The Militant Muse: Love, War and the Women of Surrealism

by Whitney Chadwick

‘I didn’t have time to be anyone’s Muse … I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist’ - Leonora Carrington

The Militant Muse documents what it meant to be young, ambitious and female in the context of an avant-garde movement defined by celebrated men whose educational, philosophical and literary backgrounds were often quite different from those of their younger lovers and companions.

Focusing on the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, Whitney Chadwick charts five intense, far-reaching female friendships among the surrealists to show how surrealism and the experiences of war, loss and trauma shaped individual women’s transitions from beloved muses to mature artists. Her vivid account includes the fascinating story of Claude Cahun and Suzanne Malherbe’s subversive activities in occupied Jersey, as well as the experiences of Lee Miller and Valentine Penrose at the frontline. The book draws on personal correspondence between the women, including the extraordinary letters between Leonora Carrington and Leonor Fini following the imprisonment of Carrington’s lover Max Ernst, and the letter Frida Kahlo shared with her friend and lover Jacqueline Lamba years after it was written in the 1930s during a difficult stay in Paris.

This thoroughly engrossing history brings a new perspective to the political context of surrealism, as well as fresh insights on the vital importance of female friendship to artistic and intellectual flowering.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Art History, Feminism, History, Biography

256 pages, Hardcover

Published October 5, 2017

About the author

Whitney Chadwick is a professor emerita at San Francisco State University. She has published on issues of gender and sexuality in surrealism, modernism, and contemporary art. Her book Women, Art, and Society (Thames and Hudson, 1990; fifth revised and updated edition, 2011) explores the history of women’s contributions to visual culture from the Middle Ages to the 21st century through an examination of the intersection of class, gender, race, and sexuality with culture, geography, politics, and criticism.

Chadwick received her PhD from the Pennsylvania State University. In 2003, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Gothenburg. Her research has been supported by fellowships at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute and the Forum for Advanced Studies in Arts, Languages, and Theology at Uppsala University.

(from https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/peo...)

Reviews

[Frankie · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a nice non-fiction to start pride month with!! A detailing of friendships between women in the 30s-40s surrealist scene, and a deeper examination of relationships that were mostly always told from the male perspective. The shattering of the one-dimensional “muse” to create a full-fledged portrait of fun, smart, defiant women who lived and loved and persisted through hardships with each other’s help.

I think the book’s best quality is the way the author contextualises the friendships, talking not only about how the women met and talked, but also about their personal involvement in historical events, society, political groups, etc., as well as each woman’s own values, struggles and wins, all of which influenced their works as well as their relationships!!

[Elise M · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a stunning and vital read for anyone with an interest in modern art. If you are anything like me then you experienced an art school education given by male professors who did not ever acknowledge the contributions of any female artists to the accepted story of those handful of 'great men' we have all come to recognise in the big galleries of the world. I left and gradually found over the years an entire substory going on, of women who fought to be given their dues in a world built against them from the start. It has been a joy rediscovering the real history of modern art and seeing the creations of these women, often in much smaller galleries, much smaller and less well attended exhibitions.

Only one of the women in this book has really gone on to ever be given her rightful place in history. This book is a wonderful overview to a very complicated network of female relationships that crossed social classes, countries, wars, and boundaries between friendship, sisterhood, and love affairs. Each women in this book is fighting to reach something inside herself, a task arduous enough. When you throw in the prospect of war and all the horrors it brings then you fall in love with the will to survive in these pages. This book, alongside Chadwick's other wonderful Women, Art and Society, should be textbook reading on any art history course.

[Adele Bsur · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved it! There is nothing more inspirational than learning about the women of surrealism as artists, outside of their secondary role as a muse or lover.

I especially love Valentine Penrose and Alice Paalen's relationship- so romantically driven, and explored through exchanges of letters and poetry. And though it isn't defined by their sexuality, Penrose found in Alice a sense of safety and refuge, a love that she sang to her through her art.

I think alot of ideas ring clear in this day and age- the constant struggle to denounce the prevailing images of feminity, the desire to be seen as individuals rather than devices of the male imagination. The list goes on. Anyway I really love this book ♡

[Gautam Bhatia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every year, at the end of August, I spend a week in Budapest, where I make it a point to visit one of my favourite bookstore-that-is-not-a-bookstore in the world: the Hungarian National Gallery’s museum shop. There has not been a single occasion where I have not found an absolutely wonderful new book in their collection, and this time it was The Militant Muse: Love, War and the Women of Surrealism.

The patriarchal world of art considered women as muses or models, but not as painters in their own right. The Militant Muse explores how surrealism in the inter-war years - under the leadership of Andre Breton - was particularly bad in this regard, and how, nonetheless, a set of women painters fought through these patriarchal barriers and crafted meaning in their own lives, through painting. In five chapters - dealing with five sets of intertwined lives - the book explores both the careers of these women painters, often in relation to, and against, male surrealist painters, but far more importantly, in relation to each other, as colleagues, comrades, and lovers. It also places it in the context of the global politics of the time - Stalinism, fascism, and the looming shadow of World War II. In these pages, I came across names that were familiar to me - such as Frida Kahlo - but, for the most part, names that I had not heard of before, such as Leonora Carrington.

One finishes this book with a renewed understanding of the truly corrosive impacts of patriarchy in the realm of art, but also, with a renewed determination to actively look beyond the received “canon,” to works that have been intentionally suppressed and erased, or just been allowed to be forgotten.

[Andrada · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite the years-long effort Whitney Chadwick clearly put into this book, I was left with the strange feeling that it was far too vague and touched only cursorily on the lives of the surrealist muses and their artistic aspirations. This is mostly due to the way she chose to structure the book as a story of the friendships between the women of the surrealist circle. This often does a disservice to one of the two women that are presented in parallel. Very little is said of Suzanne Malherbes and Leonor Fini for example and Jacqueline Lamba pales in Frida Kahlo’s shadow. I also didn’t appreciate the way the writer tried to shoehorn homosexuality into almost every friendship, even when there was little proof for it.

That being said, the Militant Muse gives a fascinating if perhaps too episodic look into the lives of the overlooked female surrealist artists that were often confined to the roles of muses, lovers and wives of the much more prominent male figures of the movement. The experiences presented are very diverse and it was interesting to follow their search for recognition and freedom of expression as they faced the gruesome realities of war and struggled against domesticity and the limited place accorded to women in the art world at the time.

[Victoria Sadler · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a year ago that I bought The Militant Muse, and even though I never intended it to be so long on the to-read pile, it really proved to be a wonder worth waiting for.

In these pages, Whitney centres the women at the heart of the pioneering inter-war Surrealist art movement – icons such as Leonora Carrington, Lee Miller, Claude Cahun, Frida Kahlo, and Valentine Penrose – and demonstrates how the complex web of intense friendship, love affairs and connections between them enabled these formidable and talented women to shirk off the ‘muse’ box that the men of the movement kept them in to flourish as formidable artists in their own right.

What’s great about Whitney’s writing and research is that, yes, of course there is the examination of the private lives of these women (simply because the likes of Breton and Ernst were critical parts of their lives) but this is not salacious writing; rather, Whitney links all the twists and turns and developments – whether they be love affairs or wars – to the impact on the artistic output of these women. Inspiring stuff here, for sure. This is a book I’m likely to return to again (and again).

[Ana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly compelling read about female artists in the Surrealist movement. Despite being very much an art history book (or a ‘women in art’ history book), it is an intensely enjoyable and *readable* (concise and plainly written) account of artists we know (like Frida Kahlo and Lee Miller) to those maybe lesser known like Claude Cahun and Jacqueline Lamba.

This book sells itself as a story of “the muses” and the world they made for themselves amongst the main characters of Surrealism - Andre Breton, Max Ernst, Diego Rivera, Roland Penrose - but it’s truth is so much more: a story of each woman as an artist in her own right - her triumphs, her trials, her politics.

A minor flaw is that it’s hard to understand what Chadwick’s focus is across the book and in each story - their most significant moments as artists, as friends or as women at that time in history? Almost seamless narratives are sometimes disrupted by the odd “analysis” that comes out of nowhere, as if she suddenly remembers the ‘art’ part of art history.

10/10 would re-read.

[Lynda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall pretty interesting historian book for art history nerds. I didn’t found the language particularly moving or interesting however it was fascinating to read how both “friendships among artists” and the war helped women in that artist era move beyond the passive role of muse (assigned to them by leader Andre Breton and the other men of the movement) toward the respect they deserved as artists and writers in their own right. It also does provides information on some artists that are seldom mentioned in general histories of the surrealist movement, even ones focusing on women, such as Valentine Penrose and Alice Rahon. It also provides interesting sidelights on better known ones, Leonora Carrington and Frida Kahlo.

[ISRA · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. Informative though written a bit densely. Not quite like a textbook but dry and heavy due to the condensed amount of detailed information. The book alternates the relationships between the women as well as their personal lives that actually occurred concurrently making the read disorganized and a thing to puzzle piece for the whole perspective time. The inclusion of Frida Kahlo and Lenor Fini as surrealist as they moved in their circle didn’t really demonstrate them as muses so much as plot devises.

[Grace Pooley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amazing primary research conducted by the author however I think this book would have been better as a journal article. It felt like there was a lot of filler that detracted from the core subject: the friendships between female surrealists during the war. The chapter on Claude Cahun was fantastic !

[josé almeida · Rating 4 out of 5]

entre aventuras e desventuras amorosas surge a questão: será a musa militante surrealista? (boa pergunta). não sei, mas nos belíssimos capítulos dedicados às duas leonores (leonora carrington e leonor fini), a frida kahlo e jacqueline lamba e a lee miller e valentine penrose, quase ficamos com a certeza de que sim...

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well researched and informative piece of work. I like the focus on artists whose stories might not otherwise be told. The narrative though is a little all over the place and jumps back and forth a lot between time and people.

[Katie Dufall · Rating 4 out of 5]

so original and interesting, couldn’t put it down at a few points (especially the chapter about frida kahlo and jacqueline breton) although others were a bit long and not as readable

good read for any one interested in art/surrealism esp but also just cool strong artistic ladies!!!

[Ruth Brumby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well researched and well written. I'm not quite sure that her argument is totally convincing about the importance of female friendships to the women's ability to move from being muses to artists. The examples she gives are quite disparate. However it is a fascinating book to read.

[Catherine Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really interesting look at the friendships and lives of the women who have in the past often been regarded simply as muses for the surrealist artists.