New art show reveals chemistry between Picasso and Lee Miller

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/may/16/picasso-lee-miller-portrait-gallery-scotland

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He made her his muse and the subject of his erotic art, while being firm friends with her husband, the man who championed his work for decades in Britain. But could Lee Miller, an early supermodel who went on to be a famous female war photographer, have been more than just friends with Pablo Picasso? 

That is the question posed by her son and archivist, Tony Penrose, who has been working with the Scottish National Portrait Gallery on a major new summer show that opens later this month.

When Miller met the famous painter she was already in love with Roland Penrose, the surrealist curator whom she later married following a tempestuous relationship with photographer and artist Man Ray.  Penrose tirelessly promoted Picasso’s work around Britain – including his now revered masterpiece, Guernica – at a time when it was judged obnoxious rubbish by the prevailing artistic taste. 

Penrose had just met Miller and the couple holidayed in Mougins, Picasso’s inspirational bolthole above Cannes, with a pack of bohemian creatives, including Dora Maar (Picasso’s then lover), Paul and Nusch Eluard, Eileen Agar, Man Ray and his new lover, Ady Fidelin. 

It was during this holiday that Picasso painted a series of six works of the eccentric and uncompromising Miller, including one of her dressed in the costume of a woman from Arles, known as Lee Miller as L’Arlésienne. She, in turn, was to photograph the painter more than 1,000 times.  

“I have every reason to suspect they were more than just friends,” said Tony Penrose. “Part of this is driven by an understanding of the behaviour of the group they belonged to. They all acted in a very liberal manner when it came to sexuality.”

According to Tony Penrose, his father would have tolerated Miller’s relationship with Picasso. “They had made up their minds that they were not going to be bound by usual convention or driven by jealousy.” 

Miller’s keen intellect would have been attractive to the artist, says her son. “Picasso definitely had a very great affection for her that went way beyond just fancying her. One of the things he valued in women was intelligence.

“The time they were together in 1937 was a great celebration of freedom. The Spanish civil war was raging and everyone knew the whole of Europe would be engulfed in conflict. The images of the group on the Côte d’Azur in those days highlight this sense of having a last fling. Also, for me, the clue about Picasso’s feelings for my mother is evident in the L’Arlésienne, which references a well-known story – later turned into a three-act play – by Alphonse Daudet about a woman from Arles whose sexuality was so overwhelming it proved fatal for her lover. Others with far greater knowledge of this period share my view that Lee Miller and Picasso may have been one more of the many temporary pairings.” 

The exhibition will include 100 photographs from the Miller archives, along with Picasso’s painting of her as L’Arlésienne. The painting, says Penrose, is rich and fearless, portraying the photographer’s warmth of personality and brilliance of intellect with her sunshine yellow face, cupid’s bow lips and big, toothy grin.

Miller was born in Poughkeepsie, in New York state, in 1907. After being discovered by the magazine magnate Condé Nast while a teenager, she soon became an internationally famous Vogue model. However, in 1929 she decided she wanted to be behind the camera and turned up on the Paris doorstep of photographer and artist Man Ray.

She probably first met Picasso in the French capital during these years, as he was a friend of surrealists whom she knew well, including Ray and Max Ernst, and she continued to make regular visits to Picasso until the early 1970s.

Miller’s adventures in love did not, it seems, qualify her to guide others – even her son. “As a kid, when I was having my agonies after being dumped by my first girlfriend, she would just say, ‘If you are hurt because you fall in love with another, that’s a self-inflicted injury’, and tell me to deal with it,” said Penrose.

Lee Miller and Picasso runs at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery from 23 May to 6 September