Woman's Hour - Muses

Episode Date: May 27, 2024

From the Pre-Raphaelites to Picasso, Vermeer to Freud, some of the most famous Western artwork involves an artist’s muse. So who are the muses who have inspired great art? How do they embody an artist’s vision? And why has the muse artist relationship led to abuse of power? Nuala speaks to art historian and author Ruth Millington and to writer, curator and podcaster Alayo Akinkugbe.Penelope Tree was one of the most famous models of the 1960s and the muse of her then boyfriend, the photographer David Bailey. Despite appearing on the cover of Vogue and being credited by Bailey with kick-starting the flower-power movement, Penelope’s life became increasingly difficult as their relationship began to flounder. These events have inspired Penelope’s loosely biographical novel Piece of My Heart and she joins Nuala to discuss her depiction of life as a ‘60s muse.In ancient Greek mythology, the nine muses are the inspirational goddesses of the arts, science and literature. So who are the nine muses? Nuala speaks to classicist Professor Edith Hall.Dora Maar was as a photographer, painter and poet but is probably most famous as Pablo Picasso’s lover and muse. Author Louisa Treger captures the complexity of this artist and muse relationship in her novel The Paris Muse and joins Nuala to discuss how the inspiration Dora offered Picasso nearly destroyed her.We hear from Liza Lim, a Melbourne-based composer who collaborated with violinist and researcher Karin Hellqvist on a composition called ‘One and the Other (speculative Polskas for Karin)’, exploring Karin’s relationship to her heritage and Swedish musical traditions.Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Laura Northedge Editor: Deiniol Buxton

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, this is Nuala McGovern and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Today, a special programme on muses. What do you think of when I say the word muse? Are you thinking about Greek mythology? Or about someone, usually a woman, who inspires creativity in the artist, often a man. It is a term that some call outdated.

It's also a term that others want to reclaim. We're going to hear from Penelope Tree, who was called the photographer David Bailey's muse, until she wasn't. We're going to hear what that was like. Also, we'll take a closer look at Dora Maar, one of Pablo Picasso's muses. But that role

eclipsed at times so much of her own creativity. And why has a power imbalance often been inherent between the artist and the muse? Well, we're going to hear more about the history and the future of this controversial concept, including from women who've made each other their musical muse. This is a recorded programme, so I can't read your messages today, but if you'd like to get in touch about anything you hear, you can email us through our website. Well, from the Pre-Raphaelites to Picasso, Vermeer to Freud, some of the most famous Western artwork involves an artist's muse. Usually a woman, nearly always painted by a man, the muse is considered more than an artist's model.

She is his inspiration. And she is sometimes his sexual partner too. So who are the muses who have inspired great art? How do they embody an artist's vision? And why has the muse-artist relationship at times led to an abuse of power? Ruth Millington is an art historian and the author of Muse,

Uncovering the Hidden Figures Behind Art History's Masterpieces. Joining us today from South Africa, I'm joined in the studio by Elayo Akinkube, who is a writer, curator and podcaster. She also runs the Instagram platform at A Black History of Art and hosts the podcast A Shared Gaze. And whereabouts in South Africa are you, Ruth?

I'm calling in from Cape Town. Calling in from Cape Town today. That is great. Let me start with you, Aliyah. What do you think is the difference between an artist's muse and an artist's model? I think I approach it perhaps simplistically by sort of thinking that the muse is someone who recurs in an artist's work and may be an inspirational figure for many different artists. I think of someone like Fanny Eaton, who was a Pre-Raphaelite model, but also posed at the RA and recurs in the work of so many artists in the sort of late

1860s. And how her image, it's well recognised by art historians who deal with that century, but also recurs in contemporary artists' work. So for instance, the Singh twins recreated her image in a work that was just at the Royal Academy. So someone like that, whose image is so enduring and seems to have such an impact on artists, perhaps even through generations. And she was a black woman. Well, she was a woman of mixed African and European descent. Yes, because what you're doing is, I suppose, rediscovering for your viewers some people that were forgotten? Yes so I came across Fanny Eaton's image when I was studying at Cambridge and I remember it was the first it was a work of art that really struck me

because she had afro hair and I was just not expecting to see that in a British drawing from the 19th century so I ended up writing about her and then sort of as the years have gone by I've seen how she as a subject has become of great interest to art historians because I suppose it's rare to see a woman of African descent portrayed by so many different artists at that time. Ruth you've written an entire book about muses why? I have and this whole question about what is the difference between a model and a muse is one that I asked almost 30 artists and muses when I was researching the book and the fashion photographer Tim Walker put it really nicely when he told me listen anybody can be a model and stand or sit for a portrait and perhaps even pay someone and commission a

portrait but for him the muse was bringing some form of inspiration to the portrait. And he said, the muse meets me halfway in the sort of handshake in the making of the portrait, which I loved showing, you know, portraiture is a two-way process. So the muse brings something more than perhaps a life model. And that doesn't have to be, you know, their appearance. It could be their beliefs, their creativity. So many different muses have brought different aspects to the role. You know, just when you're speaking about it there, I'm thinking, isn't that a collaborator? Is there a difference between a collaborator and a muse?

Well, for me, all muses are collaborators. They haven't been seen in that way historically. And I think that's been the problem with this word muse. In my research, I found, wow, these mainly women were contributing a huge amount to the making of these really famous portraits, but their contributions have sort of been forgotten or erased, even by the men who were working with them and using them.

Let's talk about some of those examples. You talk about their collaboration perhaps being painted out of the picture because we often think of passive or romantic muses like the young woman who posed for Vermeer's Girl with the Pearl Earring and Elizabeth Siddle who posed as Ophelia but all wasn't quite as it seemed, for example, with those women, was it, Ruth? Exactly. We have these images, I think, perpetuated by popular culture, by films, by books. If we start with Girl with a Pearl Earring, a great novel by Tracy Spallier,

I'm sure many listeners have loved it, as did I, but it also sort of misrepresents the muse. So the maid, a Greek, joins the household of Vermeer, this great Dutch painter in the 17th century, and becomes his maid and his muse. And she is powerless, she's submissive, younger, there's a romantic tension there, she's not the artist's wife who is jealous of her. And in the film version, it's Scarlett Johansson who plays a very sexy maid. And we see her posing for Girl with a Pearl Earring. There's all these kind of connotations of the sexual romantic muse there.

But Girl with a Pearl Earring, if you look closely at the portrait, she's very young. And most likely this was Vermeer's daughter, Maria, who would have been around age 13, just a teenager when the portrait was painted. Or it could also have been his patron's daughter, Magdalena. So not a sexual muse at all. But it's always these stories of the romantic muse which sort of come to the top of the pile and to our imaginations first. Let me turn back to you, Aliyah. Who do you think needs more recognition? I think that generally sort of black artists, muses have been in a way sort of written out of art history. And Manet's famous Olympia for instance I remember studying that painting at university and we're talking about approaching it through a feminist lens and we spoke a lot about Victorine who's the reclining nude model but we didn't at all speak

about Laura who's the figure in the background with the flowers who's posing as a maid so I think muses in general deserve more recognition because they bring something to the work of art. But for me, I guess my career is dedicated specifically to highlighting the figures who have been erased. And with some of the figures that you were looking at, and Ruth, I'll come to you with this as well. Have they been recorded as being in a romantic or a sexual relationship with the artist? I feel as though many of the figures that I've looked at, there isn't really that association with the black figures because they're often not sort of the sole muse. I think about a painting like Degas' Miss Lala at the Cirque Fernanda, which is about to be the subject of an exhibition at the National Gallery. And I haven't read anything that's been written about any sort of sexual relationship. So I do actually think it's slightly different when it's a black woman represented by a European man. But it's not to say that there aren't cases where there is a sexual relationship. But in my research, it hasn't been sort of at the fore. Whereas with, I think,

muses in general, that's one of the first things you think about. Let's throw that over to Ruth. I think we always prioritize the idea of the muse as being in a romantic relationship with the artist and in a way that is down to male artists sort of presenting this image that every great male artist must have a muse and the likes of picasso we're using muse in the titles of their paintings sort of um showing they had ownership of their female muses and presenting the muse in the titles of their paintings, sort of showing they had ownership of their female muses and presenting the muse in that way. So I think that cemented this idea that the muse must be a romantic partner

and sort of possessed by the male painter or sculptor. That word possessed. I think that we can't talk about muses without considering the power imbalance between particularly an older male artist and a younger female model or muse. And we also need to think about the context in which these women were living and perhaps a lot of them were great artists themselves but didn't have access to formal arts education so for example had to join an artist studio as a model or muse as a means of sort of getting into the arts and of course then that's up for exploitation. Muses they're not always women Frances Bacon had muses who were men have you looked at that Ruth? yes. So a third of my book is actually male

muses. And I thought it was really important to show that a man can be a muse as well. And the language around muses becomes so gendered, and I find that unfair. So last year, the Royal Academy had two great shows at the same time, had a Whistler portrait show and the women were discussed as muses and then a Francis Bacon show and his muses and the Francis Bacon estate referred to them like that they were called models showing that imbalance across the sexes. The term muse how do you feel about it? You know people call for it to be cancelled right?? You know, I actually wasn't aware that people were calling for it to be cancelled. As a Gen Z, I feel like I should know that. But the term, because it has that sort of power imbalance embedded in it, and there's a long

history of muses being sort of exploited by artists or abused by artists, and there being that power imbalance. I don't love that about it. But I do think that it can be reclaimed. I think it's important to recognize the roles of people like Fanny Eaton in art history, and people like Fanny Eaton are getting their dues now and lots of attention is being given to them. So I don't think it needs to be cancelled. But I do think it could be and should be recontextualized. I don't think it has to be a solely negative term. And we are going to speak to a woman who was abused in just a moment. But how do you see it, Ruth, as in what's in it for the muse? For me, the muse is a force of inspiration and have brought more than just how they look to a portrait. They've brought political beliefs, they've bought funding at times uh creativity imagination um political statements even to be seen to be

immortalized as a muse a lot of muses i spoke to told me that was really empowering see themselves in a portrait worthy of being hung on a gallery or museum wall, you know, shown to the world. And I think that's one element of being a muse. But if we go back in time, thinking about Elizabeth Siddle, she couldn't access formal arts education in Victorian Britain. So she was sort of acting as an artist, muse and model as a way of infiltrating the ranks of the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. This was her way of working alongside these male artists, learning from them, discussing

ideas with them. Her and Rossetti would sit side by side, they would share commissions, they would share ideas around poetry and painting and you can see that inspiration actually flowing both ways between this creative pair and there was a famous quote from Carrie Fisher the actor who wrote of her ex-husband if you can get Paul Simon to write a song about you do it. Aliyah what do you think muses get from the deal? I think the most obvious thing is fame and recognition and potentially, I suppose if you're the muse to someone usually a male artist who is

well recognised and highly regarded then in a way your status becomes elevated and perhaps you could use that, you could leverage that for your own career. Lio and Ruth you're going to stay with us for the whole programme I am delighted to say thank you so much for your thoughts.

We'll be back to you before too long. But I want to turn to a woman who has been called a muse. Penelope Tree was one of the most famous models of the 1960s and called the muse of her then boyfriend, the photographer David Bailey. Despite appearing on the cover of Vogue

and being credited by Bailey with kick-starting the flower power movement, Penelope's life became increasingly difficult as their relationship began to disintegrate. These events have inspired Penelope's loosely biographical novel, Peace of My Heart, and she joins me now in the studio. Welcome, Penelope. Thank you, Nuala. How do you feel when I say muse? You are a muse. You were a muse. Well, I mean, nobody ever said to me, you are a muse at the time. I, you know, it's the last thing on my mind and I didn't consider it really. But in fact, I had two different experiences because the first photographer who I worked with and did a lot of work with, and we had sort of quite a deep relationship,

was 30 years older than me. He was called Richard Avedon. Of course. And I was 18, he was 48. It was not a romantic relationship at all. And he asked to do some test shots of me. And I stood on the white paper, sort of shaking. And he looked through the lens. And I don't know, something happened. I felt this huge connection between us, which was really palpable. And he inspired me so much. I was 18. I was just experiencing life as an adult for the first time. And, you know, it was exciting. And also, you know, he taught me a lot.

And so that was a wonderful experience. Then I met David Bailey. And the first time that I worked with him, there was this very sexual, very electrical communication between us. And that really informed the photographs that we did together. And we then became a couple and we traveled around the world. We had a wonderful couple of years together. And then the relationship started to change.

And he was working with other models as well of whom I was very jealous because I was not allowed to work with anybody else. He said? Yes. So at that time and of course I don't have David Bailey here to respond but. No I know. Sorry Bailey. Is that what you call it? We've had it out. I mean, don't worry. We're very good friends. But the thing is that the more that I became sort of my own person, he became more and more sort of directive. And I've struggled against that. I've fought and we started to fight a lot when we were working.

Sometimes that was a good thing, but mostly it wasn't. Do you think, looking back on that time, the conversation we've had so far, were you a collaborator? Do you think that's a better word than muse? I feel like I was a collaborator with Richard Avedon. He made me feel like that. He made the whole team feel like they were collaborators, which is a wonderful thing about working in fashion is that sometimes when a team works together, you have this great sense of, you know, cooperation and that you're making something beautiful together. So that was one side. And then with Bailey, it wasn't quite so much that way. He wanted to see things his own way. He wanted to, you know, he wanted the light just so. He wanted me to pose just so. And I found that quite sort of suffocating. Which you could

characterize as, because you were an artist in your own right, is what I'm hearing, artistic differences. Yeah, we did. We had artistic differences. I wanted to be a bit more free in the way that I worked with him and he just didn't want that. What was it, do you think, you gave as a muse to David Bailey? Was it just looks?

Oh, I think that we had a connection and when you have a connection with a photographer or I assume an artist, that must change the photograph in some way, rather than if it's just a model who comes in and, you know, leaves again. Can you describe that connection? What is it?

Is it like that, OK, we're both working on the same project? How would you describe the feeling? It's quite sort of otherworld. It's like you're in another dimension suddenly with that person. And there's a kind of sense of freedom and creativity and that you're dancing with that photographer or whoever it is that you're working with. And I always found that exciting and very hard to describe, you know, because it isn't at that moment based on sex. It isn't based on romance. It's something else. It's a creative act. But it did end that period of you being a muse. I'm

wondering what that was like or how that happened. Well, it's a long story. But in fact, I think my whole body and soul sort of rebelled. And I manifested this really quite extreme acne attack, which sort of disfigured my face for a while. And it certainly ended my career. And then it ended my relationship with Bailey sort of disfigured my face for a while and it certainly ended my career and then it ended my relationship with Bailey sort of about a year later. How difficult that must be though because you were a woman that was known for your looks right we've talked about Richard Avedon we talked about David Bailey we can talk about Truman Capote as well I mean what a life you have lived. But your skin was the thing that changed and changed everything in its wake. That's true. And, you know, there's a great quote, celebrity is the mask that eats into the face.

And in my case, it was literal, you know. But I think that sometimes you have to listen to your body, and your body is telling you things that you're unconscious of. And in my case, that was certainly true. And I think it was because I had to kind of wake up, I had to wake up and actually make my own way through life, not dependent on a male, not dependent on my appearance and looks. And that was a long process. But I think I've got there. Talking about this power imbalance that there can be with muses, did you feel you were passive? I do. Yes, I have to say I do feel like I was passive. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Well, I think that I was very much in the thrall of men at the time. And, you know, that's the way I was brought up in many, many ways. And I think that's my generation. Perhaps a lot of women felt that way. Women weren't as educatedbued with ambition to become a sort of CEO of a company or whatever it is. So you're more dependent on men unless you had a real sort of inner spark to do something on your own. Oh, sorry, Eliah, go ahead. I wondered if you feel as though you gained anything from those experiences of being amused to two different photographers. Did they help your career in any way, do you think? Well, yeah, I've got a book out of it, haven't I? So eventually, yes. But I also feel, and you know, this is really true, that I got so much out of the relationships with Bailey and with Richard

Avedon and other photographers too because there is a kind of connection which I don't want to repeat myself but there is a connection between models and photographers sometimes that happens quite magically in that moment and I found that always to be quite inspiring to me. Let us talk about your book. You have based the novel loosely on your autobiography. Why did you decide to write it as fiction instead of a memoir? Well, I mean, if you can't make the world the way that you want it, you know, what's the use of doing anything? I think I've always loved reading fiction. Myself always love reading fiction. And I always wanted to write novels rather than a memoir or anything else. And also, I think you can compress time in a way that you can't in a memoir. You can also make composite characters. You can resolve things in a way that you can't in a memoir. You can also make composite characters.

You can resolve things in a way that you can't do in life. And so you have more sort of leeway to do what you like. Is it cathartic to do it that way? Yes, it is. Of course it's cathartic because you have to look, you know, look into actually what happened and what your failings were. In my case, many. I was very naive and also very dependent. And I think it was a kind of like, it was definitely a coming of age situation. And I felt that there were a lot of unresolved areas of my, you know, adolescence and growing up that I wanted to look into. Let's talk about you being a teenager, because you caused a sensation at the

Truman Capote's Black and White Ball. You were just 16 then. Do you want to tell us about that? Don't know how much there is to tell you, except that I was 16. I'd known Truman Capote since I was 13. He was very kind to me once when I asked him about writing. And I was very surprised to get an invitation. And it was an incredible spectacle that he put on. It was extraordinary. People coming from all over Europe and know, Europe and Hollywood and New York intellectuals all mixing together, which kind of hadn't happened before. And people had spent

months getting themselves together and their costumes and everything. And there were no other people my age. So it was a sort of adults party. It was people like Norman Mailer, who had a fight with Mac George Bundy, who was the national security advisor to the US at the time. They almost had a fistfight right in front of me. What a party. Yeah, it was thrilling. How did you have Truman Capote's address?

Oh, sorry. I met him through my parents. He came to lunch at my parents' house. So your parents were quite well connected. Yes, they were. It was a party for Babe Paley, who is one of the swans. They are one of, how would we describe them? The women that were around Truman Capote?

The muses. Yes, muses, really. The muses of Truman Capote? The muses. Yes, muses, really. The muses of Truman Capote, yeah. And I went up to him and said, I love your writing in this kind of, and he was just incredibly kind. He said, do you write? And I went, well, I do write short stories. And he said, send them to me. So I sent them to him. And he was very kind, you know, but I mean, I know they weren't great. Do you think that there can be an equal relationship between artists and views? I'm not quite sure whether that's a relevant question in a way, because I don't know what equal is, you know, each has his own

role. And in fact, if it's to do with the photographer, and they're, of course, wonderful women photographers, both fashion and otherwise, you know, they're always going to be the ones who decide how they want it, they're going to own the copyright. So in that way, they have all the power. In other ways, you still have quite a lot of wriggling space to, you know, be part of the team. But it's, yeah, they have the power ultimately, for sure. So interesting. Penelope, you're going to stay with us as well. I'm delighted to say.

And I should say this is a recorded programme, so I can't read your messages today on Woman's Hour. But if you'd like to get in touch about anything you hear, you can indeed email us through our website. Now, let us turn to ancient Greek mythology. The Nine Muses are the inspirational goddesses of the arts, science and literature. Worshipped by mortals, they work as a female collective to inspire poets, musicians and artists, but they can also respond violently when provoked. So who are the nine muses and

how did the muse go from all-powerful goddess, whose names inspired words of music and museum to passive figures for male artists to project onto. Well, I'm joined by Edith Hall. She is Professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University. So, Edith, who are the Nine Muses? The original Nine Muses turn up in the very earliest Greek literature we've got, which is from the 8th century BCE. And they are the daughters of Zeus, usually the top god,

and most crucially, Mamre, Mnemozone, the great goddess of Mamre. And that is extremely important in their personality and their functions. Their main function is to inspire poets. Poets can't operate without the breath. They literally breathe in, inspire. That's what I mean. Yeah, like exhale, inspire. Yeah, that whole thing of spirare, to breathe. The poet Hesiod, who tells us in his great poem, The Theogony, which is the poem about creation, it's the creation myth for the ancient Greeks, opens it by telling us how he was out shepherding his flocks on Mount Helicon, which is a beautiful mountain in central Greece.

And the muses came to him and they literally breathed into him and they said, wake up, wake up. What are you doing? You know, you're just a lazy shepherd. You have got to be a poet. We can tell you how to sing of all things that have ever been, all things that are and all things that ever will be. And they gave him a laurel branch

because the laurel is the tree of Apollo, who's the god of music and prophecy. And he woke up and realised that he had missed his vocation and he had to leave his sheep and compose some of the great poems of the Greeks. So what strikes me there immediately is that in that mythology, there are these all powerful women, they are bestowing their greatness onto they live on tops of mountains um they're associated they're the attendants of apollo who is the god who always lives very high up like

at top of delphi and he's very cerebral um they're not really to do with the body at all sometimes they have uh sons a lot of poets said they were actually the son of a muse and a mortal man, but they don't live with men. They live together. They live very collaboratively. And there are nine of them, which is very important because three is the great magic number for the ancient Greeks. It's, you know, the stable triangle. It's got geometric power. And three times three makes nine. So that's her very earliest incarnation. And the memory thing is crucial. So the first line of the Iliad, the greatest Greek epic of them all, is sing, muse, sing to me, muse of the wrath of Achilles. She's in there in the first line because the poet can't start without it because what he's got to do is he's got 16,000 lines of poem to memorise because there's no writing.

This is an oral age, right? And in order to access those memory banks, he has to call up the help of the muse. She's a form of cognitive access to the world of art and literature and poetry. And you have to be very careful because you can offend her. She's sometimes singular

or you pick on a particular muse for your particular genre. But she's extremely powerful. She's utterly an immortal and she can do you great damage. You talk about them being detached from the earth, not bodily in the same way as humans. So were they eroticised at all? Not really, no.

One of them, there's nine, and they're in charge of discrete types of poetry. So one of them is called Erato and the name, as you can hear, might be to do with Eros. And she is the goddess of love poetry. So one of them is called Erato, and the name, as you can hear, might be to do with Eros. And she is the goddess of love poetry. So if you are a love poet, then you will ask for the special help of Erato. But they're not eroticised one bit, and they're the ones doing it.

They act upon the poet. They come to him. They inspire him. They're not at all something that you project your own passive fantasies onto. And speaking about passivity or activity, how do you understand the muses going from what you speak about to, for example, a passive pre-Raphaelite version? I'm thinking of Ophelia just floating in a pond. I don't know the full history of this

but deep, deep at its core is something far more big than just the muses. And that is that actually women and females and the feminine in ancient Greece were regarded as having extraordinary sacred power. So you have high priestesses,

you have just as many Olympian goddesses as you have Olympian males. Women are allowed huge power in religion just because they weren't allowed huge power in politics. They had a much better time in religion than women do under the monotheisms. It's something I'm very passionate about. So it's a priestess at Delphi who also inspired by Apollo tells prophecies. Once the monotheism has arrived, by which especially Christianity, Christianity conquered pagan mythology by the fourth century AD, the way women are imagined in almost every way starts to become passive. And, you know, Christ is the church and the church is married to the church. But women lose their agency under monotheistic religion. Edith Hall, professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University. Thank you so much. Let us move to more recent times and to one particular woman. Dora Maar was a photographer, a painter and a poet, but perhaps is most famous as Pablo Picasso's lover and muse.

During the course of their relationship, he represented her in paintings many times, including as the Weeping Woman. Author Louisa Trager captures the complexity of this artist and muse relationship in her new novel, The Paris Muse. And Louisa joins me in studio. Welcome. Thank you. I know you've been listening to the conversation so far.

So let's get into this particular muse, Dora Maar. Who was she? Well, so Dora Maar was a celebrated photographer when she met Picasso. And her photos, to me, are mesmerising. They're radical, uncanny, fantastical. So I've been listening to the conversation and been absolutely fascinated by it. And I'd like to make some points about how Dora differs from the muses we've been talking about. For a start, you know, she was successful and established by the time she met Picasso. She'd had a photograph exhibited

at MoMA in New York, the Museum of Modern Art, as she was celebrated by the surrealists and she seduced Picasso. They had met briefly, but she hadn't really caught his eye. But she was magnetised by him. She felt this sort of electricity coming off him. And he had this magnetic dark eyed stare that made her feel like he he could see into her soul and he was very famous and he had a very bad reputation with women and and I think those things made him attractive to her too it she wasn't blind to the fact that he could open doors for her professionally. And there's a sort of legend about how they met, which I've described in my book. She sat by herself in the Dermago Cafe, which was one of

his cafes. He was across the room. And she put on this performance. She was wearing long embroidered black gloves and she peeled them off so that he could see her hands. She had the most beautiful, slender, long fingered hands with her nails painted deep red. a knife from her bag and she splayed her her hand on the on the table and she stabbed the spaces between her hands seeing how close she could get without cutting her flesh and by the time she stopped playing the show was over and i think she deliberately you know know, she knew that he was infamous with women and she deliberately thought up this very dark, slightly transgressive game to hook him and it was successful. And, you know, he was totally smitten

and their first date, she invited him to her studio and she took his photograph. Actually, as soon as she opened the door to him, she was there with her camera. So I think she was showing him that she was an equal. But it didn't remain so. It didn't remain like that, unfortunately. He had other women. He was involved with Marie-Thérèse Voltaire when he, you know, had first met Dora.

They still had a child together. He wouldn't give her up. There were multiple other women. He steered her, interestingly, from photography to painting, which in my view, she was less good at. She wanted to get pregnant and couldn't. And it was really awful to her about that. And, you know, gradually, he broke her. You mentioned Marie Therese there. We know that Picasso distorted Dora Maar's image and amalgamated her image with that of Marie Therese which it was devastating yeah and he also used to give them presents deliberately that were meant for the other you know Marie Therese was much more athletic than Dora so Dora would get this dress that was several sizes too big for her in a style that wasn't hers and know that they were meant for Marie Therese.

And there's actually one thing I want to add about Dora Maar is that she collaborated with Picasso in art. For example, she flooded into his anti-war painting Guernica. She photographed it, she encouraged him to forego colour in favour of the immediacy of a black and white photo. And she even, according to his biographer, John Richardson, painted part of the horse's flank. So, you know, at various times in their relationship, they were creative partners as well as lovers. The Weeping Woman, Picasso's Weeping Woman. She's known Dora really for that. What is the significance of it? Well, you know, in the beginning of their relationship, Picasso painted these beautiful starry-eyed portraits of Dora.

And I think she was really flattered and intoxicated. And I think the kind of dancing that Penelope described between her and Bailey, I think that happened between them. But their relationship started to unravel at the same time that Europe started sliding into war. Both the Spanish Civil War and World War II happened during the course of their relationship. I sometimes wonder if their relationship would have been different if it had taken place in times of peace. But Dora gradually became the weeping woman in Picasso's life and in his art.

And these portraits are so violent. They're full of a wailing and howling that seems to explode onto the canvas. Dora's head is thrown back or biting on a handkerchief. Tears of blood run down her cheeks. You know, her hands are claws and she scarcely looks human in them. And I think it was devastating for her. But I think Picasso was fascinated by her, but he also saw her as an emblem of suffering. You know, he put her together in this horrifying way with, you know, eyes wherever he felt like it, token hairs sprouting all over the place. But he had no interest in putting her together in a healing way. He simply moved on to the next woman. And Lee Miller was another affair that he had, the photographer.

Yes, that's right. Which I think was also a huge dent to Dora. Something that had made her work harder. What happened to her? What you mentioned about Dora being galvanized by Lee. I think pain and suffering produce great work in a lot of creatives. I mean, think about all the songs, for example, that have been written about heartbreak. And gradually the affair with Lee and others broke her. He left her for Francoise Giot and she had a breakdown. So he really destroyed her and

the rest of her life was much more contemplative and reclusive. She became very religious and she worked unceasingly until she died. At the age of 89. That's right. Yes. What about that, Penelope, the suffering that can produce great art? Have you ever suffered for art? Well, I mean, I think I suffered quite a lot when I split up with Bailey and had to kind of find my own way. But that was, you know, for me, that was quite a sort of positive thing.

It didn't seem it at the time. It felt like, you know, it was all over for me. But in fact, you know, I look back and think that was like, the best thing that could have happened. And you turned your heartbreak into a book. You know, it took many years to process clearly. But yeah, you know, you did what Dora did, you produced a book, which is the ultimate act of self-realization. But is it different, I wonder wonder to another romantic or sexual relationship when there's that artistic collaboration aspect to it as well that you would have as a muse I'm sure there is when you're working together with somebody it makes it much more intense you know I've had other relationships that were not based on creativity. And it's a very different thing.

You wrote a whole novel, obviously, Louise, about Dora Maar. Is she your muse? Well, she inspired me. But, you know, I've written other books about other incredible women. Although you could have more than one muse, as Picasso told us. That's very true. And actually, when I had to put the book aside, you know, for other projects, I could feel Doris stamping her foot and saying, come back to me. What do you think you're doing?

She was quite demanding. The Paris Muse is by Louisa Traeger. It's published by Bloomsbury on the 4th of July. Well, let's hear about another way of doing things when it comes to muses. What about having a muse and being a muse at the same time? We're going to hear from two women working together, inspiring each other, and maybe showing us a new framework for the artist-muse relationship. Lisa Lim is a Melbourne-based composer who collaborated with the violinist and researcher Karin Helkvist on a composition called One and the Other, and the full title is Speculative Polskas for Karin,

exploring Karin's relationship to her heritage and Swedish musical tradition. So it's been a collaboration that has changed the way both work as artists, but they started by telling us why this creative relationship first began. I first met and worked with Karin Hjelqvist as a member of the Sikara Ensemble in Norway. There's something really special in the way she plays and it was actually only after digging into her background that I understood more about that. So there's of course many things I like

working with Lisa. Phrases in her compositions felt so natural for me to perform. It was something it felt so good in the instrument, but it also was something that resonated with me as a musician. And I think something about Lisa, how she manages to work with these things. So they sort of become my own, but in her language, which is so fascinating. I wouldn't personally choose the word muse. You know, it's loaded, freighted with problematic power dynamics. But on the other hand, this notion of inspiration coming from someone is actually quite central to my work. I mean, all of my work really begins with the consideration of who's in the room, which is why I'm always interested in histories, traditions and performance practices of musicians. That is the stuff that's very

internalised, that's really inside their bodies. And I'm always looking out for those very unique, personal resonances around how people play. The more unique, the more unusual, the better for me. And that, I guess, is the point where that really attracts my attention. So I don't really see myself as a muse in this sense, I have to say. Or perhaps I look at it as a reciprocal muse situation. So, okay, I have inspired this piece by bringing the personal of my tradition and body and everything in it. But also, I feel like Lisa is sort of my muse as I perform it. She gives me an inspiration to explore something. So maybe it's about, we have the composition, which Lisa makes,

and the performance, which I make, and we are each other's muses. The piece that we made together, which is called One and the Other Speculative Polskas for Karin, was commissioned by Karin specifically to be part of her PhD research project, which is focused on her embodied knowledge as a basis for collaboration. So as far as the sort of muse relationship goes, she was the one who invited me into this relationship.

If I were to summarise this piece, for me it's been a framework to explore something that exists in my body that can be brought out through this music. Something that is somehow an essence of who I am. So it's a merging of the languages of my performance and Lisa's composition. Well, the process of making this work, One and the Other, really began with Karin sending me recordings of herself playing Swedish polska, this traditional dance music, and also these photographs of where she recorded them,

this old mansion that was very much part of her childhood. Both the recordings and the photos evoked this sense of multiple layers of time, ancestral time, childhood memories, the sense of something sort of transforming, the sense of access to different phases of being. So it was very, very rich. And so I think the reason why this work has become so special between us is because you know Karin you really shared something very very personal

and deep about who you are and where you come from you know it's very much grounded in your cultural sort of lineages and so yeah the process of working was really about these conversations about lineage and where you've taken those things. Making this piece together, it's really been a way for me to understand more about the heritage that I have that exists in my embodied knowledge, but also understanding the importance about the specific place you grew up in, how this informs my performance practice today. I felt so lucky and so safe to share these things with Lisa, because of course, it's not something you want to tell anybody or you might think like

oh why would this be important for someone to hear or but Lisa she has this ability of understanding on a deeper level and this understanding is it really has changed I think my way of looking at myself as a musician and my purpose and so on. So it's been a very rich journey on many levels for me, also beyond this particular composition. In Swedish, we have a phrase saying, ringar på vattnet. It means rings on the water. And for me, if the piece is sort of the water drop meeting the ocean,

the piece also gave all these waves from it. It's inspired other pieces of Lisa. It definitely inspired me in terms of collaborating and new works and this understanding of tradition and of embodied knowledge. All these rings that sort of, they seem to keep flowing out from this piece. I think at the base of this project is the co-creative exchange. Yeah, I'd say that we've been co-collaborators. We definitely come out from a practice of composition and one of performance, but I think we have met in a space in between

these practices. So co-collaborating in this field. And it's not just music, it's the many conversations and the friendship and having meals together and sharing a lot of stuff. The way of working, I think it opens up new questions, you know, in terms of co-creative or co-emergent work. And I think that's for us to keep exploring, Karin. The composer Lisa Lim and violinist Karin Helkvist on the creative exchange and friendship at the heart of their work together being each other's muses. Ruth, can you think of any other examples of reciprocal muses? Oh, absolutely. And I love this idea of the exchange and artistic allies and found some great examples of this in my research and spent a chapter of muse talking about Gustav Klimt and his, I'd say mutual muse, Emily Flurg, who in Vienna was a really radical fashion designer, creating these beautiful long, they're called reform dresses, liberating women from corsets. And if we look at Gustav Klimt's

paintings, all his women are dressed in her designs and you can really see his paintings as an advert for his great friend and companion of 26 years her designs and he would go to her shop and this is where he would meet some of his models and patrons wives and yeah find his clients as well and you can see the pair working really closely together to sort of create this liberated image of women in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century. So do you think when we come to the future of the muse do you think the term can remain can it be or be reclaimed perhaps is the right way to describe it? Yes so I think we do need and need the term in order to reclaim it and to be able to uncover you know the abuse of Picasso and be able to call it out and in a way I think this word muse has benefited men for too long

it's been written into art history by men to promote men and now it's time for women to reclaim that term and actually uncover all the contributions of women like Dora Maar who was a huge help in Picasso's career and had a huge influence on him and also there are far more diverse muses than we've discussed before as well. And now are there recent positive examples of muses that you've come across? I gave the example of Anna Brown who's Missala. I think somewhere like the National Gallery having an exhibition or dedicating an exhibition to a muse who has never sort of had the spotlight shone on her, I think is a positive example. And there are lots of art historians who are sort of trying to fight against the anonymity of black muses. And I think that's a positive. And Miss Lala, what should we know about her? So her name was Anna Brown, and she was born to a white Prussian mother and a black American father in Szczecin. I don't know if I'm pronouncing it correctly, but it's in present day Poland. And she

was in the circus from about age nine. And she was sort of famous. She was in a traveling troupe. And the National Gallery's exhibition is going to bring to light photographs of her for the very first time. It's interesting to hear of people, perhaps, that are being rediscovered as we talk about muses. We were hearing a little earlier

about the nine muses historically, Penelope, and I'm wondering, I'm calling it like the original sisterhood, right, that they were a collective of females. Did you have the opportunity to develop relationships with other women that were inspiring, that inspired you, or you were perhaps inspirational to them? Very much so. I think I would not have gotten through this life without, you know, four women I can think of who are older than me. One of them was Mrs. Vreeland, Diana Vreeland, who was the editor of Vogue, who was the best company in the world. She wasn't a beauty or anything, but being with her was an absolute delight.

And she was also very generous. And I never heard her say a negative word about anybody, which is quite rare for the fashion industry. And, you know, you sat with her and you just had the best time and felt inspired by being with her. Do you think you can be your own muse? Ruth, any examples of people being their own muse? Oh, there's so many, and I dedicated an entire section of my book to artists who've taken themselves as their own muses. Of course, famously Frida Kahlo, who painted herself again and again,

and this was after she'd had a terrible accident and was left bedridden for months. And she'd actually wanted to be a doctor. And I can see in her self-portraits, she's sort of cutting herself open, trying to heal that emotional and physical pain. So Frida Kahlo, of course, great example. And Artemisia Gentileschi, another one.

She actually painted a portrait of herself as Cleo, the ancient Greek muse of history, where she's got laurels in her hair and she's holding a scroll and on it she's written her name, Artemisia Gentileschi, writing herself into history as an artist and a muse. And so are you hopeful that future muses perhaps won't have the power imbalance that we've spoken about today. I'm very hopeful and that's what I'm advocating for in my book, that artists and muses entering a relationship are there with equality in mind. For example, I sat for an artist a couple of years ago and he now asked me if he's going to exhibit the portrait, am I happy for it to be shown there? If he was going to sell it, would I be happy with a certain buyer? And for me, that's something that's needed when that's your image going out into the world. Well, I want to thank my guests, Ruth Millington, who you just heard,

also Elayo Akungube, Edith Hall, Penelope Tree, and Louisa Trager. And on Woman's Hour tomorrow, I'll be speaking to Ruth Jones about her role as Mother Superior in Sister Act and a must for all Archers fans. What happens in a relationship when one person wants children and the other definitely does not? We've picked up on the Fallon and Harrison storyline. We'll be discussing this with a relationship therapist tomorrow.

I hope you'll join me. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. I'm Dr. Michael Mosley, and I want to let you know about my new immersive BBC Radio 4 podcast series, Deep Calm. It's all about how to tap into and activate a remarkable system that we all have hardwired inside of us. Our relaxation response.

And it's been developed to be listened to at any time you want to really unwind. We'll discover simple, powerful, scientifically proven techniques to activate this relaxation response. And encounter incredible mechanisms that work to help you rest, restore and find stillness.

From the breath to the fractal patterns of nature. I hope you'll subscribe on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Treleaven and for over a year I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies I started like warning everybody Every doula that I know It was fake No pregnancy And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth

How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.