History Main / BiographyAClef

Well, two can play that game. You see, for most people, the work of the artist is all they know and care about that artist. In some cases, it's all that they will know about that artist, especially if they are a ReclusiveArtist or if they lived in a time where way too little is knowable about him or her. If people decide to tell the story of that artist's life, they are going to find a way to shoehorn, in some way or form, aspects of his creations into that biography, which ends up making it a metafictional OriginsEpisode, or in some cases provide {{Futureshadowing}}. All biographical works of famous people take ArtisticLicenseHistory and other creative liberties as a given. Different incidents are merged or cut for smoother narrative flow. This happens even when the subject in question has life that is full of excitement, whether its the lives of famous kings, soldiers, lawyers, politicians and other historical worthies. Unlike other biographical subjects, the artist by nature doesn't usually have an exciting life. If he's a poet, a painter, a sculptor, a musician and had a long and successful career, most of that involved thinking in rooms, working hard in a corner, maybe doing some acts of recreation. It's not inherently a very dramatic life. Of course some artists do have exciting and very dramatic lives (Creator/VincentVanGogh for instance) but most artists don't. Their works might be very famous and well known and be adapted in turn but [[WhoWouldWantToWatchUs nobody would think that their lives were interesting enough to support a biography]]. But because the artist is well known, someone decides to make a biographical work anyway and this leaves writers and producers scratching their heads how to make it work.

Well, two can play that game. You see, for most people, the work of the artist is all they know and care about that artist. In some cases, it's all that they will know about that artist, especially if they are ReclusiveArtist or if they lived in a time where way too little is knowable about him or her. If people decide to tell the story of that artist's life, they are going to find a way to shoehorn, in some way or form, aspects of his creations into that biography, which ends up making it a metafictional OriginsEpisode, or in some cases provide {{Futureshadowing}}. All biographical works of famous people take ArtisticLicenseHistory and other creative liberties as a given. Different incidents are merged or cut for smoother narrative flow. This happens even when the subject in question has life that is full of excitement, whether its the lives of famous kings, soldiers, lawyers, politicians and other historical worthies. Unlike other biographical subjects, the artist by nature doesn't usually have an exciting life. If he's a poet, a painter, a sculptor, a musician and had a long and successful career, most of that involved thinking in rooms, working hard in a corner, maybe doing some acts of recreation. It's not inherently a very dramatic life. Of course some artists do have exciting and very dramatic lives (Creator/VincentVanGogh for instance) but most artists don't. Their works might be very famous and well known and be adapted in turn but [[WhoWouldWantToWatchUs nobody would think that their lives were interesting enough to support a biography]]. But because the artist is well known, someone decides to make a biographical work anyway and this leaves writers and producers scratching their heads how to make it work.

Well two can play that game. You see for most people, the work of the artist is all they know and care about that artist. In some cases, it's all that they will know about that artist, especially if they are ReclusiveArtist or if they lived in a time where way too little is knowable about him or her. If people decide to tell the story of that artist's life, they are going to find a way to shoehorn, in some way or form, aspects of his creations into that biography, which ends up making it a metafictional OriginsEpisode, or in some cases provide {{Futureshadowing}}. All biographical works of famous people take ArtisticLicenseHistory and other creative liberties as a given. Different incidents are merged or cut for smoother narrative flow. This happens even when the subject in question has life that is full of excitement, whether its the lives of famous kings, soldiers, lawyers, politicians and other historical worthies. Unlike other biographical subjects, the artist by nature doesn't usually have an exciting life. If he's a poet, a painter, a sculptor, a musician and had a long and successful career, most of that involved thinking in rooms, working hard in a corner, maybe doing some acts of recreation. It's not inherently a very dramatic life. Of course some artists do have exciting and very dramatic lives (Creator/VincentVanGogh for instance) but most artists don't. Their works might be very famous and well known and be adapted in turn but [[WhoWouldWantToWatchUs nobody would think that their lives were interesting enough to support a biography]]. But because the artist is well known, someone decides to make a biographical work anyway and this leaves writers and producers scratching their heads how to make it work.

One way to do it is mix the artist's life with their fiction. Creator/ArthurConanDoyle wrote DetectiveFiction, so have him investigate real crimes and more or less play Sherlock Holmes[[note]]which, to be fair, he actually ''did'' once or twice[[/note]]. Here's Charles Dickens having a terrible childhood like Oliver Twist, having his pocket picked by TheArtfulDodger, or an {{Expy}} of him, who makes Dickens think IShouldWriteABookAboutThis. Works using this trope vary from being sly and playful, to straight drama to outright MetaFiction. While examples of this trope do exist in earlier times, it certainly took off big time in the 20th Century, where psychology and other ideas made many people try and analyse works of art as an expression of the artist's personality. Biography à Clef more or less makes that subtext literal.

* Creator/NeilGaiman's Shakespeare episodes in ''ComicBook/TheSandman'' features this trope. In the first case, he has Shakespeare present a unique theater production of ''Theatre/AMidsummerNightsDream'' to TheFairFolk which actually inspired that play, which is here presented as a commission to Shakespeare's company from Morpheus to impress Titania. Earlier folkloric versions of Titania and Puck comment on their fictional representations in Shakespeare's play.

* Music/JacquesOffenbach's ''Theatre/TheTalesOfHoffmann'' is a famous pre-20th Century version. It presents Creator/ETAHoffmann himself narrating stories from his life, all of them adapted from his own tales ''Literature/TheSandman, Rath Krespell, A New Year Eve's Adventure'', but presented as life experiences that he will eventually use to write his fiction.