Dora Marr

By Antonia Hildebrand

Women are suffering machines, Picasso said.
And then he did everything he could to make it true.
Poor Dora loved him.
She was an artist herself,
but he immortalized her as The Weeping Woman,
without ever admitting, he was the one
who made her weep.
Dark haired, beautiful, gifted and intense,
she fell for him.

Her photography was innovative and radical.
So was her politics.
She was a surrealist.
But she loved like a 19th century heroine.
Like a passionate, intelligent woman.
All or nothing, baby.

Picasso eventually treated her with contempt and left her.
He knew he could make her jump through hoops,
and he did.
But she remained an artist,
and like him she never stopped creating.
Specializing in abstract landscapes
and photography with an uncanny atmosphere.
She didn’t photograph the world.
She used her gifts to create strange new worlds.
And yet she’s remembered as Picasso’s muse.

The Weeping Woman was weeping for Guernica,
bombed by the Nazis.
So Picasso said.
She spent nine years of her life with Picasso.
If she’d been a rationalist,
she could have gone all Dorothy Parker and said:
That’s nine years of my life I’ll never get back.
There’s a photo of her with wounded eyes,
but she looks as beautiful and untamed as a panther.
The Weeping Woman sold for $6.64 million in 1998.
But the woman it depicts was not valued by Picasso.
There was always another woman to screw.
That is where art and life part company.

Antonia Hildebrand is a poet, short story writer, screenwriter, novelist and essayist. Her first published short story appeared in Downs Images and in Woman’s Day‘ Summer Reading’ and she has since been widely published in journals, magazine and anthologies in Australia as well as Britain, the USA and Ireland. She is the author of nine books, including three books of poetry, two short story collections, two essay collections and novels. Her novel ‘The Darkened Room’ was published by Ginninderra Press in 2022. Her poetry collection, ‘Broken Dolls’ was published by Tangerine Books in 2024.