3 women in the shadow of their companion

History has not always celebrated women artists as they deserve, to put them in the background. These women have often crossed paths with a better known, more powerful, or sometimes more manipulative in their history. Their destiny and their careers were profoundly changed. Illustration with three iconic portraits. Still massively invisible in art, women have long had to fight to be able to practice it on the same basis as men. Until the 19th century, School of Fine Arts was still forbidden to them. Yet, as in so many other disciplines , women excel until a man sometimes comes to break their career. This is what happened to Dora Maar, Margaret Keane, or Camille Claudel. Their names are still linked to those of their spouse and, thus, often relayed to muses' rank. Dora Maar: under the influence of Picasso When the name of Dora Maar is typed on Google and the words "lover and muse of Picasso" appear. For decades, it was first presented as an "element" that built the myth of the Spanish painter. Hidden in the shadow of the sacred monster of painting, Théodora Henriette Markovitch (her real name) was above all a photographer, painter and poet of the surrealist movement. Born in 1907 in Paris, Dora Maar first trained in painting with artist André Lhote, then at the School of Photography in Paris. The 8th art then becomes her true vocation. She created her studio making many fashion photographs, for advertisements or magazines, nude photos or photomontages. She walks the capital to capture moments of life, in search of a passer-by, a detail that will arouse her curiosity. Her talent and her reputation also lead her on film sets, notably for the film Le Crime de M. Lange by Jean Renoir. The "Tout-Paris" flock to her workshop. The young woman is successful and at 28, is financially and intellectually independent. With a keen eye on the world around her, she does not hide her political convictions from her artist friends. Dora Maar in her studio at 6 rue de Savoie in Paris. Copyright RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / Mathieu Rabeau, © ADAGP, © Estate Brassaï - RMN-Grand Palais, © Succession Picasso 2020 In 1936, Paul Éluard officially presented him with the man who would bring about his downfall: Pablo Picasso, then 55 years old. A romance is born between the two. But Picasso was an authoritarian and violent man. He pushes Dora Maar to stop photography to devote herself to the unique art that matters to her to better dominate her: painting. Her flourishing career then came to an end, making her financially dependent on her lover. Pablo regularly beats Dora. In 1937, he made fifty-three works called La Femme qui pleure, with his young mistress as his only model. Dora Maar serves as a model for Pablo Picasso, but her influence goes further. If the story goes that she would have only witnessed the creation of the famous painting Guernica , she would nevertheless have advised her spouse to create a work on the subject. "It is possible that Picasso's most political painting, the one which earned him this worldwide reputation as a committed artist, might not have existed without Dora Maar", explains Julie Beauzac in her podcast Venus plucking her pubic hair? Worn out by her daily life with the artist, Dora Maar will lose her sense of reality and sink into depression. Picasso will then send her to the famous psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who will prescribe her electroshock sessions without anesthesia (today, electroconvulsive therapy is still prescribed against depression ). She will then be interned in a psychiatric hospital, before separating from Picasso, and withdrawing from the world, in the Luberon. She will remain cloistered there and will turn in a fervent devotion to the Catholic religion until her death, in general ignorance, in 1997. Neon Magazine - Lisa Black
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