Bemused: Prologue

(concerning the relationship between the artist and his muse)

Sing, o muse! Sing of the anger of Achilles. On second thought, sing of the man of many ways. Then again, perhaps, sing of arms and of the man. No, no…it’s all wrong, muse. Why don’t you tell us about yourself?

Muse, you’ve given inspiration to so many, from Homer and Virgil to Lucien Freud. But we know so little of you. Why do you, who have given voice to so many, yourself remain silent?

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In ancient Greece, you were considered a goddess who whispered in the ears of poets. You were the source of ideas, a wellspring of inspiration. The invocations that begin so many epic poems (as well as this very article) pay homage to you, and offer up the poet as a mouthpiece for your divine inspiration.

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My apologies muse, but it seems we no longer think of you as a divine figure like Calliope, Erato, Melpomene and the rest, but the idea of the muse remains, though quite differently. Find an artist or poet, a young, male one, and ask him to describe to you what a muse is. This is not a strictly hypothetical situation. I, myself, recognize that I have subscribed to this myth of the artist-muse dynamic – the idea that a successful artist (almost always, in this vision, male) needs an inspirational muse: a woman who’s beauty and charm fuels the work of the artist, and who is ultimately immortalized by the artist as his subjects.

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 How terribly romantic! I used to think that this sort of artist-muse tale was a fantasy held only by “sensitive” young men, but one day, in college, as I discussed the life of the artist with a female friend, she mentioned that the only thing she would love more than being a painter in Montmartre is being the muse of a painter in Montmartre.

O muse, what a lovely legacy! Only, like many of the other myths that we tell ourselves, this one falls apart under scrutiny. Montmartre conjures visions of Impressionists with glasses of absinthe, carrying easels into the field just outside of Paris, and loitering around the Moulin Rouge. The works these artists created now rate among the most popular and expensive works on the art market. Impressionist exhibitions at museums draw larger crowds than shows of any other art movement. The Impressionist period is perhaps the most romanticized period in art history, but (as the film Midnight in Paris may remind you) that is not how life actually works.

The artist-muse relationship is founded on a false nostalgia that obscures that fact that such a relationship would, in real life, be considered toxic and codependent. Consider the following – a muse inspires her artist, and as the muse’s success is bound together with the success of the artist, the relationship produces an unstable power dynamic. The muse becomes subservient to the artist, supporting him emotionally and perhaps even financially (depending on the situation). If the muse pursues success outside of her love affair with the artist, then the relationship cease to be a strictly artist-muse relationship. It would likely, however, be healthier, but so long as the relationship remains a mere artist-muse relationship, it cannot be other than unequal and codependent. 

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Oh artist, do not become complicit in this trap! Do not tie your success as an artist to the real love of others. Pursue healthy relationships. And feel free to invoke the muses of Homer and Virgil. The continued notion of the muse, however much it changes, reveals just the difficulty in answering the question “where do ideas come from?” This series of articles will explore this question from multiple perspectives. Together, we will examine how writers have grappled with the idea of the inspiration, how they have depicted the muse in their work, and how the idea of the muse has affect writers and artists from the ancient world to today. 

Read more of the ever-insightful work by Vernon on Floodmark.