Famous artist couples: What happens when one is better known than the other?

(CNN) — Artists’ private lives have long informed the curiosity of others, their romantic partnerships even more so, with numerous books, exhibitions, and online listicles addressing this particular facet of culture. “They’re like rock stars of the heart,” said the filmmaker Jacob Perlmutter, on a video call. “There’s such a romantic quality to artistic couples, and as human beings we’re attracted to that — look at all the plays and novels we absorb!”

“Artists are eccentric, they put their emotions onto canvas for a living,” Perlmutter continued, though caveated that “any couple sharing the same profession is interesting.”

Leaning into this fascination is a new documentary on Joel Meyerowitz and Maggie Barrett — he, the internationally renowned American street photographer, then aged 84, and she, 75, an English artist and self-published author — which released in the US in late 2024 and in the UK on March 21.

On Christmas Eve in 2021, Perlmutter and his now-wife, the photographer Manon Ouimet, moved into the Tuscany home of Meyerowitz and Barrett. The two couples would share this space (as well as homes in New York and Cornwall) for a year, as Perlmutter and Ouimet sought to construct a film that answered the question, “what would it be like, for one artist couple to make a film about another artist couple?”

Navigating life, love and fame

The intrigue around artist couples spans generations. A 1933 article about Frida Kahlo, which resurfaced a few years ago, was met with a collective eye roll: “Wife of the Master Mural Painter Gleefully Dabbles in Works of Art” ran the headline from The Detroit News, referencing a gulf between Kahlo and husband Diego Rivera. Fans were similarly animated in 2010 when Marina Abramović’s former partner and collaborator, Ulay, turned up in New York for “The Artist is Present”, her endurance-based performance at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), 20 years after they had last saw each other.

Perlmutter, already a fan of Meyerowitz’s work, found himself similarly enamoured when he met the couple together in London, by chance, a few weeks after spotting Meyerowitz in a hardware store. “They had a magnetizing aura about them, they seemed to radiate,” Perlmutter recalled. “During the pandemic, I came across Maggie’s blog: if the Internet is a digital street, I stumbled across her as I once had Joel.”

“Two Strangers Trying Not To Kill Each Other”, which borrows its name from a comment Meyerowitz made early in the couple’s relationship some 30 years ago, is the product of Perlmutter and Ouimet’s experiment. Wholly compelling, throughout the film are reflections on love, life, and especially death; who will get an obituary in The New York Times when they die? In which country should they scatter their ashes? There are also moments of levity, with music, dancing and games of table tennis.

“I was so excited. These glorious young creative people find us that interesting? What a fabulous adventure to go on,” Barrett told CNN, relaying her initial reaction to the pair’s invitation. “I’ve been asked a few times to be in a film and I’ve resisted,” added Meyerowitz. “But there was something about Jacob and Manon together that was so earnest, honest and open hearted. The respect between the four of us was immediately evident.”

This sentiment was echoed by Perlmutter and Ouimet, who saw in the couple a projection of their own potential story. “There was a mirroring happening, separated by 40 years of life. That bonded us from the moment we spoke on Zoom,” recalled Ouimet.

“The driving force for me, coming on this journey, was to see what a relationship looked like late in life, and to witness what love is,” Ouimet continued. “We were just turning up, exploring, observing, talking, capturing; entering this space as two artists willing to see what we could make together; as a couple, and as creative collaborators, we had no ego. It was about playing around — that allowed for honesty and intimacy.”

This intimacy, married with care, was a central component of the project, and established a sense of trust that accommodated the recording of otherwise private and often tender moments (sometimes with the filmmakers in the room, other times with the cameras left rolling). In one early scene, shot in the first ten days of filming, Barrett and Meyerowitz are folding laundry, discussing their mortality. “Everything locked into place (with that scene),” said Perlmutter. “How amazing, elegant and simple it could look. How moving and raw, and how incredibly engaging these people were.”

‘The imbalance revealed itself’

While the film’s language was shaped by both artists — the cinematography honors Meyerowitz’s framing (spontaneous but intentional) and the score, by Diogo Strausz, was derived from Barrett’s compositions — a main thread revolves around the professional inequalities that pierce their relationship. In a conversation about careers with her friend, the dancer Brenda Bufalino, on screen Barrett recognizes the limitations imposed on her own trajectory, adding that “it didn’t help either, marrying a famous man.”

Such discrepancies are of course universal and stretch well beyond the art world, but can feel especially heightened for creatives privy to outside acclaim, particularly within heterosexual couples. Lee Krasner for example, had already established her practice as an abstract artist when she met Jackson Pollock, but was ultimately overshadowed by him, her work routinely discussed in relation to his.

Furthermore, “Modern Couples”, which opened at London’s Barbican art gallery in 2018 following a run at the Centre Pompidou-Metz museum in France, examined closely these issues, inconsistencies and the frequent sexism that accompanied different creative relationships in the 20th century. It featured nearly 50 couples including Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar, Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, and Dorothea Tanning and Max Ernst.

“We saw that show and it went in really deep, for both of us,” offered Perlmutter. “The imbalance (in the film) revealed itself over time. It’s nothing we sought out, but we were able to recognize it in these struggles that played out day-to-day — something happens, and that symbolizes the imbalance. The impact and ramifications of that was interesting, because what is also so evident is that they’re completely devoted.”

Indeed, in tandem with these underlying feelings of professional inadequacy is a relationship built on profound affection and admiration. “I love Maggie deeply and share everything with her, and we’ve collaborated on quite a few projects together, but nonetheless, there was an inequity there,” recognized Meyerowitz. “Seeing it described in the film surprised both of us, and that it was such a characteristic of this film.”

“It wasn’t that I didn’t know those things about myself already, but when you see them on screen, yeah, it goes in pretty deep,” added Barrett. Ultimately, via the film she’s arrived at a place of peace, she said. “In terms of my creative work, I felt very validated. As a result of working on this, and (it) being seen now by the public as well as the filmmakers, I feel my own equality in the relationship. That was really a gift.”

Despite the film’s early wins, with awards and sold-out screenings, neither Barrett or Meyerowitz are fully convinced that audiences really are drawn to mythologized relationship dynamics such as theirs. “If they are, it’s partly because they want to see the ‘normal human behind the artist’, to not have those couples on a pedestal anymore,” Barrett said.

Meyerowitz added: “Artists are self-invented. They’re constantly questioning the meaning of their lives and the necessity of their work; gifted with this kind of searching sensibility, maybe that’s part of the rarity of artists.”

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