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Introduction
It has always seemed
to me that the
processes of acting
and painting have
much in common.
Maybe this
commonality accounts
for the interest so
many actors have had
in painting, and the
affinity actors so
often feel for
painters.
Numerous actors,
past and present,
with very public
lives in the theatre
or in film, also
have or have
had private lives as
painters. Some had
training and even
art degrees before
turning to acting,
and others came
later to painting
seriously, and have
gone on to exhibit.
Here are just a few
of the countless
well-known actors
who also paint or
painted: Anthony
Hopkins, Johnny
Depp, Sylvester
Stallone, Lucy Liu,
Marilyn Monroe,
Dennis Hopper, Frank
Sinatra, Tony
Bennett, and Billie
Dee Williams.
If we expand our
parameters to
include other kinds
of
performers—singers,
musicians, and so
on—or other
countries!—the
lists get
exponentially
longer. Just to give
a feel: Janis
Joplin, David Bowie,
Paul McCartney, and
Joni Mitchell.
We also find actors
with serious work in
visual arts such as
sculpture, design,
and ceramics.
By the same token,
there are a large
number of actors or
popular media
figures who
don't themselves
paint but have
substantial—even
world
class—painting
collections. The
list is long, but
among the most
familiar now are:
David Bowie, Bill
and Camille Cosby
(Renoir, Rembrandt,
Picasso, Matisse,
and so on), Ellen
DeGeneres, Madonna,
Steve Martin, Jack
Nicholson (Picasso,
Matisse, Rodin,
Botero, Bouguereau,
Modigliani,
Magritte, Warhol,
and so on), Barbra
Streisand, and Oprah
Winfrey.
As an aside:
Streisand, who
stopped performing
live a long time ago
due to her struggles
with stage fright,
nevertheless gave a
2016 concert so she
could add a
Modigliani to her
collection.
*
My special interest
is in
Kandinsky's
approach to painting
as it can be applied
to acting. He was a
master teacher, and
the way he talked
about the process of
painting is how I
experience and teach
the process of
acting. This way of
studying and working
has galvanized a
gratifying number of
my theatre
colleagues and
students in
countries around the
world for several
decades. By now,
there is a broad
network of actors
who mention
Kandinsky's name
in a rehearsal room
as if it were a
secret handshake.
Imagine my pleasure,
in 2011, at coming
upon a new video
from the Museum of
Modern Art,
"Helen Mirren
on Vasily
Kandinsky." In
it, the
world-renowned
actress, Dame Helen
Mirren, talks about
her love of painting
in general, and of
Kandinsky's work
in particular. I am
especially
interested in her
comments about the
parallels between
Kandinsky's
process as a painter
and hers as an
actress.
Mirren highlights
the tension in any
artistic
creation—in
painting or
acting—between
what is random in it
and what is
purposely organized.
In Kandinsky's
paintings, what
appealed to her at
first as instinctual
and improvised
turned out to be
planned, deliberate,
"thought
out" and
"constructed."
As a teacher,
Kandinsky noted that
you can't base a
work of art on
emotions because
emotions change all
the time; instead,
what is needed is a
stable, dependable
structure to support
the artist's
freedom. Mirren
finds the parallel
between this idea
and her own
experience of
creating the
appearance of
naturalness and
spontaneity by
working within a
stable, technical
form.
Surely
intentionality—the
sense that the
artist selected and
intended what we
see—is a key
to paintings and
performances that
captivate so many of
us.
The transcript of Dame Mirren's remarks follows:
* * *
Helen Mirren on Vasily Kandinsky
Painting, actually, is what I love the most. Literally, paint on
canvas, or paint on wood, or paint on anything. It's what gives me
the most pleasure in my down time. It's great just to go into an art
gallery—just ignore everything, and go to one painting. And just
spend five or ten minutes with that painting. Unfortunately, I
always like to look at paintings really close—the guards always get
rather nervous when I'm in a gallery. I want to experience the
painting as the painter did, and when you get into that
world—you know, basically sort of this far away [gestures from
her nose to extended arm]—you need to be that far away because
that's where the painter was. Now I'm in his or her space, and I'm
experiencing it the way they did, and I love that. I always feel I
can feel the painter, feel the struggles and the thought or the
anger or the joy or whatever it is. You know, my dad very much
wanted to be a painter—he was actually a cab driver—he loved
painting, and I, actually I own a couple of his paintings—they're
not very good, they're sort of, you know, copies of, of French
Impressionist style. But he, um, he loved painting, and I think I
inherited that to a certain extent from him. And my, um,
entertainment as a young girl was never to go to pop concerts or
that sort of thing. I used to love to go to the local art gallery and
just walk around.
Brilliantly, you [the interviewer] put me in front of my favorite
artist, Kandinsky. And they are my lovely friends [referring to the
Kandinsky paintings on the gallery walls]. You know, it's not
often that you'll see four magnificent Kandinskys like that, in a
row in a museum—that's an amazing thing to see. There's a sense
of chaos, and randomness, and, and like the universe, you know,
it's random but it's organized, in this incredible contradiction.
And when I first saw a Kandinsky, I assumed that it was just
improvisational, it was just instinctive and improvisational, and
wild, and, and of the moment—I loved it for that reason. And it
wasn't until I went to see a retrospective of Kandinsky's that I
learned that actually his work is incredibly worked out and— not
"controlled," but, um, you know, it's far from improvisation. It's,
it's a very thought about, constructed image. You know, that's the
connection with my art. It's, you have… it's very technical, you
know. Whether it's on the stage or on film, it's highly technical.
But within this extreme form—technical form—you have to give
an impression of improvisation, and of naturalness, and of it
being invented there and then, in the moment. And to me that
was perfectly what Kandinsky represents as an artist. There is
that process that Francis Bacon describes so well, of learning
what he calls "the good accident." And that's very much a part of
what I do, is learning the good accident in acting. As an actor, you
know, I'm always very jealous of painters, and indeed, of singers.
Because a song can travel straight into the heart, the way a
painting can. What I do has to be processed through the brain:
people have to follow the story, it has to make sense. A song, just
the note of a song, can make you feel something; likewise, a
painting can do the same thing…
Filmed by Lost and Found Films, and included
here with their permission.
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