ARTISTS IN LOVE, part 18

Augustus John on the cover of Time Magazine, by Boris Chaliapin

It's difficult to think of an artist, or a human being, who made a bigger, noisier mess of his love life than Augustus John.

Raised in a strict religious home, he rebelled with a life of free love and anarchy.  He proudly crowed, "Without much thought I act on the impulse of the moment."

John impetuously eloped with a fellow art student, Ida Nettleship, but shortly after they were married he began courting a second art student, Dorelia McNeill.  While Ida sat home tending to their new baby, John was pleading with Dorelia to pose for him in the nude ("Why not sit for me in your soft skin, and no other clothes-- Are you ashamed?  Nonsense!  It's not as if you were very fat.").

Sketch of Dorelia by Augustus John

Ida gradually accepted that in order to hang onto her husband, she would have to consent to living in a menage a trois with Dorelia.  When Dorelia remained unconvinced, John enlisted his sister, Gwen (who was also Dorelia's art teacher) to write a remarkable letter urging Dorelia to join with John and Ida.

Gwen John by her brother Augustus

Soon they were sleeping three in a bed, with their small children sleeping in boxes scattered around their home.  Having a wife and mistress did not deter Augustus from dozens of affairs with bar maids, art students and an occasional countess.  He courted them with portraits, bad poetry and wildly indiscreet letters (to a secretary, Alick Schepler, he wrote, "O pray, retain the bloom till I come.  Do not wash till I see you").

Alick Schepler by Augustus John

John impulsively offered to marry Schepler. His biographer, Michael Holroyd, recounts how he explained his decision to his existing wife and his mistress:

domestic life, even of the unorthodox variety with which they had experimented,  smothered him; he told them of his feelings for Alick, that his painting could not advance without her, that he needed her.  There was nothing too personal in all this-- but he could not be restricted....  

Unfortunately, John's confession was wasted because Alick turned him down after discovering that his plan was to set up a second menage a trois with Alick and her friend, artist Frieda Bloch. All of these women gave up on a traditional fairy tale romance for a small piece of the great artist's attention.

What does the example of Augustus John teach us about "Artists in Love"? It certainly demonstrates the manipulative power of art. Alick claimed she never noticed that she was beautiful until John drew her. When he tried to lure Frieda Bloch into joining his second menage, he offered as bait his mystical artistic secrets ("I will find her a studio-- and I will show her things I'm pretty sure she never suspected.") To justify his philandering to Ida and Dorelia, he explained that freedom was essential to the greatness of his art. Everyone was willing to make exceptions for "the King of Bohemia." But for those who, like me, have trouble accepting love as a heedless thing, John offers little.

Naw, the "artists in love" I'm referring to in this post are the women John mistreated, the ones who might have gone on to become substantial artists and independent voices in a more fair era.  An interesting thing happened amongst these women as they sacrificed their artistic careers, supported each other, and raised their many children communally.  Some fell in love with each other, apparently with greater profundity and fidelity than John was able to offer.  Ida, Dorelia and Gwen became particularly close.

Gwen's self portrait: clothed and confident

Gwen's self portrait: nude and vulnerable

Ida and Dorelia "eloped" together to Paris for a long break from John and his "nervous abberrations." John came to visit them between flings, but the two built a meaningful daily life together.

Gwen's portrait of Dorelia

 Gwen and Dorelia had their own adventures.  Reports Holroyd:

The source of Gwen's upsurge in happiness was Dorelia.  On an impulse she proposed that the two of them should leave London and walk to Rome-- and Dorelia, once she was certain that Gwen was not joking, calmly agreed.... The two girls were as excited as if it were an elopement....Gwen brushed aside [August's] objections, would not even listen to his arguments...and they set off  'carrying a minimum of belongings and a great deal of painting equipment....' At each village they would try to earn some money by going to the inn and either singing or drawing portraits of those men who would pose.... At night they slept in the fields, under haystacks or, when they were lucky, in stables, lying on each other to feel a little warmer, covering themselves with their portfolios and waking up encircled by curious little congregations of farmers, gendarmes and stray animals.  Between the villages...they would practice their singing.  They lived mostly on grapes and bread, a little beer, some lemonade.  There were many adventures; losing their tempers with the women, outwitting the men, dying of fright, crying with laughter.  

During John's long absences, these women responded to their raw deal by developing strong, supportive passionate relationships.  When Dorelia left Ida for just a few days to visit her mother, Ida wrote her: "Darling D.... Love from [Ida] to the prettiest little bitch in the world....I was bitter cold last night in bed without your burning hot, not to say, scalding body next to me."

The great naturalist author Loren Eisley wrote about one wintry evening when a street light was casting an odd shadow in his front yard.  Fetching a ladder,  he discovered that a spider had saved herself from her frosty environment by spinning her web next to the warmth of the streetlight:

"Good Lord" I thought, "she has found herself a kind of minor sun and is going to upset the course of nature."....There she was... a great black and yellow embodiment of the life force, not giving up to either frost or step ladders.  She ignored me and went on tightening and improving her web.  I stood over her on the ladder, a faint snow touching my cheeks and surveyed her universe.... a world where even a spider refuses to lie down and die if a rope can still be spun on to a star.... Here was something that ought to be passed on to those who will fight our final freezing battle with the void.  I thought of setting it down carefully as a message to the future: In the days of the frost seek a minor sun.  

ARTISTS IN LOVE, part 15

In 1886, Camille Claudel dictated a contract for her lover to sign. Claudel was only a young art student but her lover, the great sculptor Rodin, obediently wrote down every word:

In the future starting from this day of October 12, 1886, I will have as my Student only Mademoiselle Camille Claudel, who will be my sole protege.... I will accept no other students to avoid producing, by chance, rival talents, although I suppose that such naturally gifted artists occur very rarely.... Under no excuse will I ever go to visit Madame X again, to whom I will no longer teach sculpture. After the exhibition in May we will leave for Italy, remaining there at least six months together in indissoluble union after which Mademoiselle Camille will be my wife.
-- A. Rodin

Camille's contract doesn't specify what Rodin received in exchange, but his letters made it pretty darn clear:

I only had to meet you for everything to take on unknown life, for my gray existence to flare up in a bonfire. Thank you, for its to you that I owe the entire measure of heaven that I’ve had in this life.… My dearest, down on both knees I embrace your fair body.

Rodin met Camille when he was 42 and living with his long term companion, Rose Beuret. Rose was a seamstress who shared none of his friends or interests, but she took care of his daily needs and provided him with order and stability.

Camille took a job as Rodin's apprentice but critics agree she was so talented that she soon became a major influence on his art. The two worked side by side, creating beautiful and sensuous objects:




When the time was right, Camille disrobed for Rodin. Her nude form became the inspiration for some of his greatest works of art.


Rodin soon became a captive of his love for Camille. He followed her around, begging her to see him:

My savage sweetheart, Yesterday evening I scoured our usual places (for hours) without finding you. How sweet death would be!... I can’t take it any longer. I can’t go another day without seeing you.... I love you furiously. Rest assured dear Camille, that I have no liking for any other woman, that my entire soul belongs to you.

For years Rodin and Camille continued their partnership commingling art and love.

Statue by Camille

Eventually, the story of Camille and Rodin spiraled to a tragic end. He began to withdraw from the intense demands of their relationship, preferring the calm companionship of his "gray existence" with Rose. Camille became despondent, making angry sculptures about abandonment.


Before long Camille sank into mental illness, screaming in the streets that Rodin was trying to kill her and steal her ideas. She was placed in an asylum where she spent the rest of her life while Rodin married the talentless Rose and became wildly successful. His lack of passion for Rose did not seem to hinder his ability to make passionate art.




The fulgurous combination of Rodin and Camille emitted some illuminating sparks for us:

Rodin was better at creating art about love, but Camille was better at loving. She followed her passion for Rodin right over a cliff, while the more cowardly Rodin accompanied her only as far as the edge, then backed away.

If one thing is certain from the long history of art, it's that you can't make art and make love at the same time (or, in the words of Robert Coane, "you can't drool and draw.") Every artist who has tried to combine the two (and which artist over 18 has not?) ends up with artistic mush. Love requires acceptance and commitment while art requires discrimination and challenge. As much as we yearn to merge art and love, it seems that the price of great art remains detachment. Poet Peter Viereck wrote,

Art, being bartender, is never drunk
And magic that believes itself must die

Perhaps the separation between art and experience is the source of the very ache that leads to art.

ARTISTS AT WAR: GILBERT BUNDY

Gilbert Bundy (1911-1955) painted with a light and elegant brush.


Look at the graceful way he handles the bouquet of flowers on the table:



... or the foliage and chandelier in the background:



Bundy gained fame as a cartoonist in the pages of Esquire magazine in the 1930s. He painted delightful watercolors of the leisure class at play, specializing in millionaire sportsmen and glamorous show girls.









High society photos from this period show the handsome young illustrator out on the town, dressed in his tuxedo and escorting some beautiful young chanteuse to gala parties. 
 

 Here we see Bundy in his studio with yet another gorgeous model:





Bundy fell in love with the right girl, married her and had a baby daughter. Life was sweet.

But when World War II came along, Bundy decided for some reason to leave it all behind and volunteer to work as an artist in the South Pacific for Hearst newspapers.





In 1944, Bundy was accompanying the Marine invasion of Tarawa when a Japanese shell exploded in his small landing craft. Bundy survived but was trapped beneath the bodies of four Marines. The wreckage of the craft lodged on a coral reef within range of enemy gunners. For most of the day, Bundy remained pinned beneath the corpses, drenched with blood, as enemy bullets and shells strafed the remnants of the craft. When it finally turned dark, Bundy freed himself and swam away from the wreck, taking his chances spending a night alone in shark infested waters rather than endure another day under fire. The Hearst newspaper reported, "He was believed dead for three days. His reappearance startled his Marine mates."



Bundy returned to the U.S. but never recaptured the joy in his pre-war art. On the anniversary of his ordeal Bundy committed suicide, thereby rejoining his fallen comrades.

Sometimes I think about how a sensitive, observant artist such as Bundy perceived such horrors. Of course, I also wonder what lured him to leave his loving wife and daughter in order to paint war to begin with.

Arthur Koestler wrote persuasively about why artists and writers chose to immolate themselves in the flames of World War II. They were not fearless patriots or fanatical believers. To the contrary, many believed that "to love one's country is vulgar, to love God is archaic and to love mankind is sentimental." Yet, some other force drew the artists toward their doom: "there is no escape, and he feels it; so he goes on trying at least to name the nameless force that destroys him."

In trying to "name that nameless force," Koestler wrote of his friend, the young writer Richard Hillary who became a fighter pilot and was shot down in the Battle of Britain. Hillary was burned beyond recognition. After months of painful reconstructive surgery, his face was horribly disfigured and his hands resembled bird claws. Still, some of the most beautiful young women in London pursued him. Rather than embrace whatever semblance of beauty that remained in life, Hillary pressured the air force into letting him fly again and the next mission ended him. Koestler wrote that Hillary

flies like a moth into the flame; and having burned his wings crawls back into it again.... Why then, in God's name, did he go back?.... [H]e was the only one left , and he had to go on paying the tribute [to his fallen comrades]. For the survivor is always a debtor. He thought he came back [to civilization] for the fellowship with the living , while he already belonged to the fraternity of the dead.

Hillary's motives, like Bundy's, were more psychologically complex than mere patriotism. He wrote that people who feel guilt for "imaginary debts" account for many of civilization's great accomplishments:

You could not expect healthy motives to lead to the morbid act of self-sacrifice. The prosperity of the race was based on those who paid imaginary debts. Tear out the roots of their guilt and nothing will remain but the drifting sand of the desert.

Art and war together in the same petrie dish can result in situations that are not always easy to understand, but which are worth investigating. I will offer a collection of such stories in the months ahead.

ARTISTS IN LOVE, part eight

Edward Galinski, a Polish student, scratched this portrait on the wall of cell 18, block 11, at Auschwitz.

Edward was imprisoned by the Nazis in 1940 for opposing Germany's invasion of Poland. He worked at forced labor in the camp. One day, Edward was assigned to repair buildings at the women's camp next door. There he met Mally Zimetbaum-- a beautiful, doe eyed girl imprisoned for being a Jew.

Edward was completely smitten. He started talking with Mally under the watchful eye of the guards. After several weeks of furtive exchanges, the couple found a way to pass secret notes back and forth between the two camps. Against all odds, through the barbed wire and brutal guards, love bloomed.

Edward realized that Mally would eventually be killed in the gas chambers, so he came up with a daring escape plan. On June 24, 1944, he put on a stolen SS uniform and escorted Mally through the front gates using forged paperwork and passes that Mally had obtained. Once outside the camp, they disappeared into the tall grain and headed for the Czech border.




In his book about Auschwitz, Polish author Wojciech Kielar wrote that when the escape was discovered, every prisoner in Auschwitz spoke about nothing but Edward and Mally. The young couple in love became a symbol of freedom and hope for a new generation.

Edward and Mally had twelve days together. It would have to be enough.

Mally was captured by a German patrol at the Czech border. Edward was safely in the clear, but when he saw that Mally had been captured, he returned and surrendered to be with her. Back at Auschwitz, Edward and Mally were thrown into isolation cells in the basement of block 11. There they were tortured for details of their escape and the names of any accomplices. Another prisoner in block 11, Zbigniew Kaczkowski, recalled that Edward had a secret way of checking at the end of each day to see if Mally had survived: "Every night, pressing his lips to a crack in the door, [Edward] would whistle a certain melody; he would get a reply, the same melody from Mally in a distant cell."


Edward was held in cells 18, 20 and 23. There he paced, desperate and helpless while his beloved Mally was tortured down the hall. In each cell, he drew a portrait of Mally on the wall and wrote their names together.


Edward and Mally never did betray their helpers. Their captors executed them in front of the entire camp to discourage future escapes. Edward was hung from the gallows in the male prison yard. He shouted his last words, "long live Poland," with the noose around his neck. One historical account recalled that at the moment of his death, "an anonymous voice shouted out from among the prisoners: 'Hats off!' and the entire camp, as one, removed caps in a defiant salute." Mally tried to kill herself on the gallows but was intercepted and stomped to death by SS men in front of the women prisoners.



I would like to say two things about the sad story of Edward and Mally.

The first has to do with the role of art. I find it strangely moving that human beings turn to pictures for solace in times of great distress. When the woman he loved was being tortured down the hall and there wasn't a thing he could do about it, Edward drew a picture of her face. There is no logical explanation for this. Why should lines scratched on a wall make him feel closer to Mally? Images contain powerful magic, even at the outer extremes of bearable human experience.

My second point is about-- for want of a better word-- love. Sometimes I think about what Edward and Mally were able to condense into their twelve desperate days of freedom.

Rabindranath Tagore once wrote, "the butterfly counts not months but moments and has time enough." Generally I take little comfort from this because humans are different from butterflies.

But in the case of Edward and Mally one hopes that whatever they shared during those twelve days was enough to sustain them during the ordeal ahead. Years ago Richard Kennedy wrote a fairy tale called the Dark Princess, about two would be lovers, a princess and a jester. The two could never have a life together. In fact, they could not even look at each other or talk to each other. The sum total of their life together was one brief moment as they jumped off a cliff and were able to touch once before perishing in the sea below. Kennedy wrote the following about that touch:

And in that moment they touched, the sun rose a million times for them , and the Princess and the Fool could see each other and all the things of life and the world.... And that moment they touched outlasted the life of the King and Queen, and outlasted the life of the Kingdom. And that moment they touched is lasting still, and will outlast us, too.

ARTISTS IN LOVE, part eleven

James Montgomery Flagg had an ugly view of beauty.

"I have never had any slight interest in homely ladies," he said, "no matter how charming and intelligent they are reputed to be. They do not exist for me." And even if a woman satisfied his standards for beauty, she'd better not nag or be jealous about his many infidelities:

[I]f I ran the world...I'd have my FBI corral all the ugly people [along with] all nagging and jealous women,...and take them out to Death Valley and drop an atomic bomb on them.

He also believed that beauty, at least in women, diminished as they approached middle age:

Usually former models of mine whom I don't see for a quarter of a century have become distinctly middle aged.... in an almost invariably shocking way....I occasionally tell these dames they look like zombies. They naturally resent it and usually come back with "Well, you don't look so hot yourself!" But that has no sting whatever....

Flagg never ran out of of girlfriends to mistreat (will some kind female reader puhleeze write in and explain this?), but toward the end of his long career, Flagg fell head over heels in love for the first time.



In his autobiography Flagg described Ilse Hoffman, a young model and photographer, as "the most important thing in my life." Newly humbled, Flagg admitted, "I shall have to testify that there is such a thing as love at first sight. And I do mean love." The two had a passionate romance. He painted her as often as she would permit.

Ultimately, Flagg was too much of an emotional miser for a successful relationship:

After about three years there came a change in our relations-- a shadow hard to define... a contributing cause may have been ...a growing feeling on her part that she wanted to get married. I didn't....Gradually Ilse's attitude toward me began to change.

Ilse moved into an apartment of her own.

When I asked if she'd give me an extra key, she refused with obviously false excuses. I reminded her that she had a key to my place that made her welcome at any time, night or day. I told her I had no notion of using it, that I wanted her to make the gesture. Nothing doing. Then I knew.

Flagg became deeply despondent over losing the love of his life. "I walked and walked, uptown, not really knowing were I was going. I was hurt to death." One would hope that this painful experience caused Flagg to know moments of thoughtfulness. However, all evidence points to the contrary.

When Ilse found another man who was willing to commit to her, Flagg had a bitter and typically clueless reaction:

I was saturated with disgust for Ilse...I said to myself: 'I truly loved Ilse. No other woman has meant a thing to me-- from the moment I saw her.' Eventually she married this young man, who was some sort of stock market runner. Yes, she was a married woman. She'd got what she desired. A wedding ring.

Flagg never loved again. He had a sour and lonely old age. He said at the end of his life,

I can't stand the look of my present age. All my life I have been a worshipper of that beauty of the human form you see in some men and women....Is it any wonder that I don't like to look at the physical mess and mental dullness that has set in for me? As far back as I can remember, I have been in the limelight; now I'd rather be dead than be passed by, ignored.

Flagg's final self portrait is haunted by the painting of Ilse over his shoulder, and the life that might have been. The old man ruminated, "A roll in the bed with honey isn't love. And the tragic part of it is that you never learn this until you're past the age for it to happen to you again."

We sometimes like to believe that art sensitizes us and heightens our awareness of the beauty around us. But Flagg had a circle of compassion no wider than one of his pen nibs, and he paid the price for it.

ARTISTS IN LOVE, part ten

In both art and life, the sculptor Gaston Lachaise was famously devoted to his muse, Isabel.



Lachaise was working in Paris in 1901 when he first saw Isabel Nagle strolling through the gardens by the Seine. Isabel was a married woman on vacation from the United States. Lachaise later recalled, she “immediately became the primary inspiration which awakened my vision...."



The young artist appeared at her door every day until she agreed to let him draw her portrait. By the time she left Paris to return home to Boston, the couple was in love .

Lachaise could not live apart from Isabel. He gave up his friends and family in Paris, learned to speak English and followed her to Boston with just $30 in his pocket. There, he persuaded her to leave her husband, a conservative local businessman.



Gaston and Isabel fled strict Boston society to romp nude in the remote woods of Maine. They swam and frolicked in the phosphorescent sea at night. They wrote bad love poetry to each other (as is every couple's right). A sample from Gaston:

I sing my hymn to you,
You the goddess for whom I searched,
Whom I express in my every work,
Have made me a God.

Isabel and Gaston were married, and Gaston devoted his entire career to sculpting monuments to her ample belly, powerful haunches and pendulous breasts.







Years later he wrote, “through her the splendor of life was uncovered for me and the road of wonder began widening….” It must have been somewhere along that wider road that he started sculpting Isabel opened up like some giant fecund orchid.



I used to think Lachaise's art was pretty uncomplicated. Then I read that Isabel was in reality just five feet, two inches tall and weighed a mere 110 pounds. Whoa.

Oliver Sacks observed that "the world isn't given to us-- we make it with our nervous systems." In art as in love, what we bring to and invest in the object of our affection plays a significant role in what we perceive.

Lachaise did not simply copy Isabel as nature created her. Through her he distilled abstract shapes and contours of eros. Willa Cather once said we can find happiness by being "dissolved into something complete and great." As far as I can tell, Lachaise followed that formula to become a very happy guy.

WANDA GAG

Our society encourages artists to exaggerate their eccentricities.  Musicians, writers and graphic artists compete to distinguish themselves by dressing and behaving outlandishly.  A nice couple of bucks can be made from appearing as kinky and outrageous as possible.

Such poseurs are different from genuine eccentrics-- the ones who risk everything because they just can't help what they are.  The difference can be seen in the authenticity of their work.

Wanda Gag (1893-1946) the illustrator and author of important children's books, was one of the true eccentrics in American illustration.

 

The strong willed daughter of a Bohemian artist, Gag grew up in a remote corner of rural Minnesota.  Her  parents died when she was young, leaving her impoverished and responsible for her six younger siblings.  She fought to keep her family together, rejecting efforts to divide the children into foster homes.

Relying on just $8 per month from the county, Wanda scratched for pennies.  She sold little knicknacks and pictures to feed her young siblings.  She trained in St. Paul to become a professional illustrator but found the lessons too confining:

I cannot bear to think of following in the footsteps of others.  And this is what they are teaching us to do here in Illustration.  We are doing covers for the Saturday Evening Post, and everyone has a Leyendecker cover at their side which they consult and worship while working at their own sketch.

Wanda was intent on developing her own style, one that combined art and real life, so after providing for her siblings Wanda left Minnesota in 1917 to become an artist in New York City.  An early feminist and suffragist, Wanda was politically radical and artistically uncompromising.  She practiced "free love," believing that an active sex life was a wellspring for artistic creativity.  She developed a series of odd theories about nature, aesthetics and fertility. She designed and made her own clothes for an "artistic" look.

Shortly after her arrival in New York Wanda started doing illustrations for the communist newspaper, New Masses.

She began receiving steady commercial assignments but found them unfulfilling so she cut her commercial ties and rented a ramshackle home in the country (which she named Tumble Timbers). There she could work on her fine art without distraction.  (Also without heat, running water or bathrooms.  She ate food from her garden and cooked on a kerosene stove.  Her lean years in Minnesota had made her fearless about poverty.)

Wanda's drawing of Tumble Timbers

Wanda's drawing of her bed at Tumble Timbers, inscribed to her lover Carl

Her younger sister wrote a song poking fun at Wanda ("If she thinks its funny that you work for money / Don't blame her-- 'cause she's an artist!")

The stairway at Macy's

 

In 1928 Wanda hit it big with her first children's book, Millions of Cats, a deeply odd story about an elderly couple inundated with "millions and billions and trillions of cats."  They are ultimately saved when (spoiler alert) the cats kill each other over who is the prettiest.  The drawings and hand lettered text are in Wanda's distinctive voice, very unusual for the period.

My favorite book by Gag is her even more peculiar story, "The Funny Thing," in which a strange dragon-like "aminal" eats the dolls of little children until a weird baby faced man named Bobo (who lives in a cave) persuades the aminal to eat "jum-jills" (a food that Bobo invented from seed puddings and nut cakes) instead.  The aminal likes them because they make his tail grow longer (see illustration below, in which Jum-jills are rolled into balls and fed to him by birds).

 

If Wanda had any commercial sense she probably would have written sweet, condescending books for children but that was not in her DNA.   She said, "I aim to make the illustrations for children's books as much a work of art as anything I would send to an art exhibition."  Lo and behold, children recognized her authenticity so her books have remained classics for over 80 years.

With her success, Wanda was able to move from Tumble Timbers to a new home she called "All Creation" but her fortune did not change her personality.  In 1941 she confided to her diary,

I often think, "what if my readers and various people who apparently think highly of me, what if they knew that I can feel love for more than one man at the same time, that for years there have been three men on my love-horizon, that I indulge in bizarre and esoteric love rites with my lovers! Would they, knowing this, consider me less good?

 In her extensive private diaries Wanda spoke of sex joyfully but in euphemisms, calling it "treetops" or "experiences of a non-Euclidean variety."

Wanda with two of her lovers, Earle Humphreys and Adolph Dehn.  Apparently, her strong personality persuaded men to agree to these sharing arrangements.

Compare Wanda's secret diaries, and the price she paid for her nature, to the easy license for today's art celebrities such as Currin or Koons. Artists are coaxed and coddled to strive for eccentricity now. They have become wealthy flaunting the kind of weirdness that helped keep Wanda impoverished. Gag's drawings can't compete with the slick production values or technical skill of today's art but I find her genuine eccentricity a far more rewarding human experience.