Be Your Own Muse

"Farewell to the Muse" by Whitney Chadwick

Jacqueline Lamba and Frida Kahlo, Pátzcuaro, Mexico, 1938, photographer unknown

Some of the women who partnered famous surrealist writers and painters fought their way out of their roles as mere muse. This is the theme of the library book I just finished reading, Farewell to the Muse: Love, War and the Women of Surrealism by Whitney Chadwick. 

In 1982 Chadwick interviewed the surrealist Roland Penrose, saying she was interested in the "overlooked" women artists of the movement. Penrose replied, "You shouldn't write a book about the women. ...They weren't artists. Of course, they were important, but it was because they were our muses."

Roland and Valentine Penrose, from Scrap Book by Roland Penrose, 1981.

By the end of Farewell to the Muse, we see how one of Penrose's wives finally realized her dream of a creative life independent from spouse, family and other binding attachments. Valentine Penrose went on to have relationships that inspired personal expression and helped her navigate World War II in Europe.

The lives of several other surrealist-centered women show that the urge to create can survive an overbearing partner and even the trauma of war. It can find full expression afterwards, either alone or with a supportive partner. 

In one case, Frida Kahlo and Jacqueline Lamba mentored each other as they struggled to balance their art with their marriages.

In another, Claude Cahun and her partner Suzanne Malherbe created harrowing, secret real-life "performance art" (my words) in resisting the Nazis on the island of Jersey in the early 1940's. 

Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore (born Suzanne Malherbe), photo from Jersey Heritage Trust

The women in this book claimed for themselves the power to be their own muse.