The Muse at Her Easel

Zadie Smith | The New York Review of Books | 10th November 2019

Superb writing. The artist’s muse – art topic or relationship topic … or both? Celia Paul, a celebrated artist, has written about her relationship with Lucien Freud. The heart of her narrative is the competing demands of a relationship versus her own art. Conventional views of the muse as victim don’t, in this case, suffice. What is clear, as another of Freud’s lovers put it, is that “selfishness is what it takes to make great art”.