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Why do you think the Woodmans consented to be filmed?

posted 11 years ago by McFetish
2 replies | jump to latest

I confess to feeling ambivalent about this.

On the one hand, I'm grateful that they consented to participate in the making of this documentary and to opening their private lives to such intense and possibly even searing scrutiny. It feels like an act of courage and even humility.

I appreciate Betty's profound observation that art is intrinsically tied up with memory. It ties together the various strands in this documentary very effectively.

But then I consider what Charlie describes as his parents' obsession with their daughter's "legacy." Who wouldn't feel a sense of revulsion at the strange mix of grief therapy, narcissism, relentless competitiveness, and self-promotion that has apparently driven the exhibitions of their daughter's work?

Betty starts off humbly, noting that "As Francesca's work has become more and more known, she's the famous artist and we've become the famous artist's family." But she goes on to talk about her pride in a way that sounds like "naches from the daughter we helped drive to suicide."

Then, apparently sensing the grotesque awfulness of that sentiment, she concedes that "at times it rubs you the wrong way."

Except that the meaning of that remark, not immediately apparent, is clarified this way: "Hey wait a minute. I'm an artist too."

That old narcissism, rearing its ugly head again.

George too: "I may not be getting a great deal of attention, but to stay alive is a pretty good thing to do."

Yup, George at age 77 excels in one way that Francesca never can.

[–] kaskait 11 years ago

I think they wanted to leave some form of record about what happened to them. Most of Francesca's work is carefully released, I'm sure to protect the people she had known who would not consent to being exposed now(boyfriends, co-workers, friends etc).

Both parents knew that their daughter's work was fantastic and they wanted her recognized for it. But I don't think they expected the amount of fame it would garner and how they have been eclipsed by it. They are only human and to be maddened at being thought only of their daughter's flame keepers instead of artists is normal.

I think George understood very well why or how Francesca would choose suicide and he has survived that darkness. He survived because he had his wife. Francesca could not find that kind of partnership.

[–] mothnm 10 years ago

The Woodmans (film) bothered me in a number of ways, but I didn't track on the date of Francesca's death that puts her photography into an earlier context, a generation and a half earlier, than I initially mentally catalogued it. The film came out almost 30 years after her death, was done by a friend of her parents, still demanding respectful reverence for the grief of the parents, a respect which was totally indulged at the Tribeca Film Festival showing and discussion I attended. The silence of her peers, the parents handling her estate, the enforced respect instead of relentless attacks that living artists contend with. A living artist with such a narcissistic body of work would certainly be hearing criticism that Francesca probably was hearing. "Would she be such an exhibitionist if she wasn't so pretty?" would be the opening salvo in that Feminist time in those places. When I saw the Guggenheim Museum show of her photographs my response was that you couldn't say she didn't warn that the suicide was coming. The body of work had a darker feel than any individual photograph. She was her work, her despair over not snagging the alpha guy and her despair over the paucity of art world response to her work. She had not an ounce of detachment. Suicide was her final level of commitment. Promoting the work is in honor of her memory, and there is a way in which the work is quintessential for the times but there is unfortunately an aspect of all this, confirmed by the timing, that looks like a successful bid for art family dynasty.