Vol. IX comparative cinema Paula Arantzazu No. 16 2021 Ruiz The Van Gogh Enigma: Re- 93-110 Mythifications of the Artist’s Genius in Loving Vincent and At Eternity’s Gate Few painters have had as many films made about their lives as Vincent van Gogh. The interest in his story is due in part to the mystery surrounding his last days, in Arles, France. It is thus no coincidence that all the biopics about the Dutch painter focus on this stage of his life, including the recent works Loving Vincent (2017), an animated film by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman, and Julian Schnabel’s At Eternity’s Gate (2018). A comparative study of these two feature films, representing two different aesthetic and dramatic approaches, is conducted in pursuit of the two objectives of this paper: to identify the conventions of the subgenre of the artist biopic; and consequently, to analyze how both films reflect on the artist’s creative practice in order to determine whether the film camera is in fact capable of capturing the brushstroke and the mystique of the genius. Keywords ARTIST BIOPIC CINEMA AND PAINTING ANIMATED CINEMA VINCENT VAN GOGH TABLEAU VIVANT JULIAN SCHNABEL DOROTA KOBIELA HUGH WELCHMAN Date submitted: 15/09/2020 Date accepted: 16/03/2021 Paula Arantzazu Ruiz [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0002-0396-6842 Paula Arantzazu Ruiz received a PhD in Social Communication from Universitat Pompeu Fabra for a study of the films of Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi in relation to the visual culture of medicine. She is an associate lecturer at Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha and works as a film critic and journalist for Cinemanía, Diari Ara, SensaCine and Letra Global. She has contributed to several collective works, including La paranoia contemporánea. El cine en la sociedad de control (Trea, 2019) and Cuerpos representados. Objetos de ciencia artísticos en España, siglos XVIII-XX (Sans Soleil, 2020). DOI: 10.31009/cc.2021.v9.i16.06 Over the last three decades, AD) and to Giorgio Vasari’s The Lives of academic criticism has developed the Artists (1550) the mythification of an increasing interest in the genre artists, their elevation to a unique and of the biopic, a contraction of the eccentric pantheon whose members’ composite term “biographical [motion] inspiration and genius have offered picture.” George F. Custen, one of the us glimpses of sublime beauty. These first theorists to consider this film two works also established the model comparative cinema comparative genre, describes biopics as life-story for the artist biography, based on narratives that contribute, along with the repetition of certain biographical many other mass media texts, to the themes, a fixed set of artistic values creation of “public history,” which and a series of stylistic tropes, as “refers both to the product and the theorized by Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz in process in which members of the their canonical Legend, Myth and Magic mass public—the ‘public-at-large’— in the Image of the Artist: A Historical obtain their definitions of the symbolic Experiment (2007, originally published universe from watching and talking in 1934). about the communications media” On the other hand, while the (Custen 1992, 12). More contemporary relationship between cinema and definitions characterize the biopic painting has been explored in depth by as a “a film genre in its own right, Raymond Bellour in Cinéma et Peinture with narrative codes, historical and – Approches (1992), Jacques Aumont in aesthetic obligations, and novelistic L’oeil interminable. Cinéma et peinture writing styles” (Breteau-Skira 2010, 5) (1989), Steven Jacobs in Framing and as a genre whose basic obligation Pictures: Film and the Visual Arts (2011), 94 is “to enter the biographical subject Áurea Ortiz and María Jesús Piqueras in into the pantheon of cultural mythology, La pintura en el cine (2003), and, more one way or another, and to show why he recently, by Guillermo G. Peydró in El or she belongs there” (Bingham 2010, cine sobre arte: de la dramatización 10). It has also been argued that “rather de la pintura al cine-ensayo (2019), than to the past, biographical films in the case of the artist biopic, the and the analysis that surrounds them narrative and aesthetic qualities of are projected into the present” (Moral films about artists’ lives, the academic Martín 2013, 23). literature is much less extensive. As Nuances aside, all of these general Peydró suggests, this may be due definitions of the concept, functions to the popularity of the genre with At Eternity’s Gate At Eternity’s and narrative characteristics of the general audiences and the consequent and biopic conceive of the genre in terms low esteem in which film critics and of its “historical obligation,” that is, academics have held it: “The box- the description of the meritorious role office success of the biopic genre has in history of the character portrayed, generally been inversely proportional to a supposedly important figure whose its critical respect, which has received Loving Vincent Loving actions in life are deemed worthy of scant scholarly consideration until very committing to posterity in art—the recent years” (2019, 171). Nevertheless, same rationale behind pictorial and academic research on the evolution of literary portraits. However, in the case the artist biopic has increased slightly of the artist biopic, a very specific in recent years, perhaps in response to subgenre overlapping with films about the questions raised by the constant Article ARANTZAZU RUIZ PAULA of the Re-Mythifications Gogh Enigma: Van The Genius in Artist’s art, we should also speak of a kind of or renewed interest in the subgenre “mythical obligation” in relation to the among different film industries around historical person depicted: we owe to the world. A solid starting point for 2021 Vol. IX IX Vol. No. 16 No. Pliny the Elder’s Natural History (77–79 reflection on the established patterns DOI: 10.31009/cc.2021.v9.i16.06 and variations of the subgenre is Gloria such as his confrontation with society Camarero’s Pintores en el cine (2009), a as a misunderstood individual, or other compendium that details various films traits that underscore the exceptional about painters, mostly biographical, nature of his artistic personality, and that also compares the different like bohemianism, insanity, non- portraits of the lives of artists who have conformity or wildness (Wittkower and been the subject of multiple films. And Wittkower 2015) in opposition to the comparative cinema comparative perhaps of even greater value is Javier values considered normative, i.e. the Moral Martín’s La representación doble nineteenth-century bourgeois values (2013), which offers a historical and of rectitude, rationalism and culture, comparative analysis of the narrative understood as the social norms of a model of the artist biopic in order to community. The third and last of these explore its main discursive, aesthetic, tropes is an exploration of the links and cinematic elements. In short, between the cinematic image and Moral Martín’s study examines the the pictorial image and their different artist biopic specifically to identify the combinations of articulations. codes and conventions developed by There are several reasons for the films that established the canon of choosing Van Gogh as an object of the subgenre, as well as to analyze the study to analyze the variations of deviations from those norms by other the contemporary biopic. The first is more recent examples that have also related to cinema’s ongoing “interest” become major works in the tradition. in the figure of the Dutch painter. Apart Using Moral’s study as my main from Francisco de Goya, Van Gogh has theoretical framework, this paper probably had more biopics made about 95 explores the narrative and stylistic him than any other painter: Vincente evolution of what I consider to be the Minnelli’s Lust for Life (1956), with basic principles of the artist biopic Kirk Douglas playing a “hysterical” through a comparison of two recent Van Gogh (Codell 2013, 160) and with art-house feature films on Vincent van Anthony Quinn as Paul Gauguin; Robert Gogh’s life (1853−1890): the British- Altman’s Vincent & Theo (1990), starring Polish animated film Loving Vincent Tim Roth as the artist and Paul Rhys (2017), by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh as his brother Theo van Gogh, in a film Welchman; and At Eternity’s Gate that follows the tradition of portraying (2018), a Euro-American co-production1 the artist in decline (Codell 2013, 159); by the filmmaker and painter Julian Van Gogh (1991), directed by Maurice At Eternity’s Gate At Eternity’s Schnabel, with a screenplay by Jean- Pialat and starring Jacques Dutronc in a performance very different from and Claude Carrière and with Willem Dafoe as the tortured post-impressionist previous portrayals that has been artist. In broad terms, Moral describes defined by Aurora Corominas as “an act the basic principles of the male artist of intimacy” (2003, 185); and of course biopic as constituting a fixed set of the recent biopics by Kobiela and Welchman and Schnabel. Loving Vincent Loving tropes. The first of these is a fixed narrative structure that focuses on Other film productions inspired by a crucial moment in the artist’s life the artist include the documentary and places special emphasis on the Van Gogh (1948), a dramatization beginning and the ending of the story. of his life and work for which Alain The second is a particular development Resnais won the Oscar for Best Short Article ARANTZAZU RUIZ PAULA of the Re-Mythifications Gogh Enigma: Van The Genius in Artist’s of the idea of the “Great Man,” the Film at the 1950 Academy Awards; protagonist of the biopic, which in this the documentary Vincent (1987), in case would involve the artist’s search which filmmaker Paul Cox offers a 2021 Vol.