Significant Others: Creativity and Intimate Partnership

An original and revealing series of essays on couples who shared both sexual and artistic bonds Biographies of artists and writers have traditionally presented lone struggles for self-expression. Here, thirteen critics and historians aim to challenge and redefine conventional presumptions in an original and revealing series of essays on artist and writer couples whose literary and artistic renown has been compounded by the fame – or notoriety – of their relationships.

'An important book'
Guardian

'Many surprises and much to celebrate … a mine of fresh information'
Times Literary Supplement

'Compelling stories … intelligent biography and close critical readings'
New Statesman

'Reveals the pressures of societal assumptions, whilst revealing the limitations such constructions place on male and female creativity'
Aesthetica

Contents List

Camille Claudel & Auguste Rodin • Sonia & Robert Delaunay • Clara & Andre Malraux • Vanessa Bell & Duncan Grant • Virginia Woolf & Vita-Sackville West • Leonora Carrington & Max Ernst • Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera • Kay Sage & Yves Tanguy • Anais Nin & Henry Miller • Lillian Hellman & Dashiell Hammett • Jasper Johns & Robert Rauschenberg • Simone & Andre Schwarz-Bart • Lee Krasner & Jackson Pollock

About the Author

Whitney Chadwick is Professor Emerita at San Francisco State University. Among her other books are Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement, Women, Art and Society and Significant Others: Creativity and Intimate Partnership.

Isabelle de Courtivron is Professor of French Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.