Fourteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Across all types of artists’ film biographies, or biopics—whether Hollywood or independent or European art films—artists are represented as abject figures in several forms: extreme poverty, sexual licentiousness, drinking, drugs and anti-social behavior. These films imply a link between abjection and creativity that generates a conflict between creativity’s unrestrained behavior, and the art world of dealers, critics and exhibitions defined by economics and social restraint. Artists are unable to fit into the social order of their own art world; both Jackson Pollock (1912-56) in Pollock (2000) and Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-88) in Basquiat (1996) suffer under success and are extremely abject, yet their abjection works differently for Pollock than for African-American Basquiat. Lee Krasner (1908-84) in Pollock is not abject but her gender renders her unable to fulfill national (Pollock) and international (Basquiat) cultural ambitions that the other artists fulfill. The theme in artist biopics is the sacrifice of abject artists to society which, in turn, appropriates their art as transcendent national achievements, a fundamental conflict between society’s rejection of abject artists and society’s praise and appropriation of their “transcendental” art. Abject artists are in history and in a material world; but their artworks are redefined as ahistorical and spiritual. I will briefly contrast these films with the extreme abjection of Van Gogh, the paradigmatic abject artist unsuccessful in his lifetime, in Lust for Life (1956) and with Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio (1986), in which the highly successful abject artist is not marginalized but mirrors his corrupt late-Renaissance patrons.