Stuttgarter Zeitung - "A Kiss from the Muse in the City Bustle"

Stuttgarter Zeitung - "Musenkuss im Großstadttrubel"

When the original outshines everything: Soul singer Cassandra Steen shines as a modern muse during a photo shoot with painter Ekaterina Moré in the Schill Gallery

A beautiful notion: the Muses carry ideas from the gods to humans. No work of art without blessings from above, instilled by powerful women. Artist Ekaterina Moré aims to translate the ancient concept of inspiration into contemporary images. For her Muses, she has chosen prominent women whom she has photographed and now intends to paint.

Boxer Regina Halmich portrays Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy. Actress Tina Ruland embodies Terpsichore, the inspiration for choral lyric and dance, her colleague Valerie Niehaus plays Euterpe, representing lyric poetry and flute playing, and Xenia Seeberg is Erato, who fertilizes love poetry. Annabelle Mandeng and Tanja Bülter stand for Clio, the Muse of History, and Urania, the promoter of astronomy. Fashion designer Sonja Kiefer is Thalia, the patron goddess of comedy, and Jenny Jürgens embodies Calliope, who inspires epic poetry, rhetoric, philosophy, and science. Cassandra Steen, the singer from Stuttgart (Freundeskreis, Glashaus, solo), is Polyhymnia, the bringer of hymns, and thus the Muse of song and the lyre. "Her voice inspires me immensely," says Ekaterina Moré. Most of the women she had in mind had agreed, says the artist, who hails from St. Petersburg and has lived near Düsseldorf for years.

Cassandra Steen was the last in the divine round to be photographed this week. The temporary studio was the Schill Gallery in Eberhardstraße. There, where the fashion-conscious young man used to buy his trousers, namely at Ted's, a triumph of femininity was celebrated. Amidst the bustling city, an almost reverent silence reigned on the first floor. The tall singer sat in a cream-colored tunic in front of the black wall, a bouquet of long-stemmed white roses in her lap, her mouth painted bright red.

The finished painting is easy to imagine. How it will actually look will be revealed in the autumn. Starting in October, the nine portraits will tour the galleries where the photos were taken, beginning in Berlin. The proceeds from the sale of the paintings, which are expected to be around 35,000 euros, will go to children's foundations.

In Stuttgart, the women and their companions fortified themselves with pretzels from the Heusteigviertel after the shoot and discovered commonalities. Ekaterina Moré's father was a naval officer, Cassandra Steen grew up with her grandparents on a US Army base in Ostfildern-Ruit. Both are family people. Ekaterina Moré is accompanied by her sister in her projects. Cassandra Steen commutes between Frankfurt, Berlin, and Stuttgart for her album, which will be released in September: "I always come back here because my family is here."

Last but not least, both have a clear idea of what it means to be a strong woman. "Many women try to fight with masculine weapons," says Moré. Yet, strong femininity is different from masculine behavior, more intuition than reason. Thus, her paintings - she paints exclusively women - show sisters in spirit with red-painted mouths, veiled gazes from dark-framed eyes, large hands with suggested fingers, and tight-fitting dresses with deep necklines. These women are sexy and self-determined. No wonder they not only adorn fragile porcelain but also bars like those of the Maritim Hotel in Berlin. As modern Muses of the big city.

Article about the "Modern Muses" project