I have found the films of Julian Schnabel the best kind of films about artists. I have previously shared with you a Reinaldo Areinas poem that I met in Schnabel’s Before Night Falls. An artist himself, Schnabel asks the right questions, and makes something that is his own, and yet, in the skin of the artist he puts under the camera lens. Through the spontaneity of his frames he delves into why one creates, the process, the drive, the nature of epiphany, and the form itself. I believe his film At Eternity’s Gate is one of his best films about art and the painter Vincent Van Gogh. The questions, we as artists have been grappling with, find voice here as we live through Van Gogh’s dilemmas as a painter who was unrecognised in his own time, despite his conviction of a new vision of the world. I’m sharing snapshots of a conversation when Wilhem Dafoe talks about art and eternity, and a letter I wrote, having thought of these things myself in the context of Van Gogh, but also deeply inspired by Schnabel’s film. I highly recommend that you catch it if you haven’t!
P.S. shoutout to Raju tai with whom I’m rediscovering the beautiful form of the letter
Do share this newsletter with someone who you believe could find in poetry, a companion