Limelight The artist or the art By Lubna Abdel Aziz Throughout history, artists in every field have toiled and troubled over their art, their passionate cry demanding attention and appreciation from their world around them. It is desire for that "joy that in the widest commonality spread". That is their sacred mission. While in the final analysis it is the art itself that endures, some artists have been greatly aided by a lifestyle that appealed to many more than would have heeded their works. The lives of the artists become more interesting, more intriguing than the art itself, great as it may be. Their life's endeavours are overshadowed by their public's fascination with their struggles, passions, anguish, frustrations and calamities. That is perhaps why a great many of us are more familiar with Van Gogh than Van Eyck or Van Dyck. Also born in the Netherlands, Van Eyck (1386-1441), one of the founders of the Flemish realistic style of painting, a style that dominated Europe for no less than a century, was more influential during his time than was Van Gogh. Van Eyck was the first great artist to use the technique of oil painting, emphasising indirect lighting effects, vivid colours and rich precise details of clothing and jewels. Belgian painter Van Dyck (1599-1641) was the most famous portraitist of the 1600s and became court painter of King George I of England. Their ordinary uneventful lives, regardless of the calibre and grandeur of their art, are overlooked by biographers for the more elaborate fancies, possessing the elements of a richly dramatic colourful canvas. Van Gogh's tragic life appeals to a common curious trait in all of us that constantly seeks the provocative, the pathetic and the lamentable. Mozart is no less dazzling to us as a man than as a musician. His greatness lies as much in his prolific compositions as in his flamboyant lifestyle. While Pablo Picasso's art has become the most representative of the century responding to the intense challenges and rapid changes of his complex era, his many wives and children and romantic liaisons hold as much fascination for us as his massive artistic legacy. While students, critics and fans seriously pursue the life and works of their favourite artists, it is the media and the medium of film that has done much to showcase the lives of some of the world's great prodigies, and by and large the task has been admirable, even if it did not always hit the target. It is often debatable whether a picture is worth a thousand words, but seeing Michelangelo (1475-1564) lying on his back on a high scaffold, painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was indubitably more vivid on the big screen than Irving Stone's elaborate description in his best-selling novel The Agony and the Ecstasy. The 1962 film version starring Moses himself, Charlton Heston as Michelangelo Buonarotti brought alive the anguish of his five- year ordeal culminating in the world's wondrous masterpiece. No less intriguing was Lust for Life (1956), the biopic exposing the tortured soul of Dutch post-impressionist Vincent Van Gogh (1852-1890), who never sold but one painting in his entire lifetime though he produced 800 paintings during his last five years. His friend, colourful French painter Paul Gauguin, mostly known for abandoning his wife and children for the tropical shores and women of Tahiti, was masterfully portrayed by Anthony Quinn in an Oscar winning performance. Van Gogh committed suicide in an asylum where he spent the last days of his life after cutting off his ear, in an epileptic seizure over a broken love-affair, providing all the dolorific heart-bleeding details of a perfect soap opera. Would the life and works of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) have become as renowned had he not become a freakish curiosity? He was crippled at age 14 in two accidents that broke his legs, both of which healed but stopped growing while the rest of him matured normally. Ashamed of his dwarfish appearance Lautrec sought the company of prostitutes, outcasts and rejects. He lived among the nightclubs and dancehalls of Montmartre and immortalised the Parisian cabaret Moulin Rouge and its entertainer Jane Avril. Lautrec was portrayed on the screen by José Ferrer in the 1952 film Moulin Rouge. Musicians and their music have been favourite subjects or targets of the big screen. A romanticised version of Polish master piano composer Frederic Chopin was Charles Vidor's A Song to Remember (1945), with Cornel Wilde portraying Chopin as a revolutionary Pole struggling against Czarist oppression. While history supports none of that, his romance with the elegant and eccentric French novelist Georges Sand, is what grips the hearts and imagination of a romantic public. The unforgettable Amadeus (1984), one of the most beautiful, lavish creations on the screen, introduced the dramatic side-plot of composer Salieri's obsessive jealousy of the multi-talented Mozart (1756-1791). This worthy effort deserved each of the eight Oscars it received, including Best Picture and Best Director Milos Foreman. American abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) lived most of his life in obscurity, resenting the attention given to Europe's Picasso. In a 2000, critically acclaimed screen biography, Ed Harris directs as well as portrays the violent abstractionist Pollock and Marsha Gay Harden won an Oscar as the artist's wife. If you know nothing of the life of Richard Wagner, it is not because Hollywood has not tried. No artist has had 10 films made of his life, but Wagner. He was played by Richard Burton, Trevor Howard and Alan Badel, among others. Hitler's fascination and attachment to Wagner has been an everlasting media magnet. While Bernard Shaw is every bit as gifted as Oscar Wilde, some critics would say superior, it is Wilde's flamboyant life with its tragic twists and turns, his sensational trial over his affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, his imprisonment and his exile, that has made him the favourite subject of several films, eclipsing his brilliant wit, stories, poetry and plays. The impassioned erratic life of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) can now be seen on screen, with sultry Lebanese-Mexican Salma Hayek as Frida, plucking the role from other luminous Frida-hopefuls Madonna, Jennifer Lopez and Laura San Giacomo. Kahlo's life story has long tempted and tickled Hollywood's fancy, with its exquisite highs and desperate lows. Frida had outrageous affairs and stormy relationships with an array of world figures, like Nelson Rockefeller, Leon Trotsky, American lesbian photographer and expatriate Tina Modotti, and Mexican muralist Diego Rivera whom she married. A bus accident that maimed her for life provided the right measure of Hollywood spice. Julie Taymor directs an impressive cast, Antonio Banderas, Ashley Judd, Alfred Molina, and Oscar winners Edward Norton and Geoffrey Rush. Hayek and Frida etched for themselves an immortality of sorts on the silver screen. Credit should be given where credit is due. Hollywood and the film industry as a whole, with their powerful tools, have helped spread interest in the knowledge of art and numerous artists. Though the product on the screen does not go so far as to ascertain great truths, it enlightens and opens doors for further exploration. It is more than a slight benefit to art and artists. Films reach the four corners of the globe where art never does. Those who do not frequent museums, operas, concerts and libraries, are more likely to watch movies. Although the intention may be essentially to make a profitable film, the fringe benefit is the exposure of art to the masses. As history fades into literature, and life fades into film, artists are called upon to go forth and practice great art, but also live life to the fullest, preferably with torrid romances, dangerous adventures and a calamity or two here and there. Put your life in your art, as all artists must, but put art in your life. It is sure to help!
