LEONORA CARRINGTON and MAX ERNST.
When we think of the perfect picture of "A life Romantic"...I'm inclined to think of the great Surrealist's.Their chosen fields of working were about inventing brand new forms of expression which were mainly based on chance. Max was one of the outstanding exponents of art in the 20th century.
In 1938 Max Ernst fell in love with a young painter, Leonora Carrington...they moved in together in a place called SAINT-MARTIN-D' ARDECHE.......where they discovered and bought a tumbledown seventeenth century farmhouse. Together they renovated the entire complex. Max Ernst, who was persecuted as a "degenerate artist", had to leave Europe after being interned a number of times. Leonora Carrington fled to Spain while he was in German internment. In Marseilles Max Ernst was reunited with many of the Surrealists as well as the collector, PEGGY GUGGENHEIM. Peggy paid for him to fly to New York in 1941. Peggy married Max to save him. Their marriage was about that. In New York...Max meets Dorothea Tanning and once again he finds an old house on Long Island and gets started on making it their nest.
PEGGY GUGGENHEIM.
Salvador Dali and Gala Dali were also very well placed in terms of their romantic encounters.
She was the significant other of the french poet...Paul Elouard....before Dali decided to call her his own.The jewel couple were very liked across Paris in the 1940's and as Picasso reigned as "The King Of Paris"...in the painting world....Salvador was a close and passionate friend and confidante. It was Picasso who suggested that Dali and Gala should head to America to sell his surrealist sculpture's to the well to do of the American Rockefeller's.......Thirty foot high florescent orange Polar Bear Statues for the lobby of the Rockefeller Centre. Gala and Salvador were the toast of the town. He arrived back in Paris a wealthy man. The band of artists working in Paris during and after the war....were well connected.......with each other....helped each other get through to the next miraculous thing coming their way. Spaniards like Joan Miro Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali....head the brigade of talent and insight for the intelligenzia.......bohemian Paris would never be the same again. Dali many years later told "La Monde".........."When my Gala dies....I will eat her...she will not be eaten by worms or burnt in a fire.....she will live in me".
JACKSON POLLOCK and LEE KRASNER.
An American Saga....was a book written about the Jackson Pollock's life...for me it has to be the best thing ever written about the native roots and cosmopolitan strivings of American modern art.
The Prologue begins and opens with the words of Pollock....."I'm going to kill myself".....carried by his demons Jackson Pollock....was inconsolable.
Lee Krasner took him on when not one single person would even look in his direction.
She managed him..loved him...held him..became his mother/confidante/lover/agent/advocate/mentor and enemy. Love, they say, heightens our senses and lowers our perceptions......this is true of their turbulent lives...to the very frantic end. She was quoted as saying...."He was as exciting as hell".
Falling
Into
The arms
of an
artistic type ......is invincible.
ALFRED STIEGLITZ / GEORGIA O'KEEFFE.
Lee Krasner was such a great painter! She virtually put her career on hold throughout her relationship with Pollock. He told her, "There's only room for one painter in this marriage". And though they both had studios at their Long Island house, he took the barn outside, while she had a cramped room upstairs, in the house. She acted as his personal assistant and managed his career at the expense of her own. It was only after his death that she was recognised for her great contribution to American art.
ReplyDelete