The Love Lives of the Artists: Five Stories of Creative Intimacy

by Daniel Bullen

As the oldest of institutions, marriage seems outdated in modern times, when each individual is encouraged to break with tradition in order to fulfill him- or herself. And so artists like Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo seem to be paving the way toward a brave, new kind of marriage, where spouses would be allowed—even encouraged—to fulfill different aspects of themselves in outside relationships. Shared creativity, they believed, would transcend their jealousies and compensate their through art, they would rise above conventional marital fidelity, and prove a higher fidelity to art and to themselves.

The Love Lives of the Artists tells the stories of Rainer Maria Rilke and Lou Andreas-Salomé, Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O'Keeffe, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Diego and Frida, and Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin—five couples who approached their relationships with the same rebellious creativity as they practiced in their art. From their early artistic development and their first experiences in love, to their artistic marriages and their affairs—and then to their fights and reconciliations, addictions, nervous breakdowns and continued creativity— The Love Lives of the Artists describes the promise and the price of freedom and creativity in love.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, History, Relationships, Book Club

336 pages, Hardcover

First published October 25, 2011

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Stephen Kiernan]

A worthy idea for a book-- plumbing the great romances of passionate artists to see how they influenced and inspired one another -- in this volume contains too little fire.
If you want to understand the dynamics and energy of Steiglitz and O'Keefe, read GEORGIA by Dawn Tripp. If you want to watch Henry Miller and Anais Nin tryst themselves to a higher creative plane, read her diaries or at least HENRY AND JUNE.
If you read this book, though, expect to endure sentences like this (after Sartre and deBeauvoir reconnect in Paris): "With his nearly nihilistic willingness to trust his own chaotic experience -- and to jettison all absolutes and external authorities -- he 'demolished' Beauvoir's 'carefully assembled pluralistic philosophy,' which she said had 'authorized me to look upon my heart as the arbiter of good and evil.'
Authorize me, baby. Authorize me again.
I read 103 pages, flipped through to 228, then put it aside.

[lucy]

Unbelievable book. So touching, moving. A must for anyone in art, creative fields, or looking to understand how love and art can heal the painful human quest for peace of mind, contribution, and meaning in life. As an extra bonus, this book gave adequate credit to Salome on her influence on Rilke's successful/best writing, which few accounts do.