Artists and their muses — such fabled relationships, so fraught with excitement, creativity, and yes… scandal. Let’s meet some of the enchanting, free-spirited, tortured women and men that inspired great artists to do great works of art. A warning: Some of our muses are more bohemian than others, so this one’s not for the sensitive types. Another warning: Some are more tragic than others, so break out the tissues now. From Gala to Eddie to Kiki to La Cicciolina, here come the muses, their triumphs and pitfalls in tow.
Ilona Staller a.k.a. La Cicciolina
By the time Jeff Koons married Hungarian-born Italian blond bombshell “La Ciccolina” (“Cuddles”), she had achieved notoriety as both a hardcore porn actress and a member of parliament, simultaneously. She was the first to bare her breasts on Italian TV, a member of Italy’s first Green Party, then a Libertarian, then a founding member of the “Party of Love” — protesting nuclear power, championing human rights, and offering to sleep with Saddam Hussein in exchange for peace. Then, there was more hardcore porn, that is, Jeff Koons’ Made In Heaven project — explicit XXX painting and sculptures of the couples’ antics, shocking the 1990 Venice Biennale. They married in 1991. After the marriage soured, Staller took off to Italy with their 2-year-old son Ludwig Maximillian, and a grim custody battle lead to the founding of the Koons Family Institute on International Law and Policy. Scandalous all around!
Comments (10)
Salai was Leonardo da Vinci’s lover, not Caravaggio’s! Aah! I see you haven’t played Assassin’s Creed 2! Also, he stole copiously from Leonardo, Leonardo’s friends, and even his models. He used his ill-gotten gains to buy fancy clothes. At one point he had twenty pairs of shoes! Twenty! In spite of (or perhaps because of) his dramatic failings, Leonardo remained very fond of him even after they were long broken up, and he remembered him in his will with half a vineyard and the Mona Lisa.
Ummm. That’s Leonardo who had a boy lover named Salai, and his Saint John you’re showing an image of….
Wow I really enjoyed reading this article! Learned a lot too. Thanks for posting it! Really good stuff :)
ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!/ i had a demon lover, too, like dyer once/ whose corpse has never washed ashore/ yet/
They should make a Lee Miller biopic. What a life.
Re: Sargent’s Madame X. The version with the strap hanging off the shoulder was the one that caused the uproar at the Paris Salon. Sargent altered the painting after the Salon.
Picasso’s dark and weepy photographer was a talented artist in her own right, Dora Maar. She is the muse in his ‘weeping woman’ paintings and he treated her awfully. She could never compete with Walter because she couldn’t have Picasso’s children, she was sterile. At one point he sent her to a psychiatric institution. Within a very short frame of time, he left her and Marie Therese for another woman and all her closest friends and family died. She lived alone still in love with Picasso for another 50 years.
Not a single female artist and their male muse?
Not that it really matters, but Jeff Fenholt was never a singer in Black Sabbath. He auditioned, unsuccessfully, for a Tony Iommi project.
Yeah, I’d like to add my disappointment to the lack of female artists with muses (male or female). Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera come to mind, as well as Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas. Maybe you should do a companion female slideshow? As I’m sure Flavorpill is aware, women get left out of art history enough as it is.
(I was also disappointed by the lack of a female perspective in the quarter-life crisis book slideshow – perhaps it’s more of a male phenomenon, but I doubt it, since I know plenty of women my own age going through their own unique existential angst. It’s perhaps worse for women because of the deep pressure on women to find a husband and pop out babies, and the desire to still do that but also be successful in one’s job… okay rambling.) Anyway, enough sausage parties, Flavorpill! I know y’all know better.
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