The Love Lives of the Artists: Five Stories of Creative Intimacy

The personal and creative lives of artists are endlessly fascinating, from their artistic methods to their struggles to create enduring works of art—but it is their unconventional love lives that captivate us.

In this engrossing examination, Robert Daniel Bullen sheds light on the love lives of Lou Andreas-Salomé and Rainer Maria Rilke; Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe; Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir; Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin. Following these artists through their artistic development—from their early relationships to their commitments and subsequent affairs—we can see their relationships as rebellions against modern culture and bourgeois morality, but they also show us the rare fulfillment of creative freedom and shared understanding.

Were the artists especially brave, as they encouraged each other to find fulfillments outside of marriage? Or were they just cheaters and manipulators, who denied the reality of commitment?

The Love Lives of the Artists tells the stories of these relationships as the artists experienced them: As opportunities to prove their genuineness, to assert their commitment to creativity, and to turn love into the art form that would keep something human alive in the new modern culture.