Richard Armitage acting vs Richard Armitage explaining

I hope I’ve set the vid to begin where I’d like it to, but if not, I’m interested in the passage around 1:22. Marlise Boland interviews Richard Armitage, part 2.

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I thought this moment of discussion of social media was a bit disjointed; the interviewer seemed to be talking about social media as a way for fans to feel connected to the admired celebrity (and a potential for life intrusion), whereas Richard Armitage seemed to be considering social media as a means of talking about a piece of art in way that he sees as giving rise to a barrier between the viewer and the artwork (or at least an additional layer that he isn’t interested in creating, either because he doesn’t want to, or because he thinks others wouldn’t want to see it because he says that he doesn’t). She seemed to be considering social media as a source of intrusion into the life of the user, whereas he seemed to be discussing it as a mechanism for influencing the viewer’s reception of the art in ways he would prefer not to. (So when she agrees with him, she’s agreeing on the point that she’s making — too much proximity –, rather than the one that he’s making — he doesn’t want to have to argue for the virtue of his work or point out its main features.)

Communicative glitches aside, as an insight into Armitage it’s interesting because at various points, I think, it’s been clear that he’s suffering through publicity interviews, although with good cheer and an acceptance that press is part of the business. He’s gotten markedly better at it since 2011, but left to his own devices, he’d prefer, he seems to suggest here, as he has elsewhere, to let the art speak for itself.

Back in the days before he moved to LA to try his fortunes as a cinematographer, the Professor Barista (who was amused by me and the project behind this blog) and I would talk about Armitage from time to time. PB broadcast a podcast in which he interviewed famous cinematographers about their work, and I always said I wondered whether Armitage would be an interesting interviewee if queried in that much length and detail about his artistic choices. PB said he probably would be, unless he’s an idiot savant, and when I asked him what he meant, PB said that he felt some artists work so unconsciously that they can’t really explain what they are doing in terms detailed enough to be helpful or meaningful to outsiders. Essentially, their flow is such that it’s not susceptible to analysis or description from their own perspectives. PB felt that a skilled interviewer might be able to ask the right question that unlocked the key to describing or explaining the flow, but only possibly.

If I’d been asked to address that specific issue, I’d have to say that I tend to look at this question from two directions. The first is that, as a teacher, I’m constantly engaged in breaking down various processes into component parts and instructing students to replicate those processes. So on some level I am quite committed to the notion of the person who stands in front of the artwork, explaining what is going on, how it works, and how it was put together. “What was going through my mind when I …” is a question I’d love to hear him address more. I find that interesting both to do and to write about. On the other hand, I can sympathize with the possibility that one’s own creative processes are on some level opaque to one, so that the result of art in which one engages is not easily explicable. I can quite easily explain what runs through my head and the component pieces of the process when I’m writing an analytical essay, and thus explain to students how it works and coach them effectively on how to replicate it. I’m also very confident as an analytical writer. In contrast, I am entirely unconfident that I could do that about writing the other kind of text that appears here, the autobiographical text that functions emotionally. I write those texts and some readers seem to enjoy reading them, but I couldn’t really tell you how I put them together or where they come from, apart from my own experiences, and I can never tell whether or not they’re any good. “Why” something moves one is hard question to answer. I believe there’s always a “because,” but I would agree one hundred percent that it’s not always possible to put one’s finger on it easily, and perhaps I would agree, too, albeit with greater hesitation, that trying to that answer that question clouds the visceral level of one’s appreciation of art.

Armitage seems to suggest that revealing the cluster of reflections and perceptions and emotions and above all, of decisions — to the extent that he is aware of them — as they feed into the flow of his actual performances distracts from the viewer from the performance itself. Too, if PB is speculating plausibly, it’s possibly the case that Armitage may not ever the best explicator of his own output, and he’s not required to be. (I’m on notorious record as thinking his approach to his work is non-intellectual and that may also make it harder to speak about his work verbally.) What I mostly want to suggest, though, is that in understanding art, both components are necessary. It’s essential to perceive artwork on its own, apart from any scaffolding information about it insofar as that’s what makes it move us — the art fully on its own, without any justification. I hypothesize that this sort of highly emotional, indeed almost sublime connection with art has become his stated preference because it’s the source of Armitage’s own inspiration — his remarks earlier in the interview about being interested in movement and in texts and reading point in that direction. Not telling an audience ahead of time what art should mean gives the audience a great deal more freedom in both interpretation and enjoyment. We know that entertainment in art is one of Armitage’s values. And art that needs a great deal of justification or explanation, I would agree, falls flat on some sort of aesthetic grounds in the normal case of enjoyment. (Though I’d reserve the possibility that there’s art that’s “worth it” if you’re educated to appreciate it, simply because some art is so remote that we have little easy interface with it anymore.) If you’re an actor, I suppose the existence of a fandom presents a rhetorical problem in that light because you want your work to be loved for how great it is — not because a crowd of people already love you. You may not want to feel as if you must feed the machine of the personality cult, and that is entirely reasonable. Armitage has said before both that if you don’t have to work for something, it’s not worth it — and that he wants audiences to embrace his work, not necessarily embrace him.

So as a developing writer, I’m sympathetic to what I understand Armitage to be saying here. And yet, speaking as a teacher, I think it’s still worth asking those questions because their answers do tell the rest of us something. It’s not just my curiosity about Richard Armitage the person that I want to have stilled by watching these interviews, although I am curious, I do want to know more about him, and I do believe that knowing something about the artist illuminates the art, though never in one-to-one relationship. (Though I may be mistaken, it’s hard to imagine that Armitage would have thought he could play Monet without delving into at least some aspects of his life, for instance.) However, I also write my own lengthy performance analyses of Armitage’s work because his works moves me and I want to understand how and why. I know that my analytical approach has no bearing on or necessary relationship to how he puts those performances together, and that equally, my reaction to his performance has no necessary relationship to his motives or actions in putting it together. But knowing how the pieces fit together in his mind — insofar as he could talk about that intelligibly — would add to my understanding not just of his performances (as we noted, the person who creates the art doesn’t always understand it best) but also of how flow works in the life of the artist.

So yes, Mr. Armitage — I do want to see you explaining your work. I want to see your work first, insofar as I can, I want to consider on its own merits and without your apology for it, and I reserve the right to differ from you in my interpretation of it. But I also want to know what you think. You don’t have to do that on Twitter. But I am appreciative — and find it illuminating — every time you do explain yourself and your work.

~ by Servetus on March 6, 2014.