By Dorian Winter
This piece first appeared as a featured article in volume 95, issue three of Pelican. You can view our print archive here.
If you haven’t heard of The Talented Mr Ripley before, it’s essentially Saltburn’s predecessor. Written by Patricia Highsmith in 1955, the psychological thriller is a classic ‘eat-the-rich’ narrative, focusing on an aspirational (yet sociopathic) middle-class man trying to muddy his paws in his pursuit to join the bourgeoisie. Recently, a new adaptation of this story, Ripley (2024), has come out, and is available to watch on Netflix (if you have the time and/or can stand slow-paced noir directorial styles).
One major thing that captured my attention while watching the show (besides Andrew Scott, obviously) was the way that art is used as a narrative device. The show tends to use this as a parallel to the way music, particularly jazz, was utilised in the adaptation of the story starring Matt Damon (which, by the way, is the superior adaptation if you actually want to get into this). In Ripley, art is used as a central symbol particularly to represent aspiration, power, and betrayal. But how, and why?
“Is that Picasso for sale?”
After our titular character, Tom Ripley, disposes of Richard (‘Dickie’) Greenleaf’s body, he starts to embody his new (albeit stolen) villa, as well as his new identity as Dickie’s replacement. At the centre of all of this is a desire to gain some kind of mobility so that his crime isn’t discovered, and so he does what anyone would do, and pawns off the precious items “left behind” by Greenleaf. Except, not the Picasso at the end of the hall.
The Guitar Player (1910, left) by Pablo Picasso is a Cubist, monochromatic work (which works just as well in the black & white chiaroscuro of the show) that represents opportunity and mobility. Not only does it live and breathe fame in the art world, but it is distinctly abstract and indecipherable, likely representing new and broadening possibilities opening up for Ripley. Notably, within the villa, this painting is completely naked and exposed, no frame and certainly no protection, which shows a playfulness (as well as a carelessness) from Ripley when dealing with this new life of luxury.
Interestingly, we don’t see this painting again, except when Ripley sends it to himself under a pseudonym. The use of art then follows the direction of the show, where cubism becomes the more dark, dramatic lighting commanded by Caravaggio. The shift in this art now starts to symbolically unravel the dark side of Ripley’s personality, and the narrative as a whole.
Caravaggio wasn’t that nice of a guy
You’re probably familiar with Caravaggio’s works. Dramatic lighting, bodies suspended in action, flowing fabrics, and usually some kind of chaos. What you might not be familiar with is that Caravaggio was a murderer! (No wonder he was able to depict such violent scenes). This creates a lovely parallel with our protagonist, who holds a similar fascination for these painted scenes of betrayal, violence, and tragedy. In fact, the show does this a little too explicitly, inserting a composite narrative where we see a murderous painter from 1606 get away with a murder, and then parallel this to Ripley’s situation. As an interesting addition, Ripley’s character is distinctly queer-coded (though not as much as in the Matt Damon one, sorry everyone) and Caravaggio himself was rumoured to be bisexual. The paralleling between Caravaggio and Ripley is a subtle but effective move by the director, and is arguably more interesting that some other explorations of Ripley’s personality seen elsewhere. Unfortunately, I don’t think Ripley is as talented as he thinks he is, and that this admiration and comparison is a ploy used to distract him from an impending police investigation (oops).
Ripley isn’t the first show to use art as a comparison in this way, in fact if you’ve seen the third season of Hannibal (2015), Botticelli’s works are used to mirror Hannibal’s “aesthetic” ideology guiding his murders, and similarly Ripley uses Caravaggio to somewhat explain what Ripley thinks of his own murderous actions. However, there is something distinct in the way that the artistic element of chiaroscuro is used to complement the black-and-white noir direction.
The dichotomy of man: How chiaroscuro and tenebrism is used metatextually
Ripley is shot completely in black and white, a complete reimagining of the sweltering Italian summer aesthetic seen in the Matt Damon version of the narrative. This is a change that I wasn’t quite sure about, but it proved itself to be more then suitable over the course of the series. The dichotomy of black and white emphasises light and shadow, carving out the three-dimensionality of bodies and action. Additionally, the use of chiaroscuro (meaning light-dark) itself is a manipulative painting technique requiring a lot of talent and expertise. Even just looking at Caravaggio’s works, every single spot of light and shadow is intentional, much like Ripley’s actions. Additionally, the use of tenebrism (a technique meaning “darkened and obscured”) is a common feature of Caravaggio’s paintings, and parallels the tone of the series and its main character.
There are many Caravaggio works embedded throughout the series, but I’ve decided to highlight one that I found complemented Ripley’s character study well.
One featured painting that really nails this point is David With the Head of Goliath (1610, above), which is a piece that Caravaggio said depicted himself in different stages of his life, occupying both David and Goliath and a sort of duality. A museum guide phrases this in a different way, saying that Caravaggio paints “David as compassionate in the way that he gazes at the severed head of Goliath”. A narrative of both duality and distorted self-perception emerges here – Ripley not only thinks of himself as a warrior but also as a saint, saving the world from those who don’t contribute anything. In trying to carve out his own fate, and build a better life for himself (however violent his methods are), Ripley is forced to both defeat a part of himself and ruthlessly sculpt his new persona to claim what he needs.
Class, laziness, and vandalism
The start of the series sets the scene neatly. Dickie, a relaxed and untalented member of the bourgeoisie, needs an excuse as to why he hasn’t come home from Italy yet. Well luckily, he owns some paintbrushes, and some paint, and… he’s definitely no painter. The poor quality of Dickie’s paintings is interesting as a narrative device. Dickie says he loves art, makes a point of loving and collecting it, but he blatantly rips off the geometric style faces of Picasso and smudges a few landscapes here and there. Soon enough, we see that Ripley absolutely hates this, and seriously envies how easy Dickie has it.
(I mean, I think we all wish we could holiday in Italy forever and smudge a couple of ‘artworks’ as consolation).
As the episodes trudge on, we don’t see many of Dickie’s works for a while (mainly because he is murdered) and instead Ripley, taking Dickie’s place, attempts to continue this legacy of terrible art and works on some paintings himself. The half-baked attempts at art left behind by Dickie become a sort of security blanket, they remind Ripley that he doesn’t have to be good or talented, he just has to be rich. And also, Dickie is definitely still alive, we have the art to prove it.
That is, until the rather flamboyant and interrogative Freddie Miles makes his way up to Ripley’s villa and essentially lets him know that the secret is out, he knows he’s a murderer. While doing this, Freddie makes a point to paint over one of the canvases in a harsh black, which serves as a symbolic reminder that Ripley’s days of fraud are over, not even the paintings are intact anymore.
As an unfortunate spoiler, Freddie does not succeed, but we are still left with these defaced, childish artworks haunting the villa. And as Ripley attempts to parallel himself with Caravaggio, he believes himself to ascend beyond the personality he needed to steal from Dickie, and that’s where things go wrong. The interplay between Dickie’s paintings, and the grand chiaroscuro in Caravaggio’s works, demonstrates a sense of duality and confusion to the viewers that makes for a very compelling narrative.
Art isn’t just about painting
Ripley also makes a point to position the viewers in a strange territory when it comes to murder, evading the police, and stealing another person’s identity. It actually manages to paint it as something alarmingly artistic. Whether this concerns the criminal scrapbooking that Ripley uses to forge passports, or the calculated use of home décor as weapons later on, we get the sense as viewers that this is his own painting. Even if half-improvised, Ripley manages to paint his own life the way he wants to, even until the end.
To conclude, Ripley uses art as a rather pertinent narrative device. Not only is it used to reveal character motivations and draw parallels, but it uncovers the very lens that Ripley uses as he commits his various crimes. If there’s anything the show told me, it’s that you probably shouldn’t romanticise Caravaggio (but some of us just can’t help it).
Overall, I rate this 3/5 Pelicans.