What's she up to now? Credit: Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images for Sotheby's
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“One of the main reasons I want to speak to you now is because I’ve become increasingly aware of how both of us are regarded, in relation to men,” writes the artist Celia Paul to the late Welsh portrait painter Gwen John.
“You are always associated, in the public’s eyes, with your brother Augustus and with your lover, Auguste Rodin. I am always seen in light of my involvement with Lucian Freud,” Paul continues. “We are neither of us considered as artists standing alone. I hate the term ‘in her own right’ — as in ‘artist in her own right’ — because it suggests that we are still bound to our overshadowed lives, like freed slaves.”
They may have painted remarkable portraits themselves, but both women are primarily known as the muses of “great” male artists. And Paul’s new book takes the form of a series of letters to John, whose life was “stamped with a similar pattern” to her own.
“I hate the word ‘muse’, too, for the same limiting reason … What is it about us that keeps us tethered?” Paul undoubtedly knows the answer to this question already: she is forever seen first and foremost in terms of her association with a man, rather than judged by her own successes.
When the National Portrait Gallery, for instance, recently acquired a self-portrait by Paul (“Portrait, Eyes Lowered”), each of the news articles emphasised her “relationship with Lucian Freud, who painted her many times”. Similarly, Rachel Campbell-Johnston chose to open her Times article with the very same framing the artist despises: “Celia Paul was a model and muse for Lucian Freud. She is also an artist in her own right. There . . . I’ve said it. That’s how Paul does not like to be introduced.”
This rhetoric is not unusual: there is a long history of women being identified as partners of men, rather than as individual agents. Constance Mary Lloyd was a children’s book writer and dedicated activist who campaigned for a woman’s right to serve in parliament. But, upon marrying Oscar Wilde, she was referred to as “Mrs. Oscar” in the press.
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SubscribeSurely it is quite simple to be seen as ‘an artist in your own right’ and for people to forget you were ever somebody’s muse? All you have to do is to produce art that is unmistakably more original and profound than the man who launched your career. If you can, of course. Few people remember Tina Turner mainly as the partner of Ike.
My thoughts exactly. I was trying to come up with an inverse relationship and all I could manage was Denis Thatcher.
Tina and Ike- spot on.
I just remembered an even better one: Pierre and Marie Curie.
Totally agree
I am strangely unbothered by these anecdotes. More famous for exploiting your beauty or nakedness (or being exploited) than your other abilities? Then the answer is in your hands.
The best advice I ever got was “If the pain of staying is greater than the pain of going, go.” Whether you are an employee moaning about your job, or a muse feeling underappreciated, or a stripper feeling degraded, if the pain of continuing is greater than the pain of doing something else, then do something else.
This article, like it’s predecessor on Picasso, is a light exercise in righteous if irrelevant wishful thinking. Surely, there are male artists who use, abuse and neglect the women in their lives. There is no shortage of either men or women who are guilty of this, whether they’re artists or not. But if any of the women cited above had produced work that was as extraordinary as that of the men mentioned in this piece, they would have recieved the attention they deserved. Especially today, when dealers and curators are “encouraged” to seek out women and minority artists to highlight in their expositions. Today’s art world is tepid and timid enough already without forcing the issues of social justice crusaders on it. Art is a matter of genius, not fairness or balance
There are very few (no?) female artists who can be put in the category of genius. Every day Radio 3 fulfills its quota of women composers, but the results, while usually perfectly pleasant, seldom really inspire. Same with women painters. Germaine Greer wrote a book on the subject (The Obstacle Race), blaming the patriarchy of course. How long can this argument be sustained? As you say, dealers and curators are everywhere being encouraged to seek out female talent, and lots of perfectly OK work comes forward as a result. But people without cervices remain the towering figures of art.
Many thanks for this. I know so little about art, and even less about the lives of artists. Which prominent female artists had a male muse for substantial proportions of their careers? And was Lucian Freud being wilfully naive by taking Gwen’s words at face value?
I am currently reading “The Exhibitionist” by Charlotte Mendelson. So this piece has given me some real-world background to enhance my appreciation of the novel.
I can see that lady’s boobies.
What’s more, the author of this piece should realize that by lamenting the way that male artists have treated their muses, she is only drawing attention to the difference in quality of male vs. female artists. She’s doing the women no favors here.