A MUSE BOUCHE

I’ve been rereading (in some cases reading for the first time) parts of Francine Prose’s book The Lives of the Muses: Nine women and the artists they inspired.

It turns out – and very possibly we knew this all along – that it’s very hard being a muse.  And it’s no picnic having a muse, either.  Prose discusses Alice Liddell and Lewis Carroll, Gala and Dali, Hester Thrale and Samuel Johnson, Yoko Ono and John Lennon, Lee Miller and Roland Penrose, among others It’s surprising how often food crops up.

There’s John Lennon baking his own bread, taking Polaroids of it (way ahead of the Instagram game there, John) and bringing all the staff in for lunch.  Yoko says, ‘He makes the bread, and if they don’t eat it it’s a personal insult.’  Muses are, I suppose, allowed to make the occasional snide remark.

There’s Hester Thrale, Samuel Johnson’s muse, even while she was married to Henry Thrale, a brewer and MP. After Henry had had three strokes he started to eat and drink compulsively.  I haven’t been able to find exactly what he consumed but Johnson, who was no stranger to heroic eating, was so appalled that he said, ‘Sir—after the Denuriciation of your Physicians this Morning, such eating is little better than suicide.’  True enough.  Thrale didn’t stop eating and he died.  Johnson apparently though that Hester would then marry him, but in fact she married an Italian tenor named Gabriel Piozzi.   Muses, eh? Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em.

Gala and Salvador Dali we know were sufficiently food-obsessed that there were two books: Les Diners de Galaand The Wines of Dali. (Gali?), though they never looked as though they did much actually eating. And yes, that is Gina Lollobrigida

I had some idea about all the above people but I didn’t know the full story of Lee Miller.  I knew her as a model (OK, muse) for Man Ray, then a collaborator, then as a photographer in her own right, photographing fashion, portraits, and then by force of circumstances becoming a war photographer, largely for Vogue. I knew that she’d married Roland Penrose but I didn’t know that after the war she suffered terribly from depression and alcoholism, (and probably boredom) and had developed a new, consuming interest in cooking, as a partial consolation.

There’s even a recent book. Lee Miller: A Life of Food, Friends and Recipes. Recipes include champagne and camembert soup, marshmallow-cola ice cream, carrots in whiskey, and chicken in edible gold and pink cauliflower breasts. I guess you could describe this as influenced by Surrealism.

Francine Prose finds this ‘dismaying’ and quotes from Roland Penrose’s Scrapbook to reinforce her point.  ‘Devoted to parlour games, she found a fascinating pastime in kitchen games, competitions which she often pursued with success, winning countless gadgets for the kitchen and at one time a triumphant tour of Norway … as a reward for a most startling and succulent open sandwich.’

Yes, this does sound like a bit of a comedown after Miller’s previous activities, but then, if you’ve washed yourself in Hitler’s bathtub, and photographed at Dachau and Buchenwald, well, what wouldn’t be?

         

The internet being the fine thing it is, I was able to find a description of her tour-winning entry, in an article in Gastronomica magazine by Becky E. Conekin.  It’s for something called a Penrose; mushrooms stuffed with pink foie gras mousse, seasoned with paprika and Madeira, and made to resemble roses.  I gotta say that doesn’t sound like quite enough to merit a triumphant tour, still according to the article, Miller won first, second, and third prizes, which I suppose does deserve some serious recognition.

LUNCHEON ON THE ASTROTURF

There’s one thing that’s probably even less satisfying, and far more trouble, than breakfast in bed, and that’s the torturous ritual known as the picnic.

Eating outdoors in itself is fine - whether it’s sitting on a park bench eating a sandwich or on the terrace of an outdoor restaurant - but once you call it a picnic there’s all that organization, all that business with hampers and special plates and cutlery rugs. It sucks the fun right out of it.

I’ve been thinking about this because the current issue of Gatronomica also has a piece about the later years of Lee Miller. We all know about her days as model and muse, and then as war photographer, but who knew that she ended up living on a farm in east Sussex, married to Roland Penrose and engaging in “defiant” cookery”? Well, many people I suppose, but not me.

I found myself thinking about that famous photograph Miller took in Picasso’s garden, in 1937, titled “Picnic at Mougins.” See below.

© Lee Miller Archives, England 2010. All rights reserved. www.leemiller.co.uk

The cast, left to right, is made up of Nusch and Paul Eluard, Roland Penrose, Man Ray and Ady Fidelin. It’s always seemed a little dubious that the women are topless and the men fully clothed, something to do with the male gaze, artists and models, nature and culture. And the fact that it’s all a knowing nod towards Manet’s “Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe” doesn’t really change things much.

Knowing that the photograph is taken by a woman, changes things just a little, but of course Lee Miller was never exactly reluctant to take her top off, and I just discovered this picture (below) of the occasion, taken by Roland Penrose, proving that, yes she was nude model as well as photographer.

© Roland Penrose Estate, England 2010.The Roland Penrose Collection. All rights reserved.


“Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe” has surely been parodied and pastiched more than any painting except for the Mona Lisa; in other paintings, in photographs, cartoons and album covers and whatnot. Even Picasso had a crack at it.



I’ve been peering at reproductions of Manet’s original, trying to see what they actually had to eat at their picnic. It’s hard to tell. There’s bread and fruit, but I can’t identify all those fruits, and perhaps surprisingly, there’s no wine. And certainly there isn’t any eating going on – they obviously have other things on their minds.

At least it looks as though the Lee Miller crowd have eaten well, and had a bottle or two of wine, but since their plates are conspicuously empty we don’t know what was on the menu. In the Penrose picture some of the plates have been cleared away. They also, of course, have a table, which seems way, way too much trouble for a picnic.

I have only one picnic picture from my own life, fully clothed, here with my mother somewhere in Lincolnshire in the late 1960s, and although my mother’s having a cup of tea – in a real china cup note, - I’m very conspicuously not have anything at all. Even then I probably thought it was too much trouble.




And just to add, the Lee Miller Archives have been more than fair and generous in allowing me to use the relevant images.  They have asked me to add the information that "The home of Lee Miller and Roland Penrose, Farley Farm House in East Sussex is open for guided tours being April and October each year.  Please contact Kate: 01825 872856 "  I am very happy to do so.