Patti Smith, Big Eyes, Mr. Turner and Into the Woods: Women and Art

How do the artists we admire find their way?  What do they sacrifice to share their vision with the rest of us?  How does it feel?  Were they ever satisfied with what they made?

The great Patti Smith answered many of these questions, and more, in her 2010 memoir Just Kids.  It was, to me a real gift – a peek behind the curtain that stands between the journey and the outcome.  It was a long time before another such revelation turned up.  But first, consider this:

“Of course women aren’t as creative as men,” he said.  “After all, they create children.  They don’t have the same drive to do anything else.  How many female composers do you know of?”  

That wasn’t some 21st century sexist.  That was a professor at Smith, the excellent, committed, women’s college where I spent four years in the late 60s.  He was sitting in the “housemother’s parlor” after dinner, speaking with whomever of us had turned up for coffee.  I remember thinking “Huh.  That’s interesting.” and feeling, at his declaration, not outrage but sadness — and humiliation.

I remembered this moment for the first time in decades as a rash of holiday films raised questions about creativity and art, agency and power, commitment and sacrifice.  Into the Woods offered a grim view of women’s lives, where mothers imprison their daughters, daughters abuse their sisters, bakers long to become mothers and deliver their most important lessons after they’re dead, and it’s all the witch’s fault.  Steven Sondheim’s beloved musical includes some lovely songs and I went mostly to see Anna Kendrick but still…

No witches but a desperate mother who sells her soul for her art (and, kind of, for love) emerges in Tim Burton’s Big Eyes.  It’s the story of American painter Margaret Keane, whose husband Walter stole her art, her talent and her reputation and took them for his own.  The cost of continuing to paint and still support herself and her daughter was to surrender the right to take credit for her own work.  A woman in the 50’s making art for a living was unthinkable, or so he told her.  Her story is a bridge – she owned her creativity but not the product.

Then came Mr. Turner, an exquisite profile of the brilliant JMW Turner, a maker of art, no matter what the cost.  The film is a journey through his life as a painter of sea and landscapes and the invincible drive to create images of the beauty he saw.  His singular vision, the decisions he made to preserve that vision, his almost Asberger’s detachment from most people and his startling depth of commitment to the two people he truly loved combined in a thrilling consideration of art and love and living with both: a portrait of what is required of any artist, woman or man, to share what they see and feel and understand.

And so we return to Patti.  She and Turner are bookends on this shelf.  As with Mr. Turner, we learn what she lived and learned and made and what she left behind to do it — a woman slamming through barriers with commitment and with love.  An woman’s tale of what must be done – and of a woman expecting, demanding and embracing — as did Turner — all it took to share what she sees with the rest of us.