This new book details out the interesting love lives of famous writers and artists
This one is for the romantic nostalgists who love to indulge in the eccentric lives of 20th century creatives, who pursued both, their art as well as scandalous debauchery with equal passion. In this thoroughly researched, playfully prurient, colourfully illustrated book, published by Bloomsbury, novelist, Catheryn Lacy and illustrator, Forsyth Harmon, draw lines between marriages, flings, rivalries and creative connections of some of the well-loved figures of the arts. From Arthur Miller to Frida Kahlo to Nin to Hemingway to even lesser known figures such as Beauford Delaney. But what is surprising to note is the missing name of Virginia Woolf whose absence can be felt throughout the book and who lived as exciting lives as the others (her letters to Vita-Sackville-West can give you some glimpse into that.)
Poet Robert Lowell died of a heart attack, clutching a portrait of his lover, Caroline Blackwood, painted by her ex-husband, Lucian Freud. Lowell was on his way to see his own ex-wife, Elizabeth Hardwick, who was a longtime friend of Mary McCarthy. McCarthy left the father of her child to marry Edmund Wilson, who had encouraged her writing, and had also brought critical attention to the fiction of Anaïs Nin . . . whom he later bedded. And so it goes, the long chain of love, affections, and artistic influences among writers, musicians, and artists that weaves its way through the The Art of the Affair.
The book also opens up windows to works of artists who you might have never encountered before. More than gossip and trivia, this book gives you an intimate account into the personal histories of people whose works you admire and helps you gain access to their works through a lens through which you never looked at before. To think that an artist is truly alienated from his life, is to just delude yourself, it arises out of chemistry and your relationship with others. Like Lacy writes in the introduction, “The relationship in an artist’s life—whether romantic, platonic, or collaborative—create an unseen scaffolding of their life’s work.”
Buy the book here
