As a teenager, I, like many young artists, was infatuated
with the idea of the tortured genius; that one fragile soul who was fortunate
enough to either be taken for granted by his or her contemporaries, or taken off
this earth by the mad desires that made them “genius” in the first place. We can all name our favorites: Van Gogh, Caravaggio,
Basquiat… but few seem to fit both categories quite like Francesca Woodman. Her short life, as detailed in the 2010 documentary
film The Woodmans (Dir. C. Scott
Willis), hardly seemed to have a moment of triteness or triviality
about it. From almost the very moment
she first held a camera, Francesca was taking amazing and striking images that
even the most senior of photographers would feel proud to have in a
portfolio. Yet she struggled to get even
a glimmer of acceptance from the 1980’s New York art scene, and after suffering
mental illness and emotional loss, took her own life at just 22 years of age.
While this story is well told in this film, what I, as a now
older artist, find most intriguing is not the story of the tortured genius, but
the aftermath that follows. Her parents,
George and Betty Woodman, are professional artist who have been working in
paint (George) and ceramic (Betty) since the 1950’s. They have achieved a level of success in the international
art community that many only dream of, but their talent and recognition have
seemed to come not from genius, but sweat.
As they speak of their daughter in the opening scenes of The Woodmans, a sense of resentment about
them becomes instantly apparent. It is
not clear at first whether this resentment is of their daughters’ supreme level
of fame, if it is a repressed jealously of her innate and immediate talent, or
if it is the fact that they are asked to defend their role in her short life. What is genius
about this documentary is that instead of unfolding this riddle of resentment, the
film keeps adding on layer after emotional layer until you see only pain. George and Betty lost a daughter they
loved. They have regrets and they have thoughts
and feelings that they will likely never reconcile within their hearts. It’s a complicated tale that speaks not just to
the condition of being an artist, but to the human condition.
Wikipedia has a large library of Francesca's photographs. You can find them here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesca_Woodman
