British critic and art historian Ruth Millington upends the romanticized myth of the muse by revealing the fascinating stories of often-overlooked individuals portrayed in some of art history’s most significant works.
From avant-garde Austrian fashion designer Emilie Flöge’s influence on Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss to African American portrait painter Kehinde Wiley’s riveting painting of Souleo, Millington traverses history to expose the diverse relationships between muses and the artists who immortalized them.
Her book, Muse: Uncovering the Hidden Figures Behind Art History’s Masterpieces, invites us to reconsider perceptions of the muse as a powerless, submissive subject, often assumed to be young, attractive and female. She says muses can possess and exercise more power and influence than we might think.
Ruth Millington
One example Millington shares is Gala Dalí’s pivotal role in shaping the career of her husband, Salvador, then an unknown artist. Gala was not only an art critic and champion, but also the inspiration for Paul Éluard’s poetry and the face of surrealism, acting as the muse for Man Ray and Max Ernst, as well as Dalí.
Millington points out that we often assume artists always choose their muses, but in this case the reverse was true – Gala chose Dalí as she “spotted talent that needed nurturing.” Dalí used the signature “Gala-Dalí” on some of his works in recognition of her invaluable input. Through this action, Millington says, “Dalí outwardly declared the shared endeavour between artist and muse by naming her.”
Another powerful example is the 1984 collaboration between Grace Jones and three of New York’s most famous artists – Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe and Keith Haring. This catapulted Jones from supermodel and music icon to the ultimate muse. Mapplethorpe photographed Jones, whose body was painted with Haring’s trademark ‘tribal’ pictograms.
The stunning photos were published in Interview magazine, founded by Warhol. Millington contends that Jones, already skilled in subverting society’s expectations of race, gender and sexuality, was not just a muse, but an equal collaborator with her own artistic aims. By allowing her body to be used as a canvas, she furthered her goals as she “simultaneously parodied and reclaimed ‘primitivism’ in uncompromising fashion” and was elevated to “a genderless deity.”
The book, composed of 29 short segments about different muses, illustrates how, historically, the muse-artist relationship could be fraught with power imbalances and servitude. However, Millington suggests that while these relationships were complex and conflicted, they were often grounded in affection, respect and even love. Juan de Pareja, the slave of Spanish painter Diego Velázquez, for instance, moved from a position as a sidelined subject, to take a more central and dominant role in Velázquez’s work. Ultimately, Pareja asserted his autonomy and identity through his own art.
Millington proposes that how we think about the term ‘muse’ may itself be part of the problem as we often limit it to “patronizing, sexist and pejorative connotations.” She also encourages us to widen the definition of muse to include contemporary performance artists and celebrities such as Beyoncé, whose 2017 collaboration with Ethiopian American photographer Awol Erizku led to hugely popular works that centre Black women and actively dismantle conventional frameworks of race, gender and beauty.
This well-researched and entertaining book, which includes exquisite illustrations by Syrian/Iraqi artist Dina Razin, may shift your understanding of art and agency. Millington invites us to look beyond the canvas, teaching us about those we may recognize by sight, but not by name. “There is more to an image, and its muse,” she says, “than first meets the eye.” ■
Muse: Uncovering the Hidden Figures Behind Art History’s Masterpieces by Ruth Millington: Pegasus Books, 2022.
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