Pathological, in love and redeemed. Images of the artist in Wes Anderson's films

Abstract

In his last released feature film, The French Dispatch, Wes Anderson gathers the largest number of artists –from different disciplines– in his entire filmography. Starting from that character who can be considered not only as a paradigm of hero but also as an Andersonian proto-artist, Max Fischer, and his characteristic features, the present contribution tries to trace a taxonomy of the artists in the cinema of the Texan filmmaker distinguishing their different types, properties and hybridizations. Starting from those "artists of the words" who have been most frequently thematized in the academic literature on the auteur to date, the article also reviews the other recurrent types of artists –plastic and scenic– present in Wes Anderson's cinema, their prevailing personality disorders, their models of interpersonal relationships and the way in which, through the generation of communities by means of their acts of creation –a characteristic that in Wes Anderson acquires autobiographical overtones– these characters, despite their problematic traits, manage to conquer their own redemption.