The many faces of Lee Miller - model, muse, and artist - are explored in
Surrealist Muse: Lee Miller, Roland Penrose, and Man Ray at the Getty
from February 25–June 15, 2003. The exhibition traces Miller’s colorful
life and legacy from 1925 to 1945 through more than 100 photographs, and
in selected paintings and mixed-media works. These objects document the
impact of her talent and powerful personality on artists with whom she
came into contact, and explore the influences of these collaborations on
her creative life. The works on display are from the Getty’s permanent
collection, the Lee Miller Archive, and the Roland Penrose Collection.
They range from early pictures of Miller’s modeling career in New York,
to Surrealist images
showing her influence on Man Ray, Picasso, and Roland Penrose, to her
astonishing World War II photographs documenting the demise of Hitler
and the Third Reich.
Deborah Gribbon, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, commented:
“It is difficult to think of another woman who has had such a far-reaching
impact on a group of artists and their work. We see Miller’s image and
influence as interpreted by others, and then see the source of that
power in her own creative vision. Miller’s legacy is all the more
compelling because she made her presence felt at a time when women were
still struggling for equal rights. She helped pave the way, leaving her
indelible mark on a world soon to be altered by war.”
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As muse, Miller was a rare inspiration, equally comfortable and forceful
in front of and behind the camera and canvas. At the age of 19, she
became a model in New York where her image, captured and composed by
photographers Arnold Genthe, Edward Steichen, and George Hoyningen-Huene,
made her a fashion icon. At 22, Miller began working as a studio
apprentice to Man Ray in Paris. The relationship soon evolved with
Miller becoming artistic collaborator and muse. Some of Man Ray’s most
prominent images were created between 1929 and 1932 with Miller’s
assistance. Through Man Ray, Miller was introduced to the writers and
artists of the Surrealist movement. Miller’s membership in this vibrant
community sparked a cross-pollination of influences that infused
Surrealist traditions into her work. Her impact was also felt by other
artists in the group, including Picasso, who painted his vision of
Miller in five portraits, one of which is on display.Miller’s influence
is perhaps most keenly felt in the works of her two closest
collaborators - Man Ray and Roland Penrose. Both interpreted and
reinterpreted Miller’s image to reflect their relationships. Man Ray,
enraged after a quarrel with his muse, depicted Miller with her neck
slashed in his 1930–32 painting Le Logis de l’Artiste (The Artist’s
House), using a previous photograph of Miller with her head thrown back
and her neck extended as a model.
Penrose envisions Miller, whom he married, as Night and Day in his
painting portraying Miller in a costume half adorned with clouds
floating in a blue sky, and half shaded in the gentle darkness that
comes with night.
As an artist, Miller’s work moves from portraits taken in her New York
studio, to documentary images recording her travels, to the stark faces
of death and destruction captured on the fields of war as a
correspondent for the U.S. Armed Forces. Across the maturing quality of
her work, we see the different threads of her prior experiences united
in her vision. In her photograph documenting the suicide of a German
official and his family at the end of the war, Miller moves her lens
close to the subjects, capturing the bodies as if they were in a state
between dream and waking, life and death - at once beautiful, horrible,
and surreal.
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