I’ve spent the majority of this week at Hot Docs watching films about artists and makers and their drive to create.
Indie Game: The Movie followed game developers who pushed themselves to the brink of exhaustion and depression to create games that are an extension of themselves — reflecting their deepest thoughts and feelings. She Said Boom (which I will write more about in the weeks to come) looks back at the creative music and zine scenes in 1980s Toronto through the band Fifth Column. And, in its own way, We Are Legion and its reflection on the history of hacktivism and the group Anonymous illuminates issues of freedom of expression through another kind of creation that exists, in part, through computer screens. But of all the films I saw this past week, Beauty is Embarrassing (the story of artist Wayne White) was the most inspiring.
Wayne White is an American artist who came up in the 1980s, most famously creating puppets and set pieces for Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. Beyond the high profile work he has created for Playhouse and Beakman’s World as well as music videos for Peter Gabriel and Smashing Pumpkins, White made a more significant mark on the world through the humour and contagious enthusiasm he injects into all of his work. He challenges the pretensions of art critics and the established conventions of high-art with his giant sculpture/puppets and his cartoony artwork, the most recent of which is his series of word paintings that consist of witty text superimposed over more traditional paintings of scenery.
The critics interviewed in the film admit they were initially biased against White’s work because it is funny, and that is not something they anticipate from art. Instead, they expect serious subject matter and, as one audience member pointed out during the Q&A after the film, death and darkness are the more typical fetishes of modern art. Given these preconceived notions of what art should be, an artist who paints “Hot Shots and Know It Alls” and “I’ll Smash This Painting Over Your Fucking Head” over ponds and farmland doesn’t fit in to that world.
What makes Wayne White and, by extension, Beauty is Embarrassing so inspirational is White’s ability to find his place, endure and, most of all, have fun with his work. So many documentaries wallow in the hard times that artists inevitably struggle through while discovering their style, but Beauty is Embarrassing dwells instead in the happy places. It is refreshing to see a documentary about art that is not saying everything good happened in the past and all is lost for artists today.
Wayne White may have had commercial success with some of his work, but as he stated during a Q&A at Hot Docs, he will always be an independent artist. Everything he makes or builds or plays he creates for himself, not because he thinks it is what will sell.
Beauty is Embarrassing plays this afternoon in Toronto’s Bloor Hot Docs Cinema and you can check the film’s website for more information on future screenings.