The Faulconer Set: Art Movies

Pollock - 2000, d. Ed Harris - dvd
Frida - 2002, d. Julie Taymor - dvd
Basquiat - 1996, d. Julian Schnabel - dvd

On January 11, 2024, my best friend of nearly 34 years, Ryan Faulconer, passed away in our hometown of Thunder Bay, Ontario. Ryan was, among other things, a cat guy, a wresting snob, a Star Wars nerd, an art nerd and an artist. 

Art was a foundational part of our friendship, although one that ebbed over time. We had four high school art classes together scattered across 5 years of high school (high school was 5 years long back then...no, we weren't held back). These classes -- shepherded by our beloved oddball teacher, the late Ronn Hartviksen -- were a haven not just for illustration, painting, carving and sculpture but for all forms of creative endeavours.  Student-curated music and movies were not part of the curriculum but was a large part of how Ronn fostered inspiring vibrant young minds to create and explore.

While we may have explored 90's indie music thoroughly and the films of Peter Weir repeatedly (Ronn's favourite director, I have to believe he modelled his teaching style after Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society), what we didn't get much of was art history. While Ronn would expose us to the work of famous artists -- having us reinterpret a Klimpt, an O'Keefe, a Dali -- we learned next to nothing about art history in all those classes.  I'm not much of a history buff, and did pretty poorly in history class, so that was fine with me, but Ryan, he loved artists and their stories. He loved learning about what motivated people to create, and also loved learning about how they evolved. 

Ryan was legally blind, which meant he could still see, but not well, and only really make out details when very, very close to his face. He would watch TV or read with his nose practically touching the screen or page, but he could watch films sitting front or second row and pull enough visual information out of them. His limited vision informed much of the way he saw the world, which in turn informed how his art presented the world he saw. He read a lot of art books over the years, consumed art blogs voraciously (back when blogs were a thing), and the small spate of artist biopics released in the late 90's/early 2000s had a massive impact on him.  Three of them in particular (were there more?) were in Ryan's list of favourite all-time movies: Pollock, Frida and Basquiat.

Of these three films, I had only previously seen one of them, Pollock, which Ryan and I saw together on a weird non-double date in the year 2000. Our companions were not as enthusiastic about the film as we were, and I was nowhere near as enthusiastic about it as Ryan was. The film, directed by and starring Ed Harris, tells the story of Jackson Pollock, a rampaging alcoholic, as he vies for recognition in the American art scene of the 1950s and 60's.  His uncultured and unrefined style is abstract expressionism, but Pollock is terrible at self-promotion and doesn't really even think about how he should be navigating the art world. He just creates. It's artist Lee Krasner (portrayed by Marcia Gay Harden) who forwardly approaches Pollock and starts fostering his amateur work into a career.  Their relationship rapidly becomes romantic as she shepherds him into the community, getting him into the good graces of Peggy Guggenheim, where, despite his druken behaviour, his art soon becomes undeniable.

Yet, the more Pollock gets sucked into the art scene, the more obsessed he becomes with his status and the more pressure he puts on himself. Krasner's own art seems to go on the back burner as she basically manages his career and manages him as her alcoholic husband. It goes unspoken in the film, but it's clear Pollock had severe mental health issues outside of the alcoholism. Harris suggested he was possibly manic-depressive, an unconfirmed fact which certainly informs his performance. (A biography video I watched after noted Pollock was seeing a psychiatrist later in his life, but its modern form was still a nascent field of study). The last quarter of the film takes a fairly large time jump, and finds Pollock and Krasner still married but completely at odds, with Pollock now a raging drunk, and unable to create any meaningful work, he feels his status as a pioneer of modern American art slipping away. He maintained a side relationship with ingenue Ruth Kligman (Jennifer Connolly) which Krasner seemed aware of. The story ends when he dies in a drunk driving accident at the age of 44.

Watching the film again for the first time in over 20 years, I was only momentarily reminded of the non-double date viewing experience, and instead focused on what Ryan might have connected with in the film. Ryan was neither an alcoholic nor manic-depressive, but I think the way Harris directs the scenes of art being created really fuelled and inspired him. Harris' interpretation of Pollock's creative process really was one of being in the moment, feeling the vibes of the piece, the internal becoming external, and being true to one's technique(s). This was Ryan's art in a nutshell. Though his work was nothing like Pollock's, working primarily in soft oil pastels on smaller, more manageable frames and not massive mural-sized canvases, he still worked largely on feeling, emotion, and internal inspiration...pure expression. He couldn't recreate the outside world with any exacting detail, so when he did so it was impressionistic. Like Pollock, Ryan wound up developing his own techniques, only in pointillism, intensive poem drawings (where he would start with text on canvas that would morph into imagery), and his inexplicable, eye-catching circular "swoop" technique (that he actually taught to a class (or two) of university students) I've never seen elsewhere that he would used in abstract pattern collages or as the foundation of floral pieces.

"The Grocer", 2004

In the film, Harris nails the "tortured artist" portrayal of Pollock.  He is an amazing, thoughtful actor and knew exactly what he wanted to bring to the role and made sure it all got up on screen. For his first directorial effort Harris did exquisitely well in feeding the energy of creation to the audience, the art pieces that Harris himself (and sometimes stand-ins) create are not *exactly* Pollock, but certainly representative and gets the sensibility (if not necessarily the soul) right.  But Harris' storytelling falters frequently throughout the film's duration. His focus is largely covering Pollock and Krasner's relationship, but Pollock's connections to the art scene and his family all feels very much like a series of vignettes and less cohesive as a narrative. I think the other characters beyond Jackson Pollock suffer as a result. I never truly understood what Krasner or Kligman, or Pollock's friends for that matter, got out of their relationship with him. In the biography I watched, one of his friends comments "he did drink, he was an awful, awful boor, he was a trial, he was continuously testing, and yet you tolerated it and accepted it because of the other rewards" (though said rewards are never really expressed). It was clear that Krasner, at least, wanted to extract great art from a great artist, but did she truly love him, or did she just love what he was capable of? 

As an art history buff, Ryan loved Pollock's story both in film and beyond, his blog entries tell me as much, but I'm not exactly sure why. There's not much of the personality of Pollock I think Ryan saw in himself, except the desire to create, which then slowly started to be usurped by the desire to be recognized. That desire didn't consume Ryan like it did Pollock, thankfully. Pollock had a "couldn't give two fucks" attitude which, at least in how Harris portrays him, is a mask to how much he wanted acceptance and approval, but Pollock just couldn't seem to behave himself, part of whatever disorder he was dealing with. Ryan, of course, explored the artist beyond just the film via actual written biographies, so I may be missing more to the man's story that Ryan was connecting with outside the movie.

Pollack's addictions and mental health issues led to a lack of output and creativity before he died.  Different health circumstances led to Ryan's once prolific production slowing to a trickle for the latter third of his life. But Frida Kahlo's story, which Ryan said he knew prior to watching the film, provided inspiration of perseverence for him.

In Julie Taymor's artsy, visually imaginative biopic of Kahlo, we first meet Frida (Salma Hayak) as a promiscuous, gender-stereotype-defying teen fascinated by art.  Her father himself was a successful photographer who is shown providing her guidance and support. Frida wound up in a horrifying bus accident that severely damaged her spine and internal organs, which led to many many surgeries throughout her lifetime (which she states in the film may have done more damage than the original accident) that resulted in lifelong pain. During her recuperation and rehabilitation from the initial accident and surgeries, she painted, and when she was well enough, bolstered by her family's appreciation for her work, she approached the famous Mexican muralist and revolutionary Diego Rivera (as played by Alfred Molina), who happened to be working nearby, for an opinion.

Rivera is impressed and basically takes her on as a protege, but she is not immune to charms of the notorious philanderer, and eventually becomes his third wife, but with her eyes quite wide open. Their marriage was an open one, and, at least in the film's telling, it suited both of them. Kahlo's art, though, seemed to take a backseat to Rivera's grandiose profile, and while the film doesn't make much hay of Kahlo struggling in Rivera's shadow as an artist, she definitely struggled as his wife. It was eventually Rivera's affair with Kahlo's sister that broke her trust, and the pair split, which resulted in Kahlo dedicating herself to her art, which creatively expressed her pain, physical and emotional.

A curious tangent in the story finds, at Rivera's request, Kahlo taking Leonid Trotsky (Geoffrey Rush) and his wife (and their security detail) into her estate. Trotsky has fled Russia, having fallen out of favour with Stalin, and fearing for his life. Kahlo winds up having an affair with Trotsky, but ends it, seeing the impact it is having on his wife.

As Kahlo's recognition as an artist grew internationally, her health declined, and Rivera returned to care for his beloved, and also be the supporting player in her burgeoning career. At least in the film's telling, In my extracurricular viewing on Kahlo, Rivera continued to womanize and cause her great emotional and mental consternation that was present in her art.

I hadn't seen Frida until very recently, but I understand why Ryan was so captivated by the story. It is foremost a love story, albeit a very atypical one that fits somehow remarkably better into a "modern love" context of smashing gender norms, erasing the sexual binary, and recontextualizing physical vs emotional connections.  While very cis-het and happily monogamous in his marriage, Ryan loved love, and I think there's a strange triumph of the heart in Frida that is hard to not be charmed by. 

But what's more, I immediately understood that Ryan saw an artist who, like him, was dealing with chronic pain, and yet was living vivaciously in the face of it. Frida's art was fueled by her pain and yet she persevered, developed and grew as an artist in spite of her immense physical discomfort. 

Aggravated by his own lifelong disabilities, Ryan wound up requiring back surgery in 2006 which derailed his most prolific artistic period. During his rehabilitation he wound up meeting Michelle, the woman who would become his wife, and his life took him to a much different space of emotional happiness. But his physical state was never the same, and unlike Frida, Ryan had a hard time creating his art as a result of his restricted movement. His low vision required him to be close to his work, and the positioning he would have to be in to create caused him too much discomfort to persist.  I don't know if he had watched Frida much following his surgery, but he had a memory like a proverbial elephant, so I'm sure Frida Khalo-as-inspirational figure was never far from his mind. I can suggest (but don't know) that she may have been an aspirational figure for him, I think someone he hoped he would become more like: boldy and passionately facing the world each day, and using pain to feed creativity.

L-R: "The Model" (2004), "Well, Red" (2004), "Shawk" (2006),
Je mappelle Babbette (2004), "Hexperiment" (2004),
"Za Beatnik Chicky" (2004)

Ryan's subject matter, before his back surgery, was largely three-fold: expressionist abstracts, plants/nature, and female portriats.  Of these three milieus it's his portraits that are the most curious (although not his best work). Just as Kahlo's most famous works are self-portraits of a kind, Ryan's feminine portraits present his fascination with women but they are a reflection of himself. Raised by a strong-willed but compassionate mother, Ryan revered women, and he saw beauty as not just a visual perception but a character trait. His women in art tend to look very much like him, but with bulging eyes, pupils darting off in different directions, much as his own would. Artists often uses themselves as frames of reference, but I can't help but think that Ryan's female portraits were not just an expression of his admiration of and attraction to women and his desire for love and romance, but also an expression of his own femininity. We had talked at times about his portraits being a reflection of himself, but not really exploring the deeper roots perhaps beyond just an obsession with "pretty girls". It's one of already hundreds of conversations that have cropped up in my mind since his passing that will never be had.

With a better understanding of Frida Kahlo than I had prior, I really lament the fact that Ryan wasn't motivated to create much following his back surgery, despite a desire to always being there. Creating his own works of physical pain expressed artistically is something I now desperately wish I could see. But perhaps like Pollock, too addled by the painkilling medication (rather than alcohol) that he always wished he could extract himself from, the muse perhaps wasn't there, the art wasn't perhaps artistic. It's just not something you can force out of yourself. 

Of these artists, Pollack's work was his favourite (right behind Van Gough), but of the films, and personalities on display, Basquiat was his tops. Jean-Michel Basquiat's story, in the film and beyond, really spoke to Ryan. I don't have his explicit expression as to why, I can only interpret.

Artist (and Basquiat's contemporary) Julian Schnabel's film opens with Jean-Michel (Jeffrey Wright) crawling out of a cardboard box amidst the sparse trees of, well, I dunno, somewhere in Manhattan presumably (I'm sorry, I don't know NYC geography well). He makes his way to a diner with his best friend Benny Dalmau (Benicio Del Toro, playing a fictional stand-in for Basquiat's SAMO partner Al Diaz) where he takes a liking to Gina Cardinale (Claire Forlani, in a fictional role that is a stand-in for Suzanne Mallouk). After being kicked out of the diner he flits about town with Benny, snorting coke, practicing music with his avant garde band "Gray", and tagging walls with abstract messages signed SAMO. He approaches Gina at the end of her shift and asks her out. I immediately felt a pang of worry for Gina, as Basquiat's mental health is clearly under suspicion, plus having a substance abuse issue, and no discernible income, he just didn't seem like the kind of guy she should be betting on. But also we get no real sense of who Gina is a person, what drives and motivates her, what her aspirations are and how Jean-Michel's erratic nature may be interfering with that.

A chance encounter with Andy Warhol (David Bowie) finds Basquiat emboldened by Warhol's approval, and it's not long before the right person, in this case critic Rene Ricard (Michael Wincott), sees his work and brings Jean-Michel out of the shadows.  The only touch point the film makes towards Basquiat's upbringing is through a very racially-charged interview (with Christopher Walken playing the role of interviewer), where he's noted as being the product of upper-middle-class mixed race parents (his mother now in a long-term care home for her mental instability, his father barely a consideration even when he turns up at one of his shows).  At times the film seems to present that Basquiat was quite aware of his mental health issues, particularly in relation to his mother's, but at most turns it seems Basquiat exists in his own world.

Jean-Michel is portrayed in the film as demure, but carelessly ambitious, wanting fame and notoriety above all else. He cheats on Gina, he drops Rene as his manager the moment someone with a bit more pull comes along, and he leaves his music, and Benny, behind in the wake of his success.  And it's a rapid rise to success, that gets undermined by the staid, white establishment that seeks to tokenize his work as "the authentic voice of the street" and not the work of a great artist. Wright's portrayal of Basquiat is one that exemplifies his deep inner turmoil around his success being painted with a racially assigned asterisk.  He strikes up a rather tight friendship with Warhol, much later after their initial meeting, and even that is then twisted in Basquiat's mind as perhaps Warhol using him to gain some modern credibility as his own celebrity wanes. (Director Schnabel is himself in the film, portrayed in the film by Gary Oldman, as the character "Albert Milo", a confidant of sorts for Jean-Michel)

Like with Pollock, the story of Basquiat is one that seems more like a lot of disconnected vignettes of interesting moments striving to form a whole picture of a man, his life and career.  I would have to dive into  music biopics a bit more (or maybe just watch Walk Hard again) to see if it's very much the same formulae, or if the artists story has its own. The performances from a stacked-to-the-rafters cast are incredible, though it's very bizarre to see Wright in a much different mode than his usual (amazing) putterer-and-murmurs persona that has served him incredibly well in a few major franchises and an incredible 2023 Oscar nominated performance (for American Fiction). My only hesitations around performances is Bowie's rendition of Warhol, which teeters more on impression than performance (but I'm undecided on where it ultimately falls).

Ryan talked about or referenced Jean-Michel Basquiat with me more than any other artist that I can think of (except maybe Henry Matisse) and I think(/guess) it was maybe because Basquiat found his way to success in a very modern context, interacting with pop culture and artistic figures that still had relevance in our lifetime. Basquiat's art was a product of all his virtues and vices and there was at once grit and purity to it (if there was grit in Ryan's art, it was probably cat hair). I know Ryan looked up to expressionist artists, as that's how he saw himself, and I think in the stories of both Pollock and Basquiat he saw men with troubled minds that still managed to find success, or at least recognition in their lifetime (as opposed to after their deaths) both doing unconventional, innovative, individualistic work that defied the industry norms. I know Ryan dreamed less of success and more of recognition but both physically and geographically he was limited by what he could achieve on his own. He had a couple local showings in Thunder Bay, but he never had a Rene Ricard, Diego Rivera or Lee Krasner to take him wide. Art is an industry, and like any industry, you have to have more than talent, you have to have good fortune, good contacts, and personality.  Ryan most definitely had the latter, but didn't receive much of the former, at least in any way that serviced him as an artist.

What Ryan shared with the persona documented in these three great (though far from perfect) features was that he was an artist, first and foremost. It was in him, and it needed to get out. Like any great artist, he knew he wasn't going to be of any use in a 9-5 setting and it wasn't just a result of his physical or visual limitations. His blood bled pastels, even if he barely picked up a wedge later in his life. I knew Ryan as well as I've ever known anyone, and watching these three films again brought me closer to him, and permitted me to engage with him on his turf in a way I wish I had done more of when he was alive (oh, I did wade through many, many dialogues on wrestling, but not as many on art).

In one of Ryan's last blog lists of 100 favourite films (circa January 2005), Basquiat sat at #5, Pollock at #11, and Frida is #59.  My own personal tastes on these films differ. I loved Frida (though the Weinstein influence puts a big ugly asterisk beside the title). Taymor seems to readily love Kahlo's art and recreates many of her famous paintings in real life in exacting detail. Her animated and stop motion transitions are so irreverent and lively, and the colour palette of the film is just as bold as Kahlo's most vibrant works. Frida's art career and development takes sort of a backseat to her personal relationships (specifically with Rivera) but it's these very personal things that inform her art, and so are worthy. As much space as Rivera takes up, it's never off-focus from Frida. The extracurricular viewing I watched had a much bleaker view of Kahlo and Rivera's relationship than the film does, and goes into more explicit detail of the many many physical and emotional traumas that informed her work that a cinematic narrative can only glance at.

With Pollock and Basquiat, I appreciate, as Ryan did, the performance of creation. But unlike Frida, neither of the films had access to the actual work of the artists. Watching the Pollock (tv) documentary and Tamra Davis' documentary Radiant Child, the works of both artists are so far beyond the replicated or impersonative works of the the films. The Pollock doc at times pulls focus into his splatter paintings and you become immersed, just as you would upon seeing them in person. A Basquiat work is so full of detail that you have to linger to absorb it all. 

Where Pollock is a somewhat accurate in its portrayal of the sequence of events in the his life, and Frida's hews close if taking more dramatic liberty, Basquiat is a half fiction of the man's life, and maybe doesn't fully capture the radiance of his personality (Davis' documentary contains personal footage she shot of him and he had a penchant for letting smiles slip onto his face which were super alluring).  With both Davis' tribute and Schnabel's  drama, it's imperative to note that this important figure in Black culture in both cases has his story resting in the hands of white artists.  As usual, it's a reminder to take a Hollywood biopic, or any scripted biography for that matter, as an impression, and not the true story.

I also enjoyed in my extracurricular viewing how the story of Pollock touched on the influence of Mexican muralists (Diego Rivera included) on his early work, and how Basquiat as a student of art found inspiration from Pollock.  I now can see a sense of all three in Ryan's work, but most explicitly Pollock abstract expressionism in Ryan's abstracts, and Basquiat's use of text and editing definitely influence Ryan's poem drawings. 

"The Magazine" (2004)

I wish I hadn't waited until after his passing to engage with Ryan on his passion for art history. I have so many things I want to pick his brain about. 

As a little treat, in the comments is Ryan's 2004 review of Frida.