loker for Flowers Gallery

Lewis has written about art for magazines and newspapers including The Times, The Sunday Telegraph, The Observer, the Financial Times, the London Evening Standard, Prospect Magazine (where he was resident art critic 2004-2010), Die Welt, Monopol and Liberation.

Ben Lewis has made feature documentaries and series on highly topical subjects, which have provoked public debate and influenced political decision-making. ‘The Great Contemporary Art Bubble’ stimulated an international controversy about the fairness of the art market in 2009, while ‘Blowing Up Paradise: French Nuclear Testing in the Pacific” (2004) is credited with influencing the French government’s decision to compensate its soldiers and citizens who suffered illnesses after working for on atomic installations in Tahiti.

Among his credits are “Poor Us: An Animated History of Poverty“, “Chancers: the Great Gangster Film Fraud“, “Google and the World Brain,” (premiered at Sundance 2013) “Falciani’s Tax Bomb“, “The Great Contemporary Art Bubble” (shown on BBC, Arte, and at film festivals in Montreal, Vancouver, San Francisco, Palm Springs, Copenhagen, Florence (Lo Schermo del Arte), Cleveland, Minneopolis, Mendocino, Newport Beach, opened the inaugral Tel Aviv Arts Film Festival and won best feature documentary at the Foyle International Film Festival), “The King of Communism: the pomp and pageantry Nicolae Ceausescu” (Grierson Award 2002); “Hammer and Tickle: the Communist Joke Book” (premiered at the New York Tribeca Film Festival 2006 and won best documentary at the Zurich Film Festival in the same year). “Art Safari” (shown in the UK, Europe, Australia and America, winner of a bronze at the New York Television Awards and a German Grimme Prize in 2007). “Art Safari” featured films on Maurizio Cattelan, Takashi Murakami, Matthew Barney, Sophie Calle and Wim Delvoye, among others. He also produced a limited edition “Art Safari” film on DVD, commissioned by the Deutsche Bank for their exhibition “Affinities” at the Deutsche Guggenheim in 2007