Pablo Picasso’s infamous Weeping Woman was inspired by artist Dora Maar. Photographer Alfred Stieglitz took more than 300 pictures of wife and painter Georgia O’Keeffe. Francis Bacon’s stormy and tumultuous relationship with George Dyer, who tragically took his own life in 1971, drove much of his creative work. The bond between artist and muse is an elusive one and has historically been heralded as the difference between a person creating reasonably successful work and producing their magnum opus. The muse is an endless source of inspiration, their divine beauty and spirit driving the artist on to bigger and better things. Yet, modern ideas of this concept have become increasingly complicated. Art historian and critic Ruth Millington wrote a book entitled Muse: Uncovering the Hidden Figures Behind Art History’s Masterpieces. In it, she challenges the “perception of the muse as a passive, powerless model, at the mercy of an influential older artist. But is this trope a romanticised myth? Far from posing silently, muses have brought emotional support, intellectual energy, career-changing creativity and practical help to artists.”

Charis Wilson and Edward Weston fit perfectly into Millington’s discussions. The two were introduced when she was 19 and he 48, and she quickly became his wife and the focus of his photographs. She also worked as his secretary, went with him as he drove to shoots, managed correspondents and drafted the accompanying text to his images – she even wrote his application for the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in 1936. So how do we view their brief but intense relationship from a 21^st century stance? Kelli Connell (b. 1974) is asking this exactly question in a new project at High Museum of Art. Pictures for Charis reconsiders the connection between the two and offers a new perspective through a contemporary queer and feminist lens. The fascinating show takes us beyond the image itself and questions how a muse is not just the subject, but often the facilitator of great art. 

Over the past ten years, Connell has researched the lives of Charis Wilson (1914-2009) and Edward Weston (1886-1958). For her, the project is a way of understanding how the relationship between artist and muse goes deeper than the image itself. She said: “A portrait not only documents the likeness of someone at a particular time in a particular place, but it also records the photographer and model’s relationship to one another in that moment. Their combined energies are projected and preserved. The most captivating portraits contain an energy that is palpable.” Edward Wilson is regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20^th century. He was the first photographer to receive the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1936 and his quintessentially Californian images have influenced generations of image-makers. He first met Wilson in 1934, introduced by her brother and the two were married in 1939. She was photographed by him soon after their first meeting and became the great model of his later years.

She found posing for him a transformative experience and we can trace the course of their relationship through the pictures. As Connell says, the very essence of their lives together have been distilled into these preserved moments. In Wilson’s obituary, published in the Guardian upon her death in 2009, it said: “the initial session had featured isolated aspects of the nude form apparently dismembered limbs, the second synthesized woman and body into a unitary identity…as he worked more closely with her, Weston went from captioning the portraits Nude (plus, possible, a location) to Charis Wilson to simply Charis.” We can see the growth of their affection as he sets up his shot and then again in how he chooses to label it. Wilson is recorded as saying she dislikes the portraits taken just before their divorce in 1945, as she can see the sadness in her own face. Here, we see how the muse is not simply a figure to be positioned and posed, but is a documentation of the artist’s personal life, laid out with stark clarity. 

Connell used Wilson’s writing and Weston’s photographs as a guide and travelled to locales where they lived, made work and spent time together. She completed these journeys with her partner at the time, artist Betsy Odom. Together, they retrace the couple’s exploration through the American West made eighty years earlier to produce their landmark book California and the West (1940). Connell’s black-and-white images of the Chama River and the Oceano Dunes – where Weston once famously captured Wilson rolling down – are less polished and staged than those taken decades before, creating a raw and less idealized view of the locations. Along the way, Connell also collaboratively made photographs of Odom, upending the power dynamic where a photographer exerts creative control over a passive sitter.

She said: “In taking up this quest, my main interest was in Charis and Edward’s relationship, as photographer and subject, and how it related to mine and Betsy’s…This time, the images would be made by me, as a woman, photographer, partner.” The portraits, a mirror image of those featuring Charis, offer a fresh perspective on the evolving dynamic of artist and muse, asking important questions about how sexuality, gender and relationships are articulated and reinforced in photographs. Now, at High Museum, these images are presented alongside original Edward Weston shots. Together, create a powerful exhibition which complicates and analyses the gender roles and power dynamics between the artist and their muse, and questions the way that this shapes the creation of great works of contemporary art.

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Kelli Connell: Pictures for Charis is at High Museum of Art from Sep 20 2024 – Jan 5 2025: high.org

Words: Emma Jacob

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