Fiction Artists

Artists from feature films whose lives were invented, fictional artists: who are they, how do they live, how do they work? What kind of clichés do they generate? Do they reflect the way in which contemporary artists see themselves, or do they represent an anachronistic image of the artist in a society that is heavily influenced by modern media? Fiction Artists is made up of 12 chapters, comprising fragments borrowed from a range of classic features and B-films. We see, for instance, the artist as a tormented, passionate, uncontrolled, complicated, unrecognised, uncompromising creature. There is also humour, for instance in the chapter Picasso that focuses on 'name dropping'. And the film is not only a true aesthetic pleasure because the film is about painting; the artistry of Girardet and Schreiner manifests itself here in their intelligent approach to the film material and their very precise montage of sound and pictures.