Women Artists Depicted in Film: A Limited Palette

Frida Kahlo once said, “I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.” The artist as subject matter for a film would seem, on the surface, as a rich source to tap into to depict their own particular version of the world. Pollock (2000), Lust for Life (1956), and even The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965) all show artists struggling with capturing their visions in paint.

These films are only about male artists as working creative forces. When it comes to women, biopics tend to avoid showing them as actively working in favor of focusing on their personal relationships instead. This seems like a subliminal message that they should not be recognized as artists, but as women who had interesting lives involved with various men but who also painted. It may be a subtle point, but in light of women rarely being recognized for the merit of their creative work financially or in any other way, it is an extremely important one.

Frida (2002) is a perfect example of this lack of focus on a particularly gifted woman whose creative output defies categorization. Her tumultuous marriage to artist Diego Rivera, portrayed with amazing depth by Alfred Molina, receives greater screen time than her as an individual who developed her own unique voice. The paintings we see of hers tend to be portraits, but Frida was so much more than the conventional. When we do get glimpses of her more exciting work, we learn nothing as to why she chose to push boundaries and what influenced her.

She was of Indigenous American descent on her mother’s side, and incorporated folk images into her painting, but we do not learn that from the film itself. Instead, we see her involvement with the revolutionary movement in Mexico, in part because Rivera was also involved in it. “Frida” has much to admire from an incredible cast led by Salma Hayek, but it ultimately cannot rise to its own ambitions in depicting her. We are left with a narrative that does not know which artist it is supposed to be talking about, so we get a little bit about both, but not enough to be satisfying or enlightening.

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Carrington (1995) delves into the world of the Bloomsbury Set, which was a group of creatives that included painter Dora Carrington (Emma Thompson). Much like Frida, this film focuses on the unconventional love between Carrington and writer Lytton Strachey (Jonathan Pryce) more than her evolution as an artist. Her portrait of Strachey is seen several times in the course of the plot, but her experimentation with Surrealism is ignored. In fact, her actual paintings are not focused on at all until the closing credits which include a slideshow of them.

Perhaps the stickiest issue with Carrington is that it is based on a biography of Strachey, even though an opening prologue states it is about her life, not his. Unlike Frida Kahlo, Dora Carrington had very little public attention paid to her work in her lifetime, perhaps because she was so difficult to characterize. She was equally comfortable painting a fresco or a portrait, decorating such homey items as a gramophone or designing a woodblock for printing. However, her versatility is drowned out by the drama regarding her ambiguous sexuality.

The most grievous of film depictions of women artists is Big Eyes (2014) by Tim Burton, who might not have been certain if he was telling the story of a comedy or a tragedy. Margaret Keane (Amy Adams) is a woman of the 1950’s fleeing an abusive marriage only to jump impulsively into an even worse relationship with mysterious Walter (Christophe Waltz). Burton seems to want to focus on the fraudulent posturing of Walter stealing credit for Margaret’s work but this is also a horrifying case of domestic abuse.

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For years, Margaret was caged in an increasingly gilded cage as Walter made sure to exploit her paintings through cheap stunts and cheaper copies printed on postcards and flyers. The Keanes were very financially successful, but at the cost of stunting Margaret’s creativity and stifling her self-respect. It would have been a more satisfying ending to the film if Burton had shown Margaret returning to painting after her divorce from Walter, because she was capable of some interesting work with influences of Klimt and Picasso.

A more recent film regarding a woman painter is the documentary, Beyond the Visible-Hilma AF Klint, and it is a stunner. Klint is revealed to be a pioneer of abstraction, which was never acknowledged in her lifetime because she was discouraged from showing her work. As a matter of fact, her will instructed her nephew not to display her paintings until twenty years after her death. An important point raised in the film is that art is a commercial enterprise dominated by men when it comes to museums and galleries.

The same can be said about major film studios and streaming services. A film about a woman painter with no strong male role to attach a known box office name to is unlikely to be produced just like a major show of a woman painter like Klint, who never had a male companion, is unlikely to be exhibited. Indeed, the only men in Klint’s experience discouraged her from producing anything but “pretty art” the same portraits and landscapes that we commonly see in current films about women artists like Carrington and Kahlo.

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“Beyond the Visible” is so powerful because it features women curators and historians talking about a woman artist who also just so happened to have kept prodigious notes on her creative process. Klint deserves this incredible documentary, but its existence also begs the question if big budget biopics really do any artist justice in how they and their work is depicted. It is too easy for a major studio to downplay the commercial value of an artist’s life, particularly if that artist is a woman. A documentary is better than a Hollywood treatment in that an artist’s own words and process can be documented, especially if they are still alive.

Even better still might be an animated film like the astonishingly beautiful Loving Vincent (2017) for fully immersing an audience in the thoughts and work of an artist. Hilma AF Klint’s work brought to life through movement with her own words describing her internal world would be a unique way to experience how she approached painting. There are many woman artists who deserve the same kind of recognition who will not receive it unless women use their voices and their own talents in filmmaking to bring their work to greater public awareness. There is a treasure trove just waiting to be tapped into, if only other creative women go looking for them for inspiration.