Art Musicals

Quinn: Hello and welcome back to Pictorial on Relay FM. I’m Quinn Rose and I didn't go to art school, but that doesn't stop me from learning about art anyway.

Betty: And I'm Betty. I also didn't go to art school, but I also love learning about art all the time anyway as well. 

Quinn: On this podcast, we generally talk about visual artists, mostly like painters and sculptors. That's kind of our thing. We're not doing that today. Today's our 50th episode and is also serving as our two year anniversary, which is very exciting. We did it. So I decided just to have a little bit of fun in my home arena, which is talking about musicals.

Betty: I am very excited about this. It was, I had a lot of fun last time and I learned a lot, cause I pretty much don't know anything about musicals. So it's a fun experience for me.

Quinn: Well, today I am basically just going to walk through a few different musicals that are about visual artists. There's a lot of fun stuff to talk about here. And I also picked up on some pretty interesting patterns, which I think will make some fun discussion topics for the second half of the episode here. But first I thought I'd just dive into some examples. I do want to mention, I guess I consider these honorary mentions of a couple different ones I’m not really going to get into. First of all there's Fun Home, which is based on a graphic novel, it is also based on the life of the graphic novelist and cartoonist Alison Bechdel. And so that's definitely very much related to visual art. A lot of the musical is about her early experiences with drawing and learning illustration. There's also Ordinary Days, which is a musical that is not about any real artists or even any named artists, but it's kind of the concept of art is very prominent throughout the musical. There's a multiple scenes at the Met. They talk a lot about what art is and how you can appreciate art. And one of the main plot lines is about a man who is working for this contemporary artist in New York. But his contemporary art is graffiti and he's bad at it. And he goes to jail and so—

Betty: Oh my God.

Quinn: This guy like hires him to feed his cat while he's gone. And that kind of sparks a lot of these conversations about art and who is an artist and all this kind of stuff.

Betty: I just googled Ordinary Days. And I'm seeing a lot of pictures of like random pieces of colored paper all over the place. Is that a thing?

Quinn: Yeah. So part of this is this artist, what he did was he would basically write these messages— as they put it in a song, like write these messages all over the city. They're kind of encouraging cliches. And this guy at the, this is the very first song—I really like Ordinary Days. I could talk about it for awhile. But the, one of our main characters, the very beginning of the musical, the opening song, he's standing on a sidewalk with all of these papers where he's decided he's going to like take up the mantle of this artist. But instead of, you know painting these messages. He's printed them out on all these papers, written them on all these papers, and he's trying to pass them out to people and trying to like share these like happy messages with people, which is not easy to do in Manhattan. So those are just kind of a couple of honorable mentions that aren't quite what I'm mostly talking about today. Also, I guess I'll mention Moulin Rouge does feature a real artist whose name was Henry de Toulese as a very minor character. And also like in real life, he was a painter and a printmaker, very much a visual artist. They portray him as more of a musical artist in Moulin Rouge. Moulin Rouge is very fantastical and not interested in portraying reality. So that makes sense. But they do, they do use the name of a real artist, which is interesting. 

Betty: Actually didn't Henry design also the posters for Moulin Rouge as well?

Quinn: He did, yes! That’s one of the things he's most famous for. 

Betty: Okay. I was like, I thought I've heard this somewhere, but anyway.

Quinn: So my first big section I want to talk about though, is what I am calling “Musicals about van Gogh,” which apparently is its own genre.

Betty: Oh, wow. Okay.

Quinn: In looking at musicals that are about real famous artists, I found five. And three of them are about van Gogh. I'm sure there are more, but this is like the ones that I found that could be like discerned through Google and who have gotten enough sort of public attention that they showed up in my search. But yeah, I understand that like van Gogh is one of the most famous artists in the world. And also I think his life story is very engaging to people because he had such a tragic life that people very much relate to a lot of things about him and are very drawn to him. But yeah, it does seem like there's this outsize musical interest in van Gogh.

Betty: Three full musicals, even just, you know of note, that's quite a few.

Quinn: What's really interesting about them too, is they also have very different tacts and they all focus on very different areas of his life, which is pretty cool to see. Like they're not all just like, oh, here's the story of van Gogh. Like, they're all very specific chapters in his life, or like angles in his life, which is fascinating to me. One’s called The Highest Yellow, which premiered in 2004. And this focuses on van Gogh's relationship with the physician who treated him after he cut his ear off. And so this is a real physician—obviously as I haven’t seen the show, obviously, but I would assume aspects of this are fictionalized or sensationalized, but it, this was a real person and they had a real relationship and an exchange, van Gogh painted this man, the doctor did not like the portrait that van Gogh painted of him. It seemed like they had kind of a tumultuous relationship at different points. But that is what The Highest Yellow is about, the highest yellow being a reference to van Gogh's interest in the color yellow. Then there's Curtains Up which is actually about the brief period when van Gogh and Paul Gauguin lived together. And both were inspired by the innkeeper's wife and both painted her in different paintings that they produced. This is again, real period of van Gogh’s life in which he lived with this other artist who he was quite close to, but this focusing again on this particular chapter and their relationship with this woman. And then finally, there's this other musical that I found called Starry, which is actually still in active development. It was only started to be developed in like 2017, I think. And it's still, there’s like a concept album out, but it's still being developed, which is pretty interesting. And this focuses on the relationship between van Gogh and his brother Theo, who he was extremely close to. And had a very close letter correspondence with. A lot of their letters are actually some of the most rich autobiographical material that we have on van Gogh, because they were so detailed. And Theo supported Vincent basically his entire life and allowed him to survive, because he was not financially successful as an artist in his time. And so this musical focuses on their relationship throughout their lives.

Betty: Yeah, it does seem like these are all periods that are pretty significant and kind of can be their own self contained stories so I can see why, like, someone would want to explore those aspects of his life. Do they kind of also refer to like the artworks that he made in—like I presume they probably do.

Quinn: One thread that I found when researching all these musicals is it definitely seems to open up a lot of possibilities for staging that are really exciting. Because I think especially these ones about van Gogh—obviously I mean, even the names of them, you know, The Highest Yellow, Starry, like they're clearly invoking the visual aspect of their work. And I think that there is a strong draw and even a pressure to depict van Gogh's work in the staging visually in a way that captures the magic of, you know, like seeing those works that so many people have appreciated.

Betty: Actually this reminds me of I, last year I went to see the van Gogh immersive experience show. And it was in Toronto at the time. And this is, for those who don't know, is a show where images from his paintings projected in three dimensions all over the place in this big room. And it's edited and animated and there's music playing in the background. Like it, as the name suggests, it's supposed to be an immersive experience. And it was actually—I did, I did really enjoy it, but one thing that I did notice is that a lot of van Gogh's paintings are just really amazing, beautiful backdrops for settings and places. Like they just seem like they would just be beautiful stage sets. In a way like I can see how van Gogh's like art can kind of easily translate into like a stage type of setting in a way.

Quinn: I wonder if you have any thoughts on why van Gogh in particular is so beloved as a subject. I mean, I said some of mine earlier where I think like the tragedy of his life is appealing, but do you think besides that people are drawn to is art. Do you think there's any other reason that you can think of why he is so well-represented in this kind of area?

Betty: That's a really good question. And I think one aspect is probably just that his art does seem to be, I want to say like universally appreciated or at least like, as far as I know the visuals that he made and the colors and the richness and, like I think a lot of people are drawn to it. I think just as an artist, it seems like he's very unique. And just appreciated a lot more than than other artists who may, some people may like them and some people may not. And yeah, like I think that maybe the other reason is because he's a bit of a mysterious type of person because he wasn't really well, or he wasn't well-known at all during his lifetime and was only really became famous after he died. So there's a lot of unknowns and a lot of questions about his life. And I think people like to explore that or people like to learn about what it, what it's like to be an artist to have painted all his life, but never really got famous, or became well known or successful in his, in his lifetime. So I think there's that mystery that people are interested in.

Quinn: Yeah. That's a good point. I think there's so much space there to project—and I don't mean projection a negative way, but like project your own experiences and your own emotional journeys onto him, because there is so much mystery to fill in the gaps there with your own feelings. And shout out to everyone who has listened to this whole section thinking about that one scene in Doctor Who, I too have been thinking about that scene.

Betty: I have not seen that show. So I have no idea. 

Quinn: For anyone who hasn't seen it there's a very, very beautiful episode of Doctor Who where they meet Vincent van Gogh, and then they take him to the future to see a Vincent van Gogh exhibit and hear a docent there speak about how van Gogh is one of the finest artists who ever lived. And it's like, I can't even talk about it without crying because it's so beautiful. 

Betty: Now that I think of it I've heard, I've heard of this, even though I've never seen an episode of Doctor Who I've heard about. 

Quinn: Yeah. Hey everybody. Even if you don't like Doctor Who, and that’s fair, I recommend this episode. If you like this podcast, you would probably enjoy this van Gogh episode. And it’ll make you cry. 

Betty: I think I might go watch it after this. 

Quinn: So I do have a couple to talk about that aren’t just about van Gogh though. I do want to briefly mention the play Red. It is a play and not a musical, which means I have very little interest in it. But it is one of the most sort of mainstream successful theatrical productions about a visual artist. This is a play about Mark Rothko. And specifically in the time period of 1958, 59, when he was commissioned to paint murals for the Four Seasons restaurant which he then famously didn't give to them and decided that he would not, he decided to return the money and not put these murals in the Four Seasons because he decided it was inappropriate for them. So this is a play that takes place during that period, while he's painting them with this, what I believe is invented person, Ken, who's his assistant and kind of, you know, serves as the other person in this play. So it's not just a guy painting.

Betty: Wait, so there's only two people in this play?

Quinn: Yeah, I think there is. And it was on, it was produced in 2009 and Eddie Redmayne was Ken. So there you go. But yeah, it's one of the few, one of the shows I'm talking about today that actually was on Broadway. Eddie Redmayne actually won the Tony for Best Featured Actor for it in 2010. So there you go. Got got some success there.

Betty: Yeah, I think actually a couple episodes ago I talked—oh, wait, did I mention Eddie Redmayne that episode? I can't remember.

Quinn: You did, you did bring up Eddie Redmayne.

Betty: Yeah, it was in my notes, but I forgot if I said it into the episode, but yeah, this reminds me like Eddie Redmayne. I talked about him a couple of episodes ago when we talked about the International Klein Blue and he wrote a thesis on that vivid blue color. And I guess, guess I just now found out he was he was in a play all about red. So he's really into colors. 

Quinn: The other one I want to quickly mention before I get into my little finale here is a musical about Keith Haring that was called Radiant Baby. I found this score described as rock punk disco, which makes a lot of sense. And I found a review of it that basically said the staging was incredibly cool, and the show itself wasn't that good. Which is sad, but there are a couple of interesting things about this, including that the chorus of the show was children as a choice to reflect Haring’s work with children and depicting children frequently in his work, which I thought was very interesting. But this is more of a straight up, this is more of a straightforward story about Keith Haring's life, especially like later in his life as he is a successful artist, but also struggling with AIDS and the AIDS epidemic.

Betty: I see from some of the pictures that it seems like Keith Haring, like that style and his baby imagery was used in the show. And I can see that also being like a very appealing visual backdrop. Very interesting to see the the, what it looked like. But I guess since the actual show isn't very good. That's kind of a let down. 

Quinn: I got to say, the combination of things that I've heard about this show is that it's got a rock punk disco score, and that it's about Keith Herring has really good visuals, but isn't ultimately very good. This sounds like something I would personally really enjoy. And I kind of, I wish I could go see it. I don't think anyone's putting on Radiant Baby. But there is music for it online, so go nuts everyone.

Betty: I’m kind of interested in like hearing what the music in some of these plays that you mentioned are because when I went to that experience, the immersive van Gogh experience, like it was just interesting to hear, like what type of music is being paired with the paintings and the visuals you see. Different art, like it evokes like different feelings for you. And so I'm very interested to kind of see what the interpretation that, you know, the people who did the musical scores for these plays you know, ended up coming up with.

Quinn: I feel like it's so important to have the music both reflect the art, but also work well with the art in order to you know, not only straightforwardly represent the feelings that the art evokes in you in a musical sense, but also tie it into an overarching story that you're trying to tell. That can be quite challenging. 

Betty: I actually just, I think I just found the—I know this episode isn't about playbills. We talked about that already, but I think I found the playbill for Radiant Baby and it's, I mean, I would say it's not a great playbill either. I mean it is very different and very unique, but it does seem like it's kind of bland and kind of different from what we talked about when we talked about playbills, where it's like, usually is very eye catching and iconic and Keith Haring works are really colorful and like, you know, really bold. And this is kind of the opposite of that.

Quinn: Yeah. What an interesting choice. Well, the last one I want to talk about is one that we talked about on the playbill episode as well. And that is of course, Sunday in the Park with George. This is, I would say undoubtedly, the most famous musical that's been made thus far about a painter. It premiered in 1984 and it won tons of awards, including the Pulitzer prize. So just very successful, but what's very interesting about this is unlike pretty much every other musical on this list, it makes no attempt to represent the real life of the artist. So this is a musical that was inspired by the painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Gran Jatte. Which is that famous giant painting that's made of all just dots of color rather than strokes of color. And so this was painted by George Seurat, and Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine went to the Art Institute of Chicago and looked at the painting and they said, wow, I'm really inspired to make a musical based on that painting. And the main character is named George Seurat, but like, it has very, it's not an attempt to actually represent his life. Like basically the rest of the characters are fictional. The story behind the painting in the musical is fictional. There they make no secret to this. And the second half of the musical isn't even about George Seurat, it's about his fictional descendant, who was also an artist and it's kind of battling with his legacy and the concept of art and what it means in the modern world. And it's a really good musical. It's actually the only one on the list that I've seen. I haven't seen it live because my life is sad. But there's a really good professional recording of it with the original cast that you can see, which is awesome. So I've seen that and it's a really beautiful show and it is like, absolutely very much about this painting. They recreate the painting with actors in a way that is just a stunning piece of stagecraft and lots of really cool stuff and lots of really interesting ideas about art through the lens of this visual artist who is obsessed with making this painting. But none of it is a representation of a real person. 

Betty: I mean, you know, a play can be, or a musical can just be a work of fiction too.

Quinn: Yeah. I just find it interesting that is the most successful out of all of these. And it's also the only one that's like, we're not really concerned with biography. It's interesting because I think that of every musical that I've mentioned here today, I think the other one that I would consider like fairly well successful is Fun Home, which was in my honorable mentions, which is the true story of a person, of a real person, but takes a very non-traditional tact at portraying that life. It takes place at three different ages and they're all interspersed with each other and it's non linear. But I wonder if there's something to that in that like attempts of more linear storytelling of these little sections of these real people's lives, just like hasn't lent itself well to being on a stage.

Betty: I think what I really like about about these plays or just like the existence of them is that I think quite often we talk about, you know, we talk about art and like our experiences with them and like what art is for and what art does. And something that I think I've mentioned a bunch of times and probably we've talked about it too, is a lot of it is about like the painting or sculpture or whatever artworks, how they're experienced by people, by other people like how the audience experiences them and how the audience interprets them over time and how you can look at something that's really old in history and have a connection with it. And I think these plays, like I think, especially the ones that you just mentioned that are people using these artworks as inspirations to create other stories, like it shows you that these artworks, like there's a life beyond them, that they—it's more than just somebody coming in and looking at a painting. It's like, oh, very nice, and leaves. Is that they, they actually inspire other art and it's like other types of creations. 

Quinn: That's a really nice way to think about it. I did have, I have two questions that I wanted to end this with. At one is kind of an open-ended philosophical question to start with, which is why are all these about white men? And this is not counting Fun Home. Which again is in the honorable mentions and it doesn't technically count, but all we've got van Gogh, Mark Rothko, Keith Haring, George Seurat even the other ones like Gaugin and like Andy Warhol is in the Keith Haring one as well. Like every single one of these artists is a white man. I'm just, I'll cede the floor to you. What are your initial thoughts about that? 

Betty: I think it's because a lot of really famous artists happened to be white men. 

Quinn: Fair enough.

Betty: You know, it's something that I've thought about too. Like when, you know, there are shows and like museums and large institutions who, you know, these days are trying to diversify for sure. And some have, but when you look at collections and when you look at what shows are you know, major exhibitions, like right now, I think at the AGO there was recently an Andy Warhol show and there was a Monet show. And right now there's a Picasso show. So they keep having these presumably is because they draw in the crowds because they're famous artists and people know about them and they'll say, oh, like, I'll come, I'll come see it, which I guess makes sense from a financial standpoint. But yeah, like I think possible that the creators of these plays are just like, well, we need somebody famous. Like somebody who's a household name and that everybody's heard of. And they just happened to be these few select individuals. So that's kind of what, the only thing I can think of at this point. And maybe somebody has made a play or musical about like, you know, an artist like of a different gender or culture or background that maybe just wasn't as successful, but I guess we just have to get better at discovering them if that's the case.

Quinn: Yeah. I will say this is almost certainly not true for non-English shows, but I only speak English. So this is where I'm at, but yeah, it, but it's so true. What you were talking about, I feel like I get on this every time, but it is a self perpetuating cycle. It's like, oh, these artists are the most famous. And so we put on their shows to attract audiences and we make musicals about their life because people are drawn to them. And people have connections with them because they know their art. There’s nothing wrong with that. It's just that when you do that, you're just contributing to that cycle. And so it's, it's hard though. Cause it's like, unless, you know, Lin-Manuel Miranda makes a musical about, you know, a female artist or a Black artist or whoever, then you're not going to get the kind of funding and attention that you need to get your show going. Theater’s very expensive. So you go with van Gogh who you love anyway, and yeah, it just keeps going.

Betty: I mean, I think maybe let's keep an eye out on people who feature all kinds of different artists? I hope we'll see more of them in the future.

Quinn: Yeah. Everybody send me your indie shows about artists. I would love to see them to know about them. But this actually leads me to my very last question of the episode today. Who would you want to see? If you could pick any artist, and it can be a white man, it’s fine if it is, but if you can pick any artist whose life or whose art would you want to see on stage?

Betty: Not to say that people now have to make musicals about Asian women, but—

Quinn: But they do.

Betty: But they should. But the person that just kind of, I guess who immediately came to mind is Yayoi Kusama.

Quinn: Ooh, yeah.

Betty: And you know, I made a YouTube video about her. Like I love her. I think her work is great, but I think the other thing is like, she just had a really like, I mean, she's still alive. So she still has or she had like up until now a pretty interesting life and still does. And she's like a really unique type of person. Like she has like a really unique character and like she's also kind of gone through a lot of things in her life that are quite tragic as well. So I would say, I feel like she would make a very interesting—or like her life story, or maybe just similar to van Gogh, various points in her life could just make really interesting stories. That's, you know, connected to her art. And again, her art also lends itself well to these like really great visuals and backdrops as well. So yeah, somebody make a musical or play about Kusama, please.

Quinn: That's such a great answer. Her work would be so cool onstage. And I just have to share that I just had the following thought process because when I was thinking about, oh, who would I want to see, I thought about Georgia O'Keeffe and then I was like, how's there not a musical about Georgia O’Keeffe? And then I googled it and there is.

Betty: Oh, okay.

Quinn: I take back about 10% of what I previously said. Georgia O'Keeffe as is always, the token woman in the room when we talk about famous artists. But there was a, there was a musical that was made about Georgia O'Keeffe called Hello Sky, which is very nice. And so that exists, apparently it was fully staged for the first time it looks like in 2010. And so I don't know if this is still in active development or not, but good for you, people who made a musical about Georgia O’Keeffe. And in my other answer, I wanted to say Basquiat who is, we did an episode about him previously and he was a really amazing artist and a fascinating person and also was good friends with Keith Haring. So maybe bring back the Keith Haring musical, make a Basquiat musical, do them in repertory. I'm just spit balling here. 

Betty: We can even have like a crossover between the Keith Haring and the Basquiat musical.

Quinn: Well, thank you to Marc Platt and everyone else who's listening to this episode of Pictorial. You could our show notes at relay.fm/pictorial, and you could find us on Twitter or Instagram @PictorialPod. You can also find me on Instagram @aspiringrobotfm.

Betty: And you can find me on Twitter or Instagram @articulationsv. And I'm also on YouTube as ARTiculations and speaking of YouTube, we also have a YouTube channel Pictorial Podcast, where we upload visual versions of our podcasts. Usually a few weeks after the audio version has come out. And for this episode, I guess you’ll looking at some pictures of musicals.

Quinn: Thanks for listening, art enthusiasts!