muse

I saw another obit the other day that brought back memories: Dina Vierny.

Of course I never met her, but when I was in graduate school I studied, and did a short paper on Aristide Maillol, and there I met Dina.

Maillol was a French painter/sculptor, born in 1861. He his early 70’s when he met Dina. His career had flatted out, his creativity seemed to have escaped. Then an artist friend sent the 15 year old Dina to model for Maillol. She became his muse, his assistant and his model.

Their relationship was totally platonic, without a hint of any thing beyond, but she immediately inspired him and his creativity took wings in a flurry of new works that continued until he died in a car wreck at the age of 83.

When he died his family was not very interested in preserving his work, so Dina carefully collected all she could, she set up a museum in Paris, mostly stocked with his work and spent the rest of her life looking after his reputation as an artist. She was his inspiration.

The thing that always interested me was that something happened to light Mailllol’s creative fire at a time when it seemed to be going out. It may not have been her directly as much as the change it made in his thinking. He spent the last ten years of his life producing a flurry of important pieces of sculpture.

When I was a photographer another photographer said that sometimes a simple thing can kick start our creativity. A new lens that offered a different way of seeing, a different process, or a new model, but the suggestion was to be aware that such a thing could transform a career and be ready to experiment.

Right now I am about the age that Maillol was when me met Dina. My art career surely has flattened (at best). That something that lights the fires could be a simple thing like a new welder (which I acquired recently and have not used yet) or any one of a dozen other inspirations.

Hmm.