Rodin was a genius sculptor. His works are palpitating with desire. There’s a mysterious rawness and unfinished quality to them. Claudel’s work doesn’t have these qualities. It has others: a fragile and all-embracing psychological depth and a unique empathy for sorrow. But Rodin overshadowed Claudel in artistic recognition and crushed her totally when ending their tumultuous love affair. He had the immense weight of patriarchal society on his side. No wonder Claudel ended up losing her sanity. I was very hard — or should I say impossible — then for an artist to thrive when being born a woman.

I think it’s Louise Bourgeois who said that a female sculptor is always symbolically attempting to destroy the image of the father. I believe she’s right. Why else climb ladders to carve monumental pieces in stone or weld gigantic metal structures? Why choose the hardest and heaviest of all materials if not to prove something to the face of Authority? Well, in her attempt, Claudel fell. As in my painting, Rodin’s stature blew her off like a candle. But it doesn’t mean that she failed. In other words, a lot of the time, some failures resonate within us more deeply than many success stories. These failures resonate more because they seem to whisper directly to our heart.

Sometimes, what unites two people is a project, an idea. In the case of Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott, it was the non-violent fight for equality. Even after King was murdered, Coretta continued the public battle against injustice. She extended the Civil Rights movement to the Anti-War movement and the LGBT movement. She even became vegan in the last 10 years of her life.

Despite the FBI’s attempts to smear King’s reputation by releasing tapes of alleged affairs, the love between these two made history. That’s why I painted them like monuments looking above into the distance. They shared a common dream greater than themselves. In the end, their portrait doesn’t matter so much as where their gaze leads us to: a serene and unmitigated kindness.

The correspondence between Vincent and his younger brother Theo shows us the great love between them. Theo provided financial support and moral encouragement for which Vincent was so grateful that he even wanted to have Theo’s name also signed on his paintings. He just couldn’t envision his artistic journey outside this tandem. That’s why he sent detailed accounts of his painting field trips to Theo sometimes as often as twice daily.

Those letters are a great read. Vincent got drunk everyday with colors, tied to his easel like a horse plowing in the field, unflinching despite the winds that threatened his sanity. Why? Because he knew he could rely on Theo. And when he started doubting that, it triggered the end. I’m not going to tell that story again, you all know it. It’s just sad and absurd, like death always is. I just want you to remember what made Vincent’s colorful dream come alive on canvas when you see it in the museum: he painted for his brother, he painted to decorate the room of his brother’s newborn child with Japanese-like blossoming trees. And this filled him with joy.

When I was a teen, I thought Dali was “so cool”. I think the reason why the Spanish painter appeals so much to teenagers is because he combines a wild and very overtly sexual craziness along with a technique that remains very traditional. His strong desires are set free from his unconscious but always within the boundaries of traditional figuration. Just like teenagers who are so conventional in their will to correspond on the outside but are boiling like lava on the inside.

My love affair with Dali didn’t last throughout the years but I highly respect his ability to create a memorable persona and having lived a truly artistic life. His enduring love for his wife and muse Gala is also among his qualities. Although, I must say that the way Surrealists idealized women bothers me. Even though they had put them on a pedestal, they always saw women as objects of mystery and desire, never as subjects that could, like them, be mediators of another kind of reality. They saw them as the worthiest creatures but never as creators themselves. No wonder Frida Kahlo thought they were all cockroaches (Dali would probably have agreed after leaving the movement).

I used a photo by Richard Avedon as reference to depict Gala and Salvador Dali. Why? Because I like the reversal of the muse/painter relationship. In my image, Gala is not just an object, she’s active by holding Salvador by the neck in a gesture that can both be interpreted as oppressive and tender. I love the ambiguity of the domination game involved in this vision and how it seems to impress Salvador’s facial expression. He’s like a torero gored by the bull of his own imagination.

Wolfgang was a child prodigy. At the age of five, he was already composing little pieces on the clavier that his father Leopold wrote down. Of course, this didn’t come out of nowhere. Leopold was an established musician (who became Kapellmeister in Salzburg) and an experienced teacher. The Mozart family — also including the daughter Anna Maria — traveled through Europe to give concerts in different courts and show off the young phenomenon.

But growing up, Wolfgang proved to have more substance than his early role of “circus dog virtuoso” led to believe. He wanted to compose operas. He had no inclination toward the steady job of musician at the Salzburg court that Leopold urged him to keep. He wanted more creatively. He wanted to compose operas about modern life, full of unexpected twists and turns in which as many voices as possible would blend into joyfully reconciliating final choruses. But money was scarce for the independent composer and he felt guilt for not rising to his father’s expectations.

Let’s have a look at his opera Don Giovanni. In the first act, Don Giovanni is forced into a duel one night with the Commandatore and kills him after trying to seduce his daughter. He then chases almost every woman in sight using every imaginable and disloyal trick. For instance, by dressing up as their boyfriends and acting up like them. His servant Leporello keeps books on his conquests — over 2000 entries! As he often flees the scenes of his mischiefs, abused women and their angry relatives pursue him in fury. The seducer and his servant seek refuge in the cemetery. They come face to face with the statue of the dead Commandatore and the cocky Don Giovanni asks Leporello to invite it to dinner. The statue slowly nods in agreement, causing the two to run away in fear. The end of the opera is quite spectacular. Don Giovanni is at a party in his palace. The sinister white statue of the Commandatore slowly and stoically joins him demanding that he repents for his crimes. The seducer refuses despite the threat and when the statue touches him, a great cold deprives Don Giovanni of all strength and he falls into the infernal abyss with a last scream. The bad guy is punished.

It’s very hard not to draw a link between Don Giovanni and Wolfgang’s relationship with his father. The opposition between love and duty clearly echoes Amadeus’ guilt inducing paternal relationship. That’s why I depicted Leopold with livid colors and looking over his son’s shoulder in a rather circumspect look: he’s the real life Commandatore. I believe the two loved each other but I also believe Wolfgang felt terrible about his disobedience. That said, without this disobedience, he wouldn’t have composed marvelous masterpieces like Don Giovanni. So, despite his father’s disapproval, Wolfgang became Mozart by breaking what his father had shaped starting at a very early age. He flew away from convention and broke the mold, offering us his uniquely youthful and pure loving heart through his music.

Now, to disobey your father and run away to find your own voice is something I can definitely relate to.

Frida Kahlo deserves to be the cultural icon that she is. She was strong, fiercely independent and creative despite having gone through tremendous physical pain in her life. I sometimes wonder what brought her to love the rather peasant-looking and obese socialist mural painter (and 20 years her senior) Diego Rivera and marry him at just 22. I wonder how she cope with his infidelities. I wonder and, deep down inside, I know. They were complimentary.

The love that binds people who are very different is a peculiar kind of love. It binds more. I believe this is because convention as nothing to do with it. Moreover, it stems out «against» convention. It’s therefore a lot more powerful. Even though love can sometimes appear to be as fragile as a small pink heart floating on a surface, like an iceberg, it can hide titans whose strength has only been channeled and the violence pacified.

There’s a debate about the extent to which the scientist Mileva Marić — Einstein’s first wife — contributed to his early work, among which a certain Theory of Relativity. They met at the Swiss university where they studied physics together, getting similar grades. They then fell in love and their correspondence suggests indirectly that they both contributed to “their” research. But unsurprisingly, Mileva’s scientific career headed South.

An unmarried Serbian pregnant woman was unlikely to receive international acclaim in science at the time. Einstein received all the credit. As I said, we will probably never know for sure the level of her contribution. But the lesson remains: genius comes in people that are not always white men of European descent. We should stop overlooking people who don’t fall in that category. Personally, I also like the idea of genius being something relational, something that sparks from encounter rather than is possessed by a sole individual. It pleases me a great deal. Science, like art, is based on imagination. And there’s nothing that triggers the imagination as much as working hand in hand with someone you love.

To say that the house of the Schumanns in Düsseldorf was a powerhouse of romantic music is an understatement. Clara Schumann (born Wieck) was the first female piano virtuoso and composer. She was a huge star throughout Europe and had a concert career lasting 61 years. She married Robert, a piano student of her father. Her father was a well-known master of the instrument. When Robert suffered from an affliction to the right hand, he turned entirely to composing, which left Clara taking care of the household and raising their 8 children. Needless to say she couldn’t compose anymore. Robert was undoubtedly a genius of the German romantic music era, but his mind was deeply sick. He had regular hallucinations and made several suicide attempts. In 1854, he jumped from a bridge into the Rhine, after which he was taken to an asylum.

This story wouldn’t be as fully romantic if a 20-year-old musician named Johannes Brahms hadn’t moved to the Schumann house to study among them. The young prodigy became very close to Clara artistically and sentimentally. She premiered his music in public and wrote of him that he “seemed as if sent straight from God”. The letters they exchanged show very strong feelings between the two. That’s why I wish that my portrait of Brahms be hung on the right side of the Schumanns portrait. This way, it makes perfect sense that Clara’s gaze is seeking outward from the picture towards her protégé, the blue-eyed romantic wonder boy. That longing is in fact the true subject of the piece.

We don’t know for sure the exact nature of the relationship between Clara and Brahms. We can only gossip. For different reasons, it seems to have been an “impossible love”. I hear you thinking: “how more romantic can it be?” Now, all we have left to meditate on is the pounding sounds of their beautiful music, last signs of a missed embrace.

In this series, I explore strong relationships between individuals and I didn’t want that theme to be bound exclusively to human animals. Relationships happen between social animals regardless of their species. But the thing is, we tend to see other species not so much as individuals but as if they were all the same, a bit the same way we falsely categorize dog breeds. It’s a big mistake, triggered by seeing their differences first rather than their similitudes with us. Even my title “(…) and a Chimp” falls in that trap. In fact, it’s not “a Chimp” (as in “any Chimp”) but more accurately “a particular Chimp” (I wish I knew its name here). I feel like a lack of consideration for non-humans is so entrenched in our language that it becomes impossible to avoid sometimes.

With her encounter and study of the chimpanzees, Jane Goodall showed us the surprising richness in character and complex relationships they can have, not only among themselves but with us. It’s incredible, they even transmit their culture to their offspring! My painting is not only a tribute to the work of Jane Goodall now as an environmental activist but also a painterly acknowledgment of the marvelous preciousness of the kingdom we are the custodians of.

Oscar Wilde was at the height of his success when he hit an insurmountable wall: the Victorian values of his time. His love for the blue-eyed “Bosie” — a love that delightfully pierces the pages of Dorian Grey — sent him to prison and broke his creative wings. He’s a tragic hero. He paid with his life a love that others deemed should not exist. But it existed. Just as it exists now. Point blank. On canvas.

History doesn’t unfold on a line and progressively. It bends and breaks. History happens when strong individuals collide or partner up in specific places and at specific times. When Rimbaud — who was 17 — came to meet Verlaine in Paris in 1870, one of those rare moments occurred and the face of poetry forever changed. Now, you might think: “What’s so great about poetry anyway? Who cares if it’s revolutionized?” You should care. Poetry is not just a fancy play with words meant to seduce long-haired princesses. It’s about human experience. And it can change your life. Seriously. I can’t remember how many times I cried reading the Illuminations. We are driven by the magical power of words more than we think.

I could tell you how Verlaine and Rimbaud were violently in love, how it ended with the drunk Verlaine firing a bullet on his lover’s wrist and then doing prison for it while being stigmatized for his homosexuality, or how the cocky young Rimbaud felt so shitty everywhere that he always kept fleeing — he also stopped writing at only 22 — and ended up doing some obscure business in some obscure country before dying after a leg amputation at 37. I could tell you all that but it would just be a collection of anecdotes that have nothing to do with the core of their relationship: their poetry.

Rimbaud and Verlaine together were like the birth of one single “superpoet”. They read each other’s work, they wrote together, they got high and drunk together, they slept together, they traveled, they fought, they shouted “fuck you” to every shadow of authority they met (artistic glory, family, country). They killed God to invent the most marvelous wonders with the sole power of their minds. They went where no imagination has gone before. They were poor but gold poured like rivers from their homeless eyes. They were the richest men to ever dance on this earth.

I never think about science without a pinch of disdain. Not that I don’t admire scientists and their discoveries, I do, but the pursuit of knowledge calls for so much self-effacement, scientific learning requires so much humility from those who seek it… It’s just not my element. I enjoy the mystery a lot more. Maybe that’s why theoretical physics appeals to me more among the sciences; it seems to rely to a larger extent on the imagination than other fields.

Pierre and Marie Curie made a great team. Their work on radioactivity granted them a Nobel Prize in physics. Marie later won another one in chemistry for discovering new elements. Not only was she the first woman to ever win a Nobel Prize but she remains today the only one to have won two in two distinct scientific categories. She died of a leukemia induced by an over-exposure to radiations at age 66.

Philosophers Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre had to be the first diptych I paint in this series. They had to be a diptych because they had to be stand alone portraits as much as they had to go/be together, just like in their very unique relationship.

For 51 years, they had an open relationship, without getting married. Both could experience contingent love affairs outside the couple but their essential love remained for one another. I can easily portray them in my head, sitting at a table at the Café de Flore, the very charming and charismatic (but rather ugly) Sartre intensely listening to “Castor” as she goes over his latest writings and gives him advice. What I have more difficulty imagining and that makes my admiration arise is how difficult it must have been to tell each other the hard truth all the time about these contingent love affairs. The level of trust implied is immense.

Sharing feelings for other people? Sharing the most intimate? De Beauvoir sharing Sartre’s partners? I can barely conceive how emotionally explosive this must have been. But yet, because of their ability to rationalize and, more importantly, their love for one another, they pulled it off for 51 years. That’s a commitment that greatly surpasses a lot of conventional marriages. Even though De Beauvoir is deemed the most influential woman thinker of the 20th century, when asked, she said against all expectations that her greatest accomplishment was her relationship with Sartre.

A clash of egos and passion. These are the words that come to my mind when I think about the 25 years during which abstract expressionist painters Joan Mitchell and Jean-Paul Riopelle were in an artistic and romantic relationship. I tried to convey the outburst of their feelings in the background of their portraits by imitating their respective styles, in order to give shape to a love unconstrained.

Virginia Woolf’s books are portraits of different people from her life under the guise of fiction. The stories bear very little importance. In To the Lighthouse, we learn with very little explanation and in a seemingly unrelated chapter, that the central character of the novel is dead. This fact is given to as in parenthesis, as if it were but a detail. 

To the Lighthouse nevertheless continues to paint her character portrait through the gaze of a female amateur-artist family friend, the effects of war on people and places, and the tensions and silences held by a modern British family. That portrait is depicted “in a hollow”, for example by describing time passing through the rooms of the characters’ empty summer house.

Can you get more modern than Virginia Woolf, I wonder? And I haven’t even touched on the richness she digs in her characters’ inner life… That woman was a divine enchantress. Although they were both married to men, Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West (also a writer) were in a romantic relationship. Virginia’s novel Orlando, described as ‘the longest love letter in modern fiction’, is a fantasized portrait of Vita living through the ages both as a man and a woman alternatively, suggesting that ultimately, gender is an accessory to who we are and who we love.

Castor and Pollux is the most personal painting of this series. The characters portrayed come from Greek mythology. Leda, who was married to Tyndareus, was once seduced by Zeus who had taken the shape of a swan. She then gave birth to two eggs, each one containing a pair of twins. The egg fertilized by Zeus contained Helen (later known as “of Troy”) and Pollux and the second egg fertilized by Tyndareus contained Clytemnestra and Castor. So, there was one pair of divine twins and one pair of mere human twins, each featuring a girl and a boy.

The brothers Castor and Pollux really got along well. They were inseparable. When Castor got killed in battle, Pollux was devastated. He went to Zeus to get his brother back, ready to sacrifice his divine nature. Zeus made them a deal. They could stay together but they would have to spend half their time in the Hades (Ancient Greek realm of the dead). That’s why Castor and Pollux, the two brightest stars of the Gemini constellation, can be seen in the starry night only 6 months a year. The brothers have to spend the other 6 months in the underworld. 

Now, how this story relates to me? First, I think this story is a celebration of love between two men under the alibi of brotherhood. That’s why I painted myself under the helmet of Pollux and my husband (although a younger him) as Castor. But this story also speaks of everyone. We all try to reconcile our divine and our human (too human?) natures. This dichotomy is an inherent part of us. We each have inside us a potential of light and darkness that we are responsible for and must cultivate.

I painted several stand-alone portraits in this series, sometimes as studies for larger couple portraits. For instance, I painted a Vincent Van Gogh in yellow. Yellow was Van Gogh’s fetish color, the one he so masterfully painted sunflowers with. I wanted for a long time to paint a yellow Van Gogh; it seemed to be the appropriate color in a spiritual sense. At first, I wanted to use only hues of yellow but I struggled doing that because it didn’t allow me a lot of tonal contrast (every yellow is light). So, I used a dark brown for the hair and beard against which I could play my yellow song and pierce the two sky blue wells of Vincent’s eyes.