When the painter is a writer in disguise

When an author writes a story about another artist – a painter, a composer, a choreographer* – what is she really writing about? Recently, I wrote that I always assume that the artist character is really a disguised writer. A little glib, I know, but this is my starting point until convinced otherwise.

A novelist who wants to write about the source or character or limits of her own creativity may want to avoid directly writing about another writer. One reason is to appear a bit less narcissistic, another is to create some distance between the author and her subject.

Some examples, 19th century and modern. I know two Balzac stories about painters, The Unknown Masterpiece (1832) and Pierre Grassou (1840) , both of which seem to me like blatant statements about Balzac’s own purpose. In The Unknown Masterpiece, a great master labors over a single painting for a decade, and to what end?** The contrast to Balzac’s own massive productivity is obvious. Pierre Grassou goes in the other direction. The painter is a prolific hack who becomes successful because of the ignorance of his audience. This one has a great twist ending, perfectly obvious but no less entertaining. Both stories might as well have called the central character “Not Balzac.”

A modern, modernist, example: in The Lost Steps (1953) Alejo Carpentier takes a composer from New York City up the Orinoco into the Venezuelan jungle. The composer is struggling with an oratorio based on Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound. The novel is a critique or investigation of Romantic notions of the Primitive. Some people hate being told what a novel is about in such stark terms, and a rich book like The Lost Steps is “about” more than one thing, sure. But, no kidding, Romantic notions of the Primitive – ignore that and you ignore most of the book. If the narrator were a painter or writer or photographer some details would change, possibly in interesting ways, but not the central question.

To be clear: I don’t think that Balzac or Carpentier or Gogol are writing about writing as such when they tell these stories (Lost Illusions is Balzac writing about writing as such). They’re writing about creativity. That’s the subject they can displace onto another art form.

Tomorrow, the deep end of the pool (and I'm not such a strong swimmer): when the form makes all the difference.

Thanks to the Incurable Logophile for the suggestion. Got me thinking.

* Half kidding about the choreographer. What are the great novels or stories about choreographers? No idea. Suggestions welcome.

** The Unknown Masterpiece has taken on a life of its own, interpreted by later readers in ways that might shock Balzac. More on that some other time.