A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words...

The power of an image is beyond argument; images influence our thinking, as do words. Garnering inspiration from movie titles, song titles, bits of lyrics, I will sometimes title a piece before my hand touches the canvas, letting the words form visual imagery in my mind for a few days. In the case of inspiration from film, often the film and its title work in tandem to achieve this effect, as was the case in this recent painting.

À bout de souffle “Breathless” was a noir-influenced, Jean-Luc Godard film I first saw in my 20s. What struck me most about the film at the time, was not only the beauty and melancholic tragedy of Jean Seberg’s character, if not her own life, but also the unusual jump cut editing technique Godard used that completely distorted the continuity of sequence, giving the viewer a rather uncomfortable, albeit effective perception of the passage of time.  A fan of “spontaneity” in general, I later learned that Godard had written the characters’ lines, feeding them to the actors only moments before the scenes were filmed, a means to force them into present time, and further add to the momentum of the storyline. As well, if he didn’t have written material for a day of shooting, he would simply call it off. 

Godard was a rebel. He purposely broke every rule and regulation with regard to French film-making of the time. There is virtually no artificial lighting in the film, and the entire movie was shot in silence, with the sound added in post production.

In defense of his unusual film-making technique, in Godard’s words, "there used to be just one way. There was one way you could do things. There were people who protected it like a copyright, a secret cult only for the initiated. That's why I don't regret making Breathless and blowing that all apart.” Ironically, the jump cut editing was later revealed to have been accidental and the result of his trying to keep the film within the confines of its 1-1/2 hour length.

Intentional or not, his avant-garde film-making coupled with the rebellious dismissal of authority and narcissistic subjectivity of the film’s main characters, who seemed to exist only in their own world, the movie made an impression on me as an artist, and it still does to this day. 

“Breathless,” in reference to the film, describes the ending, which I won’t spoil further. In the case of my painting, the words and visual imagery of the film melded together in my mind to produce a sense of urgency, impetuousness, and the feeling of being out of one’s element, which was the impression Godard’s film so successfully delivered, as well as my favorite state of mind when creating a painting.

The figure is floating and obviously breathless in an environment where she cannot exist indefinitely. She is the beauty and reckless abandon of youth; and in her current condition, she is finite. The fish are my jump cuts – they lend a sense of sinking, but eventual ascension, a cyclical semblance of movement, perhaps with a happy ending. 

I hope you enjoy the painting.  If you have not seen the film, a restored version was released in 2010. What are you waiting for?