Clichés and stereotyping are nothing new in popular film and television. If anything, they are the glue that holds the narratives together, a familiar reinforcement of the status quo. But the presentation of artists in mass entertainment is an interesting case to explore in this context, because there isn’t one archetypal kind of artist represented. This doesn’t mean artist characters are multifaceted, or even have much depth. It’s more that artistic practice is so loathed by a certain segment of the world’s population that they can’t even get their stereotypes correct.Inspired by a lecture given by the critic and curator Ed Halter at the Migrating Forms festival in 2012, where he presented a series of clips from shows such as “Cheers” and “Saturday Night Live,” demonstrating how popular culture views experimental film, I’ve taken a different but parallel track. The following list is a small sampling of some of the most ridiculous artistic characters from television shows and film. According to these depictions, artists are wacky, dumb, chill, sexy, crazy, cocaine addicts, and even killers (oddly, there have been a lot of murderous artists on television).“Slaves of New York”This strange late-1980s oddity, based on the book of short stories by Tama Janowitz and produced by Merchant-Ivory, stars Bernadette Peters as a hat designer who lives with a younger artist boyfriend, who is named Stash. His work, based on what we see, seems to incorporate famous cartoon characters and is pretty silly. The whole film is making fun of vapid art-world hanger-ons, but the one-note portrayal of artists as dumb, lazy, and disgusting rings false. Well, sort of false.“Girls”The comedian Jorma Taccone plays Booth Jonathan, a contemporary artist who is represented by the gallery that one of the characters works at and embodies everything that is perceived to be sleazy about the art world. This portrayal is in line with Lena Dunham’s 2009 web series, “Delusional Downtown Divas,” which skewered the same type of out-of-touch figures.“Law & Order” In an episode called “Prisoner of Love” from season one, detectives Max Greevey and Mike Logan investigate an artist, known for his provocative work detailing sadomasochistic practices, who is found dead. This leads them through encounters with various art world figures, including a writer for Artview Magazine, a socialite, a curator at a gallery, and the city official who gave the artist a grant and turns out to be a main suspect.“Legal Eagles”This very bad movie stars Robert Redford as an assistant district attorney in New York City who gets dragged into the case of a stolen painting, and in turn into the life of a performance artist played by Daryl Hannah. The best scenes are with Hannah, especially when she brings Redford to her loft and shows him what she is working on: a giant installation with flashing images and Hannah dancing around it.“90210”Colin Robbins (Jason Wiles) appeared on the hit teen soap opera of the ’90s like a chilled-out apparition bringing east coast-cool to the sunny drama of the Peach Pit. He was a painter from New York who moved out to California and rented a house that he turned into a studio and a bar. Soon enough, everybody finds out about his shady past, which involves in illicit relationship he had with an art dealer in exchange for success and a cocaine addiction that he passes on to one of the cast members.“Sex and the City”The famous dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov played an artist on the HBO show, but, because I’ve never seen even a single episode, I turned to ARTINFO’s photo editor Regina Mogilevskaya, who has seen every episode and admitted to reciting monologues from Sarah Jessica Parker’s main character Carrie Bradshaw from her college dorm room. “He does crazy light installations,” she said over e-mail about Baryshnikov’s character. “He’s a huge asshole and very selfish, but sweeps Carrie away by making her breakfasts in his enormous, metallic apartment and by begging her to live a life in Paris with him.” Sounds like every artist I know.“Criminal Minds”Frankie Muniz, making a post-child-actor appearance, plays a comic book artist who bases his art on his murders. But he doesn’t seem to remember his own actions. He is very tortured, that much is clear. His drawings are scattered all over his room, pinned to the walls and ceiling, and he has breakdowns that are more comic then tragic.“A Perfect Murder”This Alfred Hitchcock stars Viggo Mortensen as a sexy artist in a relationship with a married Gwyneth Paltrow. He is also an ex-convict and has a history of conning rich women that are charmed by his long hair and giant canvases that adorn his loft. (In movies and TV shows, artists always live in lofts.) He is eventually hired by her husband, played by Michael Douglas, to murder her, which he doesn’t do. I could not confirm if Mortensen did his own paintings for the film.“C.S.I”In an episode titled “Art Imitates Life,” “Transparent” star Jeffrey Tambor plays a famous painter — or at least a painter who works at a huge studio with many assistants — whose work uses subjects that keep being murdered. Is he the one killing them? He seems detached, like many of the other artists on this list, and a little crazy, of course.
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