Artists in Love: From Picasso & Gilot to Christo & Jeanne-Claude, A Century of Creative and Romantic Partnerships

by Veronica Kavass

IPPY 2012 Gold Award in the Fine Arts category (Independent Publisher Book Awards)
ForeWord Reviews 2012 Book of the Year Award Finalist

For centuries, great artists have been drawn together in friendship and in love. In Artists in Love , curator and writer Veronica Kavass delves into the passionate and creative underpinnings of the art world's most provocative romances. From Picasso and Francoise Gilot to Lee Miler and Man Ray to Saul Steinberg and Hedda Sterne, Kavass' graceful and daring text provides a generous glimpse into the inspiring and sometimes tempestuous relationships between celebrated artists throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.

From poetic beginnings to shocking endings (and vice-versa), the various dimensions of the artist couple archetypes are ceaselessly explored.  Some are enduring and collaborative, yielding astonishing parallel bodies of work, as with Robert and Sonia Delaunay and Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Others are adoring and explosive, such as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Essays revealing what compelled these dynamic artists to partner, how their pairing influenced their work, and why their love may have faltered, are accompanied by lush illustrations of their art and documentary photographs of the couple.

The first visual book to explore this subject in such epic scope, Artists in Love  is a revelatory and riveting journey into the hearts and minds of artists in love.

Artists featured include:
Wassily Kandinsky & Gabriele Münter
Robert & Sonia Delaunay
Alfred Stieglitz & Georgia O’Keeffe
Jean Arp & Sophie Taeuber-Arp
Anni & Josef Albers
Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera
Lee Miller & Man Ray
Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight
Barbara Hepworth & Ben Nicholson
Elaine & Willem de Kooning
Pablo Picasso & Françoise Gilot
Jackson Pollock & Lee Krasner
Dorothea Tanning & Max Ernst
Nancy Spero & Leon Golub
Jasper Johns & Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Motherwell & Helen Frankenthaler
Christo & Jeanne-Claude
Bernd & Hilla Becher
Eva Hesse & Tom Doyle
Charles and Ray Eames
Kay Sage and Yves Tanguy
Saul Steinberg and Hedda Sterne
Robert Smithson & Nancy Holt
Niki de Saint Phalle & Jean Tinguely
Marina Abramović & Ulay
Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen
Bruce Nauman & Susan Rothenberg
David McDermott and Peter McGough

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Biography

256 pages, Hardcover

First published October 9, 2012

Reviews

[Rel]

Delightful

[Olga Vannucci]

The men better known for their art,
The women a force--just as smart.

[ML]

Excellent layout. Darling stories. Inspirational muses.

We are all so curious about the love life's of others. Is it because they are famous? Is it because it helps us gain perspective on our experiences? Maybe it is because love is something we're all really intrigued by in spite of what we admit to? My guess is the last one, but I am not admitting to anything.

It is wonderful to discover who inspired who; who consumed who; and who despised who. And then to examine how the relationship influenced the art created.

I would have liked to see some more culturally diverse couples, yet can imagine how challenging a book of this magnitude is to curate.

All in all, I truly love it.

[Toya Ricci]

Excellent exploration of relationships between artists and how it impacts on their work. The writing about the artists is very descriptive, but for some couples the details are a bit thin on detail and narrative.

[Aaron the Pink Donut]

Really, Really great book chronicling Artist and there muses.

[LaLa]

more interesting conceptually than specifically

[Grace]

Through vignettes, Kavass' Artists in Love chronicles the romantic relationships of 29 professional Modernist and Postmodernist artists. Some relationships were functional, some weren't, some were long term, some barely lasted, some were stereotypical, some were atypical. What's interesting is that past authors, when writing about artists and their romantic partners, often focused on the active, creative male artist, and his romantic interest (often a woman), a passive muse who they would draw inspiration from. Kavass throws tradition out the window, and focuses on couples who were both artists in their own right. Although some were (rightly or wrongly) overshadowed by their partners, others stood on equal footing, offering a glimpse into the shared lives of creatives and creativity.