Projected Art History: Biopics, Celebrity Culture, and the Popularizing of American Art 9781623560324, 9781501300097, 9781623567347

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Projected Art History

INTERNATIONAL TEXTS IN CRITICAL MEDIA AESTHETICS Volume 7

Founding Editor Francisco J. Ricardo

Series Editor Jörgen Schäfer

Editorial Board John Cayley George Fifield Rita Raley

Projected Art History Biopics, Celebrity Culture, and the Popularizing of American Art

DORIS BERGER

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc

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Bloomsbury is a registered trade mark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in English 2014 Paperback edition first published 2015 Translated from German to English by Brigitte Pichon and Dorian Rudnytsky. © Doris Berger, 2014 Original title: Projizierte Kunstgeschichte: Mythen und Images in den Filmbiografien über Jackson Pollock and Jean-Michel Basquiat (Bielefeld: transcript, 2009). The translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenschaften International – Translation Funding for Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany, a joint initiative of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Office, the collecting society VG WORT and the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (German Publishers & Booksellers Association) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Berger, Doris, 1972[Projizierte Kunstgeschichte. English] Projected art history: biopics, celebrity culture, and the popularizing of American art / Doris Berger; [translated from German to English by Brigitte Pichon and Dorian Rudnytsky]. pages cm -- (International texts in critical media aesthetics; Volume 8) Summary: “Examines the biopics of two artists in order to analyze a popular art history as it is created by a film genre”-- Provided by publisher. Original title: Projizierte Kunstgeschichte : Mythen und Images in den Filmbiografien über Jackson Pollock and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Bielefeld: transcript, 2009. ISBN 978-1-62356-032-4 (hardback) 1. Artists in motion pictures. 2. Biographical films--United States--History and criticism. 3. Art and popular culture--United States. 4. Art, American--20th century--Public opinion. 5. Basquiat (Motion picture) 6. Pollock (Motion picture) I. Berger, Doris, 1972- Projizierte Kunstgeschichte. Translation of: II. Title. PN1995.9.A76P7613 2014 791.43’657--dc23 2013049439 ISBN: HB: 978-1-6235-6032-4 PB: 978-1-5013-1573-2 ePub: 978-1-6235-6650-0 ePDF: 978-1-6235-6734-7 Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN Printed and bound in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments  viii List of Figures  xi

1 Artists’ biographies in film as popular art history  1 On the complicated relationship of art and film  3 Art history in biopics  6 Gender in genres  9 Artists’ myths and star legends  11 What, why, how: On choice and methodology  13

2 Pollock: A popular historiography  23 A public image through life: Life Magazine as image producer  26 The Pollock myth: Its ideological use in media  30 The biopic Pollock and its models in different media  36 The production of film myths  40 “The Life Painter”: A prelude  45 The myth of the tragic hero  48 The painter and his creative processes  57 The white canvas: Artistic virtuosity and media game  59 Photography as an agent of death: The artist becomes an icon  68 The radio as medium of information  71 Film in film: The turning point  75 Myths and media: A momentous marriage  86

vi Contents

Lee Krasner: From an ambitious artist to a successful woman in the background  92 Situating Lee Krasner  94 Decisions of an artist  97 Representing Krasner in the film  100 The artist disappears  103 The absence of the artist  110 Clement Greenberg: The influential referee  113 The art critic in the film  116 Peggy Guggenheim: The eccentric patron  121 The gallery owner and collector in the film  124 The staging of artistic authorship  130 The authorships of Ed Harris  134

3 Basquiat and celebrity culture  159 Jean-Michel Basquiat’s image as artist  162 Telling stories: From the gutter to the gallery—from the sprayer to the artist  166 Creating icons: The artist portrayed  170 An artist’s image: The marketing of an American artist  186 The director: An artist on being an artist  194 The producers: Between educational and economic ambitions  201 The artist’s life in film: Three sequences  205 Hungry for a genius  205 How to become a star  208 Speedy rider  210 “Black painter”: Identity discourses  213 Looks and habits: Artists’ images  218 Just do it! Spontaneous creativity  223 René Ricard: The desired and desiring critic  233 Idols and rivals: Models and counter-models  236 Andy Warhol superstar  237

Contents

David Bowie’s mimicry  242 The staging of difference: “Both played each other’s other”  245 Cinematic autobiography via side glances at celebrity culture  256 Painterly filmmaker  258 The authorship of an “interartist”  262 Under the banner of hybridity  265

4 Hollywood’s art histories: A web of artists’ myths and star legends  295 Filmic images in comparison  296 Interwoven authorships  302 Exploring the center and the margins of biopics  305 Filmography  311 Bibliography  315 Index  345

vii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My wish to make this book available to an English-speaking audience finally came true. Had it not been for a chance encounter with Francisco J. Ricardo through an introduction by Candy Coleman at a museum opening in Los Angeles in 2011, this book would probably not exist. Francisco’s enthusiasm and support, along with his wonderful contacts Katie Gallof at Bloomsbury and Jörgen Schäfer, his co-editor in Germany, presented me with the opportunity to transform my wish into a reality. Without the generous grant from “Geisteswissenschaften International – Translation Funding for Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany” and the Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Getty Research Institute, this book would not have been possible either. My deepest gratitude goes to all of these people and institutions. When Jörgen Schäfer referred me to the German-American translator team of Brigitte Pichon and Dorian Rudnytsky, the journey could begin. Brigitte and Dorian always found good solutions for complicated thoughts and I thank them for their dedication to helping transfer my voice into English. I am grateful to Jessie Park who helped me with rights and permissions and to Robert Levine for his critical reading. The book was first written and published in German by transcript in Bielefeld, Germany. I would like to thank Christine Jüchter for being so willing to set out on this cross-continental adventure. Although I updated and corrected parts of the book, the main research and narrative are based on the original publication. That research was the result of my dissertation, which was conducted using archives and interviewing key protagonists in Berlin, New York, and Los Angeles. I am indebted to the generosity and invaluable insights that Ed Harris granted me regarding his decisions and experiences in making the biopic Pollock. Additional thanks go to Julian Schnabel, who allowed me to accompany him on a

Acknowledgments

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full workday while he reflected on his time making Basquiat; and Peter Brant, who spoke with me about his role as a film producer for both biopics. I would also like to thank Paul Tschinkel, the Museum of Modern Art Archives in Queens, the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in East Hampton, the Staatsbibliothek and the Kunstbibliothek of the Staatliche Museen in Berlin, the John F. Kennedy Institute for North America Studies at the Freie Universität in Berlin, the archives of the Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin as well as the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, for granting me access to important material. The original research was funded by a scholarship at the Graduate Program InterArt at the Freie Universität, Berlin, as well as by the generous support of my mother Monika Berger. For the scholarly encouragement I would like to express my gratitude to Katharina Sykora and Gertrud Koch as well as to Sabine Kampmann, Alma-Elisa Kittner, and Anja Herrmann in Berlin and beyond. And last but not least, I would like to thank my husband, Steven Steinman, who was always there whenever I needed him most, for both versions of the book, in Germany and the United States. To him I dedicate this book.

COPYRIGHT PERMISSIONS

Unless otherwise specified, copyrights on the works reproduced lie with the respective photographers. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and we apologize in advance for any unintentional omission. We would be pleased to insert the appropriate acknowledgment in any subsequent edition.

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1  Film still from Pollock: Recreation of first two pages of “Jackson Pollock: Is He the Greatest Living Painter in the United States?” Life Magazine (August 8, 1949)  26 Figure 2.2  Jackson Pollock photographed by John Reed. A similar photograph was used in “Rebel Artist’s Tragic Ending,” Life Magazine (August 27, 1956)  29 Figures 2.3–5  Film stills from Pollock: “The Life Painter”  46 Figures 2.6–7  Film stills psychologizing Pollock: Vertigo view / The two brothers Jackson and Sande  50 Figures 2.8–10  Film stills: The suffering Pollock  52 Figures 2.11–12  Film stills: Pollock’s shadow-movements  59 Figures 2.13–14  Film stills: Pollock’s inspiration  60 Figures 2.15–19  Film stills: Transfer of movement onto canvas  61–2 Figures 2.20–1  Film stills: Mural in full frame / Mural in context  64 Figure 2.22  Jackson Pollock, Mural, 1943. Oil on canvas, 8′ 1¼″ × 19′ 10″, The University of Iowa Museum of Art, Gift of Peggy Guggenheim, 1959.6 © 2014 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York  64 Figure 2.23  Pollock in front of the empty Mural canvas in his studio; photograph by Bernard Schardt, 1943  66 Figures 2.24–5  Film stills: Pollock walking along the empty canvas  67 Figures 2.26–8  Film stills: Taking the photograph / Camera lens as full frame / Pollock looking at his image  69 Figures 2.29–31  Film stills: Radio interviewer / Pollock (Harris) dripping  74

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List of Figures

Figures 2.32–4  Film stills: Film-in-film frame / Film-shoot-in-film / The painter’s shoes as film-in-film  76 Figures 2.35–6  Film stills: Projection of film-in-film  77 Figures 2.37–8  Film stills: Production of film-shoot-in-film  78 Figure 2.39–42  Stills from Hans Namuth’s film on Jackson Pollock, 1951  79 Figures 2.43–5  Film stills: Genesis of the glass painting in projection and production  81 Figures 2.46–51  Stills from Namuth’s film, 1951  82 Figure 2.52  Lee Krasner, c.1938 / unidentified photographer. Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution  97 Figures 2.53–5  Film stills: Krasner as an attractive artist / Pollock touching her painting / Krasner’s still life as painting and filmic image  101 Figures 2.56–8  Film stills: Krasner with brush and apron / Pollock painting from the tube / Krasner steps between Pollock and his painting  105 Figures 2.59–61  Film stills: Lee Krasner in different social roles  108 Figures 2.62–3  Film stills: Greenberg and Krasner at Art of This Century / Greenberg feeling at home in Pollock and Krasner’s house  117 Figures 2.64–6  Film stills: Peggy Guggenheim in her roles  125 Figures 2.67–9  Film stills: Autograph / Signature / Handprint  131 Figures 3.1–2  Basquiat in studio on Great Jones Street, 1985. Photo Lizzie Himmel ©  171 Figures 3.3–4  Basquiat in studio on Great Jones Street, 1985. Photo Lizzie Himmel ©  173 Figure 3.5  James VanDerZee, Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1982. Gelatin Silver Print. Copyright © Donna Mussenden VanDerZee  177



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Figure 3.6  Andy Warhol, [Portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat], 1982. Polacolor print, image 3¾″ × 2⅞.″ The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.  181 Figure 3.7  Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1982. Polymer paint and silkscreen on canvas. © 2013 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by ARS Artist’s Rights Society (New York)  182 Figure 3.8  Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1984. Silkscreen on canvas. © 2013 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by ARS, Artist’s Rights Society (New York)  185 Figures 3.9–11  Film stills from Basquiat; Basquiat’s hairstyles in the movie in 1979, 1982, and 1987  220 Figures 3.12–13  Film stills; Basquiat’s creativity in everyday life, part 1  224 Figures 3.14–15  Film stills; Basquiat’s creativity in everyday life, part 2  225 Figure 3.16  Film still; Painting scene at the studio  227 Figures 3.17–19  Film stills; Painting scenes at the studio  228 Figures 3.20–2  Film stills; Andy Warhol with Henry Geldzahler; Warhol in the Factory working on an Oxidation Painting; Warhol during the collaboration with Basquiat  242 Figures 3.23–4  Film stills; Basquiat with Warhol’s wig; Warhol with Basquiat’s wig creation  247 Figures 3.25–7  Film stills; Collaborative painting sequences  249 Figure 3.28  Film still; Collaboration scene with Schnabel portraits in the background  252 Figure 3.29  Film still; Reflecting fame  254

CHAPTER ONE

Artists’ biographies in film as popular art history Art can be disseminated in many ways: by means of exhibitions, books, guided tours, as well as by articles or documentaries. Editorials and photo essays in literary biographies, coffee table books, comics, children’s books, movies or television series also tell us about the life and work of artists but these are rarely regarded as educational as they are lumped under the heading of popular culture. However, it does not always seem to make sense to dissociate high culture from popular culture—in particular because the dividing lines cannot be clearly drawn and once they are, the usual connection is between high culture as “differentiated and true” whereas popular culture is seen as “clichéd and wrong.” In introducing the term “popular art history” I want to look at high and popular culture in relation to one another and delineate a field in which the basic principles of art history are communicated and passed on through mass media. As I have observed in my work as a curator, popular art histories leave a strong imprint on the perceptions of art, artists, and artistic production. Thus it is striking that ideas of artists and artistic production are circulating that have less to do with contemporary discourses on authorship and production than with old artists’ myths. Artists are still mostly perceived as geniuses and society’s outsiders who are only able to create ‘great art’ because of their special status. When I asked visitors of exhibitions about the origin of these notions, they mentioned biographies (for example on Frida

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Kahlo or Jackson Pollock) and biographical films (such as on Van Gogh, Rembrandt or Basquiat). Experiencing this motivated me to explore how art history is being communicated in popular culture and, for that matter, to take the educational function and power of films on artists more seriously. Because of the intermedial and intertextual structure of films and the fact that they are experienced rather affectively—in particular in feature films—this medium seems to play an important role regarding general ideas about artists and artistic production that continue to have an effect on the reception of art today. Even though films about artists impact the mass mediation of art history, they do not receive the necessary attention in art historical research despite all the iconic, pictorial or optical turns.1 This study aims to contribute to closing that research gap. In contrast to art history, there are research fields in history and film studies that analyze documentaries and feature films as historical documents, as products that create historical awareness, as educational tools or even as propaganda materials.2 Even though the film historian Gertrud Koch was initially critical towards genres like historical films since it is rather the fate of individuals that is stressed instead of the historical context, she nevertheless regards them as excellent documents furthering histories of mentalities and micro histories that inform their viewers about the prevailing patterns of interpretation in earlier times. She suggests a twofold reading: “What is shown has to be assimilated simultaneously as a function of present interests while being weighed against the traditional historical readings.”3 This means that films tell us as much about the past as they are showing perceptions of it in the present. Taking Siegfried Kracauer’s approach of presenting the history of film as a history of cultures and mentalities, historians like Robert Rosenstone are attempting to find out how film as a visual medium that is subject to the conventions of drama and fictionality can be used as serious teaching material. When analyzing the relationship of moving image and written word, he asks: “What could be learned from watching history on the screen?” (Rosenstone 1995, 3–4). In this context Rosenstone’s question would read: What could be learned from a “projected art history?” A projected art history consists of an amalgamation of image and narrative in film embodying a multilevel projective force with many layers—from the projection of the filmic pictures onto the



Artists’ biographies in film as popular art history 3

screen referring to certain models and images of art and artists, to the projected images in the perception of the viewers that build on filmic narratives and that retroact as mental images back to the extra-filmic reality, lingering and impacting viewers, actors, and directors alike in terms of the reception of art. Thereby, a plethora of questions comes to mind: What kinds of art histories are actually being projected in film? What purposes lie behind them? Who is telling the stories and which criteria and models are being used for their narratives? How is painting staged in film? And ultimately, what effect does the filmic historization have outside of the films?

On the complicated relationship of art and film The relationship of film studies and art history is complicated. A case in point in the 1920s is Béla Balázs’ plea to include film in the “sacred halls of theory” (Balázs 2010, 3) demonstrating art history’s ignorance of the seventh art. Also Siegfried Kracauer was convinced that film could be useful for depicting paintings in a contemporary and vivid way and that museums would have to become accustomed to this fact (Kracauer [1938] 1974, 57). Nevertheless, the art historian Erwin Panofsky remains a rare exception, analyzing film already at the beginning of Hollywood’s “golden era.”4 He recognized a lively relationship between the creation of art and its use in film and pointed out the important influence of film on opinions, taste, language, fashion, and manners.5 It is therefore all the more astonishing that so many years later the pertinent literature from the interdisciplinary field of art, film, and media studies still remains quite sparse and extends mostly to collections of essays or individual articles.6 Interestingly, more scholarly literature has been published in German than in English that addresses art and artists in films at book-length level. In recent years, however, the interplay of art and film seems to be gaining more ground internationally in art history as well as in film studies promising more research in that field, one of which this book aims to offer. One of the reasons for the restraint within art history can be found in the synthesis of high and popular culture inherent in the

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medium of film and in its industrialized orientation. According to Angela Dalle Vacche, the skepticism towards film may be motivated by the fact that the movies have always tended to challenge not only painting but the whole system of the arts, thereby revealing the possibility to reorder classifications, hierarchies, alliances, and enmities (Dalle Vacche 1997, 3). In 1988, in attempting to name and narrow the gaping void in the research of art history concerning film, the Conference of German Art Historians published its proceedings entitled Kunst und Künstler im Film [Art and Artists in Film]. For the first time different formats were being discussed and new fields of research for art history opened up. The book Das bewegte Bild. Film und Kunst [The moving image. Film and art] continues in this vein, widening the field from the perspective of art history with discussions on intermediality and contemporary artistic practices in which film and the arts merge. Apart from these collections of essays, very few publications exist to this day that extensively reflect on the specific problems connected to the strained relationship between art and film. One of them is L’Œil interminable. Cinéma et peinture [The endless eye. Cinema and painting] by the film historian Jacques Aumont, who analyzes the differences and relationships of painting and film from the perspectives of imagery and pictoriality. However, Aumont concludes that it is ultimately impossible to treat a film as if it were a painting (1989, 251). Rather than comparing painting and film as media, Angela Dalle Vacche is interested in the staging of painting in film. In her book Cinema and Painting she sets off the relationship of painting and film with an approach that looks at how art historically acclaimed pictures influence the filmic narrative. Choosing films from different cultural contexts,7 she analyzes different “genres” of art history from a cinematographic perspective. Recognizing how film provides an opportunity for art history to look at art works from a new point of view, Dalle Vacche notes that “either film is plagued by a cultural inferiority complex and therefore obsessively cites other art forms, or it is self-confident enough to move beyond this state of dependency and arrive at the point where it can teach something new to art historians” (1997, 3). It seems that the art historian Katharina Sykora shares this opinion concentrating on the role of portrait painting in classic Hollywood films in her book As You Desire Me. She is less interested in the boundaries between the media than in “possible inversions, relativations, and



Artists’ biographies in film as popular art history 5

deconstructions of rigid genre and gender attributions becoming visible through the intermingling of painting and film” (2003, 8). Sykora examines gender roles, authorship, and intermediality in the pairing of media, allowing insights into the narrative functions and theoretical positions of portrait paintings in feature films. In his work Art and Artists on Screen, John A. Walker is interested in the depiction of art and artists in film. He compares biopics on artists from Europe and Hollywood with films in which fictitious artists are the protagonists and asks about the historical accuracy in the representation of artists in film and the dominant images of artists in fictitious films. He also expands his inquiry into the representation of art works, art dealers, and art critics in film. Moreover he examines the genres of films on artists as well as documentaries on art in his attempt to find out what the circumstances for filmmakers should or could ideally be for trying to resolve the conflict between the values in art, education, and entertainment (Walker 1993, 1). The book provides extensive insight into the context and conditions of the production and reception of films; however, it does not focus on the aesthetic side of films. Bernadette Walter’s work Das Bild des Künstlers im Spielund Dokumentarfilm [The image of the artist in feature and documentary films]8 illustrates an explicitly art historical approach. She analyzes the mythical roles of artists in feature and documentary films choosing two—the biopic Lust for Life by Vincente Minnelli and the artistic documentary of Jackson Pollock by Hans Namuth. By referring back to the art historical reception of Van Gogh and Pollock, she demonstrates to what extent the two artist characters were constructed both in the feature film and in the documentary.9 Barbara Schrödl’s publication Das Bild des Künstlers und seiner Frauen [The image of the artist and his wives] (2004) explores the use of artists in film from an ideological point of view. Citing from a long list of films, she examines the figure of the artist in feature films from Nazi Germany and the post-war era and demonstrates how much they were grounded in old artist myths. Following that, she analyzes the ideological use of artists in film and in agreement with Kracauer traces it back to the history of mentalities in Nazi and post-war Germany. I will confine my analysis to just one segment of this wide field—the biopic on artists. This focus allows me to investigate the different and differentiated applications and inscriptions of art

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and artists in film and thus describe and develop a segment of the field of popular art history. In this genre, film, art, and artists not only join hands but they amalgamate.10 Using two cases in point— the biopics on Jackson Pollock and Jean-Michel Basquiat—I want to examine which art historical and biographical narrative patterns and which (pre-)figurations are being given preference and eventually how these stories are being staged in biographical films.

Art history in biopics Biopics tell the life story or individual segments of the life of a well-known person. George Custen defines the genre: “A biopic … is minimally composed of the life, or the portions of the life, of a real person whose name is used. Other than that, the definition of what constitutes a biopic—and with it what counts as fame—shifts over with each generation.”11 Even though the film industry has been producing biopics since the advent of sound film and even though these are counted among the well-known genres,12 there exists very little scholarly literature on this subject. One of the reasons is given in Steve Neale’s study on Hollywood genres in which he observes that “the biopic has lacked critical—rather than industrial—esteem. The target of historians and of film critics and theorists alike, it has been the butt of jokes rather more than it has been the focus of serious analysis” (Neale 2000, 60). The genre is criticized as anecdotal, conventional, not artistic, and unrealistic. Marcia Landy has recognized this criticism, pointing out “the longstanding animus against mass culture and its lack of ‘seriousness,’ an animus based on distinctions between traditional and popular forms of knowledge” (Landy 1996, 155). A seminal study was published as late as 1992 when George Custen in his Bio/Pics: How Hollywood Constructed Public History examined the histories of production, of distribution and reception of almost 300 biopics that had been produced between 1927 and 1960. Apart from their history of reception, Custen explores the functioning of biopics underlining a close connection of the genre with the image politics and the star industry of the studio system. It is the first study that structurally and functionally addresses this genre; however, narrative theory is lacking in the



Artists’ biographies in film as popular art history 7

book. Henry M. Taylor focuses on a narrative perspective in his book Rolle des Lebens. Die Filmbiographie als narratives System [Role of one’s life. Filmic biographies as a narrative system] (2002). He analyzes both genre and characters using narrative theory and discussing biopics based on biographical scholarship. In contrast, the book Ikonen Helden Außenseiter: Film und Biographie [Icons, heroes, and mavericks: Film and biography] addresses different aesthetic models for biopics and their social and cultural circumstances parallel to their narrative structures.13 Since biopics typically focus on biographical content they also refer to a historical reality. The question will therefore be one of balancing biographical reality, factuality, and fictionality, even though the feature film has to follow the many premises of Hollywood’s logics of production.14 According to Taylor, the genre “biopic” is characterized by “weak narration” in which the story is often told in episodes resorting to “stereotypical, mythical story patterns” (2002, 18) using other genres, but most often it is connected with melodrama. The narrative is based on a protagonist whose development is narrated according to the classic dramatic arc—the rise and fall ending with the death of the main character.15 It is irrelevant how “true” or “false” the cinematic narrative may be since, according to Custen, the relationship of biopics to historiography can only be compared with the relationship of “Caesar’s Palace” in Las Vegas to the history of architecture. He believes that this kind of narrative distorts reality considerably but is nevertheless able to convince the viewer of its own authenticity, concluding: Hollywood biographies are real not because they are believable. Rather, one must treat them as real because despite the obvious distortions ranging from the minor to the outright camp, Hollywood films are believed to be real by many viewers. They represent, according to Hayden White, not a concrete illustration of history, a literal recapitulation of physical cause and effect, but rather types of behavior and explanation that comprise the category “history.” (Custen 1992, 7) With this in mind we have to perceive biopics on artists as realities of their own that play a role for many people (in)forming their art historical knowledge; Custen’s research on Hollywood’s view of

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history becomes transferable to Hollywood’s view of art history.16 When asked about the educational purpose and the role of the art historical context in biopics on artists, Peter Brant, the producer of two biopics, said the following in an interview: DB: Do you see these films as an educational tool for teaching us something about art? PB: Yes. Even if the story is not a hundred percent accurate, even if the story is more romantic than historically exact, it is an inspiration. You see an artist in a very noble light, you see that he or she is very human. I like bringing very sophisticated subject matter to the public. DB: Do you think that the story is more important than art historical accuracy? PB: Well, I think it should be as close to art history as possible. But ultimately, I think you have to tell a story. You have to inspire.17 There is little doubt that the vague depictions of historical or art historical context in biopics that usually succumbs to the biographical narrative of the films is one of the reasons for the skepticism of art history towards this film genre. In addition, the choice of films and the way in which artists are represented in biopics are also influenced by the industry’s concerns for distribution that first of all concentrate on whether it will meet the demands of the mass market. Therefore, successful biographies or bestseller novels are generally used as models for the script. These models, according to Walker, serve on the one hand as ready-made narratives and on the other hand it seems that their success is a guarantee for the production companies that the product will have a greater chance to be successful.18 Regarding the choice of artists on whom a film was made, it can be noted that the artists are mostly painters and less commonly sculptors, photographers or video artists.19 Additionally, the historical character is always already deceased, a factor that limits the choice of artists to a large extent. Biographism, moreover, is a controversial area in art historical discussions even though it is reflected in many



Artists’ biographies in film as popular art history 9

monographs on artists and in monographic exhibitions.20 Wölfflin’s concept of an “art history without names” (1915), concentrating on the artistic work while excluding biographical data to a large extent, is decidedly not the kind of art history that is being narrated in biopics.

Gender in genres When concentrating on the history of a person, the notions attached to the gender of the artist will be reconstructed as well. Despite the postmodern discourse that propagates the end of the metanarratives, Silke Wenk has observed that “old myths of male mastery and male creative power continue being relevant and are still circulated, even if not as grand cohesive narratives” (Wenk 1997, 12). The quantitatively unequal distribution of the genders in the existing biopics of female artists mirrors this. Apart from Séraphine de Senlis, Frida Kahlo, Camille Claudel, and Artemisia Gentileschi there are no biopics on women in the fine arts.21 There are, however, a great number of biopics on male artists.22 The few biopics on female artists always feature an important influence of a male artist or a male partner in the vicinity of the female artist to be portrayed, as can be seen from Camille Claudel’s partner Auguste Rodin or from Frida Kahlo’s husband Diego Rivera; in the case of Artemisia Gentileschi, it is her artist father Orazio Gentileschi or for Séraphine de Senlis, the collector Wilhelm Uhde. Verena Kuni even goes so far as to call the biopics of female artists a sub-genre of male artist’s biopics.23 “Gender in genre” has actually evolved into a research field in other film genres as well;24 it also will be an important category in this work. By the different ways in which the artists are characterized and represented in biopics as male and female artists, one can recognize that gender is encoded there in various ways. Artistic mastery is often represented as a male gift whereas female creativity has different points of reference: Usually it is connected with the subject of reproduction—a perspective known and debated in art history.25 Reinhild Feldhaus accordingly gets to the heart of the gendered art historical reading of the female artist describing Paula Modersohn-Becker, who died shortly after giving birth to her first

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child: “While the male artist ‘sacrifices’ his life to art, the female artist not only sacrifices her life but also her art to (new) life.”26 Female artists therefore have to consciously decide for either career or for children; in the logic of gendered myths the two cannot be coupled. Alternatively, in the reading of Frida Kahlo’s career the idea is prevalent that the artist has suffered because she could not have children and therefore immersed her reproductive strength into art.27 This same approach is reproduced in the biopic Frida (2002). In short: Procreativity and creativity are repetitively seen as dependent on each other in the reception of female artistic production both in scholarly and cinematic art histories. Hence, the topos of the “suffering male artist” or the “suffering female artist” have different characteristics, which can be observed in differing filmic representations of male and female creativity. In the biopics about women artists, suffering is usually related to the body of the artist, examples being the sexual connotations as in the case of Claudel as the “dumped” muse, or the ravished body in the case of Gentileschi, or the barren, pained body as in Kahlo’s case.28 In the biopics on male artists, suffering is usually psychological and only later transferred to the body. This becomes visible in the representation of Van Gogh when he is slicing off a piece of his ear in response to his depression, or when in the biopics on Pollock or Basquiat the abuse of alcohol or drugs is highlighted as responsible for the death of the artists. Even though one can say that there are definitely common features in the notions about male and female artists and their social functions, the stories of their lives are always characterized by gender and so are their representations encoded by it.29 Consequently the choices made by the film industry to portray male or female artists are not only reflected in the romanticized ideas of artists but also in the claims to power and hegemony within the canon of art history. And thus the question remains why despite the many years of feminist art history30 a patriarchal version of art history still dominates in the genre of biopics in which Giorgio Vasari is literally celebrated as its founding father.



Artists’ biographies in film as popular art history 11

Artists’ myths and star legends Biopics on artists always portray and project art history as the history of an (individual) artist. They are thus focused on a certain character and his or her actions. Therefore the notions of the life of an artist are often based on myths, such as: Artists and work are considered as a unity; artists are seen as unrecognized geniuses, as outsiders of their society and/or they are suffering. Even though in current biopics the artists are no longer “unrecognized” but “recognized,” a high price has to be paid for the success of creative power. Artists are mostly characterized from this limited perspective creating a rather narrow understanding of what an artist could or should be. They are portrayed in their visual and narrative stereotypes rooted in the traditions of art or literary history. Giorgio Vasari, who founded a type of art history in the Renaissance with his biographies that connected anecdotal descriptions of the life of artists to their artistic work, is considered the spiritual father of artists’ myths. A first analysis of the stereotyped descriptions of artists’ lives is the book by Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz Legend, Myth, and Magic in the Image of the Artist: A Historical Experiment first published in Vienna in 1934.31 They determine that not only in Vasari’s histories of artists but also “that … the recurrence of certain preconceptions about artists [can be demonstrated] in all their biographies. These preconceptions have a common root and can be traced back to the beginnings of historiography” (Kris and Kurz 1979, 3). Despite the continued rewriting and restating of these old myths, they keep taking on variations, and new myths are repeatedly being created.32 For example, French literary works of the nineteenth century33 have notably contributed to the idea of artists as bohemians, which is a myth belonging to Western modernism (see Brown 1985, 1–17). Creativity, spontaneity, and economic insecurity belonged to the image of a bohemian life, paving the way for romanticizing the image of the artist and artistic creativity that continues to have effects on biopics to this day. Contemporary myths often root artists within the art system and reflect their strategies for success when they are referring to “exhibition artist” (Bätschmann), “artist prince” or “art star” (Kampmann).34 For those artists whose life or work histories do not correspond to the mythic notions or who

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belong to the “other” gender, it is not easy to be included into Hollywood’s history of art. In fact, the narratives of artists’ biopics are not only influenced by artists’ myths but also by star legends. Both are closely connected to this genre. As Taylor observes: The star phenomenon is of particular relevance for biopics: On the one hand, biographical characters can be understood as stars in reality; on the other hand biopic protagonists are often portrayed by filmstars which can lead to interesting problems of impersonation. (Taylor 2002, 15) It is fascinating to observe that in the “making of” stories about biopics there is repeatedly talk of the intellectual or emotional closeness between the directors or actors and the portrayed artist, as well as of their great personal dedication to the presentation of the subject in question. Therefore we are not only dealing with a duplication of the star image in the sense of “star artist” versus “star actor.” The successful presentation of a historical person on the one hand heightens the image of an actor (as can be seen for example at the Academy Awards every year),35 while on the other hand it is also the actors’ own star images that inscribe themselves into the story of “their” artists. Even though biopics are normally not blockbusters and therefore rarely box-office hits, new films of this genre are repeatedly being made since the beginning of Hollywood’s “golden era.” This might imply that apart from sales figures there are other factors that motivate the production of these films. According to Custen, this genre is also quite interesting for producers and therefore is closely connected with the development of the film industry: Biopics also created a view of history that was based on the cosmology of the movie industry; in this world, key historical figures became stars, and the producers of these films often filtered the content of a great life through the sieve of their own experiences, values, and personalities. In this view of history, the greatness of the individual figure becomes that set of qualities that made a producer great or powerful in Hollywood, rather than those traits that characterized the famous person in his or her lifetime. (Custen 1992, 4–5)



Artists’ biographies in film as popular art history 13

By aligning themselves with heroic figures, not only directors or actors but also producers seem to expect a boost of their professional image. It will be examined in this study to what extent film legends and star discourses36 belong with the genre of biopics in the same way as the artists’ myths that encircle the historical figures. Hence, the following questions will be tackled: Which myths and legends are mainly used in the biopic genre? How do these influence artists’ and star images?

What, why, how: On choice and methodology This book is an interdisciplinary study of how art history is narrated through biopics by analyzing two films in detail. I will examine the narratives, the characters, the conditions of production as well as the reception of the two films Basquiat (USA 1996) and Pollock (USA 2000). Both examples present stereotypical characteristics as well as unusual elements in biopics about visual artists. Both films are representative for the genre in the way they use artists’ myths and star legends: They appear to be celebrating a cult of genius, more readily affirming the myth-making of individual artist figures than deconstructing them even though at the time of their production artists’ myths were already being deconstructed for quite some time in various scholarly contexts and artistic practices. In order to analyze the discrepancy between art historical discourses and the production of films, I will also pursue the production history of the two biopics as well as their places within the genre. Moreover, Basquiat and Pollock are characterized by diversely gendered and ethnic encodings. They also differ in their thematic focus as well as in the representation of artistic creativity and finally in the motivation of the directors. Another reason for my choice is grounded in that they were the only popular biopics on American artists suitable for a mass market, which evokes also the question of a certain “national art history” centered in New York City. When viewing these two films together we get to see a specific American art history unfold that leads from modernism to postmodernism, beginning with the focus on one artist-hero (Jackson Pollock) and the foundation of American modern art,

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later steering towards postmodern discourses with multiple artiststars (Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, and Julian Schnabel) and the heightened influence of the art market.37 My focus will be on the filmic representation of the artists since each is centered in the film narratives as well as generally in the biopic genre. I will precede my film character analysis with the art historical and popular reception of each artist in order to investigate the “historical, rhetorical, social, and media-relevant polysemies” (Hellmold et al. 2003, 12) that are intrinsic to the artists’ histories portrayed in film. Additionally, the dissemination of the images and myths of Jackson Pollock and Jean-Michel Basquiat in mass media will be analyzed and subsequently source materials for the films such as biographies and articles will be scrutinized regarding their rhetorics and level of historization. A study of the contexts of filmic production will ensue, concentrating on the following aspects: What motivation guided the directors, producers, and actors to work on the biopics? Which kinds of star legends are being created? The possibility of a reciprocal transfer of research between film studies and art history can be observed in an elegant stratagem of the editors of the book Was ist ein Künstler? [What is an artist?]. They quote a lengthy excerpt from a text on star images but replace the term star with artist finally explaining their intention:38 “The mimicry blurs—at least during the initial reading—the border between the film-historical considerations and their art historical perpetuation, between character and background, film star and artist. In the camouflage, the two merge borderlessly into each other” (ibid., 11). While I want to deliberately stress the entanglements of methods in this interdisciplinary study, the individual analyses will concentrate on disentangling the images of artists and stars in the films. Historical representations do not only consist of pictures and texts of individuals; they also transport an image and collective ideas of artists in general. It is precisely these collective ideas which ensure that certain artists become popular. They determine who will be portrayed in film and thereby also influence the filmic portrayal of artists—in this case they happen to be Jean-Michel Basquiat and Jackson Pollock. It should not be forgotten that these artists’ images also shape the identification of the actors with these very artists as well as the stories that are being told about them. In



Artists’ biographies in film as popular art history 15

other words, we are dealing with a consumption-oriented representation, a continuous transmission, transference, and perpetuation of notions, evaluations, and emotions. The image analyses of the films will be accomplished by focusing on specific sequences39 that highlight the visual appearance of the artist and the way in which he is characterized by the composition of the picture, mise en scène, narration, montage, and music. The identity of the artist is determined by the scopic regimes (in the Foucauldian sense) since they construct gender relationships and ethnic encoding, thereby establishing the artist’s image in the film regarding gender and ethnicity.40 These regimes characterize the protagonist in relation to the supporting roles as well as in relation to the filmic apparatus. In addition to the sequences that are chosen to analyze the artistic identity, I will compare the visual presentation of the artists in the films with the biographical and art historical sources along with texts and images in popular culture. It will help to answer the questions: Which myths and images of artists are used in film? Where do biographical and historical sources differ from the corresponding filmic portrayal? Additionally, the supporting cast of characters—other artists, critics, collectors or gallerists—will be examined in order to shed light on the context of the art world in which the portrayed artist lives and works with special attention focused upon the filmic representation of personal relationships.41 Examining the staging of characters within partnerships, as we can observe with Lee Krasner (as an artist and wife of Jackson Pollock) and Andy Warhol (as an artist and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s collaborator), will provide insights into the social circumstances, the discursive contexts, the mutual influences, and especially the divergent roles of artists in society. Apart from the analysis of individual characters, I will also underscore the intermediality in the films by exploring the use of visual, textual or audiovisual media. The filmic presentation of the artistic process, for example the making of a painting in film, can be analyzed best by looking at how different media are applied to depict artistic production. Since the art works being filmed are mostly copies, we also have to ask questions about originality and authorship. Who has produced the works shown in the films? Which media (print media, photography, or film) are visible in the biopic in order to present the creative process? And, last but not

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least, what significance does each staging have in the context of the entire film? The term “intericonicity” seems to be useful for assessing the relationship of the individual media to each other. Thomas Hensel has described the interplay of different visual media from film image, panel painting, and icon to mental image and literary metaphor in this manner: “An artifact can be called intericonic when it connects the coexisting media of different pictures in a conceptual framework” (Hensel 2006, 218). Thus, intericonicity is linked with the question of intermediality and promises to encompass the ways in which creative process, art works, and historical sources are being used as gestures of authenticating. After having addressed the individual images, modes of presentation, and production history, I will explore the notion of agency via different authorships. How is artistic authorship presented in the film? What do the different authorships, those of the artist, the director, the actor look like? To what extent is the director or the actor connected to the artist outside of the biopic? Which authorship is established through the reception of the film in print media? Finally, I hope to inspire a differentiated viewing of the films regarding the representational conventions of artists—their iconicity, images, and historization. Even though this study is more vertically than horizontally oriented by analyzing two biopics in depth rather than cursorily exploring 20 biopics, we can draw conclusions about the genre in general and obtain new perspectives regarding the initial question as to how and to what extent biopics on artists are able to write—or better project—a popular art history.

Notes 1

Regarding the different “turns” see Hensel and Köstler (2005, 9 and 20, n. 1).

2

For art history and film studies see Ferro (1977), Sorlin (1980), Marsiske (1992), Rosenstone (1994), (1995), and (2006), Landy (1996), and (2001), Hickethier, Müller, and Rother (2001). The works of historian Hayden White should also be noted: see White (1973) and (1978). Several magazines attribute a special role to film and historiography: History & Film (since 1970), Rethinking



Artists’ biographies in film as popular art history 17 History (since 1997). In particular regarding those films that are connected to the Nazi era, there are many works in German film studies in which film studies and historiography are jointly examined. Most of them reference Kracauer (1947). Here, only a short overview can be given on the existing studies, e.g. see Lowry (1991), Koch (1991), Greffrath (1995), and the recent publication by Ebbrecht (2011).

3

Biopics are structurally related to historical costume films and therefore can be easily compared: see Koch (1997, 551).

4

Another earlier exception is the art historian Hans Cürlis. In 1919 he founded an institute of cultural studies in Berlin producing short films focusing on the creation of art works. Cürlis views the medium of film as a didactic one in order to familiarize viewers with the practical side of the creative process. The films he created were: Schaffende Hände: Maler bei der Arbeit [Creative hands: Painters at work] (1923), Schaffende Hände: Bildhauer bei der Arbeit [Creative hands: Sculptors at work] (1927), Vier Bildhauer beginnen und vollenden ihr Werk [Four sculptors begin and finish their work] (1933), Schaffende Hände. Die Maler [Creative hands: The painters] (1957); see Stamm (1990, 63–8).

5

Panofsky (1947, 6). This text has been published in several different versions. The first one was “On Movies,” in Bulletin of the Department of Art and Archeology of Princeton University (1936), 5–15. Regarding the original context of this text, see Bredekamp (2006, 238–52).

6

Korte and Zahlten (1990), Paech (1994), Felix (2000), Schönbach (2000), Stemmrich (2001), Hensel, Krüger and Michalsky (2006), Dalle Vacche (2003), Felleman (2006). From the field of the arts see Schwerfel (2003), Leeb and Krümmel (2001). See also the following exhibition catalogs: Art and Film since 1945. Hall of Mirrors (1996); Spellbound: Art and Film (1996); Ghost Story. Nachbilder des Kinos (1998); Moving Images. Film-Reflexion in der Kunst (1999); Hitchcock and Art: Fatal Coincidences. (2000); Kino wie noch nie (2006); Jenseits des Kinos: Die Kunst der Projektion. Film, Videos und Installationen von 1963 bis 2005 (2006).

7

Naming only a few of the eight examples, Dalle Vacche chooses Nosferatu (D: F. W. Murnau, Germany 1922), Utamaro o meguru gonin no onna (Five Women around Utamaro) (D: Kenju Mizoguchi, Japan 1946), An American in Paris (D: Vincente Minnelli, USA 1951), Il deserto rosso (D: Michelangelo Antonioni, I/F 1964), Andrej Rubljow (D: Andrej Tarkowskij, USSR 1969), Thérèse (D: Alain Cavalier, France 1986).

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8

My thanks go to Bernadette Walter (1996) for letting me read her unpublished manuscript. Another study that used art historical methods for the analysis of films relatively early is Breitmoser-Bock (1992).

9

On the image of the artist in American films of the 1950s and 1960s see Fischer (1994, 103–13).

10 In order to concentrate on one genre I will not deal with other filmic formats like documentaries on or with artists or films by artists. Neither will I investigate artists as characters in films and television series since this is also done quite extensively by artists themselves, e.g., see the video works by Christoph Girardet and Volker Schreiner, Fiction Artists (2004); annette hollywood, hollywood art history: multiple artists (2002), Volker Eichelmann, Jonathan Faiers and Roland Rust, “Do you really want it that much?” –“… More!” (1999) or the exhibition curated by the artist Matthieu Laurette Artists’ Biopic Cinema (2008), Amsterdam: Smart Project Space. 11 Custen (1992, 6–7). The protagonists can be historical characters like politicians, scholars, athletes, entertainers or artists. 12 See the chapter “Major Genres” in Neale (2000, 60–5). 13 For other important books on biopics, see Felleman (2006) and Bingham (2010). 14 Alone the limitation of a feature film to about 90 minutes, corresponding to 80 to 90 pages of script, demands concentrating on certain moments in life thereby differing from the literary works of several hundred pages. 15 Taylor differentiates between classical biographies characterized by a harmonic closed ending and modern biographies that often end openly or riddled; see also 15–16. 16 For biopics on visual artists see the list of films in the appendix of this book. For artists’ biopics from the USA who are not only visual artists but also writers and musicians see the table in Custen (1992, 248). 17 Interview of the author with Peter Brant in New York City on September 20, 2005. Quoted as PB Sept 20, 2005. My thanks go to Jean Bickley for her help in coordinating. 18 Walker (1993, 15). The two successful fictional biographies by Irving Stone (1934) and (1961) served as models for the eponymous biopics Lust for Life (1956, D: Vincente Minnelli) and The Agony and the Ecstasy: A Biographical Novel of Michelangelo (1965, D: Carol Reed). The source for the biopic Frida (2002, D: Julie



Artists’ biographies in film as popular art history 19 Taymor) was the best-selling biography by Hayden Herrera (1983); for the film Pollock (2000, D: Ed Harris) it was the biography by Naifeh and White Smith (1989) that had been awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

19 In the meantime a heavily fictionalized and hardly biographical film on the photographer Diane Arbus exists; see Fur. An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (D: Steven Shainberg, USA 2006). For the rest we can observe that among fictitious roles of artists also photographers, and video or performance artists are featured from time to time; see for example High Art (D: Lisa Cholodenko, USA 1998: photography) or Me and you and everyone we know (D: Miranda July, USA 2005: video). In the German TV series Tatort, artists repeatedly appear as characters and they do not only work within the realms of painting or sculpture. In the US TV series Six Feet Under (created by Alan Ball, 2001–5), one of the main characters (Claire) becomes an artist and photographer. It seems interesting that most of the filmic artist characters working in the field of new media are women. The fact that artistic recognition is also coupled in reality with questions of gender and/or media seems to be reflected both in film and television. 20 Guercio (2006). See Hellwig (2003, 122–32) with regard to the methodological debates on the significance and historization of biographic elements in art history. 21 I am not counting the film Carrington (D: Christopher Hampton, GB 1995) since it depicts more the romantic relationships of Dora Carrington than her profession as painter. The film Fur. An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus also deals less with the life of the photographer; it stages her work metaphorically as a tale of “the beauty and the beast,” and the biopic on Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz Georgia O’Keeffe (D: Bob Balaban, USA 2009) did not make the theaters and turned out to be an underwhelming TV production despite its top class cast with Joan Allen (O’Keeffe) and Jeremy Irons (Stieglitz). 22 In my research on existing biopics of artists I discovered that several feature films were produced each on Rembrandt van Rijn, Francisco de Goya, Vincent van Gogh, and Pablo Picasso. Furthermore films exist on Michelangelo Buonarroti, Caravaggio, Jan Vermeer, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec, Gustav Klimt, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Amadeo Modigliani, Jackson Pollock, Francis Bacon, Jean-Michel Basquiat. See film index. 23 See Kuni (2004, 221–32), and Berger (2010, 36–46). 24 See Liebrand and Steiner (2004), and Braidt (2008).

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25 According to Maike Christadler, Vasari has attributed “a reproductive production of art” to female artists “because of their ‘natural’ proximity to ‘nature’.” See Christadler (1997, 43). 26 Feldhaus (2009). My thanks go to Reinhild Feldhaus for allowing me access to her manuscript before it was published. 27 For the most authoritative readings see among others Herrera (1983); for the deconstruction of this reading see Lindauer (1999). 28 In her video creation hollywood art history: artists in love (2002), the artist annette hollywood focuses on the female body and the politics of vision. By way of different scenes from three different films, Hollywood seems to free the artists Kahlo, Gentileschi, and Claudel to have a dialogue on female desire. 29 Ethnicity and social background play an important role as well; race, class, and gender will also be considered in the analysis of the filmic representation of each of the protagonists. 30 With Nochlin’s programmatic text from 1971 a feminist art history has developed. See Parker and Pollock (1981), Broude and Garrard (1982), Pollock (1988), Chadwick (1990). In German-speaking countries see mainly the various books published from conferences of female art historians: Barta et al. (1987), Lindner et al. (1989), Hoffmann-Curtius and Wenk (1997). 31 Kris and Kurz (1979). The book was first published in German as Die Legende vom Künstler: Ein geschichtlicher Versuch. Vienna: Krystall Verlag, 1934. For the book’s translation into English Ernst Gombrich wrote a preface and Otto Kurz added to the footnotes and bibliography. Catherine Soussloff has continued the work on concepts of the artist as historiographic notions where Kris and Kurz had stopped. See her book from 1997. 32 On research in the field of artists’ myths see Wittkower (1963), Neumann (1986), Warnke (1993), Groblewski and Bätschmann (1993), Hoffmann-Curtius and Wenk (1997), Bätschmann (1997), Ruppert (1998), Krems (2003), Hellmold et al. (2003), Kampmann (2006), von Bismarck (2010), Fastert, Joachimides, and Krieger (2011). Exhibitions on this subject were: Horky (2002), Clair (2005), Sturgis et al. (2006), Sexy Mythos (2008). 33 See de Balzac (1831), Baudelaire ([1863] 1964), Zola (1886). 34 On the state of research on artists see Kampmann (2006, 24–39). Current examples of artists’ myths are the characterizations of the Young British Artists in the 1990s and for the first decade of the twenty-first century those of Neue Leipziger Schule. Concerning the myth-making machinery of the YBAs see Ford (1996, 3–9) and



Artists’ biographies in film as popular art history 21 on the differentiations between the two myth hypes see Berger and Schäfer (2006, 156–61).

35 The Academy Awards of the recent years certainly underline the popularity of biopics: In 2007 both Awards for best actors were presented to Helen Mirren for her impersonation of Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen and to Forest Whitaker for his role as Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. Marion Cotillard was awarded the Oscar in 2008 for her role as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose, Sean Penn in 2009 as Harvey Milk in Milk, Meryl Streep in 2012 for acting as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady, and in 2013 Daniel Day Lewis won the Oscar as best actor in Lincoln. 36 On the diverse research done on the star discourse see Dyer and McDonald (1998), Gledhill (1991), Faulstich and Korte (1997), Lowry and Korte (2000), Bronfen and Straumann (2002), Ullrich and Schirdewahn (2002), Fisher and Landy (2004).   In recent years research in cultural studies has been done on the social phenomenon of celebrity culture referring to the star discourse in film history. See Monaco (1978), Gamson (1994), Marshall (1998), Rojek (2001), Turner (2004), Cashmore (2006). An interesting exhibition was shown in Vienna in 2005, documented in Superstars. Das Prinzip Prominenz. Von Warhol bis Madonna (2005). 37 Even though Basquiat was filmed before Pollock, I will start with the biopic on the artist Jackson Pollock following the traditional art historical chronology and not the chronology of the film productions. 38 Hellmold et al. (2003). “Einleitung. Künstler-Image oder das Schreiben über den Künstler als Camouflage,” 8–15. Original text by Stephen Lowry (1997, 10–35). 39 On the methodology see Korte and Dreschler (2000). 40 See Mulvey (1975, 15–27); see also Silverman (1997, 41–64). 41 Regarding partnerships of artists see Chadwick and de Courtivron (1993), Berger (2000), Weinberg (2001).

CHAPTER TWO

Pollock: A popular historiography It is astounding that it has taken 50 years for the first biopic on Jackson Pollock to be produced since the stories about the artist Pollock are literally predestined for a biographical Hollywood production. Jackson Pollock is considered the representative of American art after World War II and was already extensively marketed as a national art star during his lifetime. Even though he had been relatively successful since the middle of the 1940s, it was an article in 1949 in Life Magazine entitled “Jackson Pollock: Is He the Greatest Living Painter in the United States?”1 that guaranteed him a reputation that went far beyond the borders of New York’s art world. The various narratives about the life and work of Jackson Pollock2 also touch upon a variety of artists’ myths underscoring the romanticized image of the artist that resonates well with the biopic genre. However, as a representative of abstract art, Pollock occupies a special position in the genre since abstract art and Hollywood don’t really “get along.” Even though the artists of European modernism like Pablo Picasso or Vincent van Gogh, on whom several films exist, already embodied the threshold of abstraction, they continued addressing a wide range of issues that relate to representation. Also for Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francis Bacon, or Frida Kahlo, on whom biopics were made during the last ten years, the subject of representation in art continues to

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be relevant. It is noticeable that up to the present time, with the exception of Pollock, no biopic on abstract artists has been made, not on Kasimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian or Wassily Kandinsky, and none on Lyubov Popova, Sonia Delaunay or Sophie Taeuber-Arp. Nor has the life and work of conceptual artists––most significantly Marcel Duchamp––been of interest for Hollywood. Is their life really not dramatic enough for the genre? Does their character not correspond to Hollywood’s notions or are there other reasons playing a role for the disinterest in certain artists or art forms? Let us look back to the Hollywood films that were made during the heyday of Abstract Expressionism. In the 1940s and 50s, i.e. during the time of Pollock’s career, several movies were produced in which works of art—painted portraits, to be more exact—were used as the fulcrum of the stories. About those art works and their functionalization in films, Katharina Sykora has observed: The popular art of film is here in no way nobilitated by the so-called high art of painting. By incorporating the painted image, film offensively negates the normative coordinates of the art system, even if traditional, premodern artistic discourses are quoted in the narratives. Seen from the perspective of the art system, all the portrait paintings in these films are “bad” adaptations of parlor paintings from the time around 1900, the Salonmalerei. (Sykora 2003, 11) Thus, the art works to be seen in the Hollywood films seem to have no connection to the artistic discourse of the times; they follow other parameters. Abstract painting is hardly ever being mentioned or if so, it is being denigrated. Regarding modern art, 1940s Hollywood is suspicious or even hostile as Diane Waldman explains: “I was struck by both the frequent hostile allusions to modern art and occasionally to high art in general, and the use of the presence of a realistic portrait as an occasion to valorize an illusionist over a modernist aesthetic” (Waldman 1982, 54). Since Hollywood cultivated its aversion for abstract art, declaring it elitist and therefore not fit for the masses, it was rather the image of the artist Pollock that served as a role model for male creativity in Hollywood films and not abstract art. The director Vincente Minnelli was an exception; among other things,

Pollock

25

he was known for his interest in modern painting. In his musical An American in Paris (1951), the protagonist Jerry (Gene Kelly) is committed to the European impressionists as a painter since their artistic language corresponds to the American clichés of Paris. Minnelli stages the artist in an unbroken unity with his work by incorporating performative elements through dance. Thus, attributes like energy and spontaneity are connected to the protagonist’s artistic process of production. This description is similar to the contemporaneous reading of Pollock. Angela Dalle Vacche compares Minnelli’s cinematographic approach with the understanding of art in those times as characterized by Pollock’s artistic accomplishments and even more so by the image of the artist that circulated about Pollock in the USA by 1951. Pollock’s identity served as a model for Minnelli according to which he was able to work through his own cultural background and his artistic interests3 as a director and auteur.4 Dalle Vacche characterizes Minnelli’s film as follows: In An American in Paris, the representation of French art is caught between two extreme versions of the American identity: Pollock’s rebellious search for origins and Disneyland’s return to the happy days of childhood. Thus, in An American in Paris, French art goes to America, and it enables Minnelli to interrogate himself about his persona as an artist or auteur in relation to the way his own cultural background defines national and sexual identity. (Dalle Vacche 2012, 42) As these examples show, Hollywood was actually influencing popular notions of art (history), in particular when considering the films’ formative elements regarding opinions, taste, language, clothing, and behavior that Erwin Panofsky has described. (See Panofsky 1947, 22). Thus it is no wonder that the lack of abstract art or its discreditation in Hollywood films were just as opinion-forming. However, it was not only Hollywood but also the popular print media of the times that mirrored the widely spread dislike and the lack of understanding regarding abstract art in the 1940s and 50s.

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A public image through life: Life Magazine as image producer Nevertheless, it was the popular print media that were responsible for the public fame of the artist Jackson Pollock. Life Magazine, which was very popular, is not to be underestimated for the renown that Jackson Pollock gained at the time. Even though his works and exhibitions were also reviewed in other print media like Time, New Yorker, Partisan Review, Vogue, and Artnews, Life Magazine plays an essential role for Pollock’s popular reception. Even in the biopic Pollock this article functions as a hook for the filmic narrative. Therefore, I will concentrate on this article in order to take a closer look at how Pollock’s public image as an artist was constructed. The article starts with the following lines: “Recently a formidably highbrow New York critic hailed the brooding, puzzled-looking man shown above as a major artist of our time and a fine candidate to become ‘the greatest American painter of the 20th Century’” (Anonymous 1949a, 42). The critic mentioned in this article was Clement Greenberg. He took part in a Life Magazine round table discussion on modern art5 and propagated Jackson Pollock as the most promising American painter of the younger generation. Greenberg also championed Pollock in other print

FIGURE 2.1  Film still from Pollock: Recreation of first two pages of “Jackson Pollock: Is He the Greatest Living Painter in the United States?” Life Magazine (August 8, 1949)

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media, attempting to establish him in the art community. I will return more specifically to this later. In addition to the paintings by Pollock, it seems important to me to also analyze the characterization of that artist to whom the potential to become “the greatest American painter of the 20th Century” is attributed. At first Pollock is described as a “brooding, puzzled-looking man” who is shown in paint-splotched jeans sitting before his painting Number Nine (1948, also-called Summertime) with crossed legs and folded arms, a cigarette in his mouth. The large horizontal format of the painting is underlined by spreading it over two pages and is commented on sarcastically: Jackson Pollock, 37, stands moodily next to his most extensive painting, which is called Number Nine. The picture is only 3 feet high, but it is 18 feet long and sells for $1,800, or $100 a foot. Critics have wondered why Pollock happened to stop this painting where he did. The answer: his studio is only 22 feet long. (43) The color photograph for Life Magazine was taken by Arnold Newman. By his posture the artist here is established as an insecure man with a diffident, grim facial expression, which makes him look almost arrogant. The caption indicates his disposition as moody. The other illustrations on that page show the paintings Number Twelve (1948) and Number Seventeen (1948).6 On the next page, Pollock’s manner of painting with lacquer, sand, and trowel, which is unusual at that time, is discussed. The text is framed by two black and white photographs7 by Martha Holmes, each showing Pollock crouching before one of his paintings. On one of the photos he is dripping enamel from a stick onto the canvas lying on the floor; on the other he is spreading sand onto the sprinkled canvas. Both, the paintings and the text with quotes by Pollock, attest to an unconventional, new kind of painting. But even though the author Dorothy Seiberling attempts a precise description of his way of painting, one can detect a somewhat uncomprehending undertone especially in the captions (see the quote above) or the derisive comment “Pollock drools enamel paint on canvas.”8 The sarcastic letters to the editor regarding this article testify to an even greater lack of understanding. In almost all the published letters the readers are angry that an artist with these kinds of

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“accomplishments” is marketed as the greatest painter in the United States.9 Abstract art at the time was met with heavy disapproval. But then again—isn’t it just this disapproval that retrospectively serves the myth of the artist as the unrecognized genius? Not only Pollock is staged as the “artiste maudit”;10 his artist colleagues were also creating a similar picture of themselves as a group. Two years later, in 1951, the article “Irascible Group of Advanced Artists Led Fight against Show” (Anonymous 1951, 34) appeared in Life Magazine including a large group photograph of the “Advanced Artists” as they called themselves. Both the article and the photographs were a press event staged by 18 New York artists directed against an exhibition of American art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in which abstract art was almost completely excluded. Pollock is visible at the center of the group photos while Krasner is missing even though she was very committed to Abstract Expressionism. The only woman in the picture is the artist Hedda Sterne; thus according to Michael Leja an “aura of masculinity” (1993, 256) surrounds the photograph and the following discourse on Abstract Expressionism. Within this gendered context it was extremely difficult for artists like Elaine de Kooning or Lee Krasner to be recognized as artists by a larger public. Thus Hedda Sterne is the only artist in the group as the “token woman,”11 thereby underlining the patriarchal structures. According to Bradford Collins (1991, 283–308), this press event can be viewed as a continuation of the notions of the Bohème known from Europe and it can also be compared to the tradition of the Salon des Réfusés, but finding a new form of expressing itself by collaborating with the press through the popular print format. The photograph was taken by the Life Magazine photographer Lena Leen and can be called programmatic for it is this picture of the “irascibles” that is repeatedly used by the historicizing machinery regarding Abstract Expressionism as the basis for establishing the so-called New York School. One thing is clear: In the 1940s and 50s the coverage of Life Magazine contributed substantially to the reception of art and artists.12 But back to Pollock … Life Magazine was the initiator of his national fame. Only seven years after the controversially discussed feature story on the artist, his dramatic death in a car accident in 1956 is reported in this magazine with the headline “Rebel Artist’s Tragic Ending” (Anonymous 1956a, 58).

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FIGURE 2.2  Jackson Pollock photographed by John Reed. A similar photograph was used in “Rebel Artist’s Tragic Ending,” Life Magazine (August 27, 1956) Three illustrations accompany the text: The headline includes a picture from the magazine itself, the famous photograph by Arnold Newman from the article dating back to 1949. Between the headline and the text is another portrait of Pollock with a three-day stubble that according to the caption was taken ten days before his death. In this photograph Pollock in his sailor’s shirt and hairstyle looks strikingly like his role model and rival Picasso, only his facial expression shows an important difference (Figure 2.2). Pollock is ravaged by alcohol whereas the photographs of Picasso testify to his intellectual curiosity and love for life.13 Next to the obituary, the painting Untitled (Scent) (1953–55) is shown, a topical reference to his “late work.” Significantly, the caption does not give the title of the work but states “Late canvas shows painstaking brushwork.” This description evaluates Pollock’s changed career—from the chaotic drip painting back to meticulous work with the brush could be interpreted in the

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United States as an artistic regression, where dripping by now is established as an important innovative element of American painting (see Rosenberg 1952, 22–3, 48–50). With this article, Life Magazine honors Pollock for the last time while simultaneously the star machinery continues producing new heroes. In the same issue we can find a long photo essay on Elvis Presley and a report on the new star image of Marilyn Monroe (Anonymous 1956b, 79–84 and 101–16). Life Magazine was actually less responsible for Pollock’s place in art history than it was for the image of an artist-as-hero that was connected with American idol worship. This would be imprinted into the collective consciousness of Americans in the 1950s reaching far beyond the artistic circles.

The Pollock myth: Its ideological use in media In her monograph on Jackson Pollock, Ellen Landau has described to what extent the popular image of Pollock was also perpetuated in the movies by pointing out the influence of Pollock’s image as an artist on characters in films and images of stars like Marlon Brando and James Dean in the 1950s (Landau 1989, 11–22). Pollock as artist achieved a heroic status. In several reviews of the 1940s adjectives like “violent,” “savage,” “romantic,” “undisciplined,” or “explosive” are attributed to him or, as Landau summarizes: Many critics and reporters presented Pollock as a modernday mixture of the daring of Prometheus and the energy and superhuman strength of Hercules (with more than a dash of the innocence of the Noble Savage). The merit of his sometimes incomprehensible paintings lay in the clear evidence they displayed of search and struggle. (Ibid., 12) In addition, Pollock was characterized as “typically American.” The pioneer spirit of his parents was supposed to have been responsible for repeated westward moves with his family.14 Pollock, who was born in 1912 in Cody, Wyoming, seemed to be predestined for the lonesome cowboy image with his interest in Native American

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myths, his independent spirit, and his “wild and naive roughness” in social circles:15 Either implicitly or explicitly … Jackson Pollock came to exemplify for modern times the cowboy’s attitude of ultimate honesty; Hess explained this as based on the fact that he seemed to be living his own life “from the inside out,” cowboy style. Jackson Pollock’s reputation for stubborn independence was to prove a key component in defining the parameters of his myth. (Ibid., 13) Here in particular we can draw parallels with the image of the American man in Hollywood films of the 1950s. The rebellion against social rules is a common denominator linking Jackson Pollock and the characters portrayed by film stars like Marlon Brando, James Dean, Montgomery Clift, and Paul Newman. Supposedly there was even a direct connection through the writer Tennessee Williams, who was a friend of Pollock’s and Krasner’s.16 It was rumored that the character Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire recreates Pollock’s personality. Elia Kazan’s 1951 film of Tennessee Williams’ drama with Marlon Brando as protagonist propagates a new type of man: the rebel who revolts against social conditions as an outsider but who also has a soft, vulnerable side.17 This image is also reinforced by the actor James Dean in films like A Rebel without a Cause (1955) or East of Eden (1955). In Dean’s films the main focus, however, is on the rebellion of teenagers against their parent generation and on how they feel alienated from society. Marlon Brando and James Dean also embody their film roles in their own star images; they are characterized as moody, quarrelsome men, plagued by self-doubt (Landau 1989, 249, n. 39). Also alcoholism is a common denominator as is last but not least the comparable dramatic deaths of both James Dean and Jackson Pollock in car accidents. Both cases were reported in Life Magazine:18 In other words he [Pollock] was the irascible man, the troubled revolutionary, the romantic artist that Hollywood could appropriate for its construction of new images of masculinity and that anybody in mainstream America could adopt as a secret, hidden self … It was therefore expedient for Hollywood to use the

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Pollock phenomenon to revitalize the cowboy type—marginal and laconic, lonely and intense. (Dalle Vacche 1997, 29, 31) Thus, popular media constructed the heroic myths of the 1950s America and spread them in memorable ways. Jackson Pollock was the right man at the right time for the construction of new notions of masculinity and creativity; the long-held myths surrounding artists attributing them the role of outsiders (see Wittkower and Wittkower 1963) might have helped as well to see Pollock in this role. In this realm, artists seem to be especially well suited to mirror the notion of a rebel. At the same time, Jackson Pollock’s identity as a white man born in America with a Christian background served as the ideal figure for a post-war American artist. As Serge Guilbaut shows in his study,19 after World War II the United States also wanted to establish itself and be viewed as a cultural nation equal to Europe. While National Socialism raged in Europe, many European intellectuals and artists emigrated to America. And even though they were influencing the development of the arts in the USA in a lasting way, it seemed important to construct a national hero having no migrant background but embodying a truly American history that would not refer to European, but rather to Mexican or Native American myths. It was mainly the critic Clement Greenberg who prepared the way for interpreting Pollock as a specifically American artist by setting him apart from European artists: Pollock, I feel, has more to say in the end and is, fundamentally, and almost because he lacks equal charm, more original … He is American and rougher, more brutal, but he is also completer. In any case he is certainly less conservative, less of an easel-painter in the traditional sense than Dubuffet. (Greenberg 1947a, 138–9) America needs a strong, energetic art and not Parisian charm as Guilbaut paraphrases Clement Greenberg (Guilbaut 1983, 176). In addition, the function of institutions played a role as well, like the politics of the Museum of Modern Art, which was very interested in the transfer of modern art from Paris to New York. All these factors clearly show the hegemonial striving for cultural recognition in the US. This need is fulfilled in Pollock’s public image as

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an artist, in which old artist’s myths—of the bohemian and genius who suffers from society—are connected with American national myths—of the cowboy and rebel with interests in Native American myths. It is this connection that makes it possible to charge the image of the artist ideologically in a more political sense. As Guilbaut observes: the free world offered the exuberant Jackson Pollock, the very image of exaltation and spontaneity. His psychological problems were but cruel tokens of the hardships of freedom. In his “extremism” and violence Pollock represented the man possessed, the rebel, transformed for the sake of the cause into nothing less than a liberal warrior in the Cold War. (Ibid., 202) Thus, not only Pollock’s image was interpreted as fitting for a “liberal warrior in the Cold War,” but also his drip paintings were interpreted as an adequate expression for the fear of the atomic era during the McCarthy times (ibid., 201). This was an utter misunderstanding, especially since Pollock presented himself as rather unpolitical and since some of his artist colleagues sympathized also with communist ideas. This type of discourse shows the annexation of the arts for political-national aims in America during the times of the Cold War. (See Kozloff 1973, 43–54; Cockcroft 1974, 39–41.) Another important factor for Jackson Pollock’s success is his gender. This becomes clear when Pollock is historicized and popularized as the male artist-hero and when Lee Krasner loses her recognition with his fame. Retrospectively, the question of gender already played a role, yet of a different order, when bringing up the notion of a typically American art in the 1920s. Alfred Stieglitz saw a specifically American art on the one hand—and not quite without self-interest—in mixing the media photography and painting and on the other hand in stressing the factor of femininity in the person of Georgia O’Keeffe and her art. Stieglitz describes the artist and her work in 1918 in a letter: “The great Child pouring out her Womanself on to paper—pure—true—unspoiled” (Stieglitz quoted in Politzer 1988, 159). This invoked femininity of O’Keeffe was seen by Stieglitz as an index of the authentic, identifying it with new American art. Concerning Stieglitz’ attempts at institutionalizing O’Keeffe’s art, Ines Lindner underlines the relativity of

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gender and medium, and of being considered a modern American artist (2000, 227–47). This relativity is also important to consider after World War II, although it is grounded in completely different notions of art and gender roles. Eventually, the 1940s proved to be more effective at establishing American art than the 1920s. Apart from Peggy Guggenheim’s influence and apart from the Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA) politics, Clement Greenberg among others was a mouthpiece of American modernism who was “not only an enemy of the figurative but also of any kind of hybridization of media” as Lindner observes.20 In this respect Stieglitz’ dedication to a genuine American art, in which photography was seen as an equal to painting and sculpture, could not assert itself. And the (quite problematic) equation of “the American” with “femininity” was not forgotten in the post-war era but rather served as a subtext of exclusion for the “modern man” discourse. As an effect of these changes, the role for women artists also changed in the 1940s (see Leja 1993, 261). In the gender questions within Abstract Expressionism Michael Leja sees the reason for the “modern man” discourse, which was characterized by male individualism: Abstract Expressionism has been recognized, from its first accounts, as a male domain, ruled by a familiar social construction of “masculine” as tough, aggressive, sweeping, bold. The features of this art most appreciated in the critical and historical literature—scale, action, energy, space and so on—are, as T. J. Clark has noted, “operators of sexual difference,” part of an “informing metaphorics of masculinity.” … As a result, Abstract Expressionism has come to appear more and more a homogenous white male art, an apt artistic counterpart to the cold war politics of the contemporary white male U.S. political establishment. (Ibid., 256) Leja analyzes the gendering of Abstract Expressionism as a social phenomenon. He actually finds this discursivation of masculinity already in film noir.21 In this film genre the “tough guy” often has a soft, “feminine” core and feels alienated from his social context, which serves as a model for the concept of masculinity at that time. Pollock’s constitution fit perfectly into this image; his masculinity, which was seen as wild and aggressive but also as extremely vulnerable and sensitive was another aspect that made

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him well suited as a figurehead for the establishment of the image of a typically American artist in the later 1940s. Apart from his gendered encoding and ethnic background, even his interest in Native American myths agreed with the new demands of establishing modern American art. In short, Pollock was made into an American hero, in which national myths merged with artists’ myths, thereby reproducing old and producing new myths. This situation seems quite paradoxical: While the originality in Pollock’s artistic creations and American uniqueness are being stressed on the one hand, on the other hand the descriptions of his life are based on well-known European myths of the artist. Thus, Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz’s studies on artists’ myths can also be applied to the Pollock myth when they observe: The inner life of the artist is bound up with his work; creator and his creation are irrevocably linked. It is this fact that the biographical formulas of the artist’s death attempt to encompass. His sensitivity, vanity, and arrogance all assume a tragic dimension. In this formula, the special position of the artist is made particularly clear in that it ascribes the heroic posture of self-destruction to him. (Kris and Kurz 1979, 131) That this description can easily be transferred to the Pollock story discloses the structure of its myth-making potential that consequently legitimizes Pollock as an artist within an art historical context. Kris and Kurz’s assertion that “the recurrence of certain preconceptions about artists in all their biographies” (ibid., 3) can basically also be transferred to the film genre of biopics by adding that these basic notions are still being enriched with different cultural factors. These factors will affect the choice and type of representation of those artists on whom the films are being made. Summarizing, we can keep in mind that in the Pollock myth artists’ myths meet national myths that not only demarcate Pollock as a famous artist of modernism but above all declare him to be the “greatest living painter in the United States.” This creation of a myth is not only supported by popular print media like Life Magazine but also through its interrelation with the male figures who simultaneously appear in Hollywood films. Besides, Pollock’s case is an example for an ideological usurpation in terms of the prevailing politics of the Cold War as well as of the gender politics

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of the times. The interplay of all these factors is responsible for the enormous recognition of the artist in the 1950s. It ensures that certain notions about artists that are still maintained to this day are lodged in the collective American memory. Examples for this are the stereotyping descriptions of Jackson Pollock in Naifeh and White Smith’s biography that also serves as a model for the biopic Pollock: There was something quintessentially American about this antiartist, this handsome, rough-hewn figure from the American West, living in the country not the big city, working in dungarees instead of a smock, in a barn instead of an atelier, painting with sticks and house paint instead of sable brushes and oil. (Naifeh and White Smith 1989, 594–5)

The biopic Pollock22 and its models in different media Steven Naifeh’s and Gregory White Smith’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Jackson Pollock: An American Saga (1989) is identified as the template for the film script. The film was directed by Ed Harris, who also played the leading role of Jackson Pollock. Harris had been interested in the rights for Jackson Pollock’s published biographies for a while but all of them had already been acquired by other actor colleagues like Robert de Niro, Barbra Streisand, and Al Pacino.23 Harris said that he knew about this book project earlier but that he was not able to pay the high costs that the author demanded for the film rights. Eventually, the rights were bought by the art dealer James Francis Trezza. Harris contacted him in 1989/1990 with the proposition to make a film in which he would play the main role. Barbara Turner was hired to reduce the extensive biography (more than 900 pages) to a workable screenplay, which then was revised several times according to Harris’ suggestions, as he comments: She [Barbara Turner] was trying to write it like a Pollock drip painting, overlapped and not consecutive in any way. It was really tough to make any sense, plus it was so long … So, she

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wrote the script again over a year, and had another version of 212 pages, I said ok, we need to cut it down more … But still, she never wanted to attack it in a different way, and cinematically to me, it just didn’t make any sense. I wasn’t thinking of directing it back then, I just wanted to play Pollock, but I just didn’t get it. (EH Nov 17, 2004) The research and writing phases for the screenplay spanning from 1990 to 1998 proved to be quite time consuming; apart from Barbara Turner and Susan Emshwiller, Ed Harris himself also worked on the revisions intensely.24 In this phase the industrialist and art collector Peter Brant, who had already co-produced the biopic Basquiat, joined the project. He bought the rights from Trezza and from then on became the executive producer for the film. The last version of the screenplay is dated January 1999 and now has only 111 pages; only 89 of these were adopted for the film (EH Nov 17, 2004).25 In the year 2000 the film was completed and was shown in American theaters in February 2001.26 In contrast to the biography, the film concentrates on Pollock’s New York career from 1941 until his death in 1956. The biography, as the title “American Saga” promises, is more extensive than the film, starting with Pollock’s great-grandparents in the eighteenth century. Pollock’s predecessors, and in particular his American heritage going back several generations, are minutely described. Pollock’s childhood and his family’s move westward are extensively treated in the book but cannot be seen in the film. Already the chapter titles of the first part, “The West,” are pointing into the direction of the story that apart from his heritage is dealing mainly with Pollock’s personality. The titles are: “Strongminded Women,” “Sensitive Man,” “Stella’s Boys,” “Sensitive to an Unnatural Degree,” “An Ordinary Family,” “Abandoned,” “Lost in the Desert,” “Jack and Sande,” “Light on the Path,” “A Rotten Rebel.” This story is not explicitly told in the film but in some places it characterizes the filmic representation of the protagonist Pollock. This biography is a tour de force, comprising extensive materials of interviews and an appendix.27 It is so extensive that one would hope for a more critical approach of the existing Pollock myth. Instead, the biography rather reinforces the myth than deconstructing it. Jackson Pollock is described as a “wild man” with

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much self-doubt and suppressed homosexuality28 who, since his youth, has drowned his problems and insecurities in alcohol. The book starts with a prologue entitled “Demons,” quoting a drunken statement by Pollock: “I’m going to kill myself.” On the page next to it is a photograph by Hans Namuth on which Jackson Pollock looks utterly despondent, lost in the midst of his drip paintings surrounding him from behind leaning against the wall and before him on the floor. This clearly symbolic beginning is ominous and does not suggest a happy ending. The introduction talks of inner demons that Pollock has to fight against. If we believe the biographers, painting was the only means by which Pollock was able to appease his demons. The ensuing fame supposedly satisfied his hunger for the recognition he lacked from his brothers and parents. “In the end, painting was a way to test the world, to probe its heart, and to make it suffer forgiveness … The world had forgiven Jackson Pollock—even if it didn’t know what for” (Naifeh and White Smith 1989, 8). The prologue ends with these lofty and religiously sounding words and this tone of the introduction can be transferred to the whole text. Thus, it is rather an exception when the authors sometimes attempt to broach the subject of myth creation regarding Pollock, as they do in the chapter “Legends” that deals mainly with the relationship between Pollock and Krasner. A second attempt at deconstructing can be found in the chapter “Breaking the Ice,” which discusses the role of Life Magazine regarding the historization of Pollock. But, this biography mostly comes across like an object lesson for a fundamental problem of writing biographies: the amalgamation of fact and fiction. The authors do not seem to have enough distance from their subject and so many evaluating interpretations ensue, which, however, are never pointed out as such. Naifeh and White Smith are working mostly within the logic of existing myths, producing stereotyping statements that are all the more astonishing as the project has no lack of details. The biographies by Jeffrey Potter To a Violent Grave: An Oral Biography of Jackson Pollock (1985), and by H. B. Friedman Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible (1972) could also be named as additional models for the film that were not explicitly mentioned, along with different monographs on Pollock and articles that were made available to the director and actor Ed Harris in the PollockKrasner House and Study Center on Long Island, New York.29 In

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1998, i.e. even before the work on the film was started, Jackson Pollock’s retrospective at MoMA was taking place. Harris recalls that he visited that exhibition very often outside the opening hours and that he had several conversations with the curators Kirk Varnedoe and Pepe Karmel (EH Nov 17, 2004). Moreover, the closing credits of the film lists the art historian Francis O’Connor, who published the Catalogue Raisonné on Pollock’s works together with Eugene Thaw, as the art historical adviser. Thus, there are numerous clues proving that Ed Harris also was intensely involved with Pollock’s art historical reception and oeuvre. Apart from the literature and the preparatory talks, numerous pictorial documentations depicting Pollock’s life both in photography and film serve as important visual models. Already by the end of the 1940s Pollock had been relatively well documented (photographs by Martha Holmes, Arnold Newman, Herbert Matter, and Wilfred Zogbaum). Some of these photographs were re-staged for the biopic and made visible as black and white photographs. In art historical literature the main focus is on the photographs from 1950 by Hans Namuth. This can be justified with the concentration on Pollock’s creative phase with the drip paintings. However, in the biopic the photographs by Namuth are not shown as such; they are used by Ed Harris as models in order to be able to re-enact Pollock as much as possible in the dripping scenes. Fred Orton and Griselda Pollock commented on the dominant reception in the 1990s that favored Namuth’s pictures vis-à-vis other photographs: There were … several Pollocks on offer by 1950 and Namuth’s contribution needs to be scrutinised carefully and not seen as innocent reportage, but as representation, a particular kind of constructed image of Pollock and “les drippings”. Each photograph has to be recognised as an actively manufactured rendering of Pollock painting produced from available resources … Namuth’s photographs had a status which came to be overdetermined by the other evolving critical and institutional discourses in the 1950s that would claim and ratify the artist and “les drippings.” (Orton and Pollock 1996b, 170) Even if Namuth’s photographs were valorized for the representation of Pollock’s work by art historical studies, they do not represent the truth; they only show a certain truth, one that codifies

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the artist within a certain phase of his work and bestows on him a mythic status (ibid. 172). In Namuth’s artistic documentary on Pollock that is re-enacted in the biopic, this becomes even more evident. Even though I will not explore the reception of the Pollock documentation at this point, I want to at least point out its politics of representation. For Namuth’s film is taken as paradigmatic for the amalgamation of identity and work, of creator and creation; it thereby contributes to the mythologization of Pollock as artist. It is exactly this, then, that allows the biopic Pollock to appoint such a central, dramatizing role to the film shoot with Hans Namuth.

The production of film myths As director, lead actor and co-producer, Ed Harris was very closely connected to the biopic Pollock. Hence, it is strongly shaped by the knowledge and interpretation of one single person. Due to his multifunctional role, the film legends are mostly about Ed Harris and less about other protagonists of the film, even though Marcia Gay Harden was awarded an Oscar for the best supporting role as Lee Krasner. Nevertheless, it is Ed Harris who draws most of the attention because of his great personal involvement conveying Pollock’s artistic position. This attention extends from the physical to the emotional identification with Jackson Pollock’s personality. In the making of the film, Harris relates: “There are some similarities that I feel with Pollock in terms of fears, hopes, frustrations and needs. His were a lot more boundless than mine.”30 He also underlines his emotional approach to Pollock’s story while preparing the film: The years I spent reading and thinking and feeling about Pollock, the time I spent “painting” and trying to understand emotionally what it is to be a painter—I had to trust that time, and trust that something had seeped into my bones that would allow me to portray Pollock honestly. I had no difficulty in choosing an interpretation because it all has been very personal. From everything I read and heard, I had to go with what touched my soul and what made sense to me, both intellectually and emotionally. (Harris 2000, xvi)

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In the various interviews and statements, Ed Harris’ attempt to portray Pollock in an “honest” manner is repeatedly underlined; he wanted to empathize with him and thereby become “authentic.” On the one hand this is pointing to the enormous meaning the project had for Harris on a personal level; on the other hand it also indicates Harris’ (unspoken) professional expectation of a rising reputation as an actor that might result from a project like this.31 This tacit expectation was fulfilled; in 2001 Ed Harris was nominated for an Academy Award as best actor for his role as Jackson Pollock. His ranking on the starmeter rocketed from number 479 when the film hit the theaters in winter 2000/01 to number 26 when he was nominated for the Oscar in spring 2001.32 This has been the highest point of popularity in his career as an actor so far. Harris’ stories of the origin of Pollock also involve his father, who supposedly had given Harris Jeffrey Potter’s biography To a Violent Grave: An Oral Biography of Jackson Pollock in 1986 because of the physiognomic similarities.33 Ed Harris recounts the story of his father’s realizing the visual resemblance of his son with a national hero as a moment of initiation that launched the fascination that kept him going with this project for ten years. I will not go into the possible psychoanalytical interpretation of this anecdote, but want to mention that stories like these function well as film legends; even more so they are symptomatic for the myths of origin for biopics. In fact, the resemblance of the actors and their emotional involvement with their characters is repeatedly mentioned in the context of other biopics on artists. For example there is the story of Charles Laughton’s close physical resemblance with the artist Rembrandt in Alexander Korda’s film of the same name (1936) and of Laughton’s emotional attachment with Korda’s interpretation of Rembrandt as a victim of the Dutch bourgeoisie; the actor read art historical books and even took painting lessons (see Walker 1993, 22). In John Huston’s film Moulin Rouge (1952), José Ferrer was chosen as the lead actor “because he facially resembled the painter and because he had a melancholy and acerbic manner” (ibid., 32). And probably the most well-known example is Vincente Minnelli’s Lust for Life (1956) in which Kirk Douglas portrays Vincent van Gogh. Douglas also intensely studied van Gogh, but it is much more important for the legend that he sympathized with van

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Gogh’s struggle wanting to live exclusively from his art. Douglas also professed that his portrayal of Van Gogh was a difficult and agonizing undertaking for him and that he was unsuccessful keeping the necessary distance and illusionism to uphold the role. Kirk Douglas writes: “I felt myself going over the line, into the skin of Van Gogh. Not only did I look like him, I was the same age he had been when he committed suicide … It was a frightening experience.”34 In this example the involvement of the actor star with the artist that is being portrayed is certainly phrased in an exaggerated way. Nevertheless, structural similarities with the narratives on the motivation and involvement of the actor and director Ed Harris in comparison with the film legends mentioned above can be conveyed. Harris is proving his acting abilities among others with his physical changes towards the end of the film taking into account Pollock’s neglected appearance because of his alcoholism. In order to perform this phase of Pollock’s life, Harris gained several pounds. Anecdotes like these about Hollywood stars are enthusiastically spread by tabloids and seen as proof for the quality of an actor.35 In his role as Pollock, Ed Harris has to be seen in the context of “method acting.” Even though he did not study at the Actor’s Studio with Lee Strasberg, one can recognize the affinity to Strasberg’s principle that it has to be through their spiritual, physical, and emotional work of immersing themselves into the roles of the person they represent that will make the actors evoke the impression of having amalgamated themselves as actors with their roles.36 Ed Harris certainly succeeded in portraying Jackson in this manner, and he reflects this as follows: It’s tricky, but I never wanted to pretend to be Pollock. I wanted to be Ed Harris, using all his tools as an actor and as a person to allow Pollock’s experience on this earth to touch me, inspire me, lead me to an honest, true performance. I think the film is much more revealing of Ed Harris than it is of Jackson Pollock. (Harris 2000, xv) When asked if Harris sees himself in the tradition of Strasberg’s “method,” he answers: “I like to inhabit the persona or feel as close as possible to the character I am playing. This is what I enjoy” (EH Nov 17, 2004). In this answer, he is transforming the standards of

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an actor’s quality into his personal passion, thereby incorporating both equally into his profession. The moment of incorporating can be also found in the way Harris talks about appropriating the Pollock material for himself, relating it to his personal fascination with the person Jackson Pollock: My initial attraction to this whole thing was really him as a man and a person. I wasn’t really familiar with his art. I just felt some kinship with his struggles as an artist and a human being on the planet. It was much more related to when I was first out of school, acting in little theaters and the way I perceived myself and what I was trying to do and my own kind of agoraphobia and shyness and things like that. That was what I recognized in him, not so much who I was at that present time five years ago. (EH Nov 17, 2004) Pollock does not necessarily attempt to avoid film and artists’ myths or to deconstruct them. On the contrary, Ed Harris underlines that he wanted to represent his subjective perspective of the emotional condition of the man Pollock and he maintains that he did not want to give an “art history lesson.”37 However, by saying that, Harris refers to the lack of representing the context of the New York School rather than the myth-making. It is not easy to demarcate the borderline between an art history lesson and the representation of an artistic context. In fact, this film is unusually well informed about art historical interpretations in comparison to other biopics. The knowledge of the director and actor is clearly shown in the representation of Pollock’s way of working. The biopic also examines the relationship of artistic production and its distribution in the mass media revealing the reciprocal dependencies in a quite unique way. And ultimately the politics of representation that are expressed in this film have a distinctive influence on the popular art historical knowledge and therefore always remain a sort of “art history lesson” as well. Nevertheless, it is not Harris’ main focus to represent the artist Jackson Pollock within the art historical context nor to document Pollock’s work entirely, but to make a popular feature film about Pollock.38 Hence, the biopic follows its inherent mechanisms and sometimes has a hard time escaping certain patterns of representation.

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Liaisons dangereuses: Jackson Pollock as film character The biopic concentrates on the period from 1941 to 1956, approximately the time frame when Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner met in New York City and Pollock’s fatal car accident on Long Island. This is the time span during which Pollock experienced his artistic rise, success, and ensuing decline. The discovery of Pollock’s artistic “genius” begins with Lee Krasner’s visit to his studio, crying out “Oh my God,” expressing her amazement at his “supernatural talent.” Shortly thereafter Pollock’s “genius” is also recognized by Howard Putzel, Peggy Guggenheim’s assistant, when he first visits Pollock’s studio and exclaims: “A genius!” on seeing his art and being overwhelmed. The interest in his work is then continued by his patroness Peggy Guggenheim who includes him into her gallery program, grants him a fixed monthly advance and commissions a work, the Mural. In art historical literature, the genesis of this painting is significant for Pollock’s later works and in the film this is also copiously staged and emotionalized. Of instrumental importance for Pollock’s success is also the critical support from Clement Greenberg as an opinion-maker who will accompany the artist until the end. However, the most important function for all the phases of his life shown in the film is taken up by his partner, the artist Lee Krasner, who supports him continuously and sacrifices her own career as a painter for him. Compared to other films in which the actual process of painting is omitted, this film has several scenes in which the artist is shown painting. The performative act of Pollock’s drip painting method offers itself up for being enacted and the director Ed Harris used this for his film project, staging it extensively. Pollock’s success is epitomized by the representation of his fame in mass media. The article in Life Magazine of 1949 “Jackson Pollock: Is He the Greatest Living Painter in the United States?” thereby takes on a pivotal function. Even before we get to see the artist in person, he is introduced in the opening sequence of the film during the vernissage of his exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1950. This sequence already suggests the course of his development in which the media hype or the mass media in general are made

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responsible for the decline of the artist. At the height of his success, Pollock begins drinking again and, scarred by the changes, he is not seen painting any longer but instead fighting with his wife Lee Krasner. His marriage is shattered and he has an affair with a younger woman. The dire end takes its course, allowing for the melodramatic arc of the film that terminates with the hero’s death.

“The Life Painter”: A prelude The film begins with an opening sequence that serves as a cinematographic projection.39 On the one hand, the character Pollock is introduced as a successful artist; on the other hand the relationship of being an artist and being famous is pointed out as fatal, which will be developed further in the ensuing filmic narrative. In the first shot of the film we see a close-up of the woman’s torso in a white blouse and yellow vest holding an issue of Life Magazine in her hands with gloves matching her apparel (Figure 2.3). She is pushing her way through the crowd of the opening to Jackson Pollock in order to get an autograph on the page of the legendary article on the artist. The next close-up shot shows Pollock’s slightly paint-splotched hands signing the autograph together with the gloved hands of the woman (Figure 2.4). Then the camera pans to a close-up of Pollock, showing him in suit and tie pensively glancing into an as yet undefined realm (Figure 2.5). This scene will be repeated later on in the film suggesting the reasons for this empty look. There are no dialogues; the sequence is carried by the music that will later also accompany Pollock’s creative work process. In the flashback we find out that the scene takes place at the opening in 1950 in the Betty Parsons Gallery. Pollock is at the height of his career and the exhibition has drawn a large crowd. The forlorn glance into the room is directed at Lee Krasner standing in front of a drip painting. She responds to his glance. A shot/reverse shot between Pollock and Krasner follows; she smiles at him but instantly realizes that he is not happy. She lifts her brows in a question. Pollock’s stare gets more intense with time, becoming ominous. In this first sequence the camera introduces the matrix of a sexualized gaze. We see a buttoned-up female torso in a typical

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FIGURES 2.3–5  Film stills from Pollock: “The Life Painter”

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fifties outfit, mirroring the conservatism of the times. The woman holds the Life Magazine with her gloved hands like a fragile object, nestling it against her breast. One only sees the torso; there is no face to be seen and the woman remains anonymous. Instead, the camera and the viewer’s eye wander to a black and white portrait of a woman with a deep-cut neckline and a roguish smile shown on the cover of the Life Magazine (Figure 2.3).40 In contrast with the apparel of the woman carrying the magazine, this picture represents the other side of puritanical America where sex appeal definitely plays a role. Merging the two gazes—the stare of the viewers at the buttoned-up female torso and the inviting glance of the woman on the cover looking at the viewer—the film on the one hand points at the different notions of femininity of the times. On the other hand—and for me this is more important for the interpretation of this scene—the viewer’s gaze is being sexualized. It is a convention practiced also in other Hollywood films; one could call it a camera eye that plays with the desire of its viewers.41 But as we will see shortly, that desire will undergo several transformations. The image of “the desired body” is troubling in that it remains anonymous and dressed in a high-buttoned blouse, vest and gloves. The female body is an object to be viewed only for a short moment. Instead, it becomes—literally—the “carrier” of the look on the cover of Life Magazine. The anonymous body of the woman becomes the index of desire. It points at a regime of gaze that in this case is characterized by its constant transferral. Initially it is the portrait photo of the magazine cover that is being looked at. Life Magazine is the object of desire here, since at the time it was one of the most popular weekly magazines in the USA. To be reviewed in this publication distinguishes that person as a national star. On the way to Pollock, however, a transfer of direction occurs that ultimately points at the desired object, namely Pollock. The woman stands in front of the artist opening the magazine to the page of the article on Jackson Pollock. The gaze is at first transferred to this article; when Pollock signs, however, the figure of the artist as person and the image of the artist as star amalgamate. Now the camera is directed at Pollock’s face. The subject Pollock becomes the object of desire. This is underlined even more with the following shot: One sees Pollock with a vacant stare, fixed at an undefined space somewhere in the abyss.

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With its psychologizing and judgmental assertion, this beginning sequence looms like Damocles’ sword over the whole film. The public recognition and attention do not so much pertain to Jackson Pollock’s art but to the famous artist. This interpretation can be deducted from the biographical reading by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith: Since the Life article, his reputation had taken on a momentum of its own, sustained less by reaction to his current work, or any work, than by the fact of past recognition. Fame had begun to feed on itself. He had become “the Life painter,” an unignorable presence in the world of avantgarde art, regardless of how or what or whether he painted at all. (Naifeh and White Smith 1989, 601) During the course of the film the artist is portrayed as someone who is alienated from his own creation. And not only is the “star industry” made responsible for this development, but also the mental makeup of the artist. It is right at the beginning that the film establishes Pollock’s dependency on other people, his striving for recognition, his depressions, and his search for an authentic artistic expression.

The myth of the tragic hero Pollock is considered the tragic hero of America’s modern art. In the end, this image affirms itself in a modern hero’s death—a car accident42—and various articles that were published postmortem reflect this notion of a “logic” in Pollock’s tragic death. Thomas B. Hess for example writes: His death is tragic not only because his career is cut short but because it is logical … Pollock’s was the tragic, logical death of a man whose greatness and strength are precisely the qualities that led him to a death that could have been avoided if he had not been so strong, or had been willing to compromise, or step backwards, or hold some strength in reserve—in other words, if he had not been Jackson Pollock.43

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In the biopic, his death marks the end of the film. On the one hand this follows the structure of a melodrama and on the other hand it seems to be the logical consequence in the myth of a tragic hero. The film itself conveys the notion of a tragic hero mainly by representing Pollock as a psychologically suffering artist, visualized mostly in connection with his alcoholism. The many visits to a psychotherapist and analyst and his stays at clinics in which he attempts to free himself from his alcoholism are summarized in the film in only one short scene in which we see Pollock in a sanatorium. This motif of the suffering artist does not only follow a biographical interpretation but is also a topos in the literature on artists’ myths. Therefore, I will compare the presentation of the person and the artist in the film with other existing artists’ myths and examine their patterns of representation. The family history—a possible model for interpreting Pollock as the suffering artist—is actually only shown in fragments in the biopic. Repeatedly there are singular hints of having grown up as the youngest child of a strong mother, but these are scattered throughout the whole film. In the screenplay, however, there are several references that were not included in the film.44 Harris attributes the substantial lack of references to Pollock’s biographical origin in the film to budgetary constraints.45 But this difference in dealing with Pollock’s past also reflects the different attitudes of screenwriter and director. Barbara Turner was interested in a script of different layers while Ed Harris thought about the cinematographic realization and the length of his film, favoring rather a coherent narrative structure.46 This resulted in a compromise showing Pollock’s personality mostly via a patchwork of individual scenes and atmospheric images rather than via a coherent narrative: “The film isn’t an attempt to psychoanalyze him by any means, but he did have his problems,”47 Ed Harris said. The director did not attempt to interpret Pollock’s personality psychologically or to disambiguate it; instead he wanted to point at specific problems in his life. Helen Harrison, the director of the Pollock-Krasner Study Center, interprets Harris’ decision for the depiction of Pollock in the following way: This was a deliberate decision on Harris’ part. He resisted answering any of the intriguing questions raised by the character’s behavior because, for Pollock himself, they were never

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actually answered. Rather than speculate, or offer simplistic explanations, Harris chose to leave the issues open. (Harrison 2002, 168) Nevertheless, a psychologizing characterization of Pollock can be felt throughout the filmic narrative like an undertone; Pollock is rarely shown happy or well-balanced. He mostly exudes uneasiness in social settings, which cannot be attributed to any specific situation but it is being used to exemplify Pollock’s mental constitution. In some scenes this uneasiness culminates and escalates in different ways.

FIGURES 2.6–7  Film stills psychologizing Pollock: Vertigo view / The two brothers Jackson and Sande

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Let us cast a few glances at the filmic staging of the person Pollock: Following the opening credits, the film starts with a sequence pointing at Pollock’s psychological personality structure. The title “Nine years ago. Greenwich Village, November 1941” initially locates the events, which are psychologized with a verti­ ginous view from above looking down below into a staircase.48 Pollock is being carried up through the staircase by his brother Sande. They stop. Sande puts Jackson down. Pollock is totally drunk; he lies with his brother on the floor screaming “Fuck Picasso, that fucking guy, fuck Picasso” desperately continuing to mumble: “This guy did it all … I’m not worth shit, Sande!” Here Pollock is shown as a suffering artist, having hit rock bottom, who drowns his fears in alcohol screaming out his feeling of inferiority. His brother calms him down kissing him on the cheek, referring to the close emotional ties between the brothers. In this scene, directly after the vertiginous view, the film points at Pollock’s obsessions: On the one hand he is drinking, while on the other hand it is Picasso, his rival but also his greatest artistic ideal,49 whose works were prodigiously present during the 1930s in the art world of New York. Notably, the 1939 retrospective Picasso: Forty Years of His Art at the Museum of Modern Art was very influential on Pollock. Jonathan Weinberg is able to show this by comparing Picasso’s Guernica (1937) and its different pictorial influences on Pollock’s work between 1939 and 1942 (Weinberg 2001, 29–53). Rosalind Krauss goes even one step further recognizing the psychological construction of a “mimetic rivalry” (Krauss 1993, 332) between Pollock and Picasso that supposedly took place in the threesome Pollock-Picasso-subconsciousness. Krauss interprets this rivalry as the driving force for Pollock’s artistic creativity during the years 1938–46 (ibid., 330). In short: In the art historical literature Picasso is described as the oedipal father whom Pollock attempts to overcome (see Rubin, Nov 1979, 104–23 and Dec 1979, 72–91). However, the rivalry and competition between artists is only another topos that can be attributed to an antique legend on Parrhasios and Zeuxis.50 The impression of rivalry between Pollock and Picasso in the film is shown in different ways to which I will refer in my summary. Let us come back to this first scene once more: Pollock is characterized as a drunken, obsessive artist, plagued by self-doubts. Moreover, he is visualized several times curled up in a fetal position on the floor. I will highlight the

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FIGURES 2.8–10  Film stills: The suffering Pollock

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psychoanalyzing characterization of Pollock in the film with three sequences. They are all distinguished by the taciturnity of the artist and a psychotic retreat into himself, which is usually followed by excessive consumption of alcohol. Pollock’s alcoholism, however, is never connected to his creativity. The scenes of drunkenness thus are separated from the scenes of artistic production. Here the film follows Lee Krasner’s testimony that Pollock only painted when he was sober (see Lee Krasner in Glueck 1981, 60). Being narcotized in Pollock’s case is rather a stumbling block than a means of inspiration. 1942—Pollock in the Sanatorium: Pollock and Krasner are seen for the first time with his family at a dinner at home. An observing camera eye shows a sumptuous meal as a tableau vivant in which his mother is enthroned at the center along with his brother Sande, his wife, and children at the table. There is no word said in the beginning; we hear Benny Goodman’s song Sing, Sing, Sing— certainly an evocative picture. During the meal Pollock learns that his brother has found a job with the defense industry in order not to be drafted in the war. He will move to Connecticut with his family and the mother. Pollock swallows, glowers infuriated and congratulates in an angry tone. Sande’s wife answers laconically “Not everyone can arrange to be 4-F, Jack!” thereby pointing out Pollock’s ineligibility for the army.51 Thereupon Pollock turns up the music and begins drumming the rhythm on table and plates with his cutlery. Krasner wants to calm him down but does not succeed. He loses control, first with his cutlery and later with his fists begins to smash his food to pieces.52 CUT. We see Pollock’s brother Sande and Krasner visiting Pollock who is sitting with tear-dimmed eyes and looking quite unhinged in a bleak and bare, small hospital room (Figure 2.8).53 Pollock is crying and screaming in Sande’s lap. In the next shot we see Pollock in Krasner’s home in bed. Krasner feeds him with a mix of milk and eggs, mixed according to the brother’s instructions. This good advice from the brother signalizes that he will now hand over his caretaking to Lee. 1944—Drunk in the Street. “It’s like a storm, it will pass”: The big work for Peggy Guggenheim is finished; it hangs in Guggenheim’s hallway. At her party Pollock urinates into the fireplace, doing justice to his future image as “Jack the Dripper.” And he is also

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drunk. He stumbles and weaves, falling onto guests sitting in front of the fireplace. All are embarrassed, Lee seems angry. Peggy covers up the awkwardness of the situation by raising a toast. CUT. Pollock comes home at night. His eyes wander over a dark, empty studio. He looks at Lee Krasner sleeping in the bed. In the background melancholic music. CUT. After a drunken and disastrous night of love-making with Peggy Guggenheim, Pollock comes back home to Krasner in the morning. She confronts him: “I went out looking for you. What are you doing to yourself?” Pollock says: “Nothing.” Krasner answers: “You are doing more than that.” He lies down on the bed and answers listlessly: “It’s like a storm, it will pass.”54 CUT. The next take shows Pollock and his friend Reuben Kadish drinking in a bar. Pollock recounts sadly that Howard Putzel (Peggy Guggenheim’s assistant) has died from a heart attack. Both toast to Howard. After having drunk enough, Kadish wants to leave the bar together with Pollock but Pollock wants to remain. “I’m doing no harm,” he says. Sad music starts playing. Instead, this evening Pollock does not go home. Assuming from the dirty clothes he spends several nights in the street. Dirty and cold, crouching on the ground (Figure 2.9) he almost looks like a homeless man. He slowly gets up and goes home in a completely squalid state. Standing at the door of the apartment, he begs Lee to take him back in. He cries in her arms. They reconcile. Shortly afterwards they move to the countryside on Long Island and they get married. 1956—Huddled up on the Bed: Krasner and Pollock are estranged. Krasner has traveled to Europe alone. Pollock has a lover named Ruth Kligman whom he considers his last salvation. She is at the house together with her friend Edith Metzger. Pollock is in the bedroom. He has changed considerably, has a beard and has put on weight. He wears a sailor’s shirt in which he looks more and more like his ever-haunting rival Pablo Picasso and is lying huddled up and upside down, with his head at the foot of the marital bed (Figure 2.10). The birds chirp and the sun shines into the room. It would actually be an idyllic, peaceful moment if Pollock did not lie in this closed up manner and if he did not have this tearstained face. Ruth Kligman knocks at the door. She wants to go to the beach with her friend. Pollock lets his head sink into the bed even deeper and does not want to join them. They would wait

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for him. Pollock nods, but remains lying and sniffles. An exterior shot follows with Edith Metzger asking about Pollock. Kligman palliates the situation saying that he is just taking a nap and would come soon. Then we see a close-up of Pollock’s tear-stained face. He sniffles and tosses on the bed. For a moment it looks as if he had already died. This scene foreshadows the end and is the last calm moment before the storm of the alcoholic stupor that will cost the lives of Pollock and Edith Metzger. What can we deduce from this kaleidoscope for an interpretation of Pollock’s personality structure in the film? The suffering of the artist is already present at the beginning, pointing at subjects like alcoholism and artists’ rivalries. Successful years of work follow in which the representation as a suffering artist stays on the sideline in favor of the portrayal of the productive phases. But the impression of the “suffering man” never gets entirely lost; it is expressed in a milder form in the discomfort in certain social settings. From the middle 1950s onward, his initial suffering—the excessive consumption of alcohol—comes to the forefront again. Pollock no longer works creatively and his exterior appearance changes. His attire and hairstyle make him look more and more like his former rival Picasso. He has gained weight and his face is red and bloated. His mental condition has again become unstable, mirroring the beginning of the film. And even though he has attained the fame he had been longing for so eagerly, death seems to be the only way out of this vicious circle. To represent Pollock as a suffering artist certainly corresponds with Pollock’s real life. We can infer this from personal testimonials in letters and psychological opinions of his therapists and can also extensively read about it in his biography (see Harrison 2000, 7–19 and Naifeh and White Smith 1989, 2). The presentation in the film, however, not only refers to Pollock’s personal ordeal but also echoes certain myths associated with artists in general. Ellen G. Landau notes in her monograph to this regard: although Pollock’s story is a very personal one, in many ways it also epitomizes a pattern that reaches far back in the centuries … Throughout the ages, the most notable characteristics of the artistic genius have been his unreliability, rebelliousness, extravagance, alienation, anxiety, and melancholia. More often than not he has been doomed to a solitary and tormented life as

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a result of his debilitating alternations between periods of manic productivity and deep despair. (Landau 1989, 238) With her observations Landau refers to Rudolf and Margot Wittkower’s study. In Jackson Pollock she sees the first American “artiste maudit,” calling him “The American Prometheus.”55 Even though the author does not investigate the myth any further, she uses it as a model for Pollock’s reception as a rebel and as a shunned, suffering artist. Speaking more generally about artists’ myths, Eckhard Neumann establishes a direct connection between the antique myth and the image of the suffering artist—in the cult of Prometheus he sees an emphasis on the “heroic agony” and as a result a “mythical self-aggrandisement of the artist.” The antique myth epitomizes the suffering of the artist with society and serves as a model for the construction of an identity (see Neumann 1986, 73). Neumann goes even further, recognizing in the cult of the genius an amalgamation of antique and Christian notions of suffering: The structural similarities between suffering cultural heroes and the sacrificed god-man Christ may have founded an ideology of suffering of the artist that can be traced into our times. Their aesthetic stylizing therefore shows mythical characteristics. These also remain visible where new “messiahs” and martyr personalities arise in the arts who are free of confessional ties and have no knowledge of the antique myths of creation. (Ibid., 82) Independently of this, no matter how deliberately or involuntarily the film works with artists’ myths, the presentation of Pollock as a person takes recourse to the topos of the suffering artist. Moreover, it becomes clear that in biopics on artists the representation of the suffering artist is being favored since it legitimizes artists in their unusual activities, confirms their genius, and plays well into a dramatic narrative. Being seen as an outsider also entails wanting to be socially accepted but it is a wish that cannot be fulfilled because it does not conform to the idea of being an outsider. In the case of Pollock this wish is expressed in his continual striving for recognition that is initially limited to his family (his mother, his brother, and his wife) and that later extends to his professional environment. This aspiration mutates into a never fulfilled search that shifts from the

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private to the public sphere. Following this logic, the character Pollock and his connection to the fame associated with the article in Life Magazine in the first sequence is symptomatic for the unfulfilled search. It also tunes the viewers in onto the ambivalent impact of mass media, which is staged at different times as being part of the history of Pollock’s life and work. Below I will scrutinize these reciprocal dependencies of mass media and creative processes.

The painter and his creative processes The innovation of Action Painting was to dispense with the representation of the state in favor of enacting it in physical movement. The action on the canvas became its own representation. (Rosenberg 1960, 27) These were the words with which the art critic Harold Rosenberg coined the term “Action Painting” in 1952. Even though the article does not specifically deal with Jackson Pollock’s work,56 this text connecting the activity of painting to the identity of an artist is extremely important for understanding the performative element of Pollock’s drip painting method.57 For the acting out of the dripping,58 Harris had the photographs and films documenting the creative process at his disposal. He partly re-enacted and integrated them into the film. They characterize Pollock’s painting process without being directly quoted. However, the presentation of the creative process in the film is not only limited to the dripping; it is dramaturgically based on it and presents dripping or the reproduction of dripping in film as the culmination of Pollock’s artistic creation. In fact, after showing the film shoot with Hans Namuth, there is no additional painting scene even though Pollock continued producing works after 1950. In a later scene, the painting Portrait and a Dream (1953) is tellingly hanging on the wall in Pollock’s and Krasner’s house. In this scene Pollock quarrels with Greenberg and extremely bitterly fights with Krasner as well. In art historical literature his painting Portrait and a Dream is interpreted psychologically as having been painted from the subconscious59 and biographically as representing the rift with his wife.60 Both in the studies on Pollock and in the film, the painting is interpreted

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symbolically as representing a new phase in his work in light of figuration and abstraction, advancement and regression, success and failure. Using this painting as a decoration on the wall makes this scene an illustration of an emotionally charged period. This painting in the film thus becomes less a reference to a new phase in his work than an “affective accessory” that stands for the fusion of life and work of the artist. The film’s arc relating to Pollock’s painting process builds upon artistic innovation fueling modernism’s tradition of thinking in terms of progress. The first scene in the film depicts Pollock painting Male and Female (1942). It characterizes the artist as a modern American painter in jeans and T-shirt, visually differentiated from Lee Krasner in her traditional artist’s apron. Pollock does not work with brush and palette but directly puts the paint onto the canvas from the tube. Krasner attempts to interpret his activity by saying “Are you experimenting with surrealism? Is this a dream? Even if it is a dream, it’s still what you see, it’s life! You can’t abstract from nothing. You can only abstract from life, from nature.” Pollock answers laconically: “I am nature.” This exchange shows the viewers Krasner’s intellect, but with the simplicity of Pollock’s answer also evokes notions of his primordial approach and innate gifts while simultaneously bringing up a subject that is often mentioned in literature, namely that Pollock draws from his subconscious.61 The “I am nature” also refers to ancient myths of creation. By way of the assumed attitude of unspoiled naturalness, the artist is directly linked to the divine. “Deus Artifex—Divino Artista” is the title of a chapter in Kris and Kurz’s book in which the idea of a connection between the artist and the divine is discussed (see Kris and Kurz 1979, 38–60). The authors delineate the notion that the artist creates from an “irrepressible urge” from which he accomplishes his work in a “‘mixture of fury and madness’ akin to intoxication” (ibid., 48). Continuing, Kris and Kurz state that “[i]n the Renaissance the idea of God’s artistry passed into that of the artistry of Nature” (ibid., 55). Therefore also the notion of the creative power of the “Divino artista” is inextricably connected with that of the genius (ibid., 59). In a collection of anecdotes about artists we read that the artist appears as a second God because he himself establishes a second nature (see Krems 2003, 23). Thus Pollock’s answer “I am nature” could be interpreted to the effect that divine inspiration flows through him, that he creates a second nature with the painting, and that by

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doing this he is marked as a genius. In the extensive staging of the painting Mural (1943) this idea of the genius is illustrated further by bringing in the topos of virtuosity. The sequence shows the masterful creativity of the artist Pollock, but also that of the prowess of Harris as an actor. Apart from that it serves as a scene of initiation and can be seen as a prefiguration for the later drip painting.

The white canvas: Artistic virtuosity and media game

FIGURES 2.11–12  Film stills: Pollock’s shadow-movements

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The work entitled Mural (1943) commissioned by Peggy Guggenheim is Pollock’s breakthrough. In the film, he enlarges his studio and for the enormously big format62 of the painting breaks through the wall to Lee Krasner’s studio with an ax. Pollock unrolls the huge canvas in the direction of the camera; it literally approaches the viewer. He puts the stretched canvas against the wall and then walks the length of it, back and forth. Doing this, the movement of his walking throws shadows onto the canvas thereby indicating the creation of the painting as well as the physicality of the future painting process (Figures 2.11–12).

FIGURES 2.13–14  Film stills: Pollock’s inspiration

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The film then depicts phases of pondering and reflecting. Pollock crouches in a corner and stares at the white canvas, an allusion to the topos of fear of the white page. Lee Krasner enters his studio wanting to know what he sees on the canvas because he has been staring at it for weeks already. Pollock does not answer, locks his door and sits in front of the white canvas, which now shifts to a full frame image. Then we see a close-up on Pollock’s eyes and rising smoke from a cigarette clouding the view. With the shot/reverse shot method the image changes back and forth between the full frame of the white canvas and his

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FIGURES 2.15–19  Film stills: Transfer of movement onto canvas

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eyes (Figures 2.13–14). Connecting the shots in this way creates a correlation between the image carrier (the canvas) and the thoughts of the artist (the inspiration). It guides the viewers to the notion of an “inner voice” or a “divine inspiration” that is bestowed on the artist. At the same time the action is dynamized by way of these connecting shots that build up suspense pointing to the creation of a “master work.”63 Pollock throws his cigarette on the floor, grinding it with his paint-splotched shoe and begins to paint energetically (Figures 2.15–16). One can even hear the dynamic application of the paint onto the canvas. Cigarette in his mouth, hands paint-splotched, he continues painting relentlessly until he has finished the painting in one session throughout the night. With the musical score, the gestural act of painting (Figures 2.17–19) has the effect of a dance performance indicating the performative act of the artist dripping. The music, composed by Jeff Beal, is particularly important in this sequence since it makes the painting process more emotional and intense. From the beginning when Pollock is striding back and forth beside the canvas the music accentuates the creative process taking on varying motifs similar to the painting. Initially we hear a trumpet seeming to call the artist, and then a piano starts playing softly. In the foreground we hear Lee Krasner. The music develops with long extended organ harmonies symbolizing the reflections of the artist but also creating a mood of suspense. From the shot/reverse shot moment onward cheerful violins are introduced pointing ahead. The musical theme develops together with the creation of the painting. A carillon and several violins give the painting scene a lively and animated air. Various instruments begin playing different melodies; we hear a xylophone, bass, clarinet, and then a whole orchestra. It almost seems as if the music were narrating a variety of little stories. It seems to become powerful and almost dangerous at the point at which Pollock “throws” the horizontal red lines through the picture and onto the painted canvas. But after this it dissolves again, seems repetitive like a piece by Philipp Glass, withdrawing more and more. It becomes softer and softer as the process of painting comes to an end. Now we hear quiet violins and trumpets that slowly fade away. CUT.

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FIGURES 2.20–1  Film stills: Mural in full frame / Mural in context

FIGURE 2.22  Jackson Pollock, Mural, 1943. Oil on canvas, 8′ 1¼″ × 19′ 10″, The University of Iowa Museum of Art, Gift of Peggy Guggenheim, 1959.6 © 2014 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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The next morning we see Krasner on the way to the bathroom where she encounters Jackson Pollock sitting on the toilet with soiled hands. The artist’s body clearly exhibits signs of exhaustion; it points to the physical energy demanded of the creator while creating, thereby also referring to the genius of the artist with a very physical reference. Then the canvas painted by Harris/Pollock is presented as a full frame seen from Krasner’s perspective.64 Even though the filmed Mural is shown in full frame, one does not see it completely but in a perspectival segment shaped by the camera optics (Figure 2.20).65 The next shot shows the filmed Mural already hanging in its place in Peggy Guggenheim’s hallway, where Pollock is looking at it (Figure 2.21). Comparing it with a reproduction of the actual artwork Mural (Figure 2.22), we see that the painting was painted for the film when looking at it more closely. The genesis of this painting is given a relatively long time span of 4 minutes 40 seconds; the Mural both in the film and in art history actually plays an important role since it is interpreted as announcing Pollock’s later style of painting, the dripping. But this sequence also signifies the virtuosity of the artist. Pollock does not permit anything or anyone to interfere with his work. The artist paints the painting in one delirious go throughout the whole night: The fact that an artist begins with an insignificant detail, whose function in the whole becomes apparent only later, gives rise to the impression that with unerring certainty the painter puts down on the canvas a picture that he carries within him––and not a depiction of an exterior model. (Kris and Kurz 1979, 93) This is Kris and Kurz’s description and it could be almost entirely transferred to the making of the Mural in the film. Pollock’s walking up and down before the canvas could be regarded as that “insignificant detail” that can only be recognized later when the painting is completed. The actual production of the painting is characterized by the confidence and speed of the artist while painting. The topos of virtuosity and delirium is an important characteristic for the exceptional gifts and the genius of an artist in the myth literature. Seen from the logic of myths, we are dealing with a “divino artista.”

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FIGURE 2.23  Pollock in front of the empty Mural canvas in his studio; photograph by Bernard Schardt, 1943

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FIGURES 2.24–5  Film stills: Pollock walking along the empty canvas

There is actually a pictorial model for Pollock’s striding up and down in front of the white canvas in a photograph by Bernard Schardt (1943) that depicts Pollock in front of the empty white canvas (Figure 2.23). The film staging of the cast shadow also suggests another art historical topos—the legend of the daughter of Butades,66 a Corinthian potter, who captures the shadow of her lover on the wall before he leaves. The legend is used to explain the origin of drawing or painting67 and in connection with Pollock’s Mural could also be read as a prophecy for the invention of a

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new art form—as the drip painting is generally interpreted. Hence the staging in the film (Figures 2.24–5) also refers to the Butades legend. Pollock can be seen in front of the painting striding up and down, the shadow, however, shows a standing figure that lets us infer an element of detaining. In combination, this sequence on the one hand refers structurally to the art work to be painted in which striding movements of a figure will become visible, while on the other hand it announces the fact that the artist is present “in the picture”—which will be of great significance for the process of dripping. The staging of the genesis of this painting with the cast shadow is not only a reference to a historical document (photography); it can also be read as an index in three stages. Initially, as a formal element for the genesis of the Mural (painted images of movement), then by way of content it might stand for action painting (performativity in the sense of the artist’s body on the canvas), and finally in the sense of myths of origin of new artistic media (reference to a new art form). Within the film narrative the scene of creating the Mural takes on an initiating character both regarding content as well as medium. It also differs formally from the other representations of artistic creation. The storyline is driven forward by the filmic means—tracking shots, dynamized editing, accompanying music—dramatizing the process of painting. However, the voice of authority, the feature film and its apparatus, remain invisible. In contrast to this, other reproducing media such as photography, radio, and film become visible in the feature film when presenting the artist and his artistic practice.

Photography as an agent of death: The artist becomes an icon Photographs are an important source of information for presenting the Pollock character in the film. Some photographs are even part of the filmic narrative. For example, one narrative thread is dedicated to the making of the article in Life Magazine depicting the interview situation with the journalist and photographer68 in the countryside at Pollock and Krasner’s place. The two artists walk side by side. The dialogues between the journalist and

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FIGURES 2.26–8  Film stills: Taking the photograph / Camera lens as full frame / Pollock looking at his image

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Pollock—and also Krasner who completes what her husband has to say—are accompanied by the activities of the photographer. The sound of the camera click is accentuated auditively. The photographs showing Pollock in various contexts (with Krasner, with the salesman in the grocery store, alone in his studio) are subsequently inserted as black and white film stills before a black background into the film frame, exposing their own mediality as photo prints. Thus, they appear like original documents. Only when repeatedly looking at them we realize that they are re-enacted pictures showing the actor Ed Harris and the actress Marcia Gay Harden. When asked why these photographs were re-enacted but presented as documentary material in the film, Ed Harris answered: “Because it is a film: I am Pollock and Marcia Gay is Lee. So, if I suddenly show pictures of Pollock and Lee, it would be more of a semi-documentary comment. I was trying to make a narrative film” (EH Nov 17, 2004). Harris underlines how important it was for him to make a feature film and not a documentary. In this respect the media reflexive elements are also included in the filmic narrative. They are being used as instruments that on the one hand accompany the artistic process and on the other hand evaluate the changing role of the artist. This becomes quite clear in the staging of the famous photograph by Arnold Newman that establishes Pollock smoking and in jeans as a typical American (of the times), as a cowboy and rebel. In the staging in the film, Krasner arranges Pollock’s outfit (Figure 2.26), gives him a lit cigarette and whispers in his ear “Just be yourself” before leaving the picture. The scenery—Pollock in front of his painting Summertime—becomes visible for a moment as a frozen film still before the technical apparatus of photography is visually highlighted. The zoom onto the large format camera of the photographer takes a long time before the lens is shown at the center of the film frame (Figure 2.27). CUT. The next scene shows Pollock observing the mailman putting a batch of Life Magazines in front of his door. When he has disappeared, Pollock takes one into the house. He seems nervous. The camera looks over his shoulder as he is reading the article (Figure 2.28). This filmic staging captures Pollock’s picture, freezing him into a cultural icon. The sequence is reminiscent of Roland Barthes’ thesis of death by the act of being photographed that precedes the production of an icon. Barthes describes this process:

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Now, once I feel myself observed by the lens, everything changes: I constitute myself in the process of “posing,” I instantaneously make another body for myself, I transform myself into an image. This transformation is an active one: I feel that the photograph creates my body or mortifies it according to its caprice. (Barthes 1981, 8–9) By posing and by being photographed in the film narrative, the “dying” of the subject Pollock is being announced. The scene in which Pollock is looking at his photo-portrait and the article in Life Magazine corresponds to Barthes’ notion of totally becoming image, becoming “Death in person” when he writes that he feels dispossessed of himself by others, or the Other: “… they turn me, ferociously, into an object, they put me at their mercy, at their disposal, classified in a file, ready for the subtlest deceptions …”69 By looking at the photograph, the “person Pollock” is separated from the “image of Pollock.” From now on the “image Pollock” exists as a cultural commodity. The moment in which he is dispossessed from himself does not stop with the medium photography; however, it will find its apex in a film shoot. Photography, which “freezes” the image of the painter and the magazine, which distributes the “image Pollock,” is serving here as a prophetic knell. The alienation of the artist is announced by making him into an icon before it continues further via other reproducing media.

The radio as medium of information Initially the radio is staged as an information medium by depicting the interview between Jackson Pollock and William Wright that took place in 1950.70 In the film, here for the first and only time, Pollock is talking about the production of his art. Pollock and Wright sit in one room. We see a tape recorder, a journalist, and a microphone that the journalist pushes in Pollock’s direction after every question. Pollock seems nervous and answers the questions of the journalist in a monotonous voice. He has already prepared the answers and slowly reads them off, appearing insecure. The interview is being used as verbal information about the creative process and is visualized with painting scenes, which are

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superimposed with Pollock’s answers. The verbally and performatively intertwined sequence is also well illustrated in the screenplay: WRIGHT Mr. Pollock, in your opinion, what is the meaning of modern art? [Pollock is very uncomfortable … HIS VOICE TIGHT, MECHANICAL THROUGHOUT THE INTERVIEW … POLLOCK Modern art to me is nothing more than the expression of contemporary aims of the age that we’re living in. WRIGHT Did the classical artists have any means of expressing their age? POLLOCK All cultures have had means and techniques of expressing their immediate aims—the Chinese, the renaissance, all cultures. [The interview CONTINUES OVER: INT. BARN—ANOTHER DAY] [Pollock loops the great tangled black ropes of NUMBER 32, 1950 onto the 9′ × 15′ canvas.] POLLOCK V.O. [voice-over, DB] The thing that interests me is that today painters do not have to go to a subject matter outside themselves. Most modern painters work from a different source. They work from within. [Working his way around the huge canvas … totally focused. Pollock’s passion and intensity belie the DRONING TONE OF HIS VOICE … POLLOCK V.O. (cont’d) It seems to me that the modern painter cannot express this age … … the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio … … in the old forms of the renaissance or of any other past culture. [Thick shapes of black paint descend on the canvas …

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POLLOCK (V.O.) I paint on the floor and this isn’t unusual—the Orientals did that. The brushes I use are used more as sticks—the brush doesn’t touch the canvas … [With a huge NUMBER 32 hanging behind him and the sunlight penetrating the barn creating a halo around him, Pollock works on AUTUMN RHYTHM … POLLOCK (V.O.) … with experience, it seems to be possible to control the flow of the paint to a great extent … [It’s amazing to watch him paint. His confidence, control … the total ease he has achieved … a far cry from the tension in his voice … POLLOCK (V.O.) … and I don’t use—I don’t use the accident—’cause I deny the accident.71 In the film the journalist has more dialogue than in the screenplay. Wright and Pollock push the microphone back and forth before they talk (Figure 2.29). The artist seems to be somewhat intimidated by the apparatus. His verbal utterances sound anxious, counter-balancing his confident visual expression. In calm moments he seems extremely concentrated, in harmony with his work, while we continue to hear Pollock’s statements on painting as voice-over. They reveal him as someone who works from his inside, his subconscious, even though he recognizes a specific historical context. Especially in the harmonious painting scenes shown from a high-angle shot the artist seems to merge with his work. This representation of Pollock’s painting process originates from a black and white film by Hans Namuth.72 However, here the historical source of the film is not transferred one on one (Figures 2.30–1). Harris wears a black T-shirt while Pollock wears a white one in the original film footage. In contrast to the original, the canvas in the biopic seems to be much bigger and Harris moves on it in bare feet. Thus, a direct touch between artist and material takes place evoking a close connection between the artist and his work and accentuating the fact that the artist is “in the picture.”73 During the radio interview in the film, the artist and his work

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FIGURES 2.29–31  Film stills: Radio interviewer / Pollock (Harris)

dripping

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seem to form a well-proportioned unity if it weren’t for the fact that we repeatedly hear his mechanically sounding voice that unhinges the impression of harmony. This is where the topos of the “silent artist” is hiding and the fact that an artist does not like to speak about his work once again supports the notion of the “divino artista” who creates from his subconscious. Eloquent self-expression in context of this logic would be found as rather disturbing since it would reflect the creative process thereby taking away its immediacy. In that respect, the talking about art and its reception is taken over by other people in the film like Krasner or Greenberg. Thus, before and after this radio interview we see Lee Krasner sitting outside in a wicker chair. In a proud voice she announces the sale of his artworks and then quotes from press statements. Pollock has reached his artistic apex, his paintings are being bought and he finally receives the long-desired recognition.

Film in film: The turning point Pollock’s method of painting suggested a moving picture—the dance around the canvas, the continuous movement, the drama. (Hans Namuth 1980, 265) The film shoot in the film in October/November 1950 refers to the historical 11-minute film by Hans Namuth.74 Ed Harris stages the apex of Pollock’s creative work with a re-enacted film-infilm quotation. The film-in-film is shown in its production and projection. We see both the film shooting with Hans Namuth (played by Norbert Weisser) and also the film itself as film-infilm. At the same time this sequence is functionalized for the film narrative by using it for a climax as the staging of the film shoot becomes the trigger of Pollock’s biographical drama. In the beginning sequence we see the location, a meadow and a forest, with brush and paint bucket reaching into the front lower margin of the picture (Figure 2.32). The film frame is surrounded by black borders and we hear the rattling of a projector creating the impression of a projected image.75 Namuth’s voice asking Pollock to move into the picture can be heard. The artist enters the picture like an actor enters the stage. Namuth gives him directions: “Don’t

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FIGURES 2.32–4  Film stills: Film-in-film frame / Film-shoot-in-film / The painter’s shoes as film-in-film

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stop! That’s good. Stop. Go to the chair. Sit down. Put your shoes on.” Pollock does as he is told, puts on a shoe when Namuth’s voice comes from off screen: “Your head is too low. Lift it up.” Pollock lifts his head and moves his lips, signalizing that when putting on his shoes he also has to look at them. Namuth reacts “Don’t talk. We see your mouth moving. You’re supposed to be alone. CUT. We’ve got to do it again. You can’t talk.” The whole scene is repeated. Pollock slowly enters the picture; now he has a cigarette in his mouth. Namuth from off screen: “Now sit down. Don’t look at the canvas.”

FIGURES 2.35–6  Film stills: Projection of film-in-film

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The camera makes a quick pan to his shoes splattered with paint, showing them in a close-up (Figure 2.34). Namuth: “That’s good. Shoes! Yeah! That’s better. That looks good.” Namuth sounds pleased about his idea since the shoes are a photogenic and expressive symbol evoking paintings such as Vincent van Gogh’s A Pair of Shoes (1886).76 Pollock now once again takes off his everyday shoes and puts on his painting shoes, gets up and wants to start painting. Now Namuth interrupts him once more. “Cut. Cut. Cut.” We see the film frame again in its usual size, without a black border, showing Namuth next to his camera: “You need more time looking, like, I don’t know, like you are thinking, wondering.”

FIGURES 2.37–8  Film stills: Production of film-shoot-in-film

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FIGURE 2.39–42  Stills from Hans Namuth’s film on Jackson Pollock, 1951

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Pollock looks at him blankly, the cigarette is casually hanging at his lips; he doesn’t say a word. Next we see an interior shot of Krasner’s art works. A pan onto her shows her standing by an easel working on a painting. Then we see Pollock who is standing at the door, unnoticed by her, watching her longingly as she paints. CUT. The film-in-film sequence continues, showing Pollock who finally seems to be in his line of work. He mixes paint and starts painting on the canvas that lies on the floor. The film-in-film shows his shoes, the paint bucket, his hands and the brush as he is dripping (Figures 2.35–6). Some calm shots follow, showing the artist as he is working, the compulsory cigarette in his mouth. Apart from the rattling sound we hear nothing. All of a sudden the rattling stops, the film-in-film frame changes into the film frame and Namuth says once more “Cut.” Pollock does not let himself be deterred and simply continues painting. Namuth almost reprimands him: “Cut! We ran out of film.” Only then Pollock looks up and stops his work, his eyes speaking volumes and we almost read: “What the hell do you want from me!?” But everything is quiet. Namuth and Pollock are only exchanging glances. Namuth indicates with a movement of his head that this is just the way it is and leaves. Pollock remains on the set by himself. During a break he declares to his wife that he feels like a phony. Krasner assures him that he is a great artist and that he should simply paint. Slowly sad piano music starts playing. The filming continues and we see Pollock’s paint-splotched hands. The camera at first pans towards his head and then more to the left where we see Pollock in the foreground and a blurry picture of Namuth with his camera in the background. Unceasingly, Namuth is filming Pollock as he is contemplating his work (Figures 2.37–8). CUT. For a second time Pollock expresses his uneasiness when he tells Clement Greenberg that Namuth wanted to film him through a glass plate and that he felt like “a clam without a shell.” The art critic advises him to terminate the filming, but Pollock nevertheless goes along also with this latest Namuth-idea. In the biography it is rumored that Pollock was totally aware of the historical side of these films and that they would be valuable for his renown, and that he had seen them as providing evidence of his work. Accordingly, he wanted and needed Namuth’s attention (see Naifeh and White Smith 1989, 648).

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FIGURES 2.43–5  Film stills: Genesis of the glass painting in projection

and production

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FIGURES 2.46–51  Stills from Namuth’s film, 1951 The following scene of the film-in-film now shows the genesis of a painting according to Namuth’s idea. As a film-frame-in-film we see Pollock’s face through the glass plate and how it visibly disappears because of the increasingly dense net of dripping (Figures 2.43–4).77 Then we see the film set. Namuth lies beneath the glass painting on the floor and films Pollock from there (Figure 2.45). All of a sudden, Namuth announces that there is insufficient daylight left and that they would have to stop. Now Pollock no longer resists. He instantly drops everything, looks at Namuth

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disparagingly and goes into the house where he belts down his anger and helplessness with the first alcoholic drink in two years. In this sequence creator and creation figuratively blend into one another, while at the same time the face of the artist—as the inspirational source—progressively disappears behind his work. Viewed like this, the artist is distanced from his work. In the film narrative as well these images amount to a dispossession of the self in which the apparatus film alienates the artist from his own work. Pollock begins to drink again and now projects his recurring fear of appearing like a phony to Hans Namuth. He repeatedly whispers into Namuth’s ear: “I’m not a phony, you’re a phony. I’m not a phony, you’re a phony.” Pollock’s frustrations in the end leads to the outburst at the Thanksgiving dinner with friends in the Pollock/ Krasner home. In his increasing rage he turns over the festively decorated table and the tragedy takes its course. In the following six years until his fatal car accident in the summer of 1956, Pollock is shown as an alcoholic, whose previous purpose in life—making art—gets more and more lost. Interpreting this sequence we have to begin with separating the historical film from the film-shoot-in-film. How is the historical film by Hans Namuth interpreted and how can the film-in-film be related to it or which other levels of meaning are added? Much like his photographs, the historical Namuth film is considered a source regarding Pollock’s drip painting method. Repeatedly it is appropriated as a historical truth of Pollock’s creative process, be it in retrospective exhibitions (in which it is used as information often without further comments)78 or as a source in art historical articles.79 The questions inherent in this representation are not being answered. However, the documentation presents less the historical truth of the painting process than it shows us an abstract expressionist according to certain points of view, as Griselda Pollock and Fred Orton have convincingly demonstrated by stating: “One person’s fiction is another’s vivid image of a man and his methods; one person’s bit of theatre is another’s documentation” (Orton and Pollock 1996b, 167). Hence, the Namuth film is a cultural product following certain politics of representation; in this case the staging was directed by the artist and the director. Namuth even expresses certain narrative elements in his film: “I soon found out that a film, like a short story, needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. It wasn’t enough to show the

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painter painting” (Namuth 1980, 266). In reality Namuth was “filming an eleven-minute drama of the sublime ideal of ‘art’ in which Pollock stages himself and quite deliberately controls the perception and reception of his painting” (Walter 2001, 454). Bernadette Walter analyzes this 11-minute film recognizing a dramatic composition by viewing various camera angles.80 She even finds elements of the Western in Namuth’s staging; she argues that Pollock is playing the cowboy preparing for a fight: “He puts on his shoes, looks across concentrated at the canvas, his opponent, thinks about how to defeat it, and then attacks it with paint” (ibid.). With this staging, she claims, he is building on the myth of the lonesome fighter and rebel, as it already had been previously established in the mass media. It is hard to say to what extent Pollock had in reality contributed to the decisions of this staging, but he embodied it by wearing his jeans and T-shirt outfit and thus also contributed to his image as an artist. He was also bringing his voice into the action. He speaks about his art works off screen, thus giving the film a greater authenticity.81 With this in mind, we can recognize a certain amount of self-staging by the artist even though certain decisions can be attributed to the director. Orton and Pollock summarize the filmic expression: “What happens in this process is that biographical details and photographic representations combine to construct a mythic subject seemingly of and for the work; a mythic subject that is posited as the meaning of the work” (Orton and Pollock 1996b, 172). When comparing the sequence in the biopic that shows the film shoot, we realize some differences. The historical Namuth film shows the process of Pollock’s artistic work that at the same time codifies both the artist in certain patterns of interpretation and myths like those of the cowboy and rebel. The film-shoot-infilm only partially quotes the Namuth film. The historical film is re-enacted only in fragments thereby losing its original dramatic structure (Figures 2.39–42, 46–55). It seems that for the biopic the conditions of the production of the film were more important than the historical source. Harris as director concentrates on the process of the film production, thereby telling a different kind of drama. The main narrative in this sequence is showing how the artist gets alienated from his work, a development that is impelled by the medium film. The real production process of Pollock’s painting becomes a side issue. The term “alienation” or “externalization”

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that is prompted by the technical apparatus that intervenes between subject and object here could actually be understood in Marx’s sense, and it could be transferred to the interpretation of the film shoot in the biopic. Marx understands the alienation of the worker (artist) from his product (artwork) in such a way that the product (film) is exteriorized and in a further development exists outside of and independent from the worker. Marx even goes so far as to see an independent power here and also that “the life which he has bestowed on the object confronts him as hostile and alien” (Marx 1992, 152). Marx’s terminology of “alienated labour” is particularly well suited for the staging of Pollock particularly in those perspectives that describe the relationship of the worker “to the products of his work” and the “act of production” since they also involve the notion of “self-estrangement.”82 Marx’s resulting sociopolitical demands will not be pursued any further in this context. But his theory seems fruitful for the interpretation of the staging of Pollock and for pointing out that Marx recognized a certain pain, a lack of self-fulfillment in alienated labor. Pollock’s externalization becomes particularly obvious in those scenes in which Namuth speaks as the director, thereby taking full control of the staging of the creative process with his instructions to the artist. They make the artist into an actor of himself and they distance him from his artistic practice in the biopic. It seems that Pollock can no longer tolerate this degree of self-exposure and alienation and therefore escapes into alcohol.83 Regarding the film’s narrative, we can say that Pollock’s image as “Jack the Dripper” is revived again in the impression of the moving image, but that simultaneously the medium film distances the artist Pollock from his working process. Harris is using mass media as a “machinery of alienation” that takes away the artist’s authenticity and as a result also his creativity. This interpretation was already prepared by staging other scenes like the sequence of the Life Magazine in the beginning, the production of the Life Magazine article, and the radio interview. It leads on to a more subtle statement within the film.

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Myths and media: A momentous marriage The ambivalent connection between the creative process and reproducing media is a subtext of this film. It is presented in different ways as a fatal attraction. We have seen that the different processes of Pollock’s art production characterize the dramatic structure of the film. First, the staging of the person and the artist is oriented alongside narrative structures of artists’ myths. Thus, those presentations accumulate that show Pollock as a suffering artist and tragic hero. His suffering initially is psychological but it also becomes visible in the course of the film in physiognomic changes of the artist. That he cannot live from his art sales in the beginning of his career makes him suffer in an economic sense. Once he becomes more successful, there is no more talk of financial problems. Instead, alcohol takes on a bigger role in his life, causing existential problems. The myth of the suffering artist and tragic hero finally finds its culmination and ultimate fulfillment in Pollock’s early, dramatic death. The staging of Pollock as an extraordinary and brilliant artist follows the myth of the “divino artista.” The representation of his creativity from within—out of his subconscious––is also connected to this idea, in which “divine inspiration” transforms the artist into a second nature. Pollock even symbolizes this notion explicitly when he says “I am nature.” The “genius” Pollock becomes just as explicit in the Life Magazine interview sequence referring to his filiation. When the journalist asks him for his artistic models Pollock slowly answers “de Kooning, Kandinsky” and Krasner eloquently adds “El Greco, Goya, Rembrandt” thereby connecting him less with contemporaries and more with the tradition of established art history. Astonishingly enough, his greatest model (and rival) is not mentioned: Picasso. When asked how he would know when a painting is finished, Pollock answers with the question: “How do you know when you finished making love?” Here, he sexualizes his creative work by pretending that he can physically feel when a work of art is accomplished. This statement connects to the staging of the eruptive painting process of the Mural in the film. In the extended staging of this painting process lies another sign of his ingeniousness, also distinguishing him as a virtuoso. In the film he produces this painting in its huge format after long and

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unproductive phases in one single night. His imperturbability and confidence of applying paint and his speed are meant to convince the viewers of the uniqueness of this artist. The theme of rivalry with Picasso that is addressed in the beginning of the film characterizes the artist even before we get to see him paint. The rivalry pervades throughout the entire film. In the beginning scenes, Pollock’s deprecating attitude towards his idol Picasso becomes audible in his “Fuck Picasso!” And when he talks about him with his fellow artists in a bar, all he can say about Picasso is that he [Picasso] had been important in his time, thereby entering himself into the discussion as significantly more current by contrast. At a later date, at the apex of his work and his success, he euphorically quotes “Povero Picasso” from an article on himself, in which he is seen as the victor in the competition84—possibly his triumph over the rival might be indicated here. However, in the last year of his life a surprising change occurred. Pollock’s face lined from alcohol no longer has the characteristics of a cowboy; with his attire he now bears an uncanny resemblance to his former rival. Comparing him to simultaneous images of Picasso, who is 30 years older, one is almost tempted to say “Povero Pollock.” Hence, also the topos “rivalry” is structured dramatically in the film, ending with the second-rate embodiment of the rival to the disadvantage of Pollock. On the one hand, the character Pollock is legitimized clearly as an extraordinary artist in the film; on the other hand, he seems to be doomed to failure for exactly this reason. Eckhard Neumann sees the logic of this failure in the image of the tragic artist in general, not talking about any artist in particular: In the end, it is alienation that wins since the genius suffers, fails, and breaks from this contrast [of the contradiction of world and spirit, DB] without being able to overcome it. Longing for the unison with life, with nature, and with cosmos, the genius remains the symbol of endangered man under the banner of individuality, freedom, nature, and originality who breaks from the wish for a different type of mankind. He is no longer savior; he is a warning example for the commoner, the epitome of the tragic hero looking for new ways of living and who simultaneously perishes from it in the eyes of the world. (Neumann 1986, 83)

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Pollock as artist could be interpreted in a similar way. The artist is alienated from his creative work and in the end perishes as a tragic hero. The staging, however, implies a contrary notion as well, namely that of a non-alienated artist, an artist within whom work and person are united. This may be grounded in Harris’ notion of originality, which the director believes to recognize in Jackson Pollock when he says: Pollock’s desire to arrive at his own originality, the need, the courage to open himself up and surrender to that openness—and his unrestrained commitment to take it to its limit—drew me to him … He fought fiercely to be true to himself. He did not separate himself from his art. (Harris 2000, xv) Since Harris’ notion of authenticity does not in the end prove to exist in Pollock, he utilizes the reproducing media as the catalysts for the alienation since they are the ones that are transforming the concept of an authentic artist into the image of an authentic artist. Initially the picture of an energy-filled American artist emerges who in his cowboy outfit rebels against the European masters. However, the staging of Pollock’s creative process noticeably changes from a positive type of work that can be seen as authentic into a way of painting that seems staged and mechanically performed alienating the artist from his work. Thus the staging of the film-shoot-in-film shows a different story than the historical film. It seems that Ed Harris is less interested in including the Namuth film or re-enacting it than in quoting it in such a way that it can be used for the biographical drama of the Pollock narrative. Harris’ motivation to tell Pollock’s story conveys the notion that the artist and his work actually existed as one authentic subject before the mass media gained entrance. Following this logic, the process of alienation has to be represented as a drama with a negative ending. Since the sequences about the development of the Mural and the Namuth film are symbolizing the beginning and the end of Pollock’s artistic career, they are addressed in more detail in this book. Harris as director stages the alienation of the artist with the increasing use of media. Possibly one could assume that Harris is fundamentally pessimistic about mass media, similarly as Adorno and Horkheimer were in their essay on “culture industry.”

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But Harris’ activity is situated in a different historical context85 and above all he is actively working in the field of “culture industry” as an actor. Asked his personal opinion about mass media, he clearly took a stand: “You know the mass media exists and it always will exist, but what it does to artists of any vulnerability, whether it is an actor, a painter, a musician, is devastating” (EH Nov 17, 2004). Even though the director is following the biography with his interpretation in the film, one could just as easily suspect that he is making a critical comment on the star industry, in which the private sphere becomes a publicly accessible commodity—a subject, which Hollywood actors like Ed Harris are constantly forced to confront. When asked whether he saw similarities to his own situation as an actor with that of the star industry that could be connected to Pollock, Harris answered: EH: First of all, I am not solely an actor, I am also a father and a husband and I have friends. So, I don’t feel as isolated as Jackson did emotionally. So, it is different. But I recognized what his desperation was about. Jackson’s status at his peak in the artworld is not comparable to my situation. I have been an actor for a long time and I am recognized to some degree, but I never had to deal with that kind of celebrity, that meteoric kind of rise. That’s not where I am coming from. DB: But you do have to deal with public attention in mass media? EH: Yes, but it has been such a gradual thing. I started acting in 1987. And over the years you get a little better at dealing with it, putting it into a perspective. (Ibid.) Pollock did not have the time that Harris had in order to professionalize his handling of mass media attention since he died at the age of 44. The narrative in the film suggests that even though Pollock’s rise was not quite as meteoric—after all there are seven years between 1943 and 1950—it seems to have caused serious existential problems for the artist. And as much as the mass media contributed to Pollock’s rise, they are also made equally responsible for his fall in the film. This interpretation is visualized by highlighting the apparatus of the individual reproducing media (the

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photo camera, the photographer, the microphone, the journalist, the film camera, the director) and their forms of representation (magazine, photo prints, film projection) in the film. Thus the reproducing media become the central motor that influences the flow of the action. In these scenes the artist is discharged from his claim of authenticity and his mystical aura is completely broken by way of recurring reproduction. What remains is a biographical drama. Even though this biopic is a refreshing example on several levels within the biopic genre—as to the representation of the creative process or its media aspects—on the narrative level it nevertheless perpetuates older artists’ myths like the suffering artist (“divino artista”) and tragic hero. And those are also favored by other biopics. Even though Harris seems to be interested in the process of image production, he does not consider the influential power of the narrative structure in biopics and thus collaborates in the revival of artists’ and Hollywood myths. Since the staging of the narrative allows only little distancing and rather emotionalizes the viewers, it makes them into affective accomplices of the story. In this biopic myths and media enter into a dangerous liaison.

The artistic field Let us now take a look at those filmic characters who bear a close relation to the protagonist. Thereby Pollock will be situated in “the field of art,” which, according to Bourdieu, can only be explained in relation to the “field of power”: The field of power is the space of relations of force between agents or between institutions having in common the possession of the capital necessary to occupy the dominant positions in different fields (notably economic or cultural). It is the site of struggles between holders of different powers (or kinds of capital) … (Bourdieu 1992, 215) In the filmic representation of Pollock’s private and professional life, this “field of power” is revealed by concentrating on the partnership with the artist Lee Krasner and by looking at representatives from art criticism and the gallery scene. Discussing

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specific supporting characters will shed light onto the field, in which Pollock is located and in which processes of artistic recognition, economic dependencies, and gender relations come into play. Pollock’s artistic position within the art world of the time can best be shown with the staging of the art critic Clement Greenberg and the collector and gallery owner Peggy Guggenheim. Even though Howard Putzel, the gallery owner Betty Parsons or the collector Alfonso Ossorio also have small roles, the characters Guggenheim and Greenberg are especially significant among Pollock’s relationships. It would also be quite interesting in this context to analyze the programming objectives of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which in the 1940s supported the establishment of an American modern art. However, since the film does not deal with this element I will refrain from discussing the process of this type of institutionalization. Rather, I will throw a light on the blossoming art criticism with Greenberg as its representative. He played a prominent role in Jackson Pollock’s rapid fame. Even more important to his success were the popular mass media and the representation of his artistic activity in them, as pointed out in the preceding chapter. The most important character in the film, apart from Pollock himself, without question is his fellow artist and wife Lee Krasner. In fact, in many biopics the artist is not a lone fighter; he or she is usually presented in professional and private relationships. The reason for this may be that (artist-)couples literally ask for the building of legends, as Renate Berger has shown (Berger 2000, 1). Looking at Pollock and Krasner’s relationship, the social distribution of power in relation to gender can be deduced both in its time and within the art field. But before I will analyze the politics of representation of Lee Krasner’s filmic character or the staging of the relationship between Krasner and Pollock, I will situate the artist Lee Krasner historically and discuss her changing reception in art history. Lee Krasner is not only an important part of the Pollock narrative, but she is also an important case study for the gendered reception of female artists in modern art. From the reception of her art, we can clearly deduce the male-dominated power structures that were prevalent in the years after the war. This problem is also mirrored in the filmic staging of Lee Krasner in the year 2000.

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Lee Krasner: From an ambitious artist to a successful woman in the background How could you be a woman and an artist caught between the twin myths of gender and art embodied by the images of Monroe and Pollock? (Pollock 1996, 227) For Lee Krasner, an eloquent and autonomous woman, the possibilities to have a career simultaneously with Jackson Pollock in the American avant-garde were small. The American society in the 1950s was characterized by sexualized images of women, embodied by film stars like Marilyn Monroe. This context does not provide a positive perspective for a career as an artist who happens to be a woman: “The McCarthy era of the 1950s in North America closed the doors on any feminine presence in order to keep literature and art within the pure, safe, and virile fraternity of the pen and the brush” is how Whitney Chadwick, and Isabelle de Courtivron characterize the historical conditions for women artists at the time of the Cold War (1993, 11). Nevertheless, Lee Krasner was active as wife, manager, and critic, and later as widow, and she has significantly influenced the Pollock myth. But where is the artist Krasner? Pollock’s success is essentially connected with the abandonment of a simultaneous career for herself. Her roles are described as partner, as counterpart, as mirror—as the “other.” Yet, since the 1950s we can also observe various re-evaluations in the reception of her work. Lee Krasner (born in 1908) and Jackson Pollock (born in 1912) are repeatedly characterized in art historical and biographical literature in a polarized manner regarding their ethnic, artistic and psychological backgrounds. One could summarize pointedly: He, an American from the Mid West with a Presbyterian ancestry going back many generations. She, a daughter of Jewish immigrants located in Brooklyn. He, full of self-doubt, withdrawn, and a drunkard. She, characterized by confidence, eloquence, and ambition. He, who does not necessarily envision a career, a pupil of the expressionist painter Thomas Hart Benton, interested in Native American and Mexican myths. She, a pupil of Hans Hofmann, an émigré abstract painter and teacher very much en vogue, who taught the accomplishments of the European idols in abstract art like Kandinsky, Klee, Mondrian, Matisse, and Picasso.

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The list could be continued further. It does not only show that extremes meet but that their relationship is also a testimony to their mutual dependencies and that Lee Krasner decided to be involved in the American avant-garde as much as she could in her time. Many contemporaries agree that it was Lee Krasner who contributed most to Pollock’s career. She is the one who introduced Pollock into the New York art scene in the 1940s and acquainted him with the art critics and curators Clement Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg, James Johnson Sweeney, and Sidney Janis as well as the artists Willem de Kooning and Arshile Gorky (see Landau 1989, 85). Although she was still at the beginning of her own career at the time as well, she is described as much better connected and also much more ambitious than Pollock. Even the critic Clement Greenberg, who was mainly interested in formal criteria and less in social factors retrospectively saw in Lee Krasner one of the most influential persons for Jackson Pollock’s position (see Greenberg 1957, 95–6). But Abstract Expressionism developed into a maledominated art movement and Greenberg himself contributed to this to a large extent with his formalist rhetoric of power, which was characterized by energy, size, and virility. This was momentous for the role of a woman artist in this context. Whitney Chadwick observes on this patriarchal rhetoric: The gendered language that opposed an art of heroic individual struggle to the weakened (i.e., “feminized”) culture of postwar Europe positioned women outside an emerging model of subjectivity understood in terms of male agency articulated through the figure of the male individual. (Chadwick 1990, 320) Even though Greenberg is paying tribute to Lee Krasner when he says, “I don’t feel Pollock would have gotten where he did without her eye and her support,”86 he only acknowledges the support that she is giving the male genius and does not see her in her function as an artist. It therefore is not only indispensable to trace Pollock’s influence on Krasner; it is just as important to discuss Krasner’s influence when looking at and evaluating Pollock’s artistic position. Even though Krasner’s historical significance in art history continues to be connected more to Pollock than to her own art, the role they played for one another continues to be part of the Pollock or Krasner reception. I therefore will initially discuss

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Lee Krasner’s artistic and private situation within the historical framework of the film as well as the changing historical evaluation of her artistic position beyond the time frame of the film.

Situating Lee Krasner In 1941, Lee Krasner is invited by John Graham to the McMillen Inc. gallery to take part in the exhibition American and French Painting together with Pollock and a few other rising American artists. Krasner at the time is seen as a promising artist, who is at least on a par with Pollock (see Landau 1995, 10–16). At the beginning of their relationship as it is described in the biography by Naifeh and White Smith, Krasner’s friends and colleagues from the Hans Hofmann circle even speak disparagingly about Pollock. They say that she is denigrating herself, is much more intelligent than he, and is organizing his career (see Naifeh and White Smith 1989, 404). But at the same time Fritz Bultman, a friend, remembers that Krasner, as soon as she had moved in with Pollock, was literally sucked dry by his needs. It was a shock for Bultman that a strong woman like Krasner could subordinate herself to such an extent (ibid., 401). This assessment was strengthened during the next years and supported by the reception that is completely in Pollock’s favor; he is being highly praised as the most important American artist. Public recognition certainly culminates in the 1949 Life Magazine article, in which Pollock is set up to become the hero of American art. Even though in the film Krasner is at Pollock’s side assisting him during the interview for Life Magazine, she is not mentioned at all in the historical source and is not visible in any photograph. She is also missing in the historical account of Abstract Expressionism in Life Magazine. In the 1951 picture showing the New York avant-garde entitled “The Irascibles,” Lee Krasner was not visible either (see Life Magazine Jan 15, 1951, 34). Krasner speaks about her recognition as an artist among colleagues in an interview at the beginning of the 1980s: “There were very few painters in that so-called circle who acknowledged I painted at all … I never let it sour the relationship between Jackson and me, but, above all, I never let it interfere with my painting.” (Glueck 1981, 58)

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Even though she worked at her painting every day, it was her duty to manage the household. In a 1980s article on the PollockKrasner partnership, Grace Glueck recounts that Krasner had to learn this role since before then she never had any ambitions in this direction (ibid., 60). The role as partner and manager of Pollock has been extensively described and illustrated in articles like these, whereas Krasner’s role as a painter in her own right became more and more invisible and was even vilified. In some articles on her private relationship with Pollock we can also find gendered attributions of creativity. The stereotypical notions of the artist as genius and lone fighter are connected mainly to Pollock. In contrast, Krasner is always seen in relationship to Pollock, be it in her role as artist and wife, and later as widow. Yet, this partnership contains dependencies that cannot be evaluated unambiguously as hierarchical as it seems at first, in particular considering that the presentation in mass media outlets reflected the respective spirit of the times. Although Krasner was initially ignored as an active artist in the 1950s and was mainly seen as Mrs. Jackson Pollock, she became more widely recognized as an artist in her own right for the first time in the course of the early feminist movement. During the 1970s a multiplicity of interviews and articles are published about her with the aim of rehabilitating and nobilitating Krasner as an artist.87 Apart from concentrating on her painterly accomplishments, mainly her role as a victim who had to neglect her own career for the career of her husband is pointed out at this time. She shares a situation with many other women artists, who only through increased visibility were able to help in making demands for equality. However, in the newer literature since the 1990s earlier feminist topics are revised. Lee Krasner’s position as an artist is reinterpreted as mostly autonomous but nevertheless as someone who has to be seen within the social parameters of her own times.88 For example, in 1996 Griselda Pollock is discussing the role of Lee Krasner by simultaneously discussing the socio-political context of the 1950s, asking “how an artist like Lee Krasner dealt with the necessary, and inevitable, confrontation with the powerful artistic figures who dominated the field in which she also wanted to be an acknowledged artistic presence” (Pollock 1996, 224–5). The question has to be: What role could Lee Krasner as an artist in the 1940s and 1950s assume in order to participate as much as possible in the American avant-garde? On the one hand,

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Lee Krasner takes on an exceptional role in the emerging Abstract Expressionism since she has been taking part in it from the beginning. On the other hand, the patriarchally structured rhetoric makes this role invisible during the establishment of Abstract Expressionism. Her female identity becomes calamitous for her as an artist. The ambivalent appraisal of female creativity in these circles is symptomatic in a comment by her teacher Hans Hofmann, who said about Krasner: “This is so good that you wouldn’t know it was done by a woman” (Hofmann quoted in Naifeh and White Smith 1989, 386). This praise is not only a compliment, since to be called a “woman painter” was a deviation from the norm by way of a gendered addition that insinuated a diminished artistic importance. In this respect one can understand quite well that Lee Krasner and other female artists in this and the following generations were insisting on a non-gendered judgment. But this was exactly the problem since a non-gendered judgment as such does not exist. Every assessment takes place in relation to an existing order and this means that a non-gendered praise would mean praising male creations. But apart from fighting against patriarchal structures within her public realm, Lee Krasner was also fighting against those in her private one. As Whitney Chadwick has observed: “Her gradual emergence as an abstract painter occurred in the context of an intensely personal struggle to define herself as an artist, and to establish her artistic difference from Pollock …” (Chadwick 1990, 320). These aggravated conditions have effects on her artistic career. Lee Krasner nevertheless is actively attempting to find a way; it is a path, however, that is evaluated in different ways. Even though neither Jackson Pollock’s reception nor Lee Krasner’s was spared stereotyped, gender specific role models, I will direct my attention on their reciprocal impact and dependency when looking at the filmic representation of Lee Krasner. Ellen G. Landau speaks of “the emotional sub-text of their unique association” consisting of a “sexually charged web of dependence and autonomy inherent in any meaningful affiliation (what David Shapiro has aptly termed ‘the erotics of influence’)” widening or restraining their aesthetic possibilities (2002, 179). If we interpret Krasner’s decisions as roles that were taken on actively, then her choice to neglect her own career in favor of supporting her husband can be looked at more closely within socio-cultural parameters. In doing so she takes a quite consequential risk, as Griselda Pollock has formulated: “I

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think we need to be able to imagine what the very fact of the possibility of a relationship with the man meant in terms of an artistic relationship with one of the live wires of contemporary art at a particularly critical moment of realignment. It could be read as a sign of ambition and not submission, as so many biographers of Pollock seek to do” (Pollock 1996, 277).

Decisions of an artist Lee Krasner was fully focused on becoming an artist. She studied at Cooper Union, Art Students League, and at the National Academy of Design in New York from 1928 to 1932. During the great depression she studied at becoming a teacher and also worked as a model and waitress. Already in 1934 she got a job at the WPA

FIGURE 2.52  Lee Krasner, c. 1938 / unidentified photographer. Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

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Federal Art Project, which gave her financial security until 1943. Meanwhile, from 1937 to 1940, she frequented a place of artistic exchange, studying at the private art school of the German émigré Hans Hofmann who had brought the developments of abstract art to New York. During this time, Lee Krasner completely changed her style from realistic painting to the compositional principles of abstract art. She joined the association of “American Abstract Artists” and advocated the spreading and acceptance of abstract art. Many of her contacts, which she would use later to help Pollock, stem from this period. Her work was shown in several group exhibitions at that time and she was quite appreciated in the New York avant-garde circles.89 It is clearly conveyed in the legend of meeting Pollock in 1941— which Krasner repeatedly recounted—that she greatly valued her expertise as well as the fact that she was very engaged in abstract art in New York while at the same time attempting to position herself within it. In one of the many interviews she answered to the often asked question of her first impressions of Pollock’s works: “… a force, a living force—the same kind of thing I responded to in Matisse, Picasso and Mondrian. Once more I was hit that hard with what I saw” (Nemser 1975a, 86). She repeatedly underlined her admiration for Pollock and by doing so thereby placed him as an exceptional American artist on the same level as her idols of European modernism.90 Nevertheless, at least retrospectively, she knew about the problems that her decisions implied: When she said, “Unfortunately, it was most fortunate to know Jackson Pollock,” she shows that she is fully aware of her situation as a woman artist (Rago 1960, 32). Even though she had gained entrance to the New York art scene as a painter, her influence on the development of an American modern art could only be applied as Mrs. Jackson Pollock in her social function as wife and widow and less as the artist Lee Krasner. To this day, she is not taken seriously as a painter by some critics, and in some cases she is belittled or even met with hostility in her function as executor of the Pollock estate. In 1965, Harold Rosenberg published the article “The Art Establishment” in which he sharply criticizes Lee Krasner in her position as executor of the Pollock estate. According to him, she exercises her influence on Pollock’s creative work at her own discretion in order to raise the price in the marketplace.91 Krasner remarked on the critic, whom

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she knew personally quite well, that he had never accepted her as a painter but always saw her only as a widow.92 The polemics against Krasner culminate in Arthur Danto’s statement on her first retrospective in the USA in 1983: He writes that Krasner for him is interesting as a case but less as painter and that he is only able to see the shadows of other artists in her.93 Thus, the retrospective organized by Barbara Rose is characterized by a polarized reception.94 While feminist art historians and critics were working on the recognition of Lee Krasner’s art, the critics adhering to modernism called every change in her style a lack of artistic quality, referring it to Krasner’s biographical situation. Ellen G. Landau’s Catalogue Raisonné of 1995 contributes greatly to reevaluating and repositioning Krasner’s work.95 Even though she takes recourse to already existing evaluations on the one hand, on the other she undertakes a detailed art historical account of Krasner’s art. Postmodern theories of authorship96 along with the reevaluation of originality and avant-garde (see Krauss 1985) are the theoretical tools for throwing a renewed glance at her work. Landau suggests “to (re)view Lee Krasner would be to characterize more positively the fact that her creativity was primarily dialogic, that it was predicated in large measure on a skillful reading––or deliberate misreading––of the innovations of others” (Landau 1995, 11). Almost at the same time, Anne M. Wagner is addressing the person of Lee Krasner regarding her public appearances and her art production as the products of various fictions. She interprets Lee Krasner’s repeated changes in style to the creation of fictions enabling Krasner to build an identity as an artist for which, in reality, there was no place. Wagner is working out Krasner’s ambivalent situation by suggesting that her painterly ambitions demand that she finds her own position regarding European modernism (Matisse, Mondrian, Picasso), Abstract Expressionism and in particular Jackson Pollock’s work. But her private situation makes this difficult for a long time: The response to her own art always takes second place to the daily household tasks as Pollock’s wife, and to her role as his manager trying to connect him to the “right” circles. This is how Wagner’s theory of Krasner’s “hopeful fiction” can be understood when she writes: this cherished fiction—her confidence in painting as a practice in which female difference could be challenged and managed and

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assimilated and exorcised and so laid to rest—was what enabled her to keep on painting. She needed her fictions; they had their uses. (Wagner 1996, 189) Wagner interprets Krasner’s work, which repeatedly involves the pictorial achievements of her now prominent male painter colleagues, as a strategy to “master her femininity.”97 These recent historical studies, which also include the work by Griselda Pollock mentioned in the beginning, unequivocally point at Lee Krasner’s active position, who is no longer portrayed as a victim of social circumstances. Krasner is instead shown as an active member within a certain set of historical and cultural parameters who is looking for her place of participation within this context. Below, I will discuss in what way the different evaluations of Lee Krasner’s role can be found in the biopic and how her creativity is staged in Pollock.

Representing Krasner in the film To whom should I hire myself out? What beast must I adore? What holy image is attacked? What hearts shall I break? What lie must I maintain? In what blood tread? (Arthur Rimbaud) Like the sword of Damocles, these lines from Arthur Rimbaud’s poem Une saison en enfer (1873), or in the English translation A Season in Hell, hover over Krasner’s story. She had written them on the wall of her studio towards the end of the 1930s and obviously considered them especially meaningful. In the biographical accounts and in the film, the interpretation of this poem is also seen as a premonition of her life with Pollock and its effect on her own career as an artist.98 This is where Krasner’s myth starts, which was connected to Pollock’s in one way or another all her life. We see Krasner for the first time in the film visiting Pollock on her own initiative in November 1941; both had been invited to the exhibition “American and French Painting” at the McMillen Inc. gallery by the curator John Graham. She is introduced in the film as a New York artist who is visiting her colleague in his studio because she is curious since, apart from him, she knows all the

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FIGURES 2.53–5  Film stills: Krasner as an attractive artist / Pollock touching her painting / Krasner’s still life as painting and filmic image

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other artists who will be participating in that exhibition. This interpretation follows Krasner’s statements in interviews in which she dramatizes her first meeting with Pollock: “I felt as if the floor was sinking when I saw those paintings. How could there be a painter like that that I didn’t know about?” (Du Plessix and Gray 1967, 49). She says that she saw the presence of a power in his paintings which she had never before experienced (see Naifeh and White Smith 1989, 393). Thus, not only in the film but also in literature and her own statements it is repeatedly pointed out that Krasner believed in the genius of Pollock from the beginning.99 In the film she then invites Pollock to a visit in her studio. Three weeks later, Krasner is introduced as an artist but even more so as an attractive woman. She leads Pollock into her studio, takes off her painter’s apron and touches up her hair. Here, Krasner is shown as a woman who wants to be attractive for the male protagonist (Figure 2.53). The first artwork that we see is actually not one of her paintings, but a portrait of herself. Before she is portrayed as an active artist, she is already metamorphosed into a portrait. The logic of a male heterosexual desiring gaze is emphasized by the information that this portrait was painted by her former boyfriend Igor Pantuhoff. Only the next shot shows a work by Lee Krasner. The realistically painted Self Portrait (c. 1930),100 depicts her as a painter. Pollock’s next glance, a POV-shot, zooms to a nascent painting on the easel, a cubist still life,101 which Pollock immediately is drawn to tracing with his hands and eyes (Figure 2.54). He looks at the inscription of Arthur Rimbaud’s poem on Krasner’s wall, reading it silently while Krasner reads it to him aloud. Then the camera pans to a fragment of that painting,102 which Krasner will show at Graham’s exhibition (Figure 2.55). But we do not see the work as a whole, only in a fragment filling two thirds of the film frame. In the last third we see a lamp and a vase whose colors match the painting. Even though Pollock praises the painting with, “It works. You are a damn good woman painter,” her fragmented painting is shown in a setting that degrades Krasner’s art into a decorative object. Krasner’s introduction as a character in the film, the quote by Rimbaud and the fragmented representation of her painting, together with Pollock’s statement characterizing her as a “woman painter” make for a set of assertions that already at the beginning let the viewers infer that she is marginalized as an artist. As we will

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see, her role as artist in the film disappears in comparison with all the many other functions that Krasner fulfills in Jackson Pollock’s life account. From this perspective I will examine and evaluate the staging of the character Lee Krasner, played by Marcia Gay Harden.

The artist disappears The presence of one and absence of the other have shaped interpretations of their artistic identities—they are a precondition of the Pollock myth, and the Krasner who goes with it (Wagner 1996, 131–2) Wagner’s statement aims at the alternating visibility of one and the invisibility of the other partner; it can be transferred to the representation of the artistic authorship in the film. The comparison of two sequences testifies to this; one of them did not make it into the feature film but can only be seen in an extra feature of “Deleted Scenes” on the DVD. Both sequences refer to Pollock’s and Krasner’s self-assertion as artists. They are symptomatic for the representation of Krasner’s creativity and her role as an artist in the film. Krasner does not have an equal place next to Pollock as an artist; she only can take on those functions, which he does not fulfill. Contrasting Pollock’s increasing physicality during the production processes of his art, Krasner disappears in her role as an artist. There does not seem to be enough room for a second painter in the film. Let us look at the deleted sequence first. Jackson Pollock comes home at night. We see a close-up of his face with a cigarette in his mouth. He seems to be drunk. In the next shot he throws his cigarette on the floor, extinguishing it with his shoe. He sees Krasner sleeping in bed and goes to her studio where he sees a painting on an easel. He walks over to the painting, looks at it briefly and then begins to paint all over it. The camera observes this, fades out into a black frame before gliding into the next morning. Still in the black frame we hear Krasner call “Pollock!” No reaction. Next we see Pollock lying in bed and we hear Krasner screaming loudly “Polloooock!” He wakes up and enters her studio where he finds his fuming wife, screaming at him furiously in despair: “You son of a bitch! How dare you?! Don’t

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you ever, ever, ever touch my work again!” Whereupon Pollock protests that he only wanted to help her. Krasner attacks him again, calls him an animal and he should never ever again dare … Pollock softly responds “You were stuck. Weren’t you stuck?” This makes her even more furious and she starts destroying her painting with a knife. During this act of destruction she screams at him to get out of her sight pushing him furiously out of the room and slamming the door. Why was this sequence left out? What is being said by not saying, or showing it? Would this sequence have made the artist Lee Krasner look more equal to Pollock by showing that she clearly fights against his artistic intrusion? Or would she have been defamed as a hysterical woman artist? The claim by Pollock that she was unable to progress with the painting suggests that he knows what he is talking about but mainly it suggests his authority by judging the painting and attempting to improve it. By doing this he quasi destroys her artistic autonomy, which she does not tolerate and hence destroys the painting. For what reason is Krasner’s vigorous artistic assertion made invisible in the final cut of the film? When asked about this, Harris said that he actually liked this sequence, but that it would not have fit into his narrative and would have resulted in a wrong interpretation regarding Pollock’s decline.103 This decision to omit it from the film underlines that Krasner as an artist is not present when Pollock’s presence as an artist is increasing. This becomes even more obvious in the following sequence, the staging of Pollock’s painting Male and Female, when analyzed one more time from a different perspective. It starts showing Pollock in a paint-splattered T-shirt in the kitchen, pouring a cup of coffee. He walks over to Krasner’s studio and watches her, which she does not notice. In a POV-shot, the camera suggests a view of a “neutral” observer as we see Pollock from the back while he looks at Krasner. The room is quite tidy. Krasner works on a canvas that is placed on an easel. We cannot see which of Krasner’s paintings it is. The camera follows Pollock as he walks into his own studio through a long hallway. We see two already completed paintings, which clearly can be recognized as Pollock’s Stenographic Figure and Birth. Now the artist stands in front of a canvas, which is yet unstretched and stapled to a wall. It will be Male and Female, which he had just begun painting.104 Pollock takes a sip of coffee, lights a cigarette, and begins painting

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FIGURES 2.56–8  Film stills: Krasner with brush and apron / Pollock painting from the tube / Krasner steps between Pollock and his painting

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lines directly with the paint tube onto the canvas. In contrast to Krasner he does not use a brush. Now the camera zooms onto the painting, showing the painting process in a close-up, tracking Pollock from different perspectives so that the viewers become witnesses of the painting process; it ends with that view that shows Krasner standing at the threshold and Pollock’s blurry face in the foreground. The camera is focused on Krasner who, in contrast to Pollock painting, looks like a classic painter. She is wearing an apron over her blouse, holding a brush in one hand and a piece of cloth in the other (Figure 2.56). She enters the studio asking Pollock what he is painting. She says that she sees a head and a body, but that this was not cubism since he did not break up the figure into different perspectives. Was this a new connection or automatism? Pollock answers that he is just painting. Then she starts lecturing him showing her knowledge on the discourses of abstract painting (Figures 2.57–8). She underlines that he is in danger of repeating himself if he only paints from inside out. She turns to the painting, starting to correct something on his painting with her piece of cloth. Pollock has had enough; leaving the room he says: “Why don’t you paint the fucking thing!” CUT. In the next scene we see Pollock with artist friends in the Cedar Bar, drinking. Krasner and Pollock are characterized in this scene as artists mirroring their degrees of modernism. As in the art historical sources, the film plays with polarizing the two artists: Krasner, who is still painting on an easel but who is very knowledgeable and ambitious regarding the contemporary discourses on abstract art and Pollock, who simply paints what he feels and who does not speak about his ideas. She is represented as a classic painter in the way she dresses and what she uses (easel, brush, apron). He, on the other hand, looks very contemporary in jeans, T-shirt, and with the obligatory cigarette in his mouth. He represents the new times and a male image, which seven years later will be defined in Life Magazine: Pollock—the American man and artist, the cowboy, the “fierce hero,” who produces these “magnificent masterworks” from the gut. Next to him Lee Krasner pales in the film, or she interrupts his work with her intellectual comments and eloquence. It is paradoxical that it is exactly these abilities of Krasner, which will later propel Pollock’s career. The consequence is that after 20 minutes into the film (of 120 minutes), Lee Krasner is hardly shown

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as a painter any longer except for a short moment when they lived on Long Island and Krasner is shown at her mosaic table (dated 1947). She mostly appears as a housewife who serves her husband, as well as a proud manager and critic. Therefore, I would like to ask the question again: What would have happened if we would have been able to see the deleted scene as well? It would have been a contribution that would have differentiated our ideas about the artist Lee Krasner, since she would not have been presented only as a meticulous painter following a traditional process of painting. The criticism of her work—that she painted like Pollock, only a little bit neater105—remained in reality attached to her for a long time. This statement not only has a sexist undertone (the wife, who evidently cleans up her husband’s things), it also discriminates the quality of Krasner’s art. It is exactly this notion that the deleted scene could have to some extent corrected, with Krasner presented there as an artist having her own strong will who would not have allowed someone else to correct her art, just like Pollock. Even though nothing much would have been said about her art, she would have received more acknowledgment in her filmic representation as a painter. Otherwise, Krasner is only shown once, and only indirectly so, as a self-confident artist when Pollock says to her during a relaxed evening that he would like to have children with her, whereupon she reacts quite strictly saying that this is out of the question for her since they are both painters and could not afford children under any circumstances. Here resonates the unspoken foresight of Krasner’s gendered situation from that time that when having children she would hardly be able to paint anymore and would most likely have to be the caretaker of those children, next to her many other roles. Pollock reacts unreasonably that they are husband and wife after all, and that children belong in a marriage, whereupon she gets furious and defends her position vehemently. Marcia Gay Harden gives an impressive performance in this scene. Besides it is important to note that there is also a mythological understanding embedded, insofar that motherhood and creativity are incompatible (see Feldhaus 1977, 73–89). In this respect the sequence in which Krasner renounces motherhood should indeed be read in the sense of women artists’ myths. Paradoxically though, the logic of this myth and its representation in the film gives her a spark of credibility as an artist. Even though Marcia Gay Harden had also taken painting classes

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FIGURES 2.59–61  Film stills: Lee Krasner in different social roles

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and had read everything she could about Lee Krasner (see Rochlin 2001), it seems that Krasner’s role as an independent artist was neglected all the same.106 What is the reason for this? For one, it has to do with the time frame of the film focusing on the period from 1941 to Pollock’s death in 1956. Stories like Pollock’s childhood or Lee Krasner’s success as an artist and her re-discovery years after Pollock’s death are thereby excluded. Yet, Pollock and Krasner had a joint exhibition under the title Artists: Man and Wife already in 1949 in which Krasner was showing her Little Images, appreciated only later, on which she had been working in the second half of the 1940s in a small room of their house. She also had an exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1951 on a recommendation from Pollock and her first solo exhibition at the Stable Gallery in New York in 1955. Even though all these dates are within the historical time frame of the narrated story, we hear nothing about it in the film. As an artist Krasner remains almost invisible until the end. Rather, her role transforms from an artist into a “frustrated wife.” With glasses and in a stern outfit (Figure 2.61), she has visually changed in the film. She also fights a lot with Pollock who almost always seems drunk since his altercation with Hans Namuth in 1950. At the same time, Pollock has an affair with the much younger Ruth Kligman in whom he sees his last chance to be inspired. Nevertheless Krasner does not agree to a divorce, deciding to travel to Venice for a few weeks. The film only shows her as the loving and caring Lee Krasner when visually absent, represented by a letter, which she had written before her trip to Venice. Pollock stands wobbly with the letter in his hand on a meadow, dressed only in tank top and pants; melancholic sad music accompanies the scene. He thinks of Lee, her voice is heard from the off: “I miss you. I wish you were sharing this with me. It would be wonderful to get a new different view. Painting here is unbelievably bad. How are you, Jackson? Kiss Gyp [their dog] for me. Love, Lee.” These tender words accompany her last “appearance” in the film. Only in the closing credits are we informed about her painting achievements. In a way suggesting a true story (white writing on black) we learn that Krasner lived another 28 years during which she had painted the best works of her career, many of them made in Pollock’s former studio. These “last words” in the film are quoted

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from the biography by Naifeh and White Smith except that in the book Pollock’s uniqueness and his genius are stressed even more pointedly: Lee Krasner lived for another twenty years [sic!], during which she produced the biggest, boldest, most brilliantly colored works of her career, many of them derived from Jackson’s Easter and the Totem, and most of them painted in Jackson’s studio. To the end she continued to collide with family and friends and with the art world, looking in vain for another match. On June 20, 1984, at the age of seventy-five, riddled with arthritis and almost completely alienated from the world, she lost her energy for more collision and died. The death certificate cited “natural causes.” (Naifeh and White Smith 1989, 796) To the very end Naifeh and White Smith drew conclusions evaluating Krasner’s reception. It is the biographers who assert that “most of Krasner’s works are derived from [Pollock’s] Easter and the Totem” (1953), an interpretation based on a superficial similarity of the pictorial language, which negates the multifariousness of Krasner’s work. This statement, however, also suggests another type of assessment. By suggesting that many of Krasner’s works originated from a certain painting by Pollock and moreover were painted in his studio, the biographers underline that Pollock was the grand master thereby weakening Krasner’s role as an independent artist.

The absence of the artist Two factors have stood in the way of Lee Krasner’s getting the recognition she deserves. One is the fact that she was Jackson Pollock’s wife and, as his widow, custodian of his estate; his reputation always seemed to flourish at the expense of hers. The other problem, ironically, was the tendency of feminist critics to rank Krasner a hero of women’s art. (Baker 1999, 132) It is possible that the above factors uttered by Kenneth Baker in 1999 (roughly at the time the film was produced) were in the way of representing Lee Krasner as an artist in the biopic as well. The

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decision for the filmic representation of Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock in their roles as artists also might have other reasons. Krasner in the film represents everything that Pollock is not or does not have and she uses her competence to support his career. Representing her as an active artist at his side could have introduced a situation of balance or competition between the two artists. This would have altered the dramatic order of the narrative. It is just as striking that other artists of Abstract Expressionism are part of the film, like Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky or the younger Helen Frankenthaler, but none of their works is ever shown. Pollock is never depicted in any artistic context in this film; he is always a lone fighter. This could be another reason why the film does not present Lee Krasner as an artist for any length of time. The film follows a reception of Krasner and Pollock that was prevalent until the beginning of the 1990s, for the feminist reevaluations of the 1970s had polarized the historiography of the arts rather then changed it immediately. Krasner’s artistic position continued to remain marginalized in the “official” canon of art history for a while. Only in the 1990s comprehensive reevaluations took place in the course of the renewed reception of Krasner’s work. She is no longer seen as merely a feminist heroine; she is attributed an autonomous artistic position and feminist studies certainly have prepared the grounds for that. This fact is completely left out in the filmic representation of Lee Krasner. The images of her are loaded with notions from the 1950s clinging to an interpretation that has already been superseded several times in art history. The result is that creativity in the film is unequivocally attributed to the male artist and it should be in no way disturbed by any outside factors. The “disturbances” lie in the character of the artist himself, who in Pollock’s case drowns his psychological problems in alcohol. The woman serves as the complementary “other” and is not awarded any contemporary interpretation as an artist. This valuation also goes back to the biography of Naifeh and White Smith, on which the screenplay is based. In the chapter “Legends” the authors describe Krasner’s ambitions to support the career of her husband in the following way: The legend also gave Jackson no role in his own “discovery.” Lee alone made it happen. More articulate and cool-headed, as well as more aggressive and “political” than Jackson, she had

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the connections and she made the introductions that launched his career. As for Jackson, he was at best a pawn in Lee’s grand scheme; at worst, a hindrance. (Naifeh and White Smith 1989, 405) For the biographers, Lee Krasner is only interesting as an artist as she serves to evaluate or highlight Jackson Pollock’s genius. They repeatedly underline her influence as wife and manager, but they deny her any artistic contribution to Pollock’s career. Their summarizing conclusion is quite telling: Ultimately, Lee’s real contribution wasn’t artistic at all, at least not directly, it was emotional … She created, for the first time since 1934, when Sande came to New York, an emotional open space, where, for a while at least, Jackson could wrestle the demons inside without being overwhelmed by them … With her, and with the order she brought to his emotional life, Jackson could finally focus his tumultuous psychic energy on painting … Contrary to legend, Lee didn’t drag Jackson into the mainstream of Western art. She didn’t have to. It came to him. (Ibid, 408) Pollock’s allegedly inner fight and his genius are clearly underlined in the biography. Lee Krasner as a woman is made responsible for the emotional role and it seems that in this field she has overstepped the mark by far. How else can the misogynous description of Lee Krasner in the biography be explained? Luckily, this undertone is not reproduced in the film. But nevertheless Lee Krasner hardly has any creative role in the film, which she had demonstrably occupied until 1956. While Lee Krasner is represented as quite emancipated for her time, her staging as an artist corresponds to outmoded notions. Seen from this perspective, the film does not take any account of the more recent art historical assessments that existed when the film was made. Even though Krasner as a person is represented in a quite differentiated way, the filmic narrative in regard to her creativity remains astonishingly incomplete.

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Clement Greenberg: The influential referee The art critic Clement Greenberg has contributed considerably to the establishment of American art of the 1940s and 1950s in general and in particular to the success of Jackson Pollock. His art criticism became the art historical authority or voice of Abstract Expressionism. Karlheinz Lüdeking describes the art critic as follows: “Greenberg was a judge. He judged … Greenberg phrases his judgments clearly and plainly, without compromise and quite pointedly, without using the hesitating subjunctive forms and fearlessly without regard to risky and possibly even wrong generalizations” (Lüdeking 1997, 27). Greenberg was called the pope of critics. He had been publishing art critiques and essays since 1939 setting dominant standards regarding quality and valuation of abstract painting. Moreover, he had been greatly influencing the narratives of American modern art as adviser and curator. According to his own rules, he classifies creative works as first rate, second rate or failed (see Naifeh and White Smith 1989, 524). Despite all his exclusive rhetoric one can also recognize an ideological change in Greenberg’s criticism. He departs from his early Marxist approach as we can see in “Avantgarde and Kitsch” (1939), moving more and more into the direction of formalist criticism in which the social relevance has been blocked out as much as possible. He is concentrating on the materiality of art and on the process of its creation. He sees a development that is committed to the idea of progress in modern art and his enthusiasm about Pollock’s art, which he showered with praise in his critiques between 1944 and 1947, follows this logic. In the review of Pollock’s fourth solo exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery Art of This Century, he calls the artist the representative of a “development—which I regard as the most important so far of the younger generation of American painters” (Greenberg 1947a, 139). Even before he describes why he so highly values this artistic position, he lavishes it with superlatives. He characterizes Pollock’s work in comparison with the French artist Jean Dubuffet with attributes like “more variety,” “riskier elements,” “astounding force,” and he also calls him “more original” and “less conservative, less of an easelpainter in the traditional sense than Dubuffet” (ibid.).

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One year later he will declare a crisis in easel painting, which he sees as the trademark for modern American art and sculpture (Greenberg 1948, 481–4). Also in 1947 in his text “The Present Prospect of American Painting and Sculpture” Greenberg even calls Pollock the foremost artist in American culture: Significantly and peculiarly, the most powerful painter in contemporary America and the only one who promises to be a major one is a Gothic, morbid and extreme disciple of Picasso’s cubism and Miro’s post-cubism, tinctured also with Kandinsky and Surrealist inspiration. His name is Jackson Pollock, and if the aspect of his art is not as originally and uniquely local as that of Graves’s and Tobey’s, the feeling it contains is perhaps even more radically American. Faulkner and Melville can be called in as witnesses to the nativeness of such violence, exasperation and stridency. (Greenberg 1947b, 26) Greenberg works towards establishing a modern American art highlighting it in his texts with various stylistic means in contrast to recognized European models. On the one hand, the critic promotes the artist as a representative of his times, while on the other hand one can see these phrases also as part of a myth-making narrative of the tragic hero and outsider. Clement Greenberg also invokes Pollock’s mastery by including him into the genealogy of modern European art. It is astonishing how vehemently and how exclusively Greenberg advocates his positions, especially because they will change again. Only eight years later, in 1955, the critic jubilates about Clyfford Still in a similar rhetoric as he had done for Pollock, calling him “one of the most important and original painters of our time” (Greenberg 1955, 179–96). By effusively elevating Pollock’s art, Greenberg then seems to be working just as much at establishing his own function as an art critic since his position was one that was being established as well. Greenberg sees in American art the logical consequence and extension of Parisian art, which for him has lost its poignancy (see Guilbaut 1983, 162). He needs a fitting representative, or, better yet, a hero with whom he can exemplify his analyses of cultural politics and art theory. The biographers of Pollock see in the critic Greenberg and the artist Pollock a fitting constellation.107

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Clement Greenberg was not the only art critic of the time, but he was a very influential one. Even though he shares the wish to work toward establishing a genuine American art along with Harold Rosenberg, the two critics have quite different viewpoints. While they are both initially committed to Marxist rhetoric, the differences become visible in Kirk Varnedoe’s summary: “Rosenberg is more concerned with issues of content and Greenberg with matters of form” (Varnedoe 1998, 44). Greenberg is the critical authority for Pollock’s so-called early works, whereas Rosenberg’s text from 1952 “The Abstract American Painter” becomes important for the reception of his drip paintings; he also led the way for the development of performance art in the United States (see Kaprow 1958, 24–6; 55–7). However, initially it is Greenberg’s judgmental, machiavellistic rhetoric of power that becomes the critical authority of post-war art in America, continuing to provoke with its assertive strength and to be deconstructed and revised to this day.108 This is why Timothy J. Clark fundamentally criticizes the negation of the social context in the evaluation of art as much as he criticizes Greenberg’s claim of an ultimate value of aesthetics (Clark 1994, 13). Also Griselda Pollock is approaching Greenberg’s texts with an equally fundamental criticism relating it to the patriarchal standards of art history: Not only are issues of gender untouched in Greenberg’s writings, they would seem to be utterly irrelevant, part of the unne­­ cessary baggage that ambitious painting had to discard in order to perform its heroic act of self-protection against the mess of ideological struggle characteristic of capitalistic societies. (1994, 14) Despite all the criticism and the revisions, Greenberg’s judgmental and strong rhetoric determined formal criteria and benchmarks for Abstract Expressionism according to which works are evaluated to this day. Without continuing to go into more details regarding Greenberg’s scholarly reception, I will now illustrate the filmic presentation of Greenberg and his relationship with Pollock.

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The art critic in the film Greenberg is presented in the film as a critical authority. Even though Rosenberg also played an important role in the Pollock reception, he is being neglected and the reasons for this are multiple. On the one hand the time frame of the film concentrates on the time period from 1941 to the end of 1940s. Then, five years are left out, and it is exactly in that time, namely December 1952, in which Rosenberg’s influential article “The American Action Painters” is published.109 However, one cannot call the relationship between Rosenberg and Pollock as one of friendship even though Lee Krasner knew Harold and May Rosenberg very well since she had shared an apartment with them in the 1930s. In contrast, the relationship of the two couples Greenberg/ Frankenthaler and Pollock/Krasner was mostly a friendly one. Several photographs of their visit at the Pollock/Krasner home are documented in Pollock’s biography.110 Additionally, the two critics are competitors. Rosenberg calls Greenberg an educator of the masses and a member of the “taste bureaucracy” (Naifeh and White Smith 1989, 705). These biographical reasons and the temporal frame explain the decision of the director to concentrate on just one critic, Greenberg.111 Jeffrey Tambor portrays the Clement Greenberg character in the film as a “weighty man” in a double sense. He accompanies Pollock from his first exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery Art of This Century in 1943 onward until his conflict at the Pollock/Krasner house occurs in 1955, one year before Pollock’s fatal accident. The way Tambor portrays Greenberg shows him as down to earth, self-confident, biased, authoritative, and knowledgeable. Even though Greenberg does not seem to be overweight in historical photographs, the actor in the film is a corpulent man with a deep, affirmative voice that inspires confidence. In the film Greenberg is often at the house of the two artists and is shown as a friend whose authority as a critic is nevertheless inviolable. In Greenberg’s first appearance in the film, Lee Krasner directly approaches the critic at the opening of Pollock’s exhibition at Guggenheim’s gallery asking him about his opinion (Figure 2.62). Greenberg calls Pollock original and ambitious but he finds the titles of his paintings pretentious. Krasner asks him to look at

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FIGURES 2.62–3  Film stills: Greenberg and Krasner at Art of This Century / Greenberg feeling at home in Pollock and Krasner’s house them more closely. In the next scene Krasner is already reading Greenberg’s review of the exhibition: “Being young and full of energy, he takes orders he can’t fill. Pollock has gone through the influences of Miró, Picasso, Mexican Painting and what not, and has come out on the other side with painting of his own brush.” Krasner and Guggenheim’s assistant Howard Putzel, who is visiting them, are happy about Greenberg’s well-meaning phrases. Pollock, however, is angry about them and mentions that he had not sold a single painting. Putzel attempts to pacify the artist by saying, “Rome was not built in one day!”

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In the same year, 1943, Greenberg is getting convinced of Pollock’s artistic quality. The essence of Greenberg’s dictum becomes clear in the film when he says: “Paint is paint. Surface is surface. That’s all they should be.”112 We hear this statement twice in the film from Greenberg. First it is meant as a rebuke at Pollock since the critic believes to have seen something figurative in Pollock’s painting The Blue Unconscious (1946) when he visits Pollock’s studio. But then he finds Something of the Past (1946), a painting in formation to which he gives the highest praise by saying “Well, this is first rate!” He should paint ten paintings of the same kind, says Greenberg.113 CUT. Then we see a close-up of Greenberg who is comfortably sitting in an armchair at the Pollock/Krasner home with a glass of whiskey in his left hand. While he repeats his statement for a second time, he is gesticulating in a schoolmasterly manner with both hands (Figure 2.63), continuing: The Surrealists confuse literature with painting. I can’t stand it. They will not have their way. What you’re doing out there, Jackson, is better than anything I’ve seen from you in a year or more. I gotta backtrack. Peggy’s Mural, that’s when I thought, here’s a great painter! People are saying to me it’s wallpaper, it repeats itself, it repeats itself and all that. (Film transcript, DB) The end of this monolog, “I don’t care what it does, it’s just good. It’s a great painting,” as it can be read in the screenplay (58), cannot be heard in the film since already the next scene is with Krasner and Guggenheim in the kitchen. During Greenberg’s speech the film frame changes from a close-up of Greenberg to one showing Pollock who is caressing his dog while looking blankly at Greenberg, to a view of the living room in which Pollock can be seen together with his guests. Greenberg’s posture is the most conspicuous element in the scene while he is speaking: He has taken off his shoes; his legs are on the table in front of him. From this pose of familiarity, one could almost think Greenberg feels at home in Pollock’s place. Pollock on the other hand is drinking. Despite the effusive praise he feels attacked by Greenberg and asks him which painting he believes to have failed. Greenberg answers: “I don’t think you have color yet. Like Picasso, you’re much better off when you keep your color quiet” directly comparing Pollock’s works with those by Picasso. This only feeds the notion of the growing rivalry between

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Pollock and Picasso, which already had been hinted at earlier in the film. Pollock persists and asks Greenberg once again, which painting he thinks is a failure. Greenberg calls the painting with the blue in it unsuccessful. Clearly, Pollock wants to begin a fight with Greenberg and attempts asking other guests their opinion but they stay out of the dispute. The artist storms into his studio bringing out the painting and a tube of white paint. He asks the critic provokingly what he wants changed. Pollock is poised to start changing his painting but then takes the tube away from the canvas again. Greenberg now is completely convinced of Pollock’s genius: “Well, this is something. No matter how drunk you are … there’s one thing sacred for you. Not anybody’s feelings or anything like that. It’s your art. You are not going to destroy your art. This is something” (Film transcript, DB). The rivalry between artists has a “disinterested judge” in the myth literature (Krems 2003, 102). Greenberg could definitely be seen as a referee in the film. The referee not only measures the success between the two artists, but he is staged as a stern judge who follows his own rules. Apart from this, the autonomy of the artist is addressed in the sequence mentioned above. The notion of the artist, whose art is sacred, becomes clear. In her collection of anecdotes on painters who fight back using their own means, Krems summarizes: But the artist definitely knows how to fight back against his public—not only by sulkily packing up his works but by confronting his public with his own artistic means, showing them how incompetent they really are. Here the artist clearly uses his power and supremacy … Or he ultimately only pretends to have changed something of the criticized work so that, in the end, unchanged, it indeed gains its recognition. (Krems 2003, 141–2) This observation could be transferred to the sequence discussed above in that simultaneously discriminatory judgments on art and the role of the artist and the critic are treated as problems. Despite his fight for the prerogative of interpretation, Pollock places a lot of value on Greenberg’s opinion and appreciation. For quite some time Pollock definitely has an amicable relationship with Greenberg and even asks his advice during the filming with Hans Namuth.

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According to Clark (1990), the relationship between the two men was very close but difficult, although nevertheless effective. In the course of the different phases of Pollock’s work the relationship between the artist and the critic changed. Greenberg is mainly active as a “Pollock promoter” for a powerful American art between 1943 and 1947.114 During the phases of Pollock’s work for which he is famous today, Greenberg no longer published any extensive articles.115 Already in his text “The Crisis of the Easel Picture” from 1948, the name Pollock is only mentioned briefly in a list, even though some of the descriptions can be directly transferred to Pollock’s art. Only 11 years after Pollock died, Greenberg wrote a text, in which he underlines Pollock’s creativity again and finally addresses the drip paintings more closely.116 This text was not published in any art magazine but in the American Vogue. Instead, Greenberg started to promote other American artists like Motherwell, Gottlieb, Tobey, Gorky, Rothko, Newman, and especially Clifford Still, who became his new favorite in “‘American-Type’ Painting” (1955). Pollock is mentioned in this essay in an unusually neutral description, in which he hardly has anything to say about the drip painting phase. (See Greenberg 1955, 207) This article from 1955 is discussed in the film. It is shown as the basis for the falling-out of the two men. The artist feels that the critic has deserted him. The pent-up aggression is acted out in a profound marital argument between Krasner and Pollock concluding in a blow-up in which Pollock smashes a chair. Kirk Varnedoe attempts to explain the changed entanglement of the relationship of Pollock and Greenberg in the following way: The charmed partnership of these two ambitious men ended badly. On the printed evidence, Greenberg can hardly be accused of deserting Pollock in the mid 1950s, when the painter’s inspiration began to flag; he stayed with his chosen winner long after others fell away. But after years of unremitting boosterism, Pollock was ultrasensitive to any slackening in the intensity or exclusivity of Greenberg’s conviction, and the critic’s perceived cooling exacerbated the anxieties that drove the artist deeper into the bottle. (Varnedoe 1998, 46) The film shows different phases of the relationship between artist and critic, which are not always harmonious. It deals constantly

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with notions like dependency, paternalism, and power struggle. Nevertheless, a close friendship between two like-minded people is also expressed. Even if both of them were interested in similar things, the power is not balanced equally. It is not only the critic’s sovereignty and the dependency of the artist that is being dealt with, but also the chance for a career as a critic, which Greenberg sees and seizes in an artist like Pollock. As Varnedoe writes: “Having picked Pollock helped give Greenberg power. This and his role as a paid adviser gave his opinions an extra weight of intimidation for the artists whose careers he attempted to steer” (ibid.). Following this statement one certainly could talk of a professional dependency. But the film depicts more the defining power of the critic, addressing his influence on Pollock. This is understandable, particularly since Pollock is in the spotlight and not Greenberg’s motivation of supporting Pollock. This type of representation, however, also misleads to stereotypical statements on critic and artist, in which the artist is always the one who is dependent on the critic. The turning away of the critic symbolizes the end of Pollock’s career in the film; after all, Pollock is only shown in biographical contexts after the falling-out with Greenberg. Thus, this complex web of their relationship also follows a dramatic arc ending negatively for Pollock. Even though the complex friendship between artist and critic in the film is certainly simplified, it gives an impression of the artist’s social context, which now will be extended by looking at the character of Peggy Guggenheim.

Peggy Guggenheim: The eccentric patron In the film’s presentation of the relationship between Jackson Pollock and Peggy Guggenheim, the economic side of the artist’s life is brought to the fore. “Fancy-free”—that is the common belief of the social standing of artists, which all too often is corrected by the economic conditions of artistic work into “poor and dependent.” Speaking about art and economy is still not much welcomed in the art field except when referring to the stars of the art market. Nevertheless, artists are dependent on selling and/or other financial support. Reality and imagination of an artist’s life sometimes lie far apart regarding this subject. Plus, the development of the

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profession “artist” constantly changes. As Oskar Bätschmann has stated, in the second half of the eighteenth century the “court artist” was replaced by the “exhibition artist” forcing artists to face new tasks. He characterizes the “exhibition artist”: “Due to the competition, the artists had to define, legitimize, and finance their works in public” (Bätschmann 1997, 9). Defining and legitimizing the artist Pollock is taken over by Clement Greenberg and Lee Krasner; Peggy Guggenheim is responsible for the financing. In that, she had several functions as patron, collector, and gallery owner. From today’s point of view one could also call her a curator—a term that did not exist at the time. Apart from the exhibitions in her own galleries—Guggenheim Jeune in London (1938–9) and Art of This Century in New York (1942–7)—she also showed art in other places.117 Also her New York gallery Art of This Century served varied needs. It was both a sales room with changing exhibitions and a sort of museum in which a part of her collection was shown permanently.118 One cannot always separate the different functions since their threads support each other, which significantly shaped the art system of the times. In Guggenheim’s activity as a collector, we can also recognize socio-cultural motives that go beyond her fascination with art. They can be compared to the passion of collecting in general as Britta Jürgs points out: Art and money are connected in the figure of the collector, a fact that is being either viewed critically or admired with a certain fascination, depending on the epoch and social background. Of course collecting art does not only have to do with the passion for paintings or sculptures but also with wealth, status and power. (Jürgs 2000, 7) Bourdieu’s term of the “field of power” applies to Guggenheim’s practice in the 1940s in the United States. Already with the programmatic title of her gallery (Art of This Century) she contributes substantially to the establishment of two European art movements (surrealism and abstract art) in the US.119 She is buying and showing works by Max Ernst (to whom she was married at the time), Marcel Duchamp, Yves Tanguy, Giorgio de Chirico, Joan Miró, Paul Klee, Alberto Giacometti, Kasimir Malevich, Alexander Archipenko, and Alexander Calder. In the opening exhibition at

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her gallery in 1942 there was hardly any sign of American art. This is clearly stated in the biopic by Krasner when she says to Putzel: “It’s great Howard, but there is not one American painter in the whole goddamn show!” The paintings Guggenheim presents mirror also the preferences of her advisers, who at the beginning of her activities in New York were André Breton, Max Ernst, and Marcel Duchamp. In 1943, after Guggenheim and Ernst separated and Breton left New York, her politics of acquisition and exhibition changed. Her new advisers were James Johnson Sweeney, who at the time was curator at the Museum of Modern Art, Howard Putzel, who had a gallery in Los Angeles, and the artist Roberto Matta. They worked together in establishing an American modern art. As the Pollock biographers bluntly formulated the change: “Together, Sweeney, Putzel, and Matta pushed Peggy and Art of This Century in a radically new direction” (see Naifeh and White Smith 1989, 441). Even though she wanted to use “her gallery as a laboratory for new directions in art” (Maiwald 2000, 279), according to Naifeh and White Smith she was nevertheless far from being convinced of Pollock’s art. Sweeney, Putzel, and Matta supposedly repeatedly attempted to convince her of his paintings but in the end it might have been Marcel Duchamp’s cautious judgment of Pollock’s art (as “pas mal”) which turned the scale to convince Guggenheim to support Pollock (Naifeh and White Smith 1989, 441–2, 450). It seems, however, that Guggenheim’s attitude towards Pollock changed fairly quickly since in her sometimes ambivalent autobiographical statement she incorporates the artist as her protégé: “Next came Jackson Pollock’s show. The paintings were handsome and exciting and justified all my hopes … Sweeney did so much to help me make Pollock known that I felt as though Pollock were our spiritual offspring.”120 Her decision to support Pollock was indeed quite comprehensive: She gave him a solo exhibition at her gallery, commissioned a largescale painting (Mural, 1943), and granted him a monthly advance of $150. The sum was not paid without conditions, however; it was tied to certain contractual stipulations. If she would not sell enough works of art from his exhibitions to cover her costs, she would get the rest of the monetary value from Pollock in paintings. The stipulations toughened in 1946 when she doubled the monthly payments to $300, conversely demanding the exclusive rights for

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the sales, exhibitions, and distribution of Pollock’s works.121 It became evident here that Guggenheim was not only a selfless patron but also a businesswoman. On the other hand reportedly she was not very successful with the sales in her gallery and thus was not able to offer a sufficient economic basis for the artists. Therefore, she had begun to buy the works of each artist she exhibited at her gallery.122 With this concept and her earlier collecting strategy in Europe with the motto “Buy a picture a day,”123 she established an important collection of contemporary art. Thus being a patron for her meant that there was also an economic and social-political side to it, which decisively influenced the development of the history of American modern art. Guggenheim presents herself as described by Jürgs: With her autobiography she succeeded in preserving her name for posterity and her clever stroke of integrating her Venice collection after her death into the Solomon Guggenheim empire, preserved it in its entirety and thus continued connecting her name with this collection. (Jürgs 2000, 11) The Peggy Guggenheim Foundation in Venice kept on bearing her full name but is part of the worldwide Guggenheim empire of her uncle. This brings us back to the “field of power” in which Peggy Guggenheim also became a ‘brand name’ in the art field.

The gallery owner and collector in the film Art, money, and glamor came together in the character of the collector and gallery owner. This becomes quite clear in the first entrance of Peggy Guggenheim, played by Amy Madigan.124 Pollock and Krasner have known each other for a little under one year and live together. Guggenheim’s assistant Howard Putzel has already visited them and was very impressed by Pollock’s art. In October 1942, the artist couple visits the opening exhibition of Guggenheim’s gallery showing art by Marcel Duchamp, Paul Klee, and other émigré artists. Krasner knows some of the visitors at the exhibition, such as May and Harold Rosenberg and Howard

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FIGURES 2.64–6  Film stills: Peggy Guggenheim in her roles

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Putzel, who introduces the artist couple to James Johnson Sweeney and Peggy Guggenheim. Guggenheim wears an extravagant dress with a big glittering appliqué of a lobster (Figure 2.65).125 She wears artworks as earrings, a mini-mobile by Alexander Calder on one ear and an earring with a minuscule landscape by Yves Tanguy on the other.126 In the introduction to this scene in the screenplay she is described as glitzy “in her white dress, shoe-black hair, blood-red lip-stick, lizard green eye shadow, huge earrings” and her social status is characterized as: “She gestures grandly. This is her place and she is the queen.”127 In a small talk at the exhibition opening she says to Pollock that Putzel had already spoken to her about him. Pollock does not answer. Instead, we hear Krasner’s voice thanking Putzel and asking Guggenheim to look at Pollock’s paintings. Guggenheim continues looking at Pollock and only briefly answers Krasner’s request with a “Yes” before ending this conversation with a hostess adequate “Enjoy yourself!” Only now Pollock responds. It is the only thing in this short encounter, in which the artist, who seems out of place, says to her with a flirting glance: “I like those earrings.” In this sequence, Guggenheim’s eccentric appearance and her connoisseurship coalesce in an almost exemplary manner. For Guggenheim in the film is characterized more by visuality than by rhetoric. This observation also corresponds to a description of Guggenheim by Gore Vidal, who writes in the introduction to her autobiography: Although she gave parties and collected pictures and people, there was—and is—something cool and impenetrable about her. She does not fuss. She is capable of silence, a rare gift. She listens, an even rarer gift. She is a master of the one-liner that deflates some notion or trait of character or person. As I write this, I am trying to think of a brilliant example; and fail. So perhaps it is simply the dry tone—the brevity with which she delivers her epitaphs—that one remembers with pleasure. (Vidal in Guggenheim 2005, xii) Guggenheim’s first encounter with Pollock’s paintings is staged as a studio visit. The sequence starts with Krasner and Pollock running down a street towards their apartment. Arriving, they see Guggenheim and Putzel coming down the stairs breathlessly.

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Guggenheim is furious (Figure 2.64), shouting at him who does he think he is—after all, she is Peggy Guggenheim and does not walk five flights of stairs in order to stand in front of a locked door and besides, she has weak ankles. Fuming, she looks at Pollock and then notices that he is drunk, which Pollock and Krasner—clearly lying—deny. They walk upstairs together. Guggenheim confidently walks into the first available room and sees paintings by Lee Krasner. She comes out of the room furious, ranting: “L.K., L.K. Who the hell is L.K.? I didn’t come to look at L.K!” Putzel shows her the way into Pollock’s studio. She instantly comments authoritatively and patronizingly: “This is better. These show something.” Krasner starts explaining Pollock’s art to Guggenheim who does not react to that, but concludes that he is not a surrealist like her other American artists. She begins showing interest but is in no way exuberant in her judgment. The biography describes that Pollock at the time was working as an attendant at the Museum of Non-Objective Painting (later the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum)128 in order to make money. The film never mentions working for an income outside of painting, but the financial insecurity of the artist is a subject at other times in the film. For example, when Putzel comes for a visit, happily announcing that Pollock will have his first solo exhibition at Art of This Century, that Guggenheim will give him a contract, that he will get a monthly stipend of $150, and that he has a work commissioned for the lobby of Peggy Guggenheim’s apartment for which he has full artistic freedom. Putzel explains parts of the contract and it becomes clear that the artist will enter a business relationship with the gallery owner, in which both of them are stakeholders: Peggy will give you a stipend of 150 dollars a month. At year’s end‚ if the artist does not sell equivalent to the advance plus one third commission, he will make up the difference in paintings. In other words, my dears, you don’t sell 24 hundred dollars’ worth, Peggy owns all the work. So, sell. (Film transcript, DB) Even though this arrangement today looks like an oppressive contract, at that time it represented a great success for Pollock. It opened up the entrance to the art scene which he had been longing for and allowed him to live off of his art. Nevertheless Pollock will not talk about business with Guggenheim throughout the

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entire film; this is the job of her assistant. Their relationship in the film is a representative one, and for a short moment it even becomes an intimate one as well. After the inauguration party for his Mural Pollock is in Guggenheim’s bedroom. She sits on her bed and we hear sentimental strings. He is standing in front of her, drunk, looking at her lasciviously. Guggenheim quotes Greenberg’s praise about the Mural. Pollock does not seem interested, only asking whether she likes the painting. Guggenheim says she loves it. Pollock uses this situation in order to take the rare talk between them to a different level, saying “You have a lot of lovers!” indicating that he wants to have sex with her. She does not seem disinclined, commenting that she had already had similar thoughts (Figure 2.66). He approaches, opening his shirt and while Guggenheim opens his pants, she flirts: “I don’t think you realize how hard I work to get people interested in you, to get you into the right hands and then you act so badly. I mean, you remind me of a trapped animal.” It is at exactly this moment that she vehemently rips open his zipper, and he lunges at her clumsily in his underwear. A short, stormy flurry follows, ending in a fiasco before a sexual act can even take place. This sequence visualizes Guggenheim as a woman who was well known for her liaisons. But the sequence follows a description in the Pollock-biography that does not have any factual evidence and is only based on assumptions.129 Not even Peggy Guggenheim herself reports on it in her very revealing autobiography as far as liaisons are concerned. She describes her relationship with Pollock as one between patron and artist, in which Lee Krasner was the intermediary. She even underlines the work that she and Krasner had invested in him as an artist: Pollock immediately became the central point of Art of This Century. From then on, 1943 until I left America in 1947, I dedicated myself to Pollock. He was very fortunate, because his wife Lee Krasner, a painter, did the same, and even gave up painting at one period, as he required her complete devotion. (Guggenheim 2005, 315) In the film, Guggenheim is reduced to the role of an extravagant and glamorous socialite. Her characteristics as a hard-working businesswoman are only hinted at.130 The fact that it was Guggenheim who

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made sure that Pollock would get an exhibition at Betty Parsons’ gallery and the fact that she continued to keep up the contract with him (which would last until 1948) when she moved to Venice is not shown in the film either, nor is the fact that she organized a big exhibition for Pollock in 1950 at the Museum Correr in Venice. The Guggenheim character makes clear how the format of the feature film can simplify the presentation of a person. The detailed characterizations that are recognizable in the protagonists of Pollock and also Krasner successively dwindle in the supporting characters, reducing these to common, popular denominators and their gendered stereotypes. Guggenheim is sexualized as an extravagant woman, while Greenberg with his patriarchal attitude embodies the male critical authority. Nevertheless the focus on the “artistic field” in the film allows for an insight into the economic and institutionalized side of Pollock’s professional world, even if the supporting characters are not presented sufficiently differentiated as they could be. Thus, Greenberg’s portrayal is concentrated in the role of an influential referee and Guggenheim in that of an eccentric collector instead of showing them in their multifaceted functions and involvements in the “field of power.”

Authorship debates: From artist to star, from star to author In summarizing and assessing the biopic Pollock, the notion of authorship will come into focus. I will pursue to a lesser extent the by now almost rhetorical “death of the author”131 and instead follow a more productive debate on the question of authorship pointing to its function as a “means of classification” (see Foucault 1980, 123) of the author names “Pollock” and/or “Harris.” On this note I will on the one hand look at the representation of artistic authorship in the film character Pollock and on the other hand investigate both authorships outside of the film, of the director and the actor Harris. Pollock in the film is struggling for his status as an artist if we regard artistry and authorship132 as two related terms linked by innovation, authenticity, and authority (see Wenk 1997, 23). This becomes evident in different sequences of the film and it culminates in the film-in-film sequences with Namuth. At the same time looking at its production, both the actor and the director

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Harris stand out as the authors of the film. Looking at the different authorships in this biopic, a connection between artistic production and stardom will be explored. Let us first have a look at different ways of gaining artistic authorship. The artist legitimizes him- or herself as an author by signing his work with his or her name. Proper name and author name, however, do not have the same function, as Foucault observes: “they oscillate between the poles of description and designation” (ibid., 121). Thus the author’s name is a “means of classification” within a discourse and the signature gives utterance to this function. The signature can be seen as an “element of the artist’s fame” since it is “a gesture of authorizing” and a “criterion of allocation.” Signatures play “a significant role for establishing authorship” summarizes Karin Gludovatz analyzing the characteristics of signatures in art historical studies. Signatures have many functions, she says, and take on several levels of meaning: They are at the same time marker, vestige, seal, passage, threshold, reality fragment, and pictorial illusion. They can “disrupt” the arrangement of a picture, can “break through” to a pictorial world, and can install a protagonist in a pictorial narrative just as much as it can constitute a work and nominate an author. It is (brush-)script, “market fetish,” means of authorial power, and a factor of art historical categorization.133 From the signing with a brush to the autograph with a pen—from artist to star: Signatures are being used in different ways in Pollock marking his path from artist to star. Since we are dealing here with the staging of the signature, the question of authorship shifts from the artist to the director and/or the actor. First, I will focus on various sequences of the autograph bestowing different forms of authorship to the filmic character of Pollock.

The staging of artistic authorship In the opening sequence, Pollock signs the article in Life Magazine for a visitor of the exhibition. He is dressed in a suit, but his fingers are slightly smudged with paint. Only those viewers who see the traces of paint on his fingers can recognize the signs of his

Pollock

FIGURES 2.67–9  Film stills: Autograph / Signature / Handprint

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profession. Pollock is introduced as an art star and an “objectified subject” of desire before we even see him exercising his profession. Pollock’s signature here is his autograph and authenticates his status as (art)star. Pollock is first shown exercising his artistic profession while painting Male and Female. Nobody is allowed to interfere with his art, and his statement “I am nature” invokes the topos of “Divino artista.” Shortly afterwards, Howard Putzel comes for a visit, saying “You will be the sensation of the season.” He brings news about his first solo exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century and presents the contract for a signature. The artist signs the contract with paint-smudged hands and with Putzel’s golden fountain pen.134 CUT. Now we see the artist signing one of his paintings (Figure 2.68). It is exactly at this point in the film that the function of the name “Jackson Pollock” changes—the proper name becomes an author’s name. Harmonious music begins to play and the camera focuses on the act of signing with brush and paint on a painted canvas in a close-up. The first name “Jackson” is already written, the last name “Pollock” is painted by the actor Harris with black paint before a running camera. Here lies another neuralgic point at which the different facets of authorship—the artist’s and the actor’s—cross over. On the filmic level this short scene, the authorship of the artist is visualized and legitimized by writing or painting the name and with this Pollock’s artistic ascension is ushered in. On a metalevel, however, also the actor Harris inscribes himself into the person he represents. I will come back to this aspect later on. There is a physical relationship with the work as soon as a work is signed by hand as Deborah Cherry has shown (1997, 50). When Pollock develops the dripping method authenticating his work as an artist, the filmic depiction of authorship goes even further. Pollock is not signing the painting but imprinting it with his hands. Pollock presses his palms, which are stained from black paint, onto his work Number 1A (Figure 2.69). At the high point of abstraction, the artist authenticates the painting with the concrete trace of his hands—definitely a symbolic depiction of the physical relationship between artist and work. He almost animates his work by bringing parts of his body into the painting when incorporating traces of the maker. The original painting shows handprints as well but also a signature at the lower edge in the center. This signature is

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not visible in the film. The concentration clearly lies on an indexical representation of the body in the work. Furthermore, the imprint of the artist’s hand “identifies” him as the creator of this work and can be read as a sign for the unmistakable individuality and energy of the artist.135 With these gestures of authorization in the film the “classificatory function” of the author becomes visible. But authorship does not only show in the signature; it is also expressed in claiming artistic sovereignty over the creation of the work. It cannot be recognized detached from the work; according to Michael Wetzel one has to always see it in relation to the work and its reception: “Authorship means dominion of works,” i.e., it is assessed by the controlling strategies in relation to the ownership of works; by way of these the artist as the creator becomes the sovereign, even where the potential creativity is uttered in the imagined author-artist as a mere name without a work. (Wetzel 2000, 494–5) While control of the artist over his work is addressed at different points in the film, in the end it even turns out to be an inexorable contending for authorship. Initially the question of sovereignty over the work is expressed in a rivalry about authorship between the two artists Pollock and Krasner. A reminder: Krasner attempts to teach Pollock something while he is painting Male and Female and she starts correcting his art. Pollock stops painting, throws the tube down and says to Krasner that she should finish the painting. At a different occasion, Pollock has his creative authorship put to the test by Clement Greenberg. Also here he does not follow the advice of the art critic but retains his own will. In both cases the artist is still in direct contact with his painting. Only when filming with Hans Namuth does he start faltering in his self-confidence as an artist. Since Namuth directs the movements of the artist, the artist begins to act as himself rather than being himself. The dictate of the director seems to be even worse when he tells Pollock when to finish his painting. Namuth’s reasons were technical, like there is no more film in the camera, or there is no more daylight. But the decision when an artwork is finished is crucial to artistic authority and authorship. Here the sovereignty over the painting has shifted from the artist to that of the director, and Pollock loses

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his authorship to Namuth. The turning point of the dramatic arc in the biopic is exactly here, when Pollock is no longer the author of his work. His authorship has changed through the process of technical reproduction. He has also changed from the “unknown artist” to an art star. The result is that Pollock’s authorship is shared with other “powers”—the mass media. The film narrative suggests that the authorship of the artist is slowly diminishing and eventually lost with the entrance of reproducing media in Pollock’s life. The production of the image of the artist is clearly connoted negatively, and this conflict is played out as a biographical drama.

The authorships of Ed Harris While the film suggests a loss of Pollock’s authorship as an artist, the authorships of Ed Harris in his functions as director and actor manifest themselves differently by how the story is being told and shown. The director Harris uses a variety of media like photography, print media, radio, and film as structuring elements while narrating Pollock’s story. The reproducing media are the motor for the dramatic narration. They produce the alienation of the artist from his work, since they “disillusion the ideal image of the sovereignty of the creator,” according to Wetzel (2000, 539). Thus, the mass media are demonized as a machinery of alienation. However, the media criticism inherent in the film narrative also shows ambivalent conditions of dependence. The interpretation that the media are responsible for Pollock’s rise and fall and that stars are built up and then dropped again by the media certainly stands to reason. But it could be said just as well that the staging of Pollock as an artist who was alienated from his work is connected with Benjamin’s dictum of the loss of the aura (see Benjamin 1978, 221). However, in Pollock the loss of the aura does not lie as much in the reproducibility of a work of art as it does in the reproduced process of production. Thus, Harris, as director of the film proves to be critical by calling attention to mass media’s intricate power in creating an artist’s image and its effects on a person. Nevertheless, a critical perspective on Harris’ own practice as the author of a mass media product (which also creates a certain image of the artist) cannot be detected. On the contrary, the most urgent attempt is

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made to mediate a coherent plot. The moments of distancing and reflecting upon the “grand narrative” are less recognizable in the story than in the display of individual media within the film and in certain moments of depicting the artistic process: for example, in the originating process of the Mural when Pollock looks at the blank canvas that suddenly appears as a full screen and therefore as a white film frame. This staging on the one hand prepares the viewer for a representation of the artist as a virtuoso, but on the other hand it also points to the virtuosity of the filmmaker. Harris underlines an analogy by creating a direct connection between the filmmaker and the artist: In the beginning a film is like a white canvas, like the white piece of paper before the writer … That tension between the Nothing and how and imagined work might look in the end is enormous. One has to concretize what is in the mind’s eye so that the first stroke of the brush can be perceived already as part of the later whole. It is the same for a writer or a director.136 Most apparent are the self-reflexive moments in the film-in-film quote. Here, Harris is reflecting on his own practice as director and as actor. By visualizing both the roles of the artist he is embodying and that of the director who is giving instructions, he highlights those as conflicting positions. But since this sequence is embedded in the narrative of the biographical drama, it somewhat loses its self-critical significance. The carrier medium of this larger narrative, the feature film, could have been made more perceptible as the voice of authority by using different cinematic strategies, especially since biopics are much more influential and formative for creating images of artists than the mass media of the time criticized by the film. In order to discuss Ed Harris’ authorship as director and actor in Pollock, we will have to consider the debates on authorship in film discourse referring to the term “auteur.” The term goes back to a discussion on the “politique des auteurs” that was initiated in the French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma in the 1950s by François Truffaut, among others.137 It refers to “personal style,” “genius,” “an individual world view,” and the “filmic universe” of directors. The aim of the article was to reevaluate and to upgrade narrative cinema as an art form equal to literature. In this sense the film

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directors are elevated in comparison to the scriptwriters or, as is often the case, director and scriptwriter are one and the same person.138 Independent of the fact whether the director writes the script or not, it is decisive for the credentials of an “auteur” that the director can create “his” film with as few compromises as possible and, if possible, also without the influence of other protagonists. Therefore, the names of the directors become the “trade marks” of the films.139 With the notion of “auteur,” authorship was not only labeled as a “structural element” but it was also connected to a “qualitatively and normatively” judging factor as Diedrich Diederichsen (2001, 43) summarizes retrospectively. The “auteur” discourse has often been criticized, but also repeatedly assimilated and further differentiated.140 In Englishspeaking countries, for example, the term used is “author theory,” in German-speaking countries it is “Autorenkino.”141 Jürgen Felix describes the authorial function in films in the following way: The attribute “author/auteur” confers the “signature” to the film, as in a painting or a novel. It singles it out of the mass of the “nameless” productions. Even if we know that the auteur is a construction and is in no way identical with the real person of the filmmaker, since it is a mediated cultural product, nevertheless the category “auteur cinema” puts our perception and value judgment of films into a specific perspective. It can be compared with the function of genres or literary forms.142 Is Ed Harris now an auteur? Which methods are at his disposal to legitimate him as auteur? Harris is certainly the most influential person to validate the messages of this film project since in his role as co-writer of the screenplay,143 as director, actor, and co-producer he has taken on many functions. However, we have to differentiate between the various authorships. For on the one hand Harris is an actor by trade and on the other the motivation to make this film did not come from a screenwriter or director, but from the actor Ed Harris. The fact that Harris also became the director of this film was not planned. Only after no adequate director could be found the producer Peter Brant suggested to the actor that he should become the director.144 Thus, Pollock is less interesting for its plot but rather for its mise en scène and the acting performance. Harris as director underlines two statements in the film. First of all he

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accentuates his own acting qualities by staging the creative process; secondly, by concentrating on the production of the artist’s image through mass media. As actor-director Harris has experience in being a Hollywood star and is able to make a critical commentary within this film. But it is the extensive representation of the creative process that is an exception in comparison with other biopics.145 As becomes quite clear in the interview with Geoffrey Macnab (2002, 24), Harris is also quite conscious of this: “The one thing I was aware of in films about painters is that you rarely see them painting and their work isn’t represented very well. That was something I knew I wanted to achieve …” He also sees quite a challenge in his profession as an actor in it when he says: “The most challenging part of all that was gaining enough confidence to paint as myself, for myself, but in his manner—to be committed first to myself as a painter, keeping my focus on creating my own art, not recreating someone else’s” (Harris 2000, xvii). It was less important in the painting sequences to make identical copies of Pollock’s paintings; it was the impression of an authentic artistic process that was significant.146 This is made clear for example in the production of Male and Female, in which Pollock/Harris is partly painting other numbers and signs onto the painting in the film than there are in the original one. The flow of the painting from the subconscious seems to be more important. Another example can be found in the scene in which Number 1A is painted. Harris presses his palms onto the upper right hand edge of the painting, imitating the artistic process. His fingers point into the direction of the center of the painting, whereas in the original the fingers of the artist point into the direction of the right edge of the painting. It seems that the staging of the artist’s being-in-the-painting or the hermeneutic circle “artist—work” have priority. For the scene of the painted signature by Pollock, one could develop this conclusion further and transfer it to the actor in the sense of “actor-filmic narration.” In painting the name “Pollock” in front of the camera, Harris is attempting to copy the evidence of authorship. But Harris underlines his authenticity as an actor even more so by acting out Pollock, who was well documented in different poses and painting processes. Especially in the reenactment of the Namuth film, he could have inserted the historical source into the feature film without making a documentary out of it, even though Harris gave just this as a reason for the reenactment (EH Nov 17, 2004). Rather

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it seems important for the actor Harris to incorporate Pollock completely. In his function as director, this lack of distance can be seen critically, but in his function as actor, it actually highlights his professional skills. Especially in the later period of the film when Pollock’s alcoholism has changed the protagonist physically as well, the element of “embodying” becomes even more pronounced, since the actor has put on weight for these scenes. Harris is captivating as an actor by creating the impression that the character in the film and the actor have become one. “By transforming into his characters and pulling the audiences in”147 is the first sentence of his short biography in the International Movie Database characterizing Harris, which indirectly honors him in the American tradition of “Method Acting.” Foucault’s statement that “the name of the author … is not a function of a man’s civil status, nor is it fictional; it is situated in the breach, among the discontinuities, which gives rise to new groups of discourse and their singular mode of existence” (Foucault 1980, 123) can also be productively used in this film context. Here it is the actor, who establishes himself as author with the work about an artist. Or, in other words, Harris’ authorship as director is at the service of his authorship as actor. This transfer affects the actor Harris who is catapulted far ahead in his “starmeter” because of this film. Harris’ work on authorship not only seems to be a work on stardom but also one towards stardom, which can be seen in his nomination for an Academy Award for the best male leading role.148 In reviews of the film, Harris’ authorships are neither regarded separately nor is the effect of mixing them up reflected. Instead, different tendencies are noticeable that highlight the director, the actor, or the genre. In Roger Ebert’s review of the film, for example, the attempt is recognizable to establish Ed Harris as an auteur by underlining his performance as director: This is Ed Harris’ movie. He started thinking about it 15 years ago, after reading a book about Pollock. He commissioned the screenplay. He raised the money. He stars in it, and he directed it. He knew he looked a lot like Pollock (his father saw the book and thought the cover photo resembled his son). But his similarity to Pollock is not just superficial; he looks a little like Picasso, too, but is unlikely to find the same affinity. He seems

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to have made a deeper connection, to have felt an instinctive sympathy for this great, unhappy man … “Pollock” is a confident, insightful work—one of the year’s best films. Harris is always a good actor but here seems possessed, as if he had a leap of empathy for Pollock. His direction is assured, economical, knows where it’s going and what it wants to do. (Ebert 2001) In the German press Pollock is mostly positively discussed as well. For example Susan Vahabzadeh praises him both as actor149 and as director: Ed Harris is a great actor and he plays Jackson Pollock so well that his performance effortlessly transcends all other notions of this man. Harris as director is a surprise. One of the greatest qualities of Pollock is that he does not convulsively fixate on any image, problem, or idea. Harris has staged this film quite unobtrusively, flowingly, and then, suddenly out of this flow of images spark the things that inspire Pollock. (Vahabzadeh 2002) Gunter Göckenjan goes even further by maintaining that Harris was only able to win back his creativity by directing: With the progression of his career in the movies and his rise into the honored category of Hollywood actor, he increasingly began to miss the creative side of his profession … Working as a director was not only a clever step in his career; it was also the reconquest of his creative potential. (Göckenjan 2002) Diedrich Diederichsen is more critical in his review and he addresses a fundamental problem—or more precisely, a characteristic—of biopics when he is criticizing the lack of historical context in Pollock, which he locates in their concentration on the genius discourse: Pollock makes attempts to develop the intertwining of historical developments, the ideology of the Cold War and an emerging art market with all its subtleties and intricacies, its tragedies and contingencies. But these attempts unfortunately face the decision to establish the truth of genius as the last authority … The problem of the biopic is that at its core is the person whose

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biography is being told and not the work, not the times, not the history. (Diederichsen 2002) The general response to the film in reviews is mostly positive. Despite some critical remarks, they establish Ed Harris as an author whose name is featured as a reference for the film. Even though the different attributions of his authorships as actor and director are constantly merging, in the end they have a stronger effect on his “main profession” as actor. Ed Harris is clearly inscribing himself into the reception history of Pollock; as an actor he has succeeded in incorporating the character of the artist into his own star image. His name, his face, and his voice are connected with the artist in the popular reception of Pollock. Even in Pollock’s art historical reception the film became linked with the artist.150 For example, during the exhibition “Jackson Pollock. No Limits, Just Edges” at the German Guggenheim in Berlin (2005), the biopic was shown as a source for Pollock’s biography during the “Long Night of the Museums.”151 One more inscription of the film into the history of Pollock and Krasner was evident when visiting the PollockKrasner House and Study Center,152 where both artists’ lives were referenced several times with the words “as you saw in the movie” during a guided tour through the artists’ former house.153 One thing is certain: The actor Ed Harris is closely connected with the discourse on Pollock not only in the minds of a movie-audience, but way beyond. Harris became the contemporary personification of Pollock––at least until a new biopic on Pollock is released, if that should ever happen. Therefore, we can summarize that on a first glance this biopic remains stuck in Hollywood’s production logic by way of upholding the legend around Pollock. On a narrative level it does not offer anything new to informed viewers. Even though it criticizes the influence of mass media on Pollock’s creative process, the role of the feature film in the construction of his image remains hidden. On the other hand, Pollock definitely has to be distinguished as an ambitious project within the biopic genre since Ed Harris’ filmic narrative about Jackson Pollock and his creative process connects his biography with discourses of art history and media theory. “The film has nothing to do with Hollywood. It is too good for that,” says a praise (Rump 2002), countering the skepticism of a critic regarding the quality of Hollywood films in general. This

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film is not only a Hollywood melodrama, even though it provides for the dramatic arc that ends with the death of the hero and that therefore emotionally involves the viewers. Rather, Pollock can be located in a niche between a biopic with artistic impetus like Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio (1986) and a classic Hollywood biopic like Frida (2002) by Julie Taymor.

Notes 1

Anonymous (1949a: 42–5). The author of this article is Dorothy Seiberling; however, she is not listed in the original text.

2

For example in biographies: Friedman (1972), Potter (1985), Naifeh and White Smith (1989); or monographs like: O’Connor and Thaw (1978), Landau (1989), Varnedoe (1998).

3

Minnelli is also the director of the film Lust for Life (1956) in which Kirk Douglas personifies Vincent van Gogh. The subject of art and insanity is dramatized in this film by way of van Gogh’s biography.

4

The term auteur in the 1950s in France was coined in the sense of a “politique des auteurs” by the critics of the Cahiers du Cinéma. They understood this to mean an individual approach of a director (as creator or film artist) who develops a certain personal style and who fulfills several functions like author, director, and/or producer thereby being able to control the complete production of the film. On the history of the Cahiers du cinema and some excerpts see Caughie (1999, 35–47).

5

Davenport and Sargeant (1948, 56–8). Participants in these round table discussions were Clement Greenberg, Meyer Schapiro, Georges Duthuit, Aldous Huxley, Francis Henry Taylor, Sir Leigh Asthon, R. Kirk Askew Jr., Raymond Mortimer, Alfred Frankfurter, Theodor Greene, James J. Sweeney, Charles Sawyer, H.W. Janson, A. Hyatt Mayor, and James Thrall Soby.

6

The two works are listed as Number 12A and Number 17A in the MoMA catalog. The inexactitude of Life Magazine that can be recognized in both reproductions is much more astonishing. They were slightly cut off on all four sides. Even without comparing it with the original this mistake can be immediately recognized on Number 17A since Pollock’s signature has been cut off at the right lower edge.

7

The continuation of the article is dominated mainly by colored ads that almost strangle the article. It would be interesting to assess the proportion of the editorial section and ads in a different context and analysis.

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8

Anonymous (1949a: 45). The variations in tone makes one assume different writers for the main text and the captions.

9

Anonymous (1949b) “Letters to the Editor,” Life Magazine (August 29): 9. There was only one positive reaction out of nine letters to the editor; all the others are represented by the sarcastic tone of these examples: “Sirs: Answering your query ‘Jackson Pollock—is he the greatest living painter in the U.S.?’ I submit a photograph of my son, Dennis Michael O’Sullivan, a 5½-year-old contemporary of the Pollock trend in art with his latest effort, Number Ninetynine. (Mrs. F. D. O’Sullivan Jr., Avandale Estates, GA.)”; or: “Sirs: Based on 23 ¢ per square inch for Jackson Pollock’s Number Nine, Angell’s Number One (below) is valued at only $21.65. However, a further calculation shows my time to be worth $259.80 an hour, since I can turn them out all day at the rate of one every five minutes. (Preston W. Angell, Arlington, VA.).”

10 The term “unrecognized artist” is derived from the term “poète maudit” that had developed since the second half of the nineteenth century in France with Paul Verlaine’s “Les poètes maudits” (1888). Those talented writers were characterized by not having had any or little success during their lifetimes and becoming recognized only after their deaths. Vincent van Gogh is the prime example for the “artiste maudit” in the field of painting. 11 On the term “exceptional woman” see Graw (2001, 79–88). 12 On the influence of Life Magazine on the reception of Jackson Pollock and Abstract Expressionism in the USA see Corlett (1987, 71), Collins (1991), Schneemann (2003, esp. 155–75). 13 However, Picasso is already 71 years old on photographs as can be seen on one by Robert Doisneau Picasso and the Bread Rolls of 1952, while Pollock is only 44 on the photograph in Life Magazine from 1956. Picasso is an art star during Pollock’s time in the USA as well; see Cohen (1980, 43–7). 14 Notably, however, he moved to the East coast for his art career. The myth of “going West” in this case is only used as a backdrop for the typically American. The idea that groundbreaking art comes from the East coast was one that the art scene in California had to fight hard against, especially from the 1960s onward. 15 “Jackson” echoes Andrew Jackson who also had that rough-andready reputation, which was part of the American Wild West myth. Also his given name and surname did not have any “threatening foreign” tones attached to them. My thanks to Dorian Rudnytsky for this reference.

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16 A direct connection to Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner can be made with Tennessee Williams’ drama In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (1969): “The verbal sparring of this battling couple, a domineering wife at odds with her drunken and dissolute painter husband, remarkably (and unflatteringly) duplicates the interpersonal dynamics of the latter stages of the Pollocks’ marriage” (Landau 1989, 16). 17 Films with Marlon Brando that can be connected to this “new” type of man are: A Streetcar Named Desire (1951, D: Elia Kazan), Viva Zapata (1952, D: Elia Kazan), The Wild One (1954, D: László Benedek), On the Waterfront (1954, D: Elia Kazan). 18 On Pollock’s death see Anonymous (1956a: 58). On the one-year anniversary of Dean’s death see Anonymous (1956c: 76). 19 See Guilbaut (1983). Guilbaut analyzes the institutional conditions and the ideological monopolizing of Abstract Expressionism by the politics of the Cold War. 20 Lindner (2000, 246). See Greenberg (1940, 296–310). 21 Among the first film noir are The Maltese Falcon (1941, D: John Huston), Double Indemnity (1944, D: Billy Wilder), Laura (1944, D: Otto Preminger). On characterizing and historicizing the film noir genre see “Film Noir” by Neale (2000, 151–77). 22 Pollock (USA 2000, D: Ed Harris, 122 min). Screenplay: Barbara Turner and Susan J. Emshwiller. Cast: Ed Harris (Jackson Pollock), Marcia Gay Harden (Lee Krasner), Amy Madigan (Peggy Guggenheim), Jeffrey Tambor (Clement Greenberg), Val Kilmer (Willem De Kooning), Stephanie Seymour (Helen Frankenthaler), Norbert Weisser (Hans Namuth), and others. Original Music: Jeff Beal; Director of Photography: Lisa Rinzler; Film Editing: Kathryn Himoff; Production design: Mark Friedberg; Painting Coach: Lisa Lawley; Executive Producer: Peter M. Brant and Joseph Allen; Producer: Fred Berner, Ed Harris, Jon Kilik, James Francis Trezza; Associate Producer: Candy Trabacco, Heiner Bastian; Co-producer: Cecilia Kate Roque. Sources see: www.imdb.com. 23 Interview with Ed Harris by the author, Malibu, November 17, 2004 (quoted as EH 17, 2004). 24 This information is not visible in the credits; I was informed about it in my conversation with Ed Harris. He showed me a box with different versions of the screenplay that shed a light on the many revisions that had been made. 25 I want to thank Ed Harris for having made the unpublished screenplay available to me.

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26 Already on September 6, 2000 the film was shown at the film festival in Venice, on September 11, 2000 at the Toronto Film Festival, and on September 30, 2000 at the film festival in New York. 27 The authors state that they interviewed more than 800 people and that they had produced 18,000 pages of transcripts with 10 million words; see Naifeh and White Smith (1989, 797). 28 The descriptions in this respect are based on relatively vague reports from contemporary witnesses and assumptions of the authors regarding Pollock’s “sexual fears” (ibid., 478–82). Additionally, general observations by James Hardin Wall, a physician specialized in psychoses of alcoholics, are consulted to explain Pollock’s supposedly latent homosexuality, which is not very convincing (ibid., 318–19). 29 “I read everything I could get my hands on” (EH Nov 17, 2004). 30 In the Making-of documentation of the DVD, apart from Ed Harris, also Marcia Gay Harden (Lee Krasner), Amy Madigan (Peggy Guggenheim), Jeffrey Tambor (Clement Greenberg) talk about their roles as well as Fred Berner (producer), Mark Friedberg (production designer) and Lisa Lawley (painting coach). 31 Harris had not acted in many leading roles until then. He became known mainly as Virgil Bud Brigman in The Abyss (USA 1989, D: James Cameron). After that, he mostly had supporting roles in films like: Glengarry Glen Ross (USA 1992, D: James Foley); The Firm (USA 1993, D: Sydney Pollack); Apollo 13 (USA 1995, D: Ron Howard); Nixon (USA 1995, D: Oliver Stone); The Truman Show, (USA 1998, D: Peter Weir); The Third Miracle, (USA 1999, D: Agnieszka Holland); A Beautiful Mind (USA 2001, D: Ron Howard); Enemy at the Gates (USA/D/GB/IRL 2001, D: Jean-Jacques Annaud); The Human Stain (USA/D/F 2003, D: Robert Benton); A History of Violence (D/USA 2005, D: David Cronenberg). In the Western Appaloosa (USA 2008) Harris directs for the second time, sharing the main role with Viggo Mortensen. After having acted in Pollock, he also was offered roles as an artist: In The Hours (USA/GB 2002, D: Stephen Daldry) Harris played a writer and in Copying Beethoven (USA/G/H 2006, D: Agnieszka Holland) he had the lead role as Ludwig van Beethoven. In my interview Harris did not comment on a possible influence of Pollock on the roles he was offered subsequently as artists and rather saw them purely as chance events. (EH Nov 17, 2004). 32 See www.imdbpro.com

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33 Macnab in an interview with Ed Harris (2002, 24). 34 Douglas (1988, 266). According to Douglas, Marc Chagall was so impressed by his performance that he sent him his autobiography wanting Douglas to portray him in a movie. But Douglas never wanted to play the role of a painter again (ibid. 267). 35 For example when Charlize Theron played the murderess Aileen Wuornos in Monster (2003) her weight gain (more than 30 pounds) and her ugly looks were repeatedly admired and seen as a quality for the beautiful actress to change like that. In 2004 she won the Oscar as best lead actress for this performance. 36 See Strasberg (1987). 37 “The path, the through line of the film is tracking Pollock and his emotional state. It is not an art history lesson, it is not about anything other than this guy and his life” (EH Nov 17, 2004). 38 According to Harris the film cost about 10 million dollars and in 2004 it had not yet recouped this amount. 39 The film clearly deviates from the screenplay at this point. Harris talks of creating a new structure during the editing period: “I thought I had the final cut, and went off to do another film, actually in Berlin, Enemy at the Gates. I looked at it at the Adlon Hotel one night, I hadn’t seen it for two weeks and realized, wow, it isn’t finished yet. So, after that film I went back and re-cut for another four months … The one thing that helped me a lot was when I did look at it again in Berlin, that I had some time off in terms of getting some distance to the project. It needed a lot more shaping. I sent a copy to Walter Murch, who is a very famous and great editor. He looked at it and didn’t have much to say, but he talked about putting the film more in an art world context. It made me think about how to structure it differently, giving it a context through its structure” (EH Nov 17, 2004). 40 The model, who supposedly always wears this straw hat, is country-bred and works in New York City. The agency registers her as a “wholesome American type.” See the photo credit for the cover in Life Magazine (August 8, 1949), n.p. 41 See Mulvey (1975, 6–18). I am interpreting the gaze not exclusively regarding a heterosexual desire, as Mulvey does in her text. I am using her theoretical tools in order to label sexualized structures of the gaze. On the notion of the gaze, see also Silverman (1986). 42 James Dean also died in a car accident one year before Pollock at an even younger age.

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43 Hess (1956, 44–5, 57), repr. in Harrison (2000, 40). Other articles as well create the association of a hero’s tragic death, as in Anonymous (1956a, 58) and Karp (1956, 8, 12). 44 On the first five pages of the last script version from January 1999, several flashbacks to the year 1956 can be found, such as four evocative flashbacks with pictures from Pollock’s childhood and family from the time between 1916 and 1917 as well as six flashbacks in the form of spoken text excerpts from a letter by Pollock to his brother Sande from 1929. But these flashbacks are not shown in the film; only the scene from 1956 remains and is shown chronologically towards the end and not at the beginning, as in the screenplay. 45 “Actually, there was stuff that we wanted to shoot about his earlier life, it was actually in the script, about Arizona, his dad and his mom and the rural aspect of his life. We were thinking of some images that would not have explained anything, but at least gave a sense where this man had come from. But we didn’t have the money to shoot it” (EH Nov 17, 2004). 46 This is a good example for the dependencies and power structures of the different functions in filmmaking. 47 Ed Harris, Making Of “Pollock,” special feature on the DVD Pollock. 48 This camera eye is reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo even though in this case the staircase is not round but rectangular. 49 The film is also indirectly pointing at the demand of the American art world of this time to surpass its European models. 50 Pliny the Elder (1949–54): Parrhasios “… it is recorded, entered into a competition with Zeuxis, who produced a picture of grapes so successfully represented that birds flew up to the stage-buildings; whereupon Parrhasius himself produced such a realistic picture of a curtain that Zeuxis, proud of the verdict of the birds, requested that the curtain should now be drawn and the picture displayed; and when he realized his mistake, with a modesty that did him honour he yielded up the prize, saying that whereas he had deceived birds Parrhasius had deceived him, an artist” (Book XXXV, § 36). 51 At a later point in the film Pollock says to Reuben Kadish that he is ineligible because he is too neurotic. In the film there is no talk of a mental illness, even though in a letter of his psychoanalyst his ineligibility is substantiated with a schizoid disposition of Pollock. Letter by Mrs V. de Laszlo, M.D. from May 3, 1941 to an investigating doctor of the selection panel for the

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military service. Quoted from the picture of the letter in Harrison (2000, 18). 52 This sequence suggests that he feels deserted by his brother with whom he had lived in New York until then and was not able to control his fury. 53 In the screenplay and in the biography this scene is taking place earlier. Sande and Lee get Jackson from the sanatorium because the mother, Stella Pollock, is coming for a visit. Thus the reasons for this stay at the sanatorium do not become clear in the film but could be interpreted as a result of the family dinner. 54 “Think of it as a storm, and it will be over” Lee Krasner remembers; see Glueck (1981, 60). 55 Prometheus in Greek mythology is presented as the rebel who revolts against Zeus. He steals the fire from Zeus and gives it to the mortals in their dark caves. As a result, culture and art will develop. Zeus is so angry about this that he brutally punishes Prometheus. And since Prometheus is also a god he is damned to endlessly endure this torment inflicted on him. Only 13 generations later he is freed from this punishment by Heracles. 56 Pollock was not mentioned by name in this article. Instead, Rosenberg wanted to describe a phenomenon in its times and culture. The Pollock reception, however, sees this article as a paradigmatic description for the process of his painting. Rosenberg even defends himself against this interpretation; see Rosenberg (1961, 35, 58–60). 57 Instead of the usual existentialist interpretation of the Rosenberg text, Fred Orton suggests reading it from a political point of view; see Orton (1996, 177–203). 58 In connection with Pollock’s style of working, I will use the terms “drip-painting” or “dripping” instead of “action-painting.” 59 See Leja (1993, 122–4). In the biography this painting is used as a symbol for the dramatic turn in his life: “In the worst days of a stormy winter, both inside and outside, Jackson began work on a huge canvas … Only now the face was a trembling outline of age and exhaustion, the staring eye a vacant, tearless tracing of resignation. Jackson called the painting Portrait and a Dream” (Naifeh and White Smith 1989, 728–9). 60 “It raises the possibility that the narrative side of Portrait and a Dream may have been an outlet for Pollock to express his increasing resentment toward his wife’s continued control” (Landau 1989, 218).

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61 This area has been widely analyzed in Pollock studies, from discussing the influence of Surrealism to interpreting Pollock’s works in the context of Jungian archetypes. For me the most interesting approach is by Michael Leja. He connects Pollock’s own statements with those of his psychotherapist and modern literature (or “modern-man-literature”) thereby attempting to explain Pollock’s notion of the subconscious. Leja understands Pollock’s statement from 1947 “The source of my painting is the unconscious” in the sense that the artist possibly is trying to represent the subconscious; see Leja (1993, 121–202). 62 Mural (1943), Oil on canvas, 97¼ × 238 in. The painting is now part of the University of Iowa’s Museum of Art as a gift from Peggy Guggenheim. 63 The close-up of the artist’s eyes can also be seen as a topos for the representation of the artistic process in films. This becomes quite clear in the video work Fiction Artists (2004) in which Christoph Girardet and Volker Schreiner have assembled film scenes from a multitude of artist’s films on different subjects. In fact, exactly this representation is also typical for the Western genre. Before a shootout, suspense is built up by showing a close-up of the cowboy’s eyes. 64 Ed Harris seems to have painted this painting to this point. The Mural in the film was completed by Lisa Lawley, the painting coach; see Harris: “We had a big plastic sheet where we rehearsed a little bit with initial strokes. Lisa Lawley has deconstructed the Mural and felt that there was a certain way that Pollock began it. We were using two cameras. So, I painted myself up to the point where we break and then when Lee comes down the hallway and you see the painting finished, that was actually painted by Lisa” (EH Nov 17, 2004). 65 This could also be read as a reference to the “all-over”-strategy of the later drip paintings. 66 This is one of the myths of the origin of drawing or painting; see Pliny the Elder (1949–54, Book XXXV, § 43). 67 The legend is also used to explain the origin of the plastic arts since the father is a potter; from the picture he creates a likeness in clay for the daughter. From a film historical point of view, one could also recognize a scene of origin of the medium film in the staging of a shadow figure on canvas. 68 It is a representation of Dorothy Seiberling and Martha Holmes; however, they stay nameless in the film. 69 Barthes (1981, 14).

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70 Interview with William Wright, The Springs, Long Island, New York, 1950; broadcast on WERI, Westerly, Rhode Island, 1951; printed in Karmel (1999, 20–3). 71 Turner and Emshwiller (1999, 79–80). Punctuation and case-sensitivity are used as in the screenplay. In this version of the script one can see the omissions from the radio interview. Otherwise there were no changes made regarding content or style; see print-out of the transcript of the radio interview in Karmel (1999, 20–3). 72 Some statements from the interview can also be found in the Namuth film; see Namuth (Nov 17, 1979): “Recently I added a soundtrack to the black-and-white film, using excerpts from a radio interview conducted by William Wright in 1950” Namuth (1980), quoted from the re-print in Harrison (2000, 266). 73 That we can watch Harris painting here gives evidence of his acting abilities. For scenes like these he had “learned” to paint in order to express Pollock’s creative process adequately. 74 The film shoot in the biopic refers to the color movie, Namuth’s second film, which was shot during six weekends in October/November 1950. The film was finalized in collaboration with Paul Falkenberg in 1951. In June 1951 it was shown for the first time at MoMA and in August of the same year at the Woodstock Film Festival. Before that, Namuth had shot a black and white film, which was never shown. Hans Namuth is really a photographer and had already done several shots of Pollock in his studio and his garden during the painting of One: Number 31 and Autumn Rhythm: Number 30; see Karmel (1998, 87–137). 75 The film-in-film sequences therefore are represented in their materiality (black borders), apparatus (camera, rattling), and their agents (director and actors). 76 This take also appears in the historical film; Bernadette Walter interprets it as a “symbol of a weary path.” With a reference to Van Gogh’s shoe painting she sees Pollock’s shoes as a film image symbolizing the “difficult path of the artist in society and his lonesome journey through the world.” See Walter (2001, 455). 77 In the historical film Pollock starts a glass painting, wipes everything away and begins anew. His voice from the off is saying: “I lost contact with my first painting on glass, and I started another one.” In the film-in-film we only see the origin of the second painting and Pollock is not talking at all. The film-image-in-film is framed in black, as before, and we hear the rattling of the projector. 78 See for example the entrance of his restrospective in 1982 at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, where one had to see this film

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79 See the essays by Barbara Rose and Rosalind Krauss, in Barbara Rose, ed. (1980, n.p.). 80 “Initially Pollock’s legs in blue jeans can be seen on the screen. In the following seconds, the artist celebrates the changing of shoes. He sits down on a chair standing by. CUT. The paint-splotched leather shoes appear in a close-up. Pollock takes up one of these shoes and the camera slowly tilts towards his face. He takes off a slipper carefully attempting to slip into one of the worn out leather shoes, pauses for a moment, takes off the shoe again, turns it around shaking out a pebble and then puts it on again. Then he is ready to start the work” (Walter 2001, 454). 81 The script for the spoken text was jointly put together by Paul Falkenberg and Jackson Pollock from different sources; see Karmel (1998, 137, n. 84). 82 “This relationship [of the act of production to work] is the relationship of the worker to his own activity as something which is alien and does not belong to him, activity as passivity [Leiden], [Translators’ note: Here the translation is inaccurate: “Leiden” should have been translated as “(passive) suffering,” BP/DR], power as impotence, procreation as emasculation, the worker’s own physical and mental energy, his personal life—for what is life but activity?—as an activity directed against himself, which is independent of him and does not belong to him. Self-estrangement, as compared with the estrangement of the object [Sache] mentioned above” (Marx 1992, 327). 83 Namuth also talks about Pollock’s reaction; see Namuth (1980, 269). See also the biography Naifeh and White Smith (1989, 651). 84 “Compared to Pollock, Picasso, poor Picasso, the little gentleman who, since a few decades, troubles the sleep of his colleagues with the everlasting nightmare of his destructive undertakings, becomes a quiet conformist, a painter of the past.” Bruno Alfieri, “A Short Statement on the Painting of Jackson Pollock,” L’Arte Moderna (June 8, 1950); quoted from the reprint (Karmel 1999, 69). 85 Horkheimer and Adorno wrote their text while being in exile in California in 1944. Since they had previously experienced the propagandistic use of audio-visual media of the Nazis in Europe, their view towards mass media was naturally quite critical. 86 Greenberg quoted in Landau (1989, 86). According to Landau, Greenberg stated that Krasner had the greatest influence on Pollock

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during a lecture on May 22, 1980 at the Smithonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. 87 The many articles by women scholars stand out in this case; see the articles only from the 1970s by two authors: Nemser (1968); Nemser (1973 a and b); Nemser (1975 a and b); Rose (1972), Rose (1973 a and b), Rose (1975), Rose (1977). 88 See in particular Wagner (1996, 105–90), Pollock (1996, 220–94), and Landau (1995, 10–16). 89 For the biographical data see Grove in Landau (1995, 300–20). 90 In doing this, she is of course also taking part in the creation and solidifying of the Pollock myth as the prototype of the American artist. 91 Rosenberg (1965). Referring to this article, B.H. Friedman (1972, 245) polemically called Krasner an “action widow.” 92 “He never acknowledged me as a painter, but as a widow, I was acknowledged. And, in fact, whenever he mentioned me at all following Pollock’s death, he would always say Lee Krasner, the widow of Jackson Pollock, as if I needed that handle.” Krasner quoted in Wagner (1996, 126–7). 93 “Krasner is more interesting as a case than as a painter” and also: “There are only the shadows of other selves, the echo of other voices” (Danto 1985, 219–20). 94 The retrospective started at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and from there went on to the Museum of Modern Art in New York opening in December 1984, which Lee Krasner could not experience any more, having died in June 1984. 95 Landau had already written her dissertation on Krasner’s early work; see Landau (1981). 96 The bibliography states the English translations of Roland Barthes’ “The Death of the Author” ([1968] 1999), and Michel Foucault’s “What is an Author?” ([1969] 1980). 97 “Although Krasner’s art is ‘that of a woman,’ the autobiography it inscribes invents its subject (its ‘self’) as the bearer of a fictional masculinity … The invention is strategic, meant to master the feminine, since for Krasner femininity was the more complex and threatening term” (Wagner 1996, 189). 98 Landau (1995, 192), Naifeh and White Smith (1989, 390), Rose (1983, 97). In this catalog the lines of the poem are connected to her painting Prophecy (1956), which she had painted shortly before Pollock’s death and which still was standing on the easel when she returned from Venice.

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99 In Naifeh and White Smith’s biography this early conviction of Pollock’s artistic genius is revealed as a myth since supposedly she was first fascinated by Pollock as a man and not as an artist. Even though it is hard to distinguish the man from the artist on a personal level, this evaluation by the Pollock biographers has a misogynous undertone; see Ibid., 393–5. 100 Self Portrait, 1930, oil on linen, 30⅛ × 25⅛ in., The Jewish Museum, New York. 101 Untitled, 1940, oil on canvas, 30 × 25 in., Collection Fayez Sarofim. 102 Untitled, c. 1941, oil on canvas, 39¾ × 36 in., location unknown (possibly destroyed—see Landau 1995, 75). Since only a black and white illustration is preserved the colors for the replica had to be decided. 103 “I also really liked that scene, but where it came in their lives and in the story made it feel like the reason why Pollock went off the deep end. And this was so not accurate emotionally for Pollock. Even though I hated to cut it, because it is such a strong scene, it really would have changed his own inner journey. It just wasn’t right. That’s why I took it out” (EH Nov 17, 2004). 104 Birth, c.1941, oil on canvas, 45⅞ × 21⅝ in., Tate Gallery, London; Stenographic figure, c.1942, oil on canvas, 40 × 56 in., MoMA New York; Male and Female, c.1942, oil on canvas, 72½ × 48¾ in., Philadelphia Museum of Art. 105 Gretchen T. Munson writes a critique about the exhibition of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner Artists: Man and Wife in the gallery Sidney, which will be consequential for Lee Krasner: “There is a tendency among some of these wives to ‘tidy up’ their husbands’ styles. Lee Krasner (Mrs. Jackson Pollock) takes her husband’s paints and enamels and changes his unrestrained, sweeping lines into neat little squares and triangles” (1949, 45). 106 Half a century later, at least the actress Marcia Gay Harden received the recognition that Krasner’s creative achievement had been lacking by being awarded an Oscar for the best supporting role in 2001. 107 “From their joint debut, artist and critic seemed ideally matched: Jackson’s energetic, uncouth, ambitious paintings and Greenberg’s masculine, earnest, ambitious prose” (Naifeh and White Smith 1989, 522). 108 The Greenberg students Michael Fried and Rosalind Krauss continue their critical writings in this vein, even though they are criticizing it at the same time. Significantly, both scholars have published works

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on Pollock; see Michael Fried (1965, 14–17). Krauss has published several articles on Pollock, on one of them see Krauss (1971, 58–61). In her book The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, Krauss even made her own revision of Greenberg. She revolts against Greenberg’s type of criticism who, according to her, conceals his mechanisms of evaluation. However, making her structuralist method of analyzing modernism visible does not safeguard the author from a formalist approach. 109 Even if this text is repeatedly quoted regarding Pollock’s drip paintings, the critic never named the artist in this article. Despite that, one can assume that he is describing Pollock’s working method. 110 See Naifeh and White Smith (1989, 522, photo at the beach and 697, photo in front of the house). 111 Nevertheless it certainly would be interesting to see both critics as more nuanced characters in the film. It probably would differentiate the one-sided relationship of dependency between artist and critic. 112 This statement “Paint is paint, surface is surface …” paraphrases Greenberg’s attitude towards art in a common denominator. In the biography this situation is described in the following way: “To him, both of those earlier works, with their deeply buried imagery, all-over compositions, and exuberant surfaces, perfectly exemplified his theories: in them, paint was paint; surface was surface; and neither, apparently, aspired to more.” See Naifeh and White Smith (1989, 524). 113 Actually, in the last exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim’s there really are seven new works by Pollock with the motto “Sounds in the Grass” among which the two paintings mentioned in the film can be found; see Landau (1989, 163). 114 According to the article in Life Magazine, he was part of the selection panel and emphatically recommended Pollock; see Collins (1991, 283–308). 115 In Greenberg’s radio lecture “Modernist Painting,” Forum Lectures, Voice of America, Washington D.C. (1960), Pollock is not even named. 116 Greenberg (1967, 160–1). The Pollock retrospective at MoMA took place in the same year. 117 She presented her own collection at the Greek Pavilion of the 1948 Biennale in Venice. In 1950 she even presented a Pollock exhibition at the Museum Correr in Venice and from 1951 onward she opened up her collection at her Palace at the Canale Grande in Venice, where she also lived.

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118 She is taking up an idea that she had already had in London in 1939 to create a museum for modern art. At the time she had Herbert Read as consultant. But the project could not be realized because of the war in Europe. The unusual design of her New York gallery Art of This Century was undertaken by Friedrich Kiesler who answered the demand of multifunctionality. To this day the design of the room is a model for many architects who are working in exhibition architecture and design; see Davidson and Rylands (2004). 119 The name supposedly was invented by her former husband, the artist Laurence Vail as the title of a catalog, which Guggenheim then took over as the name for her gallery; see Naifeh and White Smith (1989, 439). 120 Guggenheim (2005, 302). She also calls Pollock her “spiritual heir” who was taken over by Betty Parsons; see ibid., 320. 121 See reprint of the agreement in Harrison (2000, 22). 122 See Reitz (1998, 129); see also Maiwald (2000, 273). 123 Tacou-Rumney (1996, 96). Maiwald is pointing out that only the political and economic circumstances at the beginning of the 1940s made her rise as an art collector possible (2000, 273–4). 124 Amy Madigan is Ed Harris’ wife in real life. 125 The dress is not exactly like the famous “lobster dress” that Elsa Schiaparelli designed in 1937, on which she had been working together with Salvador Dalí; see Martin (1987, 146). Nevertheless, the dress in the film clearly refers to it. 126 The purposeful dissimilarity in her earrings is interpreted as impartiality between surrealism and abstract art; see Tacou-Rumney (1996, 124). 127 Film script, 24. For a description of her looks see also Naifeh and White Smith (1989, 437). 128 What is meant is the Museum of Peggy Guggenheim’s uncle Solomon where the Baroness Hilly von Rebay enforced very strict working conditions. The Baroness thought very negatively about Peggy Guggenheim’s enterprise. As a result, the biography describes this time as a very depressing one for Pollock, since he did not have any news from Peggy Guggenheim and worked for a quasi-hostile institution; see Naifeh and White Smith (1989, 446–8). 129 See Naifeh and White Smith (1989, 478–9). The alleged “night of lovemaking” is severely debated. For example Jasper Sharp, who had been working in the Guggenheim Foundation in Venice at the time of his lecture, denies it; see “The Patron and the Painter,”

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lecture at the Deutsche Guggenheim, March 10, 2005 (notes of the author). 130 For example when she comes for a visit to Pollock’s studio on Long Island at a later time together with Greenberg and the collector Alfonso Ossorio, whom she is hoping to make a sale to. 131 It has been mostly the title of Roland Barthes “The Death of the Author” from 1968 that has become a rhetorical figure used to this day in order to polemicize against the debate on authorship. 132 As Wetzel has shown in his essay “Autor/Künstler” (author/artist) (2000, 480–544) artistry and authorship have a similar history. On the assessment of different discourses on authorship in contemporary art see Kampmann (2006). 133 Karin Gludovatz (2011, 25) with many thanks for letting me have a look at her manuscript during my research while her book was not yet published. 134 According to Foucault he would not be an author at this point since “a contract can have an underwriter, but not an author” (1980, 124). 135 Hollywood also relies on the imprint of the stars’ hands and feet on its Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles as a gesture of authentication. 136 With this statement he curtails the possible creativity of the director by the important element of montage. Ed Harris when interviewed by Obert (2002). 137 François Truffaut’s article from 1954 (January 31) can be seen as a document of origin. The text probably would not have had this effect if French film critics and directors like Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, André Bazin, Fereydoun Hoveyda had not “rewritten” it and if this discourse had not been used in the Nouvelle Vague. Just as important was the continuation and differentiation of this discourse in the 1960s in the Anglo-American cultural context. 138 As can be seen by the term “politique des auteurs” it is a male-dominated narrative of mastery in film discourse. Among the directors of the so-called Nouvelle Vague, for which the discussion on auteurs was like a manifest, only Agnès Varda became visible as a “femme auteur.” 139 Thinking of films for example by Hawks, Hitchcock, Godard, Truffaut, Scorsese, Coppola, Fassbinder, Woody Allen, or Almodovar. 140 See Caughie (1999). He expands the French discourse of the “politique des auteurs” from the 1950s by including the later

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141 See Sarris (1962–63, 1–8); see also Felix (2002, 13–57). 142 Felix (2000, 15). Felix does not differentiate the terms “auteur” and “author.” 143 He is not given credit in this function, but it becomes clear in my interview with Harris and the many versions of the script, which he keeps in his study. Harris: “So, she [Barbara Turner] wrote the script again over a year, and had another version of 212 pages, I said ok, we need to cut it down more, got down for 50 pages or something. But still, she never wanted to attack it in a different way, and cinematically to me it just didn’t make any sense. I wasn’t thinking of directing it back then, I just wanted to play Pollock, but I just didn’t get it. So, Trezza ultimately ran out of money, couldn’t pay for any more re-writes and during this time I was starting to work on the script on my own. I had a table set up here in my house. So, I kept working on the script, working on the script. I was taking it with me while I was doing other jobs, constantly re-writing it. I worked with what Barbara had written” (EH Nov 17, 2004). 144 This information conforms both to the statements by Harris and by Brant. Moreover, Peter Brant describes the process of finding a director as extremely tedious and as a difficult decision for Harris. Brant: “I bought the script and then we started to look for a director. We first talked to Mangold who did Copland, he is the son of the artist Mangold. But he was really into commercial films … and he didn’t really have that much excitement. So I didn’t think he was right. Then we talked to a few other people … and we reached out for the Polish director Milos Forman. He had no interest in doing Pollock, no! … So, I said to Ed, you know Ed, I have got a problem here, because you are so knowledgeable and familiar with the subject matter. I think if somebody else directs this … if we get some director coming in here, with all of them we will have a learning curve for about five or six months. You might work with him for three to four months and you might not get along with him. It is a real problem. So, I said, you’ve got to direct this, Ed” (PB Sept 20, 2005). At first Harris did not want to do this, but then Peter Brant asked Robert de Niro since he as a “method actor” always was very involved in his roles and had also served as director several times. Consequently, De Niro and the director John Frankenheimer had found good arguments from the realm of their own experience to convince Harris to be the director himself. 145 The staging of the production of a painting can be seen primarily in more artistic documentaries, as in Namuth’s film or in Henri-George

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Clouzot’s Le Mystère Picasso (F 1956). On the fictitious level some feature films are attempting to stage the creative process, like for example the film version of Balzac’s novel Le chef d’œuvre inconnu with the title La Belle Noiseuse (D: Jacques Rivette, F 1991) or Martin Scorsese’s Life Lessons from the New York film trilogy New York Stories (1989). Nick Nolte is playing a fictitious artist (somewhat resembling Julian Schnabel) in the context of the New York painting boom in the 1980s, which stages the beginning of a painting with expressive gestures. 146 Nevertheless, the team of painters created impressive replicas for the film. 147 On the first page of the entry for Ed Harris at www.imdb.com 148 The film was not—as other biopics—nominated for the Academy Awards as a whole in the category “Best Film,” “Best Director,” or “Best Script.” 149 But it was Marcia Gay Harden who was awarded the Oscar for her embodiment of Krasner. The review by Margy Rochlin “Her Friends Know What a Big Deal This Is” stands out from the others in that it concentrates on Marcia Gay Harden and her role as Lee Krasner. 150 For example, Ed Harris was asked to speak the text of the children’s book by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan, Action Jackson, for its audio version. 151 The program says: “Parallel to the exhibition, the German Guggenheim … will present the feature film Pollock (2000) by Ed Harris that biographically portrays the artistic career of the abstract expressionist.” The exhibition was on view from January 29 to April 4, 2005. 152 The Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center is located in East Hampton, New York. Since 1988 it is open to the public and is visited by scholars and vacationing visitors alike; see http://naples.cc.sunysb.edu/CAS/pkhouse.nsf, and http://www.pkhouse.org 153 In addition, a reproduction of a painting by Krasner that had originally been made for the film was hanging in the house. The painting is correctly labeled in the following way: Margaret von Biesen, “Untitled” Replica of Lee Krasner painting, 1939–40, gift of Pollock Film Inc. In the shop of this artists’ residence—apart from information about Pollock and Krasner and all kinds of merchandising articles like postage stamps imprinted with Pollock paintings—the DVD and the film poster are also being sold. Information gathered on a visit on September 23, 2005.

CHAPTER THREE

Basquiat and celebrity culture In contrast to Pollock, the completion of the biopic Basquiat1 did not take several decades after Jean-Michel Basquiat’s death to make the story of the artist into a feature film. That it arrived in the theaters only eight years after Basquiat’s death is actually an exception within this genre. Usually when observing the gestation period in the US movie industry, the production of an artist’s biopic takes about half a century.2 It is just as unusual that at the time of production there had not yet been a biography on the market3 that could have served as a reference for the script; there were only a considerable number of articles in newspapers and exhibition catalogs. For example, in the closing credits of the film the article by René Ricard, “The Radiant Child” (1981b), is specifically mentioned.4 Unusual also about this biopic is the choice of director. It is neither a well-known director nor a famous actor who tells the tragic story of Jean-Michel Basquiat, but his colleague, the art star Julian Schnabel. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s short and tragic biography is like a subject matter made for film: He became famous at age 20 and died of a drug-cocktail at the age of 27. Therefore, Basquiat mostly concentrates on biographical moments through which the artistic rise and the personal fall of the artist can be narrated. A second and quite as dominating narrative thread of the film is dedicated to the mechanisms of the New York art scene in the 1980s. Thus, the story also deals with the celebrity hype, including its life-threatening

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effects and the social context in which this phenomenon developed. We hardly get to experience the process of Basquiat’s artistic production in this film, which is especially striking in comparison with the Pollock film. The critic Veronika Rall even goes so far as to maintain that this film puts the tumult surrounding the arts—the circus made of the commodity, the worship of the golden calf—into the foreground (Rall 1996). Thus, the characters of the gallerists Annina Nosei, Bruno Bischofberger, and Mary Boone, who are all still in business today, take up important narrative threads, and so does the critic René Ricard.5 Apart from Basquiat as the main character, the roles of his artist colleagues Andy Warhol and Julian Schnabel (alias Albert Milo) are highlighted in order to characterize the art world from an artist’s perspective. It is interesting to note that neither Keith Haring nor Kenny Scharf, who were both friends and just as famous artist colleagues of Basquiat, appear in the film.6 Instead, Benicio Del Toro acts as the fictitious friend Benny from the graffiti scene. He seems to be impersonating a whole host of different friends. The proxy, as it were, for a multitude of Basquiat’s female friends is the just-as-fictitious character Gina Cardinale. She is also an artist but unsuccessful and waitressing in a restaurant. Basquiat’s promiscuous life style is intimated only once when he has an affair with a mysterious woman called Big Pink, played by the grunge star Courtney Love. Also, the film only implies Basquiat’s bisexual orientation that in the biography and other theoretical texts is more openly discussed.7 And last but not least, the African American and Puerto Rican music and art context, in which Basquiat was located just as much as he was in the “white” art world, remains only a marginal setting in the biopic. The main subject of the film is the stardom of the artist and the celebrity culture surrounding him, a culture in whose everyday affairs celebrities—and mainly white celebrities—are ubiquitous.8 The vanguard of this culture in the art field is Andy Warhol. With the celebrity portraits that he had created since 1962 until the end of his life––first uncommissioned and since 1963 also as commissioned works––or with founding the magazine Interview in 1969, Warhol had introduced the factor “celebrity” as artistic material into the art world.9 The director and artist Julian Schnabel seems to have learned from Warhol. He downright indoctrinates the biopic on Basquiat with celebrity culture—that is to say it is a film about and with celebrities of American society. The popularity of this film



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is not only achieved by the star images of the historic art scene but also by those of their actors. The cast of the film is a potpourri of actors and pop stars: Julian Schnabel (alias Albert Milo) is played by Gary Oldman, Andy Warhol by the pop star David Bowie; the gallerist Bruno Bischofberger is played by Dennis Hopper, Mary Boone by Parker Posey, and Michael Wincott portrays René Ricard. This cast of stars extends to minor parts like William Dafoe in the role of a preparator in the Mary Boone Gallery or a journalist interviewing Basquiat played by Christopher Walken. Only Basquiat as the main character is enacted by the then still relatively unknown Jeffrey Wright10 and that of his girlfriend Gina by the just as yet to be discovered Claire Forliani. The music for the film selected by John Cale and Julian Schnabel including songs by The Rolling Stones, Charlie Parker, David Bowie, and Tom Waits also contribute an important part to the celebrity and scene factor of this film. The individuals, who are the focus of attention in the film just as they had been in the 1980s New York art scene, are the so-called art stars or “superstars.”11 Andy Warhol, who has introduced stardom and its superlatives into the field of the arts, can be seen as the spiritual father of Schnabel and Basquiat. Julian Schnabel here has a double function. On the one hand he is telling the story of his artist colleague as the director, and on the other hand he also plays a role in the filmic narrative. We therefore have to look at the perspective from which the story is told, which is less historical but more the view of an insider and affected person. Thus, this film is less oriented on historical exactitude or the completeness of an artist’s life than on certain events, emotionalized memories, and the criticism of the marketing methods in the art field, all of which clearly connect to the experiences and the perspective of the artist Julian Schnabel. As the director, Schnabel speaks in interviews of an “emotional intensity” in the film, adding that he did not want to write a book nor want “to speak in the language of words but in that of feelings.” He underlines his subjective perspective when he says “[Jean-Michel Basquiat] always wanted to know what I thought about him. The film to a certain extent is my answer.”12 He refers to the film as an “homage” to Jean-Michel Basquiat and as a “requiem” about the friendship between Basquiat and Warhol (Schnabel quoted in Saada 1997, 65). But this insider perspective is not only visible in

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Schnabel’s approach; in fact, many of the actors in the film were and are in direct contact with the characters they represent.13 This is another peculiarity in the biopic genre, which is rarely possible in other films because of the gap between the historic reality and the film production. Thus the story of Basquiat lives from subjective impressions, narrated stories, and anecdotes. This does not seem to be exceptional in the reception of Basquiat, since “everyone has a Jean-Michel story” as Kelly Jones writes in an exhibition catalog, thereby underlining the high profile of Basquiat in the New York music and art scene of the 1980s.14 The biggest influence on the story narrated in the film nevertheless is Julian Schnabel’s, who had supposedly worked on the script as well. But before I will look at the genesis of the film, I will concentrate on the narratives and images about the historical person Jean-Michel Basquiat and the construction of his image as an artist.

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s image as artist To write about the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and his work from a historical and gender-oriented perspective or to make a film from the perspective of an artist colleague also means to bring to one’s mind––in this case––Eurocentric view. It is interesting to note that it is precisely in naming one’s own viewpoint where differences in the Basquiat reception can be marked. Those critics and art historians who are interested in the post-colonial discourse because of their biographical and/or theoretical background (like bell hooks, Franklin Sirmans, Greg Tate or Susanne Reichling) or those who are interested in queer studies (like José Esteban Muñoz or Jonathan Weinberg) mention their personal or theoretical background and mostly concentrate on image analyses and questions of identity. However, many other critics (like René Ricard, Cathleen McGuigan, or Phoebe Hoban) all remain quiet about that, suggesting that they speak from a universally valid perspective. For these critics the dominant themes are concerned with questions about the art market or the art context of the time. I think it is important for the assessment of Basquiat as an artist to combine the post-colonial and genderoriented discourse with questions of the art context. It is not only



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significant because Jean-Michel Basquiat is called the first black male art star of American art, but also because he is stylizing himself as a black artist in a white art world. He is also repeatedly using references from the African American or Creole cultural context in his works.15 On the one hand the references are of an iconographic kind as his (often fragmented) representations of male, African American bodies or the inclusion of the names of his idols from sports or music. On the other hand, the use of language in his paintings is reminiscent of Creole neologisms and poetry.16 After World War II, Pollock’s ethnicity as a white Christian male was of great importance for establishing an American art interested in original American subjects. I will have a closer look at it regarding Basquiat’s story in order to extract the dominant discourse of the 1980s. Ethnicity here, contrasting the historical term of race, means a general discourse of cultural location. Stuart Hall has made this term productive by delimiting it from the racial discourse, and thereby newly defining it: The term ethnicity acknowledges the place of history, language and culture in the construction of subjectivity and identity, as well as the fact that all discourse is placed, positioned, situated, and all knowledge is contextual … What is involved in splitting of the notion of ethnicity between, on the one hand the dominant notion which connects it to nation and “race” and on the other hand what I think is the beginning of a positive conception of the ethnicity of the margins, of the periphery. That is to say, a recognition that we all speak from a particular place, out of a particular history, out of a particular experience, a particular culture, without being contained by that position as “ethnic-artists” or filmmakers. We are all in that sense ethnically located and our ethnic identities are crucial to our subjective sense of who we are. (Hall 1996) Since my background, while writing this book, was situated in the art historical context of German-speaking countries and gender studies, the question of locating the speaking subject also plays a role for my own interests that are concentrated on images of artists in popular culture and their gendered and ethnic codifications. Therefore I am looking at those mechanisms and media that form an artist’s image in a public perception like articles in the

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press, (self-)stagings in photographs, and finally films. Ethnicity and gender of artists play an important role for this interest, since both factors characterize the representation of the artist and are being used in different facets. Being “ethnically located” in Hall’s sense will also play a role when analyzing the biopic Basquiat. I will therefore also ask the question of the filmic perspective and in connection to that of the position of the artist Julian Schnabel in the American world of media. For this film, Schnabel for the first (but not the last) time moved from the art world into the movie world. Before I have a closer look at the film, I will examine the popular perception of the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat in the United States, similar to the preceding chapter regarding Jackson Pollock. The article on Pollock in Life Magazine in 1949 helped quite a bit in popularizing the artist within modern American art. In Basquiat’s time in the 1980s the use of mass media was not a new phenomenon anymore, nor was it an any less effective one. The difference is that texts about art and artists had more diversified print media outlets than in the 1940s. The articles in the Village Voice, a local New York publication, and even more so in the New York Times as a nationally read daily paper, along with those in professional magazines like Art in America, Artforum or Flash Art, all shaped Jean-Michel Basquiat’s image, making him into a national and international art star alike.17 Following Pop art in the 1960s, American art reached new heights in the 1980s, mirrored economically in many cases as well. The works of the so-called Neo-Expressionists, among them Julian Schnabel, David Salle, Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, and then later Jean-Michel Basquiat, sold for astronomical prices in the mid 1980s. However, it is noteworthy that still more than 30 years after Abstract Expressionism and the feminist movement in the 1970s, only a few works by women artists played a role in the art market. In the art discourse, they certainly were influential; the best examples being the contemporaneous successes of Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, or Cindy Sherman. Additionally, in the 1980s there are just as many artworks produced in the field of concept or activist art that are proven (more) successful today than they were back then.18 The boom in the art market mentioned here is related mostly to the medium of painting that at the time was mostly dominated by men and that in America was determined by



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some male and female gallerists and—as a new development—also by auction houses. The so-called secondary market and therefore the speculative approach of collectors or gallerists to works of art resulted in extremely high prices for artworks.19 The auction sale of the plate painting Notre Dame (1979) by Julian Schnabel, then in his early thirties, reached with $93,000 a multiple of its original price at a New York auction house. This incident is seen as the beginning of the rapidly developing boom in which prices are threatening to get out of control. The art critic Grace Glueck is asking the justifiable question how the price relates to the aesthetic value of an artwork or whether one can even think in these kinds of commercial dimensions. She attempts analyzing the functioning of the art market in her article in the New York Times without, however, finding clear answers to her own questions. (Glueck 1983) The tremendous success of Basquiat’s art took place at a time during which the interest in contemporary art was expanded due to the boom on Wall Street and the economic upswing.20 Artworks and artists were treated as commodities on Wall Street; the only difference was that with a work of art one did not only buy an object or a share but access to a different social group that is promoted through the artist’s image. Legends and myths of artists distributed by print- and audio-visual media are especially attractive for creating that image. Hence, the forming of Basquiat’s image as an artist is of interest for this study. When looking at Basquiat’s art-critical and popular reception, certain narratives of his artistic career are repeated quite often and stand out. Each story needs its original myth as Simon Ford has explored regarding the 1990s hype of the Young British Artists (YBA).21 In this phenomenon he recognizes both mythical and ideological factors: “It is mythical in that it is narrative in nature and ideological in its specific function within contemporary culture.”22 The creation of the art star Basquiat and the stories connected to him follow a similar pattern. This means that the created myth is not only a specific art history but also refers to social conditions from which this myth emerges. The political context of this development was Ronald Reagan’s first term of office, propagating an economic boom and introducing tax benefits for the purchase of art. Phoebe Hoban in her biography on Basquiat describes the art market of the eighties and its connection to politics: “Reaganomics

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was making itself felt—from Wall Street to Museum Mile. The new optimism that pervaded the country was more than a recovery; it was a palpable shift in zeitgeist. A specter was haunting America— the specter of entrepreneurialism.” The new ethics of businessmen was called “The Culture of Money” (Hoban 1999, 186). It was a culture of visible wealth and social distinction.23 Fine art seemed to be the fitting investment of the times. Both Basquiat’s and Schnabel’s success stories emerged during this cultural climate. The role of mass media consisted in creating or in recognizing the latest hypes as quickly as possible and in marketing the images and stories about artists. In the 1980s, the creation of hypes developed in an entirely different tempo than it had until then. In this sense, Basquiat’s artistic career seems like a picture book in which the American and also ethnically encoded dream—from gutter to gallery—could be clearly deduced. That not everything is entirely true in these stories is of secondary importance. There is also no lack of a moral undertone that can be inferred from the story of the dramatic ending of Basquiat’s life created by the mechanisms of celebrity culture, the art market, and the media. Exactly those narratives that constitute Basquiat’s status as art star will be in focus.

Telling stories: From the gutter to the gallery—from the sprayer to the artist The stories describing Basquiat’s career repeatedly echo a narrative of a traumatic family context that forced Basquiat to leave home as a teenager and turn to the streets of New York. Even the artist talks about this. According to his biography, he tells his friends and gallerists that his father often beat him up as a child.24 In a 1986 interview with Tamra Davis, Basquiat gives an account of maltreatment by his father, thereby creating the reason for his early running away from home. “I was smoking pot in my room and my father came in and he stabbed me in the ass with a knife. I thought I better go before he killed me, you know.”25 But in the biography Gerard Basquiat, his father, counters: “Write whatever you want about Jean-Michel being an abused child, I know he wasn’t. I’m sure he told people this. Jean-Michel also



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liked to say that he grew up in the ghetto, but he didn’t.”26 It cannot be ascertained here which versions of the story are true; I much more want to underline that by telling these private stories Basquiat is also evoking the clichéd image of a black artist who has made it from the ghetto to the Olympus of the art world. He engages in an ambivalent game with clichés of ethnicities because Basquiat’s biographical origin was not underprivileged, at least not from an economical point of view.27 He comes from a much more middle-class background than would fit into the myth about him and is described in Hoban’s biography in the following way: His middle-class parents lived in Brooklyn where he was born in 1960. His bookkeeper father had immigrated five years earlier from Haiti to the US for political reasons. His mother came from Puerto Rico and is described as someone who appreciated the arts and who encouraged the talents of her son who had been drawing from earliest childhood. She went to museums with him where he supposedly also saw Picasso’s Guernica. This incident is by the way quoted in the biopic as a background to the “genius discourse.” She is also told of having given her 7-year-old son Gray’s Anatomy—a book with anatomical drawings that supposedly influenced him when he was in a hospital after a car accident. The biography states that his mother was committed to a clinic because of her severe depression. When Basquiat was 7 years old, his parents divorced and he and his two younger sisters grew up with his father. He was sent to private schools, a privilege that many children in the US do not have to this day—no matter what ethnicity. But because of his supposedly rebellious behavior, Basquiat was expelled from several schools, never finishing any. Hoban continues recounting that at age 15 he ran away from home, lived with friends or slept in Washington Square Park, making some money with self-made postcards.28 Even though poverty, ghetto, and bad education had no place in Basquiat’s original background, this story continues to be recounted by many critics. In the case of Basquiat’s own use of African American clichés, one can recognize an ironic and socio-critical component parading the social situation as a kind of mirror of the prevalent racism. This is also visible in a multitude of pictorial themes in his paintings.29 Or, as Greg Dimitriadis and Cameron McCarthy underline: “The art world’s fetishizing of the work of nonwhite artists, assumed to be ‘the voice from the street,’ marked Basquiat’s

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career for better and worse and is reflected upon ironically in his work” (Dimitriadis and McCarthy 2001, 93). This myth of origin fits seamlessly into the next narrative that paints the path from the street artist (graffiti) to the gallery artist (painting). One could speak of a “reverse-racism” that is connected to Basquiat’s ensuing success during which he is celebrated as the first (and during this time the only) black artist. Or as Hoban emphasizes: “Basquiat’s celebrity owes more than a little to an almost institutionalized reverse-racism that set him apart from his peers as an art-world novelty” (Hoban 1998, 13). This does not mean that Basquiat did not encounter very blatant racism as well. For example, the story is told in the biography that as a “black guy” he was not able to get a taxi in New York (ibid., 13). Next to the biographical anecdotes, we also find a distortion of historical facts in regard to his artistic career that is in favor of Basquiat’s authorship: In 1977, during his high school time and before his success in the art world, Basquiat started spraying graffiti together with his school mate Al Diaz. They wrote and sprayed text graffiti onto the walls in Manhattan, signed these with their pseudonym SAMO30 and the copyright sign. Local attention was not long in coming. In 1978 Philip Faflick praised their strategy in a detailed article in the Village Voice: Samo© is the logo of the most ambitious––and sententious––of the new wave of Magic Marker Jeremiahs. Accompanied by the inevitable copyright and usually punctuated with an exhortation to THINK!, there are hundreds of pithy SAMO© aphorisms splashed on choice spots in Soho [sic!], Noho [sic!], and the Village, East and West. (Faflick 1978, 41) Jean-Michel Basquiat, 17 years of age at the time, and Al Diaz, aged 19, had a similar handwriting. Both of them wrote their sayings in a pseudo-religious tone onto the walls.31 The artists/sprayers called their SAMO© statements “a refresher course because there’s some kind of statement being made. It’s not just ego graffiti” (ibid.). Today one would call this strategy a “collaborative practice” that is “site-specific” since it comments on a social environment in a public space.32 But only the later success of Basquiat’s painting lends an art historical relevance to the SAMO©-writings that most likely they otherwise would not have been granted. Usually in the



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reception, the collaborative part of SAMO© is disregarded and the writings are mostly attributed to Basquiat alone. This can be seen in the article “The Radiant Child” by René Ricard published in Artforum in 1981 or also in the biopic where we continuously see only Basquiat as sprayer. Despite the promising collaborative work, Diaz and Basquiat separated as a team in 1979. Basquiat used this separation for another statement writing “SAMO© is dead” onto the walls of SoHo. He also continued using this name when he was showing an installation at the Times Square Show in 1980, which became his first participation in a gallery space. This exhibition was organized by Colab (Collaborative Projects Inc.) in an empty building in 41st and 7th Ave. in June 1980.33 It attracted a lot of attention in New York’s art world and started to make graffiti acceptable in the art context.34 In February 1981 he exhibited several paintings under his own name, Jean-Michel Basquiat, in the exhibition New York/New Wave curated by Diego Cortez at P.S. 1, at the time called Institute for Art and Urban Resources. This exhibition attracted gallerists who were looking for young artists: Emilio Mazzoli, Bruno Bischofberger, and Annina Nosei saw Basquiat’s works there for the first time and they were enthusiastic. Already in May of the same year, Basquiat had his first individual exhibition at the Galleria d’Arte Emilio Mazzoli in Modena (Italy) and in September he took part in the group exhibition “Public Address” in Annina Nosei’s gallery in New York. After this, a multiplicity of international exhibitions followed and they were mostly reviewed positively in the press. In her biography, Hoban summarizes this rapid rise in the art world with a dramatic undertone: By the end of 1982, the homeless street artist was well on his way to becoming an international art star. The art boom was gathering speed, from the funky storefront galleries of the East Village to the swank new spaces in SoHo. Everyone wanted to cash in on the young painter’s wildly prolific talent. He was ill-equipped to deal with these rapid changes in his life, and the almost grotesque hype associated with him from the start. (Hoban 1998, 80) Basquiat’s story of the meteoric rise of artistic success is actually just as predestined for becoming a biopic as is Pollock’s embodiment of

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the American hero. As in Pollock, the biopic Basquiat also concentrates on the time span of the rise, the success, and the fall of the artist. Apart from these narrative elements, there are also influential visual elements that show Basquiat in his profession creating a publicly circulating image of the artist during his lifetime.

Creating icons: The artist portrayed The reception history of Jean-Michel Basquiat provides us with a multitude of photographic portraits establishing and characterizing him in his role as an artist. In some of the exhibition catalogs, these photo portraits are even placed before and after reproductions of his works so that they almost frame them.35 The photo portraits of Basquiat, contrary to the ones of Jackson Pollock, serve less to explain the production process, neither are they a documentation of his biography. Rather, these portraits typify Basquiat as a “painterdandy” or sometimes even as a young, “untamable” artist. These attributes can also be found in the staging of the biopic. But unlike the Pollock film, in which photos of Pollock and Krasner were reconstructed or in which photographing and filming the artist took up entire narrative strands, those images are not directly included in the narrative of the Basquiat film. Nevertheless the photo portraits typecast Basquiat’s image as different characters. Therefore, before analyzing the film, a selection of photographs of the artist as visualized by mass media will be focused upon. The Basquiat portraits can be grouped into different categories along the lines of their purpose into journalistic, artistic or documentary photographs. This classification is not exclusive or exhaustive but helps to call attention to the different uses, circulations, and messages of the portraits. The portraits of the lifestyle and press photographer Lizzie Himmel, who is working to the present day for the New York Times Magazine, Elle Decor, Harper’s Bazaar, and Rolling Stone have to be seen in the context of journalistic photography even though they are purposefully composed. Himmel is of Basquiat’s generation and she also studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Even though she was a friend of Keith Haring and other graffiti sprayers, she did not know Basquiat before she photographed him.36 Both



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FIGURES 3.1–2  Basquiat in studio on Great Jones Street, 1985. Photo Lizzie Himmel ©

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the portrait on the cover of the New York Times Magazine from 1985 and other pictures showing Basquiat in his studio are hers.37 Himmel’s color photographs are very stylized showing the artist in his studio in ever changing outfits. Himmel remembers that she chose the outfits and suggested the different placements of the artist and his works because Basquiat was found drugged in bed with a girlfriend at the appointed time of the photo shoot.38 How are these pictures composed? What image(s) do they convey? “The Provocative Dandy” (Figure 3.1): Basquiat is in his studio, barefoot, in a dark designer pin-striped suit, white shirt, coordinated tie, and short dreadlocks before one of his paintings. He is seated casually on a red chair, portrayed in the insignia of a painter with brush and paint tube, both in his right hand. His left arm is propped on the armrest; his hand touches his left cheek. This pose initially suggests the meditativeness of the painter. But a different interpretation emerges when looking at the spread legs. Basquiat has placed his left foot on an overturned red chair in front of him. But the chair seems to be less turned over in a rage—it almost looks as if it had been turned over on purpose, almost “draped.” And even though the artist is sitting down, an aspect of movement is staged here that dynamizes the image in contrast to the thinker pose shown by head and hands. The picture suggests the notion of a painter acting spontaneously and working on impulse. His expensive suit shows traces of paint, especially on the left lower pants leg. Basquiat looks into the camera; he looks at his viewers thoughtfully and provocatively.39 The foreground of the picture is dominated by the artist’s pose. Its background shows a triptych by Basquiat.40 Because of his sitting position the artist is on one level with the painted figures of his work in the background. The photo is suggesting a communicative connection between artist and artwork, in particular because one of the figures even seems to have turned towards Basquiat. Further elements connecting the artist and his work are the floor, on which one can see green and white paint splotches as well as the white spots on the pants, as if this painting had just been worked on. Only the brush in Basquiat’s hand is a little bit too small for the large surfaces of the painting so that it looks more like a general accessory of the artist. The setting as well as Basquiat’s pose—both staged by the photographer—evoke the spontaneity and intellectuality of a “wild” painter.41



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FIGURES 3.3–4  Basquiat in studio on Great Jones Street, 1985. Photo Lizzie Himmel ©

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“The Dapper Bohemian” (Figure 3.2): Basquiat is placed like an expert in front of his paintings, which are positioned at an angle to each other. Here, the artist is in a different outfit: He wears a black hat pushed back a little in the style of the 1980s, a black shirt, a plaid tie, a dark suit, and black shoes. His left hand is in his pocket, the right one, slightly balled, hangs down. The only sign that he might be a painter is a white paint splotch on his right shoe. Apart from that Basquiat looks like a trendy businessman, a smart gallerist or also simply like a “dapper Bohemian.” The artist is placed representatively before his artworks. The painted objects made from wooden boards––sculptural and painterly alike––are standing in the room freely. On the right side of the picture, one of these works is placed in the room at an angle; it is for Basquiat an unusually realistically painted life-sized image of an African American man in a T-shirt and pants with a stick in his hand. He wears a chain with a cross, wristwatch, and rings as accessories—the figure looks like a rapper or a pimp. The other work behind Basquiat shows an outlined figure painted white and partly red facing forward and looking into the camera like Basquiat. In comparison to the realistically painted figure on the right, this one resembles more a child’s painting. Basquiat stands in the middle. Here as well, he is represented as an established artist who can afford fashionable and expensive clothes. He is hardly getting “dirty” from his painting (apart from a spot on his shoe). In fact, the artist is in spatial rapport with his figures through their gazes. The photograph shows a dialogical situation playing with identification, distancing, and differentiation between the artist and his work. During the photo shoot, Lizzie Himmel took more photographs of Basquiat that were not published in the article for the New York Times Magazine but that have appeared in part in catalogs on Basquiat’s art.42 Only when studying the examples of the other photographs does it become clear to what extent Himmel’s photographs mirror the role-playing between the photographer and the artist. “The Rascal” (Figure 3.3): Basquiat is sitting on one of his painted crate sculptures. He is barefoot, as on the cover photograph, wearing a fashionable designer outfit with the shirt and pants harmonizing in color with the artworks. Initially he looks more casual than on the other pictures.43 He is wearing a cap with



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golden patterns that “crowns” him into a prince, as it were. Here, the artwork and artist are in physical contact with each other, but his position could also be seen as a dominating act in the sense of occupying his art. In the background we see two paintings, one of them with groups of words and small drawings, another one on wooden boards showing larger than life fragments of a black figure, with inner organs drawn on its torso. The face of the painted figure has a rather grim and angry expression and is larger than the artist despite its fragmentation. Finally, there is the painted sculpture that is made of a wooden crate, painted white with black characters on it. Apart from its characters, symbols, and words we see several heads; they look as if they were masked, throwing almost diabolical glances. “The College Boy” (Figure 3.4): This picture suggests a more distanced relationship between the artist and his works. Here, Basquiat is wearing a duffle coat, a white shirt, black pants, and a striped tie—the outfit of a middle-class college boy. On this picture the position of the head, bent to the left, is noteworthy. The weight of his body shown by the relationship of the supporting and the non-supporting leg is shifted to the left—a pose that is insecure and child-like. His facial expression is serious, almost sad, and a little dreamy. Again, he is looking at the camera, standing amid his artworks. Several still unfinished paintings are lying on the floor, looking meticulously arranged. In his college outfit, Basquiat looks like a young man who seems to be searching for a path in the world of grown-ups. He looks like a “dream son-in-law” of middle-class parents, if it weren’t for the motifs on the paintings that suggest a more rebellious message. All these photographs impressively work at establishing an iconography of the artist that cannot necessarily be understood as coming from the artist himself. They much more visualize and underline descriptions of an image such as “noble savage,” “extravagant dandy,” and “innocent boy.” It is remarkable that Basquiat is never shown painting or together with other persons; he is always representatively placed before or among his paintings. The artist is characterized less powerfully by way of expressive painter’s poses; instead he is staged by way of his changing outfits and spatial positionings. It is less a matter of different characteristics as an artist and more of social roles that Basquiat takes on in these pictures, in which he is staged like a photo model. The

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artworks seem like decorous comments. The pictures concentrate on stylizing the artist Basquiat. Lizzie Himmel’s photographs are highly aestheticized. Their pictorial arrangement would be just as suitable for a fashion magazine like Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar. Contrary to these pictures, James VanDerZee’s portraits stem from a totally different pictorial tradition rooted in the field of artistic photography. James VanDerZee (1886–1983) was a wellknown studio photographer in Harlem who had become famous in the 1920s for representing the African American middle class in individual and group portraits: Van Der Zee took picture after picture, making sure that each one presented Harlem in the best light. In the process, he crafted a dazzling record of middleclass black life, a side of America rarely seen at the time … First and foremost, Van Der Zee’s operation was a business, and he shot the people who could pay his price. In addition to studio portraits, he photographed clubs and church groups, sports teams and family gatherings, barber shops and pool halls. He shot funerals and weddings, soldiers and celebrities. Heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, the Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Sr., entertainers Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and Sunshine Sammy, singers Florence Mills and Mamie Smith—all were subjects for Van Der Zee’s lens. (McCollum, “Photographer James Van Der Zee”) VanDerZee’s portraits and documentary photographs were discovered in the New York art context during the exhibition Harlem on My Mind (1969) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the 1980s he also became a celebrity photographer who took portraits of Bill Cosby, Muhammad Ali, and Jean-Michel Basquiat.44 VanDerZee took the pictures of Basquiat at the impressive age of 96, one year before his death. The National Portrait Gallery in Washington had a retrospective of VanDerZee’s work, in which a portrait of Basquiat was also shown. Deborah Willis-Braithwaite summarizes VanDerZee’s portrait photographs and their social and art historical relevance as follows: Many of Van Der Zee’s portraits utilized the conventions and forms of studio portrait photography as they evolved in the second half of the nineteenth century in thousands of small



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photography businesses, a style created for clients who valued their dignity, independence, and comfort: they were formal and carefully composed works, and like the bourgeois and the celebrities in the photographs of the French photographer Nadar (1820–1910), their subjects are often made to appear both heroic and self-aware … The conventional ideals of the bourgeois portrait studio served him well as a means to capture the culturally integrationist aspirations of his black clients. (Willis-Braithwaite in Willis-Braithwaite and Birt 1993, 10) VanDerZee’s portrait photographs were considered social status symbols. In light of the photographer’s prestige as one of the most renowned photographers of the African American community of

FIGURE 3.5  James VanDerZee, Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1982. Gelatin Silver Print. Copyright © Donna Mussenden VanDerZee

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New York City in the twentieth century, being portrayed certainly also helped Basquiat in establishing his recognition and credibility as a black artist. “The Melancholiac and the Thinker”: In comparison to Himmel’s photographs, the artist is shown in his profession here and nobilitated by the pictorial language of VanDerZee’s studio photography (Figure 3.5). He is sitting on a chair that looks like a throne. Basquiat is wearing a white shirt, a sports jacket, and jeans splotched with paint. A Siamese cat is sitting on his lap. The left arm of the artist is resting between his leg and armrest. His head is nestling in his left hand and he is looking sideways and downward. His right hand touches his upper leg with his fingers spread—a signet reminding of Egon Schiele, the “young savage of modernism.” On the left margin of the picture we see a beam of light entering the picture creating a light triangle pointing into Basquiat’s direction. The pose of the artist is reminiscent of a thinker’s pose in photographs and sculptures, but it is a little more casual than in Rodin’s Le Penseur (1880). The picture was taken in a studio; as in other studio portraits curtains or furniture play an important role as decorous elements for the pictorial structure. Sean McCollum writes about VanDerZee’s photographic practice thus: He used elaborate backdrops or filled his studio with scenery as though it were a stage. “I tried to pose each person in such a way as to tell a story,” he explained. He would often set his subjects in dramatic situations: parents listening to their kids play piano, a child speaking on the telephone, a gypsy telling an old man’s fortune. (McCollum) The chair with the ornate back at the center of the picture stands out at its center as the most important element. In the background one can recognize a curtained window and a table with a vase holding a blooming branch; however, nothing of that is in focus so that the ornate and center-placed chair and the unusual lighting coming in from the left edge of the picture emerge more pronounced as abstract elements. It is the artist who is in focus. The cat on Basquiat’s lap does not only have a compository reason; it is also a symbol. Cats are considered treacherous, headstrong, stubborn, and wild and they are seen



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as night animals. Cats also appear in heraldics in which they symbolize freedom; they are also often connected to femininity, for example as attributes of the Roman goddess of the hunt, Diana. Cats as attributes of a male artist could point to the notion of his “untamable nature” and love of liberty. Siamese cats moreover are thought of as a “noble race.” In this context one could interpret the cat as an attribute of an artist to be admired; this would also coincide with the staging of the throne-like chair on which Basquiat is sitting. Unlike in Himmel’s photographs taken in the artist’s own studio, in VanDerZee’s pictures taken in the photographer’s studio none of Basquiat’s art is shown in the background. Only the paint splotches on his pants are a direct clue for his profession as a painter. Nevertheless, there are more interpretive elements characterizing Basquiat’s profession. VanDerZee’s photographs are located in a different tradition than Himmel’s, even though his pictures are just as stylized and aestheticized as hers. On the one hand they are situated in the context of the studio portrait photography in which the aim is to idealize the person portrayed. VanDerZee follows this practice quite consciously by “beautifying” the subjects of his pictures in general. He touched up the negatives, straightened teeth or added jewelry. He said: “I tried to see that every picture was better-looking than the person … I had one women come to me and say, ‘Mr. Van Der Zee, my friends tell me that’s a nice picture, but it doesn’t look like you.’ That was my style.” (VanDerZee quoted in McCollum) This tells us something about the constructed style of VanDerZee’s photographic practice. In regard to the Basquiat portrait, the question is not to make the already good-looking Basquiat look better, but to make him look in a certain way, to represent him as an outstanding artist. This can be seen mainly from Basquiat’s poses as thinker or melancholiac—poses that locate him in the art historical discourse. In fact, melancholy is a topos of artists’ myths; it is integrated into the overall structure of the motifs of creative marginality (Neumann 1986, 282). Melancholy is also closely connected to the idea of “genius and insanity” of artists as well as the characteristics that Rudolf and Margot Wittkower called “sensitivity, gloom, solitariness, and eccentricity.” The Wittkower’s find the topos of melancholy constantly in Vasari’s biography determining that melancholy was almost expected in

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the great masters.45 José Esteban Muñoz interprets this photograph also as a melancholic image of the artist that expresses sorrow since Basquiat does not look into the camera and supports his heavy head. He is interpreting this photograph dramatically in a biographical sense knowing that Basquiat was dead five years later when he says: Basquiat understood the force of death and dying in the culture and tradition around him; his art was concerned with working through the charged relation between black male identity and death. He, like Van Der Zee, understood the situation of the black diaspora called on a living subject to take their dying with them. (Muñoz 1996, 168–9) Biographical or mythological, it is certain that with these photographs Basquiat’s identity as an African American artist is being established and simultaneously a certain process of recognition is taking place. To be portrayed by a photographer like VanDerZee as melancholiac or thinker also proves that Basquiat is represented as an artist within a larger cultural context. The aim of this picture seems to be his establishment as a great African American artist who is inscribing himself into the myths of Western artists through his poses and through being nobilitated by an African American star photographer. “Beatnik and Celebrity”: There are more black and white photographs of Basquiat in existence. For example, Jérôme Schlomoff’s portrait from 1986 shows the artist before a white background with a “serious look.” He is holding the cult book by Jack Kerouac, The Subterraneans, against his chest. The book looks tattered as if it had been read several times already. The artist is stylized as an intellectual rebel and presented as in kinship with the freedom-loving beatniks. As a contrast, the photographs by Beth Philipps are of a semi-documentary character. They show the artist in different settings (at the gallery, in the car) and with different people (the gallerist Bruno Bischofberger or the artists Andy Warhol and Francesco Clemente). We can assume that these pictures were commissioned by Bischofberger in order to buttress the collaboration of the artists visually and to increase the celebrity factor of “his” artists. The other documentary photographs that stem from the end of the seventies or beginning of the eighties show



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the artist mostly with different colleagues (like Keith Haring, Fab 5 Freddy or Madonna) amidst the “downtown bohemia.”46 Basquiat’s image as an artist and his profile were also influenced by Andy Warhol. According to Warhol’s diary, the artists met on October 4, 1982 through Bruno Bischofberger. Warhol says he had met Basquiat a couple of times before giving him ten dollars several times (see Warhol 1989, 462). At Bischofberger’s recommendation Warhol, Basquiat, and Clemente worked together on 15 paintings in 1984. The collaboration then continued another year without Clemente upon Basquiat’s and Warhol’s initiatives; apart from the Bischofberger gallery in Zurich (Switzerland) the works were also shown at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in New York (see Osterwold

FIGURE 3.6  Andy Warhol, [Portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat], 1982. Polacolor print, image 3¾″ × 2⅞″ The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

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1996, 123). The critics weren’t really thrilled about this exhibition. For example Vivian Raynor compared the collaboration between Warhol and Basquiat with the story of Oedipus in the New York Times viewing Warhol as Basquiat’s pop-father and mentor who had brought him fame, and she derogatorily calls Basquiat an “art world mascot” (Raynor 1985). In the context of his celebrity photographs Warhol also took black and white photographs of Basquiat and his colleagues just at that time. They show Basquiat with a tied-up artwork in front of the window from his exhibition at the Mary Boone Gallery or laughing with Keith Haring or alone, with his eyes disappearing behind the smoke of his cigarette.47 The following portraits of Basquiat are different and can be seen in connection with Warhol’s Celebrity Portraits. “The Coveted Icon”: Warhol reported that during their first luncheon he made a Polaroid portrait of Basquiat (Warhol Diaries, October 4, 1982, 462), which is most likely the model for his portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat (Figure 3.6). The photographic

FIGURE 3.7  Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1982. Polymer paint and silkscreen on canvas. © 2013 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by ARS Artist’s Rights Society (New York)



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image was transferred onto canvas by way of silkscreen printing. The canvas was treated earlier and is part of the so-called Oxidation Paintings, sometimes also-called Piss Paintings.48 Since 1978 Warhol produced Oxidation Paintings for which the canvas was coated with a copper-based paint before the artist urinated on it or had his assistant urinate. The uric acid reacts with the copper coating so that greenish spots emerge.49 Supposedly Warhol mostly had his assistants urinate and watched them doing it, which prompted Weinberg to compare the Oxidation Paintings to the stained bed sheets of an “erotic encounter,” which is then “discovered” by a third party.50 The Oxidation Paintings are abstract pictures in large formats and on a first glance they have little in common with Warhol’s pop art icons. On a second glance one sees that he is charging the pop discourse with the virile discourse of Abstract Expressionism by quoting Pollock’s drip painting method. Here as well the canvas lies on the floor and the “imaging subject” stands in front of it or on it in order to create the painting (see Krauss in Bois and Krauss 1997, 102). The process of urinating ironizes the dripping, but enhances it with a homoerotic component by the viewing of this process. The portrait of Basquiat (Figure 3.7) is an exception in the series of Oxidation Paintings insofar as Warhol uses the format (40 × 40 in.) and the silkscreen technique that are both earmarks of his Celebrity Portraits combined with the technique of oxidation. Incidentally, along with film stars like Marilyn Monroe, Liz Taylor, Liza Minnelli, and other American celebrities, Warhol also portrayed his artist colleagues like Georgia O’Keeffe, Man Ray, Roy Lichtenstein, and Joseph Beuys—to name just a few. The format, the technique of reproduction, the choice of motif, and the choice of an artist colleague who is just becoming the shooting star of the art scene puts Basquiat’s portrait into the category of Celebrity Portraits. As in other Celebrity Portraits, Basquiat’s portrait is also depersonalized by the flatness of the silkscreen, obtaining a mask-like character. John Coplans writes about earlier Warhol portraits: His portraits are forthright, but of people wearing composed faces. The pictures are neither reworked nor touched up. What one finally must confront is the paradox that however correct its likeness, a picture never tells the truth. Photographs of faces

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are supposed to be revealing of more than the physical structure of the face. However they rarely reveal inner truths about the person concerned … Warhol’s portraits transmit nothing of the inner psychic tensions of the persons portrayed. They are always dehumanized by never reflecting what they feel. Thus Warhol dehumanizes people and humanizes soup cans. (Coplans 1970, 59) Basquiat’s facial expression, which is still recognizable on the Polaroid, gets lost in the printing process of the silkscreen. It is his dreadlocks that dominate, which could already be seen in VanDerZee’s photographs. With the silk-screening, the hairstyle becomes a dark surface surrounding the face like a wreath. His purposeful eyes and his tie that is not covered by the shirt collar also stand out. Only black surfaces remain that let us recognize the artist but make him more into an icon rather than presenting a “realistic” image. Nevertheless, the image and the canvas do not merge, as in many Marilyn pictures, in which the face of the portrayed person fills the whole work. In Basquiat’s portrait, its original medium, the photograph, becomes visible as well. On the silkscreen, the edges of the photograph are visible on the right and left side. Also the undercoating somewhat “veils” the image. The greenish spots of the Oxidation Painting and the knowledge of how it was made confer a further level of meaning to the portrait that goes beyond the discourse of the Marilyn icons. Weinberg is speculating that it might have been even Basquiat himself who urinated onto the picture. But since it names Warhol as the author the sprinkles are supposed to be Warhol’s. In this work Basquiat would become an object of Warhol’s sexual fantasies. Weinberg concludes his interpretation as follows: For if Warhol’s oxidized painting is iconic, making of Basquiat a young glittering god, it is also iconoclastic, desecrating Basquiat’s image. It reflects the moment when Basquiat made his big splash on the scene, a time when he had the power to work alchemy on the basest materials … But in Warhol’s portrait Basquiat’s splendor is already stained, as if predicting that his presence will succumb to the process of oxidation. Gold will return to excrement. (Weinberg 2001, 214) Without going any further into this biographical and dramatical interpretation, the reference of the imagined erotic connection



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FIGURE 3.8  Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1984, silkscreen on canvas. © 2013 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by ARS, Artist’s Rights Society (New York)

between portrayer and portrayed certainly has to be taken seriously. This interpretation is also supported by Warhol’s diary entries and other Polaroids that Warhol took of Basquiat. This work from 1984 (Figure 3.8) is a composite portrait of Basquiat’s body reminiscent of the posture of Michelangelo’s David or, as Jonathan Weinberg has observed, representations of male athletes from the 1950s (Weinberg 2001, 231). It is a silkscreen of Polaroids that depict fragments of Basquiat’s body composed by Warhol. The composite image appears as a negative image (which Polaroids don’t have). The preparatory work was done in 1983 when Warhol took Polaroids of parts of Basquiat’s naked body in

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which only his genitals are covered with a jockstrap.51 This work seems like a “visual touching” of a desired body and it probably is the most obvious image that relates to the sexual attraction that Warhol felt for Basquiat. In Warhol’s diary we can repeatedly read the admiring remarks on Basquiat’s beauty and the size of his penis, which Warhol attributed, not unproblematically, to his ethnic background.52 Jonathan Weinberg thinks that Basquiat was potent for Warhol in a double sense: as a “hot painter” and as a “hot body” and he continues, “Warhol’s gaze exalts Basquiat, even as his act of objectification fractures his image” (Weinberg 2001, 230 and 231). This work is the culmination of Warhol’s desire for Basquiat’s body, which is simultaneously fragmented and ultimately fetishized.53 Warhol also made portraits of his colleagues Julian Schnabel, Francesco Clemente, and Keith Haring. These portraits typify the individual artists through their choice of motifs and their size in a much greater way than the Basquiat portraits do.54 The motifs are not so much icons and the creative process is not as “personified” as the oxidation portrait of Basquiat. Thus this portrait is less a character study of Basquiat than an intimate portrait that also gives evidence of Warhol’s desire, which is underlined by Warhol’s diaries. Warhol includes Basquiat in his collection of portraits as a celebrity and thereby venerates him as an important artist desired by him. The visual and narrative characterizations of Basquiat that I have discussed here are also being distributed beyond just the art world to a wider public as exemplified by the following article and the illustrations in the New York Times Magazine—or, as Warhol correctly judges: “I think Jean Michel will be the most famous black artist after this New York Times thing comes out” (Warhol Diaries, Jan 10, 1985, 627).

An artist’s image: The marketing of an American artist In 1985 Jean-Michel Basquiat was depicted on the cover of the New Times Magazine with a photograph by Lizzie Himmel (similar to Figure 3.1) that was accompanied by an extensive article entitled “New Art, New Money. The Marketing of an American



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Artist” (see McGuigan 1985, 20–35; 74, and cover). The article is paradigmatic for Basquiat’s star image that by now was established at the age of 24. Compared to the article in Life Magazine on Jackson Pollock in which the artist is marketed on the one hand as the greatest American artist and on the other hand is polemicized concerning the production of his art, in this text Basquiat’s artworks are only sidelines. The author concentrates mostly on the art world of the 1980s and the polemic is directed against that. Even though there seems to be a critical awareness in this article, a relatively uncritical view of the artist as a dandy and rebel is being affirmed, which turns out to be just as much a defining image as was Pollock’s cowboy look through the Life Magazine article. Lizzi Himmel’s picture on the cover visualizes many of the anecdotes circulating about the artist Basquiat at the time. Characterizations like “the noble savage,” “the decadent dandy” or “the ungovernable genius” are evoked by it. Franklin Sirmans has observed that this picture in comparison to the photo portrait by James VanDerZee from 1982 raises many questions “about media hype, marketing, and quality in the increasingly image-conscious art world of the 1980s, in which Basquiat proved to be a more than competent provocateur.” (Sirmans 1999, 331) Already the title “New Art, New Money. The Marketing of an American Artist” portrays Basquiat clearly as someone who both profits from the art market and who is its victim, depending from which point of view one looks at the situation. Conspicuously, the name of the artist is not in the forefront; the focus is the marketing of an artist and Basquiat is the protagonist for that theme. In comparison to the font size of the title and the name of the author, the name of the artist “Jean-Michel Basquiat” can only be found at the right lower edge of the page in small print. Visually and verbally the message of this cover is symptomatic for the Basquiat reception during this time. He is considered a successful, charming, and elegant art star, with extravagant and eccentric behavior that includes elements of “rambunctiousness” and “authenticity” in his paintings. Sirmans sees something else in this picture: “The image pictured Basquiat like his own heroes, unquestionably courageous, strong, and yet, one of humility (grace under pressure)” (ibid., 318). His “own heroes” are the African American musicians Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie or Miles Davis, the athletes Cassius Clay (alias Muhammad Ali), Sugar Ray Robinson

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or Jesse Owens but also politicians like Malcolm X or the comic heroes of “white” America like Superman or Batman, to whom he repeatedly shows his respect in his paintings.55 His degree of fame as an African American artist can certainly be compared to his ideals from music, sports, or politics; otherwise it would not have been possible that he is on the cover of the New York Times Magazine. As Greg Tate has remarked in his essay after Basquiat’s death in the Village Voice, no other field of modern intellectual life was as restrictive towards African American artists as the visual arts. It remained a “bastion of white supremacy.” He believes that “it is easier for a rich white man to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a Black56 abstract and/or conceptual artist to get a one-woman show in lower Manhattan, or a feature in the pages of Artforum, Art in America or The Village Voice.” To become a respected celebrity in the art world was “until the advent of Jean-Michel Basquiat something of a fucking joke” (Tate 1989, 32). Tate considered Basquiat as the right man at the right time, writing: Nobody loves a genius child? Basquiat, lonesome flyboy in the buttermilk of the ’80s Downtown art boom, was hands down this century’s most gifted Black purveyor of art-world politics. He not only knew how the game of securing patronage was played, but played it with ambition, nerve, and delight. Like Jimi Hendrix he had enormously prodigious gifts and sexual charisma on his side. He was also, to boot, another beneficiary of being the right Black man in the right place at the right time. (Ibid.) There are several reasons why Basquiat became the first African American art star as Tate’s statement suggests. At the beginning of the 1980s it was fortunate for Basquiat that the developments that advanced graffiti into an acknowledged and hip art form coalesced with his working method and iconography. That’s how he could switch from the street walls to the gallery walls in SoHo. Exactly at that time, the demand for fine arts exploded—especially for paintings—and as a result the activities of gallerists to discover new artists, to make them, and to market them as new stars did as well. The boom in fine arts in New York was accompanied by the need of collectors to socialize with “their” artists and to seek



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contact with eccentric and “hip” personalities. Tellingly, articles were not only published in art magazines and dailies, but also in lifestyle magazines.57 These articles are important not only because they serve the demands of readers hungry for gossip but also because they shape Basquiat’s image from a recognized artist into a celebrity. Apart from their historicizing function they also increase the value of the artworks as well as the “label,” as in the “star Basquiat.” Another factor that cemented Basquiat’s success and status was that since 1984 he had been collaborating with Andy Warhol, the art celebrity par excellence. Even though the collaborative paintings of Warhol and Basquiat resulted in scathing criticism, they did increase the image of both artists for different reasons.58 And last but not least, Basquiat’s ethnic background served as an exotic bonus in some ways. One would think that it was high time for the American art world to finally have produced a range of famous African American artists. Basquiat’s success, however, did not really open the art market. Instead it awarded a special status to him in New York’s white art world of the 1980s.59 This is another “twisted” racism that lies behind Basquiat’s success, which is rather supporting the existing predominance of white artists in the sense of “exceptions confirm the rule” than it is undermining it. McGuigan’s text mentions Basquiat’s ethnic background only briefly as a biographic detail. The cultural context—to be successful as a “black” artist in the “white” New York art world— is hardly mentioned either. McGuigan only hints at it when quoting Basquiat saying that the black figure is a protagonist in most of his paintings and that he hardly knows paintings in which black persons are depicted (McGuigan 1985, 34). Since the author has seen a book on African and African American art in Basquiat’s studio, she is asking the almost rhetorical question of the cultural or ethnic influences. But other than that, the different descriptions of Basquiat’s works completely avoid this question. This is an established practice in the Basquiat reception, as bell hooks observes. She believes that Basquiat’s work is often misunderstood and justifiably sharply criticizes the Western point of view of many critics and art historians: That [Eurocentric] gaze which can only recognize Basquiat if he is in the company of Warhol or some other highly visible

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white figure. That gaze which can value him only if he can be seen as part of a continuum of contemporary American art with a genealogy traced through white males: Pollock, de Kooning, Rauschenberg, Twombly and on to Andy. Rarely does anyone connect Basquiat’s work to traditions in African American art history. While it is obvious that he was influenced and inspired by the work of established white male artists, the content of his work does not neatly converge with theirs. (hooks 1993, 70) In her article from 1993, bell hooks adds a new interpretation to the Basquiat reception by supplementing it with her viewpoint from the African American context. hooks propagates the aspect of reappropriation when talking about “remembering Basquiat” (ibid., see also Weinberg 2001, 215). These texts sharpen the Basquiat reception post mortem from a post-colonial point of view—an aspect that in McGuigan’s text from 1985 hardly exists. There, she clearly concentrated on the marketing strategies of the art market without analyzing how the conditions of gender and ethnicity of the artist came into play. The text consists of many anecdotes pretending with its elaborateness to write a history of Basquiat. The critical impetus, however, is put less on the reception of the artist than on the contemporary marketing methods, taking the case of Basquiat as a fitting example. On the first page of the article we can read in bold letters the following caption: “Jean Michel Basquiat flanked by his work in his studio (below). The artist’s paintings adorn his studio (right). Five years ago, Basquiat didn’t have a place to live. Now, at 24, he is making paintings that sell for up to $25,000” (McGuigan 1985, 20). The artist is clearly introduced with the “from the gutter to the gallery” motif. The article’s text begins with an anecdote that underlines the status of the artist as a star. From the beginning on, McGuigan makes it clear that the nature of art celebrities has changed in comparison to Pollock and his colleagues from the 1950s and therefore also the places at which the bohemians meet: As an artist hangout, the elegant cream-lacquered interior of Mr. Chow’s is light-years away from the Cedar Tavern, that grubby Greenwich Village haunt of the artists of the New York School 30 years ago. But art stars were different then. Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and their contemporaries,



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all more or less resigned to a modest style of living, worked for years at the center of a small and intimate art world in relative isolation from the public at large. (Ibid., 23) Even though she differentiates the artist Basquiat and the art scene of the 1980s with this comparison from the protagonists of the 1950s, at the same time she creates a genealogy of modern American art. And even though—or maybe exactly because—she underlines the differences to the New York School, Basquiat and his colleagues are legitimized as avant-garde. Her criticism starts with the new social developments, maintaining that as a result of the accelerated art market there is a constant demand for new artists making them into “overnight sensations.” She illustrates this with Basquiat’s career: His works are not only reviewed in art magazines but become parts of fashion layouts or are reproduced as decorations in interior design magazines. His art is being collected by American museums, renowned art collectors, and Hollywood stars. McGuigan also deals with the development of the market value of Basquiat’s art that has risen rapidly in a very short period. She reports an auction of contemporary art at Christie’s in which a painting bought two years prior for $4,000 now was auctioned off for $20,900. The author interprets the phenomenon in such a way that the collectors of concept art and minimal art of the late 1960s, having become bored, discovered a new joy in the neo-expressionist paintings. She also sees dangers in this hype, which can be very well demonstrated with Basquiat’s case: “Basquiat’s example shows how an artist tries to create and to preserve his autonomy in this heady environment. The danger is always that the glamour and fuss will cloud the meaning of the artwork itself” (ibid., 26). Only several pages later the author describes the career of the artist from the SAMO graffiti time to his musical activities in the band Gray. When Basquiat concentrates more on art after having collaborated with Al Diaz, the author connects his artistic production to the motif of the “poor artist”: “He had no real materials: he painted on salvaged sheet metal or broken pieces of window casement and made assemblages out of junk” (ibid., 28). Even though it might have been the case that Basquiat was hardly making any money in the beginning, these materials not only testified to poverty but to an artistic strategy as well. Besides, during the times of his commercial success, Basquiat

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was also working repeatedly with materials from outside of the realm of art (like car tires or doors) that he combined and painted. The idea emerging through McGuigan’s statement that “[h]e had no real materials”—by which she probably means classical utensils for painting like, for example, canvas—lets the success story appear even more effective. Even if the author at a later point is quoting a critical passage on the image of the artist from a text by Jeffrey Deitch, in which Basquiat is not only presented as a victim but also as an active subject, McGuigan reinforces a very different logic in her text.60 Additionally, her text characterizes Basquiat’s gallerists Annina Nosei, Bruno Bischofberger, Larry Gagosian, and Mary Boone with their different commercial strategies that had an important impact on Basquiat’s success. But according to McGuigan, Basquiat himself also had a great ambition to become a star. These are substantiated with statements like “since I was 17, I thought I might be a star” and according to McGuigan’s arguments find their ultimative satisfaction through the contact with Warhol: “Basquiat has established a friendship with an artist who probably understands the power of celebrity better than anyone else in the culture” (ibid., 34). Since Basquiat had produced a great number of works in a short time frame, the author is asking whether he might have suffered from a burnout syndrome. She explains Basquiat’s situation to herself with a mythically charged motif in maintaining that he was only able to take the pressure because of his “own deep drive to make art.” This inner drive on the one hand is described with boredom if he can’t work for a week or is explained almost picturesquely in the following way: Even when he had been painting at Warhol’s studio during the day, or if he had been out in the evening, he would often go home alone to work. He still keeps rock-and-roll hours. “He’ll run in here in an $800 suit and paint all night”, says his friend Shenge. “In the morning, he’ll be standing in front of a picture with his suit just covered in paint.” (Ibid., 74) There is an analogy here with the photograph on the cover showing Basquiat in his studio in his paint-spotted suit. And even though we briefly wonder whether this photograph is authentic and indeed was taken after a night’s work or whether it was staged, the question is not that important in this context. It rather seems



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relevant that the combination of this expressive photograph and the corresponding narrative creates a picture of Basquiat as an eccentric dandy and excessively producing art star who seems to have been caught by the art market. Even though the text is critical regarding the development of the art market and its protagonists, it does not analyze Basquiat’s role or his paintings. The author conversely operates with biographic anecdotes of the artist. They create a mythical image representing Basquiat as a passive subject and victim of media politics. Hoban in the biography comments on this article from the New York Times using it as fundamental criticism of media that accompanies stardom: The article captures Basquiat’s precarious state at the peak of his art-world success, painting a cynical picture of an artist who was clearly suffering from a toxic case of too much, too soon. The elegant dinners at Mr. Chow’s, where Basquiat was a regular, the paparazzi-chronicled nights on the town with Andy, even the presence of a New York Times journalist in his studio, watching him paint for posterity, created the sense of a life under a media magnifying glass, which was being hyped almost before it happened. (Hoban 1996, 245–6) The biography also recounts that Basquiat was very happy about the cover and the publicity connected to it, but that he criticized the content, since he was characterized in it as if he had been created by his gallerists without contributing to it himself.61 Apart from a few exceptions, McGuigan denies the artist his autonomy, making the voracious art system responsible and sees him as a victim. And even if she is not quite wrong about this, the article proves to be a fundamental criticism based on the idea of a different kind of racism that sees the “black artist” only as victim of the “white sharks of art.” The photogenic artist, who seems so suitable for this purpose, is staged for it through text and illustration. However, the author is completely masking the obvious factor of ethnicity and its social implications, thereby painting a distorted image of Basquiat’s situation. Rather, his outstanding career serves as a useful visual background for her criticism of the art market. The article thus neither adequately reflects Basquiat’s work and its implicit sociopolitical criticism nor his role as an “exceptional artist.” The biopic is oriented in a similar way, even though in some instances it takes

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special efforts in pointing out racist prejudices against Basquiat and his role as “black” artist in the “white” art world. All together the different visualizations and narratives about the artist Basquiat merge into unison in the biopic that will be deciphered below.

A biopic from an artist’s perspective The biopic Basquiat is marked by the personal signature and interest of the director, the artist Julian Schnabel. Even though the film follows a chronology oriented on the artistic and biographical career of Jean-Michel Basquiat, its content is focused on the New York art market and the creation of an art star—a story that concerns both Basquiat and Schnabel equally. The artist Julian Schnabel, known as a celebrity himself, has his debut as a director. The film is produced in the first half of the 1990s, a time in which the demand for Schnabel’s paintings (and that of his colleagues) subsided. As a result their prices also had decreased. Schnabel brought himself back into the public awareness by directing the film or, as Sean O’Hagan writes: “He has reinvented himself as an accomplished film director” (O’Hagan 2003). Julian Schnabel is Jean-Michel Basquiat’s senior painter colleague by nine years and had been successful in New York before Basquiat’s works commanded high prices.62 Both Schnabel’s and Basquiat’s art and their artists’ images profited from the boom in the art market of the 1980s. Even though the two artists were intermittently represented by the same galleries, they did not have much in common: They worked in a very different way not sharing the same social or ethnic background and were not necessarily friends, even though Schnabel describes this differently.63

The director: An artist on being an artist In fact, Julian Schnabel’s art and his image as an artist were used as symbols for the boom of the New York art market in the 1980s. “The case of Julian Schnabel” became a paradigm when talking about this period (McEvilley 1986, 9). The critic Grace Glueck describes the “phenomenon Schnabel” with view to the art market as follows: “‘The Schnabel hype’ was a commonplace in art world



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conversation, referring to what was perceived as exaggerated claims on the part of his dealers for the quality of his work and the prices it brought” (Glueck 1984). Julian Schnabel believes that he was misunderstood with statements like these and that his paintings are usually not looked at and that the opinion about him and his art are generated by its social context. He blames the art market, which he calls a “silly little microcosm of politics und bad feelings” (Schnabel quoted in Glueck 1984). And even though he is not quite wrong about this, this statement is both critical and coquettish since Schnabel was serving the mechanisms of this market that helped him reach the status of a star. Glueck in her extensive portrait in the New York Times is characterizing the artist thus: It’s a mere half-dozen years since the controversial phenomenon known as Julian Schnabel arrived on the New York art scene, one of the most promoted––and promotable––artists who ever came down the pike. And so much has the art world changed in size and structure that at 33 he enjoys a stardom undreamed of in the far-off days of Jackson Pollock, when––if it can be believed––“new” art was virtually unsaleable … There are those who hold that Mr. Schnabel’s rise has not only to do with being a talented painter, but with the show biz-stock market mentality of today’s art market, whose products share the volatility of, say, pork belly futures. (Ibid.) Schnabel’s extraordinarily strong self-confidence is repeatedly being discussed, for which he is just as famous as he is for his paintings: “Unfaltering confidence in himself has always been one of Schnabel’s strongest points—or most irritating flaws,” as Calvin Tomkins has stated (Tomkins 2001, 121). In a review of an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the art critic Roberta Smith compares the artists Frank Stella and Julian Schnabel with one another when looking at the public’s awareness of them that gave them a “larger-than-life” presence on the stage of the art world. Both artists, according to her, are showmen whose works are reflecting the heightened awareness of the public. “Their public personae,” she says, “blend with their work, enhancing and obscuring its significance.” “Popular press,” Smith continues, reports on Schnabel’s “antics” and “helped usher in a period in

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which successful artists could seem like rock stars. Photographs of him embracing his wife have appeared in Vanity Fair; his custombuilt Manhattan loft has been featured in Vogue. And when he speaks on art, he constantly relates it to the personal and to the big themes of sex, death and existence itself” (Smith 1987). But Grace Glueck is also writing that Schnabel is loyal to his friends, generous with other artists, and open for new ideas.64 In the reviews of Schnabel’s art, however, his artworks are merged with his attitude as a person. One of the reasons for the many controversial articles seems to lie in the extremely self-confident demeanor of the artist in social contexts, which at the same time also ensured his celebrity status. This is not a theme he mirrored in his art work, as for example Andy Warhol did; he seems to enjoy the fame and public attention. This does not correspond to the mythically characterized image of the psychologically and/or economically suffering artist of the nineteenth century; it rather shows the artist as star or princely artist who thoroughly savors his success in contemporary culture. Both artists—Basquiat and Schnabel—are also seen as prominent victims of the art boom of the 1980s. The art critic Ulrike Knöfel used Schnabel’s solo exhibition at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt in 2004 as grounds for attempting to revive the memory of the controversial painter Schnabel when she describes him as the darling of the art market in the 1980s who had become its greatest bogeyman in the 1990s. According to her, Schnabel is a “prime example for the fall from the sky” (Knöfel 2004, 140). This last sentence could just as well have been written about Basquiat but with a different connotation of the term “fall” that in Basquiat’s case would more easily be connected with his early death. Thus, the two artists are to a certain degree “fellows in misery” connected by the context of an exuberant art market in which artists become shooting stars who can just as quickly sink into obscurity. In the biopic, one can clearly recognize Schnabel’s criticism of this system. But that is not all: Schnabel also erects a monument for himself by his character choices in the film. Even though there is no explicit character named Julian Schnabel, the man called Albert Milo is unequivocally recognizable as the alter ego of the artist Julian Schnabel. This becomes visible in the setting (e.g. Milo’s studio is in reality Schnabel’s studio) and the works of art in the film (“genuine Schnabels”).65 I am not the only one to state that the Basquiat biopic is just as much a filmic self-portrait of Schnabel.66 He even



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speaks of this himself when he says that the film does not only tell a story of Basquiat’s life but also one of his own.67 In fact, instead of a filmic self-portrait, I would rather speak of “autobiographical fragments” that are not only reflected in the character Albert Milo and the content of the film but are also connected with Schnabel’s artistic practices outside of the film. A few years earlier in 1987, when he was only 36 years old, Julian Schnabel had already published a sort of autobiography.68 CVJ Nicknames of Maitre D’s and Other Excerpts from Life is a conglomerate of images of Schnabel’s artworks and anecdotes in a first-person narrative. Interestingly, there are hardly any photographs and if so, then these pictures create less biographical connections but are rather working material for the artist. Also in the text Schnabel rarely gives biographical information. He mostly talks about his pathway to success in New York by way of anecdotal experiences. The text is not structured chronologically but is arranged in a loose succession. Nevertheless, the “autobiographical pact,” (Lejeune 1998, 214–57) that according to Philippe Lejeune characterizes the literary genre “autobiography” is made; narrative strategies engender the assumption of an identity between author, character, and narrator by the readers. I would like to draw on some of Schnabel’s statements that provide information on his views of the art world since they can also be connected to his directorial work in Basquiat. One can often find a professorial tone there, when Schnabel makes his notions sound like a credo for young artists: Never listen to anybody when it comes to being responsible for your own paintings. It’s a mistake for young artists to want to please older ones. They’re going to make you take out of your paintings the very things that most characterize them as yours. You might think that someone is really smarter than you are, or wiser, or more experienced, and they may be. But you can’t listen to them because nobody knows better than you what you need to do. Most older artists are going to try to get you to conform to standards that you are out to destroy anyway. (Schnabel 1987, 23) For Schnabel, being an artist is a profession in which he does not only see positive aspects since the artist also has to answer the

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expectations of an art public. There is, as he says, no place for real friendships since every interpersonal exchange would be seen as a step on the career ladder. And moreover one would need to create all these connections with people in the art world so that in the beginning there was no time left for friendships, and then later there would be no more capacity for making friends (ibid., 183). Schnabel also recounts events in which he is sucked into the vortex of entrepreneurial strategies of his gallerists in order to boost the price for his art (ibid., 173, 176). He repeatedly is settling scores with the art world as for example in the following excerpt: When artists put their faith in cliques of power that they think will abet their work, they betray their class, they betray themselves. Their judgment is impaired. This destroys artists and makes them feel even more paranoid and isolated until it becomes reality. The real artists live through and beyond their decade, even if they don’t and they die. They do and their work does. Even if both get a little tattered. The mechanism of being defined as an artist of the sixties’ or seventies’ is a convenient marketing concept for the expendability of artists in the attempt to select and present the rare object. (Ibid., 133) When Schnabel speaks about “the artist” we can assume that he means also himself and his colleagues since already at the time of writing the text both Schnabel and Basquiat are seen as representatives of the 1980s. All of these anecdotes can be seen as autobiographical notes and are insightful for our context. Actually, the book did not generate great enthusiasm at the time. Paul Taylor in the New York Times starts his review with the cynical words “Julian Schnabel, the artist who once told a reporter of The New York Times that he never reads books, has written one” (Taylor 1998). The critic said he would rather entitle the book “The Rise and Rise of Julian Schnabel by Julian Schnabel” (ibid.). Even if we can criticize the fragmentary nature and self-centeredness of the artist in this book, it nevertheless tells us something about his notions of being an artist, his “heroes,” his preferences, and artistic influences. Schnabel is also looking at his own way of dealing with these matters sometimes ironically and mainly criticizing the art system of the times. Taylor’s justified objection to calling it an autobiography refers to the limited time span covered



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by the book, which leaves the young “genius” artist Schnabel unscathed. It ends in 1981 at the peak of success for Schnabel paintings in the New York art market and the year of his wedding with Jacqueline Beaurang, his first wife. But in 1984—three years before his autobiography was published—Schnabel had already parted ways with his gallerists and business partners Mary Boone and Leo Castelli and not really on amicable terms. It seems that in his autobiography he is avoiding this controversy on purpose. Similarly, Taylor believes that Schnabel’s dealings with the mass media and his reaction to his lately noticeable lack of success as well as the difficulties connected to European curators and critics that supposedly led to his exclusion from the 1982 documenta are also not mentioned (ibid.). Especially these controversies would have allowed a reflection on the art market and his own way of dealing with matters, but they were simply excluded with his temporal limitation. The example makes clear that also autobiography is a representative genre in which certain moments of life are stressed or intentionally left out. In this sense the film Basquiat can be seen as a continuation of Schnabel’s autobiographical statements. With this film and the perspective on Basquiat’s story Schnabel has a new possibility of expressing his notions on artists and the art world of this era in an even more effective way. He is also able to redefine his position as an artist with regard to Basquiat and Warhol. And moreover, the filmic version of his autobiographic fragments in the biopic on Basquiat proves to be much more successful than those in printed form. The numerous reviews of Basquiat in film magazines are wide-ranging from very positive to extremely critical viewpoints. In the French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, Basquiat is honored as the film of the month and is described exceedingly positively: “Basquiat—le film raconte magnifiquement, avec une grande simplicité et une émotion à fleur de peau, la trajectoire de ce météore.”69 He is seen more critically by Emanuel Levy in the American film industry’s magazine Variety: “Basquiat” is a decently modest, though decidedly unexciting, attempt to illuminate the short, tumultuous life of Jean Michel Basquiat … Whatever is wrong with the conceptual framework and the execution of Julian Schnabel’s feature debut is almost compensated for by an illustrious cast of terrific actors.70

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The film is also noticed in the art field, but here the voices are mostly critical concerning the role of the artist Schnabel as a director. The art critic Roberta Smith sees the film directly connected with Schnabel’s artistic practice and his biography when she is writing: And as might be expected from its director’s multifarious interests and immense ego, the movie is as much about Schnabel as about Basquiat … Furthermore, regardless of how factual “Basquiat” is, they will also have to consider how the movie fits into Schnabel’s oeuvre as a whole … For better and for worse, “Basquiat” places itself squarely in the middle of Schnabel’s multifaceted oeuvre. It may be the Gesamtkunstwerk––a total artwork––that his scattered talents and semi-talents have always sought, the fullest representation of his sensibility so far. (Smith 1996) It seems that Julian Schnabel does not only see a chance for expressing himself in a new medium; he also takes the opportunity in forming new autobiographical fragments. It is exactly this phenomenon that is most often seen negatively in that Schnabel is attempting to create a forum for himself through the back door of another artist. Susanne Reichling evaluates this highly critically from her point of view studying the African American context of Basquiat’s work and his recognition in the black community: Now, Schnabel’s film Basquiat is his late revenge with which post mortem he is taking part in Basquiat’s fame, thereby augmenting his own. This weird act of transfer could be accomplished since Schnabel smuggled himself into the film as Basquiat’s paternal friend which he, however, never had been. (Reichling 1998, 18) Julian Schnabel did not like to hear the assertion that he had created his own monument with the help of this film: “I didn’t need to do this vicariously through his work. I have my own work. But I would just like for someone to get it right” (Schnabel in Grimes 1995). But when he says he wanted to get the story “right” he seems to forget that every form in which events are being recounted also contains the view of the person who is narrating them. Thus also the perspective of a contemporary witness is not free of his



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own interests and makes it quite impossible to give a “right” representation. This observation as such does not include an evaluation but it underlines the necessity to clarify the point of view from which one speaks. It is nevertheless important for Schnabel to be viewed as a painter first, as he is saying after the success of his second film: “I’ve made a thousand paintings and I’ve made two films. I’m a painter” (quoted in Tomkins 2001, 123; see also JS Dec 14, 2006). Julian Schnabel seems to believe that as a contemporary witness and colleague he is able to have a more objective view of the time and of Basquiat’s biography than he attributes to other people. This is one of the reasons why some reviewers have a critical opinion of his position—as did Hoban, the author of the Basquiat biography.71 However, instead of a “Schnabel-bashing,” I find it important to investigate Julian Schnabel’s positioning, role, and motivation for the film, in which he began a second career as a film director that he now pursues even more successfully.72 Or, as the headline of an article on Schnabel in the New York Times summarizes after his third film: “Don’t Call Him a Filmmaker, at Least Not First” (Kennedy 2007). In the meantime, the world of film and art are united at his openings,73 at which not only art collectors but also Hollywood actors and pop stars “appear” on the scene. By now, a Schnabel opening has become a social event at which paparazzi fight for the best photographs.74 Therefore, the merging of art and film has to be studied because the context of origin amounts to more than the exclusive role of Schnabel;75 also on the side of the producers there are special interests at play that have ties back into the art field.

The producers: Between educational and economic ambitions It is interesting to note the personnel overlap in the production context of the two biopics Basquiat and Pollock. Despite the differences between the two films, Jon Kilik, Joseph Allen, and Peter M. Brant were involved in both as producers (see www.imdb.com). Jon Kilik’s main job is that of a film producer and he seems to be interested in social themes. In a publication of the University of Vermont (his alma mater), he is quoted saying “I’ve tried to choose films

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for their social significance in contemporary life” (Weaver 2004). In almost all the films he produced, including Basquiat, there is a socio-political focus.76 For example Kilik has produced a multiplicity of films by Spike Lee, who is often dealing with African American culture and its discrimination in the US. One can assume that Kilik’s involvement in Basquiat has an educational aspiration, for example by bringing to light the advantages and disadvantages of a successful life as an artist or to bring the history of the first famous African American artist onto the screen. But these are not the only reasons. Even though Basquiat was a cost-effective production within the Hollywood context with a budget of $3.3 million, various image factors also play a role in realizing films like Basquiat––apart from economic motivations. The example of the producers Joseph Allen and Peter M. Brant makes this evident. At the time of production, both were businessmen as the owners of the paper mill factory BrantAllen-Industries Inc. in Connecticut. Both of them appear for the first time in Basquiat and then later in Pollock as “executive producers.” I will concentrate below on Peter Brant’s interest in Basquiat, since he is involved in the subject of the film on different levels. Apart from being a newspaper tycoon, Peter M. Brant also plays polo, breeds horses, and collects art. He was at the time also a trustee at the Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York, is now on the Board of Trustees at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and owner of Brant Publications Inc., which includes the magazine Interview founded by Warhol and the art magazine Art in America. He is being compared with The Great Gatsby (Lubow 2008, 168–71) and called a “Donald Trump with taste”77 regarding his real estate properties. His second wife is the supermodel Stephanie Seymor Brant together with whom he has built a high profile art collection. The Brant Foundation Art Study Center, a private museum on their property in Connecticut, opened in 2009. Peter Brant is interested in modern and contemporary art on several levels. Even though he certainly is an art lover, as a businessman he also seems to have no aversion to dealing profitably with art. He bought a work by Maurizio Cattelan for $876,000 and sold it five years later for $2,08 million (Sullivan 2004). Thus he is also interested in value improving factors of his artworks. Even though Peter Brant also co-produced the film Pollock after Basquiat, his relationship to Jean-Michel Basquiat’s art is much more discernible than to that of Jackson Pollock. He



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expressed that he would not call himself a Pollock fan. He said that he once owned one of his works but that he was more interested in Pollock as a person (PB Sept 20, 2005). His decision to produce Basquiat had different reasons and motivations than financing the film Pollock. Brant met Basquiat in 1984 through Andy Warhol and he has collected Basquiat’s art since 1985.78 Apart from works by Warhol and Jeff Koons, he also owns paintings by Julian Schnabel with whom he also maintains a close friendship, as he says himself.79 Brant’s first experience with the medium of film was made with the two films produced by Andy Warhol L’Amour (1970) and Bad (1976) in which he got involved financially.80 About the origin of the film Basquiat Brant remembers that the Polish scriptwriter and filmmaker Lech J. Majewski contacted him early in the 1990s because he wanted to write a script on Basquiat. Brant said that he talked about it with Schnabel who knew Basquiat and the art market of the time well and suggested to him to work on the Basquiat story together with Majewski. According to Brant there were disagreements with the scriptwriter who wanted to approach the story in a “too surreal” way. Therefore Michael Holman, a friend of Basquiat’s at the time, and John Bowe were hired to adapt the script.81 Asked about his motivation to produce this film or biopics in general, Peter Brant answered: I am more interested in film as an art than in doing films on artists. It is a coincidence that I did a film on Basquiat and one on Pollock. If somebody would ask me, if I want to do a film on Mark Rothko, I would say no. But if someone would ask me to do a film with Wim Wenders, I would be more interested in doing a film with Wim Wenders. I am more interested in the art of film and directors who are in their own way artists. To me film is a medium, which artists can work in, but I am not so interested in doing films about art. I was interested in Pollock and Basquiat, because I thought that doing a film about Basquiat was a very important thing in a sense that it inspired young people, that it also inspired young African American people. (PB Sep 20, 2005) In this statement he ennobles the biopics Basquiat and Pollock as artistically valuable films on the one hand, and on the other hand he

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also shows interest in socio-political issues. One can also recognize his educational aspirations and his concern about cultural politics when he is saying in a different context that he is interested in everything that brings people into museums to view art (ibid.). But Brant to this point is still a less powerful film producer than an avid and acknowledged art collector. Considering his invested interest in Basquiat from the vantage point of a collector, other factors might play a role as well. Even though not considered as the most appreciated film genre, biopics seem to be a useful platform for this multifaceted interest. The motivation for a producer of biopics does not necessarily only lie in economic and educational reasons but also in that it can enhance one’s own image. This phenomenon was underlined by George Custen as a general characteristic of the biopic genre (cf. Custen 1992, 4–5). Here, the enhanced image does not only work in the movie context but also in the art world. The popular discourse on Basquiat that was renewed through this film also shed a new light on Brant’s art collection. Unlike Pollock, Basquiat was a financial success since the film even made a profit.82 This was certainly also due to the celebrity cast which had been possible to assemble since not only is Peter Brant part of the New York high society, but also Julian Schnabel has great contacts and friends among many pop stars and actors. A cast like this would not have been possible with the comparatively moderate budget if the personal connection of the director and producer had not existed. With this star cast it is nevertheless conspicuous that Jeffrey Wright was chosen for the leading role, who at the time had still been a relatively unknown actor. Julian Schnabel explained this choice: “It was important that people not know who the actor was, so they would just think it was Jean-Michel, not Lenny Kravitz playing Jean-Michel.”83 Here the director, unlike with his other characters, does not seem to lay any importance on the star status of the actor in order not to divert from the star image of Basquiat. One of the producers, Randy Ostrow, also believes that the success was connected to Schnabel’s image when he says that the cast in the US would generate interest but that in Europe and Japan Julian Schnabel’s well-known name would help stimulate sales (see Grimes 1995, 11). It seems that next to the film and pop stars it was also the images of the art stars that played a role for the financial success of this film. One of the advertising slogans for the film has to be understood



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along these lines, in which Basquiat is called the “James Dean of painting.” According to Schnabel, who didn’t like this expression, the producers thought “they could use this quote to get young people who had no interest in Basquiat’s name and work curious about seeing the film” (Mattes 1996). As the first feature film of an artist about an artist, Basquiat also engenders greater expectations of an “authentic” representation of an artist and his creation than it normally is the case in this genre. The following analysis of the film will discuss whether these expectations are being fulfilled or even can be fulfilled.

The artist’s life in film: Three sequences The story takes place in New York City from 1979 to 1988. It unfolds the artistic career of the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat of Puerto Rican and Haitian background, his meteoric success, his friendships and love affairs, and his drug problems leading to his early death in 1988. Apart from the protagonist, artist colleagues like Albert Milo (alias Julian Schnabel) and Andy Warhol play important roles in situating Basquiat’s artistic context. The gallery dealers Annina Nosei, Mary Boone, and Bruno Bischofberger are also important characters as is the art critic René Ricard. They situate Basquiat’s position within the boom of the 1980s art market. There is also a love story between Basquiat and the very pretty but unsuccessful artist Gina that eventually ends due to an affair of his. At the peak of Basquiat’s success, he hears about Andy Warhol’s sudden death, which he deeply mourns and which throws him completely off track. This event is followed by excessive drug use culminating in his death about which the viewers are informed by a text in the final credits.

Hungry for a genius Julian Schnabel is using Jean-Michel Basquiat’s biography as a parable about the functioning of the New York art world, in which an “artist genius” like Basquiat is devoured by the art world “hungry for a genius.” This point is made clear from the beginning

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of the film. In the first scene after the opening credits we see Basquiat’s sleeping face lit by a yellow light, and we hear a voiceover saying “Everybody wants to get on the Van Gogh boat.” The next scene shows the art critic René Ricard who is sitting on a park bench writing something into a notebook bohemian-style. Place and time appear—“New York 1979.” We hear Ricard’s thoughts as a voice-over introducing us to the subject of the biopic through a genius discourse on Van Gogh—the prototype of the genius in film:84 “There’s no trip so horrible that someone won’t take it. The idea of the unrecognized genius slaving away in a garret is a deliciously foolish one. We must credit the life of Vincent Van Gogh for really sending this myth into orbit.” Now we see Jean-Michel Basquiat again, just waking up and slowly rising out of a cardboard box in the bushes of a park in which he has slept. This scene takes place behind the writing of René Ricard and both characters do not notice each other. Basquiat walks through the park and writes with chalk a programmatic sentence onto a fountain, signs it with his trademark––the pseudonym SAMO and a crown—and walks away.85 Meanwhile we hear Ricard’s voice-over: I mean, how many pictures did he [Van Gogh] sell? One? He couldn’t give them away. He has to be the most modern artist but everybody hated him. We are so ashamed of his life that the rest of art history will be retribution for Van Gogh’s neglect. No one wants to be part of a generation that ignores another Van Gogh. In this town one is at the mercy of the recognition factor. One’s public appearance is absolute. Part of the artist’s job is to get the work where I will see it. I consider myself a metaphor of the public. I am a public eye, a witness, a critic. When you first see a new picture, you don’t want to miss the boat. You have to be very careful because you might be staring at Van Gogh’s ear.86 During the last sentence the camera pans onto Basquiat’s worn sneakers,87 moves upward along his body from bottom to top ending in a figure shot showing the artist as he is looking dreamily upward into the sky. A collage of film images follows. A song of the New Wave band Public Image is playing along and Basquiat’s story takes its course. Ricard’s statement functions like a prologue for the film. On the one hand it leads us into the plot while on the other it calls



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attention in a somewhat moralistic tone to the unfolding story. The Van Gogh-motto of the unrecognized artist leads ex negativo towards the real subject of the film, the recognition of an artist: It is about the recognition “factor” and the public image of an artist. Positioning himself as an art critic is tied in with this; an art critic helps artists to become famous, according to Ricard. At this point in time, Ricard is a narrator who guides the film into a certain direction. This changes as soon as Ricard becomes an acting character in the film, losing his status as narrator. But we, the viewers, are initially attuned to the content of the film via Ricard’s commentary. Meanwhile the two characters Basquiat and Ricard are introduced through their activities but without dialogue. We see the writing critic at work and we see the artist who seems to be poor and homeless, but highly inspired. Even though it is said that Basquiat sometimes slept in the park, he does not come from a poor family. This view was in part also steered by Basquiat. At a later point in the film, this distorted fact will become visible in the form of a critical question by a journalist during an interview. In any case, the statement of the film that stages the artist right from the start as an outsider without comments is visually stronger than its reflection at a much later state. To show the artist as a destitute homeless person in the beginning might also refer to the myth of the artist as poor bohemian and an outsider of society. Being tied in with these artists’ myths establishes Basquiat as an artist and also enables the film to show his meteoric rise in a much stronger contrast. To start a sequence with a close-up of the moment when Basquiat is waking up, underlines this interpretation. The scene of the “poor” artist is made even more poignant and compassionate with the sound of rain and sight of the wet cardboard of Basquiat’s abode. Another artists’ myth is invoked in the opening sequence that is mixed with the opening credits prior to the sequence described above: By inserting short sequences between the titles, the initiation into becoming an artist during childhood is introduced with the early discovery of his talent. Basquiat’s mother shows the little boy Picasso’s Guernica.88 His mother watches in tears of joy as her boy, while looking at the work of art, experiences a moment of epiphany, symbolized by a luminous yellow crown. For the boy, the contact with this recognized masterwork is an initiation into his following creativity.89 Slowly, the image of the “enlightened artist”

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fades out and a yellow glow that fills the screen remains while the close-up of the current (filmic) Basquiat fades in. The yellow glow functions as a visual bridge between the “Then” and the “Now,” connecting the two periods with the motif of the enlightened artist. The “chosen artist,” who is at times called “a Picasso in blackface,”90 is staged quite pompously. These pictures are also religiously connoted and full of messianic symbolism, since the “enlightened and crowned boy” is established as “divino artista” in the sacred halls of the museum before the scene pans into the mundane life of the big city, in which he initially has to pace his life’s journey as a poor man. The times of Van Gogh’s story of the “unrecognized genius” are over; now we are dealing with the “recognition of a genius.”

How to become a star It seems that climbing to the top needs some luck and know-how. After 20 minutes into the film, this instruction is packaged in a 3-minute dialog between Basquiat and his friend Benny, in which Basquiat receives the ammunition for his way into stardom: the two are on a fenced-in basketball court in Manhattan; on the wall of a house we see the sentence: “JIMMY BEST ON HIS BACK TO THE SUCKER PUNCH OF HIS CHILDHOOD YEARS.” Benny wears a basketball shirt with “Puerto Rico” and the number “14” on it whereas Basquiat is wearing a dapper urban outfit. Benny wants to challenge Basquiat to a basketball duel at which he does not really succeed and he therefore just dribbles and tosses the ball into the basket during which we hear a dialog, in which Basquiat asks his friend how long it takes to become famous. Benny asks whether he wants to know this for a musician or a painter, a clue that at that time it wasn’t decided yet which artistic direction Basquiat’s life would take, since he also played in a band, which at the time was in demand. But Basquiat is not interested in the difference, only in getting famous. Thereupon Benny answers that it would take four years to become famous and six years to become rich. Benny’s directives for getting there sound like this: “First you have to dress right. Then, you have to hang out with famous people, make friends with the right blond people, go to



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the right parties, socialize!” Then he suggests that he should work a lot and always in the same style so that people would recognize his work. And once he was famous, he would have to continue like this, even if it were boring, since otherwise people would get angry with him—which they would get anyway. In the meantime Benny and Basquiat walk down a street where Benny points out that famous people were usually rather dumb and that Basquiat was too intelligent for this. He should simply continue as he has done till now. Integrity was the motto and his friends liked him. And he was successful with women—what else did he want? Then the monolog is interrupted by an exchange of glances: We see a limousine stopping on the other side of the street. Basquiat recognizes Andy Warhol whom he believes to be the best painter in the world. Benny says deprecatingly that Warhol was “a homo” and painted by numbers, which he—Basquiat—was not doing. Warhol and the gallerist Bischofberger get out of the limousine. Basquiat is euphoric about the possibility to meet Warhol. He pulls a few painted postcards out of his pocket saying that he would walk over and give Warhol some of them. Benny answers that he should under no circumstance give the postcards to Warhol; he should trade them because that’s what real artists did. And besides Warhol would only use him and that he was known for that. With the encounter of Warhol this dialog on getting famous ends effectively. Actually this dialog would be more fitting for the critic Ricard. But Basquiat does not know him at that point in the film yet; in reality the advice that one should not give away one’s art but trade it actually stems from Ricard’s article “The Radiant Child.”91 The ironic note of the whole dialog is reminiscent in tone also of Schnabel’s autobiography CVJ Nicknames of Maitre D’s and Other Excerpts from Life. It remains unclear how and why Benny would have known so much about the art scene and about getting famous. We do not know whether Benny is also an artist.92 In any case, he is never shown working at his profession. The only thing that is clear about Benny is that he is a friend of Basquiat’s at whose place Basquiat sometimes sleeps, with whom he takes drugs and goes to parties. However, as a character in the film, Benny remains blurred. He is most likely Puerto Rican and his character seems to be a conglomerate of several friends.93 He cares for Basquiat like an older brother and therefore seems to be an authority for good advice and everyday knowledge. The Benny character is one of the

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instances where the director moves away from clearly verifiable biographic data; another one is when he uses visual metaphors to embellish the story of the “rise” and “fall” of a superstar.

Speedy rider The film’s story is not only shown by the course of events but also on a metaphorical level by other type of film images. For example, Schnabel inserts film footage of sea waves and a surfer into the biopic; they are integrated into the narrative either as image collages or as film-in-film sequences. They are not establishing a direct causal connection to the narrative but a metaphorical tie into the story. The sea-wave motif appears four different times announcing the coming events of the film. Except for the third sequence, each of the inserted passages is about ten seconds long. Right at the beginning, after Jean-Michel Basquiat has been introduced through the voice-over of the art critic and has been indirectly compared to Van Gogh, we see the artist looking up at the sky in a good mood. He sees part of a typical New York skyline (a brick building with a water tower) but in place of the sky above, we can see blue sea and a surfer. The surfer is attempting to catch a wave and begins to ride it elegantly. Basquiat’s dream of being an artist begins here. The second surfer collage appears when Basquiat peeks at the art world through a window during a vernissage of Albert Milo at the Mary Boone Gallery. He again glances up to the sky viewing a similar scene as in the beginning. Unlike the first sequence, the surfer here is riding a huge wave at full speed. Nothing blocks Basquiat’s career any longer; it becomes filmic reality. A whole hour passes until the next footage of the sea appears: Basquiat is successful now not only with his paintings but also his early graffiti on the walls of New York, still signed SAMO, are selling splendidly. In one sequence he sees two young men on the street taking down a piece of a wall with his graffiti works on it in order to make money on the art market. Basquiat accosts the young men telling them that this is his work. The thieves don’t take him seriously and react aggressively, feeling caught in the act. When Basquiat responds by adding to his work with additional spraying they beat him up. When the artist then adds that he is



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SAMO, he is beaten up even more. Robbed not only of his art but also of his authorship, he is lying on the floor glancing sideways. The camera pans to a wall full of posters of Warhol and Basquiat in boxer outfits advertising a joint exhibition. Another scene showing the sea is cross-faded, in which the atmosphere is darker and quieter than before; there is no surfer to be seen—only the wide sea with its surging waves. A black screen follows. The atmosphere is that of an impending storm. Here it is no longer Basquiat who actively looks into the sky as in the earlier instances; instead, lying on the floor, he rolls over putting his arm across his beaten up face. As a victim of his own success, Basquiat has been robbed of his own visions. With this sequence, the film corroborates the coming change in Basquiat’s life. This reversal is also mirrored by the formal use of the film footage that no longer appears as a collage mixed into the main film frame but has instead become the full frame itself. The artist’s imagination has taken on a life of its own, eluding him so that this sequence appears like a foreboding of the coming events. Thus, the final images of the sea aren’t long in coming. After Andy Warhol’s death, Basquiat seems to completely succumb to drugs. He is wandering through the streets of New York in daylight in open pajamas and clogs. His perception has shifted into a parallel world. Staggering in a drugged delirium, a little boy comes towards him, skipping happily. It is the young Basquiat from the beginning of the film who merges with the grown-up Basquiat as he passes him and then disappears. Here as well Basquiat does not actively glance up to the sky; rather, the following scene with footage of the sea epitomizes his biographical state of mind: We see the picture of a huge wave that with a cross-fade looks as if it were breaking over Basquiat, who seems to dissolve into the wave. Only the crashing wave remains in full frame, changing into foam. Then the camera films under water; we see bubbles and David Bowie’s song A Small Plot of Land that has accompanied this sequence fades away and only the sound of the bubbling water remains. It seems as if Basquiat were overpowered by the wave and is now sinking lower and lower. Here as well there is no surfer to be seen. Rather, a POV shot suggests that Basquiat is the surfer, who was overpowered by the wave and is drowning. The next frame is black. For a short moment we hear and see nothing and experience a quiet darkness. All of a sudden Benny’s voice can be heard gently calling

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Basquiat with his nickname “Willie Mays,” thereby awaking the artist slowly from his delirious state. After this sequence, the two are driving in a jeep through the streets of Manhattan. Basquiat is standing on the passenger seat. He is balancing on the jeep as if he were surfing through the streets—now Basquiat has become his own dream character, accompanied by a very soothing, warm song by The Pogues, Summer in Siam. Music plays an important role in this film since it charges the images with emotion.94 The music was not composed for the film but is a soundtrack compiled by Julian Schnabel and John Cale.95 In the previous examples, music and sea imagery strengthen the impression of the movement of waves and thus create feelings of ups and downs. Every sequence is supported acoustically by a different song: Public Image by the band Public Image Ltd., which accompanies the first insert, sounds strong and energetic and together with the surfer who has just “climbed” his wave is thereby attuning the viewers to the eventful times awaiting Basquiat. The new wave song also locates the events in their socio-cultural context whereas a piece on piano and clarinet, sounding as if it came from a gramophone, is quiet and harmonious and is tuned in with the image of the skillful, elegant surfer. As a contrast there is an aria by Górecki’s Symphony No. 3, Opus 36 dramatizing the sequence with the dark sea-atmosphere after Basquiat was beaten up. And finally the song by David Bowie, A Small Plot of Land, creates an eerie atmosphere in which the events seem to be disconnected from the main actor. The artist here is mainly a drug addict who is no longer in control and staggers on a knife’s edge between death and life. As in the first part of the inserted sea sequence, popular music is being used. The two classical pieces are connected with the professional advancement of the artist. Those sequences that are connected with Basquiat’s artistic development then are underpinned by a musical dose of “high culture” and those that show a biographical development with “popular culture.” This does not denote any qualitative evaluation; it rather underlines the varied use of music for two different spheres. We can therefore summarize that the sea-wave inserts can be associated with the idiomatic figure of speech “riding on a wave of success.” This idiom stands for the huge success that can come fairly quickly, can stay for a while but can disappear just as abruptly again. In the film it is translated visually and acoustically.



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The inserted film footage serve as a biographical interpretation of Basquiat describing the movement of a wave—from down upward and back down. The biopic includes other metaphorical images that I will analyze elsewhere. All in all, they lend a specific stylistic language to the film and show the director’s handwriting.

“Black painter”: Identity discourses Basquiat’s identity as an African American artist in the film is staged through different confrontations with racist notions and prejudices instead of the representation of his affiliation with a community.96 This focus corresponds to that part of Basquiat’s life that is connected to his career as a “black” artist in a “white” art world. Indeed, in his function as a visual artist, he hardly had any interchanges with the African American art scene in New York and vice versa the African American art scene was critical of Basquiat’s position, as Susanne Reichling has illustrated. She has explained this mutual rejection with the observation that the black art scene of the early eighties was mainly characterized by its antagonism to the white establishment (see Reichling 1998, 27–32). It seems that Basquiat was seen as a traitor within this community and inversely it seems it was not successful enough for him.97 Nevertheless, Basquiat was active in the Puerto Rican and African American music and graffiti scenes and was also accepted there. In 1979, together with Michael Holman—who was also hired as a scriptwriter for the biopic—he founded the band Gray.98 But in 1980 Basquiat left the band again since he wanted to concentrate more on his art career. The graffiti scene also valued his activities very much. Apart from the phrases on walls as SAMO©,99 he exhibited together with sprayers of the scene like Fred Brathwaite, Ramm-El-Zee, Lee Quinones, Lady Pink, Futura 2000 or Toxic and was friends with some of them. Some of the graffiti sprayers were also active politically and were very interested in African American subjects. This characterized Basquiat’s work as well (see Reichling 1998, 22–4). Plus, he never broke off the contact with his friends from the graffiti scene. Even when he was already successful in the art world, he invited them to travel with him or made portraits of them.100 The film shows hardly anything

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of these stories, creative periods or friendships; only the blurry character Benny is a minuscule hint of all of them. Even though we do see Basquiat at the beginning of the film as a graffiti sprayer, this activity is only staged as a route into painting and less as a parallel artistic occupation or as an expression of being part of a community. Also, those of Basquiat’s artworks that do appear in the film hardly present any ones that are explicitly about African American subject matters, even though there are a great number of them in his oeuvre. However, there is one sequence of a positive identification with African American society. From the beginning to the end of the film Benny calls his friend repeatedly by his nickname Willie Mays.101 Willie Mays is a baseball legend. He was hired by the New York Giants in 1951—a time when there had hardly been any African American players. For his outstanding performance, he was indicted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979.102 In the film, Benny is comparing Basquiat with an African American superstar, transferring his performance to Basquiat’s role in the art world, which included only a few “black” artists at the time and none of them could be called a star. Lacking a positive representation, Basquiat’s ethnic depiction in the film therefore mostly prevails in its negative form of racism. The biopic mainly shows the experience of racism underlined by gestures and reactions of the character Basquiat, which can be seen in the interview scene with a journalist. This sequence refers to a video interview from 1983 filmed by Paul Tschinkel in which the art historian Marc H. Miller interviews Basquiat.103 The talk between the two interview partners was definitely not a free flowing one. Miller, who usually is much more articulate and informed about the artists visible in other interviews within this video series, seems awkward and is relatively uninformed about Basquiat’s art. In addition the art historian asks questions with quite a racist undertone, which Basquiat unmasks with humorous counter-questions. Even though the video interview is more extensive than that, it is mainly these awkward moments that are part of the biopic in a sequence in which a journalist, played by Christopher Walken, is asking Basquiat whether he sees himself as a sort of “primal expressionist.” Basquiat plays back this ball with a smile and a provocative counter-question, “You mean Primate? An Ape?” The journalist is embarrassed and instantly asks him



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the next question whether Basquiat sees himself as a painter or as a black painter. Here as well Basquiat answers in a skillful ironic tone that he also uses many other colors in his paintings, and not only black. Now the journalist is taken aback and confusedly looks at Basquiat. And as if Basquiat took pity on him, he informs the journalist that he actually is a Creole painter. Creole, he explains, is a mix of African and European elements, comparable to an African who speaks French in Haiti. The journalist’s jaw drops; his inappropriate questions and his stereotypical ideas are elegantly exposed by Basquiat. But the journalist ups the ante with another faux pas when he asks him how he would react when called the “pickaninny of the art world.” Basquiat looks uncomprehending and asks where this is to be found in writing. “In Time Magazine,” says the journalist, only to be corrected by Basquiat that there he is called the “Eddie Murphy of the art world.”104 Now the journalist’s face has turned red, he perspires and laughs bashfully about his embarrassing Freudian slip. He clears his throat before he continues to ask Basquiat about his own staging of a ghetto background. Basquiat does not answer this question anymore. These scenes from the interview address several misconceptions and racisms regarding Basquiat’s African American identity as an artist like the problematic subject of the “primitive” in Basquiat’s works or the notion of a “black painter.” This label, applied externally—just like the label “woman painter”—sometimes contributes less to differentiation than it does to discrediting.105 Other sequences deal extensively with the kind of racism that Basquiat experienced every day. In one scene he is standing at the side of the street together with Gina during their first date. He wants to flag down a taxi but does not get one. When Gina tries to do the same on her own, a taxi immediately stops.106 In another sequence we see Basquiat and Warhol shopping at the upscale delicatessen Dean and DeLuca’s. He is asking the salesman whether he could try the caviar. The salesman lets him try with a reluctant expression. Basquiat asks whether this was really the best one they have since he wanted to buy the whole can. The salesman sneers at him saying that it would cost $3,000. Basquiat asks Warhol whether he would give him $3,000 for the caviar.107 Warhol takes out his gold credit card and Basquiat tells the salesman to credit the amount for the caviar on the card while he would pay the rest of the purchases in cash, giving him a $100 bill. The salesman

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looks at the bill checking it for genuineness. Basquiat angrily asks whether he was checking every bill like this or only his to which the salesman answers clumsily that he was only checking Basquiat’s bill. Hence, this sequence suggests that even going shopping and buying fancy food can result in a discriminatory experience for an African American. In another sequence Basquiat is greeted by the maitre d’ of a noble restaurant with “Welcome back to Barbetta, Maestro!” By now he is an acknowledged artist. He is extravagantly dressed in suit and tie that he uses as a hair band. The headwaiter leads him to his place asking courteously how his exhibition in Europe was and says that he hasn’t seen him for a long time. We then see a circle of well-dressed businessmen who all look in Basquiat’s direction and seem to be astonished why the maitre d’ is greeting Basquiat in such a friendly way. Then we see Gina sitting at a table waiting. Gina and Basquiat by now are separated and are meeting again in this restaurant for the first time after a lengthy period. While they are talking, the businessmen are glancing at Basquiat’s back. The artist turns around and sees the men at the table smoking their big cigars; one of them is asking the waiter about him. Basquiat clearly is unsettled and angry. After the waiter has poured the wine, Basquiat turns around once more. For a moment there is no sound and the camera is zooming onto the faces of the men gossiping about something we cannot hear. The build-up of this scene suggests that they are deriding Basquiat, a “black man” in a stylish restaurant. At that, Basquiat tells the waiter to put their bill on his tab without telling them about it. Gina asks him why he is doing this and he counters furiously, asking what year they were really living in. The racism Basquiat experiences cuts through a variety of social levels. This can be perceived quite well in the movie. Nevertheless, the focus of the film is mainly on those areas of Basquiat’s life that Julian Schnabel knows himself—the white art world, the classy restaurants, and the expensive gourmet stores. Other socio-cultural and ethnic aspects of Basquiat’s life and work are excluded. Thus, Schnabel does not seem to have been interested in including the graffiti and music scene that Basquiat was active in parallel to the art world. According to Reichling, Basquiat’s friendship with the graffiti sprayers Lee Quinones, Ramm El-Zee, and Fred Brathwaite played more important roles in Michael Holman’s script version



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(Reichling 1998, 18) whereas in Schnabel’s film version they hardly play any role at all. Basquiat’s multifaceted cultural identity is lost in the film through the homogenizing of his situation, in which he serves as the exotic superstar in the white art world. We, the viewers, don’t learn anything about the fact that Basquiat is estranged from the African American art community; we only learn about his being a “stranger” in the social environment of the “White Cube.” We also do not learn anything about Basquiat’s interest in African American subject matter or of his method of “culture-sampling,” which would be important for understanding his artistic practice.108 Thus, the discussion of Basquiat’s ethnicity remains limited to his experience of daily racisms in short episodes stressing Basquiat’s difference to the “white” man or the “white” artist.109 Another question considering the representation of Basquiat’s identity is his sexuality. In the film it is clearly a heterosexual one. Almost throughout the whole film Basquiat is in a relationship with Gina and even wants to marry her. Only once does he have a short affair in the film; no others are depicted. His possible bisexual orientation is only mentioned once when the stoned Basquiat calls the suicide hotline from Benny’s apartment.110 But since the sequence is narratively embedded while he is stoned, it really cannot be taken seriously. In comparison, the historical sources and the biography mark that he had a multiplicity of amorous relationships. As a multitalented and attractive young man, he seems to have had a special impact on women and men alike, and he had many different sexual contacts. In a multiplicity of stories, Hoban describes affairs with men and women in the biography, although with the latter in the majority. His reputation was “for being quite a lady’s man.”111 At the same time, we can also find phrases like “he told me he enjoyed sex more with men” in the biography. Hoban also reports that he even prostituted himself at times.112 Without pondering the significance of all the love affairs in Basquiat’s life, it should be mentioned that the biography is full of names and stories about love affairs,113 but these stories of Basquiat’s busy sexual life are hardly shown in the biopic. The narrative in the film was “cleaned up” for the American movie-goer: no prostitution, hardly any affairs, and no sign of bisexuality. Only the affair with Big Pink114 has remained, which actually rather underlines the heterosexual matrix in the film than disturbing it.

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Looks and habits: Artists’ images Jean-Michel Basquiat’s public appearance in articles, photographs, and films depicts a fashion-conscious artist, who combines different styles with clichés of artists. Even when he still had a small income, he already knew how to present himself with extravagantly styled hair and outfits not only before a mirror but also before the camera. This is visible in the historical sources like the television interview with Glenn O’Brien from 1979 in which he has styled his hair blond and partly shaved; this also shows in the documentation Downtown 81.115 Even though his outfits changed, becoming visibly more expensive with his increased level of fame, one can still recognize a personal style. He often wears outfits from the Japanese fashion label Comme des Garçons, then considered an avant-garde fashion label. Or he appears in a classy pinstripe suit with paint splotches on it, like on the cover of the New York Times Magazine (Figure 3.1). In the course of his career he is seen more and more often in suit and tie in photographs. Nevertheless, he provides these outfits with traces of being a painter like for example on the photograph by James VanDerZee, in which he wears a shirt, tie, jacket, and paint-splotched jeans (Figure 3.5). In the 1980s his appearance and his artworks actually become style icons.116 He embodies the bohemian “downtown style” that is described as follows in the New York Times Magazine: The artists cannibalize high art and the mass culture of the last three decades—television, suburbia, pornography, Saturday morning cartoons, comic books, Hollywood gossip magazines, spirituality, science fiction, horror movies, grocery lists and top-40 lists … the word bohemia takes on an ironic twist when used to describe this arts community … While past bohemians were rebels with contempt for the middle class and the mercantile culture, many of the current breed share the same values as the yuppies uptown. This is a blue-chip bohemia where artists talk tax shelters more than politics, and where American Express Gold Cards are more emblematic than garrets. In this Day-Glo Disneyland, the esthetic embrace of poverty has given way to bourgeois longing for fame and money. (Dowd 1985, 26, 28)



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Basquiat as a hip art star is the protagonist of this scene, someone who sets great store on his public appearance and displays it nonchalantly. In retrospect, we could label Basquiat a “metrosexual man.” This term was initially coined by the British queer-theorist Mark Simpson as a somewhat ironical observation of a marketing phenomenon. It is connected with a new consumer target audience—the money making narcissistic city male (Simpson 1994). This term since then is being profitably exploited by the lifestyle industry. Simpson also takes part in this, continuing to publish his thoughts on the “metrosexual man” in support of a meanwhile ten-year-old history.117 He defined metrosexuality more precisely in 2002 in an article, in which he reflects on the British soccer player and style icon David Beckham, whom he calls “supermetrosexual”: The typical metrosexual is a young man with money to spend, living in or within easy reach of a metropolis—because that’s where all the best shops, clubs, gyms and hairdressers are. He might be officially gay, straight or bisexual, but this is utterly immaterial because he has clearly taken himself as his own love object and pleasure as his sexual preference. Particular professions, such as modeling, waiting tables, media, pop music and, nowadays, sport, seem to attract them but, truth be told, like male Vity products and herpes, they’re pretty much everywhere.118 Metrosexual men like to be looked at. Their narcissism can be compared with the dandies in the nineteenth century, who placed a lot of value on their exterior appearance. However, the big difference is that metrosexual men don’t celebrate the decaying aristocratic way of life anymore but are successful in culture, in the entertainment industry, or in sports. Actually, the defining characteristics of the dandy as at the time described by Baudelaire—distinction, elegance, idleness, and originality119— have lost their meaning in the mass industry of consumerism. But they continue living in the rhetorical figure of metrosexuality under different conditions. Basquiat could be seen as an avantgarde metrosexual who obviously enjoyed spending money for his outward appearance while also thereby openly taking just as much pleasure in making his success visible.

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FIGURES 3.9–11  Film stills from Basquiat; Basquiat’s hairstyles in the movie in 1979, 1982, and 1987



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Comparing the film with historical pictures of Jean-Michel Basquiat illustrates that the focus of the story and the filmic character only represent a few of Basquiat’s stylizations. It can best be shown with his hairdos since he changed them often and also because creative hairstyles are particularly relevant and symbolic in African American culture. Kobena Mercer has observed that “Black hair-styling may thus be evaluated as a popular art form articulating a variety of aesthetic ‘solutions’ to a range of ‘problems’ created by ideologies of race and racism” (Mercer 1987, 34). Basquiat’s friend and graffiti colleague Fred Brathwaite aka Fab 5 Freddy also underlined the importance of Basquiat’s hairstyling: “Jean-Michel’s hair was in many ways his crown, and he wore it always to achieve this very desired effect and reaction” (Brathwaite 2002, 61). There are a few discrepancies when comparing the historical character with the filmic one. Basquiat in the film always wears his hair at medium length and with dreadlocks from the beginning of the story in 1979 to the end in 1988. He wears them in different styles—plaited, not plaited, with a tie in his hair or pinned up. The hairdos are quite creative but they only partially correspond to the historical ones and are changing the character’s look only in small doses. In comparison with the photos of Basquiat we can observe—for example in Glenn O’Brian’s TV show—that he had very short hair with a blond Mohawk. By the end of 1980, as can be seen in the film Downtown 81, his hair was short in front and he was wearing a few dreadlocks at the back of his head. None of these styles are shown in the biopic. There, in the beginning, Basquiat always has the same hairstyle. Only when he is more successful does his hairdo become more extravagant. The plaited hair in the way he wears it at the opening of his show in Annina Nosei’s gallery is quite catchy and resembles most the historical sources from 1982, as in James VanDerZee’s or Andy Warhol’s portraits. Following that, the group photos with Warhol or the photographs by Lizzie Himmel for the New York Times Magazine from 1984 show a shorthaired Basquiat whose hairdo is quite conventional and middle class in comparison to his earlier creations. The Basquiat character of the film does not participate in this change to a “conformed” short hairstyle; till the end of the film he keeps his hair chin-length. The change of hairstyle in the film can only be described as one-directional—from wildly unkempt to creatively styled. But the historical sources are much more varied and much more experimental especially at the

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beginning of his career, becoming more conventional towards the end. Unlike in the case of his hairstyles, Basquiat’s behavior in the film corresponds much more to historical sources. In McGuigan’s article he is described as shy and temperamental; Henry Geldzahler speaks of a charming and insolent person whom he finds attractive in this combination (quoted in McGuigan 1985, 26). Andy Warhol describes him as moody and paranoid during the time of their collaboration (Warhol Diaries Nov 7, 1984, 605). We can find all of these descriptions also in the film character. Besides, certain gestures and Basquiat’s gait are recreated especially well by Jeffrey Wright in the film as we can see when comparing the filmic character with Basquiat in the documentary Downtown 81 or as Basquiat’s friends noted.120 This aspect was also positively mentioned in film reviews, such as in Stella Bruzzi’s article: “Particularly distinctive is the repertoire of poses and movements Wright evolves to capture Basquiat’s aloof coquettishness—his floaty, camp shuffling as he walks through New York’s streets, or his slow intricate hand gestures” (Bruzzi 1997, 36). The Basquiat of the film carves his own way in a mix of naiveté and egoism. Interestingly, Jeffrey Wright, the Basquiat actor, also criticizes Schnabel’s somewhat one-sided representation of Basquiat: “Some of the danger is lost, and some of the anger is toned down. I think in some ways Julian romanticized Basquiat’s life, and maybe that’s all our culture can take right now.”121 In any case—Basquiat is represented as a young, self-confident artist who puts his own will to the test and is thereby gaining respect from his environment. In a sequence in which he is working at the Mary Boone Gallery, still as an undiscovered artist helping with setting up Albert Milo’s exhibition, he is being called by the gallerist in order to hang a large painting differently since Milo and Boone do not agree about the hanging. Basquiat is using this opportunity to free himself from anonymity and to introduce himself to the art star Milo as another painter and colleague. Patronizingly Milo says, “Too bad!” and Boone adds that he should please do his job, no matter who he is. Thereupon Basquiat leaves the gallery on the spot and thus also his breadwinning job. He presents himself as self-confident and without compromise. Other sequences refer to Basquiat’s approach to his paintings proving his artistic autonomy by not letting anyone interfere with how and what he is painting.



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When Milo—the “big M” as Basquiat calls him appreciatingly yet with irony—visits him in his studio, Basquiat ignores his suggestion to use a little more pink.122 In another sequence Basquiat’s artistic pride is hurt, reacting provokingly to the objection of a collector when she says that she does not like the green on the painting but that she would otherwise very much like to buy it. Basquiat counters with the question whether she would prefer him to repaint it a “nice shit brown.” Then the collector’s husband steps in with the sexist remark that nobody but him was allowed to make fun of his wife. Basquiat suggests irritably that they should hire a decorator, informing them that the paintings were not yet completed. The artist takes his sunglasses and furiously leaves the room. The collector buys the painting with the green as it is. Even though Basquiat defends his artistic autonomy, he does not follow through to the final consequence by refusing to sell the unfinished painting; instead, he leaves the sales talk defensively. In other situations in which he could assert his authority as artist, Basquiat also remains astonishingly quiet. He calmly accepts that Ricard is tearing out his just-completed drawing from Mr. Chow’s guestbook, taking it as a revenge of an earlier loss of a painting. During the height of his success Basquiat cedes his control over his works, leaving it to others while diverting from this predicament either with a love affair or with drugs.

Just do it! Spontaneous creativity That Basquiat is not just another artist but a “genius” is staged in different ways in the film. Especially notable are those judgments about Basquiat’s talent from other characters in the film like the critic René Ricard, his friend Benny or his girlfriend Gina, the artist colleagues Andy Warhol and Albert Milo or his gallerists. These statements or activities delineate the Basquiat character from the outside. But how does Basquiat actually create? Are there moments in which this character is represented as an artist? In order to reliably establish Basquiat as a “genius artist” different facets of creativity are staged. Often his artistic practice is connected to spontaneous activities in the film. His way of working is unexpected and fast. He seems to have a never-ending source of

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inspiration. He does not always work at his studio but also in the city or in his apartment. Basically the story of Basquiat’s artistic production follows the changing conditions of work shifting from the public spaces of the city (as graffiti sprayer) to the canvas in his private studio (as painter). Initially, we see Basquiat as graffiti sprayer in Ricard’s introduction in which he recognizes Basquiat’s genius as the artist is writing on a fountain, “PAY FOR / SOUP / BUILD A / FORT / SET THAT / ON FIRE / SAMO /M.”123 Several graffiti actions follow, in which we can watch Basquiat in short sequences spraying different phrases. He is writing on varying

FIGURES 3.12–13  Film stills; Basquiat’s creativity in everyday life, part 1



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walls of houses: “LIKE AN IGNORANT EASTER SUIT / M ©”, “SAMO AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO GOD / ©” or “A LOT OF BOWERY BUMS USED TO BE EXECUTIVES / ©.” Unlike the spraying scenes in the semi-documentary Downtown 81 in which one can watch the “real” Jean-Michel Basquiat spraying whole phrases, the biopic presents us with a fast version of the spraying activity by way of jump cuts. With this montage technique Basquiat’s “thumbprint” is more imitated than performatively staged by the actor. It seems that it is less the staging of the creative process that is the issue but rather the information provided

FIGURES 3.14–15  Film stills; Basquiat’s creativity in everyday life, part 2

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by the phrases; Basquiat’s use of language, his criticism of social structures, and the distribution of his graffiti all over town. We hear the energy-laden song Public Image by Public Image Ltd during this succession of spraying activities, a song that had already been played earlier during the first surfing montage. This is followed by a sequence that illustrates that Basquiat’s inspiration is without limits. Even the menu in front of a restaurant whose magnetic letters he regroups is not safe from his creativity (Figures 3.12–13). SAMO leaves his traces everywhere. He is an artist for whom anything can become art.124 This introduction to his creativity in daily life is reinforced by a drawing moment. Basquiat is sitting down at the restaurant whose menu he has already “designed.” Here for the first time he sees his later girlfriend Gina, who works there as a waitress. He hardly listens to his friend Benny; he only has eyes for this pretty woman and instantly starts producing: He pours maple syrup onto the table, spreads the sticky brown mass with the menu and apparently begins to draw a portrait of Gina with the back of his fork (Figures 3.14–15). He quickly draws an ephemeral portrait of Gina that looks like a child’s drawing while he is ordering pancakes with flirting eyes. She seems to succumb to his charm defending him against her boss who abruptly ends this “production phase.” Basquiat is thrown out, Gina returns the money to him and Basquiat gives her the fork—his drawing tool—as a keepsake. Basquiat alias SAMO seems to constantly produce, everywhere. He writes with chalk or spray paint onto walls or draws with maple syrup and a fork onto a table. He is using various materials and surfaces giving a fuller scope to his creativity. At this point in the film, his artistry is multifaceted and multimedial. He is even using audio-fragments of a drugged-out call to the suicide hotline as a sample in one of his songs with his band Gray. All of this is not yet the “high art” production in painting that he will be famous for; rather, he is characterized as an artist by his ungovernable creativity. His imagination in everyday life and his all-around artistic creativity show him as a “genius artist” even before he has attracted any attention in the art world. There is another sequence in which he gives proof of his genius during a party with a spontaneous act. He sees a wooden African mask, which he touches with his hand after a lengthy examination. Next to it is a round disk that he seems to like. He takes it, asking the host “Rockets” whether he could have this disk. The drug



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dealer Rockets suggests a trade—a painting for a bag (of drugs— BP/DR). Basquiat quickly takes a piece of chalk out of his pocket, walks over to the round wooden disk, writes ALI on it and is done with it—an adapted ready-made, so to speak.125 The exchange is concluded with a handshake passing the bag, the dealer delightedly regarding his new artwork. Even though there are already some of Basquiat’s paintings visible in this apartment or at his first group exhibition at P.S. 1, the actual painting process is not yet shown, a sign that in this film the point is less about how the artist is working but more about exposing the machinery of success in the art world. This becomes clear when we see Basquiat becoming a successful artist in New York before even a single painting process is acted out. Only after 38 minutes we see him painting for the first time. Similar to the graffiti spraying scenes in the beginning of the film, the painting scenes in his studio are also presented as fragments by way of jump cuts. As if by a magic trick, a multitude of paintings is created in the shortest amount of time. The sequence starts with the gallerist Annina Nosei showing Basquiat his new studio. It is a cluttered basement of her gallery. CUT—suddenly the room is more of a White Cube than a basement. Basquiat, with a paint bucket and a wide brush in his hand, is standing on a large rolled out canvas lying on the floor. He bends down and spontaneously begins to paint. The sequence

FIGURE 3.16  Film still; Painting scene at the studio

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FIGURES 3.17–19  Film stills; Painting scenes at the studio



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is accompanied musically by a Miles Davis piece radiating a harmonic atmosphere. We see a few jump cuts even though the painting scene continues coherently.126 Slowly the music of a jazz radio station broadcasting the Bands for Bonds with Dizzie Gillespie, Charlie Parker, John La Porta and others override Davis’ trumpet. The next jump cut shows a different scenery in the studio. All of a sudden a pile of unfinished paintings is leaning against the walls and the canvas on the floor is at a more advanced stage than a second earlier. The music from his radio starts with a short drumbeat, rising out of the tranquil painting process and then continuing with more drive and power via the addition of different instruments. All of a sudden we see Basquiat without a shirt and a spray can in his hand stepping on the painting and spraying something on it. Then he throws the can away, sits down in the middle of the canvas, and writes or draws on it. The camera angle changes showing the scene more from above so that one can recognize the size of the whole canvas in proportion to the room. Now Basquiat begins to roll small patches of color onto his work. Abruptly the music changes. A new jump cut. Absurdly, fewer paintings are leaning against the wall than before. Basquiat gets a stretched canvas that already has the motif of a head on it. He kneels on this canvas; a jump cut follows and he is kneeling again on the huge canvas from before. The musical tempo is now faster. The song White Lines by Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel speeds up the dynamics of the scene accompanied by an increased number of jump cuts. Now, there are even more canvases lying on the floor and there are paint cans everywhere. Basquiat seems to be simultaneously painting on all them. He briefly removes himself from the painting to look at it before he continues with the next one. “The more I see, the more I do,” we hear as a rap song and Basquiat seems to be in a sort of “production ecstasy.” CUT. All of a sudden he is sitting on an armchair getting into a different kind of ecstasy, dabbing his cigarette into cocaine and smoking it. A chorus sings in the background almost interpreting this scene: “Something like a phenomenon / Tellin’ your body to come along / But white lines blow away.” The song fades out and the camera pans left. The critic René Ricard is in the room admiring the newly created works. The whole sequence only takes a little under two minutes and it is the only one showing Basquiat in his studio painting.127 Everything moves really quickly. The production of the paintings

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is instantly followed by a viewing of the critic, which is directly followed by a process of consumption as the gallerist Nosei takes a collector couple to the studio attempting to sell the unfinished paintings. Other creative processes in the film are connected with different motivations than producing art. For example, in a nocturnal action Basquiat paints over Gina’s paintings because supposedly he doesn’t think they are good enough. In a different sequence Basquiat is in a drugged state and sees the creation of an art work that we see later in the film as a painted sculpture. Or, after the opening of his exhibition, he draws in the guestbook of Mr. Chow’s restaurant. A second more extensive scene with him painting together with Andy Warhol in his studio takes place towards the end of the film. I will come back to that later on. Even though several sequences of the artist at work are presented in this film, they do not show how a painting is created. Unlike in the film Pollock in which the painting scenes take up more time and represent some of the high points of the acting performance, in Basquiat there are only short moments in which we see artistic creation. Plus, these short moments are repeatedly interrupted by jump cuts. Therefore the actor Jeffrey Wright hardly has a chance in these situations to deliver a brilliant performance. Instead of enacting the painting process in Basquiat, it is being showcased staccato-like. It seems as if these sequences have the function of creating an artistic environment that is only atmospherically important for the story. This matches the focus of the story—the rise and fall of a superstar. It is therefore more about the images that are projected onto the artist and onto the art system than it is about the representation of creative processes or of the everyday life of an artist. In this respect, Basquiat is part of a tradition within the biopic genre in which artistic creation is mostly just hinted at or merges within the narration. Even though we can recognize some moments in the film reflecting on the medium of film, they refer to the director as a cinematographic artist rather than commenting on the artistic practice of the film’s main character. Therefore, it might be more adequate to ask whether the artistic creation in this film is more connected to Schnabel than to Basquiat––more to the production than to the diegesis of the film. What this biopic conveys is an image of Basquiat as an expressive painter who is drawing upon his subconscious while



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creating ferociously. The conceptual side of his art practice is hardly visible. It is more attributed to the artist Andy Warhol than to Basquiat. The conceptual side that Susanne Reichling has explored emphasizing Basquiat’s research on African, Caribbean, African American, and European cultures is completely absent in the biopic. On the one hand this is grounded in the peripheral role of the African American and Creole context in the film while on the other it also seems to lie in Schnabel’s approach to the art world underlining old artists’ myths of creation and genius more than attempting to show Basquiat’s actual creative process. In fact, Basquiat’s art production is quite informed and consists more in sampling different cultural and ethnic contexts and languages than in a subconscious creative energy. That his work includes a high degree of reflexiveness cannot be experienced in this biopic.

The New York art scene In this film the artistic field as represented by its characters––such as critic, gallerists, collectors, and other artists––is more significant than in Pollock. For one, casting these characters with film and pop stars attracts a lot of attention and is used profitably for the marketing of the film outside of the film narrative. And the film narrative itself also concentrates on the profit-orientation of the art market and its protagonists. Even though the gallerists—Annina Nosei, Bruno Bischofberger, and Mary Boone—characterize the development of the art market by way of their evaluative undertone in the narrative, they are not very complex as characters in the film. They are represented as shrewd and arrogant people who primarily think of their own commercial success. They rather embody the rising New York art market of the 1980s, literally courting the artists, hungry for success. Especially Nosei and Boone conform to the clichéd view of female New York gallerists as diligent business women with their tight skirts, serious looks, and strategic behavior. They almost seem like trainers who are chasing “their” artists through the circus ring of the art world. Brooks Adams criticizes the one-dimensional representations of the two gallerists in a film review in Art in America:

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[T]he artist’s first dealer Annina Nosei (played with definite panache by Elina Lowensohn [sic!]) and his subsequent dealer Mary Boone (played a bit too perkily by Parker Posey)—are portrayed not as fully dimensional people but rather as stick figures. They are seen essentially in relation to the male artist, and are there to serve him … This is not a fair or accurate portrayal of either Mary Boone, who comes across as a snippy little racist in the movie, or of Annina Nosei, who emerges as an almost hilariously young and slithery Italian temptress. (Adams 1996, 40) The clichéd representations are in no way proof of not knowing the historical situation or the individual people; it rather demonstrates a commentary of the director since Mary Boone also plays an important role for Julian Schnabel’s artistic success in New York. Nevertheless, Schnabel dissolved his business relationship with Boone in 1984 after five years; he strikes a rather diplomatic tone in saying that the dissociation was profitable for both sides: I left for Pace because I wanted to separate a couple of things. People said I succeeded because of Mary’s marketing strategy, and accused us of being coconspirators in hype, and I thought it would be great if we didn’t have that problem. This way, she can’t be accused of manipulating my career, and people can’t say it’s my work that makes her gallery, which is all pretty stupid anyway.128 The Mary Boone character in the film is also connected to the success of the film character Milo (alias Schnabel); but here their business relationship is not dissolved. Also the fact that Basquiat had a show at Boone’s Gallery in 1984 is not shown in the film either. In the film Boone is clearly presented as associated with Milo. Annina Nosei, on the other hand, takes over the role as Basquiat’s discoverer and gallerist; however, with his increasing success, she becomes less important in the film. After the opening of his show at the Nosei Gallery, for example, Basquiat is not sitting at the table with Annina Nosei but with Mary Boone, Henry Geldzahler, Bruno Bischofberger, Andy Warhol, and Francesco Clemente. The film character Bischofberger who appears not only as a gallerist but also as a collector is portrayed more sympathically



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in comparison with the female gallerists. Bischofberger, played by Dennis Hopper, is seemingly an art aficionado, who seeks out contacts with artists. We see him having dinner with Andy Warhol or at openings. It is also Bischofberger who, visibly shocked, informs Basquiat of Andy Warhol’s death. In comparison with Nosei and Boone, he seems more buddy-like.129 To the question whether he saw himself portrayed well by Dennis Hopper in the film, the “real” gallerist answered very diplomatically, “I can live with it. Hopper is my friend. But he portrays me a little too seriously. In reality I laugh a lot.” (Bischofberger, interviewed in Lautenbacher 1996). Dennis Hopper not only knew Bischofberger but he was already in contact with Andy Warhol in the 1960s.130 There is actually a Screen Test of Dennis Hopper from 1964 and a silkscreen portrait from 1971 that can be found in Warhol’s oeuvre.131 Maybe Bischofberger is more sympathetic or it is due to the fact that Bischofberger—unlike Boone and Nosei—is still in business with all the artists in the film to this day that he is presented as the more appealing character. Schnabel’s first exhibition with Bischofberger took place in 1980, Basquiat’s in 1982, and he had been working with Warhol already since 1968. Bischofberger continues to represent Schnabel to this day and also continues selling works by Basquiat and Warhol.132 Also the actor Dennis Hopper was a contemporary witness and collected art by all of the artists involved (Basquiat, Schnabel, Warhol).133 Despite these attempts at explanations, it cannot be ignored that the film is located in a male world. If women play a role at all then they are either the nice “victim” (Gina), the glitzy “vamp” (Big Pink), or the calculating “career women” (Nosei, Boone). Even though they are equally involved in the art world, the female characters in the film remain within the clichéd roles of women compared to the male characters.

René Ricard: The desired and desiring critic The character of the critic is more pronounced than that of the gallerists. René Ricard, played by Michael Wincott in the role of the homosexual critic, has a key function for the narrative perspective

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of the film. He is the first who speaks in the movie. His comments on the role of the artist in New York in 1979 at the very beginning shape our perspective onto the story. His role as a critic is brought up when Ricard calls his own function that of the “public eye” and a “metaphor of the public.” Ricard’s voice as voice-over during two parallel writing scenes—that of the critic with a pencil marking a notebook and that of the artist with chalk marking a fountain— points the way into the following biographical narrative. In his review of the film, Adams remarks: The excerpts from Ricard’s 1981 Artforum article “The Radiant Child” that are used in the movie have stood up remarkably well: they lend to the proceedings a hortatory resonance, and regardless of what one thinks of their actual content, they give the film its undeniable aura of hyperbolic accuracy. (Adams 1996, 40) Art criticism here becomes the diegesis of the film. Ricard is a sought-after man in exercising his profession. On the one hand he knows that his success is mostly due to the fact that he helps make art stars out of unknown artists. On the other hand Ricard is also alluding to his homosexual desires as we can observe in the following sequence: Basquiat as a promising young artist and attractive man unleashes a many-faceted desire in the critic at a party. Ricard is sitting on a windowsill with a telescope along with another man watching men on the street and commenting on their sexual aura. Through the telescope––an extremely phallic instrument in itself––they see Basquiat strolling down the street and writing “PLUSH SAGE HE THINK M” on a wall. Ricard interrupts the voyeuristic game and instantly runs down into the street where, completely out of breath, he excitedly introduces himself to Basquiat asking whether he knew Albert Milo, maintaining that he had made Milo into a star, and subsequently luring Basquiat with “I can make you a star.” Basquiat makes sure of this by asking: “You can put me in the ring with Milo?”134 Ricard promises this and asks whether Basquiat has a “real” name besides SAMO, to which Basquiat answers self-assuredly: “Jean-Michel Basquiat.” Ricard licks his lips and says “That sounds famous already!” He is clearly flirting with Basquiat and invites him for a cup of coffee. This sequence shows how the sexual desire of the man coincides



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with the “hunted prey” of the critic. Basquiat is not only an undiscovered artist here; he is also interesting as a young, attractive man. Both men belong to the downtown bohemia and their joint milieu and professional dependency is being mentioned at the ensuing visit by Ricard to Basquiat’s studio: Ricard: You are the news and I want the scoop. Look: When I speak no one believes me, when I write it down, people know it’s true. There has never been a black painter in art history who has been considered really important, you know that? Basquiat: Are you a writer or a white writer? Ricard: I may be white, but I am a nigger. You ask anybody. (Film transcript DB) Here Ricard’s answer “I am a nigger” denotes more a social environment than an ethnic affiliation and it seems to convince Basquiat of the critic’s solidarity. Basquiat gets up, annotates his new painting with the personal inscription “RENE 5:11” giving it to the critic as a gift. Shortly after, his trust in the critic is being tested when his artist colleague Milo comes for a visit and lures Ricard away. Milo invites the critic to come with him because he wants to paint his portrait also offering him coffee, bagels, and cream cheese. Ricard is ensnared by this offer, leaving without hesitation. Basquiat feels betrayed by this behavior and takes revenge by painting over the inscription again. Shortly after, it is Basquiat who breaks Ricard’s trust in public, when he sells exactly that painting that he had previously given to him to the gallerist Bischofberger after the latter has insistingly begged for it. In a fury Ricard makes a scene in front of Basquiat and from this moment on they break off. Basquiat is now successful and does not seem to need the critic any longer. Ricard is aghast at the lack of solidarity. One can read this action as a reaction to the earlier behavior of the critic permitting being lured away in front of the eyes of an artist by another artist. Nevertheless, Basquiat’s action has a much greater effect because he also expresses that this critic has become superfluous for the artist and that he is thereby revoking the business relationship to him. At the end of the day this narrative thread also connects them, since both the critic and the artist are ambitioned

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businessmen for whom their business conduct is more important than their friendship. At this point Schnabel’s criticism as director is easily deducible as coming from the man who has also written in his autobiography that there is no room for friendships in the art system.135

Idols and rivals: Models and counter-models Other artists have an important function in characterizing the image of the main protagonist. They inform us about different models of artistic existence thereby locating Basquiat more specifically in his role as an artist. His first contact with another artist at the Mary Boone Gallery occurs after 16 minutes into the film. Basquiat works there as an exhibition preparator together with another man. His knowledge about and interest in this job is limited—he is not even able to recognize the necessary tools. Instead, his greatest interest is watching how Albert Milo, the artist having the show, is behaving when speaking with the critic Ricard and the gallerist Boone about his work. His older co-worker, observing Basquiat’s interest in Milo, tells him that Basquiat will certainly get there one day and then be the main attraction. He reveals to him that he himself is an artist, a sculptor, but that it is good to have a job to make ends meet. He will be 40 soon, he says, and is happy that he has never been very successful as an artist so that he was able to develop his work in peace and quiet. In a well-intentional, paternal way he adds that Basquiat reminds him of himself. The superstar Milo and this unknown artist are two models for an artist’s life that Basquiat encounters early on in the film. Unlike Milo, the sculpting co-worker remains nameless in the film and disappears from the story. Nevertheless, the role is very prominently cast with Willem Dafoe so that the lack of recognition for artists becomes more significant. With due respect for the advice of the older colleague—this sequence already points out which side of an artist’s life fascinates Basquiat more: Spellbound, he observes Albert Milo, his colleague and later rival, whose position looks unattainable at this point in time. Another type of artist is exemplified by Basquiat’s girlfriend Gina, whose real job is working as a waitress. The fact that



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she is an artist is not an explicit subject but it is expressed in a sequence in which Basquiat is clearly set apart from her and virtually destroys her artistic aspirations with his creativity. In a nighttime event while Gina is sleeping but Basquiat is wide awake, he begins to paint over a canvas with a decorative pattern. His painting mania stops at nothing, not even Gina’s dress. During this scene, Van Morrison’s melancholy song “It’s all over now, Baby Blue” is playing and scenes from a black and white puppet movie are inserted dialogically. As Gina is waking up she discovers that Basquiat has painted over her paintings and her dress. She becomes furious and starts screaming at him. Basquiat answers that he couldn’t look at these paintings any more—they are too impersonal and she is much more complex than these paintings. Gina continues to be furious and now paints over his paintings, hitting him in her rage. He attempts consoling her, holds her in his arms whispering tender words in her ear, soon swearing his never-ending love.136 Basquiat clearly does not take Gina seriously as an artist; he even obliterates her in this role. It seems that there is no room for two artists in this relationship. Towards the end of the film when they are already living apart, Gina surprisingly talks about this experience gratefully. She says that she learned through him that she was not a good artist. The problematic turn of this sequence shows that the obliteration of the only female artist in the film had an effect, especially since the character is even grateful for the respectless treatment. As Hoban phrases it (1999, 325), the character Gina seems to “be a composite [of Basquiat’s] girlfriend[s] primarily based on Suzanne Mallouk,”137 who also had artistic ambitions but who, according to Schnabel, had recognized with Basquiat’s help that she was not such a good artist. The character Gina––much like Benny––is mostly a creation of the director rather than a character based on one real person.138

Andy Warhol superstar He was an art hero of mine. (Basquiat in McGuigan 1985, 34) I adore what he was doing. (Bowie in Tremlett 1997, 209)

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There is no other character in which the star images intersect as much as in the one of Andy Warhol.139 On the one hand we are dealing with the art star Warhol in the film narrative and on the other hand we see the pop star David Bowie playing Warhol. Both images are fusing into one another in our perception and therefore I will look at the character Warhol from Basquiat’s as well as from Bowie’s perspective. In order to separate the amalgamation of these images I will start with a short digression into the relationships Basquiat-Warhol and Bowie-Warhol before looking at Warhol in the film. As we read in Hoban’s biography of Basquiat, he had admired Warhol from the moment he wanted to become an artist. Since Warhol did not represent the cliché of the suffering artist, he seemed to be especially suitable as a role model for an artist that Basquiat was striving for (cf. Jane Diaz quoted in Hoban 1998, 203). Basquiat was not alone in his fascination of Warhol. He influenced almost everyone of that generation, in particular since he seemed to embody contemporary art at that time in New York. For Basquiat, Andy Warhol does not only become a role model but also a father figure, friend or mentor. Conversely, Basquiat is seen as protégé, as superstar but also as Warhol’s accessory. That Andy Warhol is represented as an important artist in the film does not only make sense biographically; it underlines also Basquiat’s success story, ensuring the much younger artist very soon a place in the American history of art. Andy Warhol was not only a model for aspiring artists of the 1980s in the USA; he also was a model for other creative professions. As Hoban observes: “… they were like Andy’s children. Andy attracted narcissists who were into fame and their own stardom” (ibid., 202). Especially Warhol’s practice of crossing boundaries between genres in the arts and his “multisexual theater”140 in the Factory in the 1960s as well as his dealings with media—and his creation of images—fascinated many filmmakers and musicians, including David Bowie at the beginning of his career as a pop star. Warhol had already been a model for Bowie before he had met him personally. He seems to have been fascinated by the Factory scene and particularly by Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground singer Lou Reed (Tremlett 1997, 151). The “superstars” of the Factory were using role play and media in the same way as the heroes of Rock’n Roll and at a certain point Pop art, rock music, and the glamor of the gay scene were



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merging. Tremlett even states that Bowie had learned the strategies from Warhol of how one could draw attention to oneself by creating an image based on a good concept from Warhol.141 Bowie’s music video Life on Mars? (1973, D: Mick Rock) is an impressive example, in which we can recognize traces of Warhol’s influence. The video shows the glamrock-Bowie bathed in bright lights, very similar to a Polaroid-aesthetic. We see only the pop star in a white, bright room in whole-body shots as close ups and in detail from below, focused mainly on the extreme eye make-up and the lascivious red mouth. The video on the one hand concentrates on the pop star Bowie’s effect of evoking desire; on the other it also is pointing to Warhol’s filmic language who used close ups, overexposure, and fast zooms in his films and Screen Tests.142 Bowie’s first personal contact with the artist came about through a Warhol double in Warhol’s theater piece Pork staged in London in 1971. “The cast brought to London was led by Tony Zanetta, the actor playing Warhol, with his hair and eyebrows bleached, and that charismatic gaze of dull, dazed, pasty-faced indifference” (Tremlett 1997, 152). Bowie seems to have been impressed by this piece (or the character Warhol); he went to several performances and invited the Warhol actor over to find out some anecdotes about the “real” Warhol. In December 1971 Bowie published a song called “Andy Warhol” on his album Hunky Dory. Shortly before that he had been able to meet Warhol in person during a visit to New York, where he also played him the song.143 Even though Bowie’s song reflects Warhol’s practice very impressively, one can also recognize a sarcastic undertone. Hence it seems that the song did not really arouse enthusiasm in Warhol.144 Nevertheless, Warhol started to follow Bowie’s career and went to his concerts.145 Warhol and Bowie share a stylistic trait even though it is articulated in different decades: Both of them use a kind of flamboyancy and an aestheticism in their masquerades (their artificial characters) that involves an ambiguous game of gender identities. Both artists are so “camp” that one could imagine Susan Sontag had created this term just for them.146 Sontag writes: “‘To camp is a mode of seduction—one which employs flamboyant mannerisms susceptible of a double interpretation; gestures full of duplicity, with a witty meaning for cognoscenti and another, more impersonal, for outsiders” (Sontag 1966, No. 17). She calls this style—if you will—the dandyism in times of mass culture

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that does not differentiate between “unique object and the massproduced object” (ibid., No. 45, 46). These are only a few points from this manifesto-like text that can be related to the stylized personas of both Warhol and Bowie. Nevertheless, there is a historical difference: One can recognize a time shift since according to Sykora Warhol had practiced “a program of non-adaptation”147 with it in the 1950s, and in the 1970s Bowie had his finger on the pulse of his time. Thus, the camp-discourse is also being used for describing Bowie’s manner and appearance in his artificial character and alter ego Ziggy Stardust (1971–73)148 as we can see from an excerpt of a portrait of Bowie in the music magazine Melody Maker from 1972. David’s present image is to come on like a swishy queen, a gorgeously effeminate boy. He’s as camp as a row of tents, with his limp hand and trolling vocabulary. “I’m gay,” he say’s [sic!],“and always have been, even when I was David Jones.” But there’s a sly jollity about how he says it, a secret smile at the corners of his mouth. He knows that in these times it’s permissible to act like a male tart, and that to shock and outrage, which pop has always striven to do throughout it’s [sic!] history, is a ballsbreaking [sic!] process. And if he’s not an outrage, he is, at the least, an amusement. The expression of his sexual ambivalence establishes a fascinating game: is he, or isn’t he? In a period of conflicting sexual identity he shrewdly exploits the confusion surrounding the male and female roles. “Why aren’t you wearing your girl’s dress today?” I said to him (he has no monopoly on t o u n g e[sic!]-in-cheek humour). “Oh dear,” he replied, “You must understand that it’s not a woman’s. It’s a man’s dress.”149 Bowie alias Ziggy Stardust successfully delivers travesty and he plays with gender codes on stage. To a certain extent, Andy Warhol’s artistic practice, his image factory, and his confusing gender stagings have contributed to this. Hence, Zanetta has explained the success of Pork: “We were all perceived as Warhol stars … For a long time I was confused as to exactly why. Part of it I think was because I was playing Andy and the attraction was to Warhol, the way of Warhol. I was the key to Warhol, or something like that … It was a lot about role-playing, and David was lured in



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the same way … He was coming from the same base as we were. Which is basically an inability to be oneself and constructing a new personality in which one could act out one’s fantasies and desires” (Zanetta quoted in Tremlett 1997, 153). Bowie’s fascination with Warhol is interesting in that his projection seems to have made a deeper impression when he saw the Warhol actor than when he met with Warhol in person. This insight indeed underlines the quality of Warhol’s self-staging as a “projection screen.” Warhol even exploits his idea of his own image being a surface so far as to repeatedly engage a doppelgänger and have him appear at different events instead of Warhol himself. Thus, as Wolfgang Ullrich has shown (2002, 128), he is simultaneously putting the phenomenon to the test that famous people and stars are almost always perceived via media and therefore as images, so that doubles of stars are less shocking and in fact being viewed with amusement. Julian Schnabel actually justifies his decision for casting Bowie with the doppelgänger motif: He was a doppelgänger: Was it Andy Warhol playing David Bowie or David Bowie playing Andy Warhol? I couldn’t just pick a regular actor and say, ok, you are Andy Warhol. Cause even Jared Harris was very, very good as Andy [in I Shot Andy Warhol, DB], but he is an actor, so you thought that’s not really Andy. Whereas in my movie you thought that’s a real guy: you thought that’s David Bowie, no, that’s Andy Warhol, no that’s David, you know. (JS Dec 14, 2006) This oscillation between these two stars makes the discussion about star images complicated and fascinating at the same time: How do the two stars Bowie and Warhol actually interrelate and how does the pop star mimic the artist? How must it have been to embody one’s former role model, which Bowie had incorporated already many years earlier into his own star image as “space-age-rock-star” Ziggy Stardust? And what does this mean for Bowie’s image in the mid 1990s?

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David Bowie’s mimicry

FIGURES 3.20–2  Film stills; Andy Warhol with Henry Geldzahler; Warhol in the Factory working on an Oxidation Painting; Warhol during the collaboration with Basquiat



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While David Bowie’s facial features are not very similar to Warhol’s, his stature and way of acting very surprisingly mirror those poses that publicly circulate about Andy Warhol. A frequently repeated gesture by Bowie as Warhol are his fingers leaning against his cheek (Figures 3.20–2) and he often sits with crossed legs absently looking at nothing specific with an unemotional expression (Figure 3.22). It is exactly these gestures, poses, and facial expressions that are to be found in the film- and video portraits of Warhol.150 The unemotional facial expression in particular and the slightly bored speech style that Bowie mimics presents Warhol as an ethereal phenomenon who seems simultaneously absent and lost in reverie but also very present and influential. In order to make the representation even more authentic, several of Warhol’s accessories—like wigs and glasses—were on loan from the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh as props for the film character.151 Bowie’s mimicry here seems to be a proof for his fascination with Warhol. If we understand the concept of mimicry not only as an acting discourse but also as one of identity, then mimicry can also be seen as a performative practice. As Gabriele Brandstetter has noted: Unlike simple imitation, mimicry demonstrates a performance of the performance; i.e., it is physically modeling a strategy that attempts covering up dissimilarity with similarity, and even more—it denotes a procedure of representation in which this similarity is presented as a mask, as a camouflage as it were. Nevertheless,—as in the Karaoke performance—the staged mimicry makes the difference between idol and imitator visible. (Brandstetter 1998, 432–3) Interestingly, David Bowie also takes on different Warhol poses during his own stage performance of the song “Andy Warhol.” Standing with a bent leg and the fingers laid against the face clearly are Warholesque.152 Since Bowie has studied Warhol’s poses and mime very carefully he seems to be particularly predestined for this role; at the same time, he always also remains David Bowie. There was a lot at stake; for example, an unbelievable representation of Warhol in the film would not have been good for Bowie’s career as an actor.153 Julian Schnabel’s decision to have Warhol enter the screen through Bowie’s mimicry and to make the relationship between Warhol and Basquiat into an important thread in the film turned out to be a bold and clever decision, since both stardom and celebrity culture are reflected in both the film and its characters.154

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As to the representation of Warhol in the film: The first meeting between Warhol and Basquiat is taking place in a restaurant in which Andy Warhol and Bruno Bischofberger are having lunch. Basquiat accosts his idol, who at first makes a declining gesture. Only after Bischofberger tells Warhol that he should give him a break, the young artist then pulls painted postcards out of his pocket and attempts to sell them to Warhol. A short dialog follows about postcards and their value. Basquiat does not concede to negotiate for a lower price and Bischofberger gives him a largish bill, whereupon Basquiat gives him all his postcards. From that point on, the ice between the two artists is broken. Warhol, who at first is very reserved, now is more interested in him. He comes to the openings of Basquiat’s shows and begins to make friends with him. Warhol describes his first meeting with Basquiat in the following way: Monday, October 4, 1982: Down to meet Bruno Bischofberger (cab $7.50). He brought Jean Michel Basquiat with him. He’s the kid who used the name “Samo” when he used to sit on the sidewalk in Greenwich Village and paint T-shirts, and I’d give him $10 here and there and send him up to Serendipity to try to sell the T-shirts there. He was just one of those kids who drove me crazy. He’s black but some people say he’s Puerto Rican so I don’t know. And then Bruno discovered him and now he’s on Easy Street … And so had lunch for them and then I took a Polaroid and he went home and within two hours a painting was back, still wet, of him and me together. And I mean, just getting to Christie Street must have taken an hour. He told me his assistant painted it.155 According to Warhol this first meeting initiated a mutual period of artistic production. Warhol took a Polaroid after which he created the oxidation portrait of Basquiat (Figure 3.7). Basquiat produced an expressive double portrait spontaneously on which the two artists can be seen with distinctive characteristics and different styles of painting. Warhol’s pensive posture of his hand, the different hairdos of the two characters, the distribution of light and dark on Warhol and Basquiat, and the different painting styles and forms of representation are quite characteristic (see also Weinberg 2001, 220–2). Even if Warhol already had met Basquiat earlier, it was this meeting that for him was worth mentioning and remembering as the first one. Jonathan Weinberg also talks about the collaborative



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nature at the beginning of this relationship: “Their relationship began around issues of borrowings and exchanges, and the act of mutual portraiture has the flavor of reckoning of accounts” (ibid., 220). The film does not show this first artistic exchange;156 it represents the relationship between the two men as consistently friendly, like for example a well-intentioned exchange at Basquiat’s opening, a joint shopping at Dean and DeLuca’s or a good advice from the older colleague to the younger. Artistic exchange becomes a subject in the film at a later point, taking place at Warhol’s Factory when it is no longer the silver party and production loft but now looks like a fancy gallery.157

The staging of difference: “Both played each other’s other”158 Jonathan Weinberg’s characterization of the relationship between Basquiat and Warhol could also summarize the staging of this relationship in the film: We see a constant appropriation of the other, which also presupposes that the two artists differ from each other not only ethnically but also artistically. Even before Warhol and Basquiat are working together on a painting in the film, there is a dialog that informs us of the difference between the artists: Basquiat enters the Factory with his bicycle as if he were at home there. Warhol is working. An assistant stands on a canvas that is lying on the floor, urinating onto it as directed by the artist (see Figure 3.21). The following dialog humorously shows a game of differing opinions on artistic authorship: BASQUIAT: Dad, I am home! WARHOL: Hi, Jean! Warhol is carefully watching his assistant Frank urinating. WARHOL: That’s great Frank. Can you, I don’t know, wiz over here? Warhol thinks it over and then gestures with his arm. More that way.

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Basquiat leans his bicycle onto the wall and approaches the table where we see a pair of wigs, fancy packing material, and newspapers. BASQUIAT: What’s with the wigs? WARHOL: Oh, I’m going to give them to people for Christmas. BASQUIAT: You think that’s a good present? Who wants an old wig? Basquiat takes one of the wigs, pulls it over his hair approaching the scene of production. BASQUIAT: Oh, Piss painting. WARHOL: No Piss painting, Jean, Oxidation art! BASQUIAT: Yeah, I hate cleaning brushes, too. WARHOL: I am going to do more of these. Frank is drinking this great Mexican beer and it makes you get this great green. BASQUIAT: Why don’t you pee on them yourself? WARHOL: I don’t like beer.159 Warhol’s art production clearly differs from Basquiat’s. In this sequence Warhol is portrayed as a conceptual artist who directs the process but lets someone else execute the work. But Warhol is also a voyeur who acts out his homoerotic desire in his art production. Basquiat, on the other hand, is a painter who would not hand over control of his artistic creation to somebody else. On top, Basquiat’s ironic remark that he also hates washing brushes shows that he does not take Warhol’s technique of production quite seriously. Here the statement of the film is underlining Basquiat’s logic, in which a painter is associated with brush and paint. On the other hand the scene in which Basquiat is putting on one of Warhol’s wigs also expresses his wish to put himself into Warhol’s position, to take on his identity—even if only as a fragment (Figure 3.23). The wig is like a fetish that is being used



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FIGURES 3.23–4  Film stills; Basquiat with Warhol’s wig; Warhol with Basquiat’s wig creation in the film at another point leading into a different direction. Basquiat will give a football helmet to Warhol with dreadlocks hanging out. Warhol will put this elaborate headdress onto his (wigged) head, groaning (Figure 3.24). Fetish on fetish, artificial character on artificial character. The old master who is pulling the work of his younger colleague over his own—an extremely turgid gesture. And still—the two scenes visualize performative strategies of appropriation. Moreover they suggest that Warhol’s and Basquiat’s fascination for each other goes into both directions.

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And it probably was also quite strategic from both sides.160 The artist colleague Keith Haring describes their mutual fascination in the following way: Andy eventually trusted Jean to the point that he would actually let him cut and sculpt his “hair”. The respect ran deeper than just aesthetics. Each had a fascination with the other’s impenetrable shell. The mystery that was Warhol was challenged by the complexities that were Basquiat. Their projected “images” were powerful and uncompromising, while they both harboured a vulnerable, humble spirit which endowed both of them with a sense of humour. They “understood” each other. (Haring 1988a, n.p.) According to Haring’s observation, the mutual recognition seems to have been inspired less by similarities and more by differences. In another sequence on the creation of a collaborative painting, the differences between the two artists are once again illustrated. The sequence starts with Warhol who is sitting in his studio on a chair with his legs crossed, elegantly holding a paint roller in his hands. Warhol is complaining that Basquiat had just painted over his favorite part in the painting. Afterwards we see Basquiat painting over a black painted Pegasus with a white wide brushstroke (Figure 3.25).161 The two artists then examine Basquiat’s change. Warhol remarks coquettishly that he is feeling so meaningless, since he, Basquiat, had become so famous. While Basquiat voices his thoughts about his being famous, Warhol walks over to the painting. He uses a paper stencil to paint over. We see Basquiat again, who is mixing red paint. A reverse shot of Warhol rolling paint over his stencil, then taking it down (Figure 3.27). The logo AMOCO appears. Warhol walks back to Basquiat. While the former is immersed in the emerging painting, he advises Basquiat not to take things so seriously. He also tells him that Bruno Bischofberger is saying that people in Europe were talking about him saying that he was like a candle burning at both ends. Warhol at this point underlines his sympathy for Basquiat saying that he thought it was terrible that people were talking like this and that Basquiat should prove that they were all wrong. Now the camera focuses on Basquiat saying that nobody in the beginning had believed that he would



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FIGURES 3.25–7  Film stills; Collaborative painting sequences

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make it and that if he were clean, then they would say that his art was dead. Basquiat appears confused and also adds that it doesn’t matter now since he was clean and healthy. Warhol responds that this wasn’t true. Basquiat goes back to the painting, takes a pencil and draws over Warhol’s just finished logo. Warhol complains once again that Basquiat paints over everything that he paints. Basquiat continues unperturbed, steps back in order to look at what he just did and says that it was better now. Warhol sits on the floor also looking at the joint painting, hesitatingly gets up asking whether Basquiat really thought so. The camera does not show the painting anymore, but the two artists looking at their work. Warhol says that he was unable to judge whether something is good any longer. Then we see a close-up of Basquiat; behind him appears a markedly overpowering portrait of Warhol by Schnabel. Basquiat says that he wants to go to Hawaii to open up a distillery, write poems, and make music again. At any rate he wants to stop painting. We hear Warhol’s voice from the off: “That would be a pity. You are a real painter.” Now we see the two artists standing in front of their painting, Warhol pensively looking at it with crossed arms. CUT. This sequence is unusually calm for the film and without music. It concentrates on the joint production of art and the dialog between the artists about Basquiat’s being famous. At the same time it also differentiates two ways of painting that distinguishes the two artists from each other. Basquiat’s style is expressive; he appears to paint freely and spontaneously from his subconscious while Warhol first thinks about the motif that he prepares with a stencil and then transfers to the canvas. Expressive and spontaneous versus conceptual and reflexive—that is the mixture of the collaborative process in the film. However, according to Bischofberger Warhol’s advertisement paintings, catch lines or logos were in part created with freehanded brushwork as well. And Basquiat had sometimes used the silk-screening technique usually associated with Warhol (Bischofberger in Osterwold 1996, 113). The film does not show this—their painting technique is clearly different from each other. Even the attire of the two artists is staged in counterpoint. While Basquiat is dressed completely in white, Warhol is wearing very dark clothes. In order to underline the black and white impression, Basquiat paints over Warhol’s black horse with white paint. The staging of this scene seems like one of



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opposite poles. It refers to their different painting styles, to different ethnicities, and to an exhibition poster on which the two artists are shown as boxers. This poster was produced for the exhibition at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in New York (1985) after a photograph by Michael Halsband. Warhol looks slight in a white t-shirt whereas Basquiat appears athletic with a naked torso.162 Despite the contrary coloring, the staging of the creative process in the film and the poster both underline the difference between the two artists via a black and white contrast. The poster was reproduced for the film as well and it can be seen directly following the sequence of the joint creative process in Warhol’s studio. The way their collaborative process is represented in the film strongly resembles a description by Keith Haring. The artist colleague had visited the two several times during their joint work at the Factory and writes about a playful and concentrated atmosphere, during which Andy Warhol was curious and somewhat nervous. But he characterizes the collaboration as a healthy relationship in which they complemented and inspired each other. It seems that it hadn’t been only Basquiat who was enthusiastic about Warhol and who expected to benefit from his fame; Warhol as well “was amazed by the ease with which Jean composed and constructed his paintings and was constantly surprised by the never-ending flow of new ideas” as Keith Haring states (1988a, n.p.). Also Jonathan Weinberg underlines the mutual dependencies and advantages for both artists: Basquiat’s obsession with trademarks was surely about a desire to, as he put it, “build up a name.” And so he was attracted to Warhol, who, more than any other contemporary artist, knew how to convert trademarks into fame. What I think Warhol wanted to learn from Basquiat was how to turn famous names back into feelings, back into a work of art. (2001, 241) In a 1986 interview, Basquiat commented on the collaborative painting process with Warhol: He would start most of the paintings. He would put something concrete or recognizable there, like a newspaper headline or a product logo, and I would soon deface it. And I would try to get him to work some more on it … I would try to get him to do at

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least two things … He just likes to do one hit, you know, and then have me do all the work … We painted over each other’s stuff all the time.163 Without taking every word at face value, there are some interesting points to be made about the artist’s statement. Not only does the staging of this scene in the biopic come very close to his description, art critics attribute Warhol’s return to painting mostly to this collaboration with Basquiat.164 In contrast to the atmosphere during the collaboration it seems that the furnishing of the studio does not correspond to the historic descriptions. Haring has reported that Basquiat and Warhol had been working on many canvases at the same time and that these canvases were hanging on every wall of the Factory (1988a, n.p.). In the film we do not see any other paintings of this collaboration; instead there are several paintings by Warhol like the flower paintings in the background. But the most dominant ones are the large Schnabel portraits that Warhol had already painted in 1982 for an exchange of paintings with Schnabel.165 It is relatively unlikely that these portraits would have been in Warhol’s studio in 1984–85 during the time of the collaboration with Basquiat. Therefore, the setting seems to have another purpose than the reconstruction of a historical scene. One reason could be that

FIGURE 3.28  Film still; Collaboration scene with Schnabel portraits in

the background



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these Warhol portraits were owned by Schnabel at the time and could be used as originals in the film. But with this decision, Julian Schnabel also attests to the exchange between Warhol and himself. And by doing so, he indirectly sneaks himself into that collaboration to which at the time in 1984 he had not been admitted. Originally, the collaboration had been arranged by the gallery dealer Bruno Bischofberger as one between Warhol, Basquiat, and Clemente. Supposedly there had also been talk of Julian Schnabel as partner in this collaboration but Basquiat had been against it, as Bischofberger remembers: Basquiat decided not to approach Schnabel with the collaboration project because, as he explained to me, he felt that an artist like Schnabel, with his strong, dominating personality, could not have prevented himself from influencing or commenting upon the work of the other collaborating artists.166 The setting in the film seems to be like a commentary by Schnabel about that historical situation. Its visual effect can also be interpreted as mirroring the “true” author of this film, who, represented in a painting, is hovering above Warhol and Basquiat. Another element is speaking for the visualization of the “true” artist with this setting. Julian Schnabel had also been working as a copyist of Basquiat paintings by using his painterly skills to copy all of Basquiat’s works for this film, since the trustee of Basquiat’s estate had forbidden the use of the originals.167 Jonathan Weinberg even goes so far as to maintain that in the film Schnabel had stolen Basquiat’s artistic style when he writes, “Schnabel recasts it so that the name Basquiat merges with the name Schnabel” (Weinberg 2001, 225). This seems a bit too harsh of a reproach, but the fact that the painter Julian Schnabel is imitating the works of his colleague for the film definitely opens up fascinating questions with regard to authorship and reproduction, presented on several levels in this film: as a reproduced portrait showing Schnabel as representative subject; as Basquiat paintings copied by Schnabel as secret author, and as film frame with Schnabel as the established director.

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Author—artist—star: Julian Schnabel’s entanglements

FIGURE 3.29  Film still; Reflecting fame Who makes whom famous could be a closing question for the analysis of the film Basquiat, thereby merging artists’ myths and star discourses to a common visual denominator. Is it Schnabel who made Basquiat more famous with this film? Is it Warhol who helps Basquiat to become famous within the story of the film? Is it Warhol alias Bowie who increases Schnabel’s fame? Or is it Basquiat and his story that help Schnabel to be more prominent again? This film still showing Basquiat in Warhol’s Factory (Figure 3.29) paradigmatically signifies, as it were, the various discourses in the film and above all it is a mirroring game between representation and authorship. Seen in the context of the collaborative process between Basquiat and Warhol, this still frame allows us to debate the question of fame in relation to three different artists via their representations. The painting utensils at the right edge of the picture initially refer to the profession of the painter. We see Basquiat embodied by Jeffrey Wright in the foreground musing about the meaning of being famous. He is dressed totally in white and thus the visually accentuated subject of the scene; his pose with his head inclined is contemplative and almost melancholic. It corresponds to the



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film’s story that deals with the positive and negative elements of the career of this artist. Behind the figure of Basquiat we see a portrait—a double silkscreen by Andy Warhol—showing the young artist colleague Julian Schnabel looking longingly directly into the camera, once as positive and once as negative. This portrait is the only visual reference to the “true” embodiment of Julian Schnabel in the film. Thus, as a setting, the portrait becomes all the more significant overseeing the events of the film. This confusing game does not end there. The third artist involved is Andy Warhol, who is not represented in character but through his work (the Schnabel portrait). The physical presence of the Basquiat character, the represented presence of Schnabel and the artistic presence of Warhol also fall into line with the characterization of the different roles of the artists in the film. Warhol—the inaccessible artist who is already established in his stardom, Basquiat—the expressive painter whose biographic drama is the subject of the film, and Schnabel—the director, who remains in the background but who clearly lords it over the scene. Seen in the context of the whole film, the individual “embodiments” in this still also encapsulate the different functions of the artists: Embodied by the actor, Basquiat represents the “body” of the film, connoting its content and its ideology. He is the pivotal element of the biographical narration of the “black” artist in the “white” art system and moreover a sort of allegory for the functioning of the art market and the making of shooting stars. Warhol is the personification of the star cult whose brilliance radiates both from his artistic work in the film and from the character represented by Bowie in the story. And, continuing this thought, the content of this still also points to the film’s creator, Julian Schnabel, who establishes himself on different levels as artist and auteur: by using his artworks and by the direction that the story takes, by its aesthetics and the montage of the film. By using the Warhol portrait as a backdrop, Schnabel’s status as an artist is underlined within the context of the whole film, since it also is pointing to his image within the art field outside of the filmic story. Schnabel’s status as artist thus is confirmed on an iconic level (as image) and on a metaphorical level (as subject of a Warhol painting = art star).

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Cinematic autobiography via side glances at celebrity culture The focus of the film on Basquiat’s life and work is strongly characterized by Julian Schnabel’s autobiographical perspective not only in the sense of the story (the shooting star in the art market narrative) but also in regard to the many stars in the film and its aesthetic dimensions. Brooks Adams has commented on Schnabel’s inserting himself into Basquiat’s story: “[O]n the level of subliminal information, Schnabel keeps making his points, keeps reasserting his own artistic lineage and largely succeeds in fitting Jean-Michel’s life and art into his own pictorial universe” (Adams 1996, 39). This is also the critical aspect of this biopic: Since Schnabel does not reveal the autobiographical perspective of the story he narrates, there are distortions that do not always correspond to the story of Basquiat’s art and life. The quite important role that Schnabel (alias Milo) has for Basquiat in the film is questionable considering the art historical and biographical sources on Basquiat. Neither a constant artistic exchange nor a friendship between Schnabel and Basquiat can be found which, however, is definitely suggested by the film.168 Even though Schnabel underlines that Basquiat had been a good friend of his (JS Dec 14, 2006), there are voices in the Basquiat-literature that assess Basquiat’s relationship to Schnabel quite critically. For example Fred Brathwaite, a friend of Basquiat’s from the graffiti and music scene, writes: … Jean-Michel just didn’t care much for his [Schnabel’s, DB] grand, swaggering style of doing just about everything he did, including paint … Jean just didn’t like his style or care for most of his work, and he let others know this because that’s what we talked about back then. It was all a question of character and aesthetics. It was no secret to me and all those close to the art scene at the time that there was never any real love between them. Yet, Jean clearly wanted the crown Julian wore around so pompously. (Brathwaite 2002, 61) The film shows Basquiat’s fascination for Milo’s/Schnabel’s fame but hardly his critical attitude towards the artist.169 It is absolutely



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legitimate and interesting that we see Jean-Michel Basquiat’s life and work in the perspective of Julian Schnabel. But the film veils the autobiographical perspective of the director, which is what makes it problematic. The view of the biopic with the same subject could be seen much less critically if the question of perspective—the “who speaks?”—also would have been depicted in the film and thus become part of the narration. Instead, Schnabel is suggesting by way of a voice-over of the critic that we are going to see Basquiat’s path to fame from the perspective of a critic. This authorizing gesture of the director accentuates not only Basquiat’s status but also that of Schnabel as an artist of the 1980s. Adams writes: The movie also, and not a minute too soon, mythologizes and historicizes the ’80s as a glamorous and dissolute golden age of art and hype. In this sense, it presents in a new way a decade that has already achieved an aura of retrospective excess and pathos. On Schnabel’s part, this is a canny move—a first step towards memorializing and apotheosizing his own ’80s achievements as well as Basquiat’s. (Adams 1996, 40) Schnabel in no way conceals his autobiographical motivation when being interviewed. He says that this film was not only about Basquiat but also about the young artists of the times and the specific historical situation in New York, underlining more the development of a generation than his personal situation (JS Dec 14, 2006). Already in Schnabel’s autobiography CVJ Nicknames of Maitre D’s and Other Excerpts from Life (1987), his focus on the shortcomings of the art market and the role of the artists are made explicit. Thus, the biopic Basquiat can definitely be seen as an extension of his autobiographical approach. And besides, the film is literally full of Schnabel quotes and of family members. His parents Esther and Jack Schnabel act as Milo’s parents. Lola, Schnabel’s daughter, plays her own mother Jacqueline Schnabel (Milo), who was Schnabel’s wife at the time. Stella, another daughter of the artist, is acting as herself, and Olatz Lopez Garmendia, Schnabel’s partner at the time of the film production, also takes on an uncredited role. Schnabel filmed at his studio, his artworks appear in the movie, and last but not least there is the character in the film, Milo. Apart from these obvious self-inscriptions of the director, the

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biopic can also be included into Schnabel’s oeuvre from a stylistic and aesthetic point of view. Compared to other biopics, this film contains procedures and stylistic elements that are connected to Schnabel’s creative process of production. For example, the “homage” is a familiar form of expression for the artist. Schnabel does not only speak of an homage to Basquiat in the context of the film (Schnabel quoted in Saada 1997, 65); he is also paying tribute to his artist colleagues and idols in painting series170 or single works like in JMB, Aug 12 (1988), on which we see Basquiat’s initials and his death date.171 We can see this painting in the biopic as well, even though it did not yet exist in the time frame of the film. It functions more like a dark omen when Basquiat is visiting Milo at his studio; showing him the painting, Milo asks Basquiat whether he likes it and tells him that he has painted it for a friend who passed away. Basquiat looks at the painting reverently while Renata Tebaldi sings “D’amor sull ali rosee” from Verdi’s Il Trovatore lending pathos and an almost sacral mood to the whole scene. In the background another large canvas is transported across the studio. It is a painting on a Kabuki theater stage set dedicated to Joseph Beuys, Milo says, while stroking the painting.172 But there is no evidence in the art historical literature that this painting was indeed dedicated to Beuys whereas with Tomb for Joseph Beuys (1986), Schnabel has dedicated a sepulchral sculpture to Beuys in the year of his death. Beuys had a special significance for him, as Schnabel often stressed in interviews and which he now also weaves into the film.173 In short, it is part of Schnabel’s artistic practice of establishing relationships to other (n.b. well-known) artists.174 The biopic is particularly well suited for suggestive inscriptions. In this case, Schnabel is constructing his own artistic genealogy with the orientation of the story and by way of using his paintings.175 This film also connects with Schnabel’s earlier artistic career providing information about his interests and iconographic program.

Painterly filmmaker One could call Julian Schnabel’s way of working “painterly filming.”176 Pictorial metaphor and citations from history and art history are just as much part of Schnabel’s paintings as they



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are part of his films (see also Moos 2010). To explore the idea of painterly filmmakers, it certainly would be interesting to have a closer look at the work of Derek Jarman, Andrej Tarkovskij, Peter Greenaway, or even Jean Luc Godard to a certain extent. This can serve here only as a suggestion for possibly triggering new ideas.177 In this context the term “painterly filming” is meant to compare the content and formal means of Schnabel’s cinematic practice in Basquiat with Schnabel’s painterly practice. When asked whether Schnabel believed it was possible at all to represent a painting process in a feature film, Schnabel answered positively. However, he sees the possibilities less in representing it by acted it out but more by working with cinematic means to find visual equivalences for depicting the creative process in film: “It is not just illustrating something. It’s showing you how it feels, it’s showing you how it puts you in that situation. So you are reacting to it rather than reading it” (JS Dec 14, 2006) as Schnabel underlines the “artistry” or specificity of film as an audio-visual medium.178 References to reality through an actor’s performance take a back seat for him. Rather, the representation of the artistic process is lifted from the iconic and indexical level to a symbolic and affective level by staging it with cinematic means in Basquiat. Thus, those sequences in which we see the actor Wright painting or writing or spraying are more characterized through montage (jump cuts) and music than by the acting. When showing the collaboration between Basquiat and Warhol, there is a stronger narrative focus on the dialog of the two artists than an observation of the painting process, directing the viewers more towards an empathetic perception. Comparing this with Pollock, the actor/ director Ed Harris concentrates far more on the performative abilities of the actor in order to represent the artistic process; this again underlines his professional background as an actor. Contrary to this, Schnabel underlines how for him the indexical means are less interesting than presenting feelings. It is the emphatic quality of a feature film that Schnabel is underlining, which includes the use of film music.179 The sequence, in which Basquiat is sinking into a drugged delirium and seeing a creative work emerge while we hear a piano piece as if from an old shellac record is a very good example for this. Another example shown shortly before the end suggests the feeling of freedom when Basquiat stands in pajamas in an open jeep driving with Benny through the streets

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of New York and the viewers hear the appeasing song Summer in Siam by The Pogues. The director is also employing visual symbols on the narrative level as carriers of meaning like a pink shawl that is used as a marker for a woman whom Basquiat desires. The pink shawl on the one hand signifies Big Pink’s allure when she lasciviously slides it from her neck across her shoulders and on the other for the “true” love of Gina who is wearing it like a Madonna. The shawl is an “objet de passage” taking on different connotations when it is passed on and eventually signifies Basquiat’s promiscuous life style. Schnabel underlines the somewhat fragmentary structure of the story by using different found footage materials as visual commentaries and including them in the cinematographic narrative like for example the surfer sequences. The sequence in which Basquiat is shown watching videos after Warhol’s death even goes beyond that when Schnabel merges footage of Jonas Mekas’ film Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol (1982) with scenes he shot himself in “Mekas style” in which Bowie acts as Warhol.180 He integrates a sort of “docufake” that only becomes recognizable as such when watching it several times and comparing it with the actual Mekas film. Quotes from other narratives are included in the final sequence, in which the young Basquiat as a young prince is locked in a dungeon and the shepherds in the fields feel his presence waiting for the savior. With these set pieces from biblical scenarios at the end of the film, Schnabel on the one hand makes the whole story quite fictitious while on the other hand he ties it closer to the historical artists’ myths in which, following the Christian doctrine, the artist is seen as savior (cf. Neumann 1986, 82–92). This sequence also corresponds to the sequence in the beginning of the film in which the young boy Basquiat is “enlightened” when looking at Picasso’s Guernica and appears as a “divine child.” This almost pathetic sequence is mirrored in Schnabel’s work as a painter and in his interior decoration in which he shies just as little away from great myths and pathos; they rather characterize his “style.”181 Thomas McEvilley’s assessment of the historical context in Schnabel’s work as a painter can also be made productive here: History expresses itself in the work, and the self reveals itself through the sense of history … One of the characteristic motifs



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that recent art has used to portray relations between self and history is fragmentation.182 Citation and fragment are stylistic attributes of Schnabel’s art and his artistic environment, the Neo-Expressionists. Schnabel’s art is a mirror of this era, of postmodernism, even if his manner can seduce us to think of modernist myths. Nevertheless, a postmodernist approach often shows an interest in older myths but also the impossibility to be able to narrate a single, complete story. Fragment and citations make it possible to internalize history, even if only in parts. For example Schnabel’s broken plate paintings reflect this interest in content and form. Citation and fragment are also used in the film as stylistic elements. They characterize the biopic on the narrative level by way of visual metaphors and on the structural level by laying bare techniques of montage. When asked about his style of directing, Schnabel repeatedly underlines his painterly approach to film: “Most directors use a literary and linear map, I use a painter’s map. What I choose to look at, what I illustrate by music, where I put the camera, it’s all painterly. If rain isn’t in the script, and it starts raining, I don’t stop. I go with the rain.” (Schnabel quoted in O’Hagan 2003) He answers the question where he sees the challenges when painting or shooting a film with: Basically, I am a painter. So, my process of a filmmaker is just an extension to that … I don’t have the same parameters as filmmakers have. So they think, they need to tell the story in a certain way. I am not looking at the way they do it, I am looking at the way I do it, and that’s why it is new or radical to the filmmakers, cause they don’t see people that think like me very often. (JS Dec 14, 2006) Schnabel does not separate the different modes and practices of production conceptually.183 But pragmatically, there are quite a lot of differences, as can be seen in the physical separation between film sets, editing room, and painter’s studio. The proportions of an editing room and studio, both production spaces, could hardly be more different in Schnabel’s case, in particular since he needs a big studio for his mostly large-scale paintings, while his editing room has the functionality of a bare-bone office in which everything is

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concentrated on the monitors. Apart from that, interior design is another creative outlet for Schnabel. He is just as well known by now for the theatrical features of “schnabelesque spaces” (Berger 2011, 83–4) as for his visual art that always finds a suitable place within them.184

The authorship of an “interartist” In Basquiat, many of the sequences as well as individual frames are characterized by an “intericonicity” that mirrors Schnabel’s way of working as a painter. The film still shown above (Figure 3.29) is a representative example in which the “multimedial coexistence” clearly leads to a “conceptual collaboration” (Hensel 2006, 218). The artist who establishes himself as auteur with such interwoven frame/image-compositions is Julian Schnabel.185 Hensel has coined the term “intericonicity” in regards to the cinematography of the Russian director Andrej Tarkovskij, particularly in his film Andrej Rubljov (1966/69). Hensel calls it a “poetics of intericonicity” that also has a bearing on the understanding of authorship: I want to introduce a concept of auteur film that does not only conceive of the director as “auteur,” as the Nouvelle Vague has implemented it, but more so as a visual artist who presents himself as someone who casts in bronze and who paints icons. Unfolding the term author in this specific way it is therefore necessary to work out the ideo-aesthetic content of Andrej Rubljov that specifically takes into account the “relationships between the pictorial and the cinematographic” (Aumont) elements. (Hensel 2006, 218) Despite Tarkovskij’s approach stemming from a different era (1960s), referring to a different time (the Middle Ages), another cultural context (the Soviet Union), and different political circumstances (communism), it can be connected with Schnabel’s cinematographic practice. Even though the political auspices could not be more oppositional, capitalism can also be extremely repressive when it is a question of how to retain one’s artistic freedom in a field like Hollywood’s film industry.186



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Schnabel’s self-confident handling of authorship and the fact that he insists on artistic freedom reflects his professional background as a visual artist. For it is in the field of art where the responsibility for and the decisions about the production process still lie with the artist himself. Also, the authorship of an artist is sealed with his signature that is immanently visible in the work. The signature in a film is limited to the credits in the opening and the closing and at best can be recognized in the cinematographic “style” of the director informing about the control (or lack thereof) of the production that in itself is always based on a division of labor in film. Julian Schnabel has underlined the importance of artistic freedom: “The more I think about my early experiences that led me to become an artist, the more I think it all has to do with freedom, really. The freedom of not being held back” (Schnabel quoted by Enright 2003, 34). This freedom of not being held back in one’s expression not only characterizes Schnabel’s decision to become an artist but also his change of media and his interest when shooting a film: “… all the movies have been about freedom and the idea that the work is completing your impulse to freedom” (JS Dec 14, 2006) says the filmmaker from his experience as an artist. It certainly is a hard challenge to leave one’s mark in the film industry. The all-encompassing influence of a director and the right to have the final cut becomes more and more rare. Often the final version of a film is more linked to the various decisions of the producers than to those of the director.187 Schnabel is not the only one to seek his artistic freedom in film; he can be situated in the tradition of the auteur film (whether Nouvelle Vague or later New Hollywood), in which the directors are attempting to free themselves from the mechanisms of the film industry, thereby insisting on artistic control and their status as author (cf. King 2002, 85–115). In 1986 Martin Scorsese for example stated that wish in the French daily Libération to be able to work like a painter when shooting a film: “The important thing would be to make films as if you were a painter: To paint a film. To physically feel the weight of the paint on the canvas. Not to be bothered by anybody. To leave an unfinished painting and to start a new one. To make smaller and smaller self-portraits.” (Translated from Aumont 1989, 252188).

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Also the Russian director Andrej Tarkovskij is attempting an approach to work on his films more and more closely to his ideal of absolute authorship (Hensel in Hensel et al. 2006, 217). According to Andrew Sarris, who has worked on the discourse of “La politique des auteurs” in the Anglo-American context, the characteristics of an auteur are “the technical competence of a director,” “the distinguishable personality of the director” and the director’s concern with “the interior meaning [mise en scène], the ultimate glory of the cinema as art” (repr. in Caughie 1999, 62–4). If we link Schnabel’s work as painter with his work as filmmaker he would be an auteur in the sense of the “politique des auteurs.” First of all Schnabel’s “trademark” in his paintings and in his films is equally recognizable and he keeps repeating subjects like fragmented historiography or the freedom of artistic production; he also uses different modes of expression in the respective media and underlines their specificities thereby proving his competence. Moreover, it certainly does not weaken him as an auteur when his status as a painter is underlined; on the contrary—the fact that he is answering the repeated questions whether he sees himself as a painter or as a director by maintaining that he is in the first place a painter has to be seen within this context of authorial legitimacy. When Basquiat appeared in the movie theaters, there had already been two successful painter colleagues who had been working as directors of commercial feature films: David Salle with Search and Destroy (1995) and Robert Longo with Johnny Mnemonic (1995). Chris Chang connects the phenomenon of visual artists attempting to find their place in Hollywood’s landscape with the collapse of New York’s boom in the art market and quite laconically judges the new sphere of activity: “No longer content with the gallery, museum or underground screen, the egos dream of conquering new territory: the Multiplex.”189 Unlike Schnabel, Salle and Longo have not continued working on other film projects to date whereas Schnabel has become an established director by now. As Calvin Tomkins writes: “Schnabel has not only mastered the craft but made a film that succeeds, in mass-market Hollywood terms and on its own terms, as a work of art” (Tomkins 2001, 122). Seeing Schnabel either as a filmmaker or as painter not only falls short but is sometimes also ideologically shaped in the Schnabel reception: “Predictably, the New York art mafia was now saying that Julian Schnabel had found his true métier, as a filmmaker––the implication



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being that we can forget about him as a painter” (ibid.). By now Schnabel is even described as a director who also paints and not as a painter who also directs (Kennedy 2007). Notwithstanding the fact that Schnabel is first and foremost a “fine artist,” that he is trained as such and has been moving in the art world for several decades, the attribute “painter” and the authorship connected to it clearly falls short regarding his manifold activities. The label auteur in the cinematographic context is only possible if we connect his fields of work with each other. Initially, the neologism “arteur” seems to be suggestive—a journalistic term for Julian Schnabel’s profession coined by the New York Times.190 I prefer, however, to use the term “interartist” in this context.191 It includes the “both—and” of different art forms but it is not limited to authorship. It also takes Schnabel’s function as an artist who is working in different media and on intermedial relations into account. It is exactly this practice of connecting the media and their fields that allows Schnabel to work as painter, sculptor, filmmaker, and interior decorator with a signature style repeatedly underlining his authorship.

Under the banner of hybridity Basquiat could be described as a biopic that is characterized by hybridity, if we consider a general definition of hybridity as a mixing and merging of genres, languages, and cultures. In addition, the discourse on hybridity can be referred to both within and outside of the film narrative: The biographic and ethnic locating of Jean-Michel Basquiat exemplifies a process of creolization, a term that itself is based on the concept of cultural hybridity (see Homi K. Bhabha 1994, and Stuart Hall 2003, 185–98). Also Basquiat’s artistic process is characterized by mechanisms of “appropriation, assimilation, and incorporation” (Schulte in Schneider and Thomsen 1997, 249, 251) or of “mixing, sampling, and blending” (Ha 2005, 75)––all constituting a hybrid practice (cf. Reichling 1998, 33–52, and Dimitriadis and McCarthy 2001, 80–5; 92–6). Also, what I have described as the “intericonicity” of the film is characterized by the hybridity of media that refers equally to Schnabel’s way of working with different media and his authorship

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as “interartist.” Thus, Basquiat literally falls into line with the “hype of hybridity,” which according to Kien Nghi Ha has become the guiding and structuring principle of postmodernism in urban industrial societies in the era of globalization. Ha states that mass consumerism and upscale cultural markets are fascinated by fractured simultaneity emerging from the oscillation of dissolution and reassembly of differences on the fragile borderlines of genres (Ha 2005, 60–1). In fact, the term hybridity could also be transferred to the film genre of biopics and to the softening of its genre-specific boundaries. For Basquiat is just as much a biopic as it is an “autobiopic” and a historicizing portrait of New York City’s art world in the 1980s—underlining the “both-and.” It is interesting to note that Schnabel refuses to see his film as a biopic since in his opinion that would be too limited (JS Dec 14, 2006). Schnabel’s dislike against genre-labeling is in tune with other film productions of the time and their historiographic classification in film studies (cf. Neale 2000, 60). Since the middle of the 1990s, so-called “genre benders” are popular again, an endeavor that was initially established in New Hollywood Cinema (cf. King 2002b, 116–46). In “genre benders” the rigid structures of the genres (western, film noir, melodrama, comedy, science fiction, horror film, musical, etc.) are mixed up, deconstructed, and criticized exactly because of their set and stereotyped ways. Schnabel knows these films and their discourses. He is even a loyal fan of Godfather I and II (1972, 1974) by Francis Ford Coppola, who was a prominent representative of the New Hollywood Cinema.192 This means that Schnabel—with his statements against being labeled in a genre— also locates himself in a certain film historiography that can be associated with the auteur film, i.e., the film with artistic aspirations.193 His rejection of this genre is also symptomatic for an attitude against the Hollywood mainstream cinema. While biopics still contribute greatly to an image boost in the industry especially for actors, they contribute little to a director being distinguished as auteur. The Academy Awards of the last years attest to this. It is symptomatic that Basquiat was not nominated for any recent Academy Award194 but honored with nominations in independent cinema festivals.195 Even though Schnabel does not want his film interpreted as a biopic, Basquiat still carries the name of an artist as its title, has a



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historic artist as its main character, and has episodes from Basquiat’s life around which other characters are grouped forming its main storyline. If we see biopics as films in which the life or certain episodes from the life of a famous person are being told while keeping the historical name, then this film can clearly be defined as a biopic.196 The lasting success of the film and the repeated television broadcasting can certainly be attributed to its focus as a biopic and moreover it was marketed as such. For example on the film poster, on most of the covers of the DVD and the soundtrack CD, Wright/Basquiat is depicted as the only artist. Also, it was advertised with statements like “Explosive! Basquiat will make sparks fly” or “Basquiat defies expectations!” It cannot be more obvious that this film is understood as a biopic. But if we take the autobiographic perspective of the film and its production context into consideration, then its approach reveals a biopic marked by hybridity.

Notes 1 Basquiat aka Build a Fort, Set It on Fire, D: Julian Schnabel, USA 1996, 108 mins; Script: Lech Majewski, John F. Bowe, Michael Holman, Julian Schnabel; Cast: Jeffrey Wright (Jean-Michel Basquiat), Michael Wincott (René Ricard), Benicio Del Toro (Benny Dalmau), Claire Forliani (Gina Cardinale), David Bowie (Andy Warhol), Dennis Hopper (Bruno Bischofberger), Gary Oldman (Albert Milo), Christopher Walken (Interviewer), Willem Dafoe (Electrician), Parker Posey (Mary Boone), Elina Löwensohn (Annina Nosei), Courtney Love (Big Pink) and others; Music: John Cale, Julian Schnabel; cinematography: Ron Fortunato; Film editing: Michael Berenbaum; Production design: Dan Leigh; Executive producer: Joseph Allen, Peter M. Brant, Michiyo Yoshizaki; Producer: Jon Kilik, Randy Ostrow, Sigurjón Sighvatsson; Co-producer: Lech Majewski; cf. also: www.imdb.com 2

Only John Maybury’s film on Francis Bacon Love is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (GB 1998) appeared in a similarly short period, only six years after the artist’s death. Otherwise the following pattern in biopics on artists can be observed: Toulouse Lautrec died in 1901; Moulin Rouge came to the theaters 51 years later in 1952. Vincent van Gogh died in 1890; Lust for Life could be seen on the big screen 66 years later in 1956. Jackson Pollock died in 1956 and the biopic Pollock was released 44 years later

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3

The biography was published only in 1998 and became a national bestseller (see Hoban 1998).

4

Ricard (1981b, 35–43). Ricard writes about the then new art and graffiti scene in downtown Manhattan. He underlines mainly the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, attempting to classify them art-historically. An interesting aspect of this article questions the shift of authorship in artistic practice—from graffiti in public spaces to works being informed by graffiti in the art field. But this reflection is not featured in the biopic.

5

It is astonishing that the gallery dealer Larry Gagosian is not one of the characters in the film even though he was responsible for the artist’s success in Los Angeles. But supposedly he made one of his galleries in New York available as a film location of what appeared as Mary Boone’s gallery. See Schnabel in Weinreich (1996).

6

Roberta Smith is criticizing the film as suggesting that Basquiat, Warhol, and Milo/Schnabel had been the only artists in the city; cf. Smith (1996).

7

See Muñoz (1996, 144–79) or Weinberg (2001, 211–41).

8

On the discussions about celebrity culture see Rojek (2001), Marshall (1998), and Mattl (2005, 56–63).

9 See Celebrities. Andy Warhol und die Stars (2008). On the phenomenon of art stars see Walker (2003, 193–259). 10 Jeffrey Wright had just become known through the Tony Award he received in 1994 for his role as Belize in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. 11 The exhibition Superstars in 2005 has addressed the cultural phenomenon of the “celebrity principle” in the arts in detail. This exhibition strained its own discursive aspirations a bit too much, stretching it from celebrity culture as subject in the arts to celebrities from the world of film and media to the “celebrity principal” in industrial products. Although it brought together a large field, it also was indistinct and arbitrary at times. 12 Interview with Julian Schnabel by Nicola Kuhn, “Fleddern Sie einen Mythos, Herr Schnabel?” in Tagesspiegel (December 12, 1996).



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13 Not only Julian Schnabel and the producer Peter Brant knew Basquiat and Warhol as well as the gallery dealers represented in the film personally; we also know this about Dennis Hopper and David Bowie. 14 Jones (2005, 163); see also Reichling (1998, 17), dissertation www. sub.uni-hamburg.de/opus/volltexte/1998/65/ 15 In reality, Basquiat’s origin has more to do with the Creole culture than with an African American background. His father is Haitian and his mother comes from Puerto Rico. Since the postcolonial discourse in the United States is mostly informed by African American history it is (and can) also be connected with the Basquiat reception. In the art historical texts we mostly read of an African American context. Susanne Reichling thinks that the correct term should be “Afro-American artist with Caribbean background” but she also writes of Basquiat as an African American artist in order to simplify. Cf. Reichling (1998, 12, n. 44). This dissertation is the first scholarly work of my knowledge that specifically analyzes the African American context in Basquiat’s work. Interestingly, it was written by a German scholar at the University of Hamburg, Germany. 16 On a general discourse of Creole linguistic usage see Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau, and Raphaël Confiant (1993); Okwui Enwezor and Carlos Basualdo (2003). 17 The following chronological selection of extensive articles that have appeared while Basquiat was alive allow us to imagine the notoriety and fame of the artist during his lifetime: Ricard (1981b, 35–49), Smith (1982, 84); Gablik (1982, 33–9); Geldzahler (1983); Lubell (1984, 45); McGuigan (1985, 20–35, 74); Raynor (1985); Dowd (1985, 26–42, 87–8, 100); Bosetti (1986, 126–7); Graw (1987, 44–51); Wines (1988). On the state of research regarding Basquiat until the production of the film in 1996 see Reichling (1998, 1–6). 18 The exhibition Flashback, curated by Philipp Kaiser at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Basel (Switzerland) attempts a new way of reading or a more differentiated historization of the 1980s in which not only those works are considered that were successful in the art market. It is interesting to note that in this exhibition neither works by Julian Schnabel nor by Jean-Michel Basquiat were included. See Kaiser (2005). On the activist art of the 1980s see Felshin (1995) and Bolton (1998, 23–50). 19 For instance, see about Larry Gagosian’s success story in Glueck (1991a).

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20 During this boom in the art market that concentrates on painting we can observe a backlash regarding artistic achievements and an expansion of the idea of art. The focus clearly lies on marketable products; process-oriented works that were developed in the earlier concept- and performance-art were rarely shown in the museums during this time. This phenomenon can be clearly observed in the development of the Documenta. After Harald Szeemann’s revolutionary documenta 5 (1972), Manfred Schneckenburger’s documenta 6 still showed many performative works as well as new media. At Rudi Fuchs’ documenta 7 to which in 1982 also Basquiat was invited, mainly paintings were shown; see Mythos Documenta (1982); Vogel (2002); Glasmeier and Stengel (2005). 21 “Because of its narrative form every myth requires its ‘creation myth,’ the point of origin from which everything followed” (Ford 1996, 4). 22 Ibid., 3. 23 Silverman (1986, 11). See also Hoban (1998, 187). 24 Hoban (1998, 20). Basquiat says about his mother: “When I was a kid my mother beat me severely for having my underwear on backwards, which to her meant I was gay” (ibid., 17). 25 Davis (1986). This video was shown in the “Basquiat” retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and MOCA in Los Angeles as a didactic tool on a monitor. The footage of the interview served as Davis’ point of departure for her documentary film Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child (2010). 26 Ibid., 21. 27 Nevertheless racism can be found in any class of American society. 28 On Basquiat’s biographical background see Hoban (1998, 16–22). 29 For example in the paintings Natives Carrying Some Guns, Bibles, Amorites on Safari (1982), Untitled (Black Tar and Feathers) (1982) or Untitled (Maid from Olympia) (1982) and Undiscovered Genius of the Mississippi (1983). 30 SAMO in slang means “same old.” Basquiat remembers finding the name when the two of them were students at a Brooklyn Heights high school in the following way: “We were smoking some grass one night and I said something about it’s being the same old shit, SAMO©, right? ‘Imagine this, selling packs of SAMO©!’ It started like that—as a private joke—and then it grew” (Faflick 1978, 41). Reichling believes that SAMO© could also be derived from “Sambo,” a racist term for the stereotype of the always cheerful black entertainer entertaining a white audience (Reichling 1998, 12).



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31 It said for example: “SAMO© AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO GOD, STAR TREK, AND RED DYE NO. 2,” or “SAMO© AS AN END TO MINDWASH RELIGION, NOWHERE POLITICS, AND BOGUS PHILOSOPHY,” or “SAMO© SAVES IDIOTS,” “SAMO© AS A NEW WAVE NEO ARTFORM,” “SAMO© AS AN ESCAPE CLAUSE” (Faflick, ibid.). 32 In his article in the Village Voice, Faflick underlines some site-specific references by mentioning where in the city certain SAMO©-phrases could be found. On the discourse regarding “site-specificity” see also Kwon (1997, 85–110). 33 “Colab is a post-SoHo phenomenon, a reaction to the clogged channels and art-for-art’s sake orientation of the post-Minimalist academy. Most of Colab’s members are committed to social change, approaching art as a radical communications medium rather than as a circular dialogue with the art traditions of the past” (Deitch 1980, 60). 34 See ibid., 58–63. One of the first exhibitions by Jeffrey Deitch as director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles dealt with the graffiti phenomenon. See Art on the Streets (2011). 35 See Jacob Baal-Teshuva (1999) or Osterwold (1996). 36 Information from an email interview of the author with Lizzie Himmel on January 7, 2006 (LH Jan 7, 2006). 37 Supposedly the version for the cover picture was chosen by the editors (LH Jan 7, 2006). 38 Ibid. 39 However, Lizzie Himmel also sees a kind of absent-mindedness caused by drugs in the eyes of the artist (LH Jan 7, 2006). Even though this version of the photograph is the one most reproduced in catalogs, it is not the one from the cover of the New York Times Magazine. 40 It is the triptych Untitled (1985), acrylic and oil paint stick on plywood, 85.4 × 108.27 in. In comparison to the reproduction of this work in the catalog, one can see that the work on the photograph is still unfinished and that some parts were added later, like for example the inner organs of the black figure or some expressively painted planes. 41 Even though Himmel explains that Basquiat’s being barefoot had to do with her fury at having left out the shoes when she chose the outfit, the visual effect suggests a certain “crudeness” of the artist.

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42 See also the pictures in Baal-Teshuva (1999, 14, 39). Later on, Himmel also shot a double portrait of Warhol and Basquiat (see ibid., 156). 43 The painting is Flexible (1984), acrylic and oil crayon on wood, 259 × 190.5 inches. The sculpture is a painted wooden crate. 44 “Van Der Zee was ‘discovered’ at the age of 82, when a photo researcher named Reginald McGhee stumbled on his collection of 75,000 photos covering six decades of African American life. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art featured his work in an exhibit called ‘Harlem On My Mind,’ and almost overnight, Van Der Zee received national recognition. In the early 1980s, 60 years after the Harlem Renaissance, celebrities—this time with names like Bill Cosby, Muhammad Ali, and Lou Rawls—flocked to sit for Van Der Zee portraits” (ibid.). 45 For a history of melancholia in the arts see Wittkower and Wittkower (1963); for an exhibition see Clair (2005); for a literary history see Wagner-Egelhaaf (2002). 46 A representation of the “downtown bohemia” can be found in the artistic documentary by Edo Bertoglio. At the time when it was made in 1980, it was called New York Beat. The film was only completed in 2000 under the title Downtown 81. The film shows Jean-Michel Basquiat as both a sprayer and musician, following him through the streets of lower Manhattan. Downtown 81, D: Edo Bertoglio (USA 2000), 72 mins; Script: Glenn O’Brien; Producer: Maripol. See also Jean-Michel Basquiat 1981 (2007). 47 See the illustrations in Andy Warhol Photography (1999, 277–9). 48 Warhol had already been creating so-called Piss Paintings since 1961 that unlike the Oxidation Paintings consist solely of urine on canvas. These Piss Paintings are usually differentiated from the Oxidation Paintings. See Appendix 4, Piss Paintings in Frei and Printz (2002, 469). 49 “I told Ronnie not to pee when he gets up in the morning––to try to hold it until he gets to the office, because he takes lots of vitamin B so the canvas turns a really pretty color when it’s his piss.” Warhol Diaries (June 28, 1977, 55). 50 “Warhol’s usual oxidation process provides only a trace of a performance, in which young men put their genitals to work for Warhol. The Oxidation Paintings are like the stained sheets of an erotic encounter” (Weinberg 2001, 212). 51 Illustrations in Andy Warhol Photography (189) and a selection of Polaroids (188). More versions of the above work—on a red



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background and as a fragmented arrangement—are shown in Andy Warhol Portraits (1993, n.p.; Ill. 39 and 40). 52 From the Andy Warhol Diaries: “… healthy as a horse, he’s put on twenty pounds, and he was just in Jamaica, and he looked actually handsome” (June 1, 1983, 503); “I hadn’t thought Jean Michel would come, but while I was waiting in line at the airport he appeared, he was just so nutty but cute and adorable” (Oct 5, 1983, 534); “The tourist business in Haiti is down to nothing. Probably the tourists were only there secretly for the big cocks. Because Jean Michel is half Haitian and he really does have the biggest one” (November 29, 1983, 541); “He fell asleep and then he got up and he was up front by the phones with a big hard-on, like a baseball bat in his pants” (April 12, 1984, 565). 53 Some of the entries in Warhol’s diary could possibly also give evidence of an imagined relationship with Basquiat. The Andy Warhol Diaries: “And oh, I really missed Jean Michel so much yesterday. I called him up and either he was being distant or he was high. I told him I missed him a lot. He sees a lot of Jennifer Goode, and I guess when they break up he’ll be available again” (October 14, 1985, 685); “Jean Michel hasn’t called me in a month, so I guess it’s really over … Can you imagine being married to Jean Michel? You’d be on pins and needles your whole life” (November 24, 1985, 695). 54 The large-scale portrait of Julian Schnabel (1982, 108 × 80 in.) shows the artist as an existentialist, alone in front of a fence in a wilderness landscape. He is shown in a tank top and pants, visible to his knees, taking up only a quarter of the image. The silkscreen is a black and white photo collage with an ochrecolored background. The portrait of Keith Haring and Juan Dobos (1983) is a portrait in two parts, showing the two men as lovers hugging each other with naked torsos. One part is the black and white photograph and the other underlines light and shade in the photograph with blue, yellow, and red coloring. Francesco Clemente’s portrait in black and white silkscreen (1982) shows the artist as a dreamy dandy, wearing suit and tie and interlacing his fingers on his head. All portraits are silk screens, see Ill. 36, 37 and 38 in Andy Warhol Portraits. 55 As in Basquiat’s works Charles the First (1982), CPRKR (1982), Untitled (Sugar Ray Robinson) (1982) or Riddle me this Batman (1987). 56 The upper case in “Black” was deliberately chosen by the author to accentuate his point.

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57 See de Antonio and Basquiat (1984); Bourriaud (1988), and particularly after his death Hershkovitz (1988); Haring (1988b, 230–4). 58 On the advantages and disadvantages of the collaboration between Warhol and Basquiat see Muñoz (1996, 144–79) or Weinberg (2001, 211–41). 59 This has far-reaching consequences. For example in the overview American Art in the 20th Century, edited by Christos M. Joachimides and Norman Rosenthal among the 66 featured artists, there are—very revealingly—only two African American artists represented (David Hammons and Jean-Michel Basquiat). Female African American artists are not included at all, even though artists like Betye Saar, Faith Ringgold or Adrian Piper have importantly influenced American art of the twentieth century. Only during the recent years are African American artists fortunately losing their “exceptional status.” 60 “Basquiat is likened to the wild boy raised by wolves, corralled into Annina’s basement and given nice clean canvases to work on instead of anonymous walls. A child of the streets gawked at by the intelligentsia. But Basquiat is hardly a primitive. He’s more like a rock star … [He] reminds me of Lou Reed singing brilliantly about heroin to nice college boys” (Deitch quoted in McGuigan 1985, 32). 61 In the biography, the image on the cover is interpreted as a statement against the establishment (ibid., 246). 62 Julian Schnabel had two solo exhibitions at the Mary Boone Gallery in 1979 that established him as an art star whereas Basquiat’s name recognition was initially established as a young graffiti artist in the Village Voice at the end of 1978. Hence, both artists first became famous in different fields. 63 “We were very good friends, in fact, almost like brothers … He said to me that he wanted to get in the ring with me and he wanted to win the heavy weight title. That’s what that was about, and if you look at it, certainly his paintings are more expensive than mine now.” Julian Schnabel in an interview with the author in New York on December 14, 2006 (quoted as JS Dec 14, 2006). 64 Glueck (1984). A similar characterization that speaks of Schnabel’s self-centeredness, generosity, and openness can be found in Tomkin’s portrait of Schnabel. See Tomkins (2001, 120–9). This description of Schnabel corresponds very much with my own observations during my meeting with the artist. It was scheduled as an interview and became a day with the artist, during which I saw him work on different projects and interact with many different people.



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65 Roberta Smith seems to even see a Schnabel mini-retrospective in the film since he is showing different works of art from the 1980s and 1990s. For the historical context in the film, she maintains, this is a faux pas since the film ends with Basquiat’s death in 1988 (see Smith 1996). 66 The producer Peter Brant also points this out as a positive when he says: “Basquiat worked because Julian knew the subject matter. He turned it a little bit into a self-portrait. That gave it a flair as well” (see BP Sept 20, 2005). Jonathan Weinberg writes as well: “Basquiat was less a coming to terms with its subject than a self-portrait of Schnabel” (Weinberg 2001, 214). 67 See Schnabel (1996). He makes a cautious statement about his film saying: “Maybe ‘Basquiat’ is about me, because I made it. But it’s not about me. I was just a messenger” (quoted in Weinreich 1996). 68 Schnabel (1987). The meaning of the title is not explained in the book. It might mean “curriculum vitae Julian.” 69 “The film Basquiat, with great simplicity and deeply touching emotions, superbly traces this meteorite’s trajectory” (Toubiana 1997, 63). Just as positive are Nave (1997, 40–1), and Seeßlen (1996, 39). Bruzzi is more critical but generally positive (1997, 35–6). 70 Levy (1996, 48). Just as critical is the review by Messias (1996, 15). 71 In a chapter with the provocative title “Basquiat Recycled: From Fakes to Films” Hoban is saying that Schnabel had forever wanted to make a film and that he simply appropriated the project of the scriptwriter Lech Majewski; cf. Hoban (1998, 327). 72 For his second film Before Night Falls (Spanish title Antes que anochezca) (2000) about the gay Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, he was awarded the special prize of the jury at the Venice film festival and the actor Javier Bardem was nominated for an Oscar in 2001 for the best actor. His third film Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (English title The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) (F/USA 2007) about the editor of Elle France, Jean-Dominique Bauby, who “wrote” a book despite a locked-in-syndrome, was even more successful. The film was nominated for the Palm d’Or and Schnabel won the Best Director prize in Cannes; in the US the film was even nominated for four Oscars. The film was also a huge success among critics and won altogether 56 prizes and was nominated for 41 awards (last check: 2014). Other film projects are the concert film Lou Reed’s Berlin (2007) and the feature film Miral (2010); www.imdb.com.

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73 See Hollein (2004), Julian Schnabel (2007), Moos (2010), and Julian Schnabel (2011). 74 I was able to observe this at the opening of the exhibition Julian Schnabel: Big Girl Paintings (2002) at the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills, where Dustin Hoffman, Gary Oldman (Schnabel/ Milo in the biopic), Dennis Hopper (Bischofberger in the biopic), Vincent Gallo (a former Gray band member with Basquiat), David Lynch, and Elton John were visiting among others and with them a great number of paparazzi. In February 2008, the year in which his film was also nominated for numerous film awards, Schnabel had another opening during the Oscar ceremonies at the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills; cf. Lee (2008). The article is full of celebrity portraits from the Schnabel opening. 75 This was attempted in the exhibition Julian Schnabel: Art and Film at the Art Gallery of Ontario, see Moss (2010). 76 Jon Kilik (born in 1956) according to the International Movie Database has produced or co-produced 42 films, many of them with a socio-political content. i.e. Miral, D: Julian Schnabel (2010); W., D: Oliver Stone (2008); Miracle at St. Anna, D: Spike Lee (2008); The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, D: Julian Schnabel (2007); Babel, D: Alejandro González Iñárritu (2006); Broken Flowers, D: Jim Jarmusch (2005); 25th Hour, D: Spike Lee (2002); Skins, D: Chris Eyre (2002); Bamboozled, D: Spike Lee (2000); Pollock, D: Ed Harris (2000); Summer of Sam, D: Spike Lee (1999); Pleasantville, D: Gary Ross (1998); Dead Man Walking, D: Tim Robbins (1995); A Bronx Tale, D: Robert De Niro (1993); Malcom X, D: Spike Lee (1992). As line producer he worked for Spike Lee’s films Jungle Fever (1991), Mo’Better Blues (1990) and Do the Right Thing (1989). He also is the producer of all of Schnabel’s films existing so far. See www.imdb.com 77 Among others in Weinberg (2004); quoted from the Internet version: www.forbes.com/business/forbes/2004/0412/064.html, which is no longer available. 78 The Basquiat retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum (March 11–June 5, 2005), afterwards at the MOCA in Los Angeles (July 17–October 10, 2005), and from November 18, 2005–February 12, 2006 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston showed many items on loan from The Stephanie and Peter Brant Foundation; see Mayer (2005). 79 See also the article by Lubow on Brant that starts off with a portrait of Brant painted by Schnabel, showing him well-dressed in suit and hat, striding ahead confidently. There is also a photograph on which



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Brant and Schnabel are shown at the beach arm in arm; see Lubow (2008, 168, 171). 80 See PB Sept 20, 2005. Bob Colacello tells about Warhol’s worry in case Peter Brant would finance the film Bad: “Andy also fretted about ‘Peter taking over’ … He [Andy] told me ‘If Peter ever gets mad, he can just dump all the paintings he owns in auction and ruin my prices. We’re just too involved. I mean, it’s like Peter is my boss now.’” www.warholstars.org/filmch/bad. html. 81 The writing credits on the International Movie Database are as follows: Story: Lech Majewski; based on a story by John F. Bowe; written by Julian Schnabel; story development: Michael Holman; cf. www.imdb.com.

Even though the name Julian Schnabel appears in the credits with “written by,” Brant says that he had only contributed a small part: “He did a little bit. Julian is the kind of guy, who thinks he can do everything. That’s his weakness. But that’s positive too, because it gives him the energy to do a lot of things. But writing is not his strength. He is a great director and a great art director” (PB Sept 20, 2005).



Reichling reported that Holman’s version of the film script pointed out Basquiat’s friendships with graffiti artists as having been important to him as well as his relationship to his father. But there is none of this in the film (see Reichling 1998, 18).

82 See PB Sept, 2005. In the US alone Basquiat grossed $2.96 million in 1996—a sum that almost covered the budget right away. See www. imdb.com. 83 Schnabel quoted from Hoban (1996). Unlike this quote, Schnabel answered my question why he chose Wright as follows: “He had a voice like Jean-Michel. And I guess he was also a black man living in a white world” (JS Dec 14, 2006). 84 The prototype of the Van Gogh films is Lust for Life, D: Vincente Minnelli (USA 1956). A bit more experimental are Vincent & Theo, D: Robert Altman (USA 1990) and Van Gogh, D: Maurice Pialat (F 1991) but both of them still cater to the myths. One could also count the episode “Crows” in the film Yume (Dreams), D: Akira Kurosawa (J/USA 1990) among the Van Gogh films, in which a student discovers Vincent van Gogh’s works and immerses himself into the world of his paintings. 85 We read on the fountain: “PAY FOR / SOUP / BUILD A / FORT / SET THAT / ON FIRE SAMO [crown].” A part of this phrase

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PROJECTED ART HISTORY “Build a Fort, Set It on Fire” is also listed on the International Movie Database as the second title of the film but it is no longer on other products like the DVD.

86 Quotes from the script Basquiat, www.awesomefilm.com/script/ basquiat.txt and amended by my own film transcript (from 0:2:52 to 0:4:00). The statements are based to a large part on René Ricard’s article (1981b, 38). 87 The artist’s shoes as a motif can also be seen in Pollock. 88 In reality this is a sign for his well-educated middle-class background. But since this sequence is taking place outside of the narrative frame of the film we don’t explicitly realize this. This event is also documented; see for example McGuigan’s article in the New York Times Magazine (1985, 28) describing the lasting impression of Picasso’s Guernica for Basquiat’s work that he supposedly saw at the Museum of Modern Art as a teenager. 89 The crown also appears later in Basquiat’s work. As an emblematic motif next to SAMO©, it is used as his signature in graffiti and sometimes also in his paintings. 90 Hebdige (1992, 62). With this statement Hebdige is referring to the article entitled “Il Picasso nero. È bagarre per l’eredità Basquiat,” in Il Giornale dell’Arte, no. 93 (October 1991: 4). 91 “This was my advice: don’t give him the picture. Kids do that. Trade. That’s what real artists do with each other” (Ricard 1981b, 40). 92 We could assume that Benny is an artist since he is showing a music video that he obviously made for Basquiat. At a later point in the film we could also assume that he is a musician since he calls Basquiat in his studio complaining to Ricard that Basquiat has not come to the rehearsal. But during the performance of the band Gray at the Mudd Club, Benny is not one of the musicians. 93 The filmic character Benny could be related to the band member Michael Holman since the video that Benny is showing to Basquiat is in reality Holman’s. Moreover, Holman has contributed to the script as well. But it could also be the Puerto Rican graffiti sprayer Lee Quinones at whose place Basquiat supposedly had lived for several months in 1978. See Reichling (1998, 21). 94 On the use and meaning of music in films see Kassabian (2001). 95 Kassabian connects “compiled scores” with “affiliating identifications” unlike “composed scores” that are coupled with “assimilating identifications.” “[Compiled scores] depend on histories forged outside the film scene, and they allow for a fair bit



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of mobility within it. If offers of assimilating identifications try to narrow the psychic field, then offers of affiliating identifications open it wide” (ibid., 3). A large part of the music used in the film was also chosen for the published soundtrack on CD. 96 Kellie Jones criticizes the lack of an ethnic community in the film as well: “Julian Schnabel’s film Basquiat (1996) offered a vision of an artist who had no black/Latino community, where graffiti, hip-hop (and even punk rock), and multiculturalism did not exist” (Jones 2005, 179, n.34). 97 Reichling reports that Basquiat canceled his participation in the group exhibition “Black and White Show” in 1983 at the Kenkelaba Gallery, curated by Lorraine O’Grady in the last minute, since he was at the same time also negotiating with Mary Boone Gallery. Reichling draws the conclusion that therefore exhibiting at a small “black” institution was not attractive for him any longer. Cf. Reichling (1998, 29). Weinberg also observes that Basquiat did not identify with the few African American painters that were successful at the time; see Weinberg (2001, 225). 98 Apart from Basquiat and Holman also Shannon Dawson and Vincent Gallo were founding members of the band; see Sirmans (1999, 236). 99 After he separated from Al Diaz in 1979, Basquiat sprayed his SAMO-phrases alone. 100 He portrayed himself together with his friends in paintings like Hollywood Africans or Hollywood Africans in Front of the Chinese Theatre with Footprints of Movie Stars (both 1983) or with the Puerto Rican sprayer Toxic in Toxic (1984) or his colleague A-One in Portrait of A-One a.k.a. King (1982). 101 The biography also states “Willie Mays” as a nickname for Basquiat (see Hoban 1998, 57). 102 Information from the Academy of Achievements, Washington DC, www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/may0pro-1 103 Jean-Michel Basquiat: An Interview, D: Paul Tschinkel (1989), 34 min. (New York, Inner-Tube Video, no. 30). I would like to thank Paul Tschinkel for providing me with a copy of the interview and for his information about the making of this video. The interview was done in 1983 but it was only made public in 1989 as part of Tschinkel’s video series Art/new york. This series documents the New York art scene since 1979 through interviews with artists, critics, gallerists, and curators by visiting exhibitions and studios. It was also shown on public television in the US. In this series there

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PROJECTED ART HISTORY are also two video contributions on Schnabel (see Expressionist Painting, no. 18 as well as Young Expressionists, no. 19), both of them from 1983. By now there are 61 program compilations; the last one is a documentary on Robert Mapplethorpe from 2006. See www.artnewyork.org/ (last accessed March 8, 2007). Even though Paul Tschinkel made the video interview with Basquiat available to Julian Schnabel who asked for it, it is not mentioned anywhere in the closing credits (Tschinkel in an interview with the author in New York on December 16, 2006).

104 Eddie Murphy’s star image as a macho loudmouth with streetcredibility is successful with both white and black viewers. See Julien and Mercer (1996, 459–60). 105 This can also be seen from Basquiat’s answer to the question often asked in interviews whether he saw himself as a black artist: “I don’t know whether the fact that I am black has anything to do with my success. I don’t believe that I should be compared to black artists. I should be compared to all artists” (Graw 1987, 45).

On the discrediting label “woman painter” see the statement on Krasner’s quality as an artist by Hans Hofmann: “This is so good that you wouldn’t know it was done by a woman.” Hofmann quoted in Naifeh and White Smith (1989), 386. On the other hand the label “black painter” or “woman painter” could also contain a political component of self-assertion if they come consciously from the artists themselves.

106 Basquiat told this story often as example of the daily racism he encountered in New York; cf. Hoban (1998, 13); similarly Graw (1987, 45). 107 According to Schnabel this scene took place between him and Basquiat. Basquiat supposedly paid him back the $3,000 (JS Dec 14, 2006). 108 See Reichling’s chapter “Basquiat als Erforscher, Archivar und Vermittler afroamerikanischer Kultur und Geschichte” [Basquiat as explorer, archiver, and mediator of African American culture and history] in Reichling (1998, 53–68), in which she makes the interesting attempt to locate Basquiat less within the context of neo-expressionist painting but rather connecting it to the context-art of the 1990s. 109 In almost all the characters, whether Warhol, Milo (aka Schnabel), Benny or Gina, ethnicity could be studied since they are all of different origins. But the “white” man or the “white” artist is not identified or accentuated as such. Instead, “whiteness” is the norm and any ethnic



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discourse is opened up as difference to the white skin, as Richard Dyer has observed. In this respect, he suggests that one should also speak of whiteness in order to minimize the power imbalance: “The point of seeing the racing of whites is to dislodge them/us from the position of power, with all the inequities, oppression, privileges, and sufferings in its train, dislodging them/us by undercutting the authority with which they/we speak and act in and on the world” (Dyer 2003, 301); see also Dyer (1997) and Berger (1999).

When considering the factor that a white artist tells the story about a black artist, a different question can be asked: What would have happened if for example Spike Lee had done the film? In all probability there would have been different episodes and characters in order to stage Basquiat’s identity as “black art star.” This scenario is not supposed to qualify Schnabel’s film in any way—it only wants to illustrate once more the focus of the perspective at hand.

110 The script says: CHRIS … What is it—did your girlfriend leave you? BASQUIAT: No! I have a boyfriend. He loves me. The scene in the film looks like this: BASQUIAT: The City is killing me. CHRIS: Tell me about it! You are talking to the right guy. How is it killing you? BASQUIAT: Boyfriend left. CHRIS: I have been there. Do you love him? BASQUIAT: Not especially.

In the biography the scene is described as follows: “One time, Clifford recalls, Basquiat played a prank by calling the suicide hotline, then amused himself by speaking in cryptic phrases, naming colors, making up nonsense. Clifford taped him on a continuous loop—they both considered it a bit of performance art” (Hoban 1998, 48–9).

111 Ibid., 54–5. Most of Basquiat’s affairs that are accounted for in the biography were with white people; supposedly he also had an affair for some months with Madonna (ibid., 160–7); see also Morton (2001, 152–4). In his diary Andy Warhol repeatedly writes about different girl friends and says: “He’s got three or four girls on the string now” and “Can you imagine being married to Jean Michel? You’d be on pins and needles your whole life.” Warhol Diaries (March 9, 1985, 631 and November 24, 1985, 695).

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112 “Basquiat’s guardian angels were not always women. For a while, Basquiat stayed with Wayne Clifford on Fifty-ninth Street and Seventh Avenue. Clifford lived with an older gay friend, and he and Basquiat occasionally made money as male hustlers” (Hoban 1998, 49). 113 One of the anecdotes in the biography is the following: “Basquiat hung out with [Kenny] Scharf, [John] Sex, and [Klaus] Nomi, and for a short while was Nomi’s lover. ‘Jean-Michel and Klaus liked each other. Jean loved it when Klaus spoke German. But he gave Klaus gonorrhea four times. Klaus got pissed off when Jean wouldn’t help pay for the medical bills,’ remembers Joey Arias, a singer/drag performer who was a good friend of Nomi’s and is the executor of his estate. A few years later, Nomi became the first downtown celebrity to die of AIDS” (Hoban 1998, 50–1). Basquiat’s changing affairs are described by his lover Patti Anne Blau with the metaphor of being a whirlwind (ibid., 63). 114 According to the film Downtown 81 Courtney Love embodies Basquiat’s girl friend Tina Lhotsky whom he also-called “Big Pink.” Big Pink, who in the film wears a pink scarf is described as follows in the biography: “He called her ‘Big Pink,’ a nickname that originated with two black men who saw her sauntering down the street in a pink, polka-dotted sixties dress. Their relationship began in late summer of 1981. Lhotsky, a big, plush blonde who looked like an East Village version of Jessica Rabbit, was an underground filmmaker and actress … Lhotsky was part of the first wave of artists to move into the East Village in the seventies, and she got involved with the Mudd Club at its inception. Like many downtown characters, she reinvented herself as a larger-than-life persona, a sort of archetypal B-movie bombshell and lethally overgrown Lolita” (Hoban 1998, 74). 115 See Downtown 81 (2000). On the bonus track of the DVD, there is footage of Basquiat’s appearance in the New York television show TV Party with Glenn O’Brien from 1979. Film stills from both films are repeatedly published in catalogs. 116 McGuigan writes that Basquiat’s works are not only published in art magazines but also appear in fashion spreads or in fancy houses as can be seen in House & Garden (McGuigan 1985, 23). 117 On Simpson’s homepage there is a separate column dedicated to the subject “metrosexual”; cf. www.marksimpson.com/ 118 The article appeared on July 22, 2002 at http://dir.salon.com/story/ ent/feature/2002/07/22/metrosexual/index.html 119 Charles Baudelaire’s “Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne” was published in 1863 in three parts in Le Figaro. First translated into



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English in Baudelaire (1964). For the section “The Dandy” see pages 26–9. 120 “… the most amazingly true aspect of the film—the uncanny performance of Jeffrey Wright, who Jean seemed to channel a sizable portion of himself into for the role” (Brathwaite 2002, 61). 121 Wright quoted in Hoban (1996). Unfortunately I was not able to get an interview with Jeffrey Wright to ask more in depth about his perception of embodying Basquiat. 122 This scene is reminiscent of a statement in Schnabel’s autobiography in which he is staging himself as an older, experienced artist. It is transferred here to Basquiat’s situation; see Schnabel (1987, 23). 123 M = crown, / = new line. Part of this sentence “Build a Fort, Set it [!] on Fire” is also presented on the International Movie Database as the subtitle of the film. As a motto it is almost programmatic for the film’s story and besides this sentence appears on several of Basquiat’s works as in Untitled (1980), oil, spray paint, varnish, felt tip pen on canvas; see Marshall (1998, 76). In the series of drawings Untitled (Suite of Fourteen Drawings) (1981) there is a piece captioned with this sentence and a sprayed spot. This series belongs to The Stephanie and Peter Brant Foundation, Greenwich, Connecticut; see Mayer (2005, 25). 124 A description that is underlined by Keith Haring later on when he writes about Basquiat’s and Warhol’s collaboration: “… Jean painted anywhere he found himself. He would create with whatever materials were readily available on whatever surface would sit still long enough to draw on” (Haring 1988a, reprinted in Warhol & Basquiat 2011, 33). 125 The word ALI on the object could refer to the famous boxer Muhammad Ali. It would fit into Basquiat’s series of works in which he was writing the names of African American stars from sports and music onto his paintings, thereby honoring them, like in Untitled (Sugar Ray Robinson) (1982), Untitled (Jackie Robinson) (1982) or CPRKR (1982). But in fact there is no work by Basquiat that looks exactly like this one; there is a painting called Cassius Clay (1982) that looks very different and a piece entitled Now’s the Time (1985), acrylic and oil paintstick on plywood on wood, 235 cm radius, which looks formally similar. This work also belongs to The Stephanie and Peter Brant Foundation, Greenwich, Connecticut. 126 These jump cuts don’t really make any sense content-wise. They are rather used to bring rhythm into the sequence attuning the viewers to the following scenes.

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127 In comparison to the painting sequence of Mural in the film Pollock we can see that the creation of a single artwork takes four minutes. 128 Schnabel quoted in: Glueck (1984). On his strategic ruminations from 1981, three years before the separation, Schnabel writes: “I had been making very large paintings. But Mary Boone’s gallery remained small as my paintings got bigger. About this time, Leo Castelli expressed a serious interest in my work; he had a very large gallery. I felt that Leo and Mary had different areas of expertise. She was much more familiar with my work, but he represented to me a tradition of long-standing good faith with artists I respected. Besides, I needed the room. So I decided to allow both dealers to represent me. Though I felt confined by Mary, the reason I didn’t leave her altogether was that I didn’t want to get lost in Leo’s stable. I liked being in both places a lot. Of course, it was an honor to be the first artist that Leo had taken into his gallery in twelve years. But I think this single act of acceptance placed me in the middle of a storm of jealousy and antagonism that has not abated. The controversy has focused attention on me at the expense of my work” (Schnabel 1987, 185). 129 In his few appearances in the film, the character of the curator Henry Geldzahler is also shown as an amiable man, as somebody who supports artists and does not use them. 130 Brant stated that Dennis Hopper was his and Julian Schnabel’s friend; see PB Sept 20, 2005. 131 It is interesting to note that in the exhibition catalog Andy Warhol Photography (1999) there are four Bischofberger portraits (1969) included next to a Dennis Hopper portrait (1971). Even though they do not look alike so much on other photographs, through the filter of Warhol the two men resemble each other. Since the book was published three years after the biopic, this juxtaposition looks like a visual proof for the truly successful casting. 132 See www.brunobischofberger.com. He also has business relationships with the producer Peter Brant, reportedly going back to the beginning of the 1970s when he produced the Warhol film L’Amour together with Bischofberger; see Hoban (1998, 143–4). 133 In Chuck Workman’s documentation Superstar. The Life and Times of Andy Warhol (1990), Hopper is sitting next to a work by Basquiat during an interview of his time with Warhol. After Hopper’s death in 2010, part of his collection, which included works by Warhol, Schnabel, and Basquiat was auctioned off. See www.bloomberg.com/news/2010–07–16/dennis-hopper-art-sendswarhol-basquiat-to-10-million-sale.html.



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134 The biography also narrates this dialog (saying “Schnabel” instead of “Milo”) but in a different context, namely when Ricard visits Basquiat at his apartment to look at his works. See Hoban (1998, 94). In the film, however, the staging appears much more sexually connoted. 135 “There’s no room for real friendship because any human exchange is just seen as a step in a careerist climb. Much time is spent nurturing liaisons with creatures of the art world mechanism” (Schnabel 1987, 183). Besides Ricard also has published several texts on Julian Schnabel; see Ricard (1979, 125–6 and 1981a, 74–80). All these texts have been reprinted in a catalog that was published the same year as the film: Julian Schnabel, exhibition catalog Galleria d’Arte Moderna Bologna (1996) along with a new interview (192–8): “The Princely Tradition. Interview between Julian Schnabel and René Ricard—August 1996.” 136 In comparison to Pollock it is interesting to note that the destruction of a painting (in this case a painting by Lee Krasner) takes place there as well. But this was taken out of the movie version and is only visible on the bonus material on the DVD. Unlike in Pollock, this destruction of the painting scene absurdly enough is the only proof of Gina’s artistic ambitions. 137 Phoebe Hoban describes Gina as “a composite girlfriend primarily based on Suzanne Malouk” (Hoban 1998, 327). 138 Schnabel confirms this assumption with the following reason: “Suzanne Mallouk was one girlfriend and Eric Goode’s sister was another one, who was with him later. Page Powell was another girlfriend he had, but essentially, Gina was based on Suzanne Mallouk. But when Claire Forliani came to see me, she was nothing like Suzanne Mallouk, but she was so good at what she was doing, that I decided to change my mind about who this character is and made another character” (JS Dec 14, 2006). 139 A similar phenomenon can be observed in the character of Bruno Bischofberger as well, played by actor star and artist Dennis Hopper. 140 See Sykora (2006, 215) in which she analyzes Andy Warhol’s portraits until the middle of the 1960s with a focus on self-reflection in media and Warhol’s eroticized gaze. 141 Warhol writes about this in a similar way in his diary by simply paraphrasing this statement from Tony Zanetta’s book, who played Warhol in the theater production Pork; see Warhol Diaries (September 5, 1985), 757.

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142 Conversely, it is also known that Warhol was inspired by many other artists. His Polaroid series Self-Portrait in Drag (1981/82) can be seen as reminiscent of Bowie’s video. 143 David Bowie, “Andy Warhol,” album Hunky Dory (1971, 3:53 min). The following description of the album on a music site almost sounds like Andy Warhol’s art: “Hunky Dory a kaleidoscopic array of pop styles, tied together only by Bowie’s sense of vision: a sweeping, cinematic mélange of high and low art, ambiguous sexuality, kitsch, and class.” (Stephen Thomas Erlewine, www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:08qog4gttv2z). 144 Bowie’s biographer describes the meeting in the following way: “The moment the song finished, Warhol hurriedly left the room, without a trace of any reaction. ... Just as they were wondering what was going to happen next, Warhol came back, said, ‘That was great, thank you very much’ ... and then took out a polaroid camera. Without any explanation, Warhol started taking dozens of photos of Bowie, his face expressionless, not saying a word and not letting Bowie see any of the photos, until suddenly he noticed Bowie’s delicately cut Italian-made yellow shoes. That broke the ice. ... Bowie had come closer to Warhol than he ever knew, but Warhol still would not say why he left the room so suddenly. There was no way the one poseur would let the other poseur know that words could hurt him ...” (Tremlett 1997, 157). According to Warhol’s biographer Victor Bockris the meeting took a similar course—only the Polaroid photo session did not occur, interestingly enough: “In fact the meeting was tense and uncomfortable, with Warhol saying little except that he liked Bowie’s shoes, seemingly confounded by Bowie’s song ‘Andy Warhol’, which the rock star made a point of playing for him” (Bockris 1989, 344–5). 145 Cf. “Only two tickets came for the David Bowie concert and everyone wanted to go.” Warhol Diaries (May 8, 1978), 132. 146 Even if Sontag is differentiating Pop art from camp at the end of her essay, almost every remark reads like an early observation of the Warhol phenomenon. Sontag also visited the Factory since there were some Screen tests made of her between 1963 and 1966 (see Ofner 2005, 156). Conversely it seems that Warhol was also oriented on Sontag’s remarks, in particular since he made a film entitled Camp (1965) one year after Sontag’s text appeared. 147 Katharina Sykora refers to Warhol’s partially effeminate self-staging, his artistic expression of a feminine encoded design and the homosexual image contents (Sykora 2006, 297).



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148 There is also an extensive fan homepage on Ziggy Stardust; see www.5years.com/ 149 Watts in Melody Maker (1972). It can also be found on the Ziggy Stardust fan homepage www.5years.com/oypt.htm. In this review of the Ziggy Stardust album Watts writes in Melody Maker: “Campness has become built-in to his public persona. I mean that, however, in a far from derogatory sense. The main preoccupation of David’s work is not directly gay sexuality, though that element is there, as with a flourishing theatricality and dramatic sense” (1972). 150 See Superstar. The life and times of Andy Warhol, D: Chuck Workman (USA 1990, 85 min.); Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film, D: Rick Burns (USA 2006, 234 mins). The Andy Warhol of the 1980s can be found in Scenes from The Life of Andy Warhol: Friendships and Intersections, D: Jonas Mekas (USA 1982, 38 mins; published 1990); Andy Warhol. Made in China, D: Lee Caplin (1989, 30 mins). 151 This anecdote is mentioned quite often; it is also quoted by Schnabel in Weinreich (1996). 152 Bowie takes on Warhol’s poses during the song and during musical solos he assumes the pose of a rock musician thereby bringing one of his pop star images into the song; see the recording of a concert at www.youtube.com/watch?v=M28zdObcVPY 153 Since 1976 Bowie has also appeared in different films and TV series. His most well-known films are: The Man Who Fell to Earth, R: Nicolas Roeg (1976); Just a Gigolo, R: David Hemmings (1978); Absolute Beginners, R: Julien Temple (1986); The Last Temptation of Christ, R: Martin Scorsese (1988); Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, R: David Lynch (1992); Basquiat, R: Julian Schnabel (1996); Mr. Rice’s Secret, R: Nicholas Kendall (2000); The Prestige, R: Christopher Nolan (2006); August, R: Austin Chick (ZA 2008). He also has composed the music for a number of films. In 1997 he was awarded a star on the Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard. For a more detailed list of his involvement in film see www.imdb.com. Moreover, Bowie has also worked in the field of fine arts, see www. bowieart.com. 154 According to Brant it had been possible to get Bowie for the role since Schnabel is a friend of Bowie’s (PB Sept 20, 2005). 155 Warhol Diaries (October 4, 1982), 462. In a small variation of the anecdote told by Bischofberger, Warhol asks whether Basquiat was such an important artist for a portrait session. But the statements

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PROJECTED ART HISTORY about the painting Dos Cabezas are identical; cf. Bischofberger in Osterwold (1996, 109).

156 In his diary Warhol also writes about Basquiat’s smell and the size of his penis connecting them with his ethnic origin. These rather racist and prejudiced comments are not mentioned in the film either; cf. Warhol Diaries (August 3, 1983), 519; (November 29, 1983), 541; (April 12, 1984), 565. 157 Already in 1968 Warhol moved his studio to 33 Union Square West. What we see in the film is this second Factory. It also mirrored the socially recognized status of the art star. See the illustrations in Celant (1998). 158 Weinberg (2001, 237–8). 159 Transcript DB from the film. In the script the sequence ends with a slightly suggestive statement by Basquiat, which is lacking in the film: “If you ever want me to shit on ’em, just ask. You could finger paint.” 160 Warhol’s biographer Bockris sees one reason in Warhol’s stagnating or even sinking success: “Warhol at the time had gotten to the bottom of the sea of his own career. Before he met Jean-Michel Basquiat, he actually had a show of dollar-bill-signs––which didn’t sell. He was at a real low point before he started to collaborate with Jean-Michel, and he was sort of in love with him. The association with a new young hip artist was very valuable to Warhol. But you have to understand Andy to understand that Jean-Michel represented to him the fabulous, miraculous beast of the subversive artist. Andy saw in Jean-Michel exactly what Jean-Michel could be, which was a Warhol Superstar burning brightly in the night, before it disintegrates with delight. Jean-Michel’s career paralleled many Superstars’—two years of extreme fame, and then disintegration, even death” (Bockris in an interview with Hoban, see Hoban 1998, 207). 161 The painting in the film refers to Amoco (1984). In the original painting there is only one Pegasus on the right side; on the left is a penguin. Whether the left horse first had been there in the original painting and then was painted over cannot be determined. But since Basquiat also wrote other words onto the horse on the right than on the original, one can assume that the second horse on the left is being used in the film for illustration purposes. On the one hand an exact iconographic accord with the original and the reproduction for the film does not seem to have been a priority and on the other the winged horse Pegasus also signifies the inspiration of poets and with this symbolic meaning



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could be pointing to the inspiration of the two artists in this context. 162 The poster was reproduced for the film with Bowie and Wright instead of Warhol and Basquiat. A similar strategy can be recognized at a later point in the film when several scenes shot in “Mekas style,” in which Bowie plays Warhol, are inserted into the found footage of the Jonas Mekas film on Warhol. 163 Basquiat interviewed in Beverly Hills in 1986; see the documentary by Davis (2010). In fact, it is surprising how close the documentary is to the biopic, even though the biopic came out 14 years before. The big difference is that we get to see the “real” Basquiat along with a wider selection of friends than the biopic features. But in terms of story-telling, it almost seems as if the narrative of the biopic influenced the narrative of the documentary. 164 In her scathing review of the collaboration, Vivien Raynor (1985) is writing that Warhol had been working again with brush on canvas for the first time since 1962. 165 Andy Warhol, Portrait of Julian Schnabel (1982, acrylic and silk-screen on canvas, 108 × 244 in.); collection Julian Schnabel. Ill. in McShine (1989, 442). Schnabel had also painted a portrait of Warhol: Julian Schnabel, Portrait of Andy Warhol (1982, oil on velvet, 108 × 120 in.). Ill. in Schnabel (1987, 95). 166 Bruno Bischofberger. “Collaborations: Reflections on and Experiences with Basquiat, Clemente and Warhol.” See www.brunobischofberger.com/sbasquiat.htm. Also in Osterwold (1996, 112). Schnabel supports this statement in his autobiography as well: “The difficulty that we [Basquiat and Schnabel] had all those years was me taking up all the room. There’s a selfishness that is embedded in one’s nature, and it’s a prerequisite for being an artist” (Schnabel 1987, 81). 167 Schnabel answered the question why he had painted the paintings himself: “First of all, I didn’t have the rights to use his pictures. And you know it wasn’t difficult to paint those paintings. I mean he had a difficult time to invent that way of painting, but to copy them wasn’t very hard. I did it with my friend Greg Bogin, who was a painter also, and we did them all in about two weeks.” He says in the interview that he had also copied Picasso’s Guernica for the film (JS Dec 14, 2006). 168 A joint exhibition of the two artists took place only shortly after Basquiat’s death through the private initiative of the collector Fredrik Roos (1951–91), the founder of the former Rooseum in

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PROJECTED ART HISTORY Malmö, Sweden; see Palmquist (1989). Revealingly, however, many collectors own works of both Basquiat and Schnabel, as examples The Stephanie and Peter Brant Foundation or The Broad Art Foundation. Schnabel himself also owns some works by Basquiat. And the works of both artists have a place in the private collection of Mr. Chow, even facing each other over a fireplace, as can be seen in a publication on Michael Chow’s and Eva Chun’s house; see MacSweeney (2006, 299).

169 The only scene that might insinuate this is the one in which Basquiat urinates in Milo’s stairway. This action indeed took place as a sign of disrespect according to Brathwaite. In the context of the film, however, this intention towards Milo is lost (see Brathwaite 2002, 61). 170 There are series of portraits of Maria Callas (1982), Jane Birkin (1990), and his wife at the time, Olatz (from 1991). 171 Julian Schnabel, JMB Aug 12, 1988 (oil and gesso on tarpaulin, 192 × 192 in). A similar example of an homage to an artist is Schnabel’s plate painting Self Portrait in Andy’s Shadow (1987, oil, plates, and Bondo on two wood panels, 103 × 72 × 10 in.). This plate painting “demonstrates Schnabel’s frequent use of the plate surfaces for large-scale portraiture, mostly of friends and personalities in the art world. Schnabel here makes his own image and links it, as homage, to Andy Warhol, whose date of death is written on the surface.” www.broadartfoundation.org/xml/artist/67.xml, the painting can be seen at www.broadartfoundation.org/artist_67.html 172 Julian Schnabel, Eulalio Epiclantos after Seeing St. Jean Vianney on the Plains of the Cure d’Ars (1986), oil, tempera and wax on muslin, 137 × 176 in. Collection of the artist. 173 Julian Schnabel in an interview with Matthew Collings, in Julian Schnabel. Bilder 1975–1986 (1987, 93–7). 174 Another important artist is Cy Twombly; regarding the influence of Beuys and Twombly on Schnabel see Davvetas (1989, 15–17). Schnabel also merges his idols from art and film with his private life: supposedly he named his twins Cy after Cy Twombly and Olmo after Depardieu’s character in Bertolucci’s 1900 and one of his daughters, Lola Montès Schnabel, after the film with the same title by Max Ophüls; cf. Tomkins (2001, 124). 175 In this sequence more paintings by Schnabel are shown that did not yet exist during the time frame of the film, for example Cortes (1988) and some paintings from the series Untitled (Los patos del Buen Retiro, 1991). The grandiose interior design and the sheer size



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of the studio, which at the time was Schnabel’s real studio, are also visually impressive. See the photographs in Hollein (2004). 176 I am using this term as an extrapolation of intermedial phenomena like “cinematographic writing” or “painterly literature.” On historicizing and theorizing intermedial relations see Rajewsky (2002). 177 Generally related works: Dalle Vacche, Cinema and Painting (1997). Regarding Jarman and Godard see Klaus Krüger in Hensel, Krüger, and Michalsky (2006, 257–79) and Klaus Krüger in Korte, and Zahlten (1990, 81–92); with regard to Tarkovskij cf. Thomas Hensel in Hensel, Krüger, and Michalsky (2006, 217–55) and regarding Greenaway, cf. Yvonne Spielmann (1998). 178 This becomes particularly clear in his film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (F/USA 2007) that stands out in its cinematographic art by its extensive and innovative use of a subjective camera (PoV shots). Schnabel has worked together with the acclaimed cinematographer Janusz Kaminski for this film, who has been shooting all of Steven Spielberg’s films since Schindler’s List (1993). 179 The choice of the music was in part based on tapes owned by Basquiat himself, which he had been compiling as a DJ and in part was Schnabel’s own preference. 180 Basquiat is shown in a shot-reverse-shot method watching the video. The viewer sees the blue light of a TV screen reflected in Basquiat’s face when he is in the shot watching; however, when the video sequences are shown in the film we do not see them on the TV screen but as a full frame. 181 In 2007 Schnabel was even portrayed in The New York Times’ style magazine with an image-text collage as a “Renaissance man” who works in all kinds of media; see Limmander (2007). 182 McEvilley (1986, 14). The essay presents illuminating insights situating Julian Schnabel between modernism and postmodernism, see 9–19. Even more extensively see McEvilley (1989, 96–109). 183 I was able to experience the way he works in different media and fields when visiting Julian Schnabel in New York on Dec 14, 2006. Even though we only had a two-hour appointment for the interview, it extended into a whole day since he continued working during the interview on different other projects with different people. For example, he had discussions with a cutter regarding the video editing of his stage setting during a Lou Reed concert that premiered the same evening in Brooklyn. In between he changed into another editing room in order to discuss a scene with Juliette

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PROJECTED ART HISTORY Welfling, the editor of his latest feature film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. During lunch he discussed the remodeling of his house with architects and engineers. Our interview took place while he was working on all of these projects, but mainly during two rides through the city and even continued after the dress rehearsal of the concert.

184 By now he is most known as the interior designer of his own artist’s residence, the so-called Palazzo Chupi in New York City. Chupi supposedly was his nickname for his wife at the time, Olatz (see Green 2008). But Schnabel had already been hired earlier by the hotel owner Ian Schrager to do the interior decorating of the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York City. He designed the public rooms of the hotel, in which he included his own art and the ones of his idols; see Julie V. Iovine in AD Architectural Digest (2006, 250–7). Also his then wife Olatz’s shop for bed linens, as well as both Azzedine Alaia shops in Paris and New York City, were designed by Schnabel in the beginning of the 1990s. And his studio as well as the houses or apartments he had with his first wife Jacqueline were reviewed several times in popular books on design as well as fashion and style magazines; see Bowles (2007, 182–9, 208). 185 Even though Michael Berenbaum is named as the editor, it can be assumed that Schnabel was involved in the process of montage. The producer Peter Brant also underlined that montage is very important for Schnabel. I could witness his contribution to the editing process for his film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and verify his involvement with the editor Juliette Welfling. 186 The McCarthy hearings in the late 1940s and early 1950s are a frightening example of how artistic freedom and freedom of speech were not only cut back under an ideological pretense but that they were punished with systematic occupational bans. Moreover, the necessity of enforcing artistic freedom in Hollywood often becomes a film subject in itself; cf. from Vincente Minnelli’s The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) to David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001) or George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck (2005). 187 Regarding Basquiat Peter Brant has stated that he intervened because otherwise the film would have been 45 minutes longer and Schnabel would have kept too many elements in it because of their visual content and less because of the story. With this statement Brant also underlines his involvement as a producer (cf. PB Sept 20, 2005). Whether it was for these or for other reasons—Schnabel raised the budget for the production of his



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next film Before Night Falls himself, among others by selling one of his early plate paintings for $700,000; see Tomkins (2001, 123). Schnabel and his wife at the time, Olatz, are named as executive producers on the International Movie Database www. imdb.com. 188 “L’important, ce serait … de faire des films comme si vous étiez un peintre. De peindre un film, de sentir physiquement le poids de la peinture sur la toile. De n’être embêté par personne. De laisser reposer une toile inachevée et d’en commencer une autre. De faire des autoportraits de plus en plus petits.” 189 Chris Chang in Film Comment (September/October 1996: 54). Also Cindy Sherman’s film Office Killer (1997) should be named in this context. 190 Philip Weiss in The New York Times (25 March 2001). Diedrich Diederichsen uses this neologism in order to reflect on the relationship between artist, auteurs, and stars; see Diederichsen (2001, 43–56). 191 This term is inspired by the time I spent at the Graduate College “InterArt” at Freie Universität Berlin. 192 On the time frame and characterization of the New Hollywood Cinema see King (2002, 11–48 and 49–84). The Berlin International Film Festival in 2004 dedicated a retrospective to the New Hollywood Cinema; see film catalog New Hollywood 1967–1976: Trouble in Wonderland (2004) and Lars Dammann (2006). 193 Schnabel does not consider any of his three films a biopic; he even goes so far as not wanting to compare Basquiat with Pollock since Pollock for him was a biopic but Basquiat was not; see JS Dec 14, 2006. 194 Biopics are usually only in the competition for best actors and hardly ever for best film. Generally on the “image” function of biopics in Hollywood see Custen (1992, 1–31). 195 Jeffrey Wright was nominated for best newcomer at the Independent Spirit Award and Benicio del Toro won the award for the best supporting role. The film won two prizes and was nominated for three more. Schnabel’s second film Before Night Falls (2000) brought him 16 wins and 15 nominations, among them an Oscar nomination for Javier Bardem as best actor. His third film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) has been his most successful so far. Schnabel won as best director in Cannes and a Golden Globe in Hollywood and was nominated for 4 Oscars. The film has

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196 For a genre definition of the biopic see Taylor (2002, 23).

CHAPTER FOUR

Hollywood’s art histories: A web of artists’ myths and star legends This book has concentrated on a segment of popular art history, taking into consideration its intertextuality, intermediality, historicity, and functionality. It has demonstrated that this segment is an important factor in producing the star images of actors and actresses, directors, or producers. The stories that are connected to the (historical) artist and that are used to create the making of an artist’s biopic are closely related to mythological narratives. The anecdotes underlining the extraordinary commitment to the film production by individual participants reinforce the star legends and are as such an important element of this film genre. In fact, this entanglement of artists’ myths (within the film) and star legends (outside of the film) is an important characteristic for biopics on artists. The “image analysis”––an interdisciplinary method in itself––permitted me to study these entanglements and see them as operative factors. Hence, the analyses of Pollock and Basquiat developed from the images of the individual artists via the “characters-in-film” to the images of those persons who were responsible for the “characters-in-film,” i.e. director, actor, and producer. Apart from the main protagonists in the films, the backgrounds for the productions were just as important as were

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the visual and textual models and the art historical contexts of the artists. In order to understand the reasons for the selection of the artists and their representations in the two films, the focus was initially concentrated on the directors who, because of their dedication and their multi-functionality, stood out within the standard division of labor in the film industry. However, it became clearer how important it is to look also more closely at the star images and motivations of individual actors and producers in order to be able to assess the factors for making the respective films.

Filmic images in comparison Pollock can be directly connected to the commitment of Ed Harris. According to legend, after his father pointed out that he physically resembled the artist, Ed Harris discovered the biography and the art of Pollock and developed an inner kinship with the artist. Initially he had only intended to act as the artist Jackson Pollock and had made great efforts to get the role. It was only during the production process that Harris began taking over the directing of the film since no suitable director could be found sharing Harris’ fascination with Pollock nor one who had accumulated as much knowledge about the artist. His involvement as producer developed later as well when the costs were rising and when, according to Harris, the project became his personal obsession. The outline for the film is credited to the biography by Stephen Naifeh and Gregory White Smith. For the most part the film’s content can also be found in the biography, although the biographical interpretation of the artist as possessed by demons that can only be driven out by his art is not quite as strongly reinforced therein, nor is the misogynist attitude towards Lee Krasner as pronounced in the film as it is in the book. Instead, Ed Harris underlines and maintains the idea that Pollock was alienated from his art by the reproduction machinery of mass media, thus making it responsible for Pollock’s biographical drama in the film. In Basquiat the story is even more closely connected to the director of the film than in Pollock since it contains an autobiographical perspective of the artist Julian Schnabel. As in Pollock, this film also deals with the rise and fall of an artist, but whereas



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Pollock is staged as a solitary fighter, Basquiat is presented as having closer contacts with other famous artists like Warhol and Schnabel (as Milo). In his alter ego role as Albert Milo, Schnabel also recounts a few elements of his own life in this film since in the 1980s he had also been a shooting star whose market value literally exploded along with the boom of the art market. Since at the time of the film’s production there was no biography about Basquiat available yet, he was able to superimpose his personal autobiographical perspective—certainly an exception in this genre. Apart from having articles, catalogs, photographs, videos, and contemporary witnesses at his disposal, Schnabel was also able to form the content of his filmic narrative with his own memories. But unlike Harris it was not Schnabel who laid the foundation for this film; initially he was interviewed during the research for the script as Basquiat’s artist colleague and contemporary witness. But it quickly became clear that he would be taking over the direction of the film. One of the reasons was the appointment of the producer Peter M. Brant who advocated for Schnabel even though he had never directed a film before. Incidentally, Peter Brant also contributed to the decision to have Harris direct Pollock. Here the important role of a producer becomes evident. Brant is an executive producer in both films (together with his then partner Joseph Allen). However, Brant’s main occupation is not that of a film producer; he is an industrialist and one of the most important art collectors in the United States owning works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julian Schnabel, and Andy Warhol among many others. Currently, he is a member of the board of trustees of MOCA, Los Angeles, and a member of the chairman’s council of MoMA in New York. The benefit for his own image through the production of these films might be less important within Hollywood than for the renown of his private art collection open to the public as The Brant Foundation Art Study Center. As I will show in the later paragraphs on “interwoven authorships,” also the two debuting directors—be it the actor Harris or the artist Schnabel—gained increased recognition and stardom by filming the artists’ lives of Jackson Pollock and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Even though the two biopics differ in the orientation of their content, both films reproduce artists’ myths that have a long art historical tradition. But because of their different historical framework and production contexts, these artists’ myths are formulated in different ways.

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Pollock is a tragic hero, a suffering genius: He is staged as a virtuoso in his artistic practice, creating from his subconscious via divine inspiration like a “divino artista.” Also in his private life everything seems to be developing in his favor. He marries the ambitioned artist Lee Krasner who puts aside her own career for him. His creativity even represses his alcoholism for a while. Everything seems to point only to the positive. With fame and recognition, however, mass media invade his life. At first, Pollock happily greets the fact that he is portrayed as the exceptional American artist in Life Magazine. The image created in the film as the glowering man in jeans is perfectly fitting to American concepts of masculinity at the time such as the rebel contemporaneously also portrayed by the star images of James Dean and Marlon Brando. But living the life of the rebel also has its tragic side, as can be seen in Pollock: When in the course of his popularization his production process, sacrosanct to him, is documented in detail and he is supposed to reenact it before a movie camera, success turns against him. Pollock becomes a caricature of himself; his artistic sensibility and creativity is dictated and dissociated from himself. The film suggests that the filmic reproduction of his creative process destroys Pollock’s authenticity. The artist does not fight against this but flees into alcohol, alienating himself from his own creativity and putting a wedge between him and his wife. The only chance to fulfill the American ideal of heroism seems to be justifiable through a dramatic death in a car accident. The biopic filmed 50 years later suggests that heroism of the 1950s takes its toll. Basquiat presents a completely different concept of the artist and his path to fame. The historical frame in the film is limited to the 1980s, and the production of the film—quite unusual for the genre—takes place shortly afterwards in the following decade. The modern myth of the tragic hero is over. Postmodernism does not only know one history—it knows many histories; it has not only one hero—but several stars and celebrities. Andy Warhol is at the vanguard of this development in the art world; in Basquiat he serves as the role model that in Pollock is ascribed to Picasso. But the difference is that Warhol is not a psychological rival for the protagonist, nor is he out of reach for Basquiat as Picasso was for Pollock. Basquiat has access to Warhol and thus can deal with his idol more playfully and in a less dramatic way than is shown in Pollock. Moreover, there is not only Warhol but also Milo (alias



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Schnabel) who is portrayed as a famous artist in the film. It becomes clear very quickly that for Basquiat the most important goal is to become famous; to find his own genuine artistic expression, as it could be interpreted in Pollock, is less important in this film’s narrative. Following this logic, the camera does not show Basquiat as a virtuoso; rather, it is the director who masterfully stages the artist’s creative process by way of montage and a compiled soundtrack. Nevertheless, the film also does not recoil from artists’ myths; on the contrary: Basquiat is almost magically introduced into the film as an enlightened genius. He is an art prince, a young “divino artista” crowned and fated to die too young, making it impossible to prove the sustainability of his creativity in the course of time. Instead, he creates constantly and everywhere—in the street, in restaurants, in his studio. And therefore everything passes extremely quickly—the rise and fall of a superstar in turbo speed. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s African American identity is shown ex negativo by presenting varying examples of racism. Hence, those narrative strings that accentuate his image as “a black artist who has risen from the gutter” are more strongly underlined than those telling the story of his middle class background. Basquiat is also not located in the multi-ethnic surroundings of his graffiti and music scene; rather, he is represented as an exotic artist, having the status of an exemplary outsider. This kind of perspective shows more the point of view and the experiences of the film’s director Julian Schnabel. The film does not show the African American and Creole elements in Basquiat’s art and it hardly represents his ethnic and cultural context in the biographical story. At most, Basquiat is shown as an African American artist in those moments when he is using his exotic status appearing proudly as a fashionable dandy. Basquiat’s bi-sexual orientation, as it is described through a variety of sources, can also hardly be conjectured in the biopic. Instead, it is far more his relationship to Gina and his affair with Big Pink that underline the heterosexual logic of the film, as does the staging of his friendships with Benny and Warhol as platonic friendships between men. Only the homosexual critic openly flirts with Basquiat and in a completely drugged-out state Basquiat once says that he has a boyfriend—more does not come through in the film’s narrative. Both biopics stage the notion of difference: Basquiat is encoded as a “black” artist among “white” artists or as an ethnic “other”

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in the “white” art world. In contrast, Pollock underlines gender differences by showing the relationship of the couple or by contrasting Pollock and Krasner. Both characters are connected with each other, characterized by their differences, throughout the whole film. Jackson Pollock is the white American with Christian roots whose forefathers already lived in the US. Lee Krasner is the daughter of Jewish immigrants. Pollock is psychologically unstable, he drinks and seems to need someone around all the time on whom he can rely. In the beginning it is his brother Sande, then later his wife Lee Krasner, and in the end his lover Ruth Kligman. In contrast to this, Krasner is characterized as a strong and self-reliant woman who, however, gives up her profession as artist in order to support Pollock in his career. This kind of statement mirrors the repressive gender roles in the post-war era that hardly allowed an active role in public for women. But privately Krasner keeps things firmly under control; she is not only housewife and manager but also Pollock’s best critic. Only in her function as an artist does she completely vanish from the film, even though this does not quite correspond to the reality. As an analogy to this development, Lee Krasner’s appearance in the film changes from an attractive bohemienne to a frustrated looking secretary, a depiction that lets Pollock stand out even more as an exceptional artist. He does not have to compete with Krasner; his measure—if there is one at all—is Picasso. The centerpiece of every artist’s biopic is the representation of the artistic process. This mysterious process has to be worked out by all directors and actors of these films. In most cases, this is told by way of the film’s narrative in which the creative process is staged with filmic means, for example through montage (as in Basquiat) or by means of certain camera shots (canvas from the back, painter’s face from the front) instead of being enacted directly in front of the camera. An actor who performs more than three consecutive brush strokes before the camera is quite rare. Pollock is an exception in this. This biopic even shows different painting processes and the actor Harris attempts to paint like Pollock while being filmed. This thematic focus on the one hand is due to the historic narrative about Pollock who as an action-painter had become famous for his performative method of painting. On the other hand, concentrating on the creative processes also permitted Harris to prove his competence as an actor and, in his function



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as director, simultaneously to include it into his filmic narrative, thereby differentiating it from other biopics. In contrast, Basquiat does not stand out in the way it represents the artistic process; instead, the artistic approach of the director Schnabel makes itself felt. For example, he is using found footage of different motifs of a surfer as a film collage and similar to Brecht’s alienation effects it comments on the film’s narrative. Thematically, the film concentrates less on the production of art and more on the production of an art star. Basquiat is downright permeated with stardom and celebrity culture, be it within the film’s narrative or in the cast of stars right down to the smallest role. An exceptionally successful blending of artists’ and star images can be found in the character of Andy Warhol played by the pop star David Bowie. On the one hand, Bowie’s Warhol is a reference to his early career as pop star. On the other hand the character Warhol in the film was not only impersonated successfully by Bowie but Bowie’s mimicry also allowed viewers to perceive both stars individually as well as mutually interacting with each other. In both films, art critics played an important role for the success of the artist. In Pollock it is Clement Greenberg who as an influential critic is using his position and powerful rhetorics for Pollock’s career thus also becoming a friend of the family. In Basquiat it is the bohemian René Ricard who is moving in similar scenes as the artist. Right at the beginning of the film he makes clear in a voiceover that the film will not deal with an unrecognized artist (artiste maudit) but instead that he as critic will recognize him and make him into a star. The critic here has a double purpose: professionally his target is the promising artist; privately it is the young, attractive man Basquiat. Even though Pollock is also dependent on Greenberg—and to a certain degree also vice versa—the mutual dependence between artist and critic does not become as clear in the film as in Basquiat. In Pollock the imbalance in power remains and the artist is always shown as the weaker link in the chain. Other agents in the art field are the gallery dealers. Both films suggest that the critics and gallerists belong to different social classes than the artist, and moreover in this economically defined field of the gallery business the activities are not always defined by an interest in art. In Pollock, Peggy Guggenheim is both a gallerist and a collector and therefore she has an immense influence on his career. In Basquiat the domain is more diverse and is controlled by

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several gallery dealers, who are each connected to one of the artists. The character Annina Nosei is associated with Basquiat, Mary Boone with Milo, and Bruno Bischofberger with Warhol.

Interwoven authorships Looking at the authorships that are established in and by the films’ narratives shifted the focus to the production and reception contexts of the films. It became apparent that the discourse about the auteur couldn’t be transferred in the same way to both biopics. Talking of Harris’ film Pollock and Schnabel’s film Basquiat then has less to do with the politique des auteurs in cinema than with interwoven authorships that transgress the film system. Thus, despite the multifunctional involvement of their directors, the two films impress less by their notable script or the exceptional way of narrating the film but more by the acting (in the case of Harris) or the autobiographical perspective (in Schnabel’s case). Apart from that, biopics on artists rarely count as auteur films. Nevertheless, in both biopics artistic authorship is a point of discussion. In Pollock it is addressed by the different ways in which the artistic processes and scenes of signing are medially staged. The narrative consequence thereof is the artist’s alienation that in the end leads to his demise. In this film the dramatized biographical narrative wins over the “intermedial narrative” so that the noteworthy achievement of reflecting media within a feature film founders. On the other hand, Basquiat is more strongly focused on the changing status of the artist. In this sense the question of artistic authorship lies less with the genesis of a work but far more with the process of becoming an artist. Hence the dramatic narrative of this film is showing the journey of a shooting star. The necessary ending seems to be his death by drugs. The amalgamation of artists’ myths and star legends so reinforced in Basquiat—and also inherent to the genre biopic—has a self-referential potential that surely could be further expanded. Recognizable attempts were made, as examples in the doppelgänger approach through David Bowie’s embodiment of the supporting character Andy Warhol or in the decision to take on other stars for smaller roles as well (Dennis Hopper as Bruno



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Bischofberger or Willem Dafoe as nameless artist). Artists’ images and star discourses are superimposed and it seems that neither of both dominates the other. At one point it is the image “Andy Warhol” that sparkles in the character and at another that of “David Bowie.” In this manner this cross fading of star images also could have been fascinating in regards to the protagonist and thus the character Basquiat would not have had to merge only with the drama of the film. Despite the convincing performance of the actor Jeffrey Wright, it would have been interesting to have a celebrity in this role to add a self-referential dimension. Therefore, we can summarize that in the stagings of artistic authorship self-referential initiatives indeed flare up in both films—but in the end these are thrust back by the emotional power of the biographical drama. In contrast to the above, several differences can be noted between the films concerning the authorship on the production side, allowing us to draw some conclusions about the background of the directors. Ed Harris substantiates his fascination for Pollock with the biographical anecdote that his father had “recognized” him on the cover of a Pollock biography. Nevertheless, this can’t be the only reason for his exceptional commitment to this film. Knowing that an acknowledged personification of a historical person always rubs off positively on the image of an actor must have influenced his fascination just as much. To be not only the leading actor but to take over the direction of the film was certainly a risk for Harris initially since he could not draw on any experience in this area. But he had the support of other colleagues and his producer. This permitted him to control the way in which Jackson Pollock’s role should be enacted even more. Nevertheless, in the end Pollock is a Harris-film less via his achievement as director but more by that as an actor.1 Harris’ public image as a “method actor” profited and since then the repertoire of his roles expanded through playing other artists, for example a fictitious writer or the composer Beethoven. If we were to assess Harris’ practice in Pollock in the context of auteur cinema, we would need to change the perspective from cinema of directors to that of cinema of actors, and the point would be less to strictly divide the two authorships from each other but rather more to take on a new perspective, the actor’s instead of the director’s. Looking beyond the example of Pollock, new considerations regarding the biopic genre therefore arise, as for example: Are biopics generally preferably actors’ films or are they directors’

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films? Is the art in these films that of actors? And how does this phenomenon affect the “politique des auteurs”? In Julian Schnabel’s case the question of authorship has to be evaluated differently. His autobiographical motivation for the biopic goes beyond the anecdotal. In retrospect, we can observe similarities with his other films in terms of film style and even content. Schnabel’s story preferences can be located in the tragic life of exceptional people; his stylistic preference is the incorporation of found footage material into the film’s narrative. But since Basquiat was his first film, I took recourse to his practice as a visual artist for my analysis of Schnabel’s authorship. Similarities could be detected, for example by his use of visual symbols or his creation of homages as forms of expression. Schnabel has a penchant for pathos and the grand narratives of love, death, and heroism as well as for art history. His autobiographical perspective in the film can also be ascribed to his artistic practice since he published a book with autobiographical fragments nine years earlier. This autobiography was not very successful but the film allowed him to publicize his story and thoughts about his times anew. Some of his statements on being an artist and on the influence of the art market on the artistic process are not only to be found in the book but also within the content of the biopic. The film is a sort of continuation of the book but with the big difference that here Jean-Michel Basquiat is at the center of the narrative. Nevertheless, in the biopic Schnabel augments his own role in the history of his colleague more than can be proven from the Basquiat reception. Thus, in various indirect ways we also learn some of Schnabel’s own history in Basquiat as manifested in the character Milo, the presentation of Schnabel’s artworks, the content orientation, and the stylistic character of the film. Critics of the film were therefore irked mainly by the fact that the autobiographical perspective is not readily recognizable and that Schnabel erected a memorial for himself at Basquiat’s expense. One could have pointed out the autobiographical point of view far more clearly if the character Milo would have been called by his real name “Schnabel” in the film. The reason Schnabel gave was that his name appears everywhere in the film and that he therefore thought it better if he remained “invisible” as a character in the film (JS Dec 14, 2006). This is not really convincing when comparing it to his otherwise extremely visible appearances as artist everywhere else. Rather, it



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seems as if Schnabel was far more interested in building a legend. In fact, by intentionally disseminating the anecdote that Milo in reality is Schnabel himself, he underlined the impression of his authorship. But in the end, the amalgamation of different authorships that characterizes this biopic is not a subject of the film itself.

Exploring the center and the margins of biopics Even though this study focused on two biopics, I would like to conclude by shifting my perspective, taking a closer look at the possible choices regarding the center and margins of this genre. I will present two poles stretching from characteristic biopics on artists to non-existent biopics within which the subject matters of my analysis can just as easily be located. Frida (2002) is at the center of the genre and can be seen as an example of a “typical” biopic. Since this is a biopic on a female artist, we might think that Frida is an exception. But this particular exception proves the rule of the representational conventions of male and female artists. Already the title of the film naming only the first name of the artist—contrasting Basquiat and Pollock— focuses on the private life of this character attuning the viewers to watching a film on a woman artist with the stereotypical strings attached. At the core of the narrative lies Frida Kahlo’s injured body and her unhappy relationship with Diego Rivera: The artist has suffered a life-threatening injury in her youth, damaging her health for the rest of her life. She begins painting when she is chained to her bed, nurturing her art out of her physical affliction. The artist Diego Rivera, already well known, becomes her mentor, her lover, and her husband but as a notorious polygamist he does not stay true to his wife. As a result, Kahlo also begins relationships with different male and female lovers even though she seems to suffer from this since in reality she only wants “her Diego.” Examining the staging of the artistic process in this film, we can notice that Kahlo is hardly ever shown painting unlike Rivera, who is often seen at work. Also formally following the biographic information her paintings are staged as tableaux vivants in which the painted characters are revived, merging with the narrative of

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the film.2 And last but not least, the setting, the make-up, and the music also contribute greatly to the success of this at times folkloristic melodrama.3 Incidentally, Kahlo’s artistic creations are explained not only in this film but also repeatedly in art historical studies and almost always in popular literature from the perspective of her life’s history.4 It is in just this biographic concentration that the discrepancy emerges between Frida Kahlo’s celebration as heroine of feminist art history on the one hand and the fact that as an artist she embodies the fundamental problem women artists face that the private realm is overrated even though she ranks among the most visibly public, politically active personalities of Mexico in the mid-twentieth century. At a first glance this codification could be correlated to her work since Kahlo painted mostly self-portraits or portraits of acquaintances and friends, and besides she also spoke many times about the involvement of her life’s history in her art herself. This often resulted in too narrow-minded explanations of her work accounting for everything with her biography, which meant that situating her in the surrealist discourse and making a pictorial analysis were overlooked. Apart from that, Kahlo actively worked on her own myth during her lifetime. A great number of photographs and entries in her diary give evidence of this. Only lately the Kahlo myth has been deconstructed thanks to studies that locate her work in avant-garde discourses while also analyzing the background for and consequences of Kahlo’s popularization and fetishizing.5 There is hardly any other artist about whom so many popular products are circulated—from posters, candles, puppets, magnets, decals, children’s books, comics, cookbooks, painted copies of her works, and murals of her portrait saying “Frida Kahlo Viva la Vida” in the streets of Los Angeles. It is therefore a logical development that this “Fridamania” also finds its expression in biopics. Despite the remarkable underrepresentation of female artists in the genre, two feature films already exist on Kahlo as well as a great number of documentaries.6 It should be mentioned, however, that only the film discussed above can be called specifically “typical.” Why? The film is modeled after the bestseller biography by the art historian Hayden Ferrera Frida—A Biography of Frida Kahlo (1983). The production of the film started almost 50 years after Kahlo’s death in 1954. The typical combination of a star connected with the biopic can be



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found in the role and the motivation of the actress Salma Hayek. This film was a great opportunity for the Mexican actress to boost her image in the Hollywood film industry—and a chance to be freed from her cliché role as an exotic sex bomb. Supposedly for the role she had to assert herself against other contenders like Jennifer Lopez or Madonna. Hayek also produced the film. The director of the film, Julie Taymor, has described Hayek’s great dedication: “Her grueling six-year saga of bringing Frida’s story to the screen is a testament to her vision, tenacity and faith that she could make it happen” (Introduction, Sigal et al. 2002, 15). The image production of this biopic even affects the literary biography exemplified by the fact that the cover of the American edition of Herrera’s biography, which was re-published in 2002, is adorned with a photograph of Salma Hayek as Frida Kahlo and not with a photograph of or painting by Kahlo as in the Spanish and German editions. Looking into the other direction—at the margins of the genre—it seems absolutely symptomatic that the artist par excellence, Andy Warhol, only appears in supporting roles, even if the feature film carries his name in the title. To the present day no classic biopic exists in which the life of this artist, so omnipresent in all media, is the dominant narrative thread,7 and it seems that the artist Andy Warhol is not a suitable subject for this genre as it is practiced today. On the one hand it is difficult to recognize the “suffering artist” in his biography or in his creative process, and on the other hand he reduces the notion of the “genius” to absurdity by making reproducibility into a subject matter of his work. In addition, he is repeatedly staging himself as a reflective “surface” in interviews and by hiring impersonators. In doing so, Warhol becomes a blank space onto which we can project our ideas about him. Marcel Duchamp is another example whose absence in biopics is somewhat symptomatic. Even though he is considered one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century and although he is the subject of many existing documentations and biographies, there is neither a biopic nor does he feature as a minor character in any films. His life certainly would be glamorous and his involvement in the various art scenes in Paris and New York definitely exciting enough to be filmed. Additionally, Duchamp died in 1968, almost 40 years ago, and Calvin Tomkins’ Duchamp: A Biography (1996) is a successful book. So these can’t be the reasons why there is still

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no biopic on this artist. It seems to be his artistry that is “responsible” in this case as well, conforming just as little to Hollywood’s notion of a suffering genius as his art conformed to the notions of creativity as portrayed in films so far. Thus, it would be a challenge to interpret Duchamp’s artistic process dramatically, since it was not an expressive activity; it would need to be staged as a thought process or as a great game of chess. His invention or, to say it better, his decision for ready-mades or the work on The Large Glass that lasted for years and the games of identity and authenticity he played as Rrose Sélavy or R. Mutt would demand a lot of the genre biopic and would possibly surpass its limits––or create a new form. Duchamp hardly allows for any points of contact to be understood as a “divino artista” who creates his works from inside out, as if commanded by God. Instead, he is an artist who analyzes the way in which the art system functions and who skillfully places his art and his gestures of questioning and asserting authentication at its margins––hence, enlarging the entire field or notion of art. Even though the film industry pretends to be telling us only original and exceptional stories, it repeatedly reverts back to the topoi of old artists’ myths. As I have been able to show with this book, shifts and reformulations of older myths are taking place and are merging with star legends. Therefore, there is a lack of a wider variety of biopics on artists precisely because they are nurtured by myths and legends rather than individual life stories. Even though their lives were quite different, the narrative structures of both case studies, Pollock and Basquiat, pay tribute to that fact. Arriving at the end of this study does not signal the end of the research perspectives inherent in the notion of a popular art history with which I opened this book. Instead, this study meant to expand horizons, so wide that the research done in a single work could by no means answer all possible questions satisfactorily. For example, the insights gained from this book could be expanded further into the direction of projected images energized by biopics. Interesting as well would be a phenomenological approach towards their reception and viewer response looking more closely at the affective elements of biopics. One could also study the images and their effect on other products of popular culture such as merchandising products (books, websites, posters, etc.) that would need to include more quantifiable methods. Another approach could be to enter the field of popular art history by analyzing other segments of it like



Hollywood’s art histories

309

for example the stagings of artists in documentaries, in television series, or the narratives in children’s books, or comics. Also those stories about artists mediated in spatial settings, including guided tours through historical homes of artists, would be well worth looking at more closely. Concerning feature films, it could be inspiring to study the use of “fictitious art” or “fictitious artists” in feature films, looking at their different functions within a cinematic narrative. Concluding, I return once again to my initial question of the educative character inherent in biopics on artists. My analyses in this book show that the biopic genre has in no way exhausted its possibilities. If Hollywood were to give up the idea of the artist as a romantic hero and tragic loner—what a variety of popular art histories could be screened! Couldn’t the biopic genre with its aesthetic possibilities, phenomenological specifics, and mass appeal contribute to this more than it does to this day, thereby expanding the current mode of representation? And couldn’t the feature film still contribute even more to the mediation of art without denying its own identity as a medium precisely because of its popularity? Question upon question! In order to answer them, I am eagerly looking forward to new films about artists and despite my enthusiasm I am, for now, closing this book.

Notes 1 After Pollock Harris takes over multiple roles for a second time in the Western Appaloosa (2008): He is director, works on the script, is a producer, and plays the supporting role next to Viggo Mortensen; during the final credits he even sings a song. That actors start realizing their own projects at different times in their career can be very well observed with Clint Eastwood. Nowadays he is celebrated as an auteur in Hollywood. He received several Oscars for his film Million Dollar Baby (2004) for which he was the director, main actor, and co-producer, and he was also credited for the music. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his film Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) and won a César in France for Gran Torino (2008). 2

The use of tableaux vivants in biopics does not always merge as much with the biographic interpretation as in Frida; its use also can be interpreted as an artistic component in the film, as for example in

310

PROJECTED ART HISTORY Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio. On the tableaux vivants discourse see also Folie and Glasmeier (2002).

3

Frida won two Oscars for best film music and the best make-up.

4

Many monographs already establish the reception of Frida Kahlo’s art in the title as a myth of victimization. See Herrera (1987), Kettenmann (1992), Zamora (1991).

5

See Lindauer (1999) and Feldhaus (2009, 83–133).

6

Frida – Naturaleza viva, D: Paul Leduc (Mexico 1984); Frida, D: Julie Taymor (USA 2002). A selection of Kahlo documentaries are: Life and Death of Frida Kahlo, D: Karen and David Crommie (USA 1976); Helen Chadwick on Frida Kahlo (GB 1992; from the BBC Series “Artist’s Journeys”); Frida Kahlo & Tina Modotti, D: Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen (GB 1996); La Cinta que envuelve una bomba, D: Jesus Muñoz Delgado (Mexico 1999); The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo, D: Amy Stechler (USA 2005).

7

Apart from Basquiat he also plays an important role in I Shot Andy Warhol (1996), and he is an important counterpart figure in Factory Girl (2006), a film on Edie Sedgwick. So far, however, there is no biopic on Andy Warhol.

FILMOGRAPHY

Documentaries and Biopics on Artists Discussed (Chronological)

Jackson Pollock (selection) Jackson Pollock (USA 1951, D: Hans Namuth) Jackson Pollock (GB 1987, D: Kim Evans) Jackson Pollock. Love and Death on Long Island (GB 1999, BBC, D: Teresa Griffiths) Pollock (USA 2000, D: Ed Harris)

Jean-Michel Basquiat and Julian Schnabel (selection) Expressionist Painting (USA 1983, Inner-Tube Video Nr. 18, D: Paul Tschinkel) Young Expressionists (USA 1983, Inner-Tube Video Nr. 19, D: Paul Tschinkel) Graffiti/Post Graffiti (USA 1984, Inner-Tube Video Nr. 21, D: Paul Tschinkel) Basquiat (Video interview, Beverly Hills 1986, D: Tamra Davis) Jean-Michel Basquiat: An Interview (USA 1989, filmed 1981, Inner-Tube Video, Nr. 30, D: Paul Tschinkel) Shooting Star (GB 1990, D: Geoff Dunlop) Basquiat (USA 1996, D: Julian Schnabel) Julian Schnabel (DE 1996, WDR Kinomagazin, D: Peter Kremski) Downtown 81 (USA 2000, filmed 1980-81, D: Edo Bertoglio) Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child (USA 2010, D: Tamra Davis)

312 Filmography

Andy Warhol (selection) Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol: Friendships and Intersections (USA 1982, published 1990, D: Jonas Mekas) Superstar. The Life and Times of Andy Warhol (USA 1990, D: Chuck Workman) Andy Warhol. Made in China (USA 1992, D: Lee Caplin) Basquiat (USA 1996, D: Julian Schnabel) I Shot Andy Warhol (USA 1996, D: Mary Harron) Absolut Warhola (DE 2001, D: Stanislaw Mucha) Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film (USA 2006, D: Ric Burns) Factory Girl (USA 2006, D: George Hickenlooper)

Biopics on visual artists (selection) Rembrandt (GB 1936, D: Alexander Korda) Rembrandt (DE 1942, D: Hans Steinhoff) Moulin Rouge (USA 1952, D: John Huston) (about Henri Toulouse-Lautrec) Lust for Life (USA 1956, D: Vincente Minnelli) (about Vincent Van Gogh) The Agony and the Ecstasy (USA 1965, D: Carol Reed) (about Michelangelo Buonarroti) Andrei Rublev (USSR 1969, D: Andrej Tarkowskij) Goya – Der arge Weg der Erkenntnis (GDR 1971, D: Konrad Wolf) Savage Messiah (GB 1972, D: Ken Russell) (about Henri Gaudier-Brzeska) Frida – Naturaleza Viva (Mexiko 1984, D: Paul Leduc) Caravaggio (GB 1986, D: Derek Jarman) Oviri aka The Wolf at the Door (DK/F 1986, D: Henning Carlson) (about Paul Gauguin) Camille Claudel (F 1988, D: Bruno Nuytten) Vincent & Theo (USA 1990: D: Robert Altman) Van Gogh (F 1991, D: Maurice Pialat) Dalí (E/BG 1991, D: Antoni Ribas) Carrington (GB 1995, D: Christopher Hampton) (about painter Dora Carrington and writer Lytton Strachey) Basquiat (USA 1996, D: Julian Schnabel) Surviving Picasso (GB 1996, D: James Ivory) I Shot Andy Warhol (USA 1996, D: Mary Harron) (indirectly about Andy Warhol)

Filmography

313

Artemisia (F 1997, D: Angès Merlet) (about Artemisia Gentileschi) Love is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (GB 1998, D: John Maybury) Rembrandt (F 1999, D: Charles Matton) Goya in Bordeaux (E 1999, D: Carlos Saura) Pollock (USA 2000, D: Ed Harris) Frida (USA 2002, D: Julie Taymor) Girl with a Pearl Earring (GB 2003, D: Peter Webber) (indirectly about Vermeer) Modigliani (USA 2004, D: Mick Davis) Klimt (A/F/DE/UK 2006, D: Raul Ruiz) Goya’s Ghosts (USA/E 2006, D: Milos Forman) (partly about Goya) Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (USA 2006, D: Steven Shainberg) Factory Girl (USA 2006, D: George Hickenlooper) (partly about Andy Warhol) Nightwatching (GB 2007, D: Peter Greenaway) (about Rembrandt) Little Ashes (UK/E 2008, D: Paul Morrison) (partly about artist Salvador Dalí, filmmaker Luis Buñuel, writer Frederico García Lorca) Séraphine (F/BE 2008, D: Martin Provost) (about Séraphine de Senlis) Camille Claudel 1915 (F 2013, D: Bruno Dumont) Renoir (F/I 2013, D: Gilles Bourdos)

Films featuring fictive artists (selection) The Fountainhead (USA 1948, D: King Vidor) An American in Paris (USA 1951, D: Vincente Minnelli) Monpti (FRG 1957, D: Helmut Käutner) The Horse’s Mouth, (GB 1958, D: Ronald Neame) The Rebel aka Call Me Genius (USA 1961, D: Robert Day) Blow Up (GB/USA 1966, D: Michelangelo Antonioni) Hour of the Wolf (S 1968, D: Ingmar Bergman) The Draughtsman’s Contract (GB 1982, D: Peter Greenaway) The Belly of an Architect (GB/I 1986, D: Peter Greenaway) Life Lessons (USA 1989, D: Martin Scorsese) (part of the film compilation New York Stories) Dreams (J/USA 1990, D: Akira Kurosawa) La Belle Noiseuse (F 1991, D: Jacques Rivette) The Big Lebowski (USA 1998, D: Joel and Ethan Coen) Pecker (USA 1998, D: John Waters) High Art (USA 1998, D: Lisa Cholodenko)

314 Filmography

Junebug (USA 2005, D: Phil Morrison) Me and You and Everyone We Know (USA 2005, D: Miranda July) Synecdoche, New York (USA 2008, D: Charlie Kaufman) Vicky, Christina, Barcelona (E/USA 2008, D: Woody Allen) (Untitled) (USA 2009, D: Jonathan Parker) El Artista y la Modelo (E/F 2012, D: Fernando Trueba)

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INDEX

abstract art 23–5, 28, 98, 113, 115, 122 Abstract Expressionism 28, 34, 83, 93, 96, 111–15, 183 Academy Awards 12, 41, 138, 266 action painting 57 African American identity 180, 187–90, 203, 213–17, 221, 231, 299 alienation 55, 71, 84–5, 87–8, 134, 301–2 American art 32–6, 91, 114–15, 120, 163–4, 190–1 An American in Paris (film) 25 art criticism 91, 113–21, 234, 301 art history 3–14, 39, 43, 86, 112, 238 in biopics 6–9 art in relation to film 3–6 Art of This Century gallery 113, 122, 128, 132 “auteur”, use of the term 135–8, 255, 302 auteur films 262–6 authenticity of the artist 88, 90, 298 authorship: artistic 130–41, 302 of films 303 of an interartist 262–5 interwoven 302–5

Barthes, Roland 70–1 Basquiat (biopic) 13, 159, 164, 169–70, 193–217, 221–5, 230–3, 245, 254, 256–67, 295–304 Basquiat, Jean-Michel 1–2, 6, 10, 14–15, 23, 159–217 appearance 218–22 artistic success of 164–8, 187–93, 208, 217 biography of 165–9, 193, 238 creativity of 226–7, 231, 299 death of 166, 302 parentage of 166–7 photographs of 170–81, 184, 186 public image of 165, 170, 187, 236 sexuality of 217, 299 way of painting 223–4, 229–30, 250 with Warhol 182–3, 192, 233, 251 Baudelaire, Charles 219 Beckham, David 219 Belázs, Béla 3 Benjamin, Walter 134 Benton, Thomas Hart 92 Beuys, Joseph 258 biographism 8–9 biopics: art history in 6–9

346 Index

characteristics of 7–12, 41, 56, 135, 139 definition of 6 as a genre 35, 90, 162, 204, 230, 266–7, 303–4, 309 timing of 159 Bischofberger, Bruno 160–1, 169, 180–1, 192, 205, 209, 231–5, 244, 248, 250, 253, 302–3 bohemian life 11 Boone, Mary 160–1, 192, 199, 205, 222, 231–3, 236, 302 Bourdieu, Pierre 90, 122 Bowie, David 161, 237–43, 301–3 with Warhol 241, 243 Braithwaite, Fred 221, 256 Brando, Marlon 31, 298 Brant, Peter 8, 37, 136, 201–4, 297 Brant Foundation 202, 297 Brecht, Bertolt 301 Breton, André 123

Dean, James 31, 298 de Kooning, Willem 86, 93, 111, 190–1 Del Toro, Benicio 160 desire 47, 88, 132, 186, 234, 239, 241, 246, 251, 260 Diaz, Al 168–9, 191 “divino artista” 58, 65, 75, 86, 90, 132, 208, 298–9, 308 doppelgänger 241, 302 Douglas, Kirk 41–2 Downtown 81 (semi-documentary) 225 drip painting 29–30, 33, 39, 44, 57, 65–8, 80–5, 115, 120, 132, 183 Dubuffet, Jean 113 Duchamp, Marcel 24, 123–4, 307–8

Cahiers du Cinéma (magazine) 135, 199 Cale, John 161, 212 capitalism 262 Castelli, Leo 199 cats, symbolism of 178–9 celebrity culture 160, 183, 196, 243–4, 301; see also stardom Christian 32, 56, 163, 260, 300 Claudel, Camille 9–10 Clemente, Francesco 180–1, 186, 253 collectors of art 122–4 conceptual art 24, 246 Creole 163, 215, 231, 269, 299 creolization 265

fame 6, 26, 28, 33, 38, 44, 48, 55, 57, 91, 130, 182, 188, 196, 200, 218, 238, 251, 254, 256–7 femininity 34, 47, 100, 179 feminism 10, 20, 95, 99, 110-11, 164, 306 film noir 34, 266 film in relation to art 3–6 film studies 2–3, 14, 266 Forliani, Claire 161 Foucault, Michel 130, 138 Frankenthaler, Helen 111 Frida (biopic) 10, 141, 305

Dafoe, William 161, 236, 302–3

Ernst, Max 122–3 ethnicity 15, 20, 163–4, 167, 190, 193, 217, 280

Gagosian, Larry 192, 268–9 Geldzahler, Henry 222, 242 “gender in genre” 9 “genre benders” 266

Index Gentileschi, Artemisia 9–10 Gentileschi, Orazio 9 Gorky, Arshile 93, 111 graffiti-spraying 168–9, 188, 210, 213–17, 224, 226 Graham, John 94, 100 Gray (band) 213, 226 Greenberg, Clement 26–7, 32, 34, 44, 57, 75, 80, 91, 93, 113–22, 128–9, 133, 301 Guggenheim, Peggy 34, 44, 53–4, 60, 65, 91, 113, 118, 121–9, 301 hairstyles 221–2 Hall, Stuart 163–4 Harden, Marcia Gay 40, 70, 103, 107–9 Haring, Keith 160, 182, 186, 248, 251–2 Harris, Ed 36–44, 49–50, 57, 59, 70, 73, 84–5, 88–90, 104, 129–32, 259, 296–7, 300–3 authorship of 134–41 Hayek, Salma 306–7 high culture 1, 3–4 Himmel, Lizzie 170–6, 186–7, 221 historical films 2 historiography 7, 11, 16–17, 23, 111, 264, 266 Hoban, Phoebe 162, 165–9, 193, 201, 217, 237–8 Hofmann, Hans 92–8 Holman, Michael 203, 213, 216 hooks, bell 162, 189–90 Hopper, Dennis 161, 233, 302–3 Horkheimer, Max 88 hybridity in film 265–7 definition of 265 image of the artist 14–15

347

“interartist”, use of the term 265–6 intericonicity 16, 262, 265 intermediality in films 15–16 Jarman, Derek 141, 259 Jewish immigrants 92, 300 Kadish, Reuben 54 Kahlo, Frida 9–10, 23, 305–6 Kandinsky, Wassily 24, 86, 114 Kazan, Elia 31 Kilik, Jon 201–2 Klee, Paul 124 Kligman, Ruth 54–5, 109, 300 Kline, Franz 190–1 Kracauer, Siegfried 2–5 Krasner, Lee 15, 28, 31, 33, 38, 44–5, 53, 57–8, 61–5, 70, 75, 80, 90–112, 116–29, 133, 140, 170, 296, 298 as an artist in her own right 94–100, 103–11 as an influence on Pollock and executor of his estate 98–9, 110 in the Pollock biopic 100–12, 300 Kris, Ernst 11, 35, 58, 65 Kurz, Otto 11, 35, 58, 65 Laughton, Charles 41 Lee, Spike 202 Life Magazine 23, 26–30, 35, 38, 44, 47, 68, 86, 94, 164, 187, 298 Love, Courtney 160 Lowensohn, Elina 232 Lust for Life (film) 5, 41 McGuigan, Cathleen 162, 190–3, 222 Madigan, Amy 124 Majewski, Lech J. 203

348 Index

Malevich, Kasimir 24, 122 Mallouk, Suzanne 237 Marx, Karl 84–5 Masculinity 31, 32, 34, 298 Matta, Roberto 123 Mays, Willie 214 media influence 89–91, 134–5, 140, 298 Mekas, Jonas 260 method acting 42, 138, 303 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 28, 176, 272 metrosexuality 219 Metzger, Edith 55 mimicry 243, 301 Minnelli, Vincente 5, 24–5, 41 Miro, Joán 114 Modersohn-Becker, Paula 9–10 Mondrian, Piet 24 Monroe, Marilyn 30, 92 Moulin Rouge (film) 41 the Mural (painting by Pollock) 44, 59–60, 65–8, 86–8, 123, 128, 135 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York 32, 34, 39, 51, 91, 123, 141, 149–51, 153, 278, 297 myths 11–14, 32–5, 40–3 artists’ 295–9, 308 Naifeh, Steven 36, 38, 48, 94, 109–12, 123, 296 see also White Smith Namuth, Hans 5, 38–40, 57, 73–85, 88, 109, 119, 129, 133–4, 137 Neo-Expressionist 164, 191, 261, 280 New Hollywood Cinema 266 New York art scene 51, 93, 159–62, 194–6, 205, 213, 231–3, 238, 257, 264, 266

New York School of artists 28 New York Times 193, 201, 265 New York Times Magazine 186, 188, 218 Newman, Arnold 27, 29, 70 Nosei, Annina 160, 169, 192, 205, 227, 230–3, 302 O’Brien, Glenn 218, 221 O’Keeffe, Georgia 33 Oldman, Gary 161 Ossorio, Alfonso 91 oxidation paintings 183–4, 245–6 piss painting 183, 246 “painterly filming” 258–63 Panofsky, Erwin 3, 25 Pantuhoff, Igor 102 Parsons, Betty 91 patriarchy 10, 93, 96, 115 patronage in the arts 123–4, 188 Picasso, Pablo 23, 29, 51, 54–5, 86–7, 114, 118–19, 138, 207, 260, 298, 300 Pollock (biopic) 13, 26, 36–52, 58–63, 67–9, 84–7, 90, 125–41, 170, 201–4, 230, 259, 295–303 deleted scenes from 103–7 representation of Lee Krasner in 100–10, 300 Pollock, Jackson 1–2, 5–6, 10, 13–15, 23–85, 163, 169–70, 183, 187, 190–1 alcoholism of 49, 53–5, 83, 86, 109, 111, 120, 138, 298 appearance 54–5 biographies of 36, 38, 41 birth 30 death 31, 48–9, 86 heroic status as an artist 30–3, 86–90, 298

Index historical black and white film of (1951) 73–85, 88, 137 myths attached to 23, 30–40 personality and interests 30–1, 37–40, 49, 55 photographs of 27, 29, 39–40, 68–9 public image of 24–6, 30–5, 71 reputation of 26, 28, 31, 36, 38 as a specifically American artist 32, 35–6 as a suffering artist 55–6, 86, 90, 298 way of painting 27–30, 57–8, 63–5, 68, 86–8, 300 Pollock, Sande 51, 53, 112, 300 Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center 38, 140 popular art history 1, 6, 16, 295, 308 Pork (play by Warhol) 239–40 Posey, Parker 161, 232 postmodernism 9, 13–14, 99, 261, 266, 298 Putzel, Howard 44, 54, 91, 117, 123–7, 132 racism 168, 189, 193–4, 213–17, 299 Rauschenberg, Robert 190 Reed, Lou 238 Rembrandt 41 Ricard, René 159–62, 169, 205–9, 224, 229, 233–6, 301 Rimbaud, Arthur 102 Rivera, Diego 9, 305 Rosenberg, Harold 57, 93, 98–9, 115–16 SAMO© 168–9, 210–13 Schardt, Bernard 66–7 Schiele, Egon 178

349

Schnabel, Julian 14, 159–66, 186, 194–205, 209–12, 216–17, 222, 230–3, 236–7, 241–4, 250–66, 296–305 autobiography 198–9, 209, 236, 257, 304 family of 257 secondary market 165 sexualization of the viewer’s gaze 47 Seymor Brant, Stephanie 202 signatures, artists’ 130–2, 263 Sontag, Susan 239–40 stardom 12, 30–1, 41, 134, 138, 140, 160–1, 164–6, 187–94, 208, 217, 238, 241–4, 255, 295, 301; see also celebrity culture Stella, Frank 195 stereotypes 11 Stieglitz, Alfred 33 Still, Clyfford 114, 120 Strasberg, Lee 42 A Streetcar Named Desire (film) 31 Surrealism 122 Sweeney, James Johnson 93, 123, 126 Tarkovskij, Andrej 262, 264 Tate, Greg 162, 188 Taymor, Julie 141, 307 van Gogh, Vincent 1–2, 5, 10, 23, 41–2, 78, 206–10 VanDerZee, James 176–80, 194, 218, 221 Varnedoe, Kirk 39, 115, 120–1 Vasari, Giorgio 10–11, 179 Walken, Christopher 161, 214 Warhol, Andy 14–15, 160–1, 180–92, 196, 202–5,

350 Index

209, 215, 221–2, 230–3, 238–55, 259–60, 297–303, 307 Factory 238, 242, 245, 251–2, 254, 286, 288 Wenders, Wim 203 white art world 160, 163, 189, 194, 213, 216–7, 300 black artist 163, 167–8, 178, 186, 189, 193–4, 213–14, 255, 280–1, 299 White Smith, Gregory 36, 38, 48, 94, 109–12, 123, 296 see also Naifeh

Williams, Tennessee 31 Wincott, Michael 161, 233 Wittkower, Rudolf and Margot 56, 179–80 Wölfflin, Heinrich 9 women artists 9–10, 34, 91, 93, 96, 98, 102, 107, 164, 305–6 Wright, Jeffrey 161, 204, 222, 230, 254, 259, 303 Zanetta, Tony 239–41 Ziggy Stardust 240–1