Art, Sex and Scandal
Words by Lauren Walker (she/her)
Sex and scandal probably aren’t the first words that come to mind when you think of art. But there was something kinky about the Surrealists. These famous artists of the 20th century had scandalous sex lives, far more interesting than you’d think. While shows like Love Island and Too Hot to Handle are some of the sexiest shows of our day and age, the love lives of the Surrealists were arguably more chaotic.
Surrealism was an art movement which took hold of Europe after World War I. The movement, which would be considered inadvertantly sexist in today’s world, was dominated by men. It aimed to capture a dream-like state of being while encouraging the pursuit of pleasure and desire.
The Surrealists saw a woman’s body as the key to an enchanting world which lay outside rationality. Through desire, the Surrealists manifested an image of the what they called the ‘femme-enfant’: a young woman whose youth, naivety, and purity were believed to permit her access to the unconscious realms that nourished Surrealist imagery.
The Surrealist male gaze lacked coherence. While they revolted against the notion of marriage, many of them married more than once. Surrealist thinking objectified women for sexual pleasure, but in reality many of the Surrealists dated intellectual women with bold and artistic personalities similar to their own. It was these contrasting views that led to the exciting romantic lives of some of the world’s most famous artists.
Roland Penrose was an English artist, historian, and poet. He was responsible for promoting and organising many of the Surrealist exhibitions in the movement’s early days. Roland married the poet Valentine Boué, and later the photographer Lee Miller. He recalled his first impression of Valentine as “unexpected and incongruous, a thunderbolt falling out of the sky.”
After the two married and discovered that Valentine had vaginismus, Roland’s growing sexual desires outgrew Valentine’s content for meaningful love. She addressed the matter in a merciless letter to him in 1934: “it is difficult to believe that something sexual could reduce a loving human being to the rank of zero.” While Valentine tried to sexually please her husband, partaking in bondage activities where he bound her naked to a pine tree, her stubborn and righteous personality ultimately divided the pair. Roland described his fetishism with bondage as a way to assure his love that he would never disappear from her grasp. But for Valentine, true intimacy was never sexual.
Valentine travelled to India in 1936 with female painter Alice Rahon, who was recently divorced from the Surrealist painter Wolfgang Paalen. The two women had an undying love for one another, spending months travelling India together while studying Hindu philosophy which enforced no laws on physical love. In 1951, Valentine Penrose published Dons des Féminines, the story of two upper-middle-class European women on a trip to the East. In the story, the two women travel alone and live out their lesbian love story without a care in the world. The characters are unarguably a representation of Valentine and Alice. I can imagine it was Valentine’s fierce French accent and inability to waver from her strong spirit that made her sexy to Alice.
Photographer Lee Miller’s undeniable Swedish-American beauty and career as a fashion model meant her entrance into Surrealist circles was somewhat effortless. While photographer Man Ray didn’t like Lee’s determination and free-spirited desire to pursue whomever she pleased, he wouldn’t dare leave her side. Lee was one of the most beautiful women in Paris, while Man Ray was described as a short, unattractive Jewish man. He was obsessed with Lee. The two shared a deeply passionate love during their three years spent living together. But soon Man Ray became jealous, possessive, and overprotective of Lee. A huge red flag in any girl’s eyes. All too much for the American goddess, Lee up and left Man Ray for New York, leaving the photographer heartbroken.
Two years later, Lee met and married a filthy rich Egyptian railroad tycoon, moving her life to Cairo. But unable to help herself on a visit to Paris a few years later, Lee met none other than Roland Penrose. The two shared a textbook love story, travelling Europe together, visiting famous artist friends. Lee was even painted by Pablo Picasso, an absolute play-boy and womaniser. Picasso’s hectic love life is a story for another time.
During the Second World War, Lee worked as a photographer and became well-known for many of her high-profile shots for Vogue. However, she suffered from terrible PTSD which caused her to give up photography. Man Ray heard she had become an alcoholic, so sent her wondrous gifts to try and cheer her up. During this time, Roland pursued multiple affairs with younger women which made the alcoholism worsen. Valentine, who had remained lifelong friends with Roland, had become close friends with Lee. She moved in with the couple during this time helping Lee with her depression and assisting to raise their young son. She was the crazy aunt of the family, requesting to read everyone’s tarot until they begged her to stop. Roland and Lee’s home, named Farleys House, became the home of the Surrealists. Known for hosting outrageous Gatsby-like parties with the most important names in the art world.
Peggy Guggenheim, on the other hand, was a unique case. From an eccentric family and a father who ran away with a cabaret singer only to drown on the Titanic, one could argue that Guggenheim spent her life collecting art to fill the void in her lonely heart. Desperate to lose her virginity at the age of twenty-three, Peggy arrived in Paris eager to find the right fit. Living the high-life of hard drinking among the bourgeoisie of the Paris cafes of Montmartre and Left Bank, Peggy cruised with unsung artists, unemployed performers, and unpublished writers.
She had an obsession with sex, describing herself as a nymphomaniac. Upon her move to Paris, handsome poet Laurence Vail became her first lucky candidate. Peggy said in an interview, "I had a collection of photographs of frescoes I had seen at Pompeii. They depicted people making love in various positions, and of course I was very curious and wanted to try them all out myself. It soon occurred to me that I could make use of Laurence for this purpose." After a soirée of sex positions, Peggy felt it was best to marry Laurence. The two were married in 1922 and were divorced by 1930 with two young children.
Peggy’s type, tall, dark and good-looking, was somewhat conflicting to the men she actually slept with. Her endless list of lovers included Yves Tanguy, Samuel Beckett, Marcel Duchamp, and John Cage, among many others. Samuel Beckett was apparently so lustful and horny that he once kept her in bed for four days with only breaks for sandwiches. Sounds kind of fun if you ask me. Peggy spoke nonchalantly about her one night stands. “Oh, but I only slept with him once,” she said in an interview, as if having sex just once shouldn’t count.
At the height of World War II, painter Max Ernst and Surrealist leader André Breton escaped Europe for New York. Who came to their rescue? None other than the American heiress; wealthy, upper-class Peggy Guggenheim. With Marcel Duchamp as her right-hand man, Peggy had collected a mass of modernist paintings which would today be worth billions.
Perhaps the lust to be with an artist came from the desire to be closer to them than they were to their practice. Nonetheless, Peggy was always second-best. She married Max Ernst soon after their arrival to New York, but Max did little to remain faithful.
The evening Max Ernst met Dorothea Tanning, it was snowing on the streets of Manhattan. Max, then middle-aged, tall, lean, blonde, and handsome, had arrived at the young American painter’s apartment. Dorothea opened her apartment door. Max had come, on behalf of his wife Peggy, to examine Dorothea’s works ahead of an upcoming exhibition titled ‘Exhibition by 31 Women’.
With dark brown hair, a slender build, a button nose, and thin lips, Dorothea in all of her youthful beauty invited Max inside to examine her paintings. It was on that night that a lifelong love affair between two creatives began. Leaving Peggy behind, Max pursued Dorothea, coming over to play chess nearly every night thereafter. Four weeks later, Max had fully moved in with the American painter.
While she was sex-crazed and eccentric, Peggy Guggenheim, stands as one of the most influential women in the history of modern art. She saved almost the entire collection of modern art from the Louvre during World War II and snuck it into America. During this time, she bought at least one painting a day from her artist friends to make sure they could afford to stay alive. She also gave Jackson Pollock a monthly allowance to ensure he could afford to paint and live.
If Peggy wanted something, then she got it. Sometimes having sex meant she got “mates rates”; she said it herself, but in classier terms. She slept around, she enjoyed it, and she didn’t care what people thought. I think that should make her a modern-day millennial icon. For Peggy, I think sex was for fun and pleasure, but art was always her one true love.
While I love the scandal of the Surrealists’ lives, the thing I love most of all is the ways in which their lives crossed paths. Throughout the roaring 20s, World War II, and beyond, these artists, regardless of all political turmoil and chaos, remained close. What kept them together? Art.
Amidst the romantic drama, love triangles, and sexual escapades, art was the lens they chose to use when they couldn’t communicate through words. Love and heart-break brought some of their best works to life. When Lee left Man Ray, his broken heart undoubtedly created some of his best works. If not for Roland, Valentine would have never written half of her poems. Max and Dorothea were a source of inspiration to each other throughout their entire lives together. Each relationship, short-lived or life-long, created the foundations for some of the greatest pieces of modern art. So next time your love life takes a hot and steamy turn, hold on to the excitement and look forward to the aftermath at the end of it.