Claude Cahun

Claude Cahun (25 October 1894 – 8 December 1954), born Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob,[1] was a French photographer, sculptor and writer.[2]

Claude Cahun
Born
Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob

(1894-10-25)25 October 1894
Nantes, France
Died8 December 1954(1954-12-08) (aged 60)
Saint Helier, Jersey
Resting placeSt Brelade's Church
49.1841°N 2.2029°W / 49.1841; -2.2029
NationalityFrench
Known forPhotography, writing, sculpture, collage
MovementSurrealism

Schwob adopted the gender-ambiguous name Claude Cahun in 1917 and is best known for self-portraits, in which they assumed a variety of personae.

Cahun's work was both political and personal, and often undermined traditional concepts of static gender roles. In their autobiography, Disavowals, they explained, "Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me."[3]

During WWII, Cahun was also active as a resistance worker and propagandist.

Early life

Born in Nantes in 1894,[4] Cahun was born into a provincial but prominent intellectual Jewish family.[5] They were the niece of avant-garde writer Marcel Schwob and the great-niece of Orientalist David Léon Cahun. When Cahun was four years old, their mother, Mary-Antoinette Courbebaisse, began suffering from mental illness, which ultimately led to her permanent internment at a psychiatric facility.[6] In their mother's absence, Cahun was brought up by their grandmother, Mathilde Cahun.

Cahun attended a private school (Parsons Mead School) in Surrey after experiences with anti-Semitism at their high school in Nantes.[7][8] They attended the University of Paris, Sorbonne.[7]

They began making photographic self-portraits as early as 1912 (aged 18), and continued taking images of themselves through the 1930s.

Around 1919, they changed their name to Claude Cahun, after having previously used the names Claude Courlis (after the curlew) and Daniel Douglas (after Lord Alfred Douglas). During the early 1920s, they settled in Paris with lifelong partner and step-sibling Suzanne Malherbe, who adopted the pseudonym Marcel Moore.[5]:69 For the rest of their lives together, Cahun and Moore collaborated on various written works, sculptures, photomontages and collages. The two published articles and novels, notably in the periodical Mercure de France, and befriended Henri Michaux, Pierre Morhange, and Robert Desnos.

Around 1922 Claude and Moore began holding artists' salons at their home. Among the regulars who would attend were artists Henri Michaux and André Breton and literary entrepreneurs Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier.[9]

Work
This plaque on Cahun's house in Saint Brélade, Jersey, celebrates their photographic innovation

Cahun's works encompassed writing, photography, and theatre. They are most remembered for their highly staged self-portraits and tableaux that incorporated the visual aesthetics of Surrealism. During the 1920s Cahun produced an astonishing number of self-portraits in various guises such as aviator, dandy, doll, body builder, vamp and vampire, angel, and Japanese puppet.[5]:66

Many of Cahun's portraits feature the artist looking directly at the viewer, head shaved, often revealing only head and shoulders (eliminating body from the view), and a blurring of gender indicators and behaviors which serve to undermine the patriarchal gaze.[10][11] Scholar Miranda Welby-Everard has written about the importance of theatre, performance, and costume that underlies Cahun's work, suggesting how this may have informed the artist's varying gender presentations.[12]

Cahun's published writings include "Heroines," (1925) a series of monologues based upon female fairy tale characters intertwined with witty comparisons to the contemporary image of women; Aveux non avenus, (Carrefour, 1930) a book of essays and recorded dreams illustrated with photomontages; and several essays in magazines and journals.[13]

In 1932 Cahun joined the Association des Écrivains et Artistes Révolutionnaires, where they met André Breton and René Crevel. Following this, they started associating with the surrealist group, and later participated in a number of surrealist exhibitions, including the London International Surrealist Exhibition (New Burlington Gallery) and Exposition surréaliste d'Objets (Charles Ratton Gallery, Paris), both in 1936. Cahun's photograph from the London exhibition of Sheila Legge standing in the middle of Trafalgar Square, their head obscured by a flower arrangement and pigeons perching on their outstretched arms, appeared in numerous newspapers and was later reproduced in a number of books.[14][15] In 1934, Cahun published a short polemic essay, Les Paris sont Ouverts, and in 1935 took part in the founding of the left-wing anti-fascist alliance Contre Attaque, alongside André Breton and Georges Bataille.[16] Breton called Cahun "one of the most curious spirits of our time."[17]

In 1994 the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London held an exhibition of Cahun's photographic self-portraits from 1927–47, alongside the work of two young contemporary British artists, Virginia Nimarkoh and Tacita Dean, entitled Mise en Scene. In the surrealist self-portraits, Cahun represented themselves as an androgyne, nymph, model, and soldier.[18]

In 2007, David Bowie created a multi-media exhibition of Cahun's work in the gardens of the General Theological Seminary in New York. It was part of a venue called the Highline Festival, which also included offerings by Air, Laurie Anderson, and Mike Garson. Bowie said of Cahun:

You could call her transgressive or you could call her a cross dressing Man Ray with surrealist tendencies. I find this work really quite mad, in the nicest way. Outside of France and now the UK she has not had the kind of recognition that, as a founding follower, friend and worker of the original surrealist movement, she surely deserves." [19]

Collaboration with Marcel Moore

Cahun's work was often a collaboration with Marcel Moore. Cahun and Moore collaborated frequently, though this often goes unrecognized. It is believed that Moore was often the person standing behind the camera during Cahun's portrait shoots and was an equal partner in their collages.[10]

With the majority of the photographs attributed to Cahun coming from a personal collection, not one meant for public display, it has been proposed that these personal photographs allowed for Cahun to experiment with gender presentation and the role of the viewer to a greater degree.[10]

World War II activism

In 1937 Cahun and Moore settled in Jersey. Following the fall of France and the German occupation of Jersey and the other Channel Islands, they became active as resistance workers and propagandists. Fervently against war, the two worked extensively in producing anti-German fliers. Many were snippets from English-to-German translations of BBC reports on the Nazis' crimes and insolence, which were pasted together to create rhythmic poems and harsh criticism. The couple then dressed up and attended many German military events in Jersey, strategically placing them in soldier's pockets, on their chairs, and in cigarette boxes for soldiers to find. Additionally, they inconspicuously crumpled up and threw their fliers into cars and windows. In many ways, Cahun and Moore's resistance efforts were not only political but artistic actions, using their creative talents to manipulate and undermine the authority which they despised. In many ways, Cahun's life's work was focused on undermining a certain authority; however, her activism posed a threat to her physical safety.

In 1944, Cahun and Moore were arrested and sentenced to death, but the sentence was never carried out as the island was liberated from German occupation in 1945.[16] However, Cahun's health never recovered from their treatment in jail, and they died in 1954. Cahun is buried in St Brelade's Church with partner Marcel Moore.

Social critique and legacy
Claude Cahun's gravestone in the cemetery of St. Brelade's Church, Jersey

Cahun made work for themselves and did not want to be famous.[20] It wasn't until 40 years after their death that Cahun's work became recognized. In many ways, Cahun's life was marked by a sense of role reversal, and like many early queer pioneers, their public identity became a commentary upon the public's notions of sexuality, gender, beauty, and logic. Their adoption of a gender neutral name and their androgynous self-portraits display a revolutionary way of thinking and creating, experimenting with the audience's understanding of photography as a documentation of reality. Their poetry challenged gender roles and attacked the increasingly modern world's social and economic boundaries. Also, Cahun's participation in the Parisian Surrealist movement diversified the group's artwork and ushered in new representations. Where most Surrealist artists were men, and their primary images were of women depicted as isolated symbols of eroticism, Cahun epitomized the chameleonic and various possibilities of genders and of the body. Their photographs, writings, and general life as an artistic and political revolutionary continue to influence artists.

Cahun's collected writings were published in 2002 as Claude Cahun – Écrits (ISBN 2-85893-616-1), edited by François Leperlier.

Street sign for 'allée Claude Cahun-Marcel Moore' in the 6th arrondissement of Paris

In 2018, a street of Paris took the name of "Allée Claude Cahun - Marcel Moore"[21] (area of Saint-Germain-des-Prés - Montparnasse, near the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs where Claude and Suzanne lived).

Rupert Thomson's 2018 novel, Never Anyone But You, was based on the life of Cahun and Moore. It was favourably reviewed by Adam Mars-Jones in the London Review of Books.[22]

Bibliography (French language)
  • Vues et Visions (Pseudonym Claude Courlis), Mercure de France, No. 406, 16 May 1914
  • La 'Salomé' d'Oscar Wilde. Le procés Billing et les 47000 pervertis du Livre noir, Mercure de France, No. 481, 1 July 1918
  • Le poteau frontière (Pseudonym Daniel Douglas), La Gerbe, No. 3, December 1918
  • Au plus beau des anges (Pseudonym Daniel Douglas), La Gerbe, No. 3, December 1918
  • Cigarettes (Pseudonym Daniel Douglas), La Gerbe, No. 3, December 1918
  • Aux Amis des livres, La Gerbe, No. 5, February 1919
  • La Sorbonne en robe de fête (Pseudonym Daniel Douglas), La Gerbe, No. 5, February 1919
  • La possession du Monde, par Georges Duhamel, La Gerbe, No. 7, April 1919
  • Les Gerbes (Pseudonym Daniel Douglas), La Gerbe, No. 7, April 1919
  • L'amour aveugle (Pseudonym Daniel Douglas), La Gerbe, No. 12, September 1919
  • La machine magique (Pseudonym Daniel Douglas), La Gerbe, No. 12, September 1919
  • Mathilde Alanic. Les roses refleurissent, Le Phare de la Loire, 29 June 1919
  • Le théâtre de mademoiselle, par Mathias Morhardt, Le Phare de la Loire, 20 July 1919
  • Vues et Visions, with Illustrations by Marcel Moore, Paris: Georges Crès & Cie, 1919
  • Paraboles (Pseudonym Daniel Douglas), La Gerbe, No. 17, February 1920
  • Une conférence de Georges Duhamel (Pseudonym Daniel Douglas), La Gerbe, No. 19, April 1920
  • Marcel Schwob, La Gerbe, No. 20, May 1920
  • Boxe (Pseudonym Daniel Douglas), La Gerbe, No. 22, July 1920
  • Old Scotch Whisky, La Gerbe, No. 27, December 1920
  • A propos d'une conference and Méditations à la faveur d'un Jazz Band, La Gerbe, No. 27, December 1920
  • Héroïnes: 'Eve la trop crédule', 'Dalila, femme entre les femmes', 'La Sadique Judith', 'Hélène la rebelle', 'Sapho l'incomprise', 'Marguerite, sœur incestueuse', 'Salomé la sceptique', Mercure de France, No. 639, 1 February 1925
  • Héroïnes: 'Sophie la symboliste', 'la Belle', Le Journal littéraire, No. 45, 28 February 1925
  • Méditation de Mademoiselle Lucie Schwob, Philosophies, No. 5/6, March 1925
  • Récits de rêve, in the special edition Les rêves, Le Disque vert, Third year, Book 4, No. 2, 1925
  • Carnaval en chambre, La Ligne de cœur, Book 4, March 1926
  • Ephémérides, Mercure de France, No. 685, 1 January 1927
  • Au Diable, Le Plateau, No. 2, May–June 1929
  • Ellis, Havelock: La Femme dans la société – I. L'Hygiene sociale, translated by Lucy Schwob, Mercure de France, 1929
  • Aveux non avenus, illustrated by Marcel Moore, Paris: Editions du Carrefour, 30 May 1930
    • Review on Bibliothèque Nationale Gallica
  • Frontière Humaine, self-portrait, Bifur, No. 5, April 1930
  • Protestez (AEAR), Feuille rouge, No. 2, March 1933
  • Contre le fascisme Mays aussi contre l'impérialisme francais (AEAR), Feuille rouge, No. 4, May 1933
  • Les Paris sont ouvert, Paris: José Corti, May 1934
  • Union de lutte des intellectuels révolutionnaires, Contre-Attaque, 7 October 1935
  • Prenez garde aux objets domestique, Cahier d'Art I-II, 1936
  • Sous le feu des canons francais ... et alliés, Contre-Attaque, March 1936
  • Dissolution de Contre-Attaque, L'Œuvre, 24 March 1936
  • Exposition surréaliste d'objets, Exhibition at the Charles Ratton Gallery, Paris, 22–29 May 1936. Items listed by Claude Cahun are Un air de famille and Souris valseuses
  • Il n'y a pas de liberté pour les ennemis de la liberté, 20 July 1936
  • Deharme, Lise: Le Cœur de Pic, 32 illustrated with 20 photos by Claude Cahun, Paris: José Cortis, 1937
  • Adhésion à la Fédération Internationale de l'Art Révolutionnaire Indépendant, Clé, No. 1, January 1939
  • À bas les lettres de cachets! À bas la terreur grise! (FIARI), June 1939

Bibliography (English language)
  • Weaver, M. and Hammond, A. "Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore: Surrealist Sisters." History of Photography, Summer 1993, 17 (2), 217.
  • Laurie J. Monahan, "Radical Transformations: Claude Cahun and the Masquerade of Womanliness". In: Catherine de Zegher (ed.), Inside the Visible, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston & MIT Press, 1996.
  • Claude Cahun, Tacinta Dean and Virginia Nimarkoh: Mise-En-Scene: Institute for Contemporary Arts: London: 1996: ISBN 0-905263-59-6
  • Shelley Rice:Inverted Odysseys: Claude Cahun, Maya Deren and Cindy Sherman: Cambridge: Massachusetts: MIT Press: 1999: ISBN 0-262-68106-4
  • 'Playing a Part: The Story of Claude Cahun,' drama documentary film by Lizzie Thynne, Brighton: Sussex University, 2004. Available from l.thynne@sussex.ac.uk.
  • Julie Cole: "Claude Cahun, Marcel Moore and the Collaborative Construction of a Lesbian Subjectivity." In: Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard (eds.), Reclaiming Female Agency: Feminist Art History after Postmodernism, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2005.
  • Tirza True Latimer, "Narcissus and Narcissus: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore," in Women Together/Women Apart: Portraits of Lesbian Paris. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8135-3595-6
  • Colvile, Georgiana M.M. "Self-Representation as Symptom: The Case of Claude Cahun." Interfaces: Women, Autobiography, Image, Performance. The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2005. p. 263-288.
  • Louise Downie: Don't Kiss Me: The Art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore: London: Aperture: 2006: ISBN 1-85437-679-9
  • Jennifer L. Shaw, "Narcissus and the Magic Mirror" in Don’t Kiss Me: The Art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, ed. Louise Downie, Tate Publishing, 2006.
  • Jennifer L. Shaw, "Deconstructing Girlhood: Claude Cahun’s ‘Sophie la Symboliste,’ in Working Girls: Women’s Cultural Production During the Interwar Years, ed. Paula Birnbaum and Edwin Mellen Press, 2009.
  • Marcus Williamson: "Claude Cahun at School in England", Lulu, 2011. ISBN 978-1-257-63952-6
  • Jennifer L. Shaw, "Neonarcissism" in *Nierika* (Mexico City: Universidad Iberoamericana), "La Política Visual del Narcisismo: estudios de casos," Vol. 2, no. 2, 31 May 2013, 19–26.
  • Jennifer L. Shaw: Reading Claude Cahun's Disavowals, Ashgate, 2013.
  • Jennifer L. Shaw, "From Cabanel to Claude Cahun: More Manifestations of Venus" in Venus as Muse: Figurations of the Creative ed. Sebastian Goth, Rodopi, 2015.
  • Jennifer L. Shaw, Exist Otherwise: The Life and Works of Claude Cahun, Reaktion Books, 2017.

Film

Theatre

Exhibitions
  • International Surrealist Exhibition, London, United Kingdom – June–July 1936
  • Surrealist Sisters – Jersey Museum in Jersey, United Kingdom – 1993
  • Mise en Scene – Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London, United Kingdom – 13 October to 27 November 1994
  • Claude Cahun : photographe : Claude Cahun 1894–1954 – Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris, France – 23 June to 17 September 1995
  • Neue Museum, Graz, Austria – 4 October to 3 December 1997
  • Fotografische Sammlung, Museum Folkwang Essen, Germany – 18 January to 8 March 1998
  • Don't Kiss Me – Disruptions of the Self in the Work of Claude Cahun – Presentation House Gallery, North Vancouver, Canada – 7 November to 20 December 1998
  • Don't Kiss Me – Disruptions of the Self in the Work of Claude Cahun – Art Gallery of Ontario, Ontario, Canada – 8 May to 18 July 1999
  • Inverted Odysseys – Grey Art Gallery, New York City, New York – 16 November 1999 to 29 January 2000
  • Surrealism: Desire Unbound – Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom – 20 September 2001 to 1 January 2002
  • Claude Cahun – Retrospective – IVAM, Valencia, Spain – 8 November 2001 to 20 January 2002
  • I am in training – don't kiss me – New York City, New York – May 2004
  • Acting Out: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore – The Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley, California – 4 April to July 2005
  • Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine – September to October 2005
  • Jersey Museum in Jersey, United Kingdom– November 2005 to January 2006
  • Cahun Exhibition – Jeu de Paume, Place de la Concorde, Paris – 24 May to 25 September 2011.
  • Enter Nous: The Art of Claude Cahun – Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois – 25 February to 3 June 2012.
  • March 2012 in Cahun's home town of Nantes, as part of two seasons on 'Le film et l'acte de création: Entre documentaire et oeuvre d'art' ('Film and the creative act: Between documentary and the work of art').
  • Show Me as I Want to Be Seen at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, California – 7 February 2019 to 7 July 2019.

References
  1. "MoMA | Claude Cahun. Untitled c. 1921". www.moma.org. Retrieved 8 January 2018.
  2. "Claude Cahun – Chronology". Retrieved 18 October 2007.
  3. Cahun, Claude (2008). Disavowals : or cancelled confessions. The MIT Press. ISBN 9780262533034. OCLC 922878515.
  4. Phaidon Editors (2019). Great women artists. Phaidon Press. p. 81. ISBN 978-0714878775.
  5. Kline, Katy (1998). "In or Out of the Picture: Claude Cahun and Cindy Sherman". In Chadwick (ed.). Mirror Images: Women, Surrealism, and Self-Representation. MIT Press. p. 69.
  6. Colvile, Georgiana M.M. (2005). "Self-Representation as Symposium: The Case of Claude Cahun". Interfaces: Women, Autobiography, Image, Performance: 265. Retrieved 5 March 2016.
  7. Doy, Gen (2007). Claude Cahun: A Sensual Politics of Photography. London/New York: I.B. Tauris. pp. xv–xvi. ISBN 9781845115517.
  8. Williamson, Marcus (2011). Claude Cahun at School in England. Marcus Williamson. ISBN 978-1257639526.
  9. Schirmer, Lothar (2001). Women Seeing Women, A Pictorial History of Women's Photography. NY: Norton. p. 208.
  10. Cole, Julie, ‘Claude Cahun, Marcel Moore and the Collaborative Construction of a Lesbian Subjectivity’, in Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard (eds.), Reclaiming Female Agency: Feminist Art History after Postmodernism (California: University of California Press, 2005), 343–60.
  11. Hutchison, Sharla (2003). "Convulsive Beauty: Images of Hysteria and Transgressive Sexuality Claude Cahun and Djuna Barnes". Symplokē. 11 (1/2): 212–226. doi:10.1353/sym.2003.0012. JSTOR 40536944.
  12. Welby-Everard, Miranda (2006). "Imaging the Actor: The Theatre of Claude Cahun". Oxford Art Journal. 29 (1): 3–24. ISSN 0142-6540. JSTOR 3600491.
  13. Penelope Rosemont, Surrealist Women 1998, University of Texas Press
  14. Rosemont, Penelope (1 December 2000). Surrealist Women. A&C Black. pp. 88–90. ISBN 9780567171283.
  15. O'Neill, Alistair (2007). London: After a Fashion. London, England: Cambridge University Press. p. 77. ISBN 9781861893154. Retrieved 19 February 2017.
  16. Andersen, Corinne (2005). "Que me veux-tu?/ What do you want of me?: Claude Cahun's Autoportraits and the Process of Gender Identification". Women in French Studies. 13: 37–50. doi:10.1353/wfs.2005.0002.
  17. Bower, Gavin James (14 February 2012). "Claude Cahun: Finding a lost great". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 8 January 2018.
  18. Katy Deepwell ' Uncanny Resemblances: Restaging Claude Cahun in 'Mise en Scene issue 1 Dec 1996 n.paradoxa: international feminist art journal online pp. 46–51
  19. "The Art Story - Claude Cahun: French Photographer, Writer and Political Activist". Retrieved 27 March 2019.
  20. Colvile, Georgiana M.M. (2005). "Self-Representation as Symposium: The Case of Claude Cahun". Interfaces: Women, Autobiography, Image, Performance: 263–288.
  21. Conseil de Paris
  22. https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n15/adam-mars-jones/im-a-cahunian
  23. Anderson, Jack (30 March 2002). "In Performance". The New York Times.

Sources

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