ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an art historical perspective on the psychoanalytic understanding of creativity as an object relationship, proposing that the creative endeavour is determined by a wider, more complex network of internal and external object relationships than is usually assumed. The traditional, popular, Romantic concept of the artist as isolated and innately gifted has tended to conceal the determining relationships of creativity. The network of relationships that forms this “environment” most obviously includes relations with an audience of real or imaginary individuals. The chapter illustrates the disparate means by which the presence of “muse” can be internalized to infuse the relationships that constitute creativity. The fundamental aspect of the network of relationships determining creativity that conjure up the angel—for good or ill—is that it is beset by rival claims or impulses. Thinking about the angel in conjunction with the history of women in art elucidates the relationship between reparation of the object and self-reparation.
