ArtMuse ArtTalks: Host Grace Anna Interviews Acclaimed Author Francine Prose
As part of our "ArtMuse ArtTalks" series, host Grace Anna interviews acclaimed author Francine Prose about her book The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired, a groundbreaking collection of the life stories of nine female muses, including Elizabeth Siddall and Gala Dali, whom we have full ArtMuse episodes on, as well as Hester Thrale, Alice Liddell, Lou Andreas-Salome, Lee Miller, Chris Weston, Suzanne Farrell, and Yoko Ono.
Throughout the course of the interview, Grace Anna asks Francine Prose about what inspired her to write The Lives of the Muses, which women’s stories resonated with her the most, the integral role the muse plays in the the creation of works of art, and the importance of sharing these women’s stories with the world and honoring their immense legacies.
Listen to this special ArtMuse ArtTalks episode:
This episode is produced by Kula Production Company.
You can purchase your own copy of The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired HERE.
Francine Prose is a renowned American author and critic. She has published several non-fiction books, including The Lives of the Muses, as well as several novels, essays, and short-stories. She has also contributed works to major publications such as The New York Times and The New Yorker. Her novel Blue Angel was a finalist for the National Book award, and her novel A Changed Man, won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Prose is also the former president of PEN American Center and holds the title of Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College, where she is currently a professor.
If you have not yet listened to ArtMuse’s episodes on Elizabeth Siddall and Gala Dali, you can find these episodes on our website or by searching for ArtMuse on all streaming platforms.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Hi listeners, host Grace Anna here. I am thrilled to share a special episode from our ArtMuse ArtTalks series, in which I am joined by the acclaimed author Francine Prose, who wrote The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired, a groundbreaking collection of the life stories of nine female muses, including Elizabeth Siddall and Gala Dali, whom we have full ArtMuse episodes on, as well as Hester Thrale, Alice Liddell, Lou Andreas-Salome, Lee Miller, Chris Weston, Suzanne Farrell, and Yoko Ono.
Throughout the course of the interview, I ask Francine Prose about what inspired her to write The Lives of the Muses, which women’s stories resonated with her the most, the integral role the muse plays in the the creation of works of art, and the importance of sharing these women’s stories and honoring their immense legacies.
If you have not yet listened to ArtMuse’s episodes on Elizabeth Siddall and Gala Dali, I encourage you to listen to them as accompanying episodes to this interview. You can find ArtMuse’s episodes on Elizabeth Siddall and Gala Dali by searching for ArtMuse on all streaming platforms, as well as on our website: www.artmusepodcast.com.
Francine Prose is a renowned American author and critic. She has published several non-fiction books, including The Lives of the Muses, as well as several novels, essays, and short-stories. She has also contributed works to major publications such as The New York Times and The New Yorker. Her novel Blue Angel was a finalist for the National Book award, and her novel A Changed Man, won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Prose is also the former president of PEN American Center and holds the title of Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College, where she is currently a professor.
With that, let’s dive into my fascinating conversation with the author, Francine Prose.
Grace Anna: Francine, thank you so much for being with me today. It is such an honor. I'm really excited to dive into your work. I've read and loved the Lives of the Muses. For our listeners today, who haven't yet read your work. Could you introduce us a little to your book and let us know about its mission?
Francine: Well, the book started around 2000 because I got one of the early fellowships to the Coleman Center at the New York Public Library, and I hadn't applied, I mean, I just got this letter saying- you get to spend a year in the great research library. So I really had to think of a project quick, by September when it began. And I had just gotten a book from a local library sale, a book called “500 of the Greatest Letters Ever Written” or something like that.
And in it, there was a letter from Samuel Johnson to Hester Thrale, who was identified as his muse. And the letter was after, she'd had been married and her husband had died, and the the letter was in response to her announcement that she was going to be married to her children's Italian singing instructor and Samuel Johnson, who in theory had a purely platonic relationship with Hester Thrale, wrote her this scathing letter breaking off all relations between the two of them saying; “you wanna continue with this ego-maniac plan, you know, blah, blah”.
And it became clear to me that their relationship had been much more complicated than the hostess/guest connection that had always been portrayed as what was between them, so that was really where I began. And it was great. I mean, going back, you know, I guess I'd read Johnson some in college, but going back to read his work again and to read her letters.
Again, the New York Public Library was insanely helpful. I mean, it was unbelievable what they had and, and also the joy of being in the Coleman Center where you could just go upstairs and hand in these slips for books and two hours later someone would bring a rolling cart to your study.
So there was all this material about the Hester Thrale/Samuel Johnson relationship and how much desire he had to be interesting to her. She was apparently a very lively conversationalist and an extremely intelligent woman and so forth. So his desire to charm her or be interesting to her, or be an entertaining guest at her house, which he was for very long periods of time, helped him in his writing, the essays or, you know, finding this sort of tone voice way in which he wrote as his career progressed until of course their friendship ended.
So that made me think about sort of the role of the so-called Muse. And then a friend suggested that there were nine muses. And it was hard, you know, because there were many other choices I could have made and, and honestly, in retrospect, I think there were some different choices than the ones I did make. But I thought, okay, nine stories.
And then the first one, of course, besides Hester Thrale and Samuel Johnson that came to mind was Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell. And again, the library had in their collection the presentation copy of the photograph, Carroll's photograph of Alice Liddell as the beggar child. I mean this incredibly disturbing picture of this little girl with one shoulder bear holding out her little hand, just a bigger child. And they had the copy, which Lewis Carroll had made and framed and handprinted to give to her. And it was in restoration for most of the time I was there. And then I think maybe the last week or two I was at the library, they brought it down and it was like some weirdo holy relic. And her story was interesting because she outlived Lewis Carroll by so many years and she went on to have a similar and even more peculiar relationship with John Ruskin, the great art critic, until he was asked to leave the house. Well, they were both asked to leave the house.
And in that particular case, and in every case really, the question would arise: what were these relationships about? What really happened? I mean, there's something automatically suspect about a grown man whose closest friends are little girls, and a few little boys. And so fortunately there are all these volumes of letters from Lewis Carroll to Alice and to other girls, and from the other girls to him, and I concluded that he wasn't a pedophile in the way we normally think of what a pedophile is. But you could say he was wildly eccentric of course, and what we would call now an arrested development case because he was so attached to his own childhood and the joys of his own childhood and he was able to rediscover it by hanging out with these children, and in that case, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are very directly acknowledged as having been written for Alice and her sister. There's a little poem in the preface at the beginning in which he describes being with them by the shores of the river on the summer afternoon and spinning out this tale that kept the girls interested.So in that particular case, maybe as much or more than any of the others, the relationship and the fact of the muse as inspiration was very clear cut and clear knowledge.
One of the stories that interested me most, I guess, was that of Lee Miller, who was a photographer. In fact, they just did a movie. It's not good. I mean, it suffers from the problems that biopics suffer. You know- “I wonder what's gonna happen when she goes and finds Hitler's bathtub”, which in real life, Lee Miller was photographed taking a bath in Hitler's bathtub. But what interested me about her was that she was very beautiful. She grew up in Poughkeepsie and she he was almost run over by a carriage or car or something on Fifth Avenue, and a stranger pulled her to safety and the stranger turned out to be Conde Nast. So Conde Nast said, “why don't you come to the Conde Nast office and be a model?”. So she started as a fashion model and then went to Paris and became Man Ray’s muse, or certainly his subject. And many of his greatest photographs were of Lee Miller. But then. what interested me most about her case was that she went from being a “muse” to having this incredible, nervy, courageous career of her own. I mean, she became a war photographer and she photographed scenes from the Spanish Civil War, and then she was photographing the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps on contract for Vogue of all things.
That was the other thing- the library had copies of Vogue from the 1940’s that just made you wanna burst into tears because the level at which they estimated their female readership was so much higher than now. Now it's like 10 makeup tips or whatever. Anyway, she photographed the liberation of the camps and the New York Times refused to run the pictures because they said, “oh, no one's gonna believe this”. And Vogue of all places was the first place that the pictures were published. So she was the one, in some ways, that I wrote about who I had the most admiration for really. Because among other things, she was the bravest. I mean, it took enormous courage for her to do what she did. And then what happened was Lee wound up on this farm. She married a surrealist artist, Roland Penrose, and wound up on a farm in the British countryside, mostly as a hostess. I mean, her family didn't know that she'd been a great photographer until after her death, they found these boxes of photographs in the attic. She was a heavy drinker, et cetera, et cetera.
But you know, all of these stories are bound or connected by the fact that they were muses, whatever that even means. But they are all stories about what was possible in women's lives and how that changed over the century. I mean, look at poor Elizabeth Siddell, who was just a disaster. And then, even after death, Dante Gabriel Rossetti exhumed her body so he could retrieve the book of poetry that he tossed into her open grave in a fit of remorse when she died.
And then Lou Andreas-Salomé, who was drawn to these geniuses, Nietzsche and Freud, and drew them into her orbit and did inspire them or you know, certainly she was a devoted audience and probably increased Nietzsche's level of torment. But who knows whether that was necessary to be that tormented for them to write out of that torment. But nevertheless, she was there. And then when Freud began his early lectures of his work, she was a devoted disciple, and came to all his lectures, went to Vienna, et cetera, et cetera. So she was important in the lives of at least all three of these men.
And I was trying to pick stories that were different from one another. For example, I could have written about Lou Andreas-Salomé or Alma Mahler who had a kind of similar history And I thought, well, one of those will do. So I picked Lou Andreas-Salomé. And then took it up to Yoko Ono who is the last in the book. And you know everything you write in my experience, years go by and you have second thoughts about how you might've done it differently. I mean, at the time I wrote it, I was very down on Yoko Ono for all sorts of reasons. And one of them was this film when they were living in the British countryside and recording Imagine. And they were recording with these great New Orleans musicians there, and they were doing How Do You Sleep?, which is a nasty song that Lennon wrote about Paul McCartney, and there's this first take and it's fabulous. I mean, it really swings. And then there's this moment where you see Yoko going up to John and whispering in his ear and John says something like, “oh, it swings too much”. And they do a second take, which is not nearly as good as the initial version. And I went like, “oh, great Yoko just ruined the song!”. But you know, as the years have gone by and Yoko Ono's still producing work, I've gained more and more respect for her, and I think I would've written that chapter slightly differently, or very differently than I did.
And also there were other situations in which I was sorry that I hadn't included someone. For example, although it had been done a lot, and I mean Janet Malcolm had just published a great book about Gertrude Stein, it would've been interesting for variety’s sake and importance to write about a same sex muse. And then I also wondered why I had limited myself to women. I was thinking about Gina Dennison and Denys Finch Hatton, and how she would essentially write her stories to amuse him when he stopped by on his imperialist flying expeditions to Africa. So there were others, I mean, I have no desire to write about nine more, but there are other choices that I might have made.
Grace Anna: Fascinating. I think you did a really great job at explaining your process. It sounds like the library in some way was your path as well in seeing what resources they had and what inspiration you got, and I think you did a wonderful job at introducing some of the women that you talk about. Firstly, our podcast also focuses on women, and of course, muses absolutely can encompass different genders and sexes, and different dynamics, but I think women are largely the most overlooked, especially in the art world. These muses and models are overlooked. So I think that narrowing down on women is important, and I think you did an immense job in your book at encompassing women who inspired literature, psychology, dance, music, and all of these different art forms, and it’s so interesting to read about. And as well as different time periods. You go as contemporary as Yoko Ono, and then all the way back to the pre-Raphaelites, which encompasses 100-200 years of women.
Actually that is one of the questions I had for you, because I thought it was a very interesting point that you made in your book about time periods. I thought it was very interesting how you said that these women not only inspired specific artists, but they came to define the values of the time periods in which they lived. And I thought that was a really interesting point that you made. We have an episode, for instance, on Kiki de Montparnasse, and she's a good example of someone that we've covered that really came to define Paris during the roaring twenties. But you encompassed a lot of different periods and there's of course some crossover of characters like John Ruskin was involved with Alice Liddell as well as Elizabeth Siddell. But it's a great variety and I think our listeners will enjoy reading these different stories that encompass all of these different people, art forms, places, time periods. So I’m sure it was very hard to pick nine women. I have a list now of maybe 500 women that I eventually want to cover, because once you open up the wells, there are so many amazing stories and amazing women to one day share their stories.
Do you wanna talk about that aspect of these women also telling us about the values of their time and why these women were inspiring to the artists of that time and what that tells us about the values of that time period in that society?
Francine: There's certain patterns of behavior or interactions between women and the culture they're living in that actually keep recurring through time. I was just watching the other night a documentary about these fashion illustrators in the 70’s in New York and they were hanging out with all these kind of Warhol it-girls in New York, and as I was watching I was thinking, “oh, it's so similar to Kiki de Montparnasse”. The idea of these young, beautiful party girls who had a huge influence on the culture of the time by doing not much except being fun and pretty going to parties and yet their influence spread very widely because of that.
Again, each of these women were products of their time. I mean, Lee Miller could never have been Lee Miller in Samuel Johnson's time. The world changed, and so did the opportunities for women, Yoko Ono could never have been Yoko Ono in Elizabeth Siddell’s time. Now of course we're heading back in the opposite direction, but the way in which a woman could think about her life or lead her life changed some over the last century.
Grace Anna: Yeah, I think that is a very very good point.
Grace Anna: Did you find commonalities between these women? Common threads that you found as you were researching and writing these stories? Or did you find that their stories were quite different? I loved how you said they all loved and were loved by their artists, which is obviously a common thread and a great theme to tie them all together. But I'm curious, because I've actually had thoughts and observations as I've done my research on various different women. One observation I've discovered is many of the women had a very strong maternal presence and an absent paternal presence, you know, their fathers either died young or left them. I'm not sure why that is, maybe these women eventually are looking at these male artists to fill some sort of void or as father figures. I don't know. But I found that to be an interesting common thread that I've come across. And in your book, I loved that so many of the women ended up writing memoirs or books later in their life that share their side of the stories. That was one common thread I observed.
But I'm, I'm curious to hear if you found commonalities or were the stories very different to you?
Francine: Well, I'm trying to think of this as true or not. I think it is true. I think every single one of them was actively resistant to social convention. I mean, even poor Lizzie Siddell. You know, to live with Dante Gabriel Rossetti without the holy matrimony. I mean, every single one went against the prescriptions of their time for what a woman's life should be. I mean, all the way up through Yoko Ono, every single one of them. And they were actively working against the constrictions that society around them was putting on them. Lee Miller for sure. I mean, who sends a woman into the war zone, in general, women were not allowed to or supposed to or encouraged to do many of the things that these women did. So, you know, they were rebels, each and a different way, but all of them.
Grace Anna: I have the quote somewhere here where you discuss Yoko Ono, not only as a woman, but as an Asian woman in a time when there was a lot of, not just gender prejudice, but racial prejudice against her. And I love this quote you said: “Our culture put Yoko Ono in a place from which she has to scream twice as loudly as anyone else simply to be heard”. And I thought that was a powerful way to put some of the challenges she faced and probably continues to face today. So yeah, certainly they were all trailblazers in their own way.
Francine: Yeah, no, she literally had to scream. It’s funny, people’s reactions to Yoko, including my own. A couple of years ago I was watching that five hour Peter Jackson documentary about The Beatles, and even then, and as I said, my ideas about Yoko had changed considerably from when I wrote about her, but even then…I mean, she's there all the time. She's sitting in the studio and she's super present. I said: “why is she there all the time?” And one of my sons who is a musician and records a lot was saying that that's what it's like in the studio. People wander in and out. The girlfriends are there. It’s not a big deal. But I was, I don't know, slightly annoyed, about her presence. And why shouldn't she be there? I mean, they had fallen madly in love, let her be there. I don't think that it had anything in particular to do with her being Asian. I think that it had something to do with her being the new fifth Beatle and later blamed probably incorrectly for the breakup of the Beatles.
Grace Anna: Yeah. And then what she went through with John's tragic death. I mean, she's really such a strong and brave woman to have persevered through all of that.
Francine: Yeah. I remember when I was writing it, I went to some dinner party and I was sitting next to a guy who had been in some eighties or early nineties hairband, I can't remember which one, and the subject of Yoko came up and he said, “oh yeah, that happens all the time. There's a woman who broke up our band, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah”. So I think that's part of musician mythology, which in Yoko's case, was just wrong.
Grace Anna: Did you find an extra pressure to write about her, given that she, and I believe Suzanne Farrell are still alive? Did that process feel different writing about these two women who were still alive and could potentially read your chapters on them?
Francine: No, I mean, they weren't consuming and it wasn't like I was saying anything that wasn't documented. And Suzanne Farrell…I had never seen her dance in person, so I sort of was writing from ignorance and it was great because I was learning a lot about the ballet, but I didn't really know that much. And then my editor, who was still alive at the time, Robert Jones, who had seen her many times, said “you really ought to watch more videos of her dancing”. And it changed everything. Because once I saw her dance, it was like- oh my God. You know, I get it. I get everything that happened. I get why she was so important to Balanchine. I mean, she was really…she could do things that nobody else could do.
Grace Anna: Yeah, I thought it was interesting how their relationship in particular was one that you pointed out as being more of a co-collaboration than some of the others. I was hoping actually you could speak more to that because on ArtMuse we try to put forth the idea that these artists' models and muses were co-collaborators and works of art, but obviously some may be more directly than others. If you could speak a little more to their relationship and their co-collaboration?
Francine: Well, the fact that she could do things that other dancers couldn't do allowed him to choreograph things that he couldn't do for other dancers. It was basically as simple as that. Her skill, her technical skill, expanded the possibility of what he was able to do and what dances he was able to design. But I was talking earlier about Lou Andreas-Salomé, and how she enabled or increased the suffering of the men she was involved with. And I recently, I was watching a documentary about the first American ballerina and it's not something we didn't know, but when you look at the amount of pain, injury, and suffering involved in being a professional dancer, and then I was thinking about the Suzanne Ferrell and that she kind of did Balanchine’s suffering for him because he wasn't required to do the insane and difficult physical feats that were being asked of her.
Grace Anna: That is really interesting and I think you make a good point too- not all of these women, not necessarily Suzanne Farrell, but I'm thinking of Gala Dali or Lou Andreas-Salomé…they caused pain. Not all of them were necessarily standup women in that sense, and I found the process of writing Gala Dali's story to be quite difficult in that sense because she's a very complex person and she did some horrible, horrible things and at the same time, she was very admirable in all these other ways. But I do think it's interesting that discussion of causing pain and maybe whether it's the artist or the muse who's taking on that pain- that not all of these women were necessarily the best of people.
Francine: Well, Gala Dali was such a grifter for starters. I mean, to have him sign 40,000 blank lithograph sheets that she could then sell and devalue his work. I mean, my parents had a Dali litho, which they got for like nothing, and when I started writing the book, I thought- yeah, mom and Dad's Dali might very well have been one of the ones that Gala had Salvador sign without having anything on it.
Grace Anna: Yeah, absolutely. It still affects the market today. And she had a gambling addiction and was dating very young men all throughout their marriage…
Francine: Well, they both were, I mean, in a way, all these people were in their own often twisted ways admirable. What did he have, a leopard or an ocelot? I can't remember. He would walk it on 5th Avenue. And this was the fifties when behavioral standards were so narrow and he was like- whatever. He would just do what he wanted and the desire…and in fact of a number of them, the characters in the book, to be outrageous when the entire world was saying: you can't, you have to lead your life within some basically narrow confines. And they were like- no, I'm gonna just be as wild as I can possibly want.
Grace Anna: Yeah, and pushing back against those societal boundaries in that way.
I wanted to talk a bit more about Alice Liddell because I do think she presents an interesting example in age difference. She was 10 when Lewis Carroll wrote, and he was 31, when he wrote Alice in Wonderland, and it made me think about- and I don't necessarily know my opinion or the answer yet- but it made me think about the idea of consent. Should being a muse be consensual or not? Obviously people are inspired by people who have already passed, so they can't give consent. But it made me think about the idea of consent and inspiration and the idea of consent and being a muse. And I don't know if, if you have any thoughts on that, but that chapter really got me thinking. I think you do a good job at expressing the complexities of their relationship. But it just made me think, you know, she was a child, so how does consent play into this?
Francine: She was a child. But you know, again, reading this volume of letters from other children or former children to Lewis Carroll, they all said that this was the happiest time of my life. They all felt that horrible modern word “seen” by him, and I don't think that if they had been sexually molested, he would have gotten this outpouring of love and support. I just don't think even during the repressed Victorian era, it would've been like that. But I don't think women want to grow up to be someone's muse. I mean, it's not like a career plan. I think it sort of happens and it happened to these women, but I don't think in any case it would've been their first choice for what they would do with their lives. It just worked out that way, and again, you know, thank goodness for people like Lee Miller or Yoko Ono, who, because of circumstances, were forced to go beyond that particular role. I mean, the sad thing about Lee Miller's life is that she wound up in exactly the same place, only worse, than a more ordinary woman would have ended up. But not Yoko, not for sure.
Grace Anna: Yeah, it is interesting to see some of these women's arcs of their life. I've found too that sadly a lot of them, most of them, die in obscurity or poverty or go backwards in a sense. And a lot of that too, I guess to your point about the different points of history, a lot of that did have to do with the social restraints. I mean, of course they pushed against the societal boundaries, but in the end they also fell victim to them… there was only so much they could push. So yeah, these stories are filled with amazing things and tragic things, in that sense.
Are there any of the women we haven't really dove deeper into yet that you’d like to discuss?
Francine: Oh, Charis Westin. I think if I had one that I would later decide I was less interested in than the others… it would've been mainly because over time I've grown less and less interested in Edward Westin's work. It just seemed so formal and I realized that it had a lot of influence on future photographers. I mean, I don't think there'd be a Mapplethorpe if there hadn't been a Westin, but she really was just a standard bearer for certain artists and a model. And it's the shortest chapter in the book, I think, for good reason. So I think maybe I would've left her out and put somebody else in, but it just seemed interesting at the time.
Grace Anna: Yeah, absolutely. I found her writing to be an interesting aspect of her story and that she did a lot of his writing on his behalf, and then later went on to publish her own memoir and autobiography.
It's interesting too, to your point of having now a different opinion on the artist, but did researching the muses change your opinion on any of these artists or philosophers?
Francine: Well, no, but you know. I never was a big fan of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s art or poetry and I became even less of a fan. But one of the things I found- I did quite a long book tour for this book. I was all over the place and I was sort of shocked…I mean, I remember very clearly giving a talk at the Art Institute of Chicago where there is one well-known Dante Gabriel Rossetti painting and I was talking about how awfully he treated Lizzie Siddall and there was so much pushback from the audience who had grown up looking at this painting and thought it was a great painting, and who was I to say that it wasn't a great painting…
So I think what I did learn is how the various artists they were involved with, or how they themselves were viewed or not viewed at the moment the book came out. Yoko Ono people were quite upset that I criticized Yoko. She has passionate fans. But you know, I'd just been to this really upsetting Yoko Ono show and I couldn't get it out of my mind. I can't remember if that's in the book, the Transparent Labyrinth at the Japan House. Everything in it seemed, I mean, not exactly sadistic, but there was this gigantic maze/labyrinth made out of clear plastic so that you walked in and you just couldn't orient yourself. And apparently so many people were bashing their faces into the walls trying to get out of the maze, that they hired this special guard to stand there and talk you through it. You know “this way, sweetheart, that way”. And then there was another- she did a recording of somebody coughing, just someone coughing like coughing…it was every 30 seconds the recording would cough. And all I could think of again was the museum guard who was standing there listening to someone cough every 30 seconds for eight hours a day. And could she not have foreseen that this was a possibility? It seemed that there was a kind of a lack of concern. I mean, not that artists are supposed to please their public, but on the other hand, you know, there just seemed to be a lack of feeling for anyone who might visit the show.
Grace Anna: Yeah, her work definitely feels provocative in that sense. I am an admirer of Yoko Ono, but I've found it very hard to actually enjoy her artwork, especially her singing. Her singing is really hard to sit through and listen to. So I completely understand in that sense.
We haven't done an episode on Lee Miller yet, but Kiki de Montparnasse was also a muse to Man Ray and it kind of changed my personal opinion of Man Ray as well. I think I found in their dynamic that he ultimately really struggled with being with a successful woman, who at that point she was a performer and a painter and this socialite and beloved by this community. And I think that kind of had them bump heads towards the end and it sort of seems like Lee Miller moved on from him for similar reasons as well- that maybe he wasn't giving her the recognition or he was kind of keeping her small when she knew she was a talented photographer and had these greater ambitions. So that was definitely an artist that…you just have a more complex view of now. And again, it was a different time, but yeah, he was one that my perspective on him changed a bit.
Francine: Well, he also taught her…it's unclear whether Lee would've become a photographer without Man Ray. I mean, he taught her how to function in the dark room, and how to arrange photographs. Because until then she'd always been on the other side of the camera and suddenly with him, she was learning what it was like to take pictures. So, you could say he was a big attention hog, but on the other hand, would she have had the career that she subsequently had without him? Who knows? It would've been harder. I mean, she would've had to find someone to show her how to do it.
Grace Anna: Yeah, I guess again, it's complex. There's this give and take. With Elizabeth Siddell similarly, Rosetti taught her a lot about making her own art. He gave her art supplies for her to make her own paintings, and a studio space. So in that sense, there is, especially with these women who are trying to then form their own careers or develop their own artistic practices, that they are in a sense indebted to the artists who originally teach them how to do these artistic practices.
Francine: Well, if they're lucky, they move beyond them. And if they're not lucky, like Elizabeth Siddell, they don't
Grace Anna: Yeah, I feel like she tried in her own way. I mean, she had John Ruskin who became sort of a patron of hers, but ultimately it was very hard for her to push back against Ruskin and Rosetti..the controlling men in her life and ultimately turned to laudanum and drugs as an escape.
Francine: Well, the opium addiction wasn't all that great of a help. And it was available over the counter. It wasn't such a big deal. I mean, some massive percentage of people, especially women, were doing laudanum all the time.
Grace Anna: Yeah, it was very overly prescribed. I remember reading they even would dip a little bit of it on baby bottles to stop babies from crying. So it was definitely well beyond a typical sort of addiction. It was prescribed to her, it was over prescribed to people, and it was an incredibly addictive substance.
What do you feel is the importance of sharing these stories and how did learning about these women change the way you viewed, say, Man Ray’s photographs or Balanchine’s ballets? How did learning their stories change your perspective and why is it important that people know their stories?
Francine: Well again, I chose them out of all the hundreds of women you mentioned that could have been chosen, because their lives seemed interesting to me and because they were admirable. It was just interesting to me to see what women had done at times, especially when it was really impossible for women to do much of anything, and how courageous and inventive and gifted they were…muse or no muse or artist or no artist to be able to forge their own lives for themselves at a time when that was much more difficult even than it is today. I mean, there's still problems as we know, which are multiplying. But I won't say that it increased my respect for women in general because, I mean, it couldn't be increased. It was so high to begin with, but it did make me realize that our modern belief that we don't have to live the lives that our parents or grandparents or grandmothers destined us for was not really so exclusively modern…that that had always existed.
Grace Anna: Yeah. And these women rebelled in the ways they could and they built off each other. I also think it's just so many of these big names like Salvador Dali, Man Ray, Balanchine…everyone knows their names, but we don't all know the strong and brave women behind them, helping them create their work. And I think your book is really important in the sense that it shares their stories and focuses on them and their contributions to these famous artists across the mediums.
I had never really considered…obviously I've read Alice in Wonderland and grew up on the movies, but I never really considered Alice the person. And it really is important to remember that a lot of these artworks and even Freud and modern psychology…that, there were women behind a lot of these men that we know their names and stories, but the women's names and stories are not as universally shared. So it's really important that you shared these stories, and I thank you for doing that.
Francine: Thank you, Grace.
Grace Anna: On that note, I did really love this quote in your book and I was gonna read it. I thought it really got to the heart of your project and our project here at ArtMuse and about muses. You write of these nine women: “Every one of them was extraordinary. Either for who she was or what she did, or for the unique and heroic qualities with which her artist endowed her. Each was a product of her time and each moved outside and beyond it. Either through personal courage, originality, and determination, or through her mysterious role in the process that turns experience into art. The lives of the muses at once illuminate and deepen the mysteries of Eros and creativity as each muse redraws the border between the human and the divine, the mortal and the eternal”.
And I just thought that was a really beautiful quote and again, really gets at the heart and importance of these women and the bravery that they showed and the contributions they made towards these works of art. And maybe there is a divine aspect, and I loved your discussion of that too. That art also has a divine aspect to it. Often artists don't actually know how ideas came to them, and yet there are also these real people that do inspire. So. I think the inclusion of both…and maybe they represent that divinity in their own ways as well. But I just thought that was such a beautiful passage and such a beautiful way to get at the heart of the idea of the muse.
Francine: Thank you. Thank you.
Grace Anna: Before we end, I just wanted to ask if there was anything else you wanted to add in terms of the women we've discussed or the idea of muses in general.
Francine: No, I think we've kind of covered it. I'm so glad that you got what I was trying to do in this book, and you really did, so thank you.
Grace Anna: Well thank you so much for joining me today. For everyone listening, I am gonna put the link to purchase the Lives of the Muses in the show notes of the episode because I know our listeners will really enjoy your collection of stories, and again, it goes well beyond visual art and most of the women in the book we have not yet discussed on ArtMuse, so it'll give a nice variety for our listeners to learn about other amazing women. So thank you so much for being here today.
Francine: Thank you.
Thank you so much for listening to this special episode from our ArtMuse ArtTalks series in which I interview the author Francine Prose. We have included a link to purchase The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired, in the show notes of this episode. I cannot recommend The Lives of the Muses enough and know our listeners will find the life- stories of these nine women fascinating.
We will be releasing more interviews this summer as part of our ArtMuse ArtTalks series as we prepare for Season Three. Season Three of ArtMuse will return this October.
In the meantime, we cannot wait to continue to share these fruitful conversations with you.
Until next time, bye for now.
