Documenting Lives

“Artists’ lives, in those days, were brief. Often in the living, always in the writing. A painter’s life was as long as a who’s who entry or a note in a tourist guidebook. This was what artists’ recorded lives mostly were, chronological lists of works with a note on technique or the odd illustrative anecdote thrown in. the most intelligent and ambitious of these assemblages – Vasari’s in the mid sixteenth century and Bellori’s a hundred years later – elaborated an idea of painting that each artist’s career was used to illustrate. Neither the individual artist’s inner life nor the minutiae of his social existence – the staples of modern biography – was felt worth retailing to anyone interested in the work.” – Peter Robb in M: The Man Who Became Caravaggio

I can’t claim to be a biography expert. I haven’t even read many biographies, let alone studied the differences among sixteenth century biographies and twenty-first century ones. But the above paragraph made me think of how much attention we direct towards the personal lives of public figures.

The categorization of a public figure may vary widely from person to person. While we would all probably agree that the President of the United States qualifies as one, we might have heated arguments on the inclusion of specific painters, writers, actors, etc. This discrepancy will depend on our definition of public, our familiarity with the specific artist and his or her work, and how reclusive he or she is. For example, I’m quite confident that we could all agree that JD Salinger is not a figure whose name is plastered on the gossip columns weekly, yet he may easily qualify as a public figure because as the writer of a famous novel, his work is read by many and his name is familiar to the public.

I don’t know if this has historically always been so, but what a public figure does during his or her private time is considered to be sought-after information today. A quick glance at the tabloids would suffice to prove my statement. There consistently is at least one headline in reference to a well-known actor. Stories range from distasteful to absurd. But anyone who’s studied economics will tell you that the articles would never have been printed unless the readers found them interesting, or at least worthy. Obviously if no one cared about who Meg Ryan’s current boyfriend is, no one would read the tabloid that prints stories on that subject matter and the paper would soon go out of business.

But it doesn’t.

On the contrary, tabloids thrive. The paparazzi are well paid and keep their jobs without many struggles. They both continue making money even after the lawsuits and the badmouthing.

We don’t care about Julia Roberts’ acting career (well, acting students possibly do but not the regular population) we care about her relationships, her family, her misery. We feel that since she’s chosen a career that’s in the public eye, she owes it to us to make her life public. We feel that we already know her.

Yet we don’t.

What the public sees of an actor is his or her character, scripted by someone else and simply acted by that individual. We read the stories invented by a writer (in the case of fiction). These public sides don’t necessarily (or even often) correlate to the person behind the face or name. Just because I like John Irving’s stories it doesn’t mean we can be buddies or even that I would like him as a person. While each of his stories might contain some of him, they don’t tell me who he is.

Also, these are one-sided experiences. I might have read all of Irving’s books or watched every Julia Roberts movie, but they’ve never heard of me. They have never been inspired by me. And they don’t necessarily care to welcome me into their lives. While they chose to have careers that affect the public, they didn’t opt to not have any private life. And I believe it’s unfair of us to assume otherwise. I can easily relate to the drive to want to get to know the person whose work inspires the reader and I can see the value of documenting the inner life of a person who’s had a unique outlook on life. But lately, it seems we’ve become much more interested in the person, even to the point of obsession.

Peter Robb’s words are not judging. They are merely a statement on the differences in styles of writing biographies between the past and now. However, to me, his words highlight a crucial difference in the society and its views on artists. They show how attention shifted from the work to the person behind it.

And I’m not confident that’s a positive change.

Previously? New Day.