I was sitting in a café, a beautiful man came in and sat at the table right in front of mine. I had my sketchbook and I wanted to turn him into my model. I went to his table and asked him if I could do it, he agreed. I spent the next few minutes trying to sketch him, but he wouldn't look at me. He completely ignored my gaze, his face showed irritation and apathy. I felt so humiliated, I've realized that I've allowed myself to exploit someone else's space for the sake of "art."
(Bodies Buried Under Masterpieces)
The nude, and the female nude in particular has a very complex history in western art. We normally delve into the way women were represented throughout history and the way their image has been constructed in different contexts, but we rarely talk about the women who model for the paintings which can be well known masterpieces. Most of these women are unknown, and what's left of them is an art object which stands the test of time, their bodies have either withered away or have been disfigured by the experience of modelling for an artist. The exclusion of female artists from the Art Canon and drawing an image of the woman as only capable of being the "muse," a fantasy created by a male dominated world, goes hand in hand with the negligence of the tough exploitive labor the model is subjected to. The result is a disfigured representation and a disfigured body.
Female artists strained behind their canvases and spent their lives seeking recognition for their mastery and innovation, while models strained and stretched and posed for hours, so that men would end up getting masterpieces to pile up on the bodies of women.
(Can the Muse Speak?)
In The Beautiful Trouble Maker (1991) a four-hour long film by the French director Jacques Rivette, the masterpiece remains an unknown enigma holding the title of the movie, yet the muse speaks. Driven by an urge to complete a work he had left undone for ten years, a painting which has transformed his relationship with wife Liz when she modeled for him, Eduoarad Frenhofer (Michel Piccoli), chooses Marianne (Emmanuelle Beart) the girlfriend of a visiting artist, to model for him. Amidst the apparent serenity of the French countryside, the film lays out relationships that are charged with tensions and disparities. The power struggle between the figures of the artist, the model, the art dealer, and even the artist's partner are illuminated throughout the film, while revolving around the myth of the work of art as Truth.
The muse speaks and suffers physically and emotionally right before our eyes breaking the idealized representation we normally see in paintings, and we spend the longest duration of the film watching Marianne reclaim her body. It's interesting to note that all the characters in the film are called by their first names, while Frenhofer is the only character with a full name, highlighting his status as the Artist, the creator of masterpieces. Yet Rivette's film remains a necessary exploration of the creative process, and the way an artist's obsessions and eccentricities tamper with the lives of those who are before the canvas.
(A Dangerous Game)
The film opens with the scene of a serious game, the game of playing out roles. Nicolas (David Bursztein), a young artist visiting the master Frenhofer in the rural French province of Languedic-Rousillon with his "lover" Marianne, sits in a café sketching a tourist. His gaze steals away at her features, turning them into lines and values of texture, while she chats with her friend. At the terrace, Marianne covertly is taking snap-shots of Nicolas, hiding behind tree leaves and pillars making sure he doesn't see her, performing the same voyeurism he's acting out on the tourist. When he had finally caught her, he chased her down to his table and asked her what was she doing? She said she was switching roles.
Right from the beginning the volatile nature of Marianne, and her playful desire to shake up roles and reclaim her autonomy is in stark contrast with the rigid role she has been molded into. We see the typical casting of women as partners of great or aspiring male artists, while their careers are portrayed in a way which makes them seem insignificant. "I write children's books."
Later that day they meet the art dealer Porbus (Gilles Arbona), the one who measures art by it's capital value, to go on a visit that would maim their relationship and rekindle Frenhofer's inspiration to open up the wounds left by what is claimed to be his masterpiece. They're welcomed into the rural conclave by his wife Liz (Jane Birkin), the woman who had inspired the major portion of his artistic creation, allowing him to exhaust her body, and put their love and happiness into jeopardy. A dangerou game called art.
(Three Men, One Body)
Liz has a studio of her own, she preserves the bodies of dead animals and portrays their corpses in aesthetically pleasing arrangements. She spends hours with them, the feathers, the furs, all adorned with precision in chemicals and glossy paints. Sacrifices on the altar of art. When Porbus enters her sanctuary, her museum, he tells her that "animals pose too." Frenhofer had made her pose for years. If these animals had been alive to see their revealed representations they would have proclaimed: "This is me, a dead cold thing.”
They all eagerly wait when Frenhofer finally arrives, holding the body of a dead rabbit which swings in sync with his arm like a brush stroke, and without giving his guests much attention he passes them by. We are then taken to the dinner table where Frenhofer stares intensely at his next prey. “Would you accept losing him for a painting?” he asks Marianne, as if he realizes the absurdity of his endeavor, the loss of a person for the sake of a painting. Investing a painting with such a huge significance, and giving it the status of an ultimate Truth that is beyond the bodies of those around him, while paradoxically in desperate need for a body to rummage through so it would surface, allows Frenhofer to spew all kinds of cliches about art when he takes them up to his studio.
Late at night, the three men meet at the atelier. In a scene which looks more like criminals conspiring for a murder in a film noir, Frenhofer asks Nicolas if he could allow Marianne to pose for him. The art dealer is all ears for the answer, for him the painting has a monetary value which rises with the myth of the artist as master and the work of art as masterpiece. It’s baffling that either at the dinner table or in the secrecy of the stone walls of his studio, Frenhofer had to bring Nicolas into the equation when Marianne’s body was in question. Three men, and the body is Marianne’s.
(Crucified on the wood of a canvas)
Marianne gets mad at Nicolas for giving an artist the permission to tear her apart. She nonetheless walks into the trap at ten in the morning. The movie lasts four hours, we spend most of the movie’s length in Frenhofer’s studio. “We want the truth in painting, it’s cruel!” He had the title from the beginning, all he needed now was the body, and truth beyond that body. He makes a sketch of her dressed, then a sketch of her face. “Don’t stare at me like that, it disturbs me.” I see her struggle with her body as it is being turned into lines. He too struggles with the sketch book: he makes rough lines with black ink, then wets his brush and smudges black paint on different places on the paper. They both are anxiety ridden: he might lose his masterpiece, she might lose herself. The stakes are high with every sketch, with every canvas being rolled out and pinned on wood. He tells her to stand straight, that she nust have been taught to stand straight, and she hurts immensely, we watch as either a tear or a sweat slides on her face while she bites the pain away. "They must have taught you how to stand straight
“There’s a robe up there.” She comes back a female nude. “the female body has so often been identified with the body as such.” As time passes, Marianne’s body takes different poses and shapes, each more difficult to hold on to: still life. His sketches are like Man Ray’s Photographs: a woman without a head who has feet peeking out of her ass. Frenhofer tells Marianne, that as a kid he used to enjoy dismembering dolls. He tells her he wants what’s beyond the nudity, the truth, the blood. The first day ends, she tells Nicolas that Frenhofer has changed her.
The next day she goes back, she decides to take over by reclaiming the space of his studio and arranging her body as she pleases. She brings the mattress and prepares to pose. Marianne wants to seize control, she wants to lose herself on her own terms. But the space gets more tense, tenser than her limbs. The poses get harder, and her arm keeps loosening as she snatches a cigarette. “You can’t smoke now we have work to do.” She tells him how his studio reminds her of her time at the boarding school, she wasn’t allowed to do anything. Being the troublemaker she is, they both get drunk, she is still posing but he can’t pin her down anymore. “I keep losing you, oh I found you again.” She slips between lost and found. But he doesn’t want her, he wants the truth, the blood.
The painting remains unknown, Frenhofer seals it behind a wall. The film gives the last words to Marianne, the work was revealed to her, her face turned pale and she ran away in horror. The muse speaks: "This is me, a dead cold thing.”
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