The French Dispatch's Best Story Finds the Violence Between Art and Commerce – Den of Geek

Rosenthaler is reluctant to sell the painting, Simone Naked, Cell Block J Hobby Room, when  Julian Cadazio (Brody’s dealer who’s briefly incarcerated for the white-collar crime of sales tax evasion) sweetly bribes his way into the Maximum Security for the Mentally Deranged unit.

“All artists sell all their work, it’s what makes you an artist,” the art dealer explains to the paint-splattered inmate. The two fellow convicts then proceed to imprison each other. Cadazio makes Rosenthaler one of the world’s premiere visionaries in the art world, based on “one small scribbly overrated picture.” The painter with a 50-year sentence is confined to deadlines for the first time in his life but manages to keep the art dealer hostage with promises of perfection. After all, Rosenthaler is a man whose secondary motivation is the terror of the Splatter Brigade, other jailed artists who taunt each other to greatness with threats of grievous harm.

Anderson, who also made Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Darjeeling Limited, and Moonrise Kingdom, is an obsessive. He fills in all the loose doodles of his subject, compulsively objectifying Rosenthaler as a truly tortured artist. Seydoux conjures her inner Morticia Addams by reminding Moses that torture is Simone’s job. She is an electrifying muse and knows how to jump start his cables.

Anderson is also making comments on the construction of an artist. Cadazio wants a biography as a patron, which is as much collateral as the paint, egg yolks, and prison soap brushed over tarp. Rosenthaler becomes an art world sensation for his mental illness and violence as much as he does for his impressionistic visions. Cadazio berates him and promotes him as a homicidal maniac, and when the painter completes his masterpiece collection, the madness is revealed as the true genius. The final paintings are done as frescos, painted on the concrete walls deep in the prison interior. They are there to stay, a testament to the artist, the life and its sentence, and the guard who gives him a reason to serve his time. The artist has hijacked his own work, putting the Cadazio family on the verge of ruin in a ransom of fulfilled promises.

Rosenthaler delivers his rogue gallery collection, on time, and it is so exquisite, it is deemed worth the price of excavation, removal, and relocation. But the artist is also a criminally insane wannabe-repeat offender, he’s even tried to sexually assault the art historian J.K.L. Berensen, as she tells her audience. His final act of violence earns him his freedom, but the inspiration for it is much deeper.

Van Gogh offered a piece of himself for an unattainable love, in what has been classified as a moment of madness. Simone is going to leave her post as the guard at the Ennui prison on the day after the illicit gallery showing is conducted. The paintings are all of Simone, and Rosenthaler immortalized her in a way which would also keep him close to her. The framing is essential to the art. The permanence is the palette. It is a deeply personal work.

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