Nobody’s Savant: The Mythic Fantasy of Autistic Genius
I knew I had to write this the moment I left the cinema. I felt so confronted by Nobody’s Sweetie, a documentary about the legacy of abstract painter Dale Frank (b. 1959), diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder in his sixties. I am also an abstract painter, diagnosed with ASD at age sixteen, and now in my thirties. Any connection I have with Frank could appear arbitrary—I have never met him, I have no insight into his identity or experience, and I do not claim to speak for him. Still, I feel I have something at stake in the conversation about his legacy.
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Derek Jarman’s Blue (1993) is a film without images—just a luminous ultramarine field and an evocative soundtrack. Made as he was dying of AIDS-related illness, Blue resists spectacle, embracing abstraction, memory, and loss. Thirty years on, it continues to evolve, expanding across artists, mediums, and generations.
Hollywood thinks it’s exposing the art world’s grift, but it’s just another con. From Velvet Buzzsaw to Picasso Baby, cinema keeps repackaging conceptual cringe as critique—while artists play along. If contemporary art is now just another film genre, it’s a bad one.
