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Breaking Muse: Rakish Artists and Their Muses
Where would the world’s most admired artists be today had it not been for their infatuations with beautiful women?
Words Benedict Browne
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Jeff Koons & Ilona Staller
Jeff Koons has always had a knack of stirring up controversy in the art world, in particularly in his series of works that he created with his ex-wife, Ilona Staller, an ex-pornstar and politician by day, intimate muse by night. Without sugar coating it, it’s offensively explicit, slightly nauseating and you’re sure as to not forget what you have just seen. He currently is exhibiting a large selection of his body of work at Damien Hirst’s Newport Street Gallery, in which he has from dainty little sculptures to magnanimously huge ones to large canvas paintings. You’re allowed to take pictures in all but one room, which to my astonishment seems appropriate. As you turn the corner into the third gallery space, you're presented with two large canvas paintings, with Koons relieving himself over his ex-wife. Lovely.
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Andy Warhol & Edie Sedgwick
One of Warhol’s self-declared ‘superstars’, Edie Sedgwick was little short of a pop cultural phenomenon. The ‘it-girl’ of the 1960s, who met an untimely death aged 28, came from a wealthy upper-class family. Shunning her privileged position for a life of excitement, art and intoxicants, she seized Warhol’s fascination and started to appear in many of his works, including the aptly titled film, Poor Little Rich Girl (1965). As is the case with so many famous artists and their muses, it didn't last, as Warhol cast Sedgwick into the cold. A shock that tormented her ever after, and which was sustained by hard drug use, it’s unsurprising she passed as such a young age.
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Jean Luc Godard & Anna Karina
Born to humble surroundings, Anna Karina found fame through her relationship with Jean-Luc Godard, the pioneer of the French New-Wave. After moving to Paris, sleeping on the streets, getting by through modelling for some less than established film-makers, she began to star in Godard’s work despite her turning down his first offer due to the requirement that she would have to appear naked. The two eventually married but it didn’t last long. She constantly battled with insecurity, jealousy and depression, yet she succeeded in maintaining her effortless cool and Parisian chic.
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Robert Mapplethorpe & Patti Smith
Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe’s extraordinary love story has rarely been matched.
The two met in New York in 1967 and instantaneously fell in love. From there on the pair collaborated together in various mediums, spurred on by their infatuation for each other. Coming from nothing, with little lining their pockets, they sacrificed everything to stay
together and to produce art, and proceeded to build a unique artistic empire and legacy. A seminal artist-muse love story, they never married and Mapplethorpe realised late in life that he was in fact homosexual, though they remained close friends till his death in 1987.
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Salvador Dali & Gala Dali
With perhaps one exception (take a dark guess as to who it is), Salvador Dali’s moustache is the most iconic piece of facial hair ever. It screams eccentricity, expressiveness and more than confirms his rakishness. By his side for much of his life was Gala — his muse, his manager, his lover and wife (in spite of his tendencies to see other women). She sat for him numerous times and he proclaimed his love to her by signing off paintings with both of their names. Perhaps his most famous quote is “It is mostly with your blood, Gala, that I paint my pictures”.
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Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar
To say that Picasso had a mild predilection for women would be a colossal understatement.
The great artist had hundreds of relationships but only a handful were elevated to the status of his muses. To single one out is a hard decision, yet, when looking at his canon of work and his artistic development, Dora Maar evidently wins through as the chosen one. She’s the reason behind Picasso’s venture into the surreal and had a tremendous effect on his seminal work Guernica (1937), an emotive, Spanish Civil War-inspired canvas in black and white. Her surrealist tendencies and passion for the camera supposedly inspired the mode of the painting.
andy warhol, anna karina, Art, artists, culture, dora maar, edie sedgwick, ilona staller, jean luc godard, jeff koons, Love, marriage, muses, patti smith, PICASSO, robert mapplethorpe, romance, salvador dali, the arts
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