[djtrix26]

This movie had to have been made before 1993, (as I saw it that year on TV). It looked like early 80s, maybe even late 60s or 70s, but I was 3 years old, so I don't know for sure. A man has a room full of these mechanical painting arms, machines that look like way over-sized phonograph tonearms tipped with a paint brush at the end, which would automate at the playback of music. The man would play the music and somehow these mechanical arms would start painting abstractions to the music. I'm not sure how it worked. Distinctively, I remember Beethoven's 5th Symphony being played throughout one of the scenes with the machines (this is where I first heard the song). And he had a domesticated monkey, or prime mate of some sort that would intently watch from a corner of the room. I believe it was wearing a red shirt, but that may be my old mind playing tricks. The machines kept malfunctioning, and finally at the end, after he has replaced the machines with gold (brass) improved designs, the whole system blows up and explodes killing the man dramatically. That's all I remember. (If you've seen Titanic (1997) and remember the ship's engine shafts thrusting up and down, they kind of look similar to these painting mechanisms, at least that's what they brought to my mind when I saw Titanic in the theater at 7 years old.) PLEASE, IF YOU KNOW THIS WORK HELP ME FIND IT! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!

[MystMoonstruck]

What a Way to Go! (1964)
Wikipedia synopsis excerpt:
Louisa (Shirley MacLaine) is a millionaire. She travels to Paris, where she meets Larry Flint (Paul Newman), who is driving a taxi. Avant-garde art dominates Flint's life, including a chimpanzee which paints. One of his projects is a "Sonic Palette", a machine that paints by sound, a "fusion of man and machine~the only positive statement in art that is being made today!"
Louisa falls in love with Flint's attitude of "Money corrupts. Art erupts!" and marries him. She enters into his bohemian lifestyle while renouncing her secret millions. An erotic foreign-film spoof shows the sheet-clad pair making love in progressively smaller bathtubs and on a bed. Flint's minimalist abstracts are just good enough to keep them fed. Louisa idly suggests having the machine paint to Felix Mendelssohn's "Spring Song", thus leading to the creation of a masterpiece. Flint becomes famous by having the machine "paint" more music. Increasingly obsessed with money, he builds more Sonic Palettes to paint a giant work of art, but the machines wind up turning on their creator by beating him to death.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_a_Way_to_Go!

Here's a film clip:
What a way! Paul Newman artist - YouTube

Here's the movie trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3JU-knnk0k

Interestingly, this was to be a project for Marilyn Monroe!