MovieChat Forums > New York Stories (1989) Discussion > Artists Need to be Passionate

Artists Need to be Passionate

posted 18 years ago by BillyBuddmix
4 replies | jump to latest

Have you noticed that the most important message of Scorsese's episode, "Life Lessons", is that artists cannot have average, simple, balanced lives? According to the story, artists need strong emotions, they need to be passionate otherwise they become mediocre and can't create great works of art. Nick Nolte's character forces himself to be in love with the assistant; he doesn't actually love her, but he needs to be passionate, he needs to feel love or pain or anger or lust all the time and very intensely, otherwise he can't create! He feeds on her emotions.

Billy

[–] kttimlin 17 years ago

You might be right, but I remember reading somewhere, I think it might have been in the book "Scorsese on Scorsese" that, while artists usually love "Life Lessons", art dealers and critics thought that it was too romanticised. People who work with artists and know how they work say that in real like they're not really like Nolte's character but that they love to see themselves that way; as tortured and driven, wrestling with obsessive love and creativity.

[–] 17 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Kevin_Finnerty 17 years ago

It's a movie. A Scorsese movie at that. he's my favorite but he's notorious for his own predilection for obsession in characters. There are bombastic idiotic no talents and there are quiet self effacing geniuses. It not so much about how artists can't have balanced lives as being about one artist, Lionel Dobie who needs to be tormented in love in order to paint. He needs help from a shrink but will probably never get it.

Scorsese never says or shows that ALL artists are like that but many artists are troubled with a myriad of problems. Lionel needed to find emotional rejection as his muse.

[–] bitherwack 16 years ago

I think the best way to put is that artists are hard to measure by ordinary standards. The process of art-- being successful at it requires a kind of dedication that no other profession requires. If they weren't passionate, there would be little motivation to stick it out through poverty, rejection, etc.