![]() ![]() Hockney’s muse provided him with career-changing subject matter – he subsequently reworked the tradition of bathers in art through a homoerotic lens. It was LA-based Schlesinger who invited Hockney into his world of swimming pools in back gardens, including his own family’s. Among his most significant subjects is American photographer and artist, Peter Schlesinger. David Hockney, ‘Peter Getting out of Nick’s Pool’, 1967ĭavid Hockney has collaborated with many naked male muses, although in his case adopting the male-on-male gaze to celebrate his sexuality on canvas. But, if you look closely, you can see black warplanes in her eyes, proving Maar’s political convictions, which had a profound impact on Picasso. This portrait is often read – in patriarchal narratives that frame women as romantic partners – as an inflection of her troubled relationship, and the abusive way in which Picasso treated her. That same year, Picasso painted a stand-alone portrait of Maar as The Weeping Woman, crying glass tears. There is even a darkroom spotlight in the picture, beneath which appears, for the first time, Picasso’s famous Weeping Woman. Leaving his bright palette behind, he created Guernica in black and white, influenced by Maar’s photography. Inside the space, Maar photographed Picasso making the mural and helped him with sections of painting it. In fact, it was Maar who found Picasso a site large enough for this huge protest painting - the former headquarters of her radical political group, Contre Attaque. ![]() Outside of the studio, Maar also indoctrinated the painter in her ultra-Left-wing politics, which infused not only Picasso’s portraits of her but also the epic anti-war mural, Guernica (1937). Under her direction, Picasso used this technique to create a series of startling, unposed portraits of her. In her darkroom, successful Surrealist photographer Dora Maar (1907–1997) taught Pablo Picasso complex photographic processes, such as cliché-verre, meaning ‘glass picture’, which involves drawing handmade negatives on glass. ![]() Many of the greatest muses have also been artists, bringing huge amounts of creativity to the role. ![]() ‘The Siddal-Rossetti partnership was a mutual commitment to art, poetry and each other, despite the power imbalance that inevitably existed’, explains curator, art historian and writer, Hannah Squire. He feeds upon her face by day and night, / And she with true kind eyes looks back on him…’īut Siddal was also a talented artist and poet, and inspiration flowed both ways for this pair. In her 1896 poem In an Artist’s Studio, Christina reflected on the relationship between her brother and sister-in-law, while exposing the gap between the positions of man and woman, artist and model, in Victorian society: ‘One face looks out from all his canvasses… A saint, an angel – every canvas means / The same one meaning, neither more nor less. Let’s start in the 19th century with one of art history’s most iconic muses, Elizabeth Siddall, who played a pivotal role within the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, inspiring many of its members and none more than Dante Rossetti. The muses, at their origin, possessed real power! And it’s worth pointing out that the word ‘Museum’ comes from the Greek ‘Mouseion’, Shrine of the Muses, devoted to learning and the arts, which they represent.ĭante Gabriel Rossetti, ‘Regina Cordium (Wedding Portrait)’, 1860 Inside the artist-muse relationshipĮlizabeth Siddall, Dante Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood In Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey, the narrator asks the muse to ‘sing’ to him, allowing him to tell the story. In ancient art and architecture, we often seen them in with Apollo, who was the God and patron of poetry, holding instruments or with symbols of their creative power. According to Hesiod’s Theogony (7 th century BC), these divine sisters were daughters of Zeus, king of the gods, and Mnemosyne, Titan goddess of memory, and each could inspire certain art forms and held knowledge: But beyond fictional stories, such as ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’, what is an artist-muse relationship really like? Having researched this very topic for the past 5 years, resulting in my book MUSE, I discovered that fact is stranger than fiction when it comes to great artists and their inspiring muses, from the ancient world to today… Meet the 9 muses of Greek mythologyĪt their origins, in ancient Greek mythology, there were 9 muses. Portrayals of the artist-muse relationship are all around us: in novels, famous films, binge-worthy TV series and, of course, art history’s narratives. ![]()
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