Art and artists"I regard art as lacking importance."- Ingmar Bergman Whether in the form of a misunderstood underdog, or a vampire-like creature who preys on others, the artist is the most ubiquitous of all Bergman's characters. |
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In The Seventh Seal Jöns the squire visits a church where the celebrated painter Albertus Pictor is working on a mural. It would hardly seem an exaggeration to regard this minor scene as an allegory for Ingmar Bergman's entire view of art: Albertus represents Bergman himself, whereas Jöns, blasé and sceptical, represents his audience.
Given Bergman's well-established reputation as a 'difficult' director, one who typifies of the art house tradition, etc., it may either be naivety, teasing, or even false modesty on his part to take upon himself so obviously and often the role of entertainer, a purveyor of amusement that is temporarily imbibed by a preoccupied audience before they go home to the drudgery of their everyday lives. And yet Bergman is in earnest. He has never pretended to be anything more than the jugglers and clowns that populate his films, whether a circus manager (Albert Johansson in Sawdust and Tinsel), an itinerant hypnotist (Albert Emanuel Vogler in The Magician) or a writer of popular fiction (David in Through a Glass Darkly). Or, for that matter, the prostitute Birgitta-Carolina in Prison. (On numerous occasions Bergman has referred to himself as an "audience whore").
In his 1954 essay "Making films" Bergman recalls: "There is an old story of how the cathedral of Chartres was struck by lighting and burned to the ground. Then thousands of people came from all points of the compass, like a giant procession of ants, and together they began to rebuilt the cathedral on its old site. They worked until the building was completed - master builders, artists, labores, clowns, noblemen, priests, burghers. But they all remained anonymous, and no one knows to this day who built the cathedral of Chartres." The essay concludes as follows:
"Thus if I am asked what I would like the general purpose of my films to be, I would reply that I want to be one of the artis in the cathedral on the great plain. I want to make a dragon's head, an angel, a devil - or perhaps a saint - out of stone. It doesn not matter which; it is the sense of satisfaction that counts. regardless of whether I believe or not; whether I am a Christian or not, I would play my part in the collective building of a cathedral."
In at least twenty five of Bergman's films (and in most of his own plays) artists of some kind play an important part. Writers and painters do occur (Tomas in Prison, Johan Borg in The Hour of the Wolf), yet more often than not the artists in question are performers: actors (Elisabet Vogler in Persona, Emilie Ekdahl in Fanny and Alexander), dancers (Rut in Thirst, Marie in Summer Interlude) or musicians (Bengt in Music in Darkness, Charlotte in Autumn Sonata). Very often these artists are exponents of more popular forms of entertainment, such as the circus (Sawdust and Tinsel) or vaudeville (The Ritual). Apart from those who are more or less professionals, there are also several characters whose involvement in the arts is on an amateur basis (Karin and Minus put on a play in Through a Glass Darkly, Edvard Vergérus plays the flute in Fanny and Alexander). By broadening the concept of artist to one who performs for others, one could include the many clergymen and prostitutes who feature in Bergman's films.
What conclusions can one draw from this? It might of course be that Bergman, who so often bases his work on his own life, is using – in a lightly disguised form – his own art and view of art as his subject matter. Many of the artists in his films can be regarded as partly autobiographical (perhaps this is why they are so often, just like Bergman the stage director, the interpreters of other people's work). But one could also argue that Bergman is using art and its practitioners as a metaphor. He appears to have taken to heart Shakespeare's view that "all the world's a stage." The art itself is seldom given much exposure; we rarely see how a work is developing, or study a particular interpretation. We learn that Johan in The Hour of the Wolf, is an artist, similarly that Emilie Ekdahl in Fanny and Alexander is an actress. We hear them talking about their work, yet we scarcely see their paintings or performances.
Instead, art and artists appear to provide Bergman with a device for exploring the interplay between people in general. In Bergman's films, the world of the arts (with its hierarchies and its public nature) and of communication itself (with its senders, receivers, interpreters, etc.) becomes a reflection of society. Bergman appears to use 'art as institution' as a metaphor for his more pressing theme of the lack of communication between people. In this way art is one of three recurrent institutions in Bergman's films, each with a similar purpose (the other institutions are religion and the family).
Basically there are two types of artists in Bergman, sometimes interchangeable: the humiliated artist, and the vampire-like artist. Obvious examples of the first category are Frost in Sawdust and Tinsel and Albert Emanuel Vogler in The Magician. Examples of the second kind are David in Through a Glass Darkly, Elisabet Vogler in Persona or Elis Vergérus in The Passion of Anna. Examples of characters who combine both qualities are Jan and Eva Rosenberg in The Shame, and the band of performers in The Ritual.