Good sex will rot your brain

and other thoughts on love and art

Hello Uncultured Swine,

I’m sorry about my absence but I’ve had love on the mind, and you know why swine? Because I’m realising my creative ambition, and my loins are determined to sabotage it.

I’ve always suspected love and creativity are mutually exclusive, that my brain will inevitably turn into soup and decide having sex is less effort than painting, and these suspicions are echoed by writer, Nikki Gemmell. In her 2021 book, Dissolve, Gemmell posits that women (specifically) can’t fall in love and be creatively actualised all at once. Clearly this idea is preposterous, gendered, condescending and, anecdotally, 100% correct.

An anatomically correct drawing of what love does to the body. (Making Lemonade (2024) by Maggie Buckle)

There are gender nuances to this concept, but at the core of why rom*nce is a Beef Wellington to creativity, is because art requires solitude. Lots and lots of solitude. When I finally decided to paint in earnest, I instinctively hid myself away because largely, you need to. I now defend that solitude so much the only relationship I can maintain is with a teeny tiny Chihuahua, and even we have regular discussions about boundaries.

So what kind of human partner could support that level of abandonment?

Perhaps I’d start by dating a fellow artist; someone who can empathize with the nature of the craft. There are plenty of historical examples of such unions and most involve common rodent, Pablo Picasso. His most infamous relationships were with Francoise Gilot and Dora Maar, equally skilled visual artists. Though Maar was already an established photographer when she met Picasso, both women engaged him for painting apprenticeships, modelling and, according to Picasso and Picasso only, his Spanish sausage.

The Waltz (1883) by Camille Claudel, cheers Getty Museum

To Maar, probably his most known ‘muse’, he denigrated photography in favour of the ‘human touch’ of painting. Though she never abandoned photography, she also never returned to her artistic ascent pre-Picasso. Gilot, whom Picasso left Maar for, wrote about his entreaties to impregnate her to cure her of ‘depression’. After two children, she barely had time to paint for him let alone herself, and detailed desperately locking herself into her studio while their toddler screamed and wailed at the door. Gilot was later hospitalised for exhaustion.

Maybe it’s not the fault of the two-artist relationship though, maybe Picasso was just a c*nt? Gemmell’s book focused heavily on a similarly inequitable partnership between sculptors, Camille Claudel (above) and Auguste Rodin. Then there was Leonora Carrington and Max Ernst, Gabriele Münter and Wassily Kandinsky, Any woman involved with Hemingway, Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. Just a few realised female artists who’s work was either overshadowed, credited to their partner, or stymied by inequitable domestic workloads.

Study for the Orange Self-Portrait II by Françoise Gilot

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera are one such exception to this rule and I have thoughts on why. Not only was Frida unable to bear children, but the pair also maintained separate (though neighbouring) houses; making it easier for Kahlo to focus on painting and for Rivera to pork her sister. Yes, their relationship was dogshit, but Kahlo’s artistic output never waivered. Likewise, painter Celia Paul and her late husband also lived separately to much success, not only was Paul able to protect her sanctum, she could also grow her leg hair from time to time. The dream.

The ability to focus at will is necessary for every artist regardless of gender, but there is one uniquely feminine need for A Room of One’s Own.

She’s called the art monster. This label was first discussed in Jenny Offill’s 2014 novel, Dept. of Speculation, with the viral phrase:

“My plan was never to get married. I was going to be an art monster instead.”

The monster being: honest, self-serving and unbecoming. Her existence well preceded Offill’s line though, in 1932 Virginia Woolf spoke on the inner voice she referred to as the ‘Angel in the House.’ The Angel represents the woman that is pleasing to m*n, “be sympathetic; be tender; flatter.” Woolf recognised its impediment to her writing, and avowed to kill that voice.

Leonora Carrington’s 1937 Self-portrait (above) and short story of a similar time, The Debutante, went so far as to literally depict this monster. In her story, Carrington avoids attending a debutant ball by asking a Hyena to go as her; the Hyena wears a human girl’s face, then eats it at the event, saying “Well, as for me, I do not eat cake” (suit yourself). The monster is non-confirming, primal and unkempt, as is Carrington’s portrayal in her self portrait. That, if you can’t tell, was a very 1930s f*ck you to being an ‘agreeable’ woman.

Though the want to be truly feral isn’t innately feminine, the expectation that you aren’t, is. And to live without that expectation is deeply enticing.

Having been in conventional circumstances myself - with a m*n, at a job, in the burbs, Karen haircut (don’t ask) - there was always a faint thought of, ‘so this is me then?’. I’d always just assumed I was too abnormal for such normalcy. Turned out that hunch was right, and although the initial loss of those circumstances was awful, the sick f*ck in me also found it morbidly interesting. I was given a rare chance to rebuild entirely, and decided to do so around that art monster.

So I’d really, really, appreciate it if my loins didn’t ruin that for me.

Liberated, moisturised, covered in chip dust. (Olympia Rotting (2024) by Maggie Buckle.)

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Ok so you’re saying “But Maggie! what if there’s a m*n who loves you for you and supports your artistic self etc etc.!” to which I’d say: that would be a woman, and I respect women too much to give them this (gestures to self) mess.

Thank you for reading if you made it to the end, I am very very keen to write some more soon! Lots of love to you (and editor Grace, forgive me I was too late)

xxxx Maggie jeannnnnnn xxoxoxoxo