his name and subsequently became secretive about his background. In the film, Arshile’s wife Mougoush Fielding reveals that he told her “so many myths”, which included plagiarising other people’s love letters to send to her and claiming to be the nephew of the Russian author Maxim Gorky. The lies were only discovered after his death, when he hanged himself in the woods near his Connecticut home in 1948 after battling cancer and depression. Cosima has since pieced together all that is known about the artist in a bid for truth. Aside from a wealth of photos and paintings, Cosima
had relatively few hard facts to go on, so she relied on her family. She conducted more than 10 hours of interviews with both Mougoush and the couple’s daughters Natasha and Maro. “I usually make films about people who are alive, so I made this film about what was still alive,” explains Cosima. “His echo is still alive in our family – I speak about him to our children.” Many of the stories within the film were familiar to
Cosima, but it also brought up a few surprises. “I thought he got off the boat and changed his name,” says Cosima. “Actually, he changed it after visiting his father and finding a photograph of himself and his mother. She had been left looking after the babies in Armenia but Arshile’s dad had not been sending back money and had a new family in America. Arshile took the picture, left his father and changed his name. That photograph was the basis of his most famous painting [The Artist and His Mother, opposite]. For me, that is a really interesting detail to find out later as it gives a new meaning to that painting – so much of his life is in that painting.” Much of the film focuses on Arshile’s last seven years,
“I wanted to put a lot of Arshile’s art back into the emotional context of the family”
which was the period after he met Mougoush – a well-educated, adventurous and wealthy 19-year-old debutante, who was coincidentally also 19 years his junior. “When she met him he was stuck in a painting period, which was heavy impasto worked on one canvas for months on end. She gave him the confidence and support to try to do something different. After they met he tried to absorb the work of Cézanne and Picasso.” Arshile was largely untrained and had spent years
teaching himself, both through observation and his study of the European masters. His career was essentially kick-started by his relationship with the Surrealist painters in exile from Paris, such as André Breton and Max Ernst. “Their encouragement really made him spark up and find a more lyrical side to his painting language,” says Cosima. She began work on the film a decade ago while at film
school, during which time, she says, it’s almost a rite of passage that students make work about themselves.
However, Mougoush was reluctant and Cosima concedes that she herself wasn’t ready initially. She did however manage to interview her grandmother in New York, walking the streets and retracing the steps of the early days of her relationship with Arshile, parts of which are included in Without Gorky. The film really took
shape when Tate wanted a 20-minute film to accompany its 2010
Arshile Gorky retrospective and Cosima put herself forward to make it. “I didn’t want a stranger doing it,” she says. “I felt territorial about it.” Following the success of the exhibition, Cosima
decided to build on what she had filmed for Tate and the final section is one of the most moving parts of the film. Although the family had never visited Arshile’s homeland before, it became clear that so many of his inspirations were found on the shores of Lake Van, where he had grown up as a little boy. “The landscape was abstracted,” recalls Cosima.
“To see the landscape that he must have seen as a child, it really brings you closer to someone. I think that landscape gave him faith and really influenced the way he sees things. It was incredible. I have never been anywhere so beautiful.” Cosima hopes the film will help spread a message that
Arshile embodied: “You have to believe in your art. We all need to have faith in what we do. He gives me so much faith in art: someone who had no success during his lifetime achieved success after his death.” Without Gorky is scheduled to air on 12 March as part of BBC4’s Storyville series.
www.bbc.co.uk
TOP Arshile Gorky with his young family in 1945 CENTRE Arshile’s two daughters, Maro (left) and Natasha, chat in a still from Without Gorky
Artists & Illustrators 25
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