Slant the Truth How?

Process Journal (Audio)

Ways to Tell the Truth at a Slant

Frida Kahlo painted 55 self-portraits. Although she’s often categorised as a surrealist painter, she said, "I don’t really know if my paintings are surreal or not, but I do know that they represent the frankest expression of myself."¹

Vincent Van Gogh painted 43 self-portraits. If you close your eyes, I’m sure you can recall his face, at a slight angle, his blue-green tinged skin. Even in a 2D representation, you are aware of the brush strokes. He said, "I am looking for a deeper likeness than that obtained by a photographer."²

These two artists, whose stories carry a dramatic narrative as heavy as any modern tragedy, left self-portraits that can give us the impression that we know them intimately.

Of course, a figure in a Rembrandt painting can have eyes that cause me to feel like I’m witnessing—or even sharing—a moment with them. But I’m more intrigued by the figure than I’m initiated into their life. Rembrandt’s portraits—so lifelike—withhold revelation. So very like life.

Performing the Truth

All the years I’ve taught theater history, I’ve repeated the curriculum books’ assertion that artists turned to experimentation to distance themselves from the perfect representation of reality that the (film) camera could now produce. Just on the heels of Naturalism, and in alignment with Van Gogh’s aims, there was a push in the theater to re-theatricalize the stage. We get Symbolism and all the isms that bloomed during the pre-war years. There is a resurgence of Commedia Dell’Arte, and other stylised forms. Before we get to (back to) where we are now: Uta Hagen’s opinions on TikTok, sharing what she believed made a great performance—the illusion of reality.

Enter Yorgos Lanthimos, and the other directors sliding all over a spectrum of isms.

While every generation thinks it invented—well, everything—the fashion of truth telling in performance has always played out along a continuum. Arguably, the Greeks began the Dionysian festival as a way to control and contain the religious rituals that involved activities that were performative, but without artifice. Playacting (and art itself) was a way to process human impulses in a way that the citizens found acceptable. Through mimesis (artifice), little was risked by the performers, but catharsis was still possible because of poetry’s ability to tell a “greater, universal truth” than a sex act, or the death of an individual actor. The Romans, however, took performance to the extreme of reality again.

Post Narrative & Trauma’s Purpose

Ten years before Marina Abramovich’s “Rhythm 0”³, Yoko Ono presented “Cut Piece”⁴, where she invited the audience to take scissors and cut off a piece of her clothing to take home with them. Both artists put their bodies—their physical safety—on the line. The artist themselves met audiences with no prepared narrative (not that this was new), and although one cannot deny that the artists themselves were present in the role of “the artist” (ie as a kind of protagonist or victim), they had no explicit personal history to share. The work turned the spotlight on the audience’s own motivations and chosen actions—in a real-world scenario.

In 1998 Tracey Emin exhibited “My Bed”, which was her bed and the surrounding space, after several days of binge drinking. While the artist removed her body from the space, the artefacts of her physical presence (including soiled underwear) comprised the artwork, which was sometimes criticised for being navel-gazing.⁵

In 2014, Emma Sulkowicz carried the mattress upon which they were raped from classroom to classroom on a university campus. The performance was titled “Mattress Performance: Carry That Weight.” Undeniably autobiographical. The work was part art, part activism—with a clear goal of getting Columbia University to take action to punish and prevent sexual assault.⁶

Currently, the Brazilian artist Caroline Brianche is performing “The Bride and Goodnight Cinderella”, which involves (among other things) the performer being drugged into an unconscious state, and other performers then exposing her genitals to the audience⁷. Her work recounts true stories of several people, her own included. She has said that her “intent is to acknowledge the existence of sexual violence”.⁸ But I doubt anyone in her audience denies the existence of sexual violence, so I wonder—regardless of the intent—what the takeaway actually is for the audience.

One reviewer noted that some audience members sobbed. Is this the kind of cleansing catharsis of Greek Theater? Is it sympathy for the individual onstage? Is it empathy/identification and grief? Is it “theater”? Is it therapy?⁹

Would Antonin Artaud approve? What is Annie Sparkle thinking?

The questions that I’m asking myself have nothing to do with whether any artworks are legitimate or valuable. Rather, I wonder about art as mimesis (fiction) vs. art as a perspective. I wonder about catharsis vs. empathy vs. pity (and terror).¹⁰

I am considering all of this through the lens of memoir, which is—in itself—a murky vessel for reality, and at best a presentation of a poetic truth.

Memoir: ☐ Realism ☐ Surrealism ☐ Performance

This morning, I once again vowed to get off Instagram after reading comments under a clearly staged feel-good video clip. The level of suspension of disbelief was disturbing, as was the hate aimed at anyone who dared to question the reality of the clip.

I was also thinking about the role of celebrities as fictional characters in our lives. When they fall so stunningly from grace, we forgive—often things we would never forgive a neighbour or even a family member for.

With memoir comes a danger of making myself out to be a hero, yes. But there is also the potential misstep of requiring a reader’s forgiveness. Or obliging them to feel empathy. Or pity, if I can’t pull off the hero-thing well enough.

People know that there is ugliness in the world. They are aware. So what is my intent in shaping and telling the stories?

Or do I simply lay it all out, hand the reader a pair of scissors, and tell them to take what they want?

What is it I obligate to the reader to do then? Make sense of it for me?

Destroy me?

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Thank you for taking the time to read/listen to my work. I hope it moves you somehow—and if it does, maybe you’ll consider sharing it with other readers?

I hope you have a great week!

Warmly,

Ren Powell’s Acts of a Recovering Drama Queen
Writing against Melodrama by Engaging with the Natural World
Give some love. It only takes a little ❤️.

1. https://www.denverartmuseum.org/en/blog/quotes-frida-kahlo

2. https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/self-portrait/9gFw_1Vou2CkwQ?hl=en-GB

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhythm_0

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut_Piece_1964

5. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/emin-my-bed-l03662

6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattress_Performance_(Carry_That_Weight)#:~:text=Begun%20in%20September%202014%2C%20the,or%20otherwise%20left%20the%20university.

7. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/12/theater/carolina-bianchi-avignon-noiva-boa-noite-cinderella.html

8. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/article/2024/jun/01/carolina-bianchi-the-bride-and-the-goodnight-cinderella-malthouse-merlyn-theatre

9. https://www.newindianexpress.com/entertainment/english/2023/Jul/12/date-rape-drug-play-shocks-top-french-festival-2594106.html

10. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/literature-of-pity/pity-and-terror-the-aristotelian-framework/6061F5314920CF640602B6B62A2253A9