Leave the controversy aside and take ‘The Danish Girl (2015), a fantastic movie on the merit of Art and Life and an artist’s portrayal. After the release and widespread acclamation of Redmayne and Vikander’s performances, the movie The Danish Girl’s central characters were criticised for inaccurate accounts of historical events.
The Danish Girl loosely depicts the lives of the Danish painter couple, Lili Elbe and Gerda Wegener. Elbe is known as one of the first known recipients of gender-affirming surgery. This short note focuses on the element of Art in this movie; the way the central character realised gender identity is by underlining the aspect of Art, as we always use the phrase ‘Art is Life’. Sometimes, Art ruins our lives, and sometimes that flourishes. In this movie, the male character realised the gender identity problem when he posed as a female model for his painter partner. He realised, in the depth of his gender, there is an element of ‘her’, and that realisation led him into gender-affirming surgery.
Identifying gender identity is a significant turning in this movie, and what made that turning point is Art. Being a model is a substantial thing in Art; everybody is a model or an object for a painter. This movie began with a crowd art show, an exhibition of Lili Elbe, the most celebrated landscape artist in Denmark, as mentioned by the gallery manager.
Gender in Portrait
It was a gender that created the ambiguous play in this movie before Elbe posed as a female model for his companion while they were blending their relationship in the moving Art of the film. Elbe and Gerda were an artist couple and celebrated their time, and Gerda once told her old male model, it’s hard for a man to be looked at by a woman. Being a model is being inspected under the bone or soul, which is not clumsy but makes them firm, revealing and penetrating; Gerda told him, ‘Submit to a woman’s gaze. Gerda says this to a man posing for her, but that comment goes to Elbe’s soul, and he is ready to face the woman’s gaze.
Before the gender identity discussion, there was a strong argument and artistic practice in this movie, and both landscape and portrait artists from 19th-century Denmark gave benchmark opinions about Art. In a scene, Gerda tells Elbe, ‘Sometimes I feel you’re going to slip through the surface of the painting and vanish’ when he is doing the painting. Gerda’s remark is prophetic and predicting, which happens slowly in his life through modeling and realising his identity. Elbe falls into a painting as a man when he is a model and vanishes as a woman.
At some point, the movie brings the beauty of Art and the Art practice of artists couples into the gloomy but spirited canvas of a monumental city. He was preparing to change his identity, study the finger notes, dress, and body language of the women, and finally, dressed like a woman, ask his partner, ‘Am I pretty enough?
Portrait and Identity
When the Elbe dresses like a woman and goes to a party, people look at ‘her’ and validate her identity and beauty, which reflects and influences his gender transition. Who creates this transition in a blissful, married couple’s life at the extreme point of happiness and joy? When starts this transition from male to female, who brought this idea of gender change through modelling? Elbe gets more attention from the surroundings after his gender change is only visible in the dress code, and then he realises gender is not a matter of dress code.
In a city enveloped with the misty nature of exquisite architecture and history, two people were playing their dangerous game on gender that started taking their life apart. Some of the critiques questioned the lack of a genuine sense of emotional connection between the two of them. But the real thing is this movie is more of a conflict and interconnections of one man or woman, which were not clearly revealed before he starts posing as a woman.
No one may not claim I am a complete man and woman. There is no kind of gender at a hundred per cent level, and we can’t measure the gender percentage level. What is going on inside his identity problem is that he sees his female side as another individual entrapped inside him, and the experience of being a woman, even for a moment, gave him a chance to awaken. After realising gender duality, he becomes rebellious daily, and his entire life is slowly changed.
One remains a valid question: Why did the gallery manager or art historian reject Gerda’s portrait painting first and take portraits of Elba, which marked his transition into the female with a comment of ‘these are different and there is market? Why those paintings and drawings are so unique in a sense?
Apart from all those disgraces and nuisances, they celebrate their togetherness; they paint, kiss, make love, and carry each other forever, the finest illustration of life. They lived in rooms of paintings and drawings of transitional phases of the artists of both.
Krispin Joseph PX, a poet and journalist, completed an MFA in art history and visual studies at the University of Hyderabad.
