Artemisia

1) What are the main points of difference between the Mary Garrard article on "Artemisia," and the Belén Vidal article? Do you think Vidal offers viable insights into analyzing the film from a feminist point of view?
Garrard’s article discusses the fact the film does not accurately portray true events that happen in Artemisia’s life. The film was criticized on both historical and esthetic grounds, but Miramax still insisted that they did a lot of research and stood by it 100 percent. Garrard continues by saying that there can be “no doubt that the basic facts of the story are inverted in the film. She then describes the film’s story line- “Artemisia begs to study under and then falls in love with the artist Tassi, is deflowered by him- an act accomplished with tender solicitude on his part and minimal resistance on hers- still initiated by the older painter into the mysteries of love and art.” The film shows Artemisia and Tassi’s “love story,” making the viewer believe that she wasn’t raped, it was consensual and that she will always love him and see’s him when she looks between two hills (the way the film finishes.)
Garrard discusses that a very different account is given in the extensive testimony of the rape trial; there are actual published documents. The film shows Artemisia being tortured by a stile refusing to testify against Agostino Tassi, he is the one who confesses because his love for her makes him not want to see her suffer. What really happened is that when she was tortured by the sibille she insisted repeatedly that she had been sexually pressured and then raped by Agostino, with graphic detail. Garrard poses the question of why Merlet, the director, change the story? Merlet justifies her version as “an effort to reflect Artemisia’s inner struggles rather than what she seems to consider the ambiguous facts of the trial.” Merlot argued that the reality of the love affair is proved by the fact that Artemisia continued o have sex with Tassi after her violation. Artemisia herself explained that: “What I was doing with him, I did only so that as he had dishonored me, he would marry me.” The trial wasn’t the only misrepresentation in the film, Garrard points out that perhaps worse than the film’s insensitivity to feminist issues is its trivialization of Artemisia’s art and falsification of her artistic development. Garrard concludes by stating that the real story is much more interesting than the film version, and it is more genuinely feminist.
Vidal’s article also discusses feminist historiographies. He states that the figure of the woman artist has been the subject of a significant number of contemporary films. Their stories center around the artist’s struggles to express her creative drive and gain social recognition against the constraints imposed by repressive historical environments. This article focuses more on the making of the film and the choices made to portray her story this way verses the historical account that is documented. He argues that through the exploration of the themes of gazing, posing, and framing, Artemisia reveals a transhistorical narrative portrait of the woman artist that builds on the work of period reconstruction in order to produce fictional scenarios of desire and self-representation. He states that the desire for ‘reconstruction’, ‘visualization’ and ‘illustration’ is a persistant feature in the problematic relationship between cinema and painting in films that adapt key episodes of art history into narratives of greative genious. Vidal discusses the parallels that are shown between events that occurred in Artemisia’s life to her creativity/ production of art. Vidal also focuses much less on the feminist view of the film.

2) Has this movie altered your view about whether it's acceptable for a biopic to stray from the facts of a person's life?
It’s interesting because this film did altar my view about whether its acceptable for a biopic to stray from the facts of a person’s life. In my other blog post I said that altering the facts can make a film more entertaining, and this is the reason why many biopic films are altered. In the case of Artemisia, Merlet may have altered the story of Artemisia’s life not only because she believed there was an actual love affair between them, and she continued to sleep with Tassi because he promised her marriage, but also because sex sells and there is a demand for love stories, with romance and everything that follows. The false portrayel of the events that occurred in Artemisia’s life bothered me more than entertained me. Artemisia is known to paint her glory feminist paintings from inspiration pulled from anguish, and her rape trial definitely contributed to her creativity. The film doesn’t give her enough credit as an artists, it structured around Artemisia learning techniques from Tassi, and being in love with him which inspired her artwork, when what actually occurred is the opposite.