Biographies of artists and writers have traditionally presented an individual's lone struggle for self-expression. In this book, critics and historians, challenge these assumptions in a series of essays that focus on artist and writer couples who have shared sexual and artistic bonds. Featuring duos such as Auguste Rodin and Camille Claudel, Sonia and Robert Delaunay, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, and Jasper Johns and Robert Ruaschenberg, this book combines biography with evaluation of each partner's work in the context of the relationship.
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Editorial Reviews
From Kirkus Reviews
Essentially gossip--in spite of the trendy title--in these 13 essays by various authors on the influence that sexually paired writers or artists have on each other. Chadwick also examined the issue of gender and creativity in Women, Art, and Society (1990) with the same superficial and fragmented results. How to reconcile the solitude that creativity requires with the love that artists crave? In these pieces, creativity becomes incidental. Instead, there are tales of monumental disorder, power struggles, madness and suicide, emotional chaos, and intense and often deviant political and sexual lives--all giving the clear message that creative people inflict immense damage on those who dare to love them. Marriage is rare, and adultery and sexual experimentation commonplace. Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant (Lisa Tickner), Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West (Louise de Salvo), and Ana‹s Nin and Henry Miller (Noel Riley Fitch) are the most familiar couples. Chadwick offers one successful pairing in Sonia Delaunay and her husband, Robert, a painter whose theory of simultaneity Sonia translated into fashion design. And there's a mutually enriching collaboration in the secret pairing of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg (Jonathan Katz). Most pairings, however, display predictable inequities: Camille Claudel driven mad by Rodin (Anne Higonnet); Clara Malraux silenced by Andr‚ (de Courtivron); and the literal possession of Jackson Pollock's life by his wife, Lee Krasner (Anne Wagner), the major informant for his biographers. And however romanticized and sanitized, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera (Hayden Herrera) and Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett (Bernard Benstock) still appear savage, disturbed, self- destructive, and power-hungry. A collection that raises questions not so much about pairing or even creativity, but rather about how people living such chaotic lives function at all--and about why those who enjoy their art should care about their sexual logistics. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I said it was great, so print this!,
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This review is from: Significant Others: Creativity and Intimate Partnership (Hardcover)
Lots of people are famous, but much fewer people are famous and have famous partners. How do two famous people get together? How does the relationship affect their craft? This book examines some of the most important creative couples of the last 125 years or so. This book is an underappreciated gem. If people haven't read about it or heard about it, then they should. The fact that many movies have been made about these couples makes me wonder if screenwriters used this book as a referral.
The book is very diverse. It includes straight, gay male, and lesbian couplings. It includes writers, painters, and sculptors. It speaks of cross-generational couples and interracial couples. Most importantly, it doesn't imply that all these couples lasted forever. Sometimes, it emphasizes divorce and break-ups in its analyses. The book has few male authors; so in terms of subject and writers, it's in many ways a women's studies text. The book is thick but that is because of the huge endnotes and reprint permissions. The work is rigorous, but it doesn't take long to read individual chapters. I just can't believe I never heard of this text before. It's simply precious, and almost priceless.
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