We continue our serialisation of MT White’s upcoming new magnum opus, The Artist’s Fortitude. It would be impolite of us not to mention this particular chapter first appeared in the esteemed PunchRiot magazine some months ago. I wasn’t going to mention it, but MT felt I should.
The Artist’s Fortitude
Hagiographies
Myth never died. As “reason” and “enlightenment” progress in modernity, myth only expands to all realms—especially to the realm of the artist.
Artists are subject to mythmaking just as much as anyone else, in both work and biography—but really, they’re one & the same. But! As Aristotle said: “the poets tend to lie a lot”. They want their stories, the personal stories they tell, to have a dramatic arc. It’s only natural. I’d say it kind of adds to their allure. In “The Magical Chorus”, Russian musicologist Solomon Volkov points out how many Soviet era artists, like film director Andrei Tarkovsky and poets like Anna Akhtamova, Yevgeny Yetvushenko, and Joseph Brodsky, willfully created and participated in their own mythmaking (Yetvushenko, for example, told everyone he was born in a village called Zima Junction because it sounded more “poetic” rather than Nizhneudinsk—the actual village in which he was born). It’s only natural…
There are the stories about “overnight” successes: Sylvester Stallone wrote “Rocky” in two days; Joe Eszterhas wrote “Basic Instinct” in just 10 days then sold it for $3 million; Michael Des Barres wrote the song Obsession in 10 minutes and it made him “at least” $3 million; Quentin Tarantino used to work at a video store until he directed “Reservoir Dogs”…
The problem with success hagiographies, and artist myths in general, is there’s a great chance artists will be aware of them. And they are informing not necessarily with faulty information but with information out of a certain context, a context formed to cater to the emotional masses, selling them a romantic story to build their legend (what does it matter to the average Ivan where Yevgeny Yetvushenko is really from?). This is true outside the creative sphere as well. In business, knowing about the “genius” of Steve Jobs makes me more loyal to the Apple product. It’s why we rarely hear about the Apple III, the NeXT computer (a 10-year concern for Jobs) or Pixar originally intended as a hardware company—all failures Jobs oversaw. And if we do hear about them, it is always in the context of how the failure led to success. Same goes for someone like George Lucas: Knowing about his struggles making the first “Star Wars” film (“Everyone was against him,” “No one thought Science Fiction was a viable genre”, “no one believed in the film”, “he didn’t have the budget he needed to really make the film he envisioned” etc.), helps me enjoy its success and the movies all the more.
But as an artist, a lonely, atomized artist, it can cause disillusion because I haven’t experienced same.
This kind of leads into another type of hagiography, that of “The Artist as Saint” or “blessed personality”. Actually, there’s no clear lines here. The “success myth” blends a lot with the “blessed personality” myth. “They are (were) a genius,” being a common refrain among friends and collaborators, waxing nostalgic with anecdotes about how exciting and enlightening it was to work or meet with them, the halos only glowing more and more in the literary and filmed portraits that follow in the artist’s wake. A recent example of this is the film “The End of the Tour” about novelist David Foster Wallace, which Bret Easton Ellis called “reverential to a fault.” Ellis used his review of the film to note how it ignored the darker side of Wallace, “the contemptuous man, the sometime-contrarian, the asshole with an abusive side, the cruel critic.” An obstacle for hagiographies like this film is having to explain the dark events of real life, like Wallace’s suicide, while keeping the halo lit. So, their handling is a portrayal of Wallace as, in Ellis’ words, of a man “too sensitive for this world,” whereas Walter Kirn contends the suicide was a result of David Foster Wallace hating “being David Foster Wallace,” (meaning he couldn’t enjoy or obtain the fringe benefits of fame—like money and women). But the film is just fiction, just a story…
A documentary example of this type of hagiography is “A Constant Forge”, about independent film pioneer John Cassavetes. Ray Carney, an authority on Cassavetes and participant in the documentary called it all “a joke”, trying to “sell us this sentimental soap-opera version of who Cassavetes was. It’s not true. It’s a fairy-tale account,” noting the doc omitted mention of his negative personality traits resulting in “the rankest of hero-worship. Cassavetes has no shortcomings and flaws. He has no tangibility, no reality.”
Why is this kind of documentary bad for the aspiring artists who watch? Carney again: “Young filmmakers will watch this movie and fall for its lies. And then they will think they are not right or normal, because their lives are not this way.”
Once again, disillusionment for the artist raises its ugly specter when consuming this type of hagiography, usually in a sea of confusion, because their watching may be at cross purposes with the intent of the documentary. In the case of “A Constant Forge”, Pioneer commissioned the documentary to promote a planned home video set of the director’s work, then Criterion added it to their DVD box set—it was just intended to promote and amplify enjoyment of a product, not inspire budding filmmakers. Whereas the success hagiography (the Lucas example) makes one feel they are falling short in a material or status sense, the “blessed personality” hagiography makes you feel you’re just a failure as a human. In a sense, this latter type may be more dangerous. You question your own life as being lacking or worthless, possibly leading to believing your life is worthless, therefore thinking you have no worthwhile art.
Many a time, these types of hagiographies are concocted by outsiders looking in. Would Lucas, Cassavetes or Wallace write their personal autobiographies as hagiographies? Probably not, but at the same time, they or their estates carefully stage manage the presentations before they even agree to participate.
Because being candid and revelatory about one’s past can open one up for trouble. When F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote “The Crack-Up” for “Esquire”, his honest three-part essay about his mental collapse, he received nothing but criticism from the likes of John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway. The latter said it, “seems to almost take a pride in his shamelessness of defeat…I always knew he couldn’t think—he never could—but he had a marvelous talent and the thing is to use it—not whine in public.”
Both Fitzgerald and Hemingway died from complications from alcohol. Fitzgerald, himself a football player and soldier, is regarded historically as the more tragic yet fragile figure. Hemingway, who marketed an image as tough guy, maintains that image posthumously though he’s the one who committed suicide and enjoyed playing the role of female in the bedroom…
When someone is frank, like Fitzgerald or Joe Eszterhas in his memoirs, it can have a helpful, almost therapeutic effect. One can find inspiration knowing they are not alone in whatever they are struggling with. St. Augustine—an actual saint—pioneered the autobiographical form, being honest about his failings in his “Confessions”.
Of course, when talking about “failings”, there is a danger of falling into a synography—actually, artists today tend to veer closer to this form when discussing their lives, almost taking a masochistic glee in how “bad” they behaved. “The Dirt”, a film about hard rock band Motley Crue takes a hedonistic joie de vivre about their party lifestyle. Henry Miller’s semi-autobiographical novel “Tropic of Cancer”, has the author hilariously describe his sexual escapades through France while also lamenting his pathetic character. Even in fictional form, the film “Sideways”, based on a novel by Rex Pickett, has the novelist protagonist portrayed as close to pathetic schlub with only scant redeeming qualities (and his actor friend in the film receives same treatment). In both books and documentaries about Dennis Hopper, a majority of the discussion about the actor/director revolves around his drug use and “wild behavior”, like firing guns in hotel rooms with flaming mattresses flying out the window, or hitting on his daughter’s classmates at her high school graduation. It’s at times both equally horrifying and entertaining, but ultimately depersonalized, also dispelling any sense of tangibility and reality. Discussing how “bad” someone is just a direct inverse of only discussing how “good” someone is. Both are forms of propaganda. Being a bad boy who can do no right is just as fallacious and damaging a story as the good boy who can do no wrong. Just as the hagiography can make the artist feel they are not “right or normal” so can the synography—if I’m not “bad” or “crazy” enough, maybe I’m not really exploring and flexing my creative juices. Just another form of insecurity and disillusionment…
And of course, the thing about artist hagiographies is you’re eventually going to find out the truth if you dig deep enough, and what then, when the façade is broken?
BUT!
As Fitzgerald wrote in The Crack-Up: “Of course all life is a process of breaking down…“
The image of holy artist shattering can have an adverse side effect—at least it did for me: I started exploring the cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky after reading an article about him in a “filmmakers of faith” section on the “Christianity Today” website. The summary wasn’t a bio, just a brief discussion of his films and how related to his faith. I just projected/assumed the fundamentalist Christian values common to someone living in the southern United States. “Sculpting in Time”, Tarkovsky’s meditation on his life and work, written before his death, didn’t really betray this image of sainted filmmaker—neither did his solemnly titled diary collection “Martyrology”. But obsessive that I am, I dug deeper into his life. He was far from a saint. He had priapic tendencies to say the least. He left his first wife, an actress, for another woman, also an actress, and impregnated another woman in Sweden before he died. On the set of his film “Stalker”, he maliciously demeaned the celebrated cinematographer Georgi Rerberg, eventually firing him. In fact, the film had to be shot three times, with three different cinematographers, basically due to Tarkovsky’s recklessness, and even though his patron at Mosfilm, Fedor Ermash, did everything to help Tarkovsky finish the film, the director lambasted him in “Martyrology”. For all his lamenting of materialism in “Sculpting in Time” and his films, he basically defected to the West, renouncing his Soviet citizenship, leaving his son behind in Russia, mainly for material reasons (some say due to pressure from his second wife). His friend and cinematographer Vadim Yusov met him in Italy, shocked at the loud, stylish clothes his friend now wore. One collaborator noted Tarkovsky was weak and indecisive in all aspects of his life except his art. Maybe his early death at age 54 led to this hagiography overtaking this image? After the director’s death, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn criticized Tarkovsky’s “Andrei Rublev”, bringing outrage in the Third Wave Emigrant community. “Tarkovsky, it turns out, had been deified,” wrote Solzhenitsyn.
Was I disappointed to discover this information? An understatement. Maybe the disappointment comes from viewing works that are so “high”, it is hard to fathom the artist living a life so “low”. But it’s a part of life. We want icons to admire, even as artists, a life to aspire to. When I discussed a previous relationship with someone I mentored, she asked that I refrain from talking about it. “I don’t want to think any less of you.” Why, in our imperfection do we want others to be perfect? Is it because the mirror image of our own likeness is so awful that we want there to be someone better, someone higher? We want the potential of that hope to be fulfilled? Could it be, we want to escape the mundane mix of good and bad that permeates our existence?
In regards to Tarkovsky, I do know one thing that does not betray his life and image: His films. His characters usually have a passive quality about them, almost taking on the role of martyr. In “Andrei Rublev”, the title character—an artist and monk—is tempted into sex with a naked pagan woman. A young man lies about his credentials as a bell-maker to get a royal commission—yet, he succeeds and it brings him to tears. In “Solaris”, the lead can’t stop his ex-wife from continually committing suicide—a metaphor for the memories that haunt us? At the start of “Stalker”, the title character leaves his wife and child to fulfill his “mission” of escorting people to the alien and mystical territory of “The Zone”—only to return disillusioned. In “Mirror”, the director’s most autobiographical film, a dying man recalls his past (his estranged wife played by the same actress who plays his mother) in the intersection against the bigger backdrop of Russian culture, history and faith. Tarkovsky’s father (who left him at an early age) was a poet. And in a way, his own way, Tarkovsky’s films are poetry too. The poetry of a flawed human trying to piece things together through cinematic imagery, echoing philosopher Lev Shestov’s observation: “Men reveal the most painful and significant truth only when not speaking directly about themselves.”
One documentary featuring Tarkovsky, “Rerberg and Tarkovsky: The Reverse Side of ‘Stalker’”, almost acts as a harmatography, or character assassination, in order to make the great cameraman Rerberg look like a martyr himself. These sorts of portrayals are legion as well. A clear example is the documentary “Overnight”, about director Troy Duffy, which is edited to make him appear as the most hateful and egotistical person to have ever lived as he tries to realize his film “The Boondock Saints”. These works are trying to topple the idols, so to speak, whether it be their artistic acumen (like Pauline Kael trying to diminish Orson Welles’ contributions to “Citizen Kane”) or just portray them as horrible people to almost delegitimize their work (how many articles have been written about Picasso abusing his seven muses?). Solzhenitsyn himself was the object of scorn in books published in both Russia and the West. His first wife, Natalya Reshetovskaya, wrote a memoir (Sanya) portraying him as an overbearing, egomaniacal womanizer who forbade her to bear children because it would interfere with his writing. Olga Carlisle, who smuggled Solzhenitsyn’s “The First Circle” and “The Gulag Archipelago” into the West and translated them into English, wrote her own pejorative memoir about her dealings with him.
Many artists have questionable events in their past both personal and political. JD Salinger, Elvis Presley, Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Fyodor Dostoevsky—all had more than questionable pasts with underage girls. Ezra Pound and Louis-Ferdinand Céline supported Fascism. Boris Pasternak and Dmitri Shostakovich pledged support and wrote odes to Stalin. TS Eliot and Walt Disney were anti-Semites. Valerie Solanas shot Andy Warhol for a reason. Nobody is perfect.
The problem with harmatologies is the budding artist, depending on the fragility of their ego, may become incredibly self-conscious in their actions and artistic practice, afraid of what others may say about them—especially in this very public social media age. This is probably the reason why many err on the side of masochistic synographies, whether bragging or mourning their “bad” behavior—there’s more than a bit of narcissism involved, but it’s better to promote and manage this information yourself, getting out in front of others who will use it for their own agendas (“Art School Confidential”—a film where an aspiring artist accepts accusations of him being a serial killer in order to achieve fame is a good satire of this inclination).
Harmatologies are usually the product of a scorned party or an uninvolved participant. The former are understandable, whether it be for political reasons (the KGB published and most likely wrote Reshetovskaya’s memoir to get at Solzhenitsyn) or personal (the producers of “Overnight” were former friends of director Duffy). Reading or watching a work like this provides a thrill, like reading a gossip column for juicy details omitted from hagiographies, almost a pornography of information. The latter type of harmatography, written by the uninvolved, like a “scholar” or journalist, are more malicious, a product of Pharisees judging a life or work they had no part in. They are just jealous, or fearful, of both the potential of a work and facing their own mediocrity.
An artist must live in order to create. Harmony Korine advised that artists should explore extremes. I don’t think a creative type can help but explore extremes whether they be sexual, chemical, religious or ideological.
In the example of Fitzgerald, being honest about one’s life and struggle can be a dangerous act. It upsets both admirers and detractors—basically everyone—for opposite reasons. They’re angered by either the extremes of love or hate being upturned, at the disturbance of myth—whether it be that of saint or sinner—because in the end most desire myth, an escape from the turbulence and chaotic nuance of this life. They don’t desire a reminder. Fitzgerald: “and there are always those to whom all self-revelation is contemptible, unless it ends with a noble thanks to the gods for the Unconquerable Soul.”
But the work outlives bad press. The only thing that stands the test of time—if it stands the test of time—is the artistic work (a film like “Star Wars” looks more antiquated by the day). As Terry Gilliam said amidst the troubled production of “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen”: “I think my priorities are right. I will sacrifice myself or anyone else for the movie. It will last. We'll all be dust.”
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