Shy, unshaved, preoccupied, constrained, dry, exceedingly serious, unhappy, dissatisfied, confused, strange, idealist, eccentric, cranky, highly skilled, intelligent, restless, unconcerned about his clothing, lonely, masochist, promiscuous, blasphemous, irritable, cares little about others, compassionate, irresponsible, alcoholic, ambitious, irrational, prone to anxiety and depression, straight forward, uncompromising, modest, emotionally raw, obsessive compulsive, devoted to the unceasing study of his profession, unappealing, pensive, temperamental, eccentric social behavior, suicidal, misunderstood, crazy, nihilist, unusual, rebellious, opinionated, self righteous, poor, highly sensitive, seer of truth, a modern day shaman or sage, e.t.c.
Ask a thousand people to define an artist and you will gather similar adjectives. Across disciplines, creative people including poets, painters, writers, filmmakers, musicians, e.t.c are mythologized as being long suffering, making sacrifices both personal and financial to facilitate/create their work. The rebellious Manto, whose compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcohol became the cause of his death, the starving and lonely Sadequain, the secluded Zubeda Agha, and the controversial Iqbal Hussain, are only a few examples. The myth of the tormented artist suffering for his or her art has endured for more than a century. This image of the artist, surrounded by mystery and magic, rebellion and inner struggle, is common knowledge. Addictions, suicidal temperaments, promiscuity, unbalanced behavior, misanthropy…all these traits have been expected of the great creators almost as a matter of course. We hold onto a myth that artists need to be filled with grief, stress and turmoil in order to create great work. Is this phenomenon an inevitable conclusion, a condition, a fate or a choice of the artist? The two words ‘starving artists’ suggest a figurative and literal willingness to ‘die for art’. Where does this image come from? Is the notion of the ‘mad artist’ a historical reality? Are they the cause or the effect of the stereotypical read of the artist?
How many times have you and I felt that family, friends, and people we don't even know are, in some way, typecasting us as economically naïve, foolish, or even irresponsible for pursuing our creativity? How many of us have succumb to the pressure of this typecast and gotten that safe day job because we distrusted our instincts that we could not only survive as artists but thrive? And even at that safe day job, the vice principal of the school, who happens to be my boss, pointed out that I am extremely snappish, nicely concluded as, “well, all artists are temperamental!”
Art history relics on the myth and the myth of art cannot survive without being connected to the artist’s life. Reading an artist’s character from his work or reading the work from his character, in both cases the events in the life of the artist become more important than the work itself. With a little bit of mythical glitter, artist then becomes a celebrity, an icon. Great art becomes popular with art history’s construction of the artistic subject. Griselda Pollock in her essay “Artists’ Mythologies and Media Genius, Madness and Art History” writes that this preoccupation with the individual artist is symptomatic of the work accomplished in art history – the production of an artist’s image for works of art, posited as the exclusive source of meaning, the ‘expression’ of his/her creative personality. She argues that art history’s focus on the narrative in the writing of history can be designated to literature rather than a historical discourse.
The area that has been given most attention when discussing artists’ personalities is the intrinsic connection between genius and madness. It is common knowledge that artists are subject to mental illness and many writers have invested in making such connections. The notion that ‘trauma influences creativity’ is established as an unquestionable reality. Aristotle once claimed that "there is no great genius without a mixture of madness". We do know that Rembrandt put on one of his finest suits and gassed himself, Rothko slit his wrists in his NY studio, Van Gogh cut off his ear and died of a self-inflicted gunshot to his chest, Sylvia Plath placed her head in the oven, with the gas turned on, and the list goes on.
This magic and mystery around artists, not to say that its entirely false, has made them available as a favorite subject for novels, plays, television, and the romantic image of the tragic genius best suits the medium of film. Some films concern fictional artists while others are based on real historic figures, in both cases it creates curiosity, mystery and romance around the figure of the artist. Premature deaths increase their iconography and the subject becomes all the more desirable if he committed suicide, was killed or was incarcerated in a lunatic asylum. The many examples of films made on visual artists (mostly painters) like Caravaggio, Modigliani, Pollock, Toulouse Lautrec, Camille Claudel, Vincent e,t,c clearly demonstrate that and tends to focus on the long suffering years of his (rarely her) life.
These films do the job of drawing attention to the practice of imaging the ideal. But what do these Hollywood flicks do to our way of looking at art and artists? Do they only reproduce the many clichés associated with artists? Does this glamour and romance distort the facts of the history or is it understood as the filmmaker’s artistic liberty? Regardless of the issues, through these films, art does seem to be reaching a wider audience and even drawing some curious audience members to the museums.
The problem of disentangling fact from friction is perplexing for even the knowledgeable viewer. As John A.Walker, in his book “Art and Artists on Screen”, uses the word, ‘faction’ for the diffusion of fact and fiction found in such biographies where the film-maker has the artistic license to take all kinds of liberty with history even more so when it is not a documentary.
Do artists today still have the same constraints? Or is this just our collective need to find something more in the doldrums of life? It is not surprising that the contemporary “artist” no longer has to make anything. He has become his own myth.
