So far I have developed 7 ex-Lovers for Helga, and have found seven stories in art history that, from Helga's standpoint, parallel to her own personal tragedies:

Lover 1.) Dirk Calligan/Paul Gauguin
Crime: Abandonment/Stole Helga's Motorcycle

Lover 2.) Sargent Jacques/ Edward Weston
Crime: Le cheat de France

Lover 3.) Clark Kent/Alfred Stieglitz
Crime: Lost glasses and found himself on Louis Lane

Lover 4.) Dublin Baker/Jackson Pollock
Crime: Beats his women like his dough

Lover 5.) Popeye Magritte/James Abbott McNeill Whistler
Crime: Traded Helga for a string of pearls

Lover 6.) Cowboy ("Billy Joe")Coolidge/Mark Rothko
Crime: Took his guns to Town, shot himself.

Lover 7.) Jasper Tanning /Man Ray
Crime: 'assisted' by assistant

The first series of photos I started with are Lover #5, inspired by a mix of René Magritte, Diane Arbus, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and Smog.
Lover number #5 traded Helga for a string of pearls, which wasn't a very nice thing to do. Aside from this crime against Helga, lover #5 isn't a bad guy. He's a sad guy full of conflict that trades his possessions like a little boy in the schoolyard.
How 'Helga' relate this to Whistler and Diane Arbus is as follows:

Whistler had a girlfriend, Maud Franklin, for sometime. When she was sick he stayed with her, and they had two daughters together. This didn't mean he treated her well though. Once he left her in a London motel pregnant under the pretense that he was in Paris, while he was still very much in town. Later, he traded her for a better, richer Beatrice "Trixie" Godwin who could provide connections for him and stabilize his finances while he worked on his art.

Norman Mailer once said, ""Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like putting a live grenade in the hands of a child." The interest in strangeness ('the other'), as well as Arbus's mystery, androgyny, ego-centrism, and depression are all inspiration for Lover #5.

For the art to go by with the art history drawings, I am looking at Son of Man, and work by Whistler.