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Thursday, March 29, 2018

The Art of the Affair (History)

by Catherine Lacey (author) & Forsyth Harmon (illustrator)

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (January 3, 2017)

Hardcover, 96 pages.
 
“Patti Smith and Robert Maplethorpe lived together in Brooklyn and later the Chelsea Hotel while the two were in their twenties. Robert told his conservative parents he had married Patti in a strawberry field in California so they would accept the living situation. In her memoir, Just Kids, Patti calls him the ‘artist of my life’ and after they parted ways as lovers, they still made art together. Robert took the cover portrait for her breakout album, Horses. When the pair met Andy Warhol he dismissed them as ‘horrible’ and ‘dirty’ Robert looked up to Andy, but Patti didn’t see the appeal. ‘I felt little for the can and didn’t like the soup,’ she said.”

The copy I have of this book is an advanced reading copy, a softcover one, so the material I read might be slightly different from the final version. I was given it as a Christmas present from an old friend of mine. She isn’t connected to the literary world, so I have no idea how she got her hands on it. She claims it was bought at a gift store (a cheap one), but I have my doubts.

Wherever the copy I have in my hands came from, this is a fun and expertly researched volume. It’s amazing how the sexual lives of various artists (of all stripes) collide together to create this web of debauchery. From the secret homosexual love of James Baldwin, to the constant adulteries of Ernest Hemingway, to the tempestuous drug fueled love life of Billy Holiday, to the long lasting (but forbidden love) between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. The six degrees of separation law never seemed to small after reading this book.

A fun easy read. It also gave me several suggestions for further readings in the autobiographies of the various artists mentioned.
           For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

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