Muse
Uncovering the Hidden Figures Behind Art History's Masterpieces
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- £7.99
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
'Exhilarating and fascinating' KATY HESSEL | 'Rich and detailed' CHLOË ASHBY | 'Enlightening' TABISH KHAN | 'Sheds light on an uncharted area of art history' JENNY PERY | 'An essential read' EDWARD BROOKE-HITCHING
Meet the unexpected, overlooked and forgotten models of art history.
Who was Picasso's 'Weeping Woman'?
Why was Grace Jones covered in graffiti?
How did Francis Bacon meet the burglar who became his muse?
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? Far from posing silently, muses have brought emotional support, intellectual energy, career-changing creativity and practical help to artists.
Muse tells the true stories of the incredible muses who have inspired art history's masterpieces. From Leonardo da Vinci's studio to the covers of Vogue, art historian, critic and writer Ruth Millington uncovers the remarkable role of muses in some of art history's most well-known and significant works. Delving into the real-life relationships that models have held with the artists who immortalised them, it will expose the influential and active part they have played and deconstruct reductive stereotypes, reframing the muse as a momentous and empowered agent of art history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Art historian Millington explodes the entrenched stereotype "of a young, attractive, female muse, existing at the mercy of an influential, older male artist" in this fascinating revisionist debut. Determined to rehabilitate the term muse—which she believes, over time, "has come to carry patronising, sexist and pejorative connotations"—Millington gives long-overdue credit to 30 figures who, she argues, should be regarded as "momentous, empowered and active agent of art history." Though Anna Christina Olson was born with a degenerative disease that left her unable to walk, it was her bodily ease and her friendship with artist Andrew Wyeth (who would "comb her hair and wash her face") that inspired Wyeth's iconic painting Christina's World (1948). Likewise, model Grace Jones allowed Keith Haring to use her body as a canvas, a work of art immortalized in the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe. Other significant creative interchanges that Millington analyzes are those of Picasso and his "Weeping Woman," Dora Marr; David Hockney and Peter Schlesinger; and Beyoncé and the Ethiopian American photographer Awol Erizku, whose works and use of Black women subjects upend outdated concepts of race and gender. Concluding with an impassioned seven-point "Muse Manifest," Millington advocates for an "emancipated muse," by demanding respect and "mutual benefit both parties involved." This brilliantly illuminates how the act of portraiture is a two-way street.