The Greatest Artist of All Time

It is often extremely difficult to gauge the greatness of an artist in labeling him "the best ever" or the "the greatest of all time" since art can be a very subjective and opinionated topic whose admirers come from wide ranges of thought. After all, what defines good art or a good artist? Art is in the eye of the beholder and the greatest artist of all time is no exception to the rule. Remember, one's trash is another's treasure.

Nonetheless, I'm going to take a bold leap forward, bolder than man's first steps on the moon, and claim that I think I have found greatest artist of all time.

The artist I am referring to happens to demonstrate his art in the form of writing, acting, and directing. He happens to be one of the funniest human beings on the planet; and if there were another planet with human beings, he would be the funniest human being on both planets combined. His work is something of an acquired taste. One must be fed his work many times in order to fully decipher and appreciate it, hence why those who appreciate his work can forever live in peace and harmony knowing that they too have gained the ability to be entertained by the brainy and astute artist who is often difficult to understand with his quirky, but intellectual jokes and never-ending blabber.

This artist happens to be Woody Allen. For starters, Allen has drawn heavily from various literatures, philosophy, psychology, and European cinema for influence. However, it may be argued that his greatest influence has come from New York City, the city he has lived in throughout his life. He is as creative a person as anybody I've come across, successfully blending emotional problems, difficult relationships, and flirty entanglements with incisive comedy and sometimes even slapstick. Allen has formulated this into a style which has often been attempted by others in film, with little to no success. It is Allen's magical touch which allows this formula work with perfection and hence why I am boldly labeling him the greatest artist of all time.

Those who have seen or read most his work can reinforce the fact that nearly all his characters written are nerdy, neurotic, un-romantic, intellectuals (although ironically almost none of the Allen-played characters admit they are intellectuals) who whine and object to all social and marital problems that arise.

From his work in 1972's Play It Again Sam (although he wrote it in 1969), a character played by Woody Allen, also named Allen, is lectured by his significant other who is on the verge of leaving him for a more exciting and romantic man. She tells Woody's character, "You're a dreamer. You're awkward. You're clumsy. They can see how desperate you are. You know this. You said it yourself. Oh, face it, Allen. You may be very sweet but you're not sexy." This is a common theme running through most of Allen's work. One can say that he achieves great success by bring himself down and making his characteristics - physical and otherwise - the object of ridicule.

Man's real insecurities and emotional problems with relationships allow us to associate and understand all of Woody's characters. Much of us hold a common note with the characters portrayed in his work. It is this duality of mixing real life emotional instability with wordy comedy that makes his work so entertaining.

Whereas some would merely brush off Allen's work as boring, I argue Allen is the great ambassador between our instable emotional problems and insecurities in life with hilarious comedy. Sandy Bates, another character written and played by Woody Allen in his 1980 masterpiece Stardust Memories, is a comic writer and filmmaker with a sudden mental breakdown who says to a voice (either in his head or an ambiguous Martian voice), "But shouldn't I stop making movies and do something that counts, like-like helping blind people or becoming a missionary or something?" The voice tells Allen's character, "Let me tell you, you're not the missionary type. You'd never last. And-and incidentally, you're also not Superman; you're a comedian. You want to do mankind a real service? Tell funnier jokes." It is examples such as this that make Woody Allen's work so worthwhile and amusing.

Another element Woody Allen successfully employs in making him the greatest artist of all time is his ability to take simple metaphors - metaphors we have all studied and analyzed all too well a thousands times in boring high school literature classes as clueless teenage kids - in making them successfully work without salvaging the entertainment value and comedic goals of the film.

Let's take for example his 2002 work, Hollywood Ending. Here Allen plays the character of Val Waxman, a once-famous film director with no luck who lands an offer to make a large motion picture. Stricken with much stress, anxiety, and paranoia (again, typical of all Allen characters), Allen's character becomes psycho-somatically blind while friends scramble to try and cover up his blindness in helping him film the entire motion picture blind!

After visiting the hospital, the medical doctor confers that his eyes have no physical problems and suggests that he sees a psychologist. The psychologist concludes that Allen's character is psycho-somatically blind and urges him to find the root of his emotional problem to remedy this blindness. Using blindness as metaphor, Allen's character directs and shoots an entire motion picture while not being able to see anything. Here, one can beg the question, "What, then, makes a true artist?"

In this film, Allen's character Val Waxman is shown flaunting and waving his arms everywhere on the film set, sometimes even looking backwards from the set, as if he is a master director. Little do they know he is blind. A reporter on the set says regarding this blind director, "To observe Val Waxman directing, one would think he has no idea. I wonder if he's one of those cinema geniuses who thrive on chaos like Fellini." Perhaps the premise of this is not too far from how real life artists present themselves. Perhaps artists are overrated entities who carry an artificial façade in deceiving people into thinking they are master thinkers when at the end of the day anybody can create the same thing the artist had created. Perhaps artists should be known as the great deceivers of society and that Fellini had no idea what he was doing on any of his film sets. Maybe that is why most artists (painters, photographers, filmmakers, etc.) I see come off as such egotistical bastards. Of course, we all know that this is probably not the case since I believe Woody Allen is a great artist; however, it is extremely fun entertaining the idea of the egotistical bastard artist.

The film by the blind director character of Woody Allen, Val Waxman, ends up getting the worst reviews since he had absolutely no idea what he was doing blind. The French meanwhile, caught in a mania with his work, label this blind director's film a masterpiece and brand him a genius - not even knowing he is blind. Allen's character says, "Thank God the French exist."

Of course, to label Woody Allen as the greatest artist of all time throughout humankind is probably an overstatement. But Allen, who speaks modestly about his masterpieces as if they were nothing special (just as basketball superstar Steve Nash shrugs off his two MVP awards and multiple all-star titles), deserves great praise. His formula is conventionally unconventional. He appeals to the masses. His talent to entertain with humor while dealing with dismal social anxieties and utilizing a fantastic spatial settings (usually New York City) is enough to rank him amongst the greats. In the end, art comes down to sheer entertainment. Allen's work is fun material - and his ability to consistently write, direct, and act in his pieces while never falling short of entertaining his audience is reason he earns my praise.

But don't tell the people of Oviedo in northern Spain that. They already know. In 2002, Woody Allen won the Prince of Asturias Award, a prize given in Oviedo, Spain by the Fundación Príncipe de Asturias (Foundation Principle of Asturias) to individuals, entities, organizations, and others from around the world that make notable achievements in the sciences, humanities, or public affairs.

In recognition of this and the wonders that Allen has mastered in art, the town of Oviedo, Spain now boasts a life-sized statue of Woody Allen on their city sidewalk - hauntingly resembling a stereotypical Woody Allen stance from any one of his films as if he were walking down New York City wearing a sportscoat with the hands in his pocket.

Actually now that I think about it, I will in fact label Woody Allen the greatest artist of all time.