What came first, the artist or the muse?
Exploring this question is the very heart of this book, looking at artists who had complex relationships with their chosen muse. They were often supported, inspired and encouraged in their art by figures whose roles have fallen into obscurity, leaving us with only an image to construct a legend about: "The perception of the muse is that of a passive, powerless model at the mercy of an influential and older artist. But is this trope a romanticised myth?"
Rather than breaking the history of the myth into chronological sections, Millington explores the role of the muse in different guises. We delve into the muse as a message, performing muses, family albums and self-portraits which give delightful juxtapositions, framing Picasso’s Dora Maar alongside Awol Erizku's photograph of a pregnant Beyonce. Millington's background in TV and radio has helped to develop her direct conversational tone that keeps the content accessible to all and avoids the navel-gazing tendency of some art tomes.
As easily evidenced on any gallery wall, females make up the bulk of the line-up, but Millington includes a few other examples such as George Dyer, the controversial muse and lover of Francis Bacon who, the story goes, fell through his skylight to the retort from Bacon: "You're not much of a burglar are you? Take off your clothes. Come to bed and you can take what you want."
Dyer's story is one often repeated throughout history; the legend is told by the victor to the spoil. Successful artists concoct a favourable narrative to add to their allure, but if we delve below the surface, we find the truth is often far more nuanced Bacon was able to create his own version about the forty-plus paintings he made of Dyer because his muse, unable to cope with Bacon's infidelity, committed suicide on the eve of a major retrospective. Bacon took many photographs of his muse and continued to use these to create some of his most famous works after he died, only admitting much later in his career that Dyer's tortured demise was his inspiration and the story behind the images. Working through his emotions on canvas he said, "I feel profoundly guilty about his death. If I hadn't gone out, if I'd simply stayed in and made sure he was alright, he might have been alive now."
Vermeer’s "Girl with a Pearl Earring" has long been the subject of speculation and led to the writer Tracy Chevalier's novel that attempted to fictionalise the gap. Recent research, however, has exposed Vermeer’s real intention. Religious allegories reimagined by the family who commissioned the paintings have been attributed to most of the works he painted in one household. The girl sitter could then be simply a young member of the family who fills in for a sequence of biblical representations.
Challenging our expectations of the role of artist and muse is Gentileschi - a talented painter who raised up to the highest levels of painting circles but who had been born a female in a time when her abilities were discouraged and frowned upon. Raped by her tutor at the age of 17 and banned from entering the art establishment, she used her own image to stare out at us and confront our ideals of the female narrative. Reimagining the classics, she retells the tales from the woman's stance in contrast to the male gaze. Her muse is never passive; her beauty is active. "I will show Your Illustrious Lordship what a woman can do," she wrote to a patron, defiant and proud of her work. Taking her former tutor to court at a time when women were disbelieved, she swore through torture in the court: "It is true, It is true." She won her case and her tutor was subsequently banished from Rome, but a cloud followed her for rape was considered the shame of the family and she was quickly married off. The work that followed depicted women wronged, such as Salome, and allowed her to exact revenge on the canvas and leave a legacy for us to interpret: "As long as I live, I will have control over my being."
Dora Maar, Picasso’s lover and sitter for over 60 paintings, was an artist in her own right when they met. A successful photographer with her own studio, she deliberately set out to attract this older man by using a knife to stab between her fingers, whilst sat at table in a cafe frequented by Picasso. This daring game worked and he moved her in with his current lover and their child. The ensuing battle that erupted was immaterial to Picasso. He walked out telling them to sort it out between themselves. Picasso's most famous portrait of Maar, entitled "The Weeping Woman," was in response to Dora's gradual deterioration into depression: "Dora for me, was always a weeping woman," he famously exclaimed.
But Dora had a much heavier influence on his work. Deeply political and active in the left-wing struggle against fascism, she opened his eyes to the cause. Just a few weeks before he had painted "Guernica," his anti-war masterpiece. Posing for a figure of a mother holding her grieving child, photographing the whole production and helping him to mix paints, she was a huge part of its creation. Picasso was still inspired by the experience to go on to make "Weeping Woman" as a further response to the event. To dismiss it later and to attribute it to the emotional whims of a woman is to vastly diminish the part she played and add to his allure as a lover and leaver of women: "For years I gave her a tortured appearance, not out of Sadism, and without any pleasure on my part, but in obedience to a vision that had imposed itself on me." Maar was later to reply: "All Picasso portraits of me are lies. Not one is Dora Maar."
Millington happily gives the muse the last word. These sitters often play a large part in any artistic creation but often never get any credit. Their part is frozen to a moment and their voices muted. To get a fuller picture, we need to listen to their story. Here at last is that perspective: "This book will demonstrate the true power that muses have held. Without doubt, it's time that we reconsidered muses, reclaiming them from reductive stereotypes, to illuminate their real, involved and diverse roles throughout art history."
After a long career as an Art and Design teacher, Tracey Foster wanted to refocus her creative energies into writing poetry and prose. After helping others find inspiration in the world around us, she took an MA course in Creative Writing at Leicester University and has not looked back. She finds inspiration in the past and the events that shape us. Previous work has been published by Comma Press, Ayaskala, Alternateroute, Fish Barrel Review, The Haiku Foundation, Mausoleum Press, Bus Poetry Magazine, Wayward Literature, Cold Moon Journal, Madswirl, Five Fleas, The Arts Council and she writes on her own blog site The Small Sublime found here.
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