In my time I have been known to be a drama queen.  My fits pale, though, when compared to one of the greats: Dora Maar, known, for the most part, as one of Picasso’s muses. That role has always overshadowed her own artistic career. If you take a closer look, you find that she was a brilliant photographer, much involved in developing surrealism, until she gave up photography to heed Picasso’s incitement to turn to painting, (less stellar in its results.) Her photographic documentation of Picasso’s weeks of painting Guernica is revelatory.

Having previously failed, she finally managed to get his attention and his affection by stabbing her gloved hand with a knife drawing blood while seated in a cafe at a neighboring table. The soiled artifact found place of honor in Picasso’s studio, and she found a place in his bed – alas to be shared by not one but eventually two other mistresses.

Detailed bio can be found here:https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-surrealist-photographer-picassos-muse

For many years there was nothing but drama, and she was painted by the master exclusively depicting negative emotions and tears. (Do we really want to call someone a master who publicly declared that for him women were either doormats or goddesses? You decide.) When her scenes became violent, and she cracked under the strain of the end-of-war years, she was committed to hospital, forced under electro shock therapy and eventually put by her lover into psychoanalysis with Lacan, his close friend.

(If you want to read a short, incisive, brilliantly funny essay on jocular Jaques, go here. The book review of Lacan’s last lover’s reminiscence is a treat! (In fact it was the only thing that made me laugh on a day where Kennedy’s retirement brought the future of constitutional law up for grabs. But I digress into politics. Must not.)

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/04/the-selfish-shrink-life-with-jacques-lacan/

Back to Maar.  I am attaching a link that shows a number of her photographs, some famous, many less familiar.  It is strong work, here and there dotted with humor. It also shows someone perceptively in tune with the social conflicts of their era.

After two years of analysis, Maar regained her poise and for some time re-entered her Paris circles. More and more drawn to mysticism and then the Catholic Church, she eventually became a devout recluse, living in her house in Provence, focusing on painting and religious services. She died, almost 90 years old, in 1997.  I wonder how different her life could have been, and her photography make an impact, had it not been for the fateful alliance with a cruel and abusive man.

http://www.all-art.org/art_20th_century/maar1.html

Photographs are from Paris, selected for what I believe might have suited her sensibilities.

Maar’s Surrealist work is on display at SFMOMA and will be featured at Paris’ Centre Pompidou and L.A.’s Getty Center in 2019.