The Sylvia Plath Effect

Is how we see someone's work colored by their suicide? The Wall Street Journal investigates, care of the photography of Francesca Woodman.

From the piece...

The photographer Francesca Woodman has received far more attention from critics and collectors since her death in 1981 than ever came her way when she was alive. Indeed, before she threw herself from a New York roof at age 22, she was unknown as an artist. She had never had a major exhibition and her only book, "Some Disordered Interior Geometries," was published the month she died.

The cultural machinery that produces judgments about an artist's lifetime of effort has less material to process when that artist dies young. The wheels grind faster and on thinner stuff. And when that young artist (or writer or actor) is a suicide, the quality of the material is often overlooked because it is immediately more valuable. The lurching randomness of existence suddenly has a steady meaning. Everything done or said by the deceased seems to be a clue that will explain why someone would choose to die rather than live. The last act suddenly becomes the most important act.

Call it the Sylvia Plath Effect or the Diane Arbus Syndrome.

The documentary "The Woodmans" is an example of this teleology operating on the legacy of Francesca Woodman.