f resh p er sp ec tives/ 5

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of boxes
and ceilings
Arts and Gender

picture: Free Pussy Riot in Berlin by Mentalgassi (source: Urban Art Core)
Pascale Charhon
September 2016

ISBN: 978-2-930897-07-3

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Of Boxes and Ceilings

Fresh Perspectives on Arts and Gender

by Pascale Charhon

Published by IETM - International Network for Contemporary Performing Arts, Brussels

September 2016

Editing and general coordination: Elena Di Federico, Nan van Houte (IETM)

Proof-reading: Mary Ann deVlieg

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(CC BY-NC-ND). You are free to reuse and share this publication or parts of it as long as you mention the original source.

This publication should be mentioned as follow:

P. Charhon, “Of Boxes and Ceilings. Fresh Perspectives on Arts and Gender”, IETM, Brussels, September 2016. Link: https://www.ietm.
org/en/publications

For further information please contact ietm@ietm.org

The publishers have made every effort to secure permission to reproduce pictures protected by copyright. IETM will be pleased to make
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Table of contents
About 3

01. 05.
performing gender:
07.
in-clusion and
introduction 4
the body as ex-clusion: questioning

02.
gender and the arts:
a review of concepts
an open possibility 11
Gender as Performance -
Diane Torr (USA) 12
The sensitive balance between following
and challenging systems of covenants, is the
5 key to progression - Israel Aloni / ilDance
(Sweden) 13
the dominant gaze 20
‘Chorus of Women’ [‘hu:r kobj+] - Marta
Górnicka, (Poland) 21
Challenging Hetero-Normativity and
the law in Ecuador: ‘Real Versus Fake’
- TransGender-TransAction Theatre

03.
company (UK-Ecuador) 22
Identity and behaviour are open structures,
shifting and changing over time - OSMOSIS Coming to Terms with Racial Repression
Performing Arts / Euripides Laskaridis in South Africa: ‘Monumental Dresses’ -
(Greece) 14 Judith Mason 23
shifting genders 6

08.
‘Performing Gender’: a European dance

04.
project on gender and sexual orientation
differences 15
conclusions 24

06.
the contribution of the
feminist debate -
and the next steps 7 Useful Links and Resources

Artistic practices as gendered practices -

gender equality and Annex: Glossary of Terms Related to
interview with Marie Buscatto 10 artistic practices 16 Gender Identities and Sexual Orientation

#WakingTheFeminists 18

The streets of (Polish) cities are becoming one

great, social stage – interview with
Agata Adamiecka-Sitek 19

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About
Gender relates to the most intimate part
of the human self – identity. The individual
identity is in constant tension with the
social self, and the arts bring this tension
to light – be it through autobiographical
elements or by reflecting the situation of
larger communities or society. Arts that
stage (in any form) such a sensitive and
intimate topic of gender identity resonate
deeply with audiences and can lead them
to reconsider their vision, their gaze, ulti-
mately their own identity.
This Fresh Perspectives publication deals
with a complex and delicate topic whose
borders are often blurred. It highlights
some crucial points – the definition of gen-
ders, gender identity, feminism, gender
bias and discrimination – that intertwine in
a complex individual and social web. It seeks
to clarify some terms while acknowledging
that there is no clear consensus, even in the
academic field, but only general agreement
on them. It focuses on the insoluble tension
between the individual and the social and
respectfully suggests possible ways to use
this tension creatively in order to advance
society.
The gender issue is a clear example of obvi-
ous binaries that limit our vision of reality
– the binary male/female, of gender roles,
and their false competition. Art can com-
plicate the story, it can let us think outside
the norms, the habits, the obvious binaries
that way too often limit our perception of
reality but also our imagination. Two out-
standing men – Brecht and Mayakovsky
– have been attributed with the famous
quote ‘Art should not be a mirror to reflect
society but a hammer with which to disrupt
it’ – but this is also a binary opposition. We
prefer to keep in mind the words of author,
feminist and social activist bell hooks: ‘Not
only will I stare, I want my look to change
reality’. Maybe that’s what the arts should
do – stare daringly at reality and change it.
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IETM would like to thank all the people who
responded to the call published by IETM
sending their contributions, and in par-
ticular: Roberta Orlando, Paola De Ramos,
Alessandra De Santis, Nela Milic, Lydia
Fraser-Ward, Lucy Hutson, Katarzyna
Perlak, Juan delGado, Joey Hateley, Jodie
Rowe, Jenny Wilson, Hester Chillingworth,
kata bodoki-halmen, Euripides Laskaridis,
Eileen Budd, Diane Torr, Anita Bartolini,
Mark Leahy.
Special thanks to those who provided con-
tacts and insights on the topic of the publi-
cation, in particular Agata Adamiecka-Sitek,
Simone Basani, Federico Borreani, Georgy
Mamedov, Sinta Wibowo.
IETM and the author also wish to thank
Professor Marie Buscatto (Professor of
Sociology and Gender Studies at Université
Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne and researcher
at IDHES, Paris 1- CNRS, France) and
Professor Rosemarie Buikema (Professor
of Art, Culture and Diversity at Utrecht
University, Chair of the UU Graduate
Gender programme and scientific direc-
tor of the Netherlands Research School of
Gender Studies, the Netherlands). Their
valuable insights, analysis and knowledge
have significantly contributed to this
publication.
The author wishes to thank Elena Di
Federico (IETM) for her support in the
research and writing process.
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IETM
IETM is a network of over 500 performing
arts organisations and individual members
working in the contemporary perform-
ing arts worldwide: theatre, dance, circus,
interdisciplinary live art forms, new media.
IETM advocates for the value of the
arts and culture in a changing world and
empowers performing arts professionals
through access to international connec-
tions, knowledge and a dynamic forum for
exchange.
pascale charhon
Pascale Charhon is a Consultant in
European Affairs providing consultancy
services in the area of European Union
policies and fundamental rights through
her own consultancy Charhon Consultants
since 2012. Prior to launching her consul-
tancy, Pascale held senior management
positions in several prominent civil soci-
ety organisations, and was engaged in
advocacy and research led project based
activities covering areas such as non-dis-
crimination, diversity management, gender
equality and intercultural education. She
works with European civil society organisa-
tions and trade unions, including from the
live performance, media and entertainment
sectors.
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Gender and social change in their artistic expression are very much related to the values in European society2. Therefore, our
recognition and acknowledgement of the engineering of processes of ‘in-clusion and approach is to recognise that the conver-
ex-clusion’ related to sexual identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity and race. The debates sation about arts and gender is not static
on gender and artistic expressions have been closely associated to political, social and but part of a continuously evolving debate.
economic changes which Western societies have experienced in the 20th century
and where some of the legacy of engrained patterns and norms has been gradually The main objective of this publication is to
questioned. Feminist pioneering work in the US and Europe have over the last decades reflect on some of the ways in which con-
played a key role in promoting inclusive perspectives and advocating gender equality temporary artists explore, or challenge,
mainstreaming. The recognition of the presence of women as subjects in art history, the traditional gender distinctions within the
questioning of the normative binary order man/woman, the redefinition of the socially realm of artistic activities and how they
constructed boundaries related to gender, the debates related to sexual orientation can promote social change. The text builds
and hetero-normativity along with the recognition of LGBTI identities are among the on the contributions of artists in various
important ingredients of the conversations at hand. Those trends have helped to shape disciplines - photography, painting and
the way in which artists have been reflecting and portraying gender in their artistic performing arts, as well as the creative
practice throughout the latest decades. industries - to examine how personal expe-
riences of daily life, interpretations of his-
torical events and artists’ own commitment
to social or political agendas, can encourage

01.
Introduction
Unlike sex, which indicates whether a per-
son is biologically male or female, gender
refers to people’s internal perception and
experience of maleness and femaleness,
and the social construction that allocates
certain behaviours to male and female
roles. Gender has, over the last decades,
become a topical issue in various forms of
contemporary artistic expression and nota-
bly in relation to movements or groups in
their efforts to become disenfranchised
by the mainstream dominant ‘male-domi-
nated culture’. It also enjoys the status of
a fully-fledged category in the sociology
of the arts. The twentieth century femi-
nist movement played an important role
in addressing the topic of gender through
new lenses that considered the role of
women as both creators and subjects of
important artworks. Contemporary fem-
inist and LGBTI movements also brought
renewed perspectives and debates about
the ways gender affects personality, rela-
tionships, and is expressed in the various
forms of contemporary artistic practices1.
The terms ‘in-clusion’ and ex-clusion’ come
1   would be a threat to the traditional family
from an interview of the Author with Prof.
Buikema (Professor of Art, Culture and Diversity
at Utrecht University), January 2016
The understanding and definition of both
gender and art have been impacted by the
beliefs, practices, social and political norms
that characterise a given society at a given
time in a given location. Culture is part of
the fabric of every society as it shapes the
way things are done and our understand-
ing of why it should be so. Gender identities
and gender relations are critical aspects of
culture because they shape the way daily
life is lived in the family surroundings but
also in the wider community, in schools
and the workplace. Societies and cultures
are also not static: they are living entities
and they are continually being renewed
and reshaped. And so are gender identities
and gender relations. Gender influences
social relations producing activities, spaces,
registers, representations and practices
associated with ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’
characteristics (grace and ability to listen,
emotionalism, passive seduction, virility,
self assertion, etc.).
Another element to acknowledge is that the
sociology of arts and gender is still a young
subject within the sphere of social sciences
and its terminology is also in constant evo-
lution. As regards language, in particular,
one should be aware of certain attempts
of negative instrumentalisation of the
debates on gender identities and expres-
sions by conservative political forces,
that have recently denounced ‘gender
theory’ as an ‘imported’ concept which
society to question some common assump-
tions about gender identities. The question
of social change adds an analytical ground
which has led many artists to discuss press-
ing issues, like diversity/equality, race/eth-
nicity, inclusion/discrimination, inextricably
linked to gender expression.
In the first place, the text aims to clarify the
concepts and underlying themes of arts
and gender from the perspective of social
science theories that influenced the con-
temporary arts movement in the first part
of the 20th century. The publication then
explores the main topics related to ‘gender’
tackled by contemporary arts expressions,
as well as by arts history, and explores how
contemporary artistic practices address
the issues at hand. Finally we address the
role of the arts in fostering social change
notably by questioning and challenging
traditional assumptions about gender
expressions. With the hope of clarifying
the linguistic difficulties mentioned above,
an attached annex includes a glossary of
the most commonly used terms related to
gender identities and sexual orientations,
with the definitions used by leading human
rights organisations in Europe and the US.
2 For instance, this debate has surfaced during
the demonstrations against same sex marriage in
France in 2012 and 2013, while in Italy – where
a law about same-sex marriage was fiercely
debated at the time of writing – conservative
parties use the English word ‘gender’ instead of
the Italian equivalent ‘genere’.

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This publication has sought to explore how
the arts intersect gender issues in differ-
ent – mostly European – countries, know-
ing that the debates on gender equality and
LGBTI issues are been very much impacted
by the political environment prevailing at
the national level. Differences in the way
different countries – and their artistic
scenes – tackle the gender issue go beyond
the scope of this publication and would
need to be addressed more specifically.
The concept of gender in its modern expres-
sion has been closely associated to a move-
ment of women’s emancipation and the
twentieth-century emergence of feminism,
as women have sought to obtain the rights,
privileges and unique forms of expression
that men have enjoyed historically in patri-
archal societies where the roles of class,
race and sexuality were defined by the
dominant gender. The emergence of femi-
nist art history since the 1960s resulted in
a critical reflection of the representation of
the woman as a subject, creator and spec-
tator of arts but it also inspired a broader
work — reinforced that belief2. Before the
1970s few people even acknowledged that
women had largely been excluded from the
institutions and systems that produced
‘serious’ artists. In many cases, successful
women had simply been written out of the
history of art. The Italian artist Artemisia
Gentileschi, for example, enjoyed an
impressive reputation in the seventeenth
century, but her efforts were eventually
forgotten, only to be rediscovered in the
early twentieth century.

02.
redefinition of the portraying of gender in
artistic practices.

Gendered roles and their artistic expres-

Gender and the arts:
a review of concepts
The ways we behave and express ourselves
are shaped by the cultures in which we par-
ticipate. Since the early twentieth century,
philosophers, social scientists and histori-
ans have theorised that the roles, charac-
teristics and activities that distinguish men
from women are not innate but socially con-
structed. The concept of gender identity
saw the light and can be defined as a cul-
tural and social construction of masculin-
ity and femininity. According to Professor
Marie Buscatto, ‘gender is a concept aiming
to give an account of the social processes
of production, legitimisation, transgression
and transformation of hierarchised, sexual-
ised differences between men and women’.
Certain principles set by society aim to ‘nat-
uralise’ such differences and to stigmatise
any behaviour going against them1. So, in
Buscatto’s view, gender presentations
in art or gendered artistic practices are
the outcome of the cultural process of
defining sexual and social identity. At
the same time, as we will examine in the
following sections, the visual and perform-
ing arts, as means of expression through
transformation and stylisation, are among
the most powerful media to reflect on this
cultural process and to create and embody
the alternatives.
1   M. Buscatto, ‘Sociologies du genre’, Paris,
Armand Colin, 2014  instance talking about herstory instead of history
sion have historically been rooted in
assumptions based on the cultural and
social norms prevailing in society. For
example, the ancient Egyptians and Greeks
developed formal methods for represent-
ing the ideal human figure in art, with males
being presented as strong and athletic,
while females appeared demure. Artworks
depicting men have historically referred to
powerful male bodies or leadership roles. In
contrast, women have tended to be shown
in artworks either as passive, eroticised
subjects who existed solely for the view-
er’s pleasure, or, alternately, in the role of
nurturers in domestic scenarios.
Throughout the Western world and for
many centuries women had far fewer
opportunities than men to become artists
and attend formal artistic education, and
when allowed it was not at the same level:
for example, women were not allowed to Artemisia Gentileschi, ‘Judith Slaying
draw from the nude in their art classes until Holofernes’ (source: Web Gallery of Art)
the nineteenth century. In theatre women
only made their way to the European stage
in the 17th/18th century (female roles
being interpreted by men and boys till that
date), to play their parts in a repertoire
dominated by male playwrights staging
male protagonists.
Women artists were rarely given the rec-
ognition granted to their male counter-
2   Incidentally, the English language offers
parts. It was also believed that ‘genius’ plenty of examples of nouns and adjectives whose
was a trait exclusively available to men, feminine version took on a negative connotation,
and language with a gender bias—such as as Guardian columnist David Shariatmadari
recently highlighted. On the other hand, it offers
the word ‘masterpiece’ to describe a great interesting opportunities to play with words, for

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03.
Shifting genders
Cross-gender figures emerged in the twen-
tieth century in several artistic domains,
mirroring the new presentations on gender
roles in society and culture. French Claude
Cahun and Mexican Frida Kahlo, affiliated
to the Surrealist movement in the 1930s,
are two prominent examples: their mascu-
line appearance in self-portraits testifies
to a growing effort to legitimise broader
gender boundaries while being a state-
ment of an assertive femininity. The female
artists mirror or double their own images
and stretch the boundaries of gender and
sexual representation in order to challenge Claude Cahun (Lucy Schwob), Marcel Moore (Suzanne
hetero-normative conceptions of gender Malherbe), ‘Untitled’, 1921-22 (source: MOMA)
identity and to emphasise the fluidity of
gender, refusing to adhere to statically
masculine or feminine characteristics.

The American photographer Diane Arbus

(1923–71) was fascinated by subjects that
crossed established boundaries, includ-
ing conventional gender distinctions. She
made direct, even confrontational pictures
of people outside the mainstream, such
as the extremely small and tall people,
twins and sword swallowers that she met
at sideshows, carnivals and circuses. Her
photograph ‘Hermaphrodite with a Dog’
conveys her subject’s experience of being
both male and female and, at the same time,
not conforming to either gender, adds up to
a shocking reality. The spectacle of the her-
maphrodite’s dual nature is highlighted in
the visible juxtaposition between the fem-
Diane Arbus, ‘Hermaphrodite and a dog in a carnival trailer, Maryland’
inine costume, make-up, and clean-shaven
(source: Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College Chica-
right side and the masculine tattoo, wrist-
go - gift of Larry Deutsch)
watch, and hairy body on the left.

The change in gender identity and the

emergence of cross-gender figures was
boosted by creative industries and com-
mercial culture. New fashion designs for
women acknowledged elements desig-
nating traditional masculine features, and
gender-neutral clothing with tailored suits
for women has been a particular feature of
modern fashion trends, magnified in the
last 40 years by designers such as Yves
Saint Laurent. Music industries icons such
as Annie Lennox or David Bowie were also
known for their famous androgynous looks.
A huge number of films deal with different
aspects of gender issues – the topic is the
background for diverse works ranging from
‘Victor Victoria’ (1982), ‘Yentl’ (1983),
‘Orlando’ (1992) and ‘The Adventures of
Priscilla, Queen of the Desert’ (1994) to
‘Laurence Anyways’ (2012) and ‘Une nou-
velle amie’ (2014), just to mention a few
well-known examples.
More than for other topics, gender has
been explored and exploited by the main-
stream and commercial media production,
sometimes only as an economically inter-
esting ‘trend’. More recently artists started
to openly criticise the ‘obvious’ representa-
tion of gender, the stereotypes and ‘norms’
largely diffused by the mainstream media,
and indeed they’ve often gone much deeper,
as we’ll see in the following sections.

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04.
The contribution of the
feminist debate –
and the next steps
The emergence of the feminist movement
in the 1960s and 1970s influenced and
challenged gendered artistic expressions.
In a 1979 installation titled ‘The Dinner
Party’, the American feminist artist Judy
Chicago honours women from the past
and present. Her huge triangular dinner
table has thirteen place settings on each
side. Every setting features a placemat, on
which is embroidered the name of a famous
historical or mythical woman, and an elabo-
rate plate designed intentionally to resem-
ble the shape of a butterfly or a vagina.
In visual arts since the 1970s, physical
appearance and gender distinctions have
started to blur. Photographers Cindy
Sherman and Nan Goldin challenged and
transformed stereotyped gender roles
while exploring female identity, love, vio-
lence, and transgender identities. These
and other artists worked to question the
common representation of the woman in
the arts and the gaze through which the
woman is looked at. More recently art-
ists like the Polish Katarzyna Kozyra have
explored the link between artistic practices
and popular and capitalist imagery and
challenged the concept of the nude with
that of nakedness.
As the feminist movement gained momen-
tum, artists began to question the tradi-
tional roles of women, addressing topics
such as women in the domestic and public
spheres and the conventional standards
of beauty. Art critics also played a large
role in the 1970s feminist art movement,
calling attention to the fact that women
artists had been completely omitted from
the canon of Western art and seeking to
re-write male-established criteria of art
criticism and aesthetics. In 1971, ARTnews
published critic Linda Nochlin’s provocative
essay ‘Why Have There Been No Great
Women Artists?’ that critically examined
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Carolyn Carson (picture: © Ripari Young Group, source: website of the artist)
the category of ‘greatness’ (as it had largely
been defined in male-dominated terms)
and initiated the feminist revision of art
history that led to the inclusion of more
women artists in art history books. In the
UK in 1973 art critics Rozsika Parker and
Griselda Pollock founded the Women’s Art
History Collective to further address the
omission of women from the Western art
historical canon. More recently, the project
re.act.feminism #2 developed ‘a mobile
archive and workstation with a growing
collection of videos, photographs and other
documents of feminist, gender-critical and
queer performance art’. This transnational
project featured works by over 180 artists
and artist collectives from the 1960s to the
beginning of the 1980s, as well as contem-
porary work, with a focus on Eastern and
Western Europe, the Mediterranean and
Middle East, the US and Latin America.
The archive contents expanded through
research and cooperation with art insti-
tutions, academies and universities across
Europe and further developed through
exhibitions, screenings, performances and
discussions.
In the 1970s and 80s the performing arts
were deeply marked by a generation of
women who introduced a strong female
perspective in their work and influenced
the aesthetics of dance and theatre.
While not necessarily taking overtly fem-
inist positions, choreographers Lucinda
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Childs, Carolyn Carlson, Pina Bausch and
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker countered
the female sub-ordination on the stage,
undermined stereotyped iconography and
are considered among the most influen-
tial contemporary choreographers. In the
theatre field outstanding female directors
played a similar role. Creating new theatre
languages based on their own scripts, or
the re-interpretation of existing repertoire,
Ariane Mnouchkine, Joan Littlewood and
Liz Lecompte had a profound impact both
artistically and socially.
The play that the New York Times
described in 2006 as ‘probably the most
important piece of political theater of the
last decade’ is also the work of a women:
Eve Ensler’s ‘The Vagina Monologues’.
First staged in 1996, it continues to meet
with international success, translated in
over 40 languages and with performances
in 120 countries. Tackling a very sensitive
issue (if not a taboo), and giving voice (liter-
ally) to women’s bodies, the play has been
received with enthusiasm by audiences.
In spite of the censorship – attempted or
imposed – in several countries (including
Wisconsin, Florida, Malaysia and Uganda),
it has inspired other plays exploring dif-
ferent aspects of women’s (and men’s)
intimacy and life, from Dutch director
Adelheid Roosen’s ‘Veiled Monologues’
to Egypt-based ‘Bussy Monologues’.
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The success of her ‘Vagina Monologues’

allowed Ensler to boost her international
action against violence on women, start-
ing with V-Day, a global movement to end
violence against girls and women (raising
awareness and funds through perfor-
mances of the ‘Monologues’ organised
around the world) and developing several
other actions, including campaigns, interna-
tional advocacy work and the creation of a
safe haven for women victims of violence in
the Democratic Republic of Congo.

During the sexual revolution of the

1960/1970s many artists had come out
of the closet, representing a colourful and ‘The Bussy Monologues’ performed in the Cairo metro, 2012 (source: Youtube)
playful element in the (predominantly seri-
ous) avant-garde. So when in the 1980s
the AIDS crisis hit it had multiple, complex
impacts on the arts world. The rapid spread
of the disease, which literally ‘wiped out a
whole generation of artists’, was a trigger
for many (male) homosexual artists like Paul
Taylor and Bill T. Jones to make work explic-
itly dealing with their sexual orientation,
and for many more artists – not necessar-
ily HIV-positive themselves, but struck by
the number of friends and colleagues found
ill or dying – to tackle new topics in their
work and ultimately to engage in aware-
ness-raising and political campaigns. The
AIDS crisis actually politicised the work of
many artists in all fields and forged a new
artistic community, especially in the US
where the political and societal response
to the crisis was one of bigotry, social Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane (source: Body Against Body blog)
stigma and backward-looking moralism1.
Tony Kushner’s ‘Angels in America’ is a land-
mark piece of work from that period.

It is worth mentioning that the feminist
movement followed different paths in
communist countries during the Soviet
era. According to Bulgarian artist Boryana
Rossa, overcoming class inequality was pre-
sented as ‘the only necessary and sufficient
condition to eliminate gender discrimina-
tion’; while indeed at the level of society
women did obtain rights that improved
their social and professional status, the
focus on class inequality as ‘the only evil’
1   About the impact of the AIDS crisis in the
visual arts and public arts, see for instance
Barbara Pollock, ‘Document, protest, memorial :
AIDS in the arts world’ in ArtNews, 5 May 2014
ultimately allowed inequalities and
exploitation to be sustained within the
family sphere. After the fall of communism,
in those societies women – especially
younger ones – still suffer today from the
joint effect of two propagandas: the one
of the ‘already realised equality’ during
the socialist era, and the one ‘of the cen-
turies-long patriarchal customs, which
are still comfortably inhabiting the family
sphere’. The case of Russian feminist punk
group Pussy Riots in 2012 showed how the
social stigma on women not fulfilling their
‘natural’ role as mothers and housewives
can be a comfortable ‘camouflage’ for the
actual political motivation of harsh repres-
sion of an artistic and activist group with a
strong activist component by the State.
Slightly similar in its effect was Apartheid in
South Africa. While the Apartheid regime
violently suppressed all emancipatory
movements, the political revolt against
Apartheid subordinated LGBT and feminist
activism. The first years after the abolition
of Apartheid witnessed a wide panorama
of performances dealing not only with the
ethnic, but also with gender diversity and
equality, while gay and lesbian communities
faced continued prejudices and struggle.

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While the feminist movement has been cru-

cial to question traditional gender roles and
gendered power relations, feminist theories
have been criticised for remaining funda-
mentally aligned with hetero-normativity.
Gay and lesbian studies, emerging in par-
allel with the equality struggle led by the
LGBTI movement in the US and Europe,
contributed to advance the debates on sex-
ual orientation as well as challenging fem-
inism and the hetero-normative models.
Judith Butler, one of the landmark voices
of the feminist and lesbian movement in the
USA, defines her book ‘Gender Trouble’ as
‘a critique of compulsory heterosexual-
ity within feminism’, with feminists as its
intended audience.

Lesbian visual art as it has emerged since

the 1960s is multifaceted and does not yet
represent a cohesive stylistic movement.
Artists such as Harmony Hammond have
been defining a homosexual iconography
and terminology. In 2000, Hammond’s
pioneering book ‘Lesbian Art in America,
A Contemporary History’ (Rizzoli, 2000)
testified to a career-long interest in the
problems of lesbian self-representation
in a patriarchal society where women’s
images are still primarily controlled by
men and their bodies objectified by male
desire. Hammond’s book explored what
it is to ‘see’ and represent as a gendered,
lesbian subject.
So called ‘Queer art’ has explored and bro-
ken down the conventions of traditional
gender and sexual roles, as in John Kirby’s
‘Self-Portrait’, in which the artist presents
himself in feminine underwear without
concealing his masculine body.
Queer art – for which it is hard to find a
widespread, commonly agreed definition
– is particularly visible in Queer festivals
organised across Europe (and outside),
which often combine arts, theory and
activism. In particular in former Soviet
countries Queer festivals constitute a
privileged showcase for artists, works and
debates that are much less easily displayed
or conducted outside the festivals’ times,
in particular in mainstream institutions or
venues. One of the most well-known and
long-standing initiatives is undoubtedly
Poster from Queer Zagreb festival (source: Queer Zagreb)
Queer Zagreb Festival (QZF), established
in 2003. Within the same region, however,
trends and experiments vary to a large
extent. According to Bulgarian academic
and researcher Stanimir Payanotov, ‘in
Eastern and Central Europe, most of the
LGBT festivals, with the exceptions of
Bulgaria and Croatia (…), are sporadic and
one-off events that are normally the result
of a desire to uncover the often uncon-
scious question within the community of
what gay culture is, and what are its effects
over the community’s development’1.
In some countries where openly homopho-
bic governments promote laws intended to
punish ‘non-normative’ sexual behaviours
(generally based on religious and moral/tra-
ditional grounds), civil society organisations
react, often using art as a form of activism
in the struggle for freedom of expres-
sion and to promote tolerant societies.
1  S. Panayotov, ‘From tradition to experimen-
tation’, introduction to the catalogue of V Sofia
LGBT Art Fest, 2009
In some Central Asian countries and nota-
bly Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan right-wing
governments’ efforts to ban the so-called
‘homosexual propaganda’, have triggered
discussions about gender and tradi-
tional gender roles in the public opinion.
According to artist and activist Georgy
Mamedov, gender identity remains a
rather marginal issue in Central Asian
contemporary arts, including theatre and
film production. However various LGBTI
and feminist groups actively make use of
artistic forms to promote their cause, as
in the case of the series of graffiti against
homophobia by the LGBTIQA organization
Labrys from Kyrgyzstan’2. Gender is how-
ever at the core of some outstanding artists
and artistic collective initiatives. One exam-
ple is the radical artistic collective Creoleak
Centr, a ‘transgender, transnational and
transdisciplinary transinstitution’ run by
Ruth Jenrbekova and Maria Vilkovisky in
Almaty, Kazakhstan3.
2  Interview with the author, December 2015
3  See G. Mamedov, ‘An Introduction to Theatre
Today in Central Asia – 2015 Edition’, IETM
2016

9
of boxes and ceilings

• Artistic practices as gendered
practices - interview with
Marie Buscatto
Marie Buscatto is Professor of Sociology,
specialised in Gender Studies at Université
Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne and researcher
at IDHES, Paris 1- CNRS, France. Buscatto’s
current work focuses on the difficulties
of access, progression and promotion of
women in the world of art. She is also inter-
ested in the ways in which artistic creation
is affected by gendered processes.
The following text is based on an interview
with the author, November 2015.
Gender organises and informs artistic
practice since early childhood. Boys are
oriented towards certain practices that are
considered as ‘masculine’, and girls towards
‘feminine’ practices. And any behaviour
going against the dominant gendered order
tends to be considered abnormal and is
therefore stigmatised. That’s the case for
children who would head for an art practice
that is not in line with what is perceived as
the norm for masculinity or femininity (for
instance boys practising dance1 or girls
playing the trumpet). The normative binary
order man/woman is therefore at the heart
of the gendered constructions of artistic
practices. The ‘masculine’ is associated
to certain postures (self-assertiveness,
virility, autonomy, sense of initiative etc.),
while ‘feminine’ will rather be associated
with seduction, caring about others, ele-
gance, passivity, etc. This binary order is
present in all the representation systems
we’re immersed in since early childhood,
and it is supported by several socialis-
ing structures – parents, schools, artistic
spaces, handbooks, novels or comics, toys,
advertisement…
The empirical research carried out on these
issues in Western countries shows, as the
main trend, that although equal access
for men and women has become the rule,
1   It is worthwhile acknowledging complete gen-
der balance women/men among ballet dancers
of Paris Opera (J. Laillier, ‘La vocation au travail.
La ‘carrière’ des danseurs de l’Opéra de Paris’,
Paris, thèse pour le doctorat en sociologie, Paris,
Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, 2012)
f r esh p er sp ec tives
w w w .ie t m.org
men and women are in no way in a posi-
tion of equality in the professional artistic
practice, be it in terms of access, prac-
tice, or recognition. The situation remains
highly unfavourable for women. There are
many reasons for this. Women for instance
tend to find themselves confined inside
certain postures and roles considered as
‘feminine’, less valued. On the other hand,
managing a professional career and bal-
ancing professional and private life is often
easier for men than for women. Also, the
social networks needed in order to gain
recognition are more favourable to men
than to women.
A second trend, though, shows a femini-
sation of the artistic professions over
the last fifty years, in particular resulting
from better access to artistic practices, the
democratisation of education and better
access of women to training opportuni-
ties. That’s how certain artistic profes-
sions could become strongly feminised.
An interesting example is that of orchestra
musicians: the equality of opportunity in
the access of women and men to conserv-
atoires was made possible by the evolution
and improvement of the recruitment/selec-
tion processes.
A study carried out in the USA showed
that conducting ‘blind auditions’ (placing
the candidate orchestral musicians behind
a wall during the audition - thus hiding them
from the jury) led to a 30% increase of
women musicians selected for big American
orchestras2. We can notice a parallel femi-
nisation movement in progress in other art
fields, such as the visual arts3 or the cinema4.
Such a feminisation trend was also fostered
by collective and social movements taking
place since the ‘70s-‘80s, which allowed
women to progress in their practice of
2   C. Goldin, C. Rouse, ‘Orchestrating
Impartiality: The Impact of ‘Blind’ Auditions on
Female Musicians’, in The American Economic
Review, September 2000
3 A. Quemin, ‘Les stars de l’art contemporain.
Notoriété et consécration artistiques dans les arts
visuels’, Éditions du CNRS, 2013
4  G. Sellier, ‘Films de femmes de la décen-
nie 2000 : Avancées et freins dans le contexte
français’, in M. Jan-Ré (dir.), ‘Créations. Le genre
à l’œuvre 2’, L’Harmattan, Paris, 2012
10
of boxes and ceilings
visual arts5 or literature6. Other initiatives
like access to funding, patronage and social
networks have been means to better value
the work of female artists. In literature for
example the work of Delphine Naudier
showed how the literary trend promoting
a ‘feminine writing’ (écriture feminine)
helped the production and promotion of
literary works written by women. In the
visual arts field, Fabienne Dumont’s works
highlight the claims of female artists claim-
ing a ‘feminine art’ or a ‘feminist art’; how-
ever those forms of expressions are not
valued on the art markets. So while there
is a feminisation of the artistic practice,
one cannot yet talk about a reversal of
the dominant gendered order. So-called
‘canonical’ art, the one considered as the
universal art, remains ‘not feminine’. Men
who promote artistic approaches consid-
ered as innovative will be better valued
than women. On the other hand, women
who will claim the ‘feminine’ or ‘feminist’
component of their own art will see their
own artistic practice undervalued.
Some works aim to ‘gender trouble’, to
use Judith Butler’s terms7, i.e. to erase
the distinction between women and men,
between feminine and masculine – let’s
think about queer, transgender or androg-
ynous works – or to bring down the hete-
ro-normative model celebrating hetero-
sexuality as the natural and fundamental
sexuality. This can happen by questioning
the sexualised differences and their ‘nat-
ural’ character, as in Marina Abramovic’s
installations, or to show works playing
with the cross-dressing of the person in a
picture, as in pioneering photographs by
Claude Cahun. However this subversion
of the gendered order remains rare, and
only rarely achieves the fame and the large
diffusion among a wider audience that
would allow it to make the distinction man/
woman, the binary femininity/masculinity
5  F. Dumont, ‘Les limites d’une évaluation chif-
frée au regard de la fabrique des valeurs. Exemple
de la reconnaissance des plasticiennes des années
1970 en France’, in Histoire & mesure, XXIII (2),
2008
6   D. Naudier, ‘L’écriture-femme, une innovation
esthétique emblématique’, in Sociétés contem-
poraines n° 44, 2001
7   J. Butler, ‘Gender Trouble: Feminism and the
Subversion of Identity’, Routledge, London, 2006
(1990)

or hetero-normativity obsolete. Most musi-
cal, theatre, visual or literary artworks tend
to respect gendered norms, even if some-
times they play with the transgression of
such norms in a punctual way or as regards
certain aspects.
Queer, transgender or androgynous artistic
works certainly embody the will to subvert
the gendered binary role, but this mode
of artistic expression remains secondary
comparing to the ‘mainstream’ trends and
artistic practices, or those more known
and reputed by art critics. Therefore, the
gendered order tends not to be fundamen-
tally transformed by and in artistic practice,
even if it is questioned, sometimes trans-
gressed, sometimes even subverted in
some artworks.
05.
Performing gender:
the body as
an open possibility
There are strong philosophical and epis-
temological links between performance
and gender, and they become clear if we
focus on the different layers of mean-
ings in the term ‘performance’ that basi-
cally indicates a temporary and active
presentation, expression, or act. Indeed
gender theory has shown that ‘gender
identities are realised through the very
act of performing and (re)acting, by quot-
ing and repeating norms’1. The term ‘per-
formance’ refers to staged art forms like
theatre, dance, or music as well as every-
day forms of symbolic behaviour: social or
cultural practices that involve theatrical,
rehearsed or conventional acts like sport
events, funerals, political speeches or ritu-
als. ‘Performance’ refers also to the capac-
ity to communicate through acts or in the
construction and performing of an identity.
1  Gender & Performance-Jaarboek voor
Vrouwengeschiedenis – 32, Amsterdam:
Amsterdam University Press, 2012
f r esh p er sp ec tives
w w w .ie t m.org
Picture from a performance of ‘You go!’ by Eugenia Tzirtzilaki in Athens, 2015
(courtesy of the artist)
Conversely, it is also possible to act against
those ‘performing acts’ that reproduce
stereotyped patterns, thus questioning
the norms.
Various acts like civil obedience or resist-
ance thus qualify as performance, as well as
e.g. citizenship or gender as performance.
According to Judith Butler2, gender is nei-
ther constructed nor a consciously acted
role, but rather ‘the sediment effect of
repetitive acts that literally ‘matter the
body’ (are materialised) through con-
ventions, sanctions and taboos: gender
materialises through restrictive norms like
discursive regulations or restraints, man-
ifested through the body’3. Furthermore,
reacting to the widespread theoretical
position claiming that sex is fixed and based
in nature while gender is fluid and based
on culture, Butler affirms that sex is not
assigned by nature but, like gender, it is
a result of performative acts. In this view
the body becomes ‘an open possibility, a
possibility to transcend the norms of sexual
difference and gender identity’4.
2  J. Butler, ‘Bodies that matter’, Psychology
Press, 1993
3  ibidem
4  Gender and performance, cit.
11
of boxes and ceilings
In the words of Prof. Buikema5, ‘the body
appears as a medium for social change
in artistic practices’. The human body has
been central to how one can understand
facets of identity such as gender, sexuality,
race, and ethnicity. People alter their bod-
ies, hair and clothing to align with or rebel
against social conventions and to express
messages to others around them. In this
sense the performing arts have a privileged
relation with the gender issues, because
more than any other art forms they allow an
embodiment of gender identities, possibly
in contrast with the ‘norm’. In ‘You go!’, for
example, Greek director Eugenia Tzirtzilaki
invites the audience to randomly choose a
piece of paper from some glass jars on the
floor and to follow the directions written on
it, for example: ‘Make a shhh sound to make
everyone quiet. Notice: if you are a man:
Do people look down? If you are woman:
Do people look at you?’… As an alternative
to the usual discussions on gender, either
extremely controversial or heavily intel-
lectual, the piece offers to the audience
an individual experience that uncovers
the choice – or unconscious acceptance –
of gender stereotypes and related power
dynamics.
5  Interview with the author, January 2016

• Gender as Performance -
Diane Torr (USA)
Performance artist Diane Torr has been
experimenting the performance of gen-
der for thirty years—exploring everything
from feminist go-go dancing to mascu-
line power play. One of the key pioneers
of ‘drag king’ performance, Torr has
been celebrated internationally for her
gender transformation workshops, in which
she has taught hundreds of ordinary
women how to ‘pass’ as men in the world
at large (in the streets, in everyday social
interactions…). The workshops appeal to
participants for many different reasons:
personal confidence-building, sexual fris-
son, gender subversion, trans-curiosity, or
simply the appeal of disguise and role play.
Writing about Torr’s work , performance
1
critic Stephen J. Bottoms recalls: ‘The first
time I saw Diane Torr perform as a man the
experience was a little unnerving. In the
context of a lecture-demonstration, she had
first appeared as ‘herself’ and presented a
slide show documenting the development
of her work. She then disappeared offstage,
leaving us to watch a video about her ‘Man
for a Day’ female-to-male transformation
workshops. Eventually she reappeared as
Danny King - her middle-aged, middle-class,
middle-management character - complete
with business suit, slicked-back hair, mous-
tache, stubble, and shiny black shoes. What
was disorientating, though, was not the
cosmetic transformation but the change in
physicality. Danny walked on slowly, plant-
ing his feet squarely onto the stage floor
as if he owned it, and then stopped, folded
his arms across his chest, and stared at us
with a look of absolute indifference. He
made as if to begin speaking, then thought
better of it. He adjusted his posture, looked
down at his shoes, back up at us, and stared
some more. A moment more, and he
began striding casually around the stage
as if checking out its dimensions, utterly
unconcerned by the presence of observers.
1  D. Torr, S. Bottoms, ‘Sex, Drag and Male Roles:
Investigating Gender as Performance’, University
of Michigan Press, 2010. A feature film about
Torr’s work, ‘Man for a Day’, by Berlin filmmaker
Katarina Peters premiered at Berlinale Film
Festival in 2012 and is now on general release
and touring.
f r esh p er sp ec tives
w w w .ie t m.org
Diane Torr as a man (photo: by Del La Grace Volcano) and as a woman (photo: E.
Innocenti; source: website of the artist)
By the time he finally deigned to speak
to us, he was indisputably in command of
the stage and his audience and yet he had
done almost nothing. Despite his diminu-
tive stature (Diane is five foot four), we had
ceded authority to him as a commanding,
masculine presence. Indeed, some sub-
conscious part of my brain was telling me
that this was, in fact, a man even though
my conscious mind knew that Danny was
also Diane. The uncanny effect was further
underlined as Danny began to explain—in
character—the means by which he was cre-
ating this impression of ‘innate’ masculine
entitlement. My fascination with Diane’s
drag performances began there, with
the simple fact of her ability to adopt and
inhabit varying forms of masculine physi-
cality that men tend to assume are inborn.
Her apparent ease in exposing this strange
artifice of naturalised masculinity is an
unsettling reminder that the assumptions
men have about their own identities are
themselves based on performance, even
pretence’ (emphasis added).
Women’s drag is less common than male
drag; according to Bottoms, ‘If gay men’s
embrace of female drag can be read as an
explicit rejection of masculine power sta-
tus, and a kind of celebratory affirmation of
12
of boxes and ceilings
their ‘feminised’ marginalisation, it makes
less obvious sense – conversely – for
women to mimic the sex responsible for
their relative disempowerment’. However
Diane Torr’s workshops are crucial in that
they blur the line between ‘art’ and ‘life’ and
allow women to experience ‘being’ a man
and reversing the dominant gaze: ‘in see-
ing the world, at least temporarily, from a
man’s perspective, and in being responded
to as male, women are able to distance
themselves critically from their socialised
perspectives as females, sometimes with
life-changing results. To take a male char-
acter created in the studio out onto city
streets as a functioning identity is to cross
over not only the line between ‘art’ and
‘life’ but the line between female and male
experience, thereby challenging all kinds of
constructions and assumptions’2. Indeed,
‘There is the danger that when those on
either side of a binary divide define them-
selves according to the terms of that divi-
sion they simply reinforce the very separa-
tion that is the root of the problem’ – and
indeed women often tend to define them-
selves exactly in relation to a ‘male’ coun-
terpart, perpetuating the same norms that
often lead to their own oppression.
2  Torr and Bottoms, cit.

• The sensitive balance between
following and challenging sys-
tems of covenants,
is the key to progression
- Israel Aloni / ilDance
(Sweden)
Israel Aloni is an independent choreogra-
pher based in Sweden and the artistic direc-
tor of ilDance, an independent contempo-
rary dance company based in Gothenburg,
that aims to encourage, support, produce
original contemporary dance in Sweden.
Gender is an issue that draws a rather sig-
nificant focus in the work of Aloni, who has
dedicated a few creations to research and
investigate gender in a particular way, and
in parallel has investigated human sexuality
and sexual expressions as means for gender
definition and expression.
Aloni’s work ‘Catharses’ (2014) is an orig-
inal contemporary duet piece that Aloni
defines as ‘a journey towards a purified
state of femininity. A hike through the
bumpy road on the way to a revelation of
the bare and delicate truth concerning the
power and beauty of the female human-be-
ing, from the biological, intellectual, emo-
tional and spiritual aspects. The journey
aspires to neglect the inhibitions caused
by the enforced judgements of a society
which continuously perpetuates a play-
ground for frictions between the sexes’.
Pushing aside scepticism, criticism, conven-
tions and stereotypes that are grounded
in Western societies and lead to a battle
between genders, the work celebrates
‘the female form in its origin of animalism,
intuition and instincts’; it celebrates femi-
ninity and its difference from masculinity,
overcoming the tendency – spread also in
part of the feminist movement – to erase
this difference.
‘The creation of ‘Catharses’ is inspired by
the possibility to send out a message which
shines light on the female gender from a
different angle and by doing that, remind-
ing the public the long forgotten core of
the female identity. We hope to expose a
raw and genuine state of femininity which
is universal and is not thinned out by the
social demands of each respected country
or culture.’
f r esh p er sp ec tives
w w w .ie t m.org
Pictures from the performance ‘Catharses’ by ilDance (photo: © ilDance
2016 - source: ilDance)
In ‘Forbidden Fruit’ (2014), a multidiscipli-
nary performance including contemporary
dance, original text sung and spoken live,
video and film projection and meaning-
fully dominant costumes and visuals Aloni
aspires to unravel the internal meaning of
sensuality, lust, passion, desire, attraction
and sex. ‘Forbidden Fruit’ comes from the
need to question the way sex is presented
and conceived in contemporary societies –
as a sin, as immoral, as a weapon in the case
of sex abuses; and the way women who are
victims of rape are often accused of having
‘provoked’ this violence. ‘Sex is the most
natural way of creation and production.
Sex is the purest expression of attraction,
passion, lust, pleasure, sensuality, love and
desire. Why don’t we reconsider the way
we introduce sex into the consciousness
of the next generations? How can we be
surprised that there is so much sexual vio-
lence in our current reality, when all we do
is preach about the criminal and forbidden
aspect of any sexual interaction? Why have
we covered the creation of life with a dark
blanket of obscenity and filth?’
‘The piece aspires to remove the shame
and inhibition which suppress the natural
urge of sensual exploration. This is not to
suggest that the piece is only about encour-
agement to sexual promiscuity. However,
it suggests a sceptical approach to the
13
of boxes and ceilings
mythological stories around sex and to its
negative connotation, which can result in
the audience re-examining its beliefs and
personal views, possibly diminishing the
number of sexually orientated crimes and
sexual discrimination toward women’. The
piece includes 4 international performers
(UK, Norway, Spain and Hungary) and an
all-rounded creative team of two visual
artists, a film and video maker and a light
designer. Together they all work on creat-
ing an experience for the public which is
stimulating and exciting in a similar way to
that of a sexual encounter.
In personal and artistic life, Aloni has always
been very much focused on the topics of
gender and identity. Talking about the per-
sonal relationship to the topic of gender,
and the impact on the artistic work, Aloni
says: ‘On both personal and social levels,
the most important yet nearly absent attri-
bution of gender identity is its fluidity and
originality. Despite the fact that the last
centuries have progressed the question-
ing of the social constructions of men and
women, it will take time to change minds.
My approach to the performers that I work
with and to the cast as a whole, is similar
to the approach I have to my own gender
identity - fluid and personal. I believe that
art is the parallel dimension to life in a soci-
ety. In my opinion, also fighting for gender

equality is not a matter of marking the
similarities between men and women but
a broader matter of human rights. Gender
equality is thus part of the debates at hand’.
‘I believe that art can help to progress
discussions to gender in a more sophisti-
cated manner. As a gender-fluid individual I
dream of a world where we do not object to
the power of the female form, rather than
a world that demands more similarities
between female and male. (…) As a ‘femalist’
I advocate and promote the value of female
in our world. The value and importance of
female attributions in every existing thing
on this planet and beyond. I disagree with
the masculinisation of anything that is tra-
ditionally powerful such as GOD, world,
universe etc. I advocate for the big mother.’
‘I respect and enhance characteristics of
the artists who create and perform in my
work, regardless of their social gender
roles. Thus, the individuals take on a role
which is independent of their biological
and/or physiological gender but rather
connected to their subjective, fluid and
diverse identity. This approach resonates
with the public and offers them an oppor-
tunity to examine gender roles in our soci-
ety through more tolerant and accepting
filters, such as those featured in my pieces.’
f r esh p er sp ec tives
w w w .ie t m.org
• Identity and behaviour are
open structures, shifting and
changing over time’- OSMOSIS
Performing Arts / Euripides
Laskaridis (Greece)
‘Venus’ is the general, ‘mother title’ of
several projects developed by Euripides
Laskaridis, director of the OSMOSIS
Performing Arts company in Greece. These
are versatile projects oscillating between
the performing and visual arts. Laskaridis
takes on a variety of personas of differing
genders, body shapes and forms to explore
the notions of ridicule and transformation
as defence mechanisms against the fear
of the unknown. ‘Venus’ is an anthology of
characters in morph, a collection of arche-
types in constant change and transforma-
tion. Through this general and privy title
reference is made not only to the ancient
goddess, or the prehistoric Willendorf
Venus but also to an alien space - the dis-
tant planet. By embodying awkward or
extravagant forms, the artist challenges the
audience’s boundaries and tests the limits
of their acceptance.
Ridicule in this work is looked upon as
that humbling moment when you can
laugh about and feel empathy for your
own misfortunes, and directly refers to
the ancient Greek mechanism of catharsis
and the artist’s cultural heritage. Gender-
challenging, awkward and at times almost
‘Relic’, performance by Euripides Laskaridis (photo: Evi Fylaktou)
14
of boxes and ceilings
alien creatures are embodied by the artist
to act as a kind of projection screen for
displaying newly-formed Western cultural
archetypes.
Talking about gender identity, Laskaridis
says: ‘it always scares me to label things.
The whole problem starts when people
have to name and define things. We have
this inherent need to understand, and in the
process of doing so, especially in Western
culture, we tend to categorise. This should
always happen in a very delicate way, leav-
ing the door open for people to decide for
themselves how they want to structure
who they are, what they are, how they
behave, and also leave space for others
to see that these (identity, behaviour…)
are open structures, shifting and changing
over time’.
‘The idea of a series of works under the
general title of ‘Venus’ came from my own
will to see what happens when inhabiting
different forms, different shapes, i.e. a
female voluptuous body as I do in ‘Relic’
(read more below) or several different face-
types as I did in ‘Quirks’ – it is, of course,
about gender difference but at the end
of the day it is also about different body
shapes, ages, races etc. It’s about diversity
and understanding others, it’s about using
form-shifting, transformation, or transfigu-
ration - call it what you will - as a door to a
diverse universe.’

‘Relic’ is a one-man show that stemmed
from the ‘Venus’ projects. Relic, from the
Latin relinque (what is left behind), is as
much of a story of a person as it is a story
of a place - a country or a notion. Relic taps
on gender, western consumerism, our rela-
tionships, what we think of the others, of
sex, of body types, where we come from
and where we head to… As Laskaridis puts
it, ‘I always speak about ‘the different’ and
how the audience deals with it. Something
or someone we may not be able to under-
stand because it’s definitely not us. There
is a lot of talk around open and closed bor-
ders lately, around accepting or not the
‘alien’. Does this make Relic a political piece
all of a sudden? I don’t want to think about
things that way. This is why I dislike labels...
‘Art and gender’, ‘art and politics’, ‘art and
aesthetics’, these are great subjects for dis-
cussion but only to remind us that art is not
categorical, art is a universal language spo-
ken by people of different nations in order
to contemplate life’.
‘In the encounter with the audience you get
to know different layers of your work that
can be read and that you were not aware
of, so I am happy to remain open. The audi-
ence interprets my work at different levels;
to some it seems that the work is political
- and I agree - but I would never narrow it
down to just a ‘political work of art’ or ‘a
work that talks about gender’. Nor would
I narrow down its political meaning to the
Greek crisis just because I am Greek creat-
ing work in Athens at this time. As I am very
suspicious of labelling people I dislike label-
ling art as well. Labelling doesn’t only come
from an academic need to understand, cat-
egorise and thus discuss ‘effectively’ art but
also from a westernised marketing-based
commitment which I seldom find blocks
the audience from truly seeing the artistic
value of an art work - not to mention how
it may mislead artists to look in other direc-
tions from their true artistic needs, just to
ensure funding.’
‘One critical element of my universe is the
attack on the mainstream, a daring attempt
to break dominant notions. Not to destroy
but to reassess values and beliefs… it’s
always about breaking this hypnotic way
of being. It’s about recognising that we
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Cecilia Moiso, ‘Facets’, at Performing Gender International Symposium,
Bologna 2015 (photos by Elisa D’Errico, source: Performing Gender website)
are complex and ever-changing, not heav-
enly made, nevertheless capable of the
impossible.‘
• ‘Performing Gender’: a
European dance project on
gender and sexual orientation
differences
Performing Gender was a European dance
project funded by the EU Culture pro-
gramme between 2013 and 2015 – and,
interestingly, the only project dealing with
gender issues to be funded by the Culture
Programme 2007-2013 and in the first
round of the Creative Europe programme.
The project was initiated by Arcigay
Il Cassero - Gender Bender Festival
(Italy), leading along with the Dutch
Dance Festival (The Netherlands), Paso
a 2 Plataforma Coreográfica (Spain) and
Domino Association - Queer Zagreb
(Croatia). The project aimed to use artistic
and cultural tools to open up a civil reflec-
tion on gender and sexual orientation dif-
ferences, seen as sources of values and
richness for the whole of European society.
The main aim of Performing Gender was
to create a European laboratory, in which
dominant codes and mainstream images in
relation to gender and sexual preference
15
of boxes and ceilings
could be questioned and reflected upon,
bringing this into the wider community
through the universal language of the arts,
to develop new images and to collect new
insights together.
The starting point of this journey was the
body of the artist, seen as the ideal cultural
medium to research and portray new iden-
tities. An international group of 17 chore-
ographers, dancers and visual artists were
involved in an artistic research based in
four different European cities: workshops,
residencies and performances investigated
the representations of sexuality and gen-
der, challenging the artists’ identities and
calling into question stereotypes and bias.
At the end of this journey, the artists were
asked to produce new works to be staged in
established and renowned European muse-
ums. These museums opened their institu-
tions and integrated these new works of art
and identities as part of their collections.
Throughout the project, the international
group of choreographers, dancers and
artists participating (including for example
Cecilia Moiso, Poliana Lima and Giorgia
Nardin) explored common themes such as
the gendered or sexualised gaze, the forces
of nature/nurture in generating identities,
visibility, marginality, the draw of the urban
metropolis, the problematic of language
and labels, the need for self expression

and personal freedom, the intersection of
gender and sexual identities with national-
ity. The project developed a wide array of
interactions and network building activities
involving museums and cultural centres,
citizen networks and LGBTI organisations
in various cities across Europe. Through its
30 shows, events, conferences, workshops
and parties, the project involved 15 differ-
ent communities, including trans-sexual
people, teenagers, rainbow families, older
people, illustrators, lesbian choirs, people
with Parkinson’s disease and visual arts
scholars.
06.
Gender equality
and artistic practices
The power of the arts to question gender
binary and hetero-normativity provides
an opportunity to uncover and denounce
gender biases and unbalances that exist
both in society and in the artistic field. As
pointed out by recent debates (for example
on the online community of HowlRound,
or in the #Wakingthefeminists case pre-
sented further below), indeed the arts are
still today suffering from a big problem:
women are heavily under-represented in
top positions (especially as the heads of
big cultural and artistic institutions) and
in certain professions (e.g. technicians,
stage designers etc.); the image of women
is still often conveyed in the good old way
(submission, weakness etc.); and the very
fact of undertaking specific artistic studies
is judged negatively if the choice does not
correspond to the (unspoken, and there-
fore even more dangerous) ‘norm’. While
statistics have started to appear - making
it clear that the problem exists and is so
tangible as to being measurable - and some
countries have adopted specific legislation
that fosters gender equality1, the issue is
far from being solved.
1  R. Polacek, ‘Handbook of Good Practices to
Combat Gender Stereotypes and Promote Equal
Opportunities in Film, Television and Theatre in
Europe’, FIA, Brussels, 2010
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Posters by Guerrilla Girls at the exhibition elles@centrepompidou, Paris,
2009-2012 (photo: © Guerrilla Girls - source: Guerrilla Girls website)
The French sociologist Marie Buscatto
speaks about ‘gendered artistic practices’:
the artistic practice – from the choice to
study and practice a certain art up to the
one of making a professional career – is
indeed influenced by the historical cultural
and social construction of sex, the social
organisation of gender difference, discrim-
ination based on gender and the performa-
tive acts by which we ‘embody’ gender and
express ‘femininity and masculinity’.
In 1985, a group of women artists in New
York City formed a collective organisation
called the Guerrilla Girls to protest at the
unequal treatment of women professional
artists in the arts. Their name indicated
their willingness to engage in unconven-
tional tactics in their fight for equality. The
Guerrilla Girls, who are still active, are
known for the gorilla masks the members
wear to avoid being recognised by the art
world establishment and institutions they
might criticise. Their productions took the
form of public protests and lectures as well
as flyers and posters. One of their principal
goals was to oppose the lack of representa-
tion of women artists in major museum col-
lections. One of their best-known posters,
‘Do Women Have to be Naked to Get into
16
of boxes and ceilings
the Met. Museum?’ includes statistics to
highlight the disproportionate representa-
tion of women artists (5%) compared to
female nudes (85%) in the collection of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
In the words of Prof. Buikema ‘The Guerrilla
Girls poster is an excellent example of how
the right image combined with the right
medium - a poster echoing the engineering
of advertisements, thus linking the female
body and the market - is able to say it all.’2
Despite encouraging signs of women’s
improved status and visibility in the art
world, major systemic issues still persist.
In a recent article the American curator
Maura Reilly argues that ‘despite decades
of antiracist queer and feminist activism
the majority continues to be defined as
white, Euro-American, heterosexual, priv-
ileged, and, above all, male’. As the author
remarks, ‘Sexism is so insidiously woven
into the institutional fabric, language, and
logic of the mainstream art world that it
often goes undetected. (…) Discrimination
against women at the top trickles down
into every aspect of the art world—gallery
representation, auction price differentials,
2  Interview with the author, January 2016

press coverage, and inclusion in perma-
nent-collection displays and solo-exhibition
programs’.
Evidence of the gender bias affecting the
art world(s) is backed by more and more
data, often collected by artists and profes-
sionals from the field. For instance a survey
of special-exhibition and solo shows sched-
uled at major art institutions in the US, UK,
France and Germany (mentioned by Reilly
in the same article) reveals that gender
parity in the visual arts field is nowhere
in sight. Permanent-collection displays at
major art institutions are also imbalanced.
Granted the opportunity to reinstall col-
lections at museums, many curators are
not daring enough to reconfigure the
hegemonic narratives in ways that offer
new perspectives on old stories. In 2009,
the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France took
the bold step of organising the nearly two-
year exhibition ‘elles@centrepompidou’
in which the then Head of Contemporary
Collections, Camille Morineau, reinstalled
the museum’s permanent collection with
only women artists. It took her six years
to convince the then Director (a man) to
organise such an exhibition. During its
run, attendance to the permanent collec-
tion increased by 25 percent. ‘elles’ was
a particularly revolutionary gesture in
the context of France, where, Morineau
explains, ‘nobody counts the number of
men and women in exhibitions. Very few
people notice that sometimes there are no
women. (…) The show meant the Pompidou
had to broaden its holdings of women art-
ists through purchases and donations’.
Unfortunately, in the subsequent post-
‘elles’ re-hang of the permanent collection,
only ten percent of the works on view are
by women—exactly the same as it was pre-
‘elles’. Moreover, the acquisition funds for
women artists almost immediately dried up.
More recently (January 2016) Saatchi
Gallery in London opened its first all-
women exhibition, ‘Champagne Life’, gath-
ering the work of 14 emerging artists from
around the world. While most of the artists
involved do not necessarily classify them-
selves or their own work as ‘feminist’, they
recognise the evident gender unbalance
in the art world. As American artist Julia
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Wachtel stated in an interview, even if she
felt she was never directly discriminated
against, ‘I do think in much more insidious
ways things would have happened dif-
ferently in my career if I was a man. Male
artists are taken more seriously. While one
might say it’s problematic to have a show of
just women artists because we don’t have
a show advertised as exclusively male, the
statistics speak for themselves’.
Statistics do speak for themselves indeed,
like the clear figures that recently sparked
debate about the ‘old-white-men’ domi-
nance in the music industry, for instance.
However in the theatre field, data gathering
is in most cases the voluntary occupation of
female professionals1 and the results, how-
ever partial they can be, send exactly the
same message. In the US an interesting ini-
tiative was launched by the Kilroys, a group
of Los Angeles-based female-identified
playwrights and producers. They started
The Kilroys’ List, a gender parity initiative
to end the ‘systematic under-representa-
tion of female and trans* playwrights’ in the
American theatre industry. First released
in June 2014, The List is an annual col-
lection of highly-recommended contem-
porary plays written by female and trans*
identified authors, which are read or seen
by an industry professional within the last
twelve months. While the actual impact of
the list is hard to define, the initiative cer-
tainly brought a lot of attention to the issue
– also thanks to extensive media coverage
across the US – and individual writers cited
on the list have reported more interest and
requests for their scripts.
But there is still a long way to go, not only
in statistical terms but also in terms of
narratives and (false) arguments perpetu-
ating gender discrimination in the artistic
field. Arguments and narratives are as
important as data in perpetuating, or
dismantling, the gender bias. As regards
the visual arts, specialist writer Ashton
Cooper wrote, ‘art journalism is in no way
immune from conventions that ostensibly
champion women artists, but in fact perpet-
uate problematic narratives about them (…)
1  See for instance Laura Shamas, ‘Women play-
wrights: who is keeping count?’ on HowlRound,
May 2014
17
of boxes and ceilings
In particular, I’m thinking of the widespread
myth of the ‘overlooked’, ‘forgotten’, and/
or ‘rediscovered’ female artist’. Cooper
maintains that this kind of narrative does
not advocate for women artists, but rather
belatedly elevates women (or minorities)
to the canon, instead of questioning the
‘canon’ itself – a canon that is shaped by
(white) men. So instead of repeating (and
accepting) ‘the tired story where a mas-
culinist force deigns to discover, find, or
recognize female artists’, we could try to
understand the material realities of these
women’s lives (for example the fact that
they were often giving birth and raising
children while they produced art – which
obliged them to live in isolation and ‘obscu-
rity’). ‘It is essential that we complicate
these stories’ says Cooper.
And complicated these stories are. Work-
life balance is a hot topic of discussion in the
performing arts world, where women are
paid on average less than men and women
with children are paid less than their child-
less female colleagues, for instance ; an
additional ‘complication’ concerns age,
since there is also an employment disadvan-
tage especially and significantly for older
women performers due to the restricted
number and variety of aged female char-
acters, let alone the more interesting ones.
The fact that the gender bias ‘often goes
unnoticed’ is indeed part of the problem,
as well as the most commonly used excuse
for that – in theatre, it sounds something
like ‘We choose the best plays, so probably
we didn’t find enough good plays written by
women’. The recent example of the Abbey
Theatre in Ireland is key to understand how
this false argument is used.

• #WakingTheFeminists
In autumn 2015 the Abbey Theatre,
Ireland’s national theatre, launched its
programme to mark the centenary of the
1916 Rising (leading to Irish independ-
ence), titled ‘Waking The Nation’. One out
of the ten plays in the 2016 programme
are written by a woman – three out of ten
will be directed by women. In the days
that followed the announcement, a dis-
cussion evolved on Facebook and Twitter,
initiated and led by set designer and pro-
ject manager Lian Bell, under the hashtag
#WakingTheFeminists (#WTF) coined by
director Maeve Stone. The Director of the
Abbey, Fiach Mc Conaghill, apologised on
Twitter saying: ‘I’m sorry that I have no
female playwrights next season. But I’m
not going to produce a play that is not ready
and undermine the writer’ .
In the weeks following the announcement,
there was an outpouring of testimonies
from both women and men working in
Irish theatre, highlighting the disenfran-
chisement and chronic under-represen-
tation of the work of women artists at the
Abbey, and by extension in the Irish arts
industry. Following the protest and harsh
discussion on the social networks, a public
meeting was held at the Abbey Theatre,
gathering many of those who became
associated with the grassroots movement
of #WakingTheFeminists. Following on
from that meeting, #WakingTheFeminists
has begun to engage with all the major
state-funded theatre organisations, start-
ing with the Abbey Theatre and the Gate
Theatre, to make gender equality a reality
through their policies and programming.
#WakingTheFeminists have also begun
engaging with the Arts Council to ensure
that gender equality is addressed across
the sector in a way that will be practical, sig-
nificant and long-lasting. On August 30th,
2016 #WakingTheFeminists achieved a
major success when the Abbey Theatre
announced a set of guiding principles
to ensure that Gender Equality is both
embraced and enshrined at the national
theatre.
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The Waking the Feminists movement in front of the National Abbey Theatre in
Dublin, Ireland (photo: Brenda Fitzsimons/The Irish Times)
In one of the first articles about the Abbey
Theatre case, Irish Times columnist Una
Muhally stated that the question of gender
unbalance in programming was a recurring
feature in diverse forms of artistic expres-
sions such as theatre, music or film festivals
or literature prizes, and claimed: ‘Gender
equality in Ireland’s artistic institutions is
not about tokenism, it is about redressing a
historical imbalance, it is about represent-
ing the population, it is about showcasing
multiple perspectives not just a male ones,
it is about reflecting the whole audience
and not just a part of it. If art is about how
we see ourselves, then why are we only
getting one half of the picture?’.
If the argument often used to justify the
gender bias in theatre is that there are not
enough ‘good’ plays written by women,
then cultural and political institutions – who
by now cannot claim that they’re not aware
of the problem, at least not in the Western
world – should take the responsibility to
address the supposed ‘lack of good women
playwrights’, or artists, or professionals at
large. The question that needs to be asked
is who is deciding women’s worth – a ques-
tion that does not concern only the theatre
field, but society at large; it doesn’t concern
only women, but all the under-represented
minority groups in society.
18
of boxes and ceilings
Things are going a bit better in some coun-
tries, as highlighted in the Handbook of
Good Practices in Combating Gender
Stereotypes and Promote Equal
Opportunities in Film, Television and
Theatre in Europe produced by the
International Federation of Actors (FIA) in
2010. However quantitative improvements
are not enough. In Poland, for instance,
in the last ten years there has been a vis-
ible increase of women directors working
also in the most prestigious theatres in the
country, however, according to researcher
and academic Agata Adamiecka-Sitek1,
‘this group of women has simply managed
to jump into the old arrangement – they’re
the ones who have managed to pull it off –
but their appearance there hasn’t changed
anything in the institutional practice of the
theatre, or in its ideological framework’.
The key to a real revolution, Adamiecka-
Sitek suggests, would be to start collabo-
rations with women in many different roles:
not only directors, but also stage and light
designers, choreographers etc., but this
kind of proposal meets with strong resis-
tance in particular inside big institutions.
1  A. Adamiecka-Sitek, ‘How Far Can You Go in
an Institution? On the Feminist Turn that Wasn’t.
Agata Adamiecka-Sitek Talks with Milena Gauer
and Weronika Szczawińska’, in Didaskalia -
Polish Theater Journal 01/2015

• The streets of (Polish) cities are
becoming one great, social stage
– interview with
Agata Adamiecka-Sitek
Agata Adamiecka-Sitek, PhD, graduated
in cultural studies from the University of
Silesia. Author of books, essays and articles
published in the journals Dialog, Didaskalia,
Teatr, Notatnik Teatralny and in essay col-
lections. She’s the founder and editor of
two publication series – Inna Scena and
Nowe Historie – and editor of numerous
books on theatre. Recently Adamiecka-
Sitek led the project and was on the edi-
torial board of the first edition of Jerzy
Grotowski’s ‘Teksty zebrane’. She works at
the Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute
in Warsaw, Poland, where she manages
academic projects, including a programme
of research on Polish theatre from a gender
and queer perspective.
The term ‘gender’ in Poland has recently
moved from the field of social sciences and
culture studies into the area of direct, brutal
political struggle. Its stakes, it would seem,
are extremely high. The concept of a con-
servative, national state is being designed
as an alternative to liberal democracy. And
such a state needs a clearly defined enemy,
so as to strengthen the consolidation pro-
cess of the community through battling the
said enemy. In the joint offensive led in the
last three years by the Catholic Church
and right-wing politicians gender has been
defined as a synonym of corruption – as an
ideology aimed at destabilising fundamen-
tal categories of social life, as an attack
on family and as drastic sexualisation of
children.
Although since the mid-90s interdiscipli-
nary gender studies have been developed
within Polish universities, and artists
practicing critical art have consciously
employed gender strategies to expose
the regime of the dominating gender and
sexuality matrix, the term ‘gender’ used to
be barely recognised beyond narrow aca-
demic circles. Today everyone in Poland
knows the word, after the Parliament of the
previous term established a ‘Commission
for Countering the Gender Ideology’, and
Polish Catholic bishops repeatedly warned
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the worshippers against this ‘dangerous
ideology profoundly destructive to human
beings’.
Following the victory of the far right in the
election in October 2015, the war on gen-
der has entered a new phase. The Minister
of Science has officially announced that
gender studies projects will not be financed,
and scientific journals publishing texts
referring to this ‘pseudoscience’ will lose
their funding. The policy of the Ministry
of Culture should be understood similarly,
since this year it has completely withheld
any funding towards expanding national
collections of modern art. Furthermore,
by announcing a reform of the theatre
system, which is to once more subordinate
state-funded theatres to central govern-
ment, it openly speaks about the necessity
of restoring respect for the classics and
theatre craft, and to liberate the stages
from leftist ideology. Given how the right-
wing majority currently ruling Poland has
paralyzed the Constitutional Tribunal and
in view of the successive laws introduced
by the Parliament that break civil liberties
guaranteed by the Constitution, we should
not expect that the ‘freedom of artistic
expression and scientific research’ guaran-
teed by the Article 73 of the Constitution
will remain in force. And it doesn’t have to
happen by way of direct acts of censor-
ship – as in the case of the new Minister
of Culture, who, immediately after he took
the office, tried to prevent the premiere of
‘Death and the Maiden’ based on Elfriede
Jelinek and directed by Ewelina Marciniak.
The already successfully implemented eco-
nomic censorship will suffice, along with
the self-censorship of artists, curators and
heads of institutions, for whom artistic
freedom might end up becoming the price
of survival in the new regime.
In this context we begin today to look at
the Polish theatre of the last 25 years dif-
ferently. At a certain point gender issues
defined its avant-garde face. In the mid-
90s productions appeared that focused on
problems of identity and on the violence
man experiences when he’s formatted by
hetero-normative cultural matrices. Those
mechanisms were studied in the most pro-
found and consistent way by Krzysztof
19
of boxes and ceilings
Warlikowski, Areas of non-normative male
sexuality in the context of the bourgeois
societal paradigm were also examined by
Krystian Lupa, who more and more openly
revealed the autobiographical angle of his
research. The ‘misfit’ became the protago-
nist of Polish turn-of-the-century theatre,
dramatically going through his conflict
with the world and experiencing sexuality
marked by gender binary as a space of per-
manent lack and suffering. Undoubtedly,
the mere presentation of such characters
carried political significance in prudish,
post-Communist and Catholic Poland.
Especially as it was accompanied by a cou-
ple of high-profile coming-outs in the the-
atre community. Theatre with great force
supported the LGBT politics of the time,
which could be summed up by the slogan
of the 2003 social campaign ‘Let Them See
Us’. However, today it is clear how quickly
the real emancipatory potential of such
theatre has run out. Its hero was alienated
from the Polish social context, focused on
his own suffering, which was furthermore
spectacularly aestheticized on stage. The
critical power of plays underwent petrifi-
cation, and theatre became a sophisticated
cultural product for the emancipated and
privileged group of the big-city establish-
ment; a space where they could celebrate
their own status and feed their fill on
non-hetero-normative spleen. With time it
also became evident that the productions
by homosexual directors carried in them a
deeply negative, frequently misogynistic
attitude to female sexuality.
At the beginning of the 21st century female
directors fiercely entered the Polish stage,
placing at the centre the problem of female
emancipation, which has never been fully
worked through in Poland. It was con-
stantly postponed in view of the fight for
independence, and after the transforma-
tion of 1989 it became stifled by the strong
alliance of conservative neoliberalism and
the all-powerful Catholic Church. However,
‘the woman question’ in its existential, social
and meta-theatrical dimension turned out
to be a lot less attractive to the mainstream.
The institution of public theatre, in Poland
still operating within the rigid rules of rep-
ertory theatre, turned out to be irrevocably
androcentric. Admittedly, a group of young

female directors managed to penetrate
the mainstream, and gender issues for the
major part ceased to be transparent also
in shows directed by many male directors,
but the power and prestige remained in the
hands of men. The most important feminist
productions were created outside of the
state-funded theatre system – such as the
‘Chorus of Women’ - hugely innovative in
its form and acclaimed in Europe - by Marta
Górnicka – or on Europe’s peripheries,
the great dance shows of Agata Siniarska
or Agata Maszkiewicz and the intellec-
tual, post-Brechtian theatre of Weronika
Szczawińska.
In one of Marta Górnicka’s productions
entitled ‘Magnificat’ (2011), the Chorus of
Women sings a powerful song against the
oppression suffered by women in Poland on
the part of the Catholic Church. ‘Woman,
carry your cross’, they shout at a point in
a derisive but terror-filled citation of the
Church’s stance, which demands control
over their bodies treated as symbolic prop-
erty of the national community. Today, five
years after its premiere, the significance of
that show becomes more and more radical.
Poland is a country where due to the war
on ‘gender ideology’, any sexual education
became blocked, contraception is in no way
subsidised by the state, and at the moment
of writing there is a total ban on abortion.
Thousands of women and men took to the
streets to protest against the barbarous
law. The streets of cities are becoming one
great, social stage. Here begins the most
important gender-themed theatrical show
in contemporary Poland.
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07.
In-clusion and
ex-clusion: questioning
the dominant gaze
If ‘representation (…) is a major realm of
power for any system of domination’1,
then it is crucial to understand, and to
question, whose gaze is defining what is
the norm in a given society, what is art,
what is art worth being programmed, and
so on. Questioning all this inevitably leads
to questioning the dominant narratives,
the power structure of the arts world and
of society at large. According to Rosemarie
Buikema , gender and social change in their
artistic expression are very much related
to the recognition and acknowledgement
of the engineering of processes of ‘inclu-
sion and exclusion’ related to sexual iden-
tity, sexual orientation, ethnicity and race.
For art to have an impact on society and to
bring about social change, it is crucial that
the arts world itself is able to question its
own structure, habits and practices; how-
ever the persistent inequalities mentioned
above are the evidence of a gap between
the self-proclaimed ‘open mindedness’ of
artists and arts professionals and actu-
al practices. However, when it comes to
challenging one’s own stereotypes and
prejudices, the task is hard. Artists like
Korean-American playwright Young Jean
Lee are questioning the dominance of
‘Straight White Men’ in society; Lee’s play
with the same title puts on stage a Christ-
mas family reunion of a father with his
three grown-up sons – two rather ‘typical’
straight white men and one working at a
community organisation and volunteering
for good causes. Lee developed this char-
acter following a workshop with university
students of diverse races, sexual identities
and backgrounds, and attributed to the
key character all the characteristics that
the classroom said they desired to see
in a white, male character on the stage.
‘On paper, he was idyllic. But once he was
1  b. hooks, ‘Continued devaluation of Black
womanhood’, in S. Jackson, S. Scott, ‘Feminism
and sexuality: a reader’, New York, Columbia
University Press, 1996 (quoted in Wikipedia)
20
of boxes and ceilings
brought to life and put in a room with oth-
er less utopian males, those same students
suddenly found him detestable’ – a ‘loser’,
as his family desperately labels him in the
play. Lee states: ‘There’s a contradicto-
ry expectation these days. One is that
(straight white men) be more deferential,
be less macho, and take up less space. And
the other is that we want them to continue
to be typical straight white men because
we’re invested in it’ .
Speaking of the UK, Prof. Buikema notes
that artistic practices concerning gender
and social change gradually came to include
artistic practices of under-represented
groups. An example is so-called refugee
art and its relationship to the ‘diaspora art’,
which underwent a major development in
the 1990s because of the increasing num-
ber of artists who came to Britain from
Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. These artis-
tic practices however have experienced
the same kind of difficulties as women’s
artworks to be integrated in the so-called
mainstream artistic canon, and risk to be
categorised as a separate chapter in art
history. ‘Despite career successes and vari-
ous levels of visibility, many of these artists
(including outstanding names like Yinka
Shonibare, Breda Beban, Steve McQueen
etc.) remain associated with the countries
or regions of the world from which they
came, rather than the country to which they
migrated and in which they practiced, for
lesser or greater periods of time’.
It is also worthwhile acknowledging how
refugee artists are redefining diaspora
art currently and how cultural and artistic
practices may be melting with the so-called
host culture. Today, the term ‘refugee’
smoothes over difference within the group
it designates at the same time as reifying
the boundary that defines its otherness
and the notions that constitute that bound-
ary (e.g. artist Margareta Kern). However,
‘refugee’ and ‘asylum seeker’ are terms
denoting internationally recognised politi-
cal status, nor are you born a refugee or
born an asylum seeker. As Buikema notes,
‘a ‘refugee artist’ or an ‘asylum seeker art-
ist’ becomes someone not defined simply
by their political displacement or their
ownership of a ‘wrong’ passport (or indeed
of none at all); they are socially and cultur-
ally defined by notions of displacement and

by other, changing signifiers of the words
‘refugee’ and ‘asylum seeker’. The end of the
first decade of the twenty-first century has
witnessed interesting changes in curatorial
policy and has also allowed a shift to occur
in the way the viewing public looks at the
work of artists from refugee populations.
This shift may open up possibilities for cul-
tural transfer to occur from artist/refugee
to viewers/members of the public and for
viewers to rethink and re-negotiate their
understanding not only of the art but also
of place or territory as somewhere that is
demonstrably shot through with multiple
places, multiple histories, multiple imagina-
tions and multiple cultures’.
• ‘Chorus of Women’ [‘hu:r kobj+]
- Marta Górnicka, (Poland)
The ‘Chorus’ is a women’s choral project
created by the Zbigniew Raszewski Theater
Institute in Warsaw, Poland. Three editions
have been staged so far, gaining the Choir
an international success: ‘This Is the Choir
Speaking’ (2010), ‘Magnificat’ (2011) and
‘Requiemachine’ (2013); here we chose to
focus on the first two editions which were
based on an all-female cast.
In fact the cast was recruited following
an open call ‘for all women who wanted
to work together, regardless of age, pro-
fession, appearance, and vocal abilities’,
while professional music education was
at the bottom of the list of required skills.
Ultimately the choir was made of women
who were very diverse, but united by the
desire to do something new together.
The key elements of the Choir are the voice
and the language in their interaction with
the body. Both voice and language are
used in a very specific way that marks a
break compared to ‘traditional’ choirs. The
librettos of ‘This Is the Choir Speaking’ and
‘Magnificat’ are a patchwork of texts from
religious books and sermons, glossy wom-
en’s magazines, cooking recipes, repertory
theatre and traditional tales. However,
beside what is said, how it is said has crucial
importance: ‘the Chorus hisses, screams,
gasps, whispers, sighs, sings operatic arias
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‘Chorus of Women. Magnificat’, directed by Marta Górnicka, Zbigniew Raszewski
Theatre Institute in Warsaw, 2011 (Photo: Krzysztof Krzysztofiak - source: Polish
Theatre Journal)
and pop standards; it repeats and loops
phrases, delivers them quietly or cuts
them off unexpectedly (…) The Chorus (…)
uses the body/voice to disrupt meanings
and estrange words, not only revealing the
built-in ideology of language but also influ-
encing the reception of the Chorus, which
has a powerful effect on viewers at the
sensory level’. The community of women
acting on stage impacts the audience with
an ‘immense corporeal power’, their voices
and bodies unified, their bodies ‘expand so
much that their presence becomes physi-
cally and sensually overwhelming’ – a pro-
cess possible thanks to the contact with the
audience.
The Choir combines two tactics of feminist
political action in theatre: ‘On the one hand,
at the level of the body, the Chorus is rem-
iniscent of écriture féminine and the second
wave of feminist performance, confronting
the public with embodied female subjects
who create through their bodies, endowed
with the status of a source and tool of a
specific female language that exceeds the
masculine logos. On the other hand, at the
linguistic level the Chorus juggles clichés
and stereotypes, practicing a cultural brico-
lage whose aim is to unmask the perform-
ative character of femininity rather than to
21
of boxes and ceilings
discover the ‘real’ femininity under the shell
of social imperatives’.
The Choir has been defined ‘a fascinating
example of artistic practice that leads to
the liberation of the female subject and
the female community through discipline,
including rigorous physical discipline’, with
reference to strong elements of contem-
porary Polish theatre back to the work of
Jerzy Grotowski and therefore to a mascu-
line and homo-social tradition.
Interestingly, Agata Adamiecka-Sitek, who
contributed to the development of this
work, admits that ‘The Women’s Choir
as a whole worked on – and is working
on – Marta Górnicka. None of the women
singing in the Choir, even the one with the
most individuality on the stage, will be
remembered individually; any of them can
be replaced at any moment. Marta’s other
collaborators are similarly invisible. In this
dimension, this is a project that really hasn’t
changed the relationships in the theatre of
directors’. If the Choir then is not reform-
ing the institution of theatre, however,
it certainly holds a specific value for the
society it stems from, in opposition to the
conservative forces that in Poland exercise
an increasing control over women.
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• Challenging Hetero-
Normativity and the law in
Ecuador: ‘Real Versus Fake’
- TransGender-TransAction
Theatre company
(UK-Ecuador)

‘Real versus Fake’ by TransAction Theatre

Company (UK) is an art-law collaboration,
grass-roots activism and trans-feminist
cross-cultural performance project stag-
ing the first (trans) ‘gay’ marriage in Quito,
Ecuador. Though Ecuador does not have
equal marriage laws, Joey Hateley and
Hugo Vera have been able to enter into a
legal partnership: as a trans man, Joey’s
gender is not recognised by the state, which
continues to regard him as female, so he
and Hugo were able to wed as ‘husband and
wife’ whilst clearly being husband and hus-
Picture from the video ‘Real v Fake. The first (trans)gay marriage, Quito, Ecuador’
band. This marriage highlights ‘the inherent by TransAction Theatre (photos of Joey Hateley and Hugo Vera by Ana Belen,
foolishness of both unequal marriage laws Santiago Teran, Ana Almeida - Source: YouTube)
and non-recognition of trans peoples’ gen-
der identities’.

This marriage project, which arose from

marginalised trans-feminist activists in
Ecuador (CasaTrans, Quito) in dialogue
with gender-queer communities in the
UK, questions what is real versus what is
fake, what is ‘in good faith’, whose reality
is reflected and who benefits from legal
discourse, as well as the colonial economy
of marriage and other religious, social,
and cultural practices. The project further
examines how to make space for cross-cul-
tural allegiance and alternative family
values so that communities can be more
cross-culturally represented. The project
also seeks to impact and progress the pol-
icy and legal environment in Ecuador. The
project generated high interest and was
extensively covered by national media in
Ecuador.
The project challenges the societal ste-
reotypes and narratives prevailing in
Ecuador society. It brought into practice
the ‘alternative use of the law’, a concept
theorised by lesbian legal activist Elisabeth
Vasquez which involves the celebration of
a marriage between two men. In order to
accomplish what, in principle, would be
impossible under Ecuadorian law (which
prohibits homosexual marriage), one
party would have to be a ‘trans man that
is assigned female at birth’ who retained a
female legal sex on his documents despite
a social identity as a man; the other man
would have to have been assigned male at
birth, with a corresponding male legal sex
and male social identity. A gay marriage in
these terms would have to be allowed, as
the couple would be entering a contract
‘outside the imagination of the legislator
and his prohibitions’.
Joey Hateley, artistic director of
TransAction Theatre, self-defines as ‘a
Trans-Feminist theatre practitioner who
uses mixed-medium processes and per-
formance techniques’ to operate in differ-
ent cross-cultural contexts’. TransAction
Theatre Company collaborates with
diverse communities, artists and organ-
isations to create a multi-discipline pro-
gramme of socio-political, cutting edge the-
atre projects. TransAction runs artistic and
participatory cultural exchange projects
that explore the ways in which we under-
stand our own identity community and our
place in the world. Building on Augusto
Boal’s Theatre of the oppressed it aims for
a ‘Theatre of Terrorism’: in Hateley’s words,
‘Could a modern day theatre created by
art-activists be seen to create counter
propaganda to the dominant discourse of
the war on terror?’.
‘TransAction utilises structural inter-dis-
ciplinary methodologies that create a
framework from which to understand
and raise awareness of how oppression
is both individual and social, multiple and
interlocking. Developing feminist method-
ologies that practically help us understand
how Hegemonic Power operates creates a
space that enables us to learn from, teach
and empower each other as individuals
and communities. The creative process
explores how we depart from the current
socio-political climate to work towards a
more socially cohesive society, and asks the
question, how would we get there and what
could that future look like?’.

22
of boxes and ceilings

• Coming to Terms with Racial
Repression in South Africa:
‘Monumental Dresses’
- Judith Mason
Professor Rosemarie Buikema’s current
research concerns the role of the arts in
processes of political transitions, where
Buikema combines theories of transitional
justice, the politics of aesthetics and theo-
ries of sexual difference in order to develop
new and multi-layered scenarios for social
change and transnational justice. This
contribution is an extracted edited sum-
mary of two academic papers1 produced
by Professor Buikema whose research on
art, gender and social change led to inves-
tigate the role played by art in supporting
the South African Truth and Reconciliation
Commission2 and giving voices to victims
of the apartheid.
The case study below takes us back in time
to the late 1990s. We chose to include it
because it is exemplary in showing how the
arts can help in healing the social wounds
left in South African society in the after-
math of the Apartheid era. It also shows
that time is needed to appreciate the signif-
icance and the potential impact of the arts
in the processes of social change.
Phila Portia Ndwandwe was a South African
woman and a fighter against the Apartheid
regime. Reported missing since 1988, she
turned out to have been murdered by the
Apartheid regime security police. She was
the first victim identified after information
was provided by perpetrators appear-
ing before the Amnesty Committee of
1  Contribution based on two articles written by
Prof. Buikema: ‘The Role of Art in the Becoming
Post-Apartheid of South Africa’, Journal of
Memory Studies, vol. 5, no. 3, 2012; and
‘Monumental Dresses: Coming to Terms with
Racial Repression’, unpublished (courtesy of the
author, November 2015)
2  The Truth and Reconciliation Commission
(TRC) was a court-like restorative justice body
assembled in South Africa after the abolition
of apartheid. Witnesses who were identified as
victims of gross human rights violations during
apartheid were invited to give statements about
their experiences, and some were selected for
public hearings. Perpetrators of violence could
also give testimony and request amnesty from
both civil and criminal prosecution. The TRC was
seen by many as a crucial component of the tran-
sition to full and free democracy in South Africa.
f r esh p er sp ec tives
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Judith Mason, ‘The Man Who Sang and the Woman Who Kept Silent’, triptych,
1998. Collection: The Constitutional Court, South Africa. © 1998 by Judith
Mason - source: Signs Journal)
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission possibilities to think about the historically
(TRC) in South Africa. When her remains raced and gendered space of South Africa
were exhumed in 1997 her pelvis was in a different way for both the oppressor
clothed in a plastic bag fashioned into a pair and the oppressed. The blue plastic shop-
of panties, as in a last attempt to protect her ping bag, which really is omnipresent in
modesty. South Africa, is paradigmatically related to
the blue plastic bag that at least minimally
A judge of the South African Constitutional warranted Phila Ndwandwe’s dignity.
Court, Albie Sachs, called on people in 2010
to take seriously the potential of art to add
complexity and depth to politics, arguing
that it should be granted a proper posi-
tion in the public debate on the new South
Africa. Judge Sachs brought a tribute to
Phila Ndwandwe through the installation
of artist Judith Mason dedicated to the
murdered activist, which is in the main
hall of South Africa’s Constitutional Court.
The core of the installation consists of a
dress made of blue plastic bags. The dress
not only symbolically makes up for Phila
Ndwandwe’s forced nakedness but it also
commemorates her struggle. The dress
thus both restores Ndwandwe’s dignity as
a woman and a human rights activist. This
dress negotiates between the seen and the
unseen, the said and the unsaid, the known
and the unknown. The exhumations most
literally brought hidden truths to the sur-
face in such a way that this surface will
never be the same. In that vein, the dress
performs a sense of redemptive truth as
well as a sense of restorative justice for
both the perpetrators (or those who suf-
fer from identifications with this position)
and the victims. In this context, the very
materiality of the plastic dress opens up
23
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08.
conclusions
This publication has sought to capture
some of the essential elements of the rela-
tion between gender identities and artistic
practices. It has also provided snapshots of
the ways in which artistic representation
can contribute to formulate social critique
and to challenge stereotypes by encourag-
ing audiences to question their own views,
gaze and vision.
Such a publication does not claim to re-
flect the magnitude and diversity of the
debates and situations across Europe (let
alone internationally), for which more re-
search would be needed. However we can
attempt to formulate some concluding re-
marks building on some of the most inspir-
ing cases mentioned in the text.
Artistic practices dealing with gender
identities remain very much dependent
on the binary norms which prevail in soci-
ety. Art bears the potential to criticise the
status quo; however, there is a risk to end
up using the old recurring concepts and
terms – while these should be questioned
in the first place. As long as gender issues
are discussed within existing social and
political frames, gender identity in all of its
fluidity and diversity cannot be addressed
in a meaningful way.
It should be noted however that gender
fluidity, while getting more recognition
in the Western world, is becoming an in-
creasingly cruel battlefield in large parts
of the world. Arts as a forerunner in the
defence of human rights should and could
contribute to the social and religious ac-
ceptation of the cause for LGBT rights.
Performing arts, as a live art form that
brings in the language of the physical body,
is apt to influence our imagery, our sub-
liminal categorisation techniques and to
stimulate the social and open discourse
on gender issues. While many consider
this era a post-feminist one where all the
objectives of the feminist movement have
been achieved, we see that there is indeed
a pressing need to put the debate on gen-
der identities and diversity in art expres-
sions into the limelight. Fifty years after
the provocative essay by Linda Nochlin,
have we really moved forward in terms of
gender equality in the arts? Data from the
ground, as well as narratives surrounding
the issue, seem to suggest that there is still
a long way to go.
Also the question of gender mainstream-
ing in the access, progression and promo-
tion of women within the arts and cultural
environment, is of critical importance.
While women are over-represented in the
more supportive positions in culture, their
under-representation in cultural manage-
ment positions or as publicly acclaimed
artists is obvious. More gender balance
is needed in programming in major muse-
ums, theatres or cultural centres. More
opportunities are needed for women to
experiment, fail, and grow, working their
way up in the world of art. More responsi-
bility is needed from political and cultural
institutions to mainstream gender equal-
ity and ensure that women really enjoy
the same opportunities as men (access to
education, to power positions in the pro-
fession and to professional/policy making
networks). The deceptive argument that
‘there are simply not enough good women
artists’ simply doesn’t meet the bar.
The lack of comparable aggregated num-
bers giving a clear account of the level of
gender disparity across artistic disciplines
and EU Member States calls for more
research to fill information gaps. Inter-
estingly, the sector is constantly asked to
provide figures about its economic impact
but never on this specific topic. Still, there
is already enough evidence to confirm the
existence of gender bias in the arts. Let’s
learn from the Irish case and the #Waking-
TheFeminists movement how the arts can
bring the problems into light and collabo-
rate with policy makers to bring about real
change. And let’s keep in mind that visible
positive achievements (like the increase
in women directors in Poland) should not
cover what remains to be done at a deeper
level, at the level of daily institutional prac-
tices and relationships.
Audiences and the next generation of
visual arts and live performance students
or young artists in the making need to be
supported and encouraged to be exposed,
learn and seek inspiration about — and
work on — gender. Artists openly focus-
ing on social change have contributed to
addressing the gendered order, gender
fluidity as a narrative or pluralised gender
perspectives; however there is a need to
create more space, legitimacy and visibili-
ty for those debates in the mainstream art
environment and discourses. Important-
ly, women artists cannot be judged only
through the feminist lens perspective, nor
expected to deal always with gender par-
ity; the same goes for artists issued from
‘minorities’ (whether in terms of ethnic
origin, cultural or religious background or
sexual orientation). We need to question
the narratives and the power dynamics in
society and in the arts world.
Finally, the struggle for gender equality
should be considered part of a broader
struggle for inclusion, accessibility and
democratisation of the arts. The discrimi-
nation based on gender and sexual orien-
tation are strictly linked to other issues
like ethnicity and economic status, and it
is high time that artists and activists work-
ing on these different topics join forces to
open up theatre (as an institution, a venue
and a field) to a broader public in all its
complexity.
As we learned from the post-apartheid
South African case, art is a mode of expres-
sion that can contribute to support social
transformation by bringing the complexity
of realities to the surface. Performing arts
dealing with gender issues can respond to
a world rife with conflict and confusion by
producing works that inspire us to collab-
oratively create a society that is more just,
more diverse and more alive than often
seems possible.

24
of boxes and ceilings
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Useful Links and Resources of the History of Ideas’, http://www.ency- eurofia/eurofia-news-details/article/

• Feminist Art, http://www.theartstory.org/
• HowlRound, http://howlround.com/
• ILGA Europe, http://www.ilga-europe.org
• MoMA Learning, https://www.moma.
org/learn/moma_learning/themes/
investigating-identity/constructing-gender
• Waking the Feminists, http://www.wak-
ingthefeminists.org
• Agata Adamiecka-Sitek, Milena Gauer,
Weronika Szczawińska, ‘How Far Can
You Go in an Institution? On a Feminist
Turn That Wasn’t: Agata Adamiecka-Sitek
Talks with Milena Gauer and Weronika
Szczawińska’, in Didaskalia – Polish Theater
Journal, 1/2015, http://www.polishtheatre-
journal.com/index.php/ptj/article/view/57
• R. Buikema, G. Griffin and N. Lykke,
‘Theories and Methodologies in Feminist
Research’, Routledge, London, 2011
• Marie Buscatto, ‘Artistic Practices as
Gendered Practices. Ways and Reasons’,
in Zembylas T. (ed.), ‘Artistic Practices’,
Routledge, London, 2014
• M. Buscatto, ‘Sociologies du genre’,
Armand Colin, Paris, 2014
• J. Butler, ‘Gender Trouble: Feminism
and the Subversion of Identity’, Routledge,
London, 1990
clopedia.com/doc/1G2-3424300308.html
• C. Goldin, C. Rouse, ‘Orchestrating
Impartiality: The Impact of ‘Blind’ Auditions
on Female Musicians’, in The American
Economic Review, September 2000, http://
www.nber.org/papers/w5903
• Ewa Guderian-Czaplińska, ‘[ha’reı]’, in
Didaskalia 2/2015, http://www.didaskalia.
pl/Didaskalia_angielski_2.pdf
• H. Hammond, ‘Lesbian Art in America, A
Contemporary History’, Rizzoli, 2000
• b. hooks, ‘Continued devaluation of
Black womanhood’, in S. Jackson, S. Scott,
‘Feminism and sexuality: a reader’, Columbia
University Press, , New York, 1996
• J. Laillier, ‘La vocation au travail. La ‘carri-
ère’ des danseurs de l’Opéra de Paris’, thèse
pour le doctorat en sociologie, Université
Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, Paris, 2012
• A. Łuksza, ‘“I’m Calling Out to You”: On
the Choral Theatre of Marta Górnicka.
How to Make a Baba?: Choral Theatre’
vs. Feminist Theatre’, in Didaskalia - Polish
Theatre Journal, 1/2015, http://www.polish-
theatrejournal.com/index.php/ptj/article/
view/53/108
• G. Mamedov, ‘An Introduction to Theatre
Today in Central Asia – 2015 Edition’, IETM
2016, https://www.ietm.org/en/publica-
tions/an-introduction-to-theatre-today-
in-central-asia
handbook-of-good-practices-to-combat-
gender-stereotypes-and-promote-equal-
opportunities-in-film-tel/
• Quemin, ‘Les stars de l’art contemporain.
Notoriété et consécration artistiques dans
les arts visuels’, Éditions du CNRS, Paris,
2013
• G. Sellier, ‘Films de femmes de la décennie
2000 : Avancées et freins dans le contexte
français’, in M. Jan-Ré (dir.), ‘Créations. Le
genre à l’œuvre 2’, L’Harmattan, Paris, 2012
• D. Torr, S. Bottoms, ‘Sex, Drag and
Male Roles: Investigating Gender as
Performance’, University of Michigan Press,
2010, http://www.press.umich.edu/title-
DetailDesc.do?id=236704
• M. Shirley Blumberg, D. Walder
(eds.), ‘South African Theatre As/And
Intervention’, in Cross/Cultures 38,
Amsterdam, 1999
• K. Igweonu, ‘Trends in Twenty-first cen-
tury African Theatre and Performance’,
Amsterdam-NY 2011

• J. Butler, ‘Bodies that matter: on the dis- • D. Naudier, ‘L’écriture-femme, une inno-
cursive limits of ‘sex’’, Routledge Classics, vation esthétique emblématique’, in Sociétés
London, 1993 contemporaines, n° 44, 2001

• F. Dumont, ‘Les limites d’une évaluation • S. Panayotov, ‘From tradition to experi-

chiffrée au regard de la fabrique des val- mentation’, introduction to the cata-
eurs. Exemple de la reconnaissance des logue of V Sofia LGBT Art Fest, 2009,
plasticiennes des années 1970 en France’, https://www.academia.edu/858234/
in Histoire & mesure, XXIII (2), 2008 Queer_Art_in_Bulgaria

• Gender & Performance-Jaarboek voor • R. Polacek, ‘Handbook of good practices

Vrouwengeschiedenis – 32, Amsterdam to combat gender stereotypes and pro-
University Press, Amsterdam, 2012 mote equal opportunities in film, television
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25
of boxes and ceilings

Annex: Glossary of Terms Related to Gender
Identities and Sexual Orientation
Sources: ILGA Europe and Anti-defamation
league (USA)
Anti-LGBTQ bias
Prejudice and/or discrimination against
people who are or who are perceived to be
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer
(LGBTQ)
Art for social change
Art with a vision that has the power to
impact people in many ways. It can raise
consciousness; alter how we think about
ourselves, our society or our culture; create
a vision of a more equitable society and/or
world; be a tool or strategy for organising
and building social movements. It can help
to reclaim local and community-based cul-
tural practices as a form of resistance; chal-
lenge racism, sexism, homophobia, trans-
phobia, ageism, disability or other forms of
discrimination; and question mainstream
culture and beliefs. Artistic expression has
the power to increase awareness, stimulate
dialogue, open new spaces for civic par-
ticipation and imagine new ways to create
equity, fairness and social cohesion.
Biological sex
The biological and physiological charac-
teristics of males and females. These are
characteristics people are born with that
do not usually change over the course of
their lives. Although sex is typically defined
as being male or female, in actuality, there
are more than two sexes.
Bisexual
A person who is emotionally, physically and/
or romantically attracted to some people of
more than one gender.
Gay
Man who is sexually and/or emotionally
attracted to men. Gay is sometimes also
used as a blanket term to cover lesbian
women and bisexual people as well as gay
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men. However, this usage has been dis-
puted by a large part of the LGBTI com-
munity and gay is therefore only used here
when referring to men who are emotionally
and/or sexually attracted to men.
Gender
Refers to people’s internal perception and
experience of maleness and femaleness,
and the social construction that allocates
certain behaviours into male and female
roles.
‘Gender’ refers to the socially defined
‘rules’ and roles for men and women in a
society. The attitudes, customs and val-
ues associated with gender are socially
constructed; however, individuals develop
their gender identities in two primary
ways: through an innate sense of their own
identity and through their life experiences
and interactions with others. Dominant
Western society generally defines gender
as a binary system—men and women—but
many cultures define gender as more fluid
and existing along a continuum.
Gender expression
Refers to the ways in which people exter-
nally communicate their gender identity to
others through behaviour, clothing, haircut,
voice and emphasising, de-emphasising
or changing their bodies’ characteristics.
Gender expression is not an indicator of
sexual orientation.
Gender identity
Refers to each person’s deeply felt internal
and individual experience of gender, which
may or may not correspond with the sex
they were assigned at birth.
The term refers to how an individual identi-
fies in terms of their gender. Since gender
identity is internal, one’s gender identity is
not necessarily visible to others.
Gender role
The set of roles and behaviours expected of
people based on gender assigned at birth.
26
of boxes and ceilings
Hetero-normativity
Refers to cultural and social practices
where men and women are led to believe
that heterosexuality is the only conceivable
sexuality. It implies that heterosexuality is
the only way of being ‘normal’.
Heterosexism
Attitudes and behaviours based on the
belief that heterosexuality is the norm.
Homophobia
Prejudice and/or discrimination against
people who are or who are perceived to
be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or
queer (LGBTQ). Fear, unreasonable anger,
intolerance or/and hatred directed towards
homosexuality.
Other related, specific, terms are transpho-
bia and biphobia.
Homosexual
People are classified as homosexual on the
basis of their gender and the gender of
their sexual partner(s). When the partner’s
gender is the same as the individual’s, then
the person is categorised as homosexual. It
is recommended to use the terms lesbian
and gay men instead of homosexual people.
The terms lesbian and gay are being consid-
ered neutral and positive, and the focus is
on the identity instead of being sexualised
or pathologised.
Intersex
A term that relates to a range of physical
traits or variations that lie between stereo-
typical ideals of male and female. Intersex
people are born with physical, hormonal
or genetic features that are neither wholly
female nor wholly male; or a combination
of female and male; or neither female nor
male. Many forms of intersex exist; it is a
spectrum or umbrella term, rather than a
single category.

Lesbian
A woman who is sexually and/or emotion-
ally attracted to women.
LGBTI
Acronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans
and intersex people.
Queer
Has become an academic term that is inclu-
sive of people who are not heterosexual -
includes lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and
trans people. Queer theory is challenging
hetero-normative social norms concern-
ing gender and sexuality, and claims that
gender roles are social constructions.
Traditionally the term ‘queer’ was an abu-
sive term and therefore for some still has
negative connotations. Many LGBTI per-
sons however have reclaimed the term as
a symbol of pride.
Sex
Refers to biological makeup such as pri-
mary and secondary sexual characteris-
tics, genes, and hormones. The legal sex is
usually assigned at birth and has tradition-
ally been understood as consisting of two
mutually exclusive groups, namely men and
women. However the legal definition of sex
should also include intersex people.
Sexual orientation
Refers to each person’s capacity for pro-
found affection, emotional and sexual
attraction to, and intimate and sexual rela-
tions with, individuals of a different gen-
der or the same gender or more than one
gender.
Social justice
Structural change that increases oppor-
tunity for those individuals or groups who
are suffering from marginalisation and
disadvantages - politically, economically
and socially. Social justice is grounded in
the values and ideals of equity, access, and
inclusion for all members of society, par-
ticularly for under-privileged communities
f r esh p er sp ec tives
w w w .ie t m.org
and communities structurally are suffer- Transphobia
ing from social inequalities based on gen-
der, race, class and status. Social justice Refers to negative cultural and personal
encourages change to come from those beliefs, opinions, attitudes and behaviours
that are most affected by social inequity, based on prejudice, disgust, fear and/or
involving them in working on the prob- hatred of trans people or against variations
lems and decisions; it employs a combina- of gender identity and gender expression.
tion of tactics such as advocacy related to
policy, grassroots organizing, litigation, and
communications.
Social change
Seeks to uncover the underlying causes of
inequity and address systemic change in
institutions and policies as well as socially
upheld behavioural norms that foster fair
treatment for all. Social change refers to
action to make change that ensures inclu-
sion, equity, fairness, and justice in society.
Transsexual
Refers to people who identify entirely with
the gender role opposite to the sex assigned
to at birth and seeks to live permanently in
the preferred gender role. This often goes
along with strong rejection of their physical
primary and secondary sex characteristics
and wish to align their body with their pre-
ferred gender. Transsexual people might
intend to undergo, are undergoing or have
undergone gender reassignment treat-
ment (which may or may not involve hor-
mone therapy or surgery).
Trans person / people / man / woman
Inclusive umbrella term referring to those
people whose gender identity and/or a
gender expression differs from the sex
they were assigned at birth. It includes,
but is not limited to: men and women with
transsexual pasts, and people who identify
as transsexual, transgender, transvestite/
cross-dressing, androgyne, polygender,
genderqueer, agender, gender variant
or with any other gender identity and/or
expression which is not standard male or
female and express their gender through
their choice of clothes, presentation or
body modifications, including undergoing
multiple surgical procedures.
27
of boxes and ceilings
 “Que me veux-tu?”
To what extent does an understanding of her Jewish background and culture
contribute to the comprehension of Claude Cahun’s notions of identity
and representation as revealed in the photomontages
accompanying Aveux non avenus (1930)?

Frontispiece: Claude Cahun, Que me veux-tu? c. 1928

Photograph, 23 x 18 cm
Courtesy of the Jersey Heritage Trust

Roger Pilgrim
September 2011

5
 Que Me Veux-tu?: Claude Cahun's Photomontages

First published in Great Britain and in English by Majaro Publications, 2012

Copyright © Roger Pilgrim 2011

All rights reserved

Majaro Publications
3 St Mary’s Road
Croyde
N Devon EX33 1PE

ISBN 978-0-9562859-3-5

2
 ABSTRACT

Since her rediscovery in the 1990s, one question which has been substantially overlooked
by art historians studying Claude Cahun is what influence Cahun’s Jewish background and
culture had on her work. While some writers on Cahun explicitly acknowledge her Jewish
ethnicity, few have chosen to foreground this influence. This dissertation will argue that a
deeper understanding of her Jewishness helps to inform an understanding of the
photomontages she produced to accompany her 1930 semi-autobiographical collection of
poems, philosophical fragments and recounted dreams, Aveux non avenus (Disavowals). It
will show that a substantial body of evidence supports the contention that Cahun used her
Jewish ethnicity to engage with contemporary issues related to identity and subjectivity
and, particularly, what it felt like to be an assimilated Jew in early twentieth-century
France. By firmly positioning Cahun in relation to her upbringing, her family and by
drawing upon events and trends from the wider economic, political and social spheres, it
will examine her work in its proper historical setting.
Although her work is sometimes opaque and often disguises as much as it reveals,
Cahun frequently acknowledged the influence of her Jewish background. In Disavowals,
she used a range of Jewish symbols and references as part of her engagement in a personal
search for self. Her own and her family’s experience during the influential Dreyfus affair
(1894-1906) sensitised her to wider issues of anti-Semitism in French society. In the
1920s the politicisation of Cahun’s work initially manifested itself in her use of
photomontage, an art form closely related to protest, and a range of widely understood
anti-Jewish stereotypes; the belle-juive, the grotesque and the vampire. In employing these
images, Cahun asks her viewers to question what is ‘normal’ and how someone who, in
other circumstances would be seen as French, can easily become ‘another’.
The evidence challenges a dominant paradigm in academic studies of Cahun’s
work; that it is primarily informed by considerations linked to gender, stemming from the
rediscovery of her work at a time when gender studies were à la mode. It is remarkable that
Cahun’s concern with issues of ethnicity and cultural difference has been largely
overlooked, not least by Jewish academics. The dissertation will remedy this by extending
our understanding of one of the most unusual artists of the early twentieth century.

3
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................6
EXISTING ACADEMIC STUDIES OF CAHUN AND HER WORK ..............................12
SITUATING CAHUN IN HER TIME ................................................................................26
CAHUN’S ART ...................................................................................................................40
CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................61
APPENDICES .....................................................................................................................64
Appendix I: Exhibitions..............................................................................................64
Appendix II: The orientation of the photomontage prefacing Chapter III ...................65
BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................66
ILLUSTRATIONS...............................................................................................................73

4
 TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS

3.1: Alphonse Lévy, The Hebrew Lesson, 1886 ...............................................................................74

3.2: Atelier Nadar, Sarah Bernhardt in Jean Richepin’s Pierrot the Murderer, 1883 ......................75
3.3: Claude Cahun, Self-Portrait, c. 1929.........................................................................................76
3.4: Alfred Le Petit, La Poule aux ouefs d’or, 1882 .........................................................................77
3.5: Claude Cahun, Self-Portrait, c. 1928.........................................................................................78
3.6: Lloyd Thatcher, FT Graphics, Week of the living dread, 2011..................................................79
3.7: Claude Cahun, HUM (Frontispiece to Pt VII of Aveux non avenus), c. 1930 ...........................80
3.8: Claude Cahun, ‘Passport’ photograph, 1936 .............................................................................81
3.9: Claude Cahun, Self-Portrait, 1925.............................................................................................82
3.10: Tombstone ...............................................................................................................................83
3.11: Solomon J Solomon, High Tea in the Sukkah, 1906................................................................84
4.1: Claude Cahun, Untitled (Frontispiece from Aveux non avenus), c. 1930 ..................................85
4.2: Claude Cahun, E.D.M. (Frontispiece to Ch III to Aveux non avenus), c. 1930 .........................86
4.3: Claude Cahun, M.R.M (Frontispiece to Ch VI of Aveux non avenus), c. 1930 .........................87
4.4: Claude Cahun, Moi-meme (Frontispiece to Pt II of Aveux non avenus), c. 1930 ......................88
4.5: Hannah Hoch, Liebe im Busch (Love in the Bush). 1925..........................................................89
4.6: Hannah Hoch, Mischling (Half-Caste), 1924 ............................................................................90
4.7: Edouard Debat-Ponsan, She is not Drowning, 1898..................................................................91
4.8: Claude Cahun, Self-Portrait with Quilt, 1898 ...........................................................................92
4.9: A decorative Hamsa ...................................................................................................................93
4.10: Traditional Middle Eastern Hamsa ring...................................................................................93
4.11: F. W. Murnau, Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror (1922) .......................................................94
4.12: Claude Cahun, Frontière Humaine, c. 1928 ............................................................................95
4.13: Claude Cahun, Que me veux-tu? c. 1928 .................................................................................96
4.14: Vitrine van den Bergh, c. 1930 ................................................................................................97
4.15: Claude Cahun, Self-Portrait in a barn doorway, 1930s ..........................................................98
4.16: A curlew...................................................................................................................................99
4.17: Claude Cahun, Self-Portrait, 1914...........................................................................................99
4.18: Salome’s Dance .....................................................................................................................100
4.19: Gustav Klimt, Judith II (Salome), 1909.................................................................................100
4.20: Claude Cahun, Self-Portrait, c.1920......................................................................................101
4.21: Claude Cahun, Maurice Schwob, c.1920 ...............................................................................102
4.22: Claude Cahun, Self-Portrait, c.1928......................................................................................103
4.23: Claude Cahun, Un air defamille, 1936 .................................................................................104
4.24: Claude Cahun, Self-Portrait, c.1913......................................................................................105
4.25: Cleo de Merode......................................................................................................................105
4.26: Unknown, Claude Cahun with black waitress, 1935.............................................................106
4.27: Claude Cahun, Untitled, 1939................................................................................................107
4.28: LeJuifetLa France, 1941.....................................................................................................108
4.29: Claude Cahun, Self-Portrait (in the doorway of La Rocquaise), c.1935 ...............................109
4.30: Cohenim hands giving a blessing, Date unknown .................................................................110
4.31: The Monstrous Races, 1475...................................................................................................111

5
 INTRODUCTION

Que me veux-tu?

What do you want from me?1

Gelatine silver print (1928) – Claude Cahun

One question which has been substantially overlooked by art historians studying Claude

Cahun (1894-1954) following her rediscovery in the 1990s is what influence Cahun’s

Jewish background and culture had on her photographic work in the 1920s. Some writers

on Cahun’s work explicitly acknowledge her Jewish ethnicity, but few have chosen to

foreground this influence.2 This dissertation will argue that a deeper understanding of her

Jewishness informs an understanding of the photomontages she produced to accompany

her 1930 semi-autobiographical collection of poems, philosophical fragments and

recounted dreams, Aveux non avenus (referred hereafter by its English title, Disavowals).

Much of Cahun’s work was done in collaboration with her stepsister and long time

partner, Suzanne Malherbe (a.k.a. Marcel Moore, 1892-1972). Commentators on their

works have conflicting views on the nature of this cooperation. Tirza Latimer makes the

practical point that such staged portraits would, at the very least, have required someone to

release the camera shutter, while Renée Riese Hubert has observed that historians have

1 Claude Cahun, Que me veux-tu?, Gelatin silver print, 23 x 18 cm, 1928, Musee d’Art moderne de la Ville
de Paris(Translation mine); Cahun did not often give her works titles and Oehsen has suggested that,
although this is the name now used for this piece, it was named by Cahun’s biographer, Francois Leperlier. It
would however be ironic, given the many interpretations made of Cahun’s work, if she had indeed chosen
this title; Kristine von Oehsen, “‘Claude Cahun’: Published/Unpublished: The Textual Identities of Lucy
Schwob: 1914-1944” (PhD, Norwich: University of East Anglia, 2003), 85.
2 See, for instance, Claire Follain, “Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe - Resistantes,” in Don’t kiss me: the
art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore., ed. Louise Downie (London: Tate Gallery, 2006); Kristine von
Oehsen, “The lives of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore,” in Don’t kiss me: the art of Claude Cahun and
Marcel Moore., ed. Louise Downie (London: Tate Gallery, 2006).

5
downplayed Moore’s importance to emphasise Cahun’s multiple identities.3 On the other

hand, James Stevenson suggests that the main artistic input came from Cahun, observing

that the photographs taken after her death have little artistic merit.4 Disentangling their

respective roles is beyond the scope of this dissertation, which will follow the established

convention of referring to the works as Cahun’s alone. Unlike Cahun, Moore had no

Jewishness in her background so, if the work was hers alone, this could significantly

undermine the arguments made here. However, any form of collaboration allows the

argument, perhaps somewhat diluted, to stand.

As Steven Harris has remarked, “the erosion of a secure, stable identity was a

significant feature of the surrealist project.”5 Rosalind Krauss sees Cahun’s work as

“continuous with the subjective blurring I have been attributing to much of surrealist

production” and “[challenging] the very idea of selfhood as stable.”6 Cahun acknowledged

her own interest in the complexities of identity - as she wrote (in an oft-quoted statement):

Sous ce masque un autre masque. Je n’enfinirai pas de soulever tous

ces visages.7
After this mask another mask. I will never be finished with removing
all these faces.
Such complexity has allowed - perhaps encouraged – multiple interpretations of her work

to flourish. Surrealist thought intersected with ideas originating in psychoanalysis and

3 Tirza True Latimer, “Entre Nous: Between Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian
and Gay Studies 12, no. 2 (2006): 198; Renée Riese Hubert, Magnifying Mirrors: Women, Surrealism &
Partnership (Lincoln, [Neb.]: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 2.
4 James Stevenson, “Claude Cahun: an analysis of her photographic technique,” in Don’t kiss me: the art of
Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore., ed. Louise Downie (London: Tate Gallery, 2006), 53 et seq.
5 Steven Harris, “Coup d’oeil,” Oxford Art Journal 24, no. 1 (2001): 91.
6 Ibid.; Rosalind E Krauss, Bachelors (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1999), 37.
7 Frontispiece to Pt X of Aveux non avenus, 1930 quoted in Honor Lasalle and Abigail Solomon-Godeau,
“Surrealist confession: Claude Cahun’s photomontages,” Afterimage 19, no. 8 (March 1992): 10 (Translation
mine).
7
associated with Freud and Lacan.8 Recently Lacan’s ideas have been preferred by

analysts of visual culture seeking to relate subjectivity to visual art and some have sought

to apply Lacanian analysis to Cahun’s images.9 Perhaps inevitably, given Cahun’s

situation as one of the few women associated with the early development of Surrealism,

her work has also been seized upon by feminist art-historians.10 As Lucy Lippard has

pointed out, “the Zeitgeist provides the context for the work. If Claude Cahun had been

rediscovered in the 1970s instead of the 1990s, we would perceive her work differently.”11

The various approaches to Cahun’s work will be considered in Chapter 2, as will the work

of those who have focused on Cahun’s Jewish origins. These include galleries like the

Israeli Centre for Digital Art in Holon, Israel and The Judah L. Magnes Museum in

Berkeley, California, which have recently taken up her work, perhaps in response to a later

“Zeitgeist”. It will also consider the extent to which academics with a Jewish background

have tended to downplay their own ethnicity when considering Cahun’s work.

While the dissertation will not seek to undermine readings based on sexuality and

gender, it will contend that, by concentrating on Cahun as a “post-feminist before her

time”, they miss an important and informative element of her work.12 As Griselda Pollock

remarks, Cahun’s works are a “challenge to the certainties of the contemporary feminist

8 The interrelationship between the surrealists and psychoanalysis is explored in Carolyn J Dean, The Self
and Its Pleasures: Bataille, Lacan and the History of the Decentered Subject (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1992), 4 et seq.
9 Harris, “Coup d’oeil,” fn 8, 93; Gen Doy, Picturing the Self: Changing Views ofthe Subject in Visual
Culture (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005), 44 et seq.
10 Abigail Solomon-Godeau, “The Equivocal ‘I’: Claude Cahun as Lesbian Subject,” in Inverted Odysseys:
Claude Cahun, Maya Deren, Cindy Sherman, ed. Shelley Rice and Lynn Gumpert (Cambridge, Mass: MIT
Press, 1999), 112.
11 Lucy Lippard, “Scattering Selves,” in Inverted Odysseys: Claude Cahun, Maya Deren, Cindy Sherman, ed.
Shelley Rice and Lynn Gumpert (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1999), 36.
12 Solomon-Godeau makes the point that since her rediscovery, Cahun’s images have often been aligned with
the work of post-modernist feminist artists; Solomon-Godeau, “The Equivocal ‘I’,” 114.
8
movement as much as the dominant culture.”13 Cahun’s concept of identity, as expressed

in her Disavowals, was strongly influenced by notions of “otherness” based on ethnicity

and cultural difference. It is thus possible to place her work in a wider context which

accords with Hall’s concept of society as “composed of people with radically different

histories, cultures, experiences, stories and positions.”14 Although Cahun would not have

been recognised as Jewish by many Jews (see the quotation regarding the halakha on page

27 below), it is a cultural identity Cahun herself seems explicitly to have recognised.15

Academics have often commented on the adoption of her grandmother’s family name,

Cahun, within her pseudonym, although many focus on the ambivalence of her forename

which in French can be a male or female name.16 Gen Doy has suggested that assuming

the name ‘Cahun’ represents a move away from a clearly signified Jewish identity, but this

can be challenged.17 Cahun’s use of this surname – a French version of Cohen, the name

of the priestly caste and a clear signifier of Jewishness – represents not just an

acknowledgement of her ethnic origins, but must also be seen, as Krauss puts it, to be

“flaunting one’s Jewishness” and a “provocation” in the face of growing European anti

Semitism.18 Moreover, this explicit recognition of her Jewish background is reinforced by

other aspects of Cahun’s behaviour in the 1930s, as will be discussed in depth in Chapter 3.

13 Griselda Pollock, “Inscriptions in the feminine,” in Inside the Visible: An Elliptical Traverse of 20th
Century Art in, of, andfrom the Feminine, ed. M. Catherine de Zegher (Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press,
1996), 76.
14 Quoted in Gill Perry and Steve Edwards, “Identity, Difference and the Performative in Contemporary Art,”
in Themes and issues in contemporary art history (Milton Keynes: Open University, 2004), 3:36.
15 Jeremy Wanderer, “The future of Jewish practice,” in Modern Judaism: An Oxford Guide, ed. Nicholas de
Lange and Miri Freud-Kandel (OUP Oxford, 2005), 259; Lizzie Thynne, “‘Surely you are not claiming to be
more homosexual than I?’ Claude Cahun and Oscar Wilde,” in Oscar Wilde and Modern Culture: The
Making ofa Legend, ed. Joseph Bristow (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2008), 189.
16 See, for instance, Oehsen, “The lives of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore,” 12; Hubert, Magnifying
Mirrors, 2.
17 Gen Doy, “Another side of the picture: looking differently at Claude Cahun,” in Don’t kiss me: the art of
Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore., ed. Louise Downie (London: Tate Gallery, 2006), 77.
18 Krauss, Bachelors, 42.

9
 It would be surprising, and noteworthy in itself, if there was a complete absence of

references to Judaism in Cahun’s work, and Chapter 4 will consider the evidence presented

in the photomontages published as the frontispiece and prefacing each chapter or part of

Disavowals. Studies of Cahun’s work have focused on the many self-portraits she and

Moore produced during the 1920s. Yet only one self-portrait seems to have been

published at this time, raising a question as to whether they were they intended to be

exhibited in this unaltered form.19 It does, however, seem reasonable to consider the

meaning of the fragments of Cahun’s self-portraits included within the photomontages. In

this context, it is possible to see them not just as an expression of an individual identity,

but as part of a broader engagement with notions of difference and alterity. Cahun herself

stated that her portraits were not about herself, expressing the wish that her body should

dissolve:

Quandje n’aurai plus qu’un battement de coeur à noter, mais à la

perfection, bien sûrje gagnerai la partie.20

When I have nothing more than a heartbeat to note, to perfection, I will have
won.

Cahun and her work cannot be easily categorised and the intention is to focus on a

broad concept of difference as a tool for the exploration of racial, ethnic and cultural

identity, following ideas proposed by Griselda Pollock and developed by Stuart Hall. As

Gill Perry and Steve Edwards remark, “both [authors] are concerned with “difference” as a

complex and diverse process, rather than with quintessential or essentialist notions of

gender, sexuality or race.” 21 It will be argued that Cahun’s work can be seen as a syncretic

19 See for instance Jennifer Shaw, “Narcissus and the Magic Mirror,” in Don’t kiss me: the art of Claude
Cahun and Marcel Moore., ed. Louise Downie (London: Tate Gallery, 2006), 33.
20 Cahun quoted in Laurie J. Monahan, “Radical Transformations: Claude Cahun and the Masquerade of
Womanliness,” in Inside the Visible: An Elliptical Traverse of 20th Century Art in, of, and from the
Feminine, ed. M. Catherine de Zegher (Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1996), 35.
21 Perry and Edwards, “Themes and issues in contemporary art history,” 3.37.

10
fusion of elements and techniques from Dadaism and surrealism, blended with images and

experiences drawn from her own background as a Frenchwoman of Jewish origin. Her

careful arrangement of the self-portraits within the photomontages in Disavowals prompts

the viewer to consider how Cahun can appear both like him or her, yet different. The

evidence presented here is also intended to augment, and even challenge, a dominant

paradigm in academic studies that her work is primarily informed by feminism and gender

studies and linked to psychoanalysis. It will aim to add to scholarly understanding of this

complicated artist, showing how, by taking symbols and images linked to Jewishness and

relating them to her own background and experience, she demonstrates a concern for wider

issues of ethnicity and cultural difference.

11
 EXISTING ACADEMIC STUDIES OF CAHUN AND HER WORK

Je est un autre – un multiple toujours1

I is another – and always multiple

Confidences au miroir (Unpublished manuscript c.1945) – Claude Cahun

2.1 Introduction

Art and cultural historians have frequently viewed Cahun’s work as a commentary on the

fragmented nature of human identity – perhaps following Cahun’s own statement above.

Some view it from the perspective of her gender and, occasionally, sexual orientation

(Solomon-Godeau and Lasalle); others consider how it intersects with notions of identity

drawn from early twentieth-century psychologists, like Freud and Lacan (Doy and Harris).

A third perspective, based on Cahun’s interest in the surrealist theatre, reflects on the

performative aspects of her work (Welby-Everard). Inevitably, ambivalence and

ambiguity has encouraged a multiplicity of approaches. Direct references to race and

ethnicity are relatively few in Cahun’s writing. Cahun herself eschewed directness,

encouraging an indirect approach to art, as to political action.2 Yet, it would be remarkable

in itself if the Jewish elements in her background had no impact on her output and there

has recently been an increased interest in this aspect of her identity. However, the

hypothesis explored here - that her work is better understood having gained a more

thorough understanding of her ethnicity and cultural background - should be seen as an

addition to existing studies.

This section of the dissertation will review recent literature on Claude Cahun. It

will explore how and why art historians incline to foreground approaches based on

1 Claude Cahun, Ecrits, ed. François Leperlier (Paris: J. M. Place, 2002), 594 - translation mine.
2 Doy, “Another side of the picture,” 76.

12
feminism and on psychology, Freud and particularly Lacan, whereas others stemming from

her Jewish origins and cultural background have tended to be neglected.

2.2 On the nature of identity

As Julian Baggini has observed, care needs to be taken with the postmodern

conception of fragmented identity.3 He suggests that each of us is capable of exhibiting

varying aspects of our character at different times depending on circumstances, a thought

that seems to fit well with Cahun’s own view on her wearing of multiple masks.4

Accordingly, embracing the notion that Cahun’s ethnicity influenced her work does not

exclude it being affected by her gender, sexual orientation, interest in the theatre or even

ailurophilia.5 As Amartya Sen notes, the theoretical attempt to appreciate a person in his

or her social setting is “entirely estimable”, but has largely ended up with a highly

restricted understanding of a person mainly as a member of exactly one group.”6 Indeed,

the focus on a single identity leaves open the fascinating question, to which this essay will

return, of the motivation of those who choose to emphasise it.

Art of the past inevitably speaks differently to new generations, depending on their

interests, perspectives and obsessions, and it can be tempting to read too much into the

creations of earlier times. As Abigail Solomon-Godeau has remarked, “it requires almost

more of an effort to resituate Cahun in her actual time and milieu than it does to consider

her work in the context of contemporary theoretical formulations”.7

3 Julian Baggini, The Ego Trick: In Search ofthe Self (Granta Books (Kindle Edition), 2011), Loc 1223.
4 Ibid., Loc 1478; Cahun quoted in Lasalle and Solomon-Godeau, “Surrealist confession,” 10.
5 An unpublished letter suggests Cahun saw herself as having feline characteristics; David Bate and Francois
Leperlier, Mise en scene: Claude Cahun, Tacita Dean, Virginia Nimarkoh (ICA (London), 1994), 16.
6 Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence: The Illusion ofDestiny (Penguin, 2007), 177.
7 Solomon-Godeau, “The Equivocal ‘I’,” 114.

13
2.3 Early biographical work: a political perspective?

Before her rediscovery in the early 1990s, Cahun was a shadowy figure on the

periphery of the Parisian surrealist movement, mainly known for her involvement in left

wing politics.8 Pre-1990 references to her are few and, given her choice of pseudonym,

often mistake her for a man.9 Much of her work was lost, believed destroyed during the

1940s and only rediscovered in the late 1980s. Academic interest in her work was given

impetus by Leperlier’s 1992 biography in French Claude Cahun: l’ cart et la

mtamorphose (1992), which remains the only complete published biography. Leperlier

offers little evidence and few comments regarding Cahun’s Jewish origins. Noting she was

a child from an old Jewish family of strong religious tradition, he goes on to suggest that:

à vrai dire, lejudaïsme ne constitue plus guere qu’un fonds culturel en friche, un
patrimoine largement désaffecté.10
in truth, Judaism formed hardly more than a cultural resource lying fallow, a
heritage broadly untouched.
He attributes this to the agnosticism of her father and uncle, and her mother’s

Catholicism.11

His biography does, however, stress Cahun’s left-wing political credentials,

devoting four chapters of ten to them. Judaism and left-wing sympathies are not mutually

exclusive: as a Jewish contemporary of Cahun’s, Vivian Gornick, states, “if a Jew growing

up in this world was not a Marxist [...] he did not in his deepest part of himself disown

them or find them strange or alienating creatures. They were there, they were

8 Bate and Leperlier, Mise En Scene, 17; See, for instance, Helena Lewis, Dada Turns Red: The Politics of
Surrealism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990), 134 et seq.
9 Lewis, for instance, makes this mistake; see Lewis, Dada Turns Red, 134.
10 Franois Leperlier, Claude Cahun : l’ cart et la mtamorphose (Paris: Jean-Michel Place, 1992), 21
(Translation mine).
11 Ibid.

14
recognizable, they were us.”12 Chapter 3 will take issue with Leperlier’s assessment,

suggesting that Cahun was more profoundly influenced by her ethnic origins than he

suggests. In his Afterword to the 2007 edition of Disavowals, Leperlier acknowledges that

“from her childhood, Claude Cahun was immersed in literature, art, philosophy and ancient

mythology, largely due to the influence of her paternal grandmother, Mathilde Cahun, who

was of Jewish origin”.13 While not a complete retraction, it may represent a softening of

his earlier position.

Gen Doy too favours a political approach to Cahun’s work. Her 2007 book is clear

that her analysis stands on “foundations permeated by a Marxist understanding of history,

culture and subjectivity”.14 Although ‘difference’ is one of her themes, references to

Cahun’s Jewish background are very few and Doy seems concerned with other influences

on Cahun’s work.15 Doy acknowledges that her origins led to Cahun being “confronted by

difficult situations”, although she implies that the anti-Semitism which flared up during the

influential Dreyfus affair in the 1890s quickly died down in the early twentieth century.16

In Chapter 3, this somewhat sanguine view will be challenged; anti-Semitism remained a

constant feature of the political and social climate in Europe in the early twentieth century,

although its intensity fluctuated. Doy does conclude that Cahun’s work can be approached

in more than one way, in the context of gendered, sexualised and, even, to some extent,

‘racialised’ identity.17

12 Quoted in Christopher Bigsby, Arthur Miller: The Definitive Biography (Weidenfeld & Nicolson (Kindle
Edition), 2010), Loc 1424.
13 Claude Cahun, Disavowals or Cancelled Confessions, ed. Jennifer Mundy, trans. Susan De Muth (London:
Tate, 2007), 210.
14 Gen Doy, Claude Cahun: A Sensual Politics ofPhotography (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007), 11.
15 The index includes just three references to “Jewish identity”; Doy, Claude Cahun.
16 Ibid., 27.
17 Ibid., 33; Doy, “Another side of the picture,” 72.

15
2.4 Early interest in Cahun: a feminist approach?

A paucity of more recent biographical material on Cahun may have increased the

influence of Leperlier’s early biography and helped downplay the significance of Cahun’s

Jewish origins in the minds of subsequent historians. Regrettably, more recent detailed

biographical work by Kristine von Oehsen has not altered this.18 Cahun’s position as one

of the few women surrealists and her rediscovery in the early 1990s - a time when female

academics were keen to reappraise the significance of women artists and to elevate them

from what Penelope Rosemont has called the “sub-basement called ‘Women’s Art’” -

made her adoption by feminist art historians something of an inevitability.19 Jennifer

Shaw’s observation makes the point that, “if Cahun had not existed, we would have had to

invent her [...because] the dominant interpretation of Cahun's photographs fits almost too

neatly with contemporary theory.”20 Cahun’s choice of what appear to be male

pseudonyms has also led to her being embraced by feminists.21 Of course, the name

‘Claude’ is gender unspecific, being both a male and a female name. ‘Cahun’ is however

unmistakeably Jewish, an aspect of her choice which is often neglected.

In the 1990s, early interest in Cahun’s work was shown by Rosalind Krauss,

Abigail Solomon-Godeau and Therese Lichtenstein. Of these three, only Krauss seems

willing to draw upon her own Jewishness in her analysis of Cahun. Jon Stratton has

observed that Jewish identity is often ignored or treated tokenistically in academic

discussions noting that, in the US at least, much discussion of identity politics revolves

18 Oehsen’s work contains just three references to Judaism; Oehsen, “Claude Cahun.”
19 Bate and Leperlier, Mise En Scene; Linda Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?,” in
Women, Art, and Power: And Other Essays (London: Thames and Hudson, 1994); Penelope Rosemont, ed.,
Surrealist Women: An International Anthology, Surrealist revolution series (London: Athlone Press, 1998),
xxx.
20 Quoted by Tirza True Latimer, “Review: Disavowals or Cancelled Confessions by Claude Cahun,” Papers
ofSurrealism Volume 8, 2010, 1, http://tinyurl.com/2wr9p5g.
21 Thynne, “Claude Cahun and Oscar Wilde,” 189.

16
around African-Americans and, increasingly, 'Hispanics' and 'Asians’.22 For example,

when Catherine Soussloff chaired a February 1996 College Art Association panel on

Jewish identity, she noted it was the “first time in the eighty-five-year history of the

organization that Jewish identity had been the subject of a session”.23 Stratton suggests

that being silent as a Jewish academic is perhaps one side of an ‘assimilationist’ bargain,

the other sides of which are acceptance, emancipation and enfranchisement.24

Two of the earliest articles on Cahun’s work were published in early 1992, around

the time of Leperlier’s biography. Therese Lichtenstein’s essay in Artforum makes passing

mention of Cahun’s origins, stating that she was born into a wealthy Jewish intellectual

family in Nantes.25 Drawing on Leperlier (whom she credits as its source), she

emphasises Cahun’s political commitment - evidenced by her membership of the surrealist

political group, Contre-Attaque, and her opposition to the rise of Hitler - which she

believes “extended throughout her life and work and had an explicitly feminist subtext”.26

However, her main focus is Cahun’s “complex representations of female sexual identity,”

which she contends “interrupt the restrictive gender roles assigned to women and men” and

challenged conventional notions within the surrealist movement of power as part of male

privilege.27 Lichtenstein can be portrayed as pursuing ideas being promoted by Griselda

Pollock and others at this time, although by the late 1990s Pollock had broadened her

views, observing the “the false universalization of a positivist Eurocentric, masculine and

often Christian subject position which mistakes itself for humanity in general”, leading her

22 Jon Stratton, Coming Out Jewish: Constructing Ambivalent Identities (London: Routledge (Kindle
Edition), 2000), 209.
23 Quoted in Mason Klein, Alias Man Ray: The Art ofReinvention (New York, N.Y: The Jewish Museum,
2009), 211 fn 3.
24 Stratton, Coming Out Jewish, Loc 1009.
25 Therese Lichtenstein, “A mutable mirror: Claude Cahun.,” Artforum 30, no. 8 (April 1992): 64.
26 Ibid., 64, fn 3.
27 Ibid., 65.

17
to see Cahun’s work as a “challenge to the certainties of the contemporary feminist

movement as much as the dominant culture”.28

Lichtenstein’s work seems hampered by imprecise use of the historical record: her

argument draws heavily on visual evidence offered by the photomontages illustrating

Disavowals, although these works predate both Hitler’s accession to power in Germany

and Cahun’s own political involvement. Lichtenstein notes too how Cahun’s work

“verges on the grotesque”, asking the important question “what are we to make of this?”29

She suggests it reveals “the subject’s identity as alienated and unintegrated in the world”

and that the work asserts the artist’s difference.30 Yet she fails to link this to her comments

on gender, and neglects an obvious connection to ethnic difference. This theme of the

grotesque will be explored in Chapter 4.

Honor Lasalle and Abigail Solomon-Godeau published their article on Cahun at

approximately the same time as Lichtenstein’s.31 Their primary source of biographical

information is also Leperlier, although they were careful to note that Cahun’s life was still

undergoing ‘biographical reconstruction’. References to Cahun’s Judaism are also

perfunctory and the article is concerned with broadly similar issues to Lichtenstein’s,

asserting the importance of analysing critically works produced by Surrealist women

which are explicitly concerned with the problems of femininity and representation.

Accordingly, they contrast Cahun’s own highly recognisable image with the often

anonymous images of women typical of male-produced Surrealist photography. Referring

to the photomontages accompanying Disavowals, their views generally comply with the

28 Griselda Pollock, Differencing the Canon: Feminist Desire and the Writing ofArt’s Histories (London:
Routledge, 1999), xxvi; Pollock, “Inscriptions in the feminine,” 76; Pollock has argued that feminist
investigations allowed and encouraged the examination of other concerns focusing around difference; see
Perry and Edwards, “Themes and issues in contemporary art history,” 3:33.
29 Lichtenstein, “A mutable mirror,” 67.
30 Ibid.
31 Lasalle and Solomon-Godeau, “Surrealist confession.”

18
dominant feminist paradigm in suggesting that Cahun’s use of photomontage - a technique

rarely employed by male surrealists - and her often fiercely confrontational gaze subvert

the work of other male Surrealists, whose work all too often, they feel, implies a male

viewpoint.32

Lucy Lippard, writing later in the decade, provides context for these early writings

on Cahun. While acknowledging that Cahun fits conveniently within a feminist analysis of

identity and self, Lippard notes how concerns changed after the 1970s and how crucial the

timing of Cahun’s rediscovery was to the way she was received.33 It is unsurprising

perhaps that the majority of these early writers on Cahun were keen to stitch her work

securely into a larger feminist tapestry.34 Whitney Chadwick makes a related point:

The neatness with which Cahun’s photographs have been annexed to

postmodern concerns with the decentred subject and with identity as
contingent and mutable, has obscured the complexities and contradictions
of her writings and blinded many to the works’ representations of
conflicted identities.35
We might perfectly reasonably look beyond politics and feminism to enrich our

understanding of Cahun’s work. Lippard acknowledges that there can be multiple

motivations for Cahun’s approach, seeing her as “an outsider to the dominant society (a

Jew, a lesbian)”.36 And, as Cahun herself commented in Disavowals:

Brouiller les cartes. Masculin? Féminin? Mais ça depend des cas. Neutre
est le seul genre qui me convienne toujours.37
Shuffle the cards. Masculine? Feminine? But that all depends on the case.
Neuter is the only gender which always suits me.

32 Ibid., 10.
33 Lippard, “Scattering Selves,” 36.
34 With apologies to Rozsika Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine
(London: Women’s Press, 1984).
35 Whitney Chadwick and Dawn Ades, Mirror Images: Women, Surrealism, and Self-Representation
(Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1998), 7.
36 Lippard, “Scattering Selves,” 28.
37 Cahun, Ecrits, 366 Trans. Susan de Muth.

19
2.5 Rosalind Krauss: a Jewish perspective?

Krauss is one who seems to see a wider picture, without completely engaging with

its implications. In her influential essay on Surrealist photography, Corpus Delecti, written

for the 1985 exhibition L'Amour Fou: Photography and Surrealism, Cahun is not

mentioned, although several of her photographs were included.38 Exhibitions, many of

which are listed in Appendix I, have influenced how Cahun’s work has been understood

over the last quarter-century. Curators have frequently paired Cahun with other female

artists – for instance, David Bates’ Mise en scène exhibition (1994) – and presented her as

the
in Inverted Odysseys
forerunner of later(2000). More
artists like Cindy
recently, institutions
Sherman, whose with
workJewish alongside have
connections
featured Cahun’s

taken an interest in Cahun’s work: the Israeli Centre for Digital Art in Holon, Israel and

The Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley, California have both staged exhibitions - an

example of a PR strategy which, as Judith Butler provocatively suggests, is intended to

appropriate “work by that class of persons we might arguably call Jewish."39

In the introduction to Bachelors (1999) (“the story of her own relation to

surrealism”) Krauss describes how Cahun stands for “an engagement with the construction

of both identity and gender”.40 The “gender indeterminacy” of Cahun’s chosen name,

coupled with her chosen physical appearance, makes her work a natural focus for feminist

writers.41 Krauss, herself of Jewish origin, notes how few choose to mention the second

part of Cahun’s pseudonym, which goes not to the matter of gender, but of race.42

Though undeniably Jewish, the name Schwob had assumed a certain

cultural veneer that armed its bearer somewhat against anti-Semitism,

38 Rosalind E Krauss and Jane Livingston, eds., L’amour Fou: Photography & Surrealism (New York:
Abbeville, 1985), Figures 99, 100 and 101.
39 Judith Butler, “Who Owns Kafka?,” London Review of Books, March 3, 2011, 5.
40 Krauss, Bachelors, 1 and 29.
41 Ibid., 29.
42 Ibid., 37.

20
 joining it to Proust among others. The act of defiance attached to leaving
“Schwob” to affect “Cahun” can thus only be seen as one of flaunting
one’s Jewishness in the face of the heightened anti-Semitism of post-war
France, a kind of provocation every bit as dangerous as parading one’s
lesbianism.43

One may challenge the protection offered by the name “Schwob”; both the family and

Lucy herself were attacked both verbally and physically during the Dreyfus affair, when

Captain Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935), a Jewish army officer from Alsace was falsely

accused of treason in 1894 for revealing French military secrets to the Germans and

subjected to court-martial, convicted, imprisoned, retried before eventually being released

and rehabilitated in 1906.44 Furthermore, early twentieth-century Paris - Cahun’s home in

the Twenties and Thirties, and a sanctuary for Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) – showed greater

antipathy towards Jews than homosexuals.45 Krauss makes plain her view that Cahun’s

use of this pseudonym was a conscious choice. Moreover, she notes some awareness of

the significance of ethnic difference within the surrealist movement. Although not Jewish,

Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) nevertheless took on the name Rrose Sélavy in 1921. In a

gesture similar to Cahun’s adoption of her pseudonym, it combined a ‘change’ of sex with

adoption of the second most common Jewish name, Lévy, coupling “travestie and

Jewishness in one defiant gesture”.46 However, other Jewish artists adopted names which

disguised their origins; Emmanuel Radnitsky (1890-1976), for instance, became Man Ray

and Samuel Rosenstock (1896-1963), Tristan Tzara.47 Ray, in particular, seems to have

43 Ibid., 42.
44 Paula Hyman, The Jews of Modern France, Jewish Communities in the Modern World 1 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1998), 101.
45 Unlike in the UK, homosexual acts performed in private were not a crime in France at this time; see Doy,
Claude Cahun, 31; Anti-Semitism in relation to Paris based artists in 1920s Paris is explored by Golan and
will be discussed further in Chapter 3; see Romy Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia: Art and Politics in France
Between the Wars (New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press, 1995), 137 et seq.
46 Krauss, Bachelors, 42.
47 Milly Heyd has written on how name changing was common among children of Jewish immigrants: Milly
Heyd, “Man Ray/Emmanuel Radinitsky: who is behind the enigma of Isidore Duncan,” in Complex
21
been haunted by his background, at times suppressing his Jewish origin so he could “pass”

as a sophisticated cosmopolite.48

2.6 Psychoanalytical approaches to Cahun’s work

Another common approach to identity in Cahun’s work is based on psychoanalysis.

Doy, for instance, sees the self as “a focus where psychoanalysis and Marxism can usefully

come together” while Harris states that Cahun’s “art and her writing were [...] articulated

in relation to the two discourses that, in her day, appeared to shake the stable subject:

surrealism and psychoanalysis.”49 A number of writers have seen Lacan’s work as of

relevance, based perhaps on a passing acquaintance between him and Cahun (although

there is no evidence that they discussed his work)50. Doy suggests Lacan is “the

psychologist of preference for recent writers keen to relate subjectivity to visual art and

culture”.51 However, Harris observes that an approach based on concepts developed by

Freud, such as the Oedipus and castration complexes, can also be useful.52

Neither writer specifically mentions Cahun’s Jewish background, which is perhaps

surprising for, as Stephen Frosh has suggested, “Jewish identity, anti-Semitism and

psychoanalysis go together in powerful ways; each term makes some kind of sense of the

others, and each has been implicated in the practices of the other.” 53 Freud’s biographer

believed that his Jewishness contributed greatly to Freud’s work, while others have

Identities: Jewish Consciousness and Modern Art, ed. Matthew Baigell and Milly Heyd (New Brunswick,
N.J: Rutgers University Press, 2001), 124; Eliane Strosberg, The Human Figure and Jewish Culture (New
York: Abbeville Press, 2009), 52.
48 Samantha Baskind and Larry Silver, Jewish Art: A Modern History (Reaktion Books, 2011), 106.
49 Doy, Picturing the Self, 5; Harris, “Coup d’oeil,” 94.
50 Doy, Claude Cahun, 59.
51 Doy, Picturing the Self, 44.
52 Harris, “Coup d’oeil,” 93.
53 Stephen Frosh, Hate and the Jewish Science: Anti-Semitism, Nazism and Psychoanalysis, Revised.
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 214.
22
attributed Freud’s ability to stand alone and hold unconventional views to his irreligious

but strong Jewish identity and to being accustomed to a marginal social status.54

2.7 Bailey and Thynne: more recent thoughts on Cahun’s Jewish origins

Laura Bailey and Lizzie Thynne have sought to understand the significance of

Cahun’s ethnicity, noting how her work interrogates vision as a means of control and

categorisation [...and] the tactics she adopts are ironic and parodic, reinventing and

subverting dominant cultural tropes and themes”.55 Cahun’s work, they believe, presents

her as “a racial ‘other’ – third sex, Jew, and vampire”.56 Cahun is willing to use aspects of

her identity to advantage: upon being interrogated by the Nazis in Jersey she notes how,

“normally I lived my Cahun identity but I went as Lucy Schwob, therefore

unrecognizable”.57 They also consider connections between Cahun and Havelock Ellis

(whose work Cahun translated into French in 1929). Ellis’ concept of ‘sexual inversion’,

where invert and normal are distinguished through anatomical markers drawn from racial

physiognomy is highly relevant to Cahun’s work, which caricatures notions of a Jewish

physiognomy wherein the Jew is presented as a physical monstrosity or a deceptive

chameleon.58

2.8 Cahun’s theatrical connections

Cahun was deeply involved in amateur theatre in Paris and in 1929, immediately

prior to the publication of Disavowals, spent three months in Pierre Albert-Birot’s Le

Plateau theatre company, prompting Miranda Welby-Everard to suggest that “the medium

of theatre in both its specific and widest sense is fundamental to Cahun’s mode of

54 Judith Marks Mishne, Evolution and Application of Clinical Theory, 1st ed. (Free Press, 1993), 3.
55 Laura “Lou” Bailey and Lizzie Thynne, “Beyond representation, Claude Cahun’s monstrous mischief
making,” History ofPhotography 29, no. 2 (Summer 2005): 137.
56 Ibid., 141.
57 Quoted in Ibid.
58 Ibid., 143.

23
expression and her world of fantasy and faade”.59 The connection between ideas of the

self and the performance arts are commonplace and neatly summarised in the well-known

speech by Jacques in Act 2, Scene 7 of Shakespeare’s As You Like It. The player

portraying many parts dovetails neatly with Cahun’s notion of herself as wearing multiple

masks.

Welby-Everard refers to Cahun’s 1926 appearance in a dramatisation of the story of

the biblical heroine Judith, who seduces and slays the Babylonian general Holofernes and

ends an existential threat to the Israelites.60 Cahun takes up this story in her essay The

Sadistic Judith. Katherine Conley has suggested that Cahun’s “choice of Judith is of

particular interest because, like Cahun, she was Jewish”, however the explanation is

probably more prosaic and the story was simply familiar to her from her childhood.”61

Conley nevertheless believes Cahun’s interest lies in “the question of what is human and

how a human being knows who and what she is”, proposing that Cahun’s portrayal of

Judith presents the human condition as “fundamentally ambiguous”.62 Although Conley

does not draw out this connection, Cahun may have seen parallels between Judith and her

own position as an assimilated Jew in 1920s France. This will be discussed further in

section 4.5.

Cahun’s interest in the theatre would also have exposed her to contemporary

attitudes towards Jews. Landa’s 1926 study, The Jew in Drama, offers some insight:

In no department of human activity has Jew-baiting been more

persistent and popular than in the realm of the drama. From time

59 Miranda Welby-Everard, “Imaging the Actor: the Theatre of Claude Cahun,” Oxford Art Journal 29, no. 1
(March 2006): 2.
60 Ibid., 11.
61 Claude Cahun, “Heroines,” in Inverted Odysseys: Claude Cahun, Maya Deren, Cindy Sherman, ed.
Shelley Rice and Lynn Gumpert, trans. MacAfee Norman (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1999), 51;
Katherine Conley, “Claude Cahun’s Iconic Heads: from ‘The Sadistic Judith’ to Human Frontier,” Papers of
Surrealism, no. 2 (Summer 2004), http://www.surrealismcentre.ac.uk/papersofsurrealism/journal2/index.htm.
62 Conley, “Claude Cahun’s Iconic Heads,” 2 et seq.

24
 immemorial the Jew has either been grossly libelled or ruthlessly
travestied on the stage. The practice has become an almost adamantine
law. 63

63 M. J Landa, The Jew in Drama (London: P.S. King, 1926), 9.

25
 SITUATING CAHUN IN HER TIME

Moi, juive au point d’utiliser mes pchs à mon salut, de metre en

œuvre mes sous-produits, de me suspender continuellement, l’œil en
crochet, au bord de ma propre poubelle!1
I, Jewish to the point of using my sins for my salvation, of putting my
by-products to work, of always surprising myself, my eye hooked over
the edge of my own waste-paper bin!

Disavowals (originally published in 1930) - Claude Cahun

3.1 Introduction

As several writers have commented, a work whose title is often translated as ‘Denials’,

may hide as much as it reveals.2 Thynne remarks how in Cahun’s work, “far from

revealing an authentic image of herself, her series of portraits render her identity opaque”,

while Laurie Monahan states that “Cahun takes her own subjectivity as a means of

revealing the impossibility of fixing the self [...so that] biography itself becomes suspect,

another mask among many.” 3 However, Cahun’s own comment above suggests her

recognition of her Jewish antecedents and that she drew on them in her work. Moreover,

she indicates in the epigram to this chapter that her Jewishness was strongly retrospective;

as she remarked elsewhere “Before Iwas born, Iwas condemned. Sentenced in absentia.”4

The purpose of this section of the dissertation is to extend an understanding of

Claude Cahun and the time during which she lived. In doing so, it will reconsider the

nature of identity in the context of being Jewish, before considering the extent to which

1 Cahun, Ecrits, 211; Translated by Susan de Muth in Cahun, Disavowals.

2 Elza Adamowicz, “‘Sous ce masque, un autre masque’: Claude Cahun’s Photomontages,” in Exposure:
Revealing Bodies, Unveiling Representations, ed. Kathryn Banks and Joseph Harris, Modern French
Identities (Oxford etc: P. Lang, 2004), 51.
3 Thynne, “Claude Cahun and Oscar Wilde,” 184; Monahan, “Radical Transformations,” 128.
4 Quoted in Mary Ann Caws, Glorious Eccentrics: Modernist Women Painting and Writing (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 135.
26
this was relevant to Cahun. It will also consider the social and political events of Cahun’s

time, particularly French attitudes to Jews living in France.

3.2 Some art-historical theory

The intention here is not simply to take a biographical approach to Cahun’s work,

nor to follow a strictly formalist analysis relying solely on her art as a source of

interpretation.5 Rather it is to extend an understanding of her work by, to use Solomon

Godeau’s words quoted above, resituating it in the time of its production.6 As Kurt Forster

has remarked:

Because of the categorical and valuative separation of art from history,

reasons for what happens in art must be sought within art itself, or, at the
most, within biography. The historical reality of artifacts (sic) is thereby
either estranged into the seemingly "other" realm of art, or is personalized
to an extreme degree. To be sure, when it is quite impossible to make
sense of a given situation in this way, art historians may quickly point to a
usually "dirty" event at their doorstep, and since history is full of them,
there is always a crusade, or a sacco di Roma, or a World War to serve as a
last cause and explanation of otherwise puzzling facts.7

Cahun’s life was certainly full of ‘dirty’ events; two world wars, the rise of the Nazis and

the Dreyfus affair in France. Such historical events need not be a “last cause”, but can help

illuminate Cahun’s work.

3.3 Cahun and ideas of Jewish identity

In one sense identifying someone as Jewish is straightforward for, as the

Encyclopaedia Judaica notes:

the most enduring definition of Jewish identity has been the halakha,
the traditional Jewish legal system, according to which one of the
following two conditions is sufficient for one to be a Jew: either one is

5 For further explanation of this debate see, for instance, Michael Hatt and Charlotte Klonk, Art History: A
Critical Introduction to Its Methods (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 14 et seq.
6 Solomon-Godeau, “The Equivocal ‘I’,” 114.
7 Kurt W. Forster, “Critical History of Art, or Transfiguration of Values?,” New Literary History 3, no. 3
(Spring 1972): 460.
27
 the child of a Jewish mother, or one converts to Judaism. This identity
does not depend in any way upon factors within a particular
individual’s perspective. Indeed, even an explicit denial of one’s
identity is not relevant on this conception.8

Jeremy Wanderer characterises this rather legalistic approach to identity as ‘external’ and,

on this basis, Cahun was not Jewish.9 Her father, Maurice, a member of a long-established

Jewish family resident in France for many years, complies on this definition.10 However,

Cahun’s mother came from a Catholic family and there is no evidence that she, or indeed

Cahun herself, converted to Judaism.11 Indeed, the concern here is not with religious

Judaism but a broader Jewish ethnicity, for, as Claire Follain has observed, Cahun did not

adhere to any particular faith and took an interest in Christianity, Buddhism and other

religions only “on a pagan plane”.12

One difficulty with a narrow definition based on external factors is that it does not

allow for how individuals see themselves. As Jenkins explains, identity is an essentially

social issue, based on a “simultaneous synthesis of (internal) self-definition and the

(external) definitions of oneself offered by others [...] We can’t see ourselves at all without

also seeing ourselves as other people see us.”13 Two important factors in identification,

and they are relevant here, are kinship and ethnicity (including race).14 There is debate

about whether ethnicity is unchanging or situational, capable of change as circumstances

require or allow. Freud, for instance, was estranged from the Jewish religion and ignorant

8 Quoted in Wanderer, “Jewish practice,” 259.

9 Ibid.
10 Leperlier, Claude Cahun : l’cart et la mtamorphose, 21.
11 Francois Leperlier, “Claude Cahun: la gravite des apparences,” in Le Rêve D’une Ville: Nantes Et Le
Surréalisme: [exposition, 17Décembre 1994-2 Avril 1995] (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 1994),
263.
12 Follain, “Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe - Resistantes,” 86.
13 Richard Jenkins, Social identity (Routledge, 2004), 19.
14 Ibid., 65.

28
of its language and culture, but if asked what was left to him that was Jewish, would reply

‘a very great deal, and probably its very essence’.15

Recent approaches to ethnic identity have been based on a shared ‘cultural

identity’, which the cultural theorist Stuart Hall (1932-) has described as “a collective ‘one

true self’, hiding inside the many other, more superficially or artificially imposed ‘selves’,

which people with a shared history or ancestry hold in common”.16 However, rather than

being a defining body of characteristics, Hall sees identity as “multiply constructed across

different, often intersecting and antagonistic, discourses, practices and positions”.17

Cahun, of course, would not have been aware of these concepts of multiple identities,

which developed into a recognised body of critical theory only the 1980s. 18 Nevertheless,

it seems reasonable, following Hall, to search amongst Cahun’s multiple masks for her

essential Jewishness.

Identity has both a temporal and spatial aspect and both are relevant to a

consideration of Cahun’s position. A particular identity may become especially prominent

at certain periods, sometimes due to external factors: Jews, for instance, may respond to a

perceived rise in anti-Semitism with increasing commitment to their Jewishness.19

Similarly, Jews living simultaneously in their own and a host community may alter their

private behaviour when in public.20

15 Yaakov Malkin, “Humanistic and secular Judaisms,” in Modern Judaism: An Oxford Guide, ed. Nicholas
de Lange and Miri Freud-Kandel (OUP Oxford, 2005), 106.
16 Quoted in Laurence J Silberstein, Mapping Jewish identities (NYU Press, 2000), 2.
17
Ibid., 3.
18 See for instance, an excellent survey by Charles Lemert, “A History of Identity: The Riddle at the Heart of
the Mystery of Life,” in Routledge Handbook of Identity Studies, ed. Anthony Elliott (London: Routledge,
2011), 45.
19 Wanderer, “Jewish practice,” 261.
20 Malkin, “Humanistic and secular Judaisms,” 106.

29
3.4 Jewish aspects of Cahun’s upbringing

Cahun acknowledged both kin and ethnicity as important, by observing in later life

that her adoption of the name ‘Cahun’ was recognition of her “obscure Jewish relatives

with whom she felt more affinity” than with her immediate family.21 There are some

reasons for this ‘affinity’. Cahun’s mother, who suffered from mental illness, was

hospitalised when Lucy was just four years old and was absent during her early years.22 In

her mother’s absence, Lucy lived for six years with her paternal grandmother, Mathilde.23

Her father, despite being Jewish by birth, seems not to have been particularly observant:

indeed, his willingness to marry into a family that was not only Catholic, but ‘slyly anti

Semitic’ suggests otherwise.24 However his mother came from a religious family – she

counted rabbis among her ancestors - and was from a generation more observing of Jewish

tradition.25 Lucy may have attended synagogue, but many of the ceremonies and events

which are central to conveying the inner spirit of Jewish life between generations take

place within the home.26 Mathilde was an authoritarian figure and “somewhat tyrannical in

her love for her children”.27 She never accepted her son’s marriage to Lucy’s Catholic

mother and Cahun later exhibits distaste for the maternal, perhaps as a result of her chaotic

21 Thynne, “Claude Cahun and Oscar Wilde,” 189.

22 Louise Downie, “Sans Nom: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore,” Jersey Heritage Trust: Heritage
Magazine, 2005, 10.
23 Chronologie included in Cahun, Ecrits, 11.
24 Cahun quoted in Leperlier, “La gravite des apparences,” 263.
25 Robert Ziegler, “‘Marcel Schwob (23 August 1867-26 February 1905)’. Nineteenth-Century French
Fiction Writers: Naturalism and Beyond, 1860-1900,” Dictionary of Literary Biography (Detroit: Gale
Research, 1992), 244.
26 Morris Kertzer, What is a Jew?, New and completely rev. ed. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 169.
27 Ziegler, “‘Marcel Schwob (23 August 1867-26 February 1905)’. Nineteenth-Century French Fiction
Writers: Naturalism and Beyond, 1860-1900,” 244.
30
early years.28 Grand-mère Mathilde may well be a source of Cahun’s preference for her

Jewish family.

In 1886, Cahun’s uncle, David-Léon Cahun (1841-1900), a traveller, writer and

academic, wrote a notable memoire on traditional Jewish life, La vie juive,.29 Appearing

when many French Jews had already migrated from the countryside to the city – just as the

Schwobs had done in moving from Alsace to Nantes – it traded on childhood memory and

nostalgia, and enjoyed great success among assimilated French Jews, especially those of

Alsatian origin.30 It was illustrated by Alphonse Lévy (1843- 1918), a Jewish artist and

illustrator. Despite his stated intention to show homage “to the simple ways and rustic

customs which are falling by the wayside” and his own Jewish background, some of

Lévy’s figures bear a marked resemblance to anti-Semitic depictions of characteristic

Jewish physiognomy, perhaps reflecting the fact that he had earlier worked as an illustrator

for various satirical magazines.31 From the mid-eighteenth century, caricaturists had

depict Jews as ‘others’, ensuring the ‘Jewish nose’ (often combined with unpleasant

looking eyes and a shabby appearance) always accompanied any anti-Jewish litany.32

Linda Nochlin identifies one example by Lévy, The Hebrew Lesson (Fig. 3.1), which

shows the teacher as “a gap-toothed, large-nosed old man [...] within a dark interior

unmistakably shown as Jewish by the Hebrew inscription and seven-branched lamp

28 Leperlier, “La gravite des apparences,” 261; See, for instance; Caws, Glorious Eccentrics, 132; Danielle
Knafo, “Claude Cahun: The Third Sex,” Studies in Gender and Sexuality 2, no. 1 (2001): 40; Adamowicz,
“Claude Cahun’s Photomontages,” 55.
29 Richard I Cohen, Jewish Icons: Art and Society in Modern Europe (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1998), 175.
30 Paula E Hyman, “The social contexts of assimilation: village Jews and city Jews in Alsace,” in
Assimilation and community: the Jews in nineteenth-century Europe, ed. Jonathan Frankel and Steven J.
Zipperstein (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 129 fn 59.
31 Baskind and Silver, Jewish Art, 51; Cohen, Jewish Icons, 175.
32 Richard I Cohen, “The Visual Dreyfus affair - a New Text? On the Dreyfus Affair Exhibition at the
Jewish Museum, New York,” in Art and Its Uses: The Visual Image and Modern Jewish Society, ed. Ezra
Mendelsohn and Richard I Cohen, Studies in contemporary Jewry 6 (New York: Published for the Institute
by Oxford University Press, 1990), 79.

31
hanging from the ceiling”. 33 The same image would later appear in what Elie Szapiro calls

a “véritable anthologie anti-Sémite,” Die Juden in der Karikatur (1921).34 It seems

reasonable to assume that illustrated copies of Léon’s book were available to Lucy in

grand-mère
images. Mathilde’s house and that she may well have been familiar with Lévy’s

Another influence on Lucy may have been her uncle’s connection with the leading

French actress, Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923). Marcel was a leading Symbolist writer and

co-founder of the prestigious journal Mercure de France (later to publish work by Cahun).

He had a keen interest in British literature, translating works by Robert Louis Stevenson,

whom he greatly admired, and in 1905, Shakespeare’s Hamlet for Bernhardt in the lead

role.35 While there is no evidence that she met or saw Bernhardt perform, Cahun was

involved in the theatre and some of Cahun’s self-portraits bear marked similarities to

portraits of Bernhardt – see figures 3.2 and 3.3. Bernhardt was partly Jewish and, although

often identifying herself as Catholic, capable of using her Jewish identity when she

perceived it was to her advantage.36 Indeed, Bernhardt employed many identities and by

“her continuous self-fashioning” fabricated “her own myth [...] cultivating the image of her

own unconventionality [and] compounding the confusion between life and performance”, a

description that might also fit Cahun.37

33 Linda Nochlin, “Starting with the Self,” in The Jew in the Text: Modernity and the Construction of
Identity, ed. Tamar Garb and Linda Nochlin (London: Thames and Hudson, 1995), 13.
34 Quoted in Ibid.
35 Thynne, “Claude Cahun and Oscar Wilde,” 182.
36 Kenneth E Silver, “Sarah Bernhardt and the Theatrics of French Nationalism: From Roland’s Daughter to
Napoleon’s Son,” in Sarah Bernhardt: The Art of High Drama, ed. Professor Carol Ockman and Kenneth E.
Silver (Yale University Press, 2005), 81 et seq.
37 Carol Ockman, “When is a Jewish Star Just a Star? Interpreting Images of Sarah Bernhardt,” in The Jew in
the Text: Modernity and the Construction of Identity, ed. Tamar Garb and Linda Nochlin (London: Thames
and Hudson, 1995), 121.
32
 Bernhardt came to embody the stereotypical belle juive, “as dangerous as she is

seductive”.38 A satirical poster from 1882 (Fig. 3.4), caricaturing Bernhardt as the goose

who laid golden eggs, shows her having a distinctly Semitic nose. Such images

contributed to a public codification of anti-Semitic signs that would be elaborated over

later decades.39 Bernhardt’s planned appearance in 1892 as Salome in Oscar Wilde’s

controversial play was a further connection between the actress and an anti-Semitic

stereotype of the Jewish woman as “ugly, money-hungry, sexually promiscuous and

destructive”.40 Although the writing of Salome predates Cahun’s birth, there is a

connection. As will be discussed in Chapter 4, Salome was a persona Cahun adopted and

extensively alluded to in her writing and photography.41 Wilde was an associate of her

uncle and in 1918 Cahun attended the so-called Billings trial in London where Maude

Allan, an actress and lead in Salome, sued MP Noel Pemberton Billings for libel. A better

understanding of early twentieth-century France’s attitudes to its Jewish population is

facilitated by some discussion in the following section of the environment in which Lucy

Schwob grew up between 1894 and her move to Paris in 1918.

3.3 Attitudes towards French Jewry, 1889 – 1918

France granted civic equality to its Jews in 1789 and, by 1889, its 68,000 Jews were

mostly urban, and disproportionately represented in the bourgeoisie.42 This led one rabbi

to declare that assimilation had ensured “there are no longer any other than Frenchmen in

38 Sander L Gilman, “Salome, Syphilis, Sarah Bernhardt, and the Modern Jewess,” in The Jew in the Text:
Modernity and the Construction of Identity, ed. Tamar Garb and Linda Nochlin (London: Thames and
Hudson, 1995), 111.
39 Ockman, “Jewish Star,” 139.
40 Gilman, “Salome,” 111 et seq.
41 Thynne, “Claude Cahun and Oscar Wilde,” 181 et seq.
42 Nadia Malinovich, “Race and the construction of Jewish identity in France, 1900-32,” Jewish History 19,
no. 1 (2005): 30; Hyman, The Jews ofModern France, 93.
33
France.”43 Nevertheless, most Jews, including some who were only partly Jewish,

probably saw themselves defined by a “shared past, a religious heritage, and biological ties

of common descent”; an attitude beautifully illustrated in Solomon J. Solomon’s High Tea

in the Sukkah (1906), where the traditionally attired rabbi is surrounded by his community

in contemporary dress (Fig. 3.11).44 Nor did Jewish assimilation prevent Jews continuing

to be seen as the “other” in France, for 1889 also saw the publication of La France juive,

an anti-Semitic tract by Edouard Drumont, blaming the Jews for all France’s ills.

Drumont’s views clearly struck a chord; his book sold 100,000 copies within a year and,

by 1912, had been reprinted 200 times in six languages.45

In 1894, the year Cahun was born, an episode occurred which severely tested the

Jewish community’s belief in France’s continued commitment to her revolutionary ideals

and the harmony of French and Jewish interests, and which left many individual Jews

feeling seriously discomforted.46 Captain Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935) was a Jewish army

officer from Alsace, who was accused of treason in 1884 for revealing French military

secrets to the Germans, invaders of France and occupiers of Paris during the recently ended

Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1.47 During the following twelve years, he was subjected to

court-martial, convicted, imprisoned, retried and eventually released and rehabilitated. The

Affaire Dreyfus polarised French public opinion and, although Dreyfus was not a notably

observant Jew, the situation developed serious anti-Semitic overtones. 48 When Dreyfus

was stripped of office in 1895, the crowd cried “Death to the traitor, death to the Jews” and

43 Hyman, The Jews ofModern France, 91.

44 Paula E Hyman, “The French Jewish Community from Emancipation to the Dreyfus Affair,” in The
Dreyfus Affair: Art, Truth, and Justice, ed. Norman L Kleeblatt (Berkeley, [Calif.]: University of California
Press, 1987), 30.
45 Hyman, The Jews ofModern France, 96.
46 Hyman, “Emancipation to the Dreyfus Affair,” 31.
47 Hyman, The Jews ofModern France, 101.
48 Norman L Kleeblatt, ed., “The Dreyfus Affair: A Visual Record,” in The Dreyfus Affair: Art, Truth, and
Justice (Berkeley, [Calif.]: University of California Press, 1987), 1.
34
anti-Semitic demonstrations took place in many cities49 Most Jews experienced a social

ostracism and even the young were affected, with some Jewish children being bullied at

school.50

The Schwob family had direct experience of both exclusion and bullying.

Newspapers in Nantes criticised members of the local Jewish community and were

opposed by the paper Le Phare de la Loire, whose publisher was Cahun’s father. Maurice

became the target of the local anti-Semites, as did his thirteen-year-old daughter.51 A

review of the trial of Dreyfus by the Court of Appeal in 1906 brought the Affaire back into

the public consciousness, resulting in an upsurge of anti-Semitism.52 Cahun describes her

personal experience of this period in a letter written in 1951: “One day, tied up with

skipping ropes to a tree in the playground, I was pelted with gravel."53 As a result, her

family sent her away to school in England for a year.

Can such a childhood experience be relevant to work Cahun published in 1930?

Susan Rubin Suleiman has suggested that the only recent event similar to Dreyfus in its

enduring power to divide national opinion is the US involvement in Vietnam.54 Historians

have mixed views on the long-term effects of Dreyfus. Paula Hyman, for instance,

suggests that it is difficult to assess the impact, which depends on the age, class and

political ideology of the participant, but concludes that most Jews seem not to have been

affected in the longer term.55 Richard Cohen takes a more nuanced view, observing that,

post-Dreyfus, French Jews were “less malleable, [...] more openly expressive of his or her

49 Hyman, The Jews of Modern France, 101; Vicki Caron, “The Antisemitic Revival in France in the 1930s:
The Socioeconomic Dimension Reconsidered,” The Journal of Modern History 70, no. 1 (March 1998): 24.
50 Hyman, The Jews ofModern France, 112 .
51 Pierre Birnbaum, The Anti-Semitic Moment: A Tour ofFrance in 1898, 1st ed. (Hill and Wang, 2002),
241/2.
52 Marcus Williamson, Claude Cahun at School in England (Self published, 2011), 2.
53 Quoted in Ibid., 4.
54 Susan Rubin Suleiman, “The Literary Significance of the Dreyfus Affair,” in The Dreyfus Affair: Art,
Truth, and Justice, ed. Norman L Kleeblatt (Berkeley, [Calif.]: University of California Press, 1987), 120.
55 Hyman, The Jews ofModern France, 112.

35
beliefs and opinions, and less prone to accept the dictates of propriety and French

centralistic politics.”56 Nadia Malinovitch agrees, seeing the generation of French Jews

reaching maturity after Dreyfus as more willing to confront the complexities of Jewish

identity.57 Crucially, the Affaire gave birth to the ‘intellectual’ as a distinct social category

in France, and prompted changes in the French Left which made it a natural home for Jews

grappling with issues of anti-Semitism and identity.58 Cahun herself would later embrace

left-wing politics, although not until the 1930s when anti-Semitism had firmly re-

established itself in both France and Germany.

3.5 The re-emergence of anti-Semitism in the 1920s

From 1920, Cahun and Moore lived near Montparnasse, an area known for its

community of Jewish artists.59 Cahun’s close social group included journalists, academics

and those involved in the avant-garde theatre. There is no specific evidence that Cahun

sought to engage specifically with the Jewish community, but a number of her close

friends, like the Surrealist poet Robert Desnos, were Jewish.60 The early 1920s saw

significant changes in France. A policy of encouraging immigration to replace manpower

lost in World War I, allowed many Jews from eastern Europe to enter France. Initially, the

policy seemed uncontroversial, but over time increasing numbers of foreign residents

began to place considerable strain on French hospitality.61 While historians disagree on the

timing, most agree that increasing competition from Jewish workers eventually contributed

to a re-emergence of anti-Semitism in France. While Richard Cohen suggests that the tide

56 Richard I Cohen, “Recurrent Images in French Antisemitism in the Third Republic,” in Demonizing the
Other: Antisemitism, Racism and Xenophobia, ed. Robert S. Wistrich (Routledge, 1999), 185.
57 Nadia Malinovich, French and Jewish: Culture and the Politics of Identity in Early Twentieth-Century
France (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2008), 25.
58 Ibid., 27.
59 Leperlier, “La gravite des apparences,” 264; Malinovich, French and Jewish, 147.
60 Malinovich, French and Jewish, 150.
61 Cohen, “Recurrent Images in French Antisemitism,” 190; Albert S. Lindemann and Richard S. Levy,
Antisemitism: A History (Oxford University Press, 2010), 146.
36
did not turn until the end of the 1920s, Remy Golan believes that in the mid-1920s the art

world became vulnerable to waves of nationalism and xenophobia that would later affect

all French social and political life.62 Although he is careful to indicate that F. W. Murnau’s

Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror (1922), is not a deliberately anti-Semitic film, Patrick

Hogan has suggested that it may have contributed to contemporary audiences’ sense of

national suffering linked to Jewish immigration and helped to reinforce stereotypically

Jewish physical characteristics; long ‘Asiatic’ finger nails, bulging eyes and the hooked

nose.63 While there is no evidence that Cahun herself saw this film, one of her friends,

Robert Desnos certainly did.64 Moreover, in Self-Portrait, c. 1928 (Fig. 3.5), Cahun bears

an eerie resemblance to the cinematic character.65 Baillie and Thynne have observed how

the vampire condenses fears of racial difference, while Michèle Cone observes how “the

vampire myth always seems to revive in times of paroxystic tension in the social and

political realms”.66 A more recent example illustrating exactly this point is provided by

Figure 3.6, a photomontage from the Financial Times accompanying a particularly gloomy

article on the state of the world’s economy.67 Chapter 4 will explore further Cahun’s

motivations in using similarly striking images.

The early twentieth century also saw a new notion of racial difference. Race was

“no longer the vague term [...] that referred to different national or ethnic types” but “had

become increasingly couched in the language of science [...] as anthropologists and social

scientists began to study the physiognomy of different groups in order to establish

62 Cohen, “Recurrent Images in French Antisemitism,” 192; Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia, 137 et seq.
63 Patrick Colm Hogan, “Narrative Universals, Nationalism, and Sacrificial Terror: From Nosferatu to
Nazism.,” Film Studies 8 (2006): 95 et seq.
64 Robert Desnos: “Les rayons et les ombres”; Cinema (Paris Gallimar 1992), p.23 quoted in Enno Patalas,
“On the Way to ‘Nosferatu’,” Film History 14, no. 1 (January 1, 2002): 31.
65 Bate and Leperlier, Mise En Scene, 9.
66 Michele C Cone, “Vampires, viruses and Lucien Rebatet: Anti-Semitic Art Criticism During Vichy,” in
The Jew in the Text: Modernity and the Construction of Identity, ed. Tamar Garb and Linda Nochlin
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1995), 185; Bailey and Thynne, “Beyond representation,” 143.
67 Alan Beattie, “Week of the living dread,” Financial Times (London, August 6, 2011), 9.

37
distinctions between them.”68 In the 1920s, French magazines began to discuss how

human typologies determined who was best fitted for a specific profession, an approach

which would later yield eugenics and notions of a superior race.69 Such notions presented

the Jewish community with a dilemma - on the one hand, intractable biological differences

might prevent acculturalisation while, on the other, a racialised self-understanding

bolstered the sense of community that many Jews felt.70

Cahun’s continued use of the name ‘Claude Cahun’ throughout the 1920s, in the

face of growing anti-Semitism particularly against artists, lends support to Rosalind

Krauss’ perceptive assertion that it was a conscious decision. Cahun herself wrote: “the

choice of... Claude Cahun – [...] represented my true name rather than a pseudonym”.71

Earlier, Cahun had used a number of different pseudonyms. Claude Courlis, for instance,

contains the French word for curlew, which at least one writer has seen as a reference to

her beak-shaped nose. However, its reference to Judaism is much less direct than using the

name ‘Cahun’.72

3.6 Cahun’s Jewish sympathies after 1930

Disavowals was published in 1930, but Cahun’s subsequent behaviour also

suggests a strong Jewish element in her “core” identity. Moore and Cahun became more

politically active in the 1930s, initially joining the Association Ecrivains etArtistes

Révolutionnaires (AEAR) in 1932 and a successor organisation, Contre-Attaque, in 1935,

both organisations set up, in part at least, to oppose growing fascism in Europe.73

Significantly, they left Paris for Jersey in May 1938 immediately after the introduction of

68 Malinovich, “Jewish identity,” 29.

69 Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia, 97 et seq.
70 Malinovich, “Jewish identity,” 30.
71 Leperlier, “La gravite des apparences,” 262 (My translation).
72 Thynne, “Claude Cahun and Oscar Wilde,” 189.
73 Oehsen, “The lives of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore,” 15.

38
new restrictions on Jews living in France and the publication of Louis-Ferdinand Celine’s

Bagatelles pour un massacre (1937), which Remy Golan has described as, “one of the

most virulent anti-Semitic texts ever published”.74 When resident in Jersey during its

occupation after 1940, both were involved in anti-Fascist resistance action, for which they

were tried and sentenced to death (although the sentences were not carried out before war

ceased).75

Cahun’s 1936 “passport” style photograph showing her wearing a brooch in the

form of a star (Fig. 3.8) can surely be seen as a coded statement acknowledging her origins

and a protest against anti-Semitism.76 This is not the only photograph of Cahun wearing a

Star of David: a self-portrait (Fig. 3.9) from 1925 shows her wearing a more theatrical

version.77 Carol Ockman has pointed out that contemporary evidence on the significance

of this symbol is mixed. Of potentially greater significance is the ornamentation on her

gravestone in Jersey (a place where there were few Jews) in the form of two Stars of David

(Fig. 3.10), which is difficult once again to portray as anything other than a conscious

statement, whether done on the basis of testamentary disposition, or at the behest of Moore

whose body is buried in the same grave.78

74 Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia, 154; Chronologie included in Cahun, Ecrits, 14.
75 Therese Lichtenstein, “A mutable mirror : Claude Cahun.,” Artforum 30, no. 8 (April 1992): 64; Claire
Follain, “Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe - Resistantes,” in Don’t kiss me : the art of Claude Cahun
and Marcel Moore., ed. Louise Downie (London: Tate Gallery, 2006), 83; Harris, “Coup d’oeil.,” 91.
76 Doy, Claude Cahun, Figure 17, p 84.
77 Ockman states that her brief excursus into the six-pointed star’s history suggests that its use in the
nineteenth century was suprisingly ecumenical; Ockman, “Jewish Star,” 135; Kertzer too notes that its
significance as a Jewish symbol originated in the last 75 years; Kertzer, What is a Jew?.
78 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Cahun Accessed: 13.7.10

39
 CAHUN’S ART

Imiter, simuler Ie premier venu qui te plaise et me convienne,

reconstituer le diamant du regard, Ie charme de ces passants. Je suis
l’un, tu es l’autre. Ou le contraire. Nos desirs se rencontrent. Deja c’est
un effort que de les démêler.1
Imitate, pretend to be the first one who comes along that pleases you
and suits me, reconstitute the diamond of a look, the charm of these
passers-by. I am one, you are the other. Or the opposite. Our desires
meet. It’s hard enough just to disentangle them.

Disavowals (originally published in 1930) - Claude Cahun

4.1 Introduction

Cahun’s own experience of being Jewish was important but, for someone of her political

sensitivities, changing social attitudes to French Jews and Jewish artists in the 1920s were

likely to have been of equal significance. Like so much of Cahun’s writing, her comment

above is capable of wide interpretation. Nevertheless, its references to ‘imitation’ and

‘pretence’ and ‘the charm of these passers-by’ suggest a concern with the complexities of

an individual’s relationship with society, while the phrases “I am one, you are the other.

Or the opposite” may address directly ambiguities arising when those of French origin

cannot be easily distinguished from assimilated Jews.

In the nineteenth century, an interest among those ruling Europe’s nation states in

establishing a racially homogenous national culture often created circumstances in which

some immigrants could be assimilated and others excluded.2 After all, this was a time

when “the notion that races existed and were fundamentally different from one another was

1 Cahun, Ecrits, 306 Translated by Susan de Muth.

2 Stratton, Coming Out Jewish, 53.

40
an integral part of modern European culture.”3 For Jews this offered a mixed benefit;

seeing themselves as intrinsically different undermined the assimilation they so often

sought, while being racially differentiated offered a route to achieving a sense of

community which they felt, but rarely articulated.4 From the 1820s, a concept of

Jewishness as a race allowed some Jews to establish a distinctive identity separate from

religion or legal status.5 This is apparent in the remarks of Jews like Alphonse Lévy, (see

section 3.4) who described his illustrations of Jewish life as depicting a “race [...] valiant,

strong in its family virtues, its sobriety, its tenacity” (my italics).6 From the perspective of

host populations too, Jews were ambivalently ‘othered’ and thought of as both ‘white’ and

‘non-white’.7 Complications were created by issues of identification. In the late 1880s, an

extensive survey of German Jews revealed not just that their dress was similar; Jews were

also indistinguishable in terms of skin, hair, and eye colour from most other residents.8 As

Alain Finkielkraut remarks provocatively, “anti-Semitism turned racist only on the fateful

day, when [...] you could no longer pick Jews out of a crowd at first glance”.9

This chapter will examine Cahun’s self-portraits from the 1920s, which appear in

several of the photomontages accompanying Disavowals, notably prefacing Chapter III, V

and VII (Figures 4.2, 4.3 and 3.7), but also in the Frontispiece (Fig. 4.1). It will suggest

that they address the status and situation of the assimilated Jew in French society and

expose the attitude of the French to manifestations of Jewishness. It will be argued that

Cahun’s art links notions of the monstrous with anti-Semitic stereotypes to produce

3 Malinovich, “Jewish identity,” 29.

4 Ibid., 30.
5 Lisa Moses Leff, Sacred bonds of solidarity: the rise of Jewish internationalism in nineteenth-century
France (Stanford University Press, 2006), 99 et seq.
6 Quoted in Nochlin, “Starting with the Self,” 15; Leff, Sacred bonds of solidarity, 96 et seq.
7 Stratton, Coming Out Jewish, 57.
Challenging
8 Sander L Gilman,
Traditional
“The Identities,
Jew’s Body:ed.Thoughts
Norman L.
onKleeblatt
Jewish Physical University Press,
(RutgersDifference,” in Too1996),
Jewish?:
68.

9 Quote in Nochlin, “Starting with the Self,” 10.

41
imagery which directly addresses issues of ‘otherness’. By considering how Cahun’s work

intersects with that of other early twentieth century artists, Jewish and otherwise, it will

show that Cahun drew on existing forms of artistic expression related to politics and

protest.

4.2 On the nature of Cahun’s art

The impact of her Jewishness on Cahun’s art has been neglected by art historians,

but this lacuna extends beyond her work. A reason often cited for this is the prohibition on

the creation of art in the Second Commandment, although Kalman Bland has conclusively

demonstrated that this belief that Jews are aniconic is a mischaracterisation based on anti

Semitic perceptions.10 Writing in the mid-1990s, Norman Kleeblatt has commented that:

As with other white, ethnic minorities, Jewish identity has until now
played a minor role in [...] the writing about [...] identity-based art. While
Jews certainly have been included [...] it has not been for their Jewishness,
but for their primary public identities as, for example, women, Holocaust
survivors, lesbians, or gay men.11

The leading Jewish-American art critic, Harold Rosenberg (1906-1978) sought to address

the issue in his seminal 1966 essay, ‘Is there a Jewish art?’ He asserted that, by the early

twentieth century, “the most serious theme in Jewish life is the problem of identity”.12 His

words echo ideas set out above, observing that identity is “not a Jewish problem; it is a

situation of the twentieth century, a century of displaced persons, of people moving from

one class into another, from one national context into another.” For Rosenberg:

Work inspired by the will to identity has constituted a new art by Jews
which, though not a Jewish art, is a profound Jewish expression, at the
same time that it is loaded with meaning for all people of this era.”13

10 Kalman P Bland, The Artless Jew: Medieval and Modern Affirmations and Denials ofthe Visual
(Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2000), 11.
11 Norman L. Kleeblatt, Too Jewish?: Challenging Traditional Identities (Rutgers University Press, 1996), 4.
12 Harold Rosenberg, “Is There a Jewish Art?,” Commentary 42, no. 1 (1966): 60.
13 Quoted in Ibid.

42
Jewish artists were, of course, not alone in their concerns about identity. The centrality of

identity to surrealist thinking has already been noted in the Introduction. Cahun would

later claim to be a surrealist, “looking at my life as a whole, I am what I have always been:

surrealist”.14 However, her first documented meeting with André Breton in 1932 took

place after the publication of Disavowals and her pre-1930 work has few surrealist

references.15 Cahun’s extensive use of photomontage in Disavowals makes Dada a more

relevant influence. Leperlier’s assessment that Cahun assimilated Dada without letting it

influence her significantly can be challenged.16 Photomontage as a new photograph-based

technique was invented shortly after WWI by Berlin Dadaists and used to critique post

war culture by employing photographs with newspaper cuttings, lettering and drawing to

form “a chaotic, explosive image, a provocative dismembering of reality”.17 One of its

leading exponents, Hannah Hoch, used photomontage to address troubling issues of race;

Love in the Bush (1924) and Half Caste (1925) (Figures 4.5 and 4.6) are responses to anti

Black propaganda resulting from the 1919 occupation of the German Rhineland by French

African troops.18 Figure 4.6, in particular, displays elements of the grotesque in the way a

photograph of lips has been superimposed over the mouth. Cahun’s exact knowledge of

work produced by German Dadaists is unknown, although she had contacts through her

collaborator Georges Ribemont·Dessaignes, editor of Bifur and a former Dadaist.19

Cahun’s choice of photomontage in Disavowals follows in this tradition of political

commentary and protest.

14 Quotation from unpublished letter to Jean Schuster, 19 February, 1953, quoted in Leperlier’s “Afterword”;
Cahun, Disavowals, 213.
15 “Afterword”; Ibid., 212.
16 “Afterword”; Ibid., 213.
17 Dawn Ades, Photomontage (London: Thames and Hudson, 1986), 12 et seq.
18 Wendy A Grossman, Man Ray, African Art, and the Modernist Lens (Washington, D.C: International Arts
& Artists, 2009), 85.
19 Oehsen, “Claude Cahun,” 20; Rosemont, Surrealist Women, 51.

43
 The late nineteenth and early twentieth-century struggle between the

individual’s desire for independence and the sovereign powers of society was hardly

unique to the Jews. However, Frosh has argued that their situation was different

from other ethnic groups in Western society:

[...] historically and culturally, otherness and the sense of the alien is (sic)
deeply embedded in Western society. Whilst there are several forms that
this takes, including vicious modes’ of anti-Black and other colour racism,
anti-Semitism has been and remains a potent signifier of the underside of
Western culture. The Jew is a principle of otherness for the West [...] the
kernel of otherness, which is always found everywhere, yet is never to be
allowed in.20

Frosh acknowledges this to be an extreme formulation. However, the Holocaust which

occurred just a dozen years after Disavowal’s publication did not emerge from a clear sky.

The anti-Semitism experienced by Cahun and her family provides good reasons to search

for references to alterity in her work.

4.3 “The Doors of Perception”: the Frontispiece to Disavowals21

Cahun’s decision to emphasise her Jewish appearance by appearing shaven-headed

can be seen - like her adoption of a very Jewish pseudonym - as part of a deliberate

strategy to focus her work on racial difference. Shaven images of Cahun appear early in

Disavowals in the introductory Frontispiece (Fig. 4.1), as reflections in a mirror towards its

bottom left hand corner. By revealing them as reflections, Cahun may have been drawing

on symbolism dating from the Dreyfus era, when Truth was often depicted as a woman

holding a mirror offering illumination and comfort to victims of repression and falsehood

(Fig. 4.7).22 Marina Warner has argued persuasively that, throughout history, the female

20 Frosh, Hate and the Jewish Science, 215.

21 With due acknowledgement to the estate of Aldous Huxley, whose titles for his volumes of essays from the
1950s, while not particularly relevant here, seemed too good a fit to ignore for this and the following two
sections.
22 Cohen, “The Visual Dreyfus Affair,” 80.

44
nude has represented truth, although nude images of Cahun (such as Fig. 4.8) are rare, and

the mirror here is held in female hands emerging from drapes.23 David Bate has written

how the surrealists’ images of woman are “an empty fantasy” and “a support of desire” and

Cahun may have been keen to avoid this objectification of the female form routine in

surrealist photography.24

The Frontispiece is important, offering a “cover image encompassing the trajectory

of the book.”25 Its use of a fixed, staring eye supported by a woman’s hands are symbols

which have been interpreted by art historians in different and contradictory ways. Harris

has observed that both have strong associations with surrealism and psychoanalysis. The

eye, as symbol of masculinity and of the phallus, appears in several influential surrealist

works including Georges Bataille’s Story of the Eye (1928) and the Dali/Bunuel film, Un

Chien andalou (1929).26 Harris himself sees the hands as phallus-like in their uprightness

and their proximity to the eye as symbolising masturbation, although such an explanation

is potentially confusing given Cahun’s often presumed homosexuality. Lasalle and

Solomon-Godeau have suggested alternatively that the objects on either side of the eye can

be seen as clear labial shapes forming a clitoris, physical locus of female pleasure.27 One

might take issue with both these interpretations. Oehsen makes a very perceptive point in

asserting that, while Disavowals can be interpreted as a commentary on female

representation, it “is first and foremost a personalised account of the search for self”.28

This is consistent with Cahun’s own comment in her Introduction, “Until I see everything

23 Marina Warner, Monuments & Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form (London: Weidenfeld and
Nicolson, 1985), 315.
24 David Bate, Photography and Surrealism: Sexuality, Colonialism and Social Dissent (London: I.B. Tauris,
2004), 166.
25 Oehsen, “Claude Cahun,” 100.
26 Harris, “Coup d’oeil,” 98.
27 Lasalle and Solomon-Godeau, “Surrealist confession,” 52.
28 Oehsen, “Claude Cahun,” 99.

45
clearly, I want to hunt myself down, struggle with myself”. Following this line of thought

suggests the prominent eye in the Frontispiece is more likely a reference to the importance

of self-perception.29 Eye and hand have an interrelated significance within the Jewish

tradition; the hamsa or ‘hand of Miriam’ is a traditional symbol to ward off the evil eye

and the two often appear together (Fig. 4.9). Such symbols were often worn as jewellery

intended as a talisman, as an antique ring (Fig. 4.10) illustrates.30 It might be imagined that

Cahun saw similar objects in her childhood and consciously or unconsciously reproduced

the imagery, in reference to the importance of ethnicity to an understanding of herself.

Cahun’s use of the name ‘Cahun’ is further referred to in hand of Miriam. It is a reminder

of the five books of the Torah, extensively used by the Cohenim, while the priestly

blessing employs both hands in a gesture (Fig. 4.30) not unlike the hands in Figure 4.10, a

reference to God in the Song of Songs:

Behold, he stands behind our wall

He looks in through the windows
Peering through the lattice.31

A number of Cahun’s self-portraits show her through a latticed window and the

photomontages prefacing Chapters II and VI (Figures 4.3 and 4.4) both show her face

veiled or behind latticework.32

Oehsen makes a powerful case that, in Disavowals, Cahun may also have intended

to challenge the role of religion in society, but that prompts the question, which religion?33

The Frontispiece includes the word “Dieu” (God) written vertically upwards. While there

are obvious references to Christianity here and elsewhere in the photomontages – the

29 Cahun, Disavowals, 1.
30 See also Erwin R Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, vol. VII (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1958), 125 fn 208 He observes that the Cohenim hands had talismanic value.
31 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priestly_Blessing Accessed: 14.7.10; Book 2: Verse 9
32 Photographs reprinted in Louise Downie, ed., Don’t kiss me: the art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore
(London: Tate Gallery, 2006), 129.
33 A detailed case for this interpretation is made by Oehsen; Oehsen, “Claude Cahun,” 98 et seq.

46
photomontage introducing Chapter X, for instance, refers to ‘La famille sainte’ – a more

inflected approach might include a consideration of how the Jews, who are proscribed from

saying or writing the name of God owing to its holiness often avoid this by adapting the

word – for instance to G-d - and recognising that Cahun may have referenced this tradition

by writing it backwards.34

4.4 “Heaven and Hell”: the photomontage prefacing Chapter III

The reflected and distorted images of Cahun in the Frontispiece appear to be based

on self-portraits from the late 1920s. Few of Cahun’s self-portraits were exhibited or

published in their original form in her own lifetime. However, a double image entitled

Que me veux-tu? (Fig. 4.13) formed the basis for a dust jacket design for Georges

Ribemont-Dessaignes’ 1929 novel, Frontière Humaine (Human Limit).35 Ribemont

Dessaignes was editor-in-chief of the magazine, Bifur, and another image of Cahun (Fig.

4.12), also entitled Frontière Humaine, appeared in the April 1930 edition. By using this

title, Cahun seems to question the limits of being human and inhuman. Debra Hassig has

noted how, from medieval times, a dichotomy between ‘us’ and ‘them’ has reinforced a

recognisable pictorial code in which deformity was seen as a feature of those like the Jews

who were the devil’s prey. Jews were also seen as sharing traits in common with the

Monstrous Races who inhabited the fringes of the known world; strange dress,

incomprehensible speech and physical deformities (note, for instance, the double headed

form in Fig. 4.31).36

34 Jews avoid the casual writing of God or any similar name to avoid any breach of the commandment not to
erase or deface the name of God in Deuteronomy 12:3.
35 Oehsen observes that this photograph was probably untitled in Cahun’s time and to have been named by
Leperlier; Oehsen, “Claude Cahun,” 85.
36 Debra Hassig, “The Iconography of Rejection: Jews and Other Monstrous Races,” in Image and Belief:
Studies in Celebration of the Eightieth Anniversary of the Index of Christian Art, ed. Colum Hourihane,
illustrated edition. (Princeton University Press, 1999), 26 et seq.
47
 Bailey and Thynne have noted that her self-portraits deliberately present Cahun as a

Jew, the racial ‘other’ and a vampire.37 In her self-portrait of 1928 (Fig. 3.5) her skin is

bleached white and her profile emphasises her prominent nose and chin and her protruding

pointed ear.38 Similarities between Cahun’s images and the vampire are discussed below,

but use of physical characteristics to identify and establish racial difference was well

established by the 1920s. Sander L Gilman’s work on the importance of the Jewish nose

as a racial symbol has already been referred to above and, where Jews were largely

indistinguishable from the crowd in dress and behaviour, the Jewish nose became almost a

unique signifier, making the Jew visible in the crowd. 39 Such imagery dates at least as far

back as the twelfth century, when Jews were often portrayed with hooked noses. 40 Debra

Hassig has pointed out how by early medieval times the depiction of Jews as separate from

acceptable society was “employed relentlessly [...] and formed part of a much larger

propaganda campaign that helped fuel anti-Semitism all over Europe.”41 In the mid

nineteenth century, the commentator Robert Knox (1791-1892) listed the characteristics of

the Jewish face:

the contour is convex; the eyes long and fine, the outer angles running
towards the temples; the brow and nose apt to form a single convex
line; the nose comparatively narrow at the base, the eyes consequently
approaching each other; lips very full, mouth projecting, chin small,
and the whole physiognomy, when swarthy, as it often is, has an
African look.42

37 Bailey and Thynne, “Beyond representation,” 143.

38 There is some dispute over the dating of this series of photographs. Oehsen makes a coherent case for
dates in the period 1928-9 and these are used here; Oehsen, “Claude Cahun,” 78; Bailey and Thynne,
“Beyond representation,” 141.
39 Gilman, “The Jew’s Body,” 61.
40 Ibid.; Ziva Amishai-Maisels, “The Demonization of the ‘Other’ in the Visual Arts,” in Demonizing the
Other: Antisemitism, Racism and Xenophobia, ed. Robert S. Wistrich (Routledge, 1999), 53.
41 Hassig, “The Iconography of Rejection: Jews and Other Monstrous Races,” 25.
42 Gilman, “The Jew’s Body,” 62.

48
A certain ambiguity in the ‘othering’ of Jews has been noted and, in nineteenth century

Europe, the notion of the ‘Black Jew’ was already well-established. As Cornel West has

observed, "Jew and Blacks have been linked [...] in an inseparable embrace principally

owing to their dominant status of degraded Others."43 Doy implies that a surviving image,

probably dating from the 1920s, of Cahun arm in arm with a black waitress (see Fig. 4.26)

is a rare reference by Cahun to race and ethnicity, as is a much later image showing a

group of hands of different colours (Fig. 4.27).44 However, one must be wary of reading

too much significance into single images and neither forms a part of the photomontages

accompanying Disavowals.

Of much greater significance among Cahun’s references to the racial ‘other’ is the

photomontage prefacing Chapter III of Disavowals, predominantly composed of images of

Cahun with a shaven head (Fig. 4.2). Oehsen suggests the framing of this image, an angel

at the top and Satan at the bottom is suggestive of Heaven and Hell, so what lies between

can be characterised as representative of the human condition.45 On either side of the main

group of images are contrasting cut-outs of Greek statuary, a hermaphrodite to the left and

a Venus to the right.46 Jennifer Shaw has incorrectly observed that these images are shown

upside down (as is the photograph of Cahun posing as Satan in Le Mystère d’Adam) and

suggested viewers were intended to associate this unusual use of classical imagery with the

homosexual practices of the ancient Greeks and Cahun’s supposed lesbianism. 47

However, as Appendix II describes, this interpretation is based on a false premise, because

43 Quoted in Milly Heyd, Mutual Reflections: Jews and Blacks in American Art (New Brunswick, N.J:
Rutgers University Press, 1999), 1.
44 Doy, “Another side of the picture,” 77.
45 Oehsen, “Claude Cahun,” 104.
46 Ibid., 112.
47 Although the image accompanying this article has, in fact, been published correctly; Shaw, “Narcissus and
the Magic Mirror,” 42; While Cahun and Moore were probably lovers, Latimer has pointed out that they
would have been unlikely to recognise the description “lesbian”; Latimer, “Entre Nous,” 199.
49
the photomontage has been reproduced incorrectly in republished editions of Disavowals.

Viewed correctly, these images of statues are the right way up. Nochlin has suggested

negativity towards Jews may derive from a “deeply implanted, universalist notion of the

‘normal’”, sourced from Greek classicism.48 Robert Young makes a similar point,

observing that an aesthetic basis for racial distinction - wherein European faces were often

illustrated by reference to ancient Greek sculpture - held sway for much of the nineteenth

century.49 Cahun’s inclusion of quintessentially classical images juxtaposed with her own

pale and marble-like profile may indicate a desire to disrupt such notions of ‘normal’ and

is consistent with the suggestion made here that it was her intention to address issues of

assimilation. Cahun asks the viewer to consider how her profile, with its prominent

‘Jewish nose’ and so on, compares to these exemplars of beauty. A self-portrait (Fig.

4.15), showing Cahun wearing a classically draped dress and posing in characteristic

profile may be similarly intended.

Cahun’s shaven images in the centre of this photomontage also challenge notions of

the ‘normal’. Mary Ann Caws suggests of Cahun that “She fascinates. She horrifies. She is

monstrous. There is no better way of putting it. [...] You are tempted to look away.”50

Cahun herself called these images her “monstrosities”.51 Yet in many other photographs

from this same period, her appearance is unremarkable (see, for instance, Fig. 4.29). By

presenting herself shaven-headed, monstrous and grotesque, Cahun asks her viewer to

question the nature of identity and consider how someone who, in other circumstances

would be seen as French, can, with largely cosmetic and reversible alterations to her

48 Nochlin, “Starting with the Self,” 18.

49 Robert JC Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race, 1st ed. (Routledge, 1994), 96.
50 Mary Ann Caws, The Surrealist Look: An Erotics ofEncounter (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1997), 96.
51 Herbert Molderings and Barbara Mülhens-Molderings, “Mirrors, Masks and Spaces. Self Portraits by
Women photographers in the Twenties and Thirties,” Le Magazine, Jeu de Paume, June 3, 2011, 22,
http://lemagazine.jeudepaume.org/2011/06/herbert-molderings-barbara-mulhens-molderings/.
50
appearance, easily become ‘another’. Thynne is keen to link Cahun’s shaved head to her

ethnic origins noting that, “among the many connotations of the shaved head is its

Jewishness, since it evokes the ritual of Orthodox women”. 52 She misses the key point, for

while Orthodox Jewish wives do not permit their own hair to be seen in public, their heads

are not usually shaved.53 However, in times of conflict, hair removal has long been

punishment for prisoners and women who consort with the enemy.54 By shaving her head,

Cahun may be presenting herself as a prisoner of her Jewish birth and originating from a

group whom many in France viewed as an enemy.

Similar themes emerge from considering how Cahun uses her own image to

represent the anti-Semitic conception of the Jew as vampire.55 Michèle Cone has written

persuasively on how, in propaganda from the late 1930s and early 1940s, French anti

Semites appropriated vampire images: for instance, a poster created for the 1941 exhibition

“Le Juif et la France” (Fig. 4.28) depicted the Jew, in a contemporary description, as “a

kind of a vampire with long beard, thick lips, and crooked nose, whose fingers, like the

claws of a bird of prey, clutch the terrestrial globe.”56 The association was an established

practice of anti-Semitism before the publication of Disavowals. Adolf Hitler (1889–1945)

in the first volume of Mein Kampf (1925) refers to the Jew as ‘the eternal blood-sucker’.57

In Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), the eponymous count was associated in contemporary

minds with “those horrid inbred Jews everyone was worrying about [...a] filthy black

52 Thynne, “Claude Cahun and Oscar Wilde,” 186.

53 Kertzer, What is a Jew?, 91.
54 Thynne, “Claude Cahun and Oscar Wilde,” 186.
55 Lizzie Thynne, “Indirect Action: Politics and the Subversion of Identity in Claude Cahun and Marcel
Moore’s Resistance to the Occupation of Jersey,” Papers of Surrealism, no. 8 (Spring 2010): 14,
http://www.surrealismcentre.ac.uk/papersofsurrealism/journal8/index.htm.
56 Robert de Beauplan, quoted in Cone, “Vampires, viruses,” 179.
57 Quoted in Hogan, “Nosferatu to Nazism,” 99.

51
Hebrew”.58 Stoker describes the count’s face in terms that resonate powerfully with

Cahun’s images, “strong [...], aquiline, with a high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly

arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead [...] sharp white teeth [...], his ears were pale

and at the top extremely pointed”.59

Bailey and Thynne have observed how a comparison of Cahun’s self-portrait in

Figure 3.5 with another visual image - Orlok the vampire in Murnau’s 1922 film,

Nosferatu (Fig. 4.11) - reveals marked similarities; the prominent nose, the bleached skin

and sunken eyes.60 Cahun must have been aware of the significance of the Semitic nose in

adopting as an early pseudonym the name ‘Courlis’, French for curlew, a bird with a long

curved beak (Fig. 4.16). The bird appears in the photomontage prefacing chapter VIII of

Disavowals (Fig. 3.7), immediately below a matching profile of Cahun’s own head. The

viewer’s attention is immediately drawn to this conjunction, suggesting a conscious

decision by the artist to draw attention to this most stereotypically Jewish of her features.

José Monléon has pointed out how many nineteenth-century fictional ‘monsters’

were, in common with Jews, difficult to distinguish in a crowd. John Polidori’s (1795

1821) vampire looked like an English gentleman, while Sheridan Le Fanu's (1814-73)

monsters were distinguished from the norm only by slight deviations, such as paleness or

sharp teeth.61 Another acquaintance of Cahun’s uncle was Robert Louis Stevenson, author

of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) in which the monstrosity of Mr

Hyde also proves difficult to define:

Mr Hyde was pale and dwarfish, he gave an impression of deformity

without nameable malformation, he had a displeasing smile...all these were

58 Bram Dijkstra, Idols ofPerversity: Fantasies ofFeminine Evil in Fin-De-Siècle Culture (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1986), 343.
59 Bram Stoker, Dracula, Rev. ed. (London and New York: Penguin Books, 2003), 24.
60 Bailey and Thynne, “Beyond representation,” 143.
61 José B Monleón, A Specter Is Haunting Europe: A Sociohistorical Approach to the Fantastic (Princeton,
N.J: Princeton University Press, 1990), 78.
52
 points against him but not all could explain the hitherto unknown disgust,
loathing and fear with which Mr Utterson regarded him.62

It is not known if Cahun read any of these novels, but they reveal some similarities

between these fictional indicators of the monstrous – pale skin, deformities and the like -

and those deployed in her own ‘monstrosities’.63

Exposure to anti-Semitism in 1920s Parisian society was probably commonplace.

Critics had begun to identify the ‘problem’ posed by Jewish art as early as 1925 and the

immigrant artist population in Montparnasse, where Cahun and Moore lived, immediately

became their target. Employing Old Testament symbolism, one critic wrote in that year,

“A barbarian horde has rushed like a plague, like a cloud of locusts upon Montparnasse.”64

In 1928, shortly before Disavowals was published, xenophobia reached fever pitch with the

appearance of two volumes of highly derogatory articles by Camille Mauclair in Le

Figaro. The second, entitled Les Meteques contre L’art Francais (The wogs against

French art), was clearly anti-Semitic, being dedicated to art dealers with names like

Rosenschwein and Lévy-Tripp.65 Landa, for instance, has noted how, at this time,

depictions of Shylock in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice (1600) were routinely anti

Semitic, while Dorian Bell has documented what he refers to as French literature’s “late

century anti-Semitic swoon”.66 As one deeply involved in the theatre and literature, Cahun

must surely have been aware of such manifestations of anti-Semitism. Her casting as

62 Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case ofDr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Tales ofTerror, Rev Ed.
(Penguin Classics, 2003), 16.
63 Oehsen, “Claude Cahun,” 21.
64 Vauxcelles quoted in Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia, 142.
65 Ibid., 151.
66 Landa, The Jew in Drama, 14; Dorian Bell, “The Jew as Model: Anti-Semitism, Aesthetics, and
Epistemology in the Goncourt Brothers’ Manette Salomon,” MLN 124, no. 4 (September 2009): 826.
53
Satan in Le Mystère d’Adam may also have caused her to reflect on the irony of someone

with her Jewish background being cast as a demon.67

4.5 “The Art of Seeing”: the photomontageprefacing Chapter VII and other

references to Jewish culture

Written shortly before Disavowals, Cahun’s unpublished manuscript Héroïnes

(1925) contains a series of reinterpreted stories from the Bible, Homer and elsewhere.

While none of Cahun’s photographs refers directly to Héroïnes, there are indirect

references within Disavowals. This section will explore these interrelationships by

considering two essays from Héroïnes which refer to notable Jewish women, “Salome the

Skeptic” and “The Sadistic Judith”.

Symbols significant to Jews also have meanings in other cultural settings, and we

need to be wary of reading too much into the symbols Cahun used. Examples of

intertextuality are inevitable in Cahun’s work, which draws so widely from classical and

biblical images and literature. The photomontage prefacing Chapter VII (Fig. 3.7), for

instance, includes an early photograph from 1914 of Cahun’s face on a pillow with her hair

spread around it (Fig. 4.17). Doy has commented on its resemblance to the Gorgon, one of

the femmes-fatales of Symbolist imagery, often associated with horror and danger by male

writers, but empowering to feminists.68 As Erwin Goodenough has observed, the same

symbol is also found in early Jewish symbolism; as a talisman for the dead, employed to

ward off demons and grave robbers.69

Cahun seems to have identified closely with Salome and the epigram introducing

Chapter VII of Disavowals reads:

67 Welby-Everard, “Imaging the Actor,” 2.

68 Doy, Claude Cahun, 17.
69 Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, VII:229.

54
 Before renouncing this world I will dance before Herod, because he is
interested in my sleep and could compel me to retrace my steps, to
rethread my dreams.70

The origins of this fascination have already been mentioned – the link with Sara Bernhardt,

her uncle’s connections with the play and Wilde, and her reporting on the Billings Trial.

As a Jewess involved in the death of John the Baptist - one of the Catholic Church’s more

significant figures - Salome is intimately related to early notions of ‘otherness’ and perhaps

represents an early example of the ‘belle juive’ discussed in Chapter 3.71 From the early

ninth century, Salome epitomised evil sensuality and from her developed many images of

the demonic ‘other’.72 A depiction of Salome (Fig. 4.18) in the late eleventh century

Aachen Gospels of Otto III shows her as a sinuous figure with bare breasts and extended

claw-like fingers. It is difficult to find examples in Cahun’s self-portraits which depict her

as a femme-fatale, but Solomon-Godeau has made the interesting observation that an early

portrait from 1913 shows her as the “virtual double” of the famous Parisian dancer, Cléo

de Merode, (Figures 4.24 and 4.25) and it would be easy to believe that the young Cahun

saw herself here as Judith or Salome.73

It stretches the imagination to see the mature Cahun as a femme-fatale – she is too

physically frail for that. Her thinness may be associated with one period in her late teens,

during which Cahun suffered from anorexia. Leperlier has associated this with a rejection

of adulthood.74 However, there are other associations. Strosberg reminds us that food

remains “the touchstone of Jewish identity.”75 Cahun’s anorexia and denial of food may

70 Cahun, Disavowals, 133, 223 fn 102.

71 St John is allocated two saint’s days (24th June and 29th August) by the Catholic Church and appears
frequently in church decorations particularly within baptisteries; Linda Murray and Peter Murray, Dictionary
of Christian Art, 2nd ed. (Oxford Paperbacks, 2001), 273.
72 Amishai-Maisels, “Demonization of the ‘Other’,” 57.
73 Solomon-Godeau, “The Equivocal ‘I’,” 122.
74 Quoted in Oehsen, “Claude Cahun,” 141.
75 Strosberg, Human Figure, 50.

55
perhaps be alternatively viewed as another expression of her ambivalence towards her

ethnicity and family. An object produced by Cahun for a 1936 Paris exhibition is entitled

Un air defamille, which can be translated as Family resemblances (Fig. 4.23), suggesting

family connections. It comprises a doll’s bed covered by a number of objects - a light

bulb, a child’s flute, sewing equipment - beneath a swathe of netting having the appearance

of a wedding veil. A card pinned to the object reinforces an association with food and

eating as it reads:

dANGEr
m anger m angez
menge je mens
mange gje manje

This object is enigmatic and few commentators on Cahun’s work have ventured a

detailed analysis, other than Leperlier, whose rather superficial reading is discussed above.

Various meanings can be read into Cahun’s words in both French and English. Manger is

the French verb ‘to eat’ but has been broken up to be read as ‘danger’ and ‘anger’. In

French, ‘ange’ means angel while je mens can be translated as ‘I lie’, referring perhaps to

Cahun’s disavowals. Given difficulties of interpretation, any proposal must be tentative,

but the work unquestionably links food with three familiar themes of Cahun’s work;

family, Jewishness and denial. This is an area of her work where more analysis may prove

fruitful.

Judith is often seen as another ‘deadly woman’ like Salome.76 By the early

twentieth century, “artists searched far and wide to come up with instructive examples of

emasculating feminine perfidy”, which they found in characters like Judith and Salome,

“virgin vampires, adolescents lusting after seed, unconscious whores who drained the veins

76 Amishai-Maisels, “Demonization of the ‘Other’,” 57.

56
of man’s intellect”.77 Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) portrayed Judith (1909) as bare breasted

and with claw-like hands (Fig. 4.19), similar to images of Salome.78 However, as Oehsen

perceptively observes, Cahun’s concern in Héroïnes is to challenge superficial reliance on

appearance alone as a basis for judgement. Her reinterpretation of the fairytale “Beauty (or

the Taste for the Beast)”, for instance, tells how the apparently monstrous can turn out

good.79

In “The Sadistic Judith”, Cahun expresses sympathy for this heroine, whose

ambivalence when submitting to the Babylonian general, Holofernes is deliberately

couched in terms in which assimilated French Jews might have recognised their own

choice between their adopted country, France, and faith to their Jewish origins:

Am I truly condemned, a criminal since childhood, to destroy

everything I love? [...]
Is he not my chosen one because he is the strongest one?”80

She draws a stark contrast between her adopted countrymen, of whom she says, “And then

there are my brothers! They have nothing to fear, because they loathe me. Fatherland,

prison of my soul!”, and her Jewish family (Cahun’s words in italics are of particular

significance):

The people of Israel applauded Judith.

[...] she exclaims:
“People! What do we have in common? Who allowed you to
penetrate my private life? To judge my acts and find the
beautiful? To burden me (I am so weak and weary, eternally
hunted) with your abominable glory)?”81

77 Dijkstra, Idols ofPerversity, 374.

78 Indeed, art historians often label the picture as Salome, although there is no indication that Klimt intended
this connection - see Neret Gilles, Klimt, 1862-1918 (Midpoint Press, 2001), 34.
79 Cahun, “Heroines,” 81; Oehsen, “Claude Cahun,” 80.
80 Cahun, “Heroines,” 53.
81 Ibid.

57
 Disavowals “is not a straightforward revelation of cohesive subjectivity.”82

However, it contains several coherent references to Cahun’s family. Chapter VII, which is

introduced by the ‘Herod’ epigram, contains a lengthy reference (under the subheading

‘Nightmare’) to a dream meeting with her father. This passage contains familiar references

to his ‘monstrous’ appearance – his skin tone, flat skull and vacant eyes - and the

associations she makes between him and her desire to ‘cut off’ curlews’ beaks may be in

reference to her Jewish origins.

Curiosity keeps me awake in front of a man face: skin

pockmarked, battered, granulated – but white, but livid; the skull
flat, the forehead covered in hemp; nose, mouth tumescent ... the
eyes vacant [...] There is a silence between us, an obstinacy. It
must be my father [...] I find myself walking in step, in step with
my forgiven shadow. My breath, still uneven with some faded
terror, offers me a transition ... can one give in to such monsters?
And above all when in such a short time so many curlews’ beaks
have to be cut off.83

A self-portrait of Cahun from 1928 (Fig. 4.20) shows her as “the very reincarnation of her

father, Maurice” (Fig. 4.21) and is notable both for the paleness of their complexions and

the very distinctive noses.84 Interestingly, the 1928 photograph appears to be a restaging of

an earlier 1920 version (Fig. 4.22), in which the only difference seems to be Cahun’s hair,

for she is sitting in exactly the same position and appears to be wearing the same clothes.

It is speculation, but if she retook the photograph solely to show herself without hair, it

makes a powerful statement of the connection she perceived between her family and the

symbolism of the shaven head.

82 Jennifer Shaw, “Singular Plural: Collaborative Self-images in Claude Cahun’s ‘Aveux non Avenus’,” in
The Modern Woman Revisited: Paris Between the Wars, ed. Whitney Chadwick and Tirza True Latimer
(New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 156.
83 Cahun, Disavowals, 136.
84 Solomon-Godeau, “The Equivocal ‘I’,” 122; Downie agrees that Cahun’s image is very similar to one of
her father; Downie, “Sans Nom: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore,” 9.
58
 The next sentence immediately following this passage reads “To the glory of

Freud”, a possible reference to Freud’s first major work, The Interpretation of Dreams

(1900).85 Cahun was clearly interested in Freud’s writing and The Interpretation of

Dreams and other works were published in French between 1922-6.86 Freudian

psychoanalysis became “a formative feature embedded in both surrealist theory and

practice”.87 More specifically, the surrealists used conscious manifestations of the

unconscious as a domain for their own inquiry and research.88 There is further work to be

done on the links between Cahun’s work, her Jewishness and psychoanalysis. In a recent

study, Frosh has proposed that the emergence of psychoanalysis in the early twentieth

century represented the direct response of the ‘Jewish mind’ to new forms of racial anti

Semitism, which revealed the irrational and intense underside of western civilisation.89

However, regrettably the full implications of psychoanalytic thinking on anti-Semitism and

racism have not yet been understood, for advances in this area would unquestionably

provide further insight into the work of artists like Cahun. Nevertheless, drawing on the

work of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi (1932 - 2009), Frosh postulates the early twentieth

century also saw the appearance of a new ‘type’ of Jew, alienated from religious Judaism,

but insistent on inalienable secular Jewish traits of “intellectuality and independence of

mind, the highest ethical and moral standards, concern for social justice, tenacity in the

face of persecution.”90 Such characteristics are hardly unique to Jews, but based on the

85 Cahun, Disavowals, 137; Oehsen, “Claude Cahun,” 116.

86 Doy, Claude Cahun, 4, 32.
87 Christopher Green, Art in France: 1900-1940 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 274.
88 Bate, Photography and Surrealism, 9.
89 Frosh, Hate and the Jewish Science, 1.
90 Yerushalmi quoted in Ibid., 11.

59
evidence of her life – her intellectuality, her political activism, her resistance activities in

Jersey during its occupation – could very well describe Claude Cahun herself.91

91For more details on these aspects of Cahun’s life see, for instance, Oehsen, “The lives of Claude Cahun
and Marcel Moore.”
60
 CONCLUSION

L’art est a l’oppos des ides generales, ne dcrit que l’índividuel, ne

desire que l’unique. Il ne classe pas; il déclassé.1
Art is against general ideas and only describes the individual, only
desires uniqueness. It doesn’t categorise, it uncategorises.

Preface to Vies Imaginaires (1896) – Marcel Schwob

This dissertation has sought to show that there is a substantial body of evidence to support

the contention that Claude Cahun in Disavowals, used her Jewish ethnicity to engage with

contemporary issues related to identity and subjectivity and, particularly, what it felt like to

be an assimilated Jew in early twentieth-century France. By firmly positioning Cahun in

relation to her upbringing, her family and by drawing upon events and trends from the

wider economic, political and social spheres, it has attempted to set to rights Solomon

Godeau’s criticism that studies of Cahun’s work have found it difficult properly to situate

her work in its true historical setting. A detailed consideration of her photography and its

relationship to her writing, her life experiences and the historical events in France in the

late nineteenth and early twentieth century balances a biographical approach with a proper

consideration of the texts, not emphasising artist over artefact.

Although her work is sometimes opaque and often disguises as much as it reveals,

it has been shown that Cahun frequently acknowledged that she felt the influence of her

Jewish background and origins. This was clearly not a comfortable relationship and Cahun

was as capable of rejecting her family as accepting it. Nevertheless, in Disavowals, she

used a range of Jewish symbols and references as part of her engagement in a personal

search for self. However, her own and her family’s experience during the Dreyfus affair

1 Marcel Schwob, Vies Imaginaires (Paris: Gérard Lebovici, 1986), Preface p.1; translated by author.
61
almost inevitably sensitised her to wider issues of anti-Semitism in French society. The

politicisation of Cahun’s work initially manifested itself in the 1920s in her use of

photomontage, an art form closely related to protest, and drawing upon a developing range

of widely understood anti-Jewish stereotypes; the belle-juive, the grotesque and the

vampire. In employing these images, Cahun asks her viewers to consider what is normal

and to question the nature of identity by considering how someone who, in other

circumstances would be seen as French, can, with largely cosmetic and reversible

alterations to her appearance, easily become ‘another’. In the 1930s, like many other artists

of the time, she would involve herself in more overtly political protest and eventually in

Jersey, in outright resistance following the German invasion in 1940.2

The evidence presented augments and, in part, challenges the dominant paradigm in

academic studies of Cahun’s work; that it is primarily informed by considerations linked to

gender, stemming in large part from the rediscovery of her work at a time when gender

studies were à la mode. There is a certain irony in the title of Cahun’s Que me veux-tu?

This focus remains as is demonstrated by both recent exhibitions and scholarship: the

opening section of the Cahun retrospective at Paris’ Musée de Jeu de Paume dealing with

her early work is entitled “Metamorphoses of identity and the subversion of identity”,

while Jennifer Shaw’s forthcoming book is entitled Claude Cahun's Disavowals: Writing

Sexuality and Representation (due to be published in 2012 by Ashgate).3 While it is

perhaps unsurprising that these issues have tended to be placed in the foreground of

academic studies, it is remarkable, given the evidence presented here, that Cahun’s concern

with issues of ethnicity and cultural difference has been largely overlooked, not least by

Jewish academics. If Marcel Schwob is correct in his assertion set out in the epigram

2 Oehsen, “The lives of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore,” 19.

3 Francois Leperlier and Juan Vincente Aliaga, eds., Claude Cahun (Paris: Hazan, 2011).

62
introducing this conclusion that “art only describes the individual”, then a broadening of

our viewpoint on Claude Cahun’s photographs can surely only add to scholarly

understanding of this complicated artist.

63
 APPENDICES
Appendix I: Exhibitions
The following is a list of some of the major exhibitions where Cahun’s work has featured
prominently:

International Surrealist Exhibition, London - June-July 1936

Surrealist Sisters - Jersey Museum 1993

Mise en Scene - Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London - 13 October to 27

November 1994

Claude Cahun (1894-1954): photographe - Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris - 23 June to

17 September 1995

Claude Cahun (1894-1954): photographer, authoress, journalist, actress, activist;

Neue Museum, Graz, Austria - 4 October to 3 December 1997; Fotografische
Sammlung, Museum Folkwang Essen, Germany - 18 January - 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; Art
Gallery of Ontario, Ontario, Canada - 8 May to 18 July 1999

Inverted Odysseys - Grey Art Gallery, New York, USA - 16 November 1999 to 29
January 2000

Surrealism: Desire Unbound - Tate Modern, London - 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, USA to May 2004

Acting Out: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore - The Judah L. Magnes Museum - 4
April - July 2005; Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME, USA - September
to October 2005; Jersey Museum - November 2005 to January 2006

Back to the Canon: The Photographic Portraits of Claude Cahun; The Israeli Center
for Digital Art; March 2008 to April 2008

Angels of Anarchy: Women Artists and Surrealism ; Manchester Art Gallery;

September 2009 to January 2010

Claude Cahun; Jeu de Paume, Paris; May to September 2011

64
Appendix II: The orientation of the photomontage prefacing Chapter III

The correct orientation of the photomontage which introduces Chapter III of Disavowals

Fig. 4.2) seems to have caused some confusion to the publishers of Cahun’s work, art

historians and museum curators. There seems little question that Cahun intended the work

to be displayed with her image as Satan in Le Mystère d’Adam the correct way up at the

bottom of the picture. The original 1930 edition of Disavowals (number 192 of the edition,

and inspected at the British Library) has the image this way up and if one examines

carefully the photographs of the display in the window of Editions du Carrefour (Fig.

4.15), the photomontage is clearly displayed in this orientation. However, the versions

reproduced in Ecrits (2002) and in the UK edition, Disavowals (2007) both have

reproduced the image upside-down.1 Moreover, it has also been incorrectly published in a

significant number of catalogues of Cahun’s work, including the recent show at the Musée

de Jeu de Paume in Paris.2

1 Cahun, Ecrits, 225; Cahun, Disavowals, 37.

2 Leperlier and Aliaga, Claude Cahun, 80.

65
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ILLUSTRATIONS

73
3.1: Alphonse Lévy, The Hebrew Lesson, 1886
Illustration from La vie juive, David-Léon Cahun
Harvard Library
www.archive.org/details/laviejuiveillus00cahugoog

74
3.2: Atelier Nadar, Sarah Bernhardt in Jean Richepin’s Pierrot the Murderer, 1883
Photograph
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.

75
3.3: Claude Cahun, Self-Portrait, c. 1929
Photograph, 11.8 x 9 cm
Courtesy of the Jersey Heritage Trust

76
3.4: Alfred Le Petit, La Poule aux ouefs d’or, 1882
Caricature of Sarah Bernhardt published in Le Grelot, 32.3cm x 28.3cm
Collection of Philippe Lechat, Paris
www.lagouttedor.net

77
3.5: Claude Cahun, Self-Portrait, c. 1928
Photograph, 21cm x 12.4cm
Courtesy of the Jersey Heritage Trust

78
3.6: Lloyd Thatcher, FT Graphics, Week of the living dread, 2011
Photomontage
The Financial Times Limited

79
3.7: Claude Cahun, HUM (Frontispiece to Pt VII of Aveux non avenus), c. 1930
Photomontage, 15.2cm x 10.2cm
http://www.preview-art.com/previews/09-2005/bg/Frye-ActingOut3bg.jpg

80
3.8: Claude Cahun, ‘Passport’ photograph, 1936
Private collection, UK
Taken from Doy, Gen. Claude Cahun: A Sensual Politics of Photography. London: I. B.
Tauris, 2007. p. 84

81
3.9: Claude Cahun, Self-Portrait, 1925
Black and white photograph
Collection Leslie Tonkonow and Klaus Ottmann
Taken from Rice, Shelley, and Lynn Gumpert, eds. Inverted Odysseys: Claude Cahun,
Maya Deren, Cindy Sherman. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1999. p. 103

82
3.10: Tombstone
Cemetery of St. Brelade's Church, Jersey
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Cahun

83
3.11: Solomon J Solomon, High Tea in the Sukkah, 1906
Ink, graphite, and gouache on paper, 41 x 30.5 cm
The Jewish Museum, New York, Gift of Edward J. Sovatkin

84
4.1: Claude Cahun, Untitled (Frontispiece from Aveux non avenus), c. 1930
Photomontage with paint, 15.9 x 35.1 cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
http://cs.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=170272

85
4.2: Claude Cahun, E.D.M. (Frontispiece to Ch III to Aveux non avenus), c. 1930
Photomontage, 15.2 x 10.2 cm
http://www.preview-art.com/previews/09-2005/bg/Frye-ActingOut3bg.jpg

86
4.3: Claude Cahun, M.R.M (Frontispiece to Ch VI of Aveux non avenus), c. 1930
Photomontage, 15.2 x 10.2 cm
http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/LargeImage.aspx?image=/lotfinderimages/d17563/d1
756323x.jpg

87
4.4: Claude Cahun, Moi-meme (Frontispiece to Pt II of Aveux non avenus), c. 1930
Photomontage, 15.2 x 10.2 cm
http://www.preview-art.com/previews/09-2005/bg/Frye-ActingOut3bg.jpg

88
4.5: Hannah Hoch, Liebe im Busch (Love in the Bush). 1925
Photomontage. 9 x 8 ½ inches
Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas. The Benjamin J. Tiller Memorial Trust

89
4.6: Hannah Hoch, Mischling (Half-Caste), 1924
Photomontage 4 5/16 x 3 ¼ inches
Collection Institut fur Auslandsbeziehungen, Stuttgart

90
4.7: Edouard Debat-Ponsan, She is not Drowning, 1898
Oil on canvas
Musée de l’Hotel de Ville, Amboise
Taken from Richard I. Cohen, “The Visual Dreyfus affair - a New Text? On the Dreyfus
Affair Exhibition at the Jewish Museum, New York.” In Art and Its Uses: The Visual
Image and Modern Jewish Society, edited by Ezra Mendelsohn and Richard I Cohen, p.81

91
4.8: Claude Cahun, Self-Portrait with Quilt, 1898
Photograph, 11.6 x 8.3 cm
Courtesy of the Jersey Heritage Trust

92
4.9: A decorative Hamsa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamsa

4.10: Traditional Middle Eastern Hamsa ring

Photographed by author
Property of Nadine Majaro (bequest from her Jewish paternal grandmother)

93
4.11: F. W. Murnau, Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror (1922)
Film still of ‘Orlok’
Taken from Hogan, Patrick Colm. “Narrative Universals, Nationalism, and Sacrificial
Terror: From Nosferatu to Nazism.” Film Studies 8 (2006): p. 100

94
4.12: Claude Cahun, Frontière Humaine, c. 1928
Photograph, 13.9 x 9 cm
Courtesy of the Jersey Heritage Trust

95
4.13: Claude Cahun, Que me veux-tu? c. 1928
Photograph, 23 x 18 cm
Courtesy of the Jersey Heritage Trust

96
 Photomontage prefacing Ch
III shown in the correct
orientation

4.14: Vitrine van den Bergh, c. 1930

Courtesy of the Jersey Heritage Trust

97
4.15: Claude Cahun, Self-Portrait in a barn doorway, 1930s
Photograph, 11 x 9 cm
Courtesy of the Jersey Heritage Trust

98
4.16: A curlew
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/curlew

4.17: Claude Cahun, Self-Portrait, 1914

Photograph, 17.8 x 23.6 cm
Courtesy of the Jersey Heritage Trust

99
4.18: Salome’s Dance
Detail of page from the Aachen Gospels of Otto III, 983 - 1002
Aachen Cathedral Treasury

4.19: Gustav Klimt, Judith II (Salome), 1909

Oil on canvas, 178 × 46 cm
Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Venice

100
4.20: Claude Cahun, Self-Portrait, c.1920
Photograph, 23.8 x 18 cm
Courtesy of the Jersey Heritage Trust

101
4.21: Claude Cahun, Maurice Schwob, c.1920
Photograph
Location unknown

102
4.22: Claude Cahun, Self-Portrait, c.1928
Photograph, 7.1 x 6 cm
Courtesy of the Jersey Heritage Trust

103
4.23: Claude Cahun, Un air defamille, 1936
Photograph of a surreal object, 14.9 x 9 cm
Courtesy of the Jersey Heritage Trust

104
4.24: Claude Cahun, Self-Portrait, c.1913
Photograph, 18 x 13.7 cm
Musée des Beaux Arts de Nantes

4.25: Cleo de Merode

Photograph

105
4.26: Unknown, Claude Cahun with black waitress, 1935
Photograph
Courtesy of the Jersey Heritage Trust

106
4.27: Claude Cahun, Untitled, 1939
Photograph, 24.4 x 19.1 cm
Collection Christian Bouqueret, Paris

107
4.28: Le Juif et La France, 1941
Exhibition Poster
Taken from Cone, Michele C. “Vampires, viruses and Lucien Rebatet: Anti-Semitic Art
Criticism During Vichy.” In The Jew in the Text: Modernity and the Construction of
Identity, edited by Tamar Garb and Linda Nochlin, p.179

108
4.29: Claude Cahun, Self-Portrait (in the doorway of La Rocquaise), c.1935
Photograph, 10 x 8 cm
Courtesy of the Jersey Heritage Trust

109
4.30: Cohenim hands giving a blessing, Date unknown
Decoration from a synagogue wall
Taken from Goodenough, Erwin R. Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period. Vol. VII.
New York: Pantheon Books, 1958. Figure 84

110
4.31: The Monstrous Races, 1475
Illustration from The Monstrous Races, woodcut illustration from C. van Megenberg, Buch
der Natur, Germany, fol. 284v
Taken from Amishai-Maisels, Ziva. “The Demonization of the ‘Other’ in the Visual Arts.”
In Demonizing the Other: Antisemitism, Racism and Xenophobia, edited by Robert S.
Wistrich. Routledge, 1999. Figure 27

111
 Claude Cahun’s objects of resistance

Allison O’Sullivan

A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of

Philosophy

School of Art and Design

September 2016

1
2
COPYRIGHT STATEMENT

'I hereby grant the University of New South Wales or its agents the right to
archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or part in the
University libraries in all forms of media, now or here after known, subject to the
provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I retain all proprietary rights, such as patent
rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all
or part of this thesis or dissertation.
I also authorise University Microfilms to use the 350 word abstract of my thesis in
Dissertation Abstract International (this is applicable to doctoral theses only).
I have either used no substantial portions of copyright material in my thesis or I
have obtained permission to use copyright material; where permission has not
been granted I have applied/will apply for a partial restriction of the digital copy of
my thesis or dissertatio

Signed

Date ..................... . . . . . . . . . . . .
AUTHENTICITY STATEMENT

'I certify that the Library deposit digital copy is a direct equivalent of the final
officially approved version of my thesis. No emendation of content has occurred
and if there are any ·nor variations in formatting, they are the result of the
conversion to digita at.'

Signed

Date
3
 CLAUDE CAHUN’S OBJECTS OF RESISTANCE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 5

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 6

CAHUN’S TEXTS 8

INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW 9

CHAPTER ONE: OBJECT THEORY 38

CHAPTER TWO: LITERARY WORKS RESISTING INTERPRETATION 77

CHAPTER THREE: THE OBJECTS OF 1936 112

CHAPTER FOUR: DEHARME AND LE COEUR DE PIC 158

CHAPTER FIVE: OBJECTS OF RESISTANCE 187

CONCLUSION 212

BIBLIOGRAPHY 228

4
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my initial supervisors, Associate Professor Alan Krell, and Professor
Susan Best, who supported me through the early planning and research stages of my
thesis; and my subsequent supervisors Dr Scotte East and Dr Michael Garbutt, who
assisted me in rethinking my theoretical framework, and who provided a large amount of
support over a very intense period of writing towards submission.
I would also like to thank Professor Maaike Bleeker, who very kindly agreed to meet with
me during a visit to Sydney. Prof Bleeker provided very insightful feedback on my
progress and made many helpful research suggestions in the areas of materiality and
object theory.
Thanks also go to the staff at the Jersey Heritage Trust Archives, who provided documents
and images throughout my research.
I would also like to thank my family for their support over the last few years.
Lastly, very special thanks to Chris Mitchenson, for all his patience, support and
assistance throughout.

5
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

MOORE, MARCEL, AND CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1929. UNTITLED. PLATE 1, DISAVOWALS.

CAMBRIDGE. MA: THE MIT PRESS, 2008.

MOORE, MARCEL, AND CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1929. I.O.U (SELF PRIDE). PLATE 9,
DISAVOWALS. CAMBRIDGE. MA: THE MIT PRESS, 2008.

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1936. UN AIR DE FAMILLE. JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST,

JHT/1995/00032/C. HTTP://CATALOGUE.JERSEYHERITAGE.ORG/

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1914. SELF-PORTRAIT, JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST, JHT/2003/00001/008,

HTTP://CATALOGUE.JERSEYHERITAGE.ORG/

MILLER, LEE. 1930 TANYA RAMM IN BELL JAR. VARIANT ON HOMAGE Á D.A.F. DE SADE, LEE
MILLER ARCHIVES.

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1925. SELF-PORTRAITS WITH BELL JAR, JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST.
JHT/1995/00027/O, JHT/1995/00027/P, JHT/1995/00027/Q, JHT/1995/00027/R.
HTTP://CATALOGUE.JERSEYHERITAGE.ORG/

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1916. SELF-PORTRAIT AGAINST GRANITE WALL. JERSEY HERITAGE

TRUST. JHT/1995/00026/P. HTTP://CATALOGUE.JERSEYHERITAGE.ORG/

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1920. SELF-PORTRAIT. REPRODUCED IN “CLAUDE CAHUN: A SENSUAL

POLITICS OF PHOTOGRAPHY,” GEN DOY, 2007. NY, I.B. TAURUS.

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1921. SELF-PORTRAIT. JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST.

CAHUN, CLAUDE. CA 1921. SELF-PORTRAIT. JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST.

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1914. CAHUN READING WITH “L’IMAGE DE LA FEMME.” JERSEY

HERITAGE TRUST.

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1931. FROM THE SERIES ENTRE NOUS. JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST.

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1931. FROM THE SERIES ENTRE NOUS. JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST.

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1936. OBJET/SOURIS VALSEUSES. ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO.

HUGO, VALENTINE. 1931. SYMBOLIC OBJECT.

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1936. QUI NE CRAINT PAS LE GRAND MECHANT LOUP, REMET LA
BARQUE SUR SA QUILLE ET VOGUE A LA DERIVE. JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST.

RAY, MAN. 1936. UNTITLED (EXPOSITION SURRÉALISTE D’OBJETS).

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1936. UN AIR DE FAMILLE. JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST.

6
REDON, ODILON. 1979. VISION FROM DANS LE RÊVE. BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON.

CAHUN, CLAUDE. SKETCH. JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST.

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1930. SELF-PORTRAIT. BIFUR MAGAZINE, 1930.

BRETON, ANDRÉ. 1935/6. JE VOIS J’IMAGINE.

RAY, MAN. UNTITLED (EXPOSITION SURRÉALISTE D’OBJETS).

DEHARME, LISE, AND CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1937. LE COEUR DE PIC (FRONT COVER).

RAY, MAN. 1931. LA REINE DE PIC (LISE DEHARME). PRIVATE COLLECTION.

BRETON, ANDRÉ. 1937. POUR JACQUELINE. PRIVATE COLLECTION.

CAHUN, CLAUDE 1936. LA NERF MA PETIT DENT. FROM LE COEUR DE PIC.

CAHUN, CLAUDE 1936. PREND UN BATON POINTU. JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST.

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1936. UNTITLED (LA DEBONNAIRE SAPONAIRE). FROM LE COEUR DE PIC.

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1936. LE COEUR DE PIC (BACK COVER).

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1936. LES ENNUIS DE PIC. FROM LE COEUR DE PIC.

JE NE VOIS PAS LA [FEMME] CACHÉE DANS LA FORÊT, IN LA RÉVOLUTION SURRÉALISTE,

PARIS, NO.12, DECEMBER 15TH 1929

CAHUN, CLAUDE AND MOORE, MARCEL. C.1940-44. TYPEWRITTEN NOTE, DER SOLDAT
OHNE NAME SERIES. JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST.

UNKNOWN. 1950. PORTRAIT OF MARCEL MOORE AND CLAUDE CAHUN. JERSEY HERITAGE
TRUST.

MOORE, MARCEL (?). 1937. GASGOYNE, ELT MESENS, ANDRÉ BRETON, ROLAND PENROSE
AND CLAUDE CAHUN AT THE LONDON SURREALISM EXHIBITION. JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST.

MOORE, MARCEL (?) DAY OF RELEASE 1945 WITH NAZI BADGE. JERSEY HERITAGE
TRUST.

RAY, MAN (1936) . L’OCÉAN GLACIAL. ANDRÉ BRETON, 1935. PRIVATE COLLECTION.

7
 CAHUN’S TEXTS

VUES ET VISIONS. MERCURE DE FRANCE, NO. 406. 1914

HEROÏNES. MERCURE DE FRANCE, NO. 639. 1925

AVEUX NON AVENUS. EDITIONS DU CARREFOUR. 1930

LE PARIS SONT OUVERTS. PARIS: JOSÉ CORTI. 1934

PRENEZ GARDE AUX OBJETS DOMESTIQUES! CAHIERS D'ART, VOL. 11. 1936

8
INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW

9
CLAUDE CAHUN: AN INTRODUCTION

Claude Cahun was a writer, photographer and artist who worked both in Paris and

on the Island of Jersey from the turn of the twentieth century until her death in 1954. After

her death her body of work slipped into obscurity until the rediscovery of a collection of

her photographs in the late 1980s. 1 François Leperlier’s 1992 biography of Cahun, Claude

Cahun: Masks and metamorphoses, 2 was the first major publication on her life and work.

Since then interest in her work has continued to grow. Since the rediscovery of the

collection of Claude Cahun’s photography and correspondence on the Island of Jersey

discussion and examination of Cahun’s work has produced a large volume of new

literature on the subject. Theorists from the fields of feminism, art history and gender

studies have all completed analyses of her photography and, to a lesser extent, her writing,

including Tirza True Latimer, Gen Doy, Rosalind Krauss, Mary Ann Caws, Whitney

Chadwick, Carolyn Dean, and Katy Kline, 3 whose contributions to literature on Cahun I

will examine in this introduction, in order to provide a context for my investigation of her

objects. An overview of this previous scholarship on Cahun will reveal the current gaps

in understanding her work, with particular regard to her object manufacture, the

1
Downie, L. (2005). Sans nom: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. Heritage.: 8–9.
2
Downie, L. (2005). 8. Leperlier, F. (2001). Claude Cahun: Masks and metamorphoses. London, United
Kingdom: Verso Books.
3
See Caws, M. A. (1992). The eye in the text: Essays on perception, mannerist to modern. United States:
Princeton University Press; Caws, M. A. (1997). The Surrealist Look: An erotics of encounter.
Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press; Dean, C. J. (1996). Claude Cahun’s double. Yale French Studies. Yale
University Press. 71-92; Kline, K. (1998). In or out of the picture: Claude Cahun and Cindy Sherman, in
W. Chadwick (Ed.), Mirror images: Women, surrealism, and self-representation. Cambridge, MA.: MIT
Press. 67-81; Knafo, D. (2001). Claude Cahun: The third sex. Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 2.1, 29–
61; Krauss, R. (1999). Claude Cahun and Dora Maar: By way of introduction, in R. Krauss (Ed.),
Bachelors. Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press. 1-50; Krauss, R. E., Livingston, J., & Ades, D.
(1985). L’amour fou: Photography & surrealism. Washington, D.C.: Abbeville Press Inc.; Latimer, T. T.
(2006). Acting out: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, in L. Downie (Ed.), Don’t kiss me: The art of
Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, London: Tate; Latimer, T. T. (2003) Looking like a lesbian: portraiture
and sexual identity in 1920s Paris, in W. Chadwick, T. T. Latimer (Eds.), The modern woman revisited:
Paris between the wars. The State University, USA: Rutgers. 127-143.
10
theoretical underpinnings of which have received less attention than her photographic

self-portraits.

Claude Cahun was born in Nantes, France, into a family prominent in symbolist

literature and leftist journalism. 4 Her literary talents were fostered in this intellectual

atmosphere, and she moved to Paris as a young woman where she wrote for numerous

newspapers and journals. 5 Initially influenced by the symbolists and the bohemian

aesthetic movement of England, in the early 1930s Cahun entered a period of intense

experimentation and political discourse as a new member of the surrealist group.

It is apparent that Cahun’s work moved through an interesting period in 1936, in

which she concentrated on the production of plastic objects and surrealist assemblages,

some of which she subsequently photographed or displayed. It is my belief that this phase

is particularly notable as it brings to our attention the point at which Cahun worked most

closely with several artists and writers associated with the surrealist group in Paris prior

to her departure for Jersey in early 1937. Cahun’s close association with the surrealists at

this time, notably André Breton, Benjamin Péret and Georges Bataille, also re-opens

speculation as to the (predominantly male) surrealists’ relationships with and attitude

towards both women and homosexual artists. As previously stated, analysis of Cahun’s

work to date has largely focussed on her photographic practice. Her self-portraits blurred

the boundaries of gender and identity and added layers and double binds to the process of

interpretation which has led to much debate between researchers of her photographic

works. As Amy Lyford points out, “in a society such as France’s that relied on well-

defined ideas about sexual difference and gendered social roles, changes in the

4
Downie, L. (2005). 8.
5
Chadwick, W., & Latimer, T. T. (2003). The modern woman revisited: Paris between the wars. New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. 165.
11
understanding of masculinity or femininity had the potential to alter the entire social

order.” 6 Prior to her work in the 1930s, Cahun experimented with the depiction of gender

in her photographs. As her photographic work shows, and as I will discuss in chapter two,

Cahun was aware of the power of the gaze, and its role in the delineation of subject and

object, particularly in relation to gendered objectivity.

The publication of her book Aveux non avenus in 1930 appears to have been a

cathartic moment for Cahun, allowing her to shift her emphasis from the personal to the

universal, and to take the universal more personally. At a time when Breton and other

members of the surrealist group, such as Salvador Dalí, were shifting their priorities

towards the exploration of the political potential inherent in objects, there appears to have

been a recognition by Breton and Cahun of their mutual concerns. Previously

uninterested in each other the two writers came together to work on the same projects

with the same aims. As art historian Sarane Alexandrian stated, “in his role of militant

activist, Breton acted as a true apostle, trying to persuade organizations of the left that

true revolutionary art was not simply art which made the most of a propaganda content,

but an art which took human desire into account with audacity and originality.” 7 Cahun

began to associate with these organisations of the left, and as a result quickly became

closely involved with Breton and his visions of inventing and disseminating a truly

revolutionary art form.

Katy Kline states in her essay In or out of the picture: Claude Cahun and Cindy

Sherman, that “though the mask is generally considered a tool of evasion or concealment,

6
Lyford, A. (2007). Surrealist masculinities: Gender anxiety and the aesthetics of post-world war I
reconstruction in France. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 2.
7
Alexandrian, S. (1985). Surrealist art. New York, NY: Thames and Hudson. 94.
12
Cahun’s many masks and manoeuvres reflect rather than deflect.” 8 Cahun’s use of the

mask as a metaphor for personal identity – a mask which reflects true nature, rather than

disguising it – appeared often in her writing, and many theorists have developed strong

links between her writing and photography on this basis. More prosaically, of course,

masks are also physical objects. In this thesis I will explore Cahun’s investigation of

identity in her plastic objects, and how her production of these objects acts as a fluid

extension of her oeuvre. Furthermore, this concept of the mask as a reflective surface,

obscuring the identity concealed beneath, goes straight to the heart of Cahun as a symbol

of resistance: in this case, resistance to objectification, and resistance to being read and

interpreted by others.

THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LANDSCAPE: PARIS BETWEEN THE TWO

WORLD WARS

The interwar France of Cahun’s active years was a time and place of rapid change.

Post-World War I a worrying neo-conservatism began to spread; fascism was becoming

a genuine concern throughout the region. Anti-Semitism, long a problem in Europe, was

also on the rise. 9 In Russia, the heroes of the left-wing intelligentsia had been replaced by

the autocratic Joseph Stalin. Disagreements over the direction Communism was taking

led left-wing groups that had originally come together to unite in the face of conservatism

to begin to bicker among themselves. They splintered into smaller, less effective groups,

8
Kline, K. (1998). In or out of the Picture: Claude Cahun and Cindy Sherman, in W. Chadwick (Ed.),
Mirror images: Women, surrealism, and self-representation. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press. 68.
9
Hobsbawm, E. (1995). Age of extremes: The short twentieth century, 1914-1991. London: Abacus. 112,
119.
13
or in the case of the remains of the French Communist Party (PCF) in the mid-1930s,

aligned themselves with a major party such as the Popular Front, which was seen as a

betrayal of communist principles by many of the surrealists. 10

The surrealist group had been politicised from their inception in 1924. One of their

initial efforts to engage with French politics was the publication of La revolution

surrealiste, a journal distributed from 1924 to 1929, the aims of which the surrealist group

described as “the systematic denunciation of bourgeois thought.” 11 While the journal was

intended to disseminate revolutionary ideas inspired by communism, it became more and

more preoccupied with the ability of violence, sexuality and perversion to provoke a

reaction in their audience, with issues dedicated to subjects such as the writings of the

Marquis de Sade. 12

Robert S. Short summarised the objectives of surrealist politics into three main

goals:

the reconciliation of a generalized spirit of revolt with revolutionary

action; the reconciliation of the idea of a 'spiritual revolution' and its
accompanying insistence on ethical 'purity' with the practical necessities
of political effective-ness; the reconciliation of an independent
revolutionary art with the demands for propaganda and didacticism made
by the communist party. 13

In 1927 the surrealists Breton, Louis Aragon, Paul Eluard and Benjamin Péret attempted

to reconcile surrealism with communism by applying for membership of the PCF.

However, once they had joined the party the PCF leadership consistently questioned

10
Short, R. S. (1966). The politics of surrealism, 1920-36. Journal of Contemporary History, 1:2. 18.
11
Short, R. S. (1966). 8.
12
Naville, P. (1976). La revolution surrealiste, numbers 1-12, 1924-1929. United Kingdom: Ayer Co
Pub.
13
Short, R. S. (1966). 3.
14
Breton’s insistence on calling himself a surrealist once he became a communist. 14 By the

early 1930s, the majority of surrealists had found the PCF too restrictive, and

consequently left the party. Aragon however remained a committed member, which

caused a permanent rift between himself and Breton. Their argument became the subject

of Cahun’s 1934 political tract, Les paris sont ouverts, which is discussed in chapter five

of this thesis. The last issue of La revolution surrealiste in 1929 contained Breton’s

Second surrealist manifesto, which was designed to restate the direction of the group and

affirm their commitment to collective political action, and which signalled the beginning

of dissent and further fractures between its members. 15 At this point Bataille formed the

new group Contre-Attaque, in order to work with other exiled surrealists such as Roger

Callois, Robert Desnos, and André Masson. 16 Cahun also became a member of this

association, and appears to be one of the few at this point who were able to move freely

between the estranged groups. 17

In the 1920s the revolutionary intellectuals of France consisted largely of liberal-

minded people of middle class backgrounds, sharing the same social background as the

original Leninists of Russia, held together by the rather paternalistic but well-intentioned

belief that it was the role of the intelligentsia to fight for the freedom of the proletariat on

their behalf, as the working classes possessed neither the means nor the education to be

able to free themselves. 18 The combination of political turmoil, both domestically and

abroad, with personal conflicts caused by strong opposition to communist party ethics,

14
Short, R. S. (1966). 10.
15
Gemerchak, C. M. (2003). The Sunday of the negative: Reading Bataille, reading Hegel. United States:
State University of New York Press. 10.
16
Gemerchak, C. M. (2003). 10.
17
Heron, L., & Williams, V. (Eds.). (1997). Illuminations: Women writing on photography from the
1850’s to the present (international library of historical studies). London, United Kingdom: I.B.Tauris.
92.
18
Gemerchak, C. M. (2003). 92.
15
contributed to the artists and writers active in surrealism throughout the 1930s developing

into one of the most politically charged creative alliances in modern history.

MODERNITY, MODERNISMS, AND THE OBJECT

By the early twentieth century, the advent of industrial modes of production and

distribution led to an exponential increase in the turnover of goods. This in turn created a

change in attitude to the value of consumable items, and the acquisition of possessions

had become central to the essence of modern life. 19 People of previous eras had displayed

an acquisitive nature, but now the phenomenon of gauging success by the constant

attainment and upgrading of consumer goods had filtered down through the middle and

lower middle classes to the working class.

The term modernity was coined by Baudelaire, in his 1864 work The painter of

modern life. Describing the modern man, Baudelaire theorised in his passage on

modernity:

And so, walking or quickening his pace, he goes his way, for ever in
search. In search of what?... He is looking for that indefinable something
we may be allowed to call ‘modernity’, for want of a better term to express
the idea in question. The aim for him is to extract from fashion the poetry
that resides in its historical envelope, to distil the eternal from the
transitory…Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one
half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable. 20

19
Trentmann, F. (Ed.). (2012). The Oxford handbook of the history of consumption. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. 413.
20
Baudelaire, C. (1964). The painter of modern life and other essays. London: Phaidon Press. 13.
16
Here, Baudelaire neatly described the predicament facing artists who wish to interrogate

the repercussions of modernity for both art and life: how to depict the transitory essence

of contemporary society through the traditional media of painting, sculpture, and

literature.

Breton and his associates during this period were united not by concerns over

stylistic methodologies but by a philosophical approach to the social and political issues

facing modern men and women. By the early 1930s this philosophical methodology

became increasingly politicised in response to the tensions rising throughout Europe and

the wider world. As these surrealists sought the answer to revolutionising modern life,

they engaged with ideas from theorists as diverse as Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and,

later, Theodor Adorno. Increasingly their focus shifted to manipulation of the objects

themselves, rather than merely depicting or describing them, as a method of highlighting

the central role objects played in the examination of modernity. Cahun’s strong political

views coupled with her strong interest in objects brought her into the surrealist group at

this time. The objects she created then utilised these tensions between art and modern

life, between substance and ephemera, in order to interrogate the truths of modernity and

to find new ways to communicate their intent to her audience.

GENDER, CONFUSION AND MODERNITY IN INTERWAR FRANCE

Following the First World War, French government and social policy was geared

towards removing women from the professions they had entered during the war’s labour

crisis and reinserting them into the home as wives and mothers. Repopulation was now

17
popularly seen as a French woman’s primary occupation and an obligation to her nation. 21

In Paris, as elsewhere in the Western world, ‘boyish’ girls and young women (garçonnes)

were decried for overturning the natural order of civilization. Mary Louise Roberts claims

that women artists such as Cahun protested (through exaggeration and parody) notions of

the modern woman in portraiture and dress. 22 These women artists believed that modern

fashions created not freedom, but the illusion of freedom: many women spent hours

conforming to the new bodily stereotype of la garçonne, including strict regimes of diet,

exercise and beauty therapies, as well as the donning of restrictive undergarments and

tight tube dresses. Writing on the author Collette, Isabelle de Courtivron also points out

that these ‘women of the Left Bank’ were socially, politically and artistically active “at a

time when French women had the legal and economic status of minors, and in a culture

that operated under rigid definitions of femininity.” 23 As Roberts elaborates:

gender was central to how change was understood in the postwar

decade. The discursive obsession with female identity during these
years reveals that a wide variety of French men and women made it a
privileged site for a larger ideological project: how to come to terms
with rapid social and cultural change, and how to articulate a new, more
appropriate order of social relationships. 24

Cahun’s period of the production of Aveux non avenus (1924-29, pub. 1930),

which coincided with this growing era of uncertainty over gender roles and relations,

predated her involvement with the surrealists; nevertheless, her interest in Freudian

21
Chadwick, W., & Latimer, T. T. (Eds.). (2003). 6.
22
Roberts, M. L. (2003). Samson and Delilah revisited: The politics of fashion in 1920s France, in W.
Chadwick, T. T. Latimer (Eds.), The modern woman revisited: Paris between the wars. The State
University, USA: Rutgers. 4.
23
de Courtivron, I. (2003). Never admit!: Colette and the freedom of paradox, in W. Chadwick, T. T.
Latimer (Eds.), The modern woman revisited: Paris between the wars. The State University, USA:
Rutgers. 56.
24
Roberts, M. L. (2003). 5.
18
psychoanalysis and debates on sexuality and the ‘modern woman’ was apparent in her

admiration and translation of such authors as Havelock Ellis, 25 a British sexologist and

social reformer whose publications on the ‘third sex’ and inversion shocked the

international public. 26 Cahun’s attempt to translate one of Ellis’ works is discussed in

more detail in chapter two of this thesis.

MODERN WOMANHOOD AND THE SURREALISTS

Feminist commentators are divided on the issue of whether there is a distinct and

eternal female experience, and such world-views have also informed different positions

on Surrealist women. Essentialist feminist writers such as Danielle Knafo and Jennifer

Shaw are critical in their assessments of surrealist practice. Knafo writing in 2001 stated:

It should not come as a surprise that the majority of Surrealist

representations of women reflect a strong, traditional masculine bias.
Women are exalted, feared, or degraded in the photographs of Man Ray,
Jacques-Andre Boiffard, Raoul Ubac, Maurice Tabard, and Hans
Bellmer. 27

Although kinder in her assessment of surrealism’s relationship with women, Shaw has

written largely in agreement. She claims that “even in the more radical circles of the

surrealists, this relationship between male artist and female muse predominated”, and that

25
Shaw, J. (2003). Singular plural: Collaborative self-images in Claude Cahun's Aveux non avenus, in W.
Chadwick, T. T. Latimer (Eds.), The modern woman revisited: Paris between the wars. New Brunswick,
NJ: Rutgers University Press. 159.
26
Shaw, J. (2003). 159.
27
Knafo, D. (2001). Claude Cahun: The third sex. Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 2.1. 35.

19
surrealism ultimately displayed a “failure to leave space for female creativity and female

desire.” 28 Mary Ann Caws offers the most succinct description of feminist reactions to

surrealist depictions of women: “We have been angry at the images; we still are.” 29

Shaw, Knafo, and Caws’ views stand in direct opposition to those of Rosalind

Krauss. Knafo claims that Cahun breaks with this surrealist practice of the depiction of

women because her photographs:

were self-portraits, works in which she was both artist and model, [and
which] subverted the social and sexual hierarchy in which the artist is
quintessentially male and his material female. 30

The post-structuralist art historian Krauss contests these long held views about the place

of women within surrealism and challenges many previous assumptions regarding

misogyny and sexism in her 1998 book Bachelors. In a chapter entitled Claude Cahun

and Dora Maar: by way of introduction, she claims that Cahun’s practice, far from

existing in opposition to male surrealist practice, instead illustrated the experimental

blurring of boundaries which existed in all surrealist literature, and subsequently in its art

and photography. 31 Krauss refutes the claim of many feminist academics that women in

the surrealist movement were expected to replicate male surrealist examinations of the

female as object. 32 She does this by elaborating on the so called fold created in identity

originally described by Marcel Duchamp, which can be explained as a blurring of the

borders between different identities – what she calls an alteration or de-classing of the

28
Shaw, J. (2003). 158-9.
29
Caws, M. A. (2006). Glorious eccentrics: Modernist women painting and writing. New York: Palgrave
McMillan. xv.
30
Caws, M. A. (2006). 36.
31
Krauss, R. (1999). Claude Cahun and Dora Maar: By way of introduction, in R. Krauss (Ed.),
Bachelors. Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press. 37.
32
Krauss, R. (1999). 17.
20
subject. With regards to this folding of identity she argues that artists who worked on both

sides of the line of this fold such as Cahun simply cannot be understood in terms of

essentialist feminist criticism. As she states:

[as they] are continually changing places, it is not possible to take such a
project [i.e. the work of the artist] seriously and at one and the same time to
proclaim the subject-position of the work’s instigator as stable and female,
as has been urged for Cahun. 33

Taking into account these differing interpretations of Cahun’s work, it becomes apparent

that both Cahun and her practice occupy a space which is difficult to describe or delineate,

resisting a clear interpretation using methodologies or theoretical discourses which

assume a stable identity position of the artist. It this inscrutability which I will examine

in relation to the notion of resistance, particularly as it applies to her objects.

Kristine von Oehsen is one of the few scholars to discuss Cahun’s practice with

regards to the design and creation of surrealist objects. Von Oehsen’s central thesis is

designed around her academic expertise in the literary accomplishments of Cahun with

reference to her family’s extensive avant-garde literary background, and Cahun’s

symbolist influences in this environment. In regard to Cahun’s associations and

motivations during the year of 1936 von Oehsen’s information is also concise and

valuable: she lists the dissolution of the contentious Contre-Attaque, a short-lived anti-

fascist movement in which Cahun was an active member; Cahun’s signed pledge to the

surrealist anti-fascist declaration; her work on the illustrations for Lisa Deharme’s book

of poetry Le coeur du pic (published in 1937); and the surrealist exhibitions in London

33
Krauss, R. (1999). 50.
21
and Paris. 34 All of the above provide insight on the inspiration for her practices during

the year of 1936.

Von Oehsen also provides an excellent chronology of what she refers to as

Cahun’s practice of ‘assemblages’. Over the ten-year period to 1936 she notes that

Cahun’s “self-interrogation becomes increasingly marginal.” 35 It is von Oehsen who

notes that it was specifically in 1936 that Cahun began to create plastic objects for

exhibition, rather than temporary objects for the purpose of creating photographic works.

Von Oehsen also provides a brief but important visual analysis of one of Cahun’s plastic

works, namely the Object of 1936.

In Gen Doy’s essay entitled Another side of the picture: Looking differently at

Claude Cahun, the author briefly explores the link between Freud’s notion of the

‘uncanny’, Cahun’s surrealist assemblages, and her essay of the same year. Doy links

Cahun’s “poetic espousal of the irrational” 36 with the political and social movements of

the time, and with the attendant aspirations to social and cultural revolution. In this thesis

I will build on Doy’s scholarship on Cahun by performing an in-depth analysis of the

objects which Cahun lauded, and by exploring the potential for a thorough analysis of the

political significance of their existence and the nature of their public display.

Mary Ann Caws has suggested that the later stages of surrealism, marked by a

“fluid interpenetration” such as we see in Cahun’s objects (and indeed as mentioned

above, is also to be found in Cahun’s analysis of the self, which for her is frequently

neither subject nor object) have been overlooked in academic examinations of the

34
Von Oehsen, K. (2006). The lives of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, in L. Downie (Ed.), Don’t kiss
me: The art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. London: Tate Publishing. 15-17.
35
Von Oehsen, K. (2006). 16.
36
Doy, G. (2006). Another side of the picture: Looking differently at Claude Cahun, in L. Downie
(Ed.), Don’t kiss me: the art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. London: Tate Publishing. 79.

22
movement in favour of the study of automatism, which is more easily explained. 37 This

emphasis on the earlier period of surrealism could provide us with an alternative

explanation for Cahun’s lack of stature within the surrealist canon: the period of her

closest involvement with the group has simply not received as much recognition in the

literature. At the time of its publication her incisive political tract of 1934, Les paris sont

ouverts, was highly regarded by her peers. By the 1980s her reputation had been so

obscured that the few commentators still referring to the tract assumed she was a man. 38

This thesis aims to investigate the power of the object in Cahun’s work through

an examination of how ideas about objects can be traced throughout her written and

photographic work, from a period before her association with the surrealists to the

moment culminating in her objects of 1936. A study of Cahun’s plastic works will yield

valuable information, expanding on interpretations of her entire oeuvre, and augmenting

understanding of the group dynamics that were fundamental to the work of those

associated with surrealist art throughout the era of its production.

CAHUN AND THE SURREAL EYE

I have briefly mentioned Cahun’s awareness of gendered objectivity above and

will return to this in greater detail in chapter one in a discussion of her photographic self-

portraits. Central to this notion of subject and object is the gaze, the physical embodiment

of this being the eye of the beholder. Cahun’s attraction to the symbolism of the eye is

apparent throughout much of her work, including Aveux non avenus. Jennifer Shaw

37
Caws, M. A. (2006). 14.
38
Doy, G. (2007). 9.
23
engages in an analysis of Cahun’s written work in relation to the eye from a surrealist

perspective, specifically through her reading of the images contained within Aveux non

avenus, in her essay Narcissus and the magic mirror. Shaw posits that Cahun’s major

literary work of 1930 is for the most part an interpretation of the classic tale of Narcissus.

Using both Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytical theory as well as literary analysis

Shaw provides an in depth visual analysis of the cupped hands which form the centre of

the collage featured on the frontispiece of the book. Shaw focusses on mirror imaging as

the basis for her discussion of the image. Shaw attributes Cahun’s use of the cupped eye

resting on a woman’s lips as symbols of “I”/”eye” and interprets this as a passive offering

of self to the viewer in an act of devotion. 39 This interpretation represents an habitual

gender construction of the relationship between subject and object on the part of Shaw,

in which she is automatically positioning the male as the active viewer and the viewed as

passively female. Shaw concedes that the image also forms a larger whole; the eye as the

clitoris, the arms as labia, and the mouth upon which they rest as anus, however Shaw

does not perform a further analysis of this imagery. As I will discuss in chapter three in

an analysis of the two objects which Cahun created for the surrealist object exhibition,

this image is also significant in that it highlights the surrealist phallic eye as feminised by

Cahun, a concept which Cahun made concrete in the production of her objects.

In another article entitled Singular plural: Collaborative self-images in Claude

Cahun’s Aveux non avenus, Jennifer Shaw investigates Cahun’s response to the social

status of women depicted within another of the collages contained in the 1930 publication.

In her interpretation of the ninth plate contained in the book, entitled I.O.U (self pride),

Shaw interprets the Russian nesting dolls as not only a symbol of postwar pressure on

39
Shaw, J. (2006). Narcissus and the magic mirror, in L. Downie (Ed.), Don’t kiss me: the art of Claude
Cahun and Marcel Moore. London: Tate Publishing. 39.
24
French women to begin repopulating the nation, but also as a comment on women’s role

in the creative process. She draws the conclusion that;

the only place for creative potential left to women in the dominant
discourse of postwar France was the potential to create a child…Cahun
and Moore recognized that the notions of creativity that dominated their
culture were based on idealized versions of romantic love that reduced
women’s ‘creativity’ to childbearing. 40

Shaw’s interpretation of this particular plate invites a close comparison to Cahun’s object

Un air de famille – a comparison which I will discuss in greater detail in chapter three.

While Shaw effectively interprets the collages which form the beginning of each chapter

of Aveux non avenus within her own paradigm, utilising in her analysis of the images

Narcissus and the mirror stage, I wish to extend these insights by investigating the

assertively psychosexual and political imagery contained within Cahun’s collages, and

consequently their importance as a precursor to the creation of her plastic objects.

IDENTITY, GENDER AND QUEER THEORY

Tirza True Latimer has written extensively on Cahun, again focussing principally

on her photographic work. Her research includes such essays as Looking like a lesbian:

Portraiture and sexual identity in 1920s Paris and Becoming modern: Gender and sexual

identity after World War I (with Whitney Chadwick). These studies are primarily

concerned with Cahun’s photographic art as a metaphor for her relationship with life

40
Shaw, J. (2003). 159.
25
partner Suzanne Malherbe (also known as Marcel Moore). Latimer’s essays are

contributions to the history of Cahun and Moore from a Queer Theory perspective.

Latimer is concerned with the couple’s relationship to the culture they inhabited socially

and professionally, that is both as a lesbian couple and as lesbian artists. Latimer frames

her judgment of Cahun’s relationship with her peers in suspicious terms: for example, she

claims that Cahun was able to earn “Breton’s grudging respect (despite his acute

homophobia)”, suggesting that there was a strained relationship between the two

writers. 41 It has been said that when Claude Cahun would arrive at André Breton’s

favourite café, dressed in a suit, with shaved head dyed gold, pink or green, arm-in-arm

with lover/stepsister Moore, Breton would drop everything and abruptly leave. 42 Katy

Kline echoes this impression when she states that “Breton, however, is said to have been

so put off by her assertively unconventional manner and appearance that he would

abandon his favourite café upon her arrival.” 43 It does appear that Breton initially found

Cahun’s outlandish attire and bold wit (evident in much of her personal correspondence)

disconcerting. However, the basis for these judgments is largely anecdotal in nature, and

this reading of their early relationship has coloured much writing on the subject and,

consequently, interpretations of Cahun’s contribution to surrealist politics as a whole. It

is incongruous that Breton would have continued to work with someone whom he found

abhorrent, and to whom he wrote:

You dispose of a very extensive magic ability. I find also – and don’t repeat
it – that you must write and publish. You know well that I think you are
one of the most curious spirits of these times. 44

41
Latimer, T. T. (2006). Acting out: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, in L. Downie (Ed.), Don’t kiss
me: The art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. London: Tate Publishing. 67.
42
Caws, M. A. (2006). 133.
43
Kline, K. (1998). 68. My Italics.
44
Leperlier, F. (2007). Afterword. Disavowals. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 213.
26
Cahun wrote to Breton shortly before her death: “I dangerously upset my mind for those

I love. Warning; you are among them.” 45 It is difficult to believe that a collaborative

friendship that spanned twenty years (and was cut short only by Cahun’s early death) was

based on anything other than mutual respect.

Of concern with regards to surrealism and homosexuality has also been Breton’s

profound distaste for ‘pederasty.’ 46 The cognate pédérastie is the word generally used to

describe male homosexuality in French which leads to some confusion when attempting

to understand his meaning in English. Whatever his opinion on male homosexuality,

Breton certainly appears to have found lesbianism less confronting than manifestations

of male homosexuality. Indeed, Carolyn J Dean asserts that within the surrealist group

“lesbianism served a complicated and sometimes parallel function to idealized

heterosexuality in the Surrealist imaginary.” 47 Indeed, although much of her analysis was

couched in veiled terms, it is clear in Cahun’s literary works that she considered herself

a kind of ‘other’ other: indefinable. This is crucial to the understanding of her object

manufacture, relating as it does to Cahun’s relationship to those who perceive her, and

speaks to Cahun’s attempts to renegotiate the traditional subject/object relationship.

45
Caws, M. A. (2006). Glorious eccentrics: Modernist women painting and writing. New York: Palgrave
McMillan. 140.
46
Schehr, L. R. (2012). Alcibiades at the door: Gay disCourses in french literature. California: Stanford
University Press. 31.
47
Dean, C. J. (1996). Claude Cahun’s double. Yale French Studies, 90. Yale University Press. 78.

27
THEORETICAL OBJECTS AND RESISTANCE

This thesis is not intended to provide a broad survey of Cahun’s object production

and photography, but rather as an examination of a particular period of Cahun’s practice

with relation to objects, spanning approximately 1930 to 1937, with some discussion of

her subsequent resistance actions on Jersey during the Second World War and how this

was influenced by her beliefs regarding the political and social potential of objects to

effect change. In order to explore Cahun’s plastic contributions to the surrealist movement

during this period I will therefore be concentrating on the two objects which Cahun

produced for exhibition while associated with members of the surrealist group. I will first

attempt to unravel the conflicting information available on each object. Secondly, while

academics and historians such as Doy, von Oehsen, and Shaw have made mention of

Cahun’s objects none, with the exception of Canadian art historian Steven Harris, have

made an in-depth visual or theoretical analysis of her practice in this area, or of the

motivation behind it. My efforts to augment research in this field have also involved the

investigation not only of her productions, but also the complex and increasingly tense

social and political environment in which Cahun was working and with which she was

always so deeply involved. Important to the interpretation of these selected objects is an

understanding that Cahun was primarily a writer and her photographic archive, which

now draws so much attention, was never intended for public display. It is my position that

while evidence of an interest in the importance of objects occurs early in her literary

output she had never intended to extend these theories to physical production until she

came into contact with the earlier attempts of surrealism to discover the essence of

objects. Cahun also made liberal use of text within her sculptures and assemblages,

28
generally utilised to expand upon a political or social issue being raised in the work which

will be discussed in detail with regards to each object in chapter three.

In order to read and interpret Cahun’s objects, and her writings about objects, it is

first necessary to formulate a methodology to support this enquiry. Hubert Damisch

states, “a theoretical object is one that is called on to function according to norms that are

not historical. It is not sufficient to write a history of this object.” 48. Like her textual

works, Cahun’s objects are embedded with layers of obscured meaning, and it is

impossible to develop an understanding of these objects without first teasing out the

complex social, cultural and political messages her objects contained. In order to do so,

one must think in theoretical terms, and as Damisch continued:

A theoretical object is something that obliges one to do theory; we could

start there. Second, its an object that obliges you to do theory but also
furnishes you with the means of doing it. Thus, if you agree to accept it on
theoretical terms, it will produce effects around itself. Third, its a
theoretical object because it forces us to ask ourselves what theory is. It is
posed in theoretical terms; it produces theory; and it necessitates a
reflection on theory. 49

Damisch’s contention that a theoretical object must be accepted on theoretical terms is

particularly relevant to Cahun’s objects, which communicate their meaning by resisting

casual interpretation: as I shall argue, the viewer must consent to the theoretical

discussion proposed by the object, before the object may be read. A theoretical object

thus becomes a model for a particular perspective. Part of this thesis is concerned with

understanding exactly how Cahun’s objects are theorised.

48
Bois, Y.-A., Hollier, D., Krauss, R., & Damisch, H. (1998). A conversation with Hubert
Damisch.October, 85. 5.
49
Bois, Y.-A., et al. (1998). 5.
29
 Mieke Bal has extended Damisch’s concept of theoretical objects in her

interpretation of artworks. Bal defines theoretical objects as “works of art that deploy

their own artistic…medium to offer and articulate thought about art.” 50 Thus Bal offers a

narrower interpretation of the concept of ‘theoretical object’ within the discussion of art

theory, in which sculptures become theoretical objects when they make you think about

art. While Cahun’s objects certainly do this, as did all the other objects in the surrealist

exhibition alongside which they were displayed, I argue that Cahun’s works went further.

Much like Damisch’s definition of the theoretical object Cahun’s primary purpose in

creating her plastic objects, as foreshadowed in her prior written works, was to force the

viewer to think by creating objects which actively resisted the traditional subject/object,

active/passive dynamic of conversation. In these objects Cahun begins to embody the

notion of objects as possessing a form of active agency and that they perform this agency

through resistance.

OBJECTS OF RESISTANCE

In contending that Cahun’s objects are ‘objects of resistance’ a definition of that

concept is required. I will argue that, according to the definitions of both Bal and

Damisch, Cahun’s objects are both objects that think and theoretical objects in that they

make their viewers think. The purpose of this, for Cahun, was for the object to force the

viewer into new modes of thought by offering resistance to traditional interpretation. If

the subject fought to impose a human interpretation upon the object, it would resist. If the

subject chose to ‘listen’ to the object it would share its thoughts.

50
Bal, M. (1999). Narrative inside out: Louise Bourgeois’ spider as theoretical object. Oxford Art
Journal, 22:2. 104.
30
 Francis Ponge was another French literary figure contemporary to the surrealists

whose work has only recently been re-examined. His great work, Le parti pris des choses

(The voice of things) was first published in 1942. In it he sought to minutely describe the

experiences of objects as they interact with, and are interacted with, by human subjects.

A contemporary of Cahun’s, Ponge began working on this concept at around the same

time as the exhibition in which Cahun’s objects were displayed. Like Cahun, during the

war Ponge became a member of the French resistance. 51 Ponge was also, like Cahun,

briefly associated with the surrealists, and joined the Communist Party in 1937. 52 The

timeline of his involvement with the group is such that his great prose-poetry work may,

in part, have been inspired by the 1936 surrealist object exhibition, and the concepts under

discussion at the time. Esther Rowlands is one writer who has since returned to Ponge’s

object poetry in any detail, and it is she who first described the objects in Ponge’s poetic

works as objects of resistance.

For Ponge, his battle was, in part, against the meaning of the words themselves. As Ponge

stated, in order for language to engage in resistance, then the writer must master “the art

of resisting words, the art not to say that is what it does mean, the art of assaulting [words]

and making them submit.” 53 Unlike Ponge however, neither words nor objects were the

enemy for Cahun. Cahun spoke of writing in resistance to herself, but ultimately Cahun’s

objects of resistance push outwards: they resist interpretation by the subject, unless the

subject is willing to submit to the rules of communication as defined by the object.

Furthermore, Ponge sought to break resistant objects by describing them in minute

detail, forcing their secrets out of them by imposing his own language upon them. Cahun

51
Rowlands, E. (2004). Redefining resistance: The poetic wartime discourses of Francis Ponge,
Benjamin Péret, Henri Michaux and Antonin Artaud. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi B.V. 9.
52
Eburne, J. P. (2008). Surrealism and the art of crime. United States: Cornell University Press. 245.
53
Rowlands, E. (2004). 55.
31
wished for her objects to communicate with their viewers, to engage them in critical

thinking by first asking them to throw their own preconceptions, their own human

descriptive and prescriptive language away. Her objects, in the first instance, are objects

of resistance in that they resist language, like Ponge’s. However, Cahun wished for a free

flow of information between subject and object, a de-privileging of both, in order for

mutual conversation to flow.

Cahun’s objects therefore only work in resistance to interpretation, whereas

Ponge’s objects work only when every drop of information has been dragged from them

with human language, and when their resistance has been neutralised. Ponge saw the

wilful resistance of objects as a quality to be subdued. Cahun saw possibilities in this

passive resistance that Ponge did not. Cahun’s objects of resistance are a liberatory force,

rather than an obstructive one. 54

While Rowlands has associated Ponge with these ‘objects of resistance,’ no one

has yet done so for Cahun. The importance of reading Cahun’s objects as objects of

resistance is that it opens up new possibilities for understanding her wider body of work.

As stated in earlier examples of discussions of Cahun’s work, theorists such as Knafo and

Krauss both agree that Cahun’s photographic self-portraits defy interpretation according

to considerations of the relationship between subject and object as understood in art

history and theory. Yet no theory has yet been formulated for Cahun in order to describe

an alternative to these readings. Like her objects, Cahun’s written works and self-portraits

also resist easy interpretation, layered as they are with complex language and symbols. It

is my assertion that understanding her objects as objects of resistance will also provide a

key to understanding Cahun’s wider body of work.

54
Rowlands, E. (2004). 68.
32
A NOTE ON TRANSLATIONS

The main texts by Cahun referred to in this thesis are Vues et visions (Views and

visions, 1914), Heroïnes (Heroines, 1925), Aveux non avenus (translated as both

Disavowals and Cancelled confessions, 1930), Les paris sont ouverts (which translates as

All bets are off, 1933-4), and Prenez garde aux objets domestiques! (Beware of domestic

objects! 1936). Other materials used include correspondence to and from both Cahun and

Lise Deharme, as well as various other notes in the Cahun collection housed by the Jersey

Heritage Trust. All of these minor sources only exist as untranslated source materials.

Aveux non avenus, Heroïnes, and Prenez garde aux objets domestiques! have all

been translated into English, and where these translations are available they have been

used as the basis for my interpretation of Cahun’s literary works. The other materials

included have not yet been translated in their entirety: sections of Les paris sont ouverts

and Vues et visions are available, having been translated previously by other scholars.

Wherever these translations exist I have made use of them in the first instance. Where I

have felt that the translation misses the original meaning of the work, I have provided

further commentary and explanation.

Cahun’s language is opaque and often obfuscatory, making translation a slow and

difficult process. While translation of the correspondence and other sundry notes was a

relatively simple process other sources, more literary in nature, presented some

challenges. In these works, contemporary events with which only Cahun and her

immediate circle were aware of are occasionally referenced, as well as colloquialisms

from the era, and political events of the day, which required a wide-reaching

understanding of both language and Cahun’s contemporaneous culture in order to attempt

33
translations. These elements are combined with a strong, poetic voice which renders any

literal translation of the text impossible. Cahun was an obscurantist, and readers in French

had to read closely in order to understand her original meaning. Thus, any great

translation will capture her meaning as best as possible while sacrificing some of the

content, and a good translation will provide at least a sense of her meaning, or as is often

the case with Cahun’s work, several, layered interpretations of the text.

The expertise and time required to translate these works in their entirety was not

possible so, for the purposes of this thesis, I have performed conscientious translations of

the most relevant passages. Where these translations are my own, they are marked in the

footnotes as such. Thus, any potential differences in interpretation that may arise due to

my translations are my own responsibility.

Cahun’s written works certainly deserve more examination than they have

received so far. The difficulty of teasing meaning from her words is very much in keeping

with the argument of this thesis: Cahun herself as writer, and her works, resisted

definition, as she moved between styles and genres, poetry and prose, fiction and non-

fiction, burying her meaning in layers of wordplay.

THESIS STATEMENT AND CHAPTER SUMMARY

This thesis positions Claude Cahun’s plastic objects as theoretical objects that

provide a key to reading Cahun’s life and work, including her literary, photographic, and

book illustrations. Cahun’s theorisation, production, and use of objects constructed them

as agents of social and political action. An understanding of her deliberations on the

34
nature and use of plastic objects, as well as gendered objectivity, is crucial to an

understanding of her methodologies and output as a whole. I will, in the first instance,

discuss theoretical frameworks which will help to further illuminate her position,

particularly with regard to object manufacture. Cahun’s early literary works, and her later

political tracts, all help to illuminate her stance on the theoretical possibilities of objects

and will be discussed at length. In the final instance, an in-depth analysis and discussion

of the nature of Cahun’s work with objects, in the fields of sculpture, photography and

political resistance in the form of performance will be undertaken, in order to provide an

analysis of the ways in which Cahun’s thinking on the nature and importance of objects

culminated in a new theoretical framework.

Claude Cahun’s theorisation, production, and use of objects constructed them as

agents of social and political action in order to disrupt the status quo. Reading Cahun’s

work through this lens provides the impetus to re-evaluate her oeuvre and her relationship

to the surrealists, and to the broader avant-garde. In particular, this focus provides an

opportunity to consider Cahun’s political activism as an important, integrated component

of her artistic endeavours. While the way in which Cahun’s photography and performance

of her personal identity blurred established gender categories has received significant

scholarship, this thesis argues the disruption of categories of subject and object provides

a useful framework for understanding her wider body of work. Cahun’s work with plastic

objects is an extension of her previous literary and photographic works, and her

exploration of objects culminates in her resistance action on Jersey during the second

world war and explores the notion of Cahun as object.

To understand Cahun’s object manufacture I will first attempt to locate it within

the academic and philosophical body of object theory. In chapter one I will begin by

examining past and current theories of the object, in order to draw out tensions relevant
35
to a discussion of Cahun’s objects and their manufacture. Prior to her experiments in

object production Cahun created a considerable body of literary work, including fiction,

poetry, modern prose and political tracts. I will conduct a partial survey of these works in

chapter two, with an emphasis on those writings in which Cahun discussed objects and

their significance. Cahun’s writing makes it apparent that her interest in objects and their

potential sphere of influence began in her teenage years and developed towards a working

theory which would come to the fore during her time of experimental object making and

political association with the surrealist group in Paris during the mid-1930s. These earlier

works suggest Cahun’s association with the surrealist group at this point was not only a

matter of political affiliation but also the culmination of more than a decade of Cahun’s

own thinking about the significance of objects.

Another important aspect of Cahun’s writing on objects was her use of gender.

Specifically, Cahun explored gender in relation to traditional understandings of subject

and object relations, both active and passive, and the gendered assumptions made about

activity and passivity of subject/object relations, both within artistic practice and the

wider social sphere. As explored in this introduction, her examinations of and

experimentation with gender identity have been discussed with relation to her self-

portraits, and some of her published works, by writers such as Latimer and Shaw.

However, her concern with gender has not yet been examined within the field of object

theory as it relates to her plastic practice.

In chapter three I will provide a detailed analysis of the two aforementioned

objects created by Cahun in 1936, in the light of this new understanding of her

conceptualisation of objects prior to their production. These objects are also extremely

important in their associations with her political beliefs which were always her core

concern. In chapter four I will also discuss Cahun’s apparent return to photography and
36
how she modified this practice by returning not to self-portraiture, but by capturing

images of objects and assemblages which stood in place of bodily matter.

Chapter five examines Cahun’s work with the resistance movement on the Island

of Jersey during the second world war, and the ways in which her object manufacture

synthesised with her political ideas to create concrete objects of resistance. In this way

Cahun’s objects played with the notion of resistance on more than one level: as actors in

a political resistance network, and as art objects whose meaning resisted traditional

methods of interpretation.

By re-examining Cahun’s work in relation to these objects I will demonstrate that

re-reading her other work, both literary and photographic, with reference to these

important objects creates new frameworks by which Cahun and her work can be

understood. Cahun as an individual had a lot to resist – as a woman, a lesbian, and a

Jewish intellectual, as a left-wing radical, and finally as a political prisoner. Cahun’s life

began in natural opposition to the status quo, and she continued to work from this

oppositional position throughout her life. If Cahun’s inscrutability is not examined as part

of her larger intent to employ defiance and resistance as a means of communicating her

ideas but is merely accepted as the personal quality of being mysterious and ultimately

unreadable, then her intent can only ever be partially recognised.

37
CHAPTER ONE: OBJECT THEORY

38
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS

This chapter sets out to survey theories of the object which inform discussions of

art and social action in the twentieth century, in order to further clarify the terms of

discussion of Cahun’s plastic object manufacture. There exists already extensive

scholarship on the nature of objects and their relationship to human society, therefore in

this chapter I have selected a cross-section of exemplary scholarship in these areas in

order to survey each of the theories which are most of relevance to Cahun’s own object

work. In this chapter I discuss key theories regarding mediation, agency, and the

dissolution of boundaries between subject and object. The ways in which Cahun’s own

work on objects was informed by various positions on objects that were circulating at the

time of their production is canvassed, as well as current theories of the object. In order to

establish a framework for the ways in which Cahun’s objects resisted, this chapter

introduces some key statements Cahun made about objects, and some of her work in

relation to selected understandings of objects. This discussion of objects is motivated by

Cahun’s own work throughout the 1920s and 30s, which repeatedly returned to a concern

with objects, specifically the importance of objects in the world, and the question of their

ability to communicate with and influence human subjects.

In this way, by following Cahun’s interests, the thesis constructs her plastic art

as ‘theoretical objects’ in the sense Mieke Bal and Hubert Damisch suggest, which can

both generate theoretical discourse and engage us in critical reflection. Put simply, in

general terms theoretical objects prompt you to think, but they don’t tell you what to

think. Hanneke Grootenboer frames this as, “not so much a method as an attitude, a way

of looking to art rather than at it, in order to understand what it does as much as what it

39
is.” 1 Cahun’s often contradictory or confounding stance on the nature and importance of

objects also revealed the tensions which exist between competing theoretical approaches

in various discourses on objects. Furthermore, while Cahun did not directly state her own

theory of the object, her plastic artworks can be understood as theoretical objects, that is,

as forms of thinking and reflecting about 20th century experience, and the means of

resisting alienation and exploitation.

The surrealist exhibition of 1936 was the culmination of several years’

investigation into the nature of objects, conducted by various artists and writers associated

with the group, most notably Breton’s musings on the power of object encounters in

works such as his novel Nadja (1928) and Dalí’s experiments with objets surréaliste and

symbolically functioning objects. Dalí also wrote several articles on the relationship

between subject and object between 1928 and 1936, and while Cahun does not explicitly

refer to these works as influences on her own, their effect can nevertheless be felt in both

her objects and her published tracts of the 1930s.

Marx’s stinging critique of modernity, in which he had identified that humanity’s

interactions and intrinsic worth were dominated by the concerns of capitalist methods of

production, establishes objects and their manufacture as central to modern life. Many of

Cahun’s works, for example, Un air de famille (a family resemblance) (1936) directly

referenced the experience of alienation and the exploitation of labour, in particular, of

women. In considering how objects figure in the modern subject’s experience of

alienation, the discussion in this chapter then follows various historical materialist

perspectives and their importance to surrealist practice. Cahun’s approach to objects

departed from a strict historical materialist framework in one key respect: objects are

1
Grootenboer, H. (2013). Treasuring the gaze: Intimate vision in late eighteenth-century eye miniatures.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 9.
40
capable of influencing the actions of the people around them, but according to Cahun

their influence is not purely of a physical nature; part of an object’s ability to fascinate us

lies in its secrecy, and that part of it exists beyond our comprehension. In this respect the

dual character of the object reflects the two key dimensions of surrealism, in both its

revolutionary critique of bourgeois society, and its appeal to the liberatory power of the

unconscious.

Writing after Marx, many theorists from the surrealists’ contemporary Walter

Benjamin through to Jean Baudrillard and later scholars such as Ulrich Lehmann would

continue to interrogate objects and their relationship to and influence on human nature

and society. The chapter then discusses German philosopher and social theorist Theodor

Adorno’s exploration of the object’s ability to mediate interactions with human subjects.

Both Adorno and later theories of the object, such as Graham Harmon’s object-oriented

ontology (OOO), also discussed in this chapter, can be used as a key to reading aspects

of agency in Cahun’s work.

Harman’s OOO bears particular relevance to the work of Cahun and surrealist

object manufacture in its attempts to de-privilege the subject within subject/object

interactions, an idea also pursued by Bruno Latour and Tim Morton with their discussions

of quasi-subjects and quasi-objects, and later by political theorist Jane Bennett whose

theory imbues objects with their own agency. My discussion of these various, often

competing theories of the object culminates in a suggested direction that one could take

in utilising these theories as a basis for understanding Cahun’s own work.

41
CONTEMPORARY CRITIQUES – SURREALISM AND THE OBJECT

The French art historian Sarane Alexandrian claimed in 1969 that “the object is

an even more typically surrealist creation than the collage.” 2 His assertion was made at

least partially in response to the success of objects in representing the beautiful/disturbing

dialectic within Breton’s ‘convulsive beauty’: the notion that true beauty must be

disconcerting in order to affect its audience. 3 This beauty, which was an attempt to

simultaneously evoke feelings of both attraction and revulsion in the viewer, was rooted

in Freud’s notions of the unheimlich, or the uncanny or uncomfortable. Breton’s

conception of convulsive beauty was also closely tied to his talismanic concept of the

‘marvellous’. As he stated: “the marvelous is always beautiful, anything marvelous is

beautiful, in fact only the marvelous is beautiful.” 4 Breton’s experiences in the flea

market, and reminiscences of childhood delight in collecting pebbles met at just this

theoretical point: the moment of shocked recognition of something new and strange, when

the eye alighted on a utilitarian, discarded or natural object, stripped of context, revealed

as something unique and, until this moment, unknowable. The feeling of the marvellous

meets the jarringly pleasant sensation invoked by discovering an object of convulsive

beauty. In Breton’s philosophy, only art which provoked this dissonant sensation was

worth creating.

Speaking on a lecture tour in Prague in 1935, Breton introduced the recent focus

of surrealist concerns which he termed the ‘crisis of the object’:

2
Alexandrian, S. (1985). Surrealist art. New York: Thames and Hudson. 140.
3
“Convulsive Beauty will be veiled-erotic, fixed-explosive, magic-circumstantial or will not be.” Breton,
A., & Caws, M. A. (1987). Mad love (French modernist library). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
19.
4
Breton, A., Seaver, R., & Lane, H. R. (1969). Manifestoes of surrealism. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press. 14.
42
 It is essentially on the object that the more and more clear-sighted eyes of
Surrealism have remained open in recent years…It is the very attentive
examination of the numerous recent speculations that this object has
publicly given rise to (the oneiric object, the symbolic object, the real and
virtual object, the found object, etc.), and this examination alone, that will
allow one to understand all the implications of the present temptation of
Surrealism. It is essential that interest be focused on this point.5

Breton had addressed this ‘crisis of the object’, and proposed an answer in the

creation of surrealist objects (that is, the concretisation of imagined or dreamed objects),

as early as the first surrealist manifesto (1924):

Man, that inveterate dreamer, daily more discontent with his destiny, has
trouble assessing the objects he has been led to use, objects that his
nonchalance has brought his way, or that he has earned through his own
efforts, almost always through his own efforts, for he has agreed to work, at
least he has not refused to try his luck (or what he calls his luck!). 6

The conception of surrealist objects, which, as an experiment in convulsive beauty, were

to be both “problematic and troubling (problématique et troublant)”, was lauded by Dalí

in his article on Millet’s The angelus (1933) as “surrealism’s most lucid and prophetic

moment” and which “proposed to realize as closely as possible, as a means of faithful

verification, delirious objects designed to be put in to circulation, that is to say to

intervene, to collide commonly, on a daily basis with life’s other objects in the clear light

of reality.” 7 Dalí called them delirious, Cahun irrational, but their essential character

remained the same: as Breton stated, “for a total revision of real values, the plastic work

of art will either refer to a purely internal model or will cease to exist.” 8 For Cahun, the

plastic work of art would become an object whose language needed to be interpreted,

5
Breton, A., et al. (1969). 257.
6
Breton, A., et al. (1969). 10.
7
Malt, J. (2004). Obscure objects of desire: Surrealism, fetishism, and politics. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. 87.
8
Bates, D. V. (2003). Photography and surrealism: Sexuality, colonialism and social dissent. London: I.
B. Tauris. 75.
43
before it could be understood by the viewer. Cahun believed this could only be achieved

by resistance to interpretation, a resistance to the natural instinct of its audience to ascribe

quotidian meanings to everyday objects.

In 1931, Dalí instigated an investigation into what he termed ‘symbolically

functioning objects’, an experiment which is discussed in more detail in chapter three as

an important precursor to Cahun’s own object manufacture throughout the period of

1935-7. Dalí claimed that art should be committed to what he called ‘the poetic autonomy

of things’ 9, and whereas Breton thought the importance of objects lay in their effect on

the human subject, Dalí thought objects mattered precisely because of their existence,

their ‘thingness’. 10 As I will argue, this point of view can also be found in Cahun’s work

with objects. Roger Rothman states that Dalí believed “the role of the artist was not to

identify particular things that best serve the subject, but instead to liberate all things –

especially the tiniest of things – from the minds that would control them.” 11 I will argue

that with her objects, Cahun attempted not only to free objects from the constraints of

their human subject, but to then use the freedom of her newly liberated objects to free the

subject in turn.

In 1928 Dalí described the beauty of mass-produced industrial objects, and

claimed that they displayed a “spirituality and nobility of the object that is beautiful in

itself.” 12 In 1936, in her tract Beware domestic objects!, Cahun herself would argue that

humanity’s complacency with regards to the power inherent in objects had led them to

ignore the intrinsic beauty of those particular objects which Marx described as

‘commodities’: objects manufactured and acquired for their utilitarian value only.

9
Dalí, S., and Finkelstein, H. (1998). The collected writings of Salvador Dalí. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. 80.
10
Rothman, R. (2016). Object-oriented surrealism; Salvador Dalí and the poetic autonomy of things.
Culture, Theory and Critique, 57:2. 186
11
Rothman, R. (2016). 186
12
Dalí, S. (1998). 59
44
 Influenced by Graham Harman’s theory of object-oriented ontology (OOO),

which I will examine in further detail later in this chapter, Roger Rothman argues that

these early surrealist objects are therefore best understood through the writings of

Salvador Dalí, rather than those of Andre Breton or Georges Bataille. Rothman makes

the claim that “the most object-oriented thinker of the Surrealist movement was Dalí.”13

Unlike Dalí and Cahun, Breton ultimately concluded that objects are enlivened by human

subjects interacting with them: that in and of themselves, objects are still ultimately

passive. 14 in Dalí’s writings “the human subject is understood as a mere thing among

other things in the world.” 15 This de-privileging of the human subject over the object is

something Cahun would also closely consider.

One of the objects Cahun created was a disembodied eye, floating between a cloud

and text. As discussed in chapter three, this object owes a lot in terms of its apparent

symbology to Dalí’s Un Chien Andalu of 1929. Dalí was particularly fascinated by the

eye, and he asked “what would an eyeball do if it were suddenly freed from the skull that

holds it and the brain that controls its movements? What if an eyeball were released from

the subject-object relation and set upon the world as one object among others?”16 In

Cahun’s eyeball, and the accompanying text, one can see Dalí’s concerns reflected. Both

Cahun and Dalí strove for what Bryant called a “democracy of objects.” 17

Dalí’s foundational work on the nature and importance of objects prefigures the

work that Breton and Cahun would perform with regards to objects as agents of social

change in the lead up to the surrealist object exhibition of 1936. Dalí’s influence on

Cahun’s own thoughts is never overly referred to in her own writing on the subject, but

13
Rothman, R. (2016). 180.
14
Rothman, R. (2016). 182.
15
Rothman, R. (2016). 179.
16
Rothman, R. (2016). 188.
17
Rothman, R. (2016). 188.
45
nevertheless can be traced through these important early works. As I will expand in the

following chapters, Dalí and Cahun’s ideas on the importance and autonomy of objects

continue to grow together over the next several years. Dalí also wrote in 1932 of

“Psychoatmospheric-anamorphic objects”, in which he described specifically surrealist

objects as “acting and growing under the sign of eroticism.” 18 As I will contend in chapter

three, Cahun also wished for her objects a kind of sensual communication much akin to

Dalí’s own, exhorting the viewers of her objects to touch them in the dark.

Rothman claims for the three protagonists of surrealism that “Breton’s idealism

incorporates things into a dialectically expanding subjectivity, while Bataille’s

materialism provokes the mutual annihilation of subject and object. Only Dalí’s approach

insists upon the ontological persistence of things outside of human subjectivity.” 19 Like

Cahun, Dalí concept of objects is democratic; he argues for the freedom of all objects,

human and non-human. Rothman goes so far as to conclude that, because of his theory of

the relationship between subject and object, Dalí should not ever have been considered a

surrealist. 20 In this Dalí’s involvement with the surrealist group also parallels Cahun’s

own, as Cahun was never truly considered a surrealist either, although unlike Dalí the

relationship between Breton and Cahun was never abruptly severed.

While it is apparent that Cahun’s own thoughts on objects certainly drew from

those of her contemporaries with whom she worked closely, it nevertheless stood as

unique. In order to understand Cahun’s objects one must understand the other theories,

both political and poetic, which informed Cahun’s thoughts, and much of her creative

output.

18
Dalí, S. (1998). 245.
19
Rothman, R. (2016). 193.
20
Rothman, R. (2016). 192.
46
MARXIST THEORIES OF THE OBJECT

An investigation of Cahun’s motivation in the production and discussion of

objects pivots on an understanding of her personal philosophies and politics. Importantly,

Cahun was involved in several groups with socialist underpinnings, such as the AEAR

(L'Association des écrivains et artistes révolutionnaires, or Society of revolutionary

writers and artists). Her slow disenchantment with Marxist groups in Paris was, as I will

discuss in chapter four, due to her flagging faith in the ability of many of her

contemporary artists and writers to adequately address social issues: specifically, how

contemporary modes of production (of objects in industrial manufacture) were

objectifying and exploiting large sections of society.

Cahun’s critiquing of objects bore, in some parts, close relations to Marx’s

critique of what he termed the ‘circuit of capital’, in which the non-owners, the working

classes, are responsible for the creation of objects which they will never possess. For

Marx then, objects were central in the alienation of the working classes in modern life, as

workers were themselves alienated from the objects which they produced. As Marx

claimed:

the worker cannot use the things he produces to keep alive or to engage in
further productive activity... The worker's needs, no matter how desperate,
do not give him a licence to lay hands on what these same hands have
produced, for all his products are the property of another. 21

21
Ollman, B. (1977). Alienation: Marx’s conception of man in a capitalist society. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. 143.
47
 Marx stated that the one thing all man-made objects have in common in terms of

value is human labour 22: that is, it is the interaction of humans with objects, in their

manufacture and distribution, which gives them value. As he wrote; “A use-value, or

useful article, therefore, has value only because human labour in the abstract has been

embodied or materialised in it.” 23 Marx was of course concerned with use-value in so far

as it pertains to the value of labour within the capitalist market, and thus with the working

conditions, lifestyles and recompense of men (and perhaps women) for their labour. His

concern was therefore of a material nature. He did however ponder the nature of the

human/object relationship as an expression of fulfilment of desire: “A commodity is, in

the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of

some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from

the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference.” 24

While Marx’s primary concern was with value in terms of commercial value,

nevertheless his definition is a starting point for the various surrealist attempts to

describe the nature of the relationship between human beings, and the objects with which

they interacted on a daily basis. Marx described what he called ‘useful’ objects as things

which were “an assemblage of many properties, and may therefore be of use in various

ways” 25 Nevertheless, Marx was also willing to concede that human beings were also

capable of ascribing value to objects that falls outside his own definition of use-value,

and that emotional attachment to objects could imbue them with a value which at least

partly stemmed from a non-commercial concern:

22
Marx, K. (1867). Capital: A critique of political economy. volume I: The process of capitalist
production. Retrieved from http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/marx-capital-a-critique-of-political-economy-
volume-i-the-process-of-capitalist-production. 46.
23
Marx, K. (1867). 46.
24
Marx, K. (1867). 42.
25
Marx, K. (1867). 43.
48
 A thing can be useful, and the product of human labour, without being a
commodity. Whoever directly satisfies his wants with the produce of his own
labour, creates, indeed, use-values, but not commodities. In order to produce
the latter, he must not only produce use-values, but use-values for others,
social use-values. Lastly, nothing can have value, without being an object of
utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does
not count as labour, and therefore creates no value. 26

The fetishism of commodities as described by Marx 27 is particular to the human

labour which is attached to objects, it is a human perception of differing forms of labour,

and the perceived skill and effort involved, which charges the object with not only value,

but also meaning. In terms of commodification, this has an impact on the objects’

perceived commercial value, however for an artist like Cahun this perception of the value

of human interaction with the object would result in a more ephemeral, philosophical

value which Marx had not considered. This ‘fetishism’ as defined by Marx is also of

particular relevance to art objects. Cahun and Breton among others in the group sought

as I shall discuss to declass art and culture; to create an egalitarianism not only of people,

as envisioned by Marx, but also a democracy of objects, in which subject and object

interact freely in a sensual, non-hierarchical fashion.

In a recent examination of Marxist theory as it relates to modernist investigations

of the object, Christina Kiaer has discussed the potential agency of objects as theorised

by the Russian Constructivists. Kiaer states that, unlike traditional interpretations of

radical art objects which seek to abolish bourgeois ideas of fine art and the attendant

commercial value of objects, that Constructivism instead sought “to harness the power of

the commodity fetish” 28 in the service of socialism. Kiaer suggests that, in a similar vein

to the surrealists, Constructivist objects can be used to inform and enrich the relationships

26
Marx, K. (1867). 47-8
27
Marx, K. (1867). 84.
28
Kiaer, C. (2005). Imagine no possessions: the socialist objects of Russian constructivism. Cambridge:
The MIT Press. 125.
49
that exist between people, rather than distance them from each other as is commonly

understood within the Marxist model. As she states, “whereas Marx laments that the

commodity fetish resulted in ‘material relations between persons and social relations

between things,’ [Constructivist Boris] Arvatov wants to recuperate thing like relations

between persons and social relations between things for the benefit of proletarian

culture.” 29

The founder of Constructivism, Alexander Rodchenko wrote in Paris in 1925,

“Objects in our hands should also be equal, also be comrades, and not black, gloomy

slaves like they have here.” 30 In beginning to formulate a theory of objects to serve the

Russian socialist ideal, Rodchenko identified what the surrealists also saw in their post-

war Paris: “black, gloomy slaves” in need of liberation. While Kiaer’s research

successfully discusses the idea of the power of an object to influence the human subject

and brings to our attention that the investigation of this power was not limited to the

research of the surrealists at roughly the same time, their political aims and individual

results differed remarkably. Significantly, critic Duy Lap Nguyen argues that Kiaer has

missed the point of Marx’s argument with regards to commodity fetishism and has thus

misrepresented the Constructivists’ interrogation of capitalism as a whole. Nguyen asserts

that the underlying idea of “the ‘socialist object’” was predicated on this

misunderstanding of Marxist theory, and under the New Economic Plan “merely served

to perpetuate capitalism by unwittingly affirming the fetishism of labour upon which

capitalism is founded,” 31 and as I shall argue, Cahun’s methodology and execution

29
Kiaer, C. (2005). 32.
30
Lavrentiev, A., Bowlt, J. E, Gambrell, J. & Rodchenko A. (2005). Experiments for the future: Diaries,
essays, letters and other writings. New York: The Museum of Modern Art. 169.
31
Nguyen, D. L. (2014) Imagine no possessions: the socialist objects of Russian Constructivism. Russian
Journal of Communications, 6.2. 222.
50
differed in several important respects from these other socialist studies regarding the

importance of objects.

Sociologist Professor Christian Fuchs has argued that Marx’s description of

capitalist exchange describes not only the trading of physical commodities, but also a

form of communication. Fuchs argues that this is described by the transferring of objects

from one person to another, as well as through the labour exchange and therefore

labourer’s relationships to, and communication with, the objects they produce. 32 Fuchs

suggests that the closest Marx ever came to discussing what Fuchs describes as modes of

communication, with relation to people and the objects they handled or transmitted, was

through the analysis of traffic or exchange in a capitalist economy. 33 Writing on Marx

with similar concerns in mind, Baudrillard claimed that:

the Marxist theory of production is irredeemably partial, and cannot be

generalised…the theory of production (the dialectical chaining of
contradictions linked to the development of productive forces) is strictly
homogenous with its object – material production – and is non-
transferable, as a postulate or theoretical framework, to contents that were
never given for it in the first place. 34

While Baudrillard claimed that Marx’s theories were “non-transferable,” Fuchs

contends that Marx laid the ground for a communication theory through his description

of the relationship between workers and objects, and that this area has been ignored or

dismissed by the vast majority of analysts in the intervening period.

While Fuchs’ emphasis is on proving a predictive analysis of modern media and

associated technologies, his analysis of Marxist communication theory is also relevant to

32
Fuchs, C. (2009). Grounding critical communication studies: An inquiry into the communication theory
of Karl Marx. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 34.1. 16.
33
Fuchs, C. (2009). 16.
34
Baudrillard, J., & Levin, C. (1981). For a critique of the political economy of the sign. United States:
Telos Press, 165.
51
understanding of a kind of ‘Marxist object theory’, which can be applied to Cahun’s own

theories regarding the object. Cahun and Marx were both concerned with the alienation

of workers, however by the 1930s Cahun’s theorisation differed in several distinct

respects. Where Marx saw the physical process of commodity production as the alienating

factor, Cahun declared that because the working classes were closer than other citizens

to the means of production, they were therefore closer to the true meanings of the objects

which they created and handled. For Cahun, the alienation occurred when layers of

prescribed meaning were attributed to objects, obscuring their truth. As she stated at the

zenith of her object manufacture in 1936:

In contemporary society, we are not all or always able to make ourselves

pliant, good conductors of liberating forces, and we surprise ourselves
sometimes in resembling more the little mimic than the grand
paranoiac…on all sides, our reality founders: the shackles of forced
labour, mind-destroying, the golden bridle of the passions will be broken
and broken again, perhaps before the fading of the photographs of
perishable objects which are displayed before my eyes. 35

While Marx’ theory of alienation is important to Cahun’s philosophy with

particular regards to the importance of objects and object manufacture, ultimately

Cahun’s own theory diverged from the Marxist canon. Writing in 1936, Cahun declared

that the worker was more likely to understand or develop an affinity with surrealist objects

than less, due to their handling and creating of objects on a daily basis. She stated that

workers alone were, at that point in the surrealist experiment, the only people capable of

understanding the intrinsic meaning of the objects in front of them, rather than any

symbolic value they may possess. 36 The idea of objects containing hidden meaning, or in

her words, speaking a “secret language” 37 which humankind would struggle to

35
Cahun, C. (1936) Prenez garde aux objets domestiques. Cahiers d'Art, vol. 11. 45.
36
Cahun, C. (1936). 45.
37
Cahun, C. (1914). Vues et visions. Mercure de France, no. 406. 272.
52
understand, surrounded as they are by layers of socially-prescribed meanings and actions,

is a theory which Cahun first wrote about in 1916. By 1934, Cahun’s beliefs on Marxist

theories of production and commodity fetishism became apparent through the publication

of her first major political tract, Les paris sont ouverts (All Bets Are Off), I will trace

Cahun’s interest in these ideas through her writings in the next chapter.

One of Cahun’s objects created in 1936, Un air de famille (a family resemblance),

is an excellent example of Cahun’s representation of working class women as producers

of “surplus value” within a Marxist definition, surplus value being a value within the

labour chain which is not paid for and can best be described as exploitation. The most

obvious application of this definition is in the analysis of slavery; however, this theory

can also be extended in order to be applied to discussions on the contribution that women

make as unpaid members of the work force, largely through home duties (an area which

Marx largely neglected) 38. While Marx made passing reference to the emancipation of

women and compared their former employment in unregulated industries to exploitation

and slavery, he tended to subsume the struggles of women into the general struggle of the

working classes. What Marx was lamenting was only the ‘capitalistic’ exploitation of

women (and children). Marx appears to have taken less issue with women being exploited

for their surplus value production in the form of domestic labour, with husband and

children as their employers and clients, and it becomes apparent through the study of her

body of work that Cahun had a serious problem with this exclusion.

Cahun’s Un air de famille consisted of the disembodied representation of a

woman’s body and could be interpreted as woman as a series of useful objects, giving

sustenance to her family, broken down into composite pieces in the process, and never

38
Vogel, L. (2013). Marxism and the oppression of women: Toward a unitary theory. United States: Brill
Academic Publishers. 161.
53
considered as a whole. While Marx has been accused of having ignored women in his

formulation of capitalist production theory, 39 40

Cahun also used her object manufacture

to reinsert women into the Marxist dialogue regarding objects and their relationship to

the working classes.

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AND THE OBJECT

While Marx was the progenitor of historical materialism, he was not the last to

examine the complex human relationship with objects on both a physical and

psychological level. Theorists from such wide-reaching disciplines as anthropology,

psychology, philosophy and the political sciences have since analysed the multifaceted

relationship which exits between human beings and objects, be it those needed for

survival, those produced as part of a wider network of production and supply, or those

that form part the complex network that exists between human beings and their desires.

Candlin and Guin’s Object reader provides several examples, from Jean Baudrillard’s

Subjective discourse or the non-functional system of objects, in which he explores, among

other things, the narcissism inherent in the collection of objects, 41 to Griselda Pollock’s

Maternal object: matrixial subject, in which she examines object theory in relation to

feminist discussions of the subject/object binary in gendered human relations, and

alternative, affective methodologies in the interpretation of objects. 42

Professor Ulrich Lehmann, an academic working in the field of material history,

in his paper The Uncommon object: Surrealist concepts and categories for the material

39
Hartmann, H. I. (1979). The unhappy marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards a more
progressive union. Capital & Class, 3.2. 1–33.
40
Hartsock, N. C. M. (1984). Money, sex and power: Towards a Feminist historical materialism. New
York: Longman Higher Education.
41
Guins, R., & Candlin, F. (2009). The object reader. London: Taylor & Francis. 42.
42
Guins, R., & Candlin, F. (2009). 484.
54
world, examines the increasing commercialisation of surrealist art in relation to their

primarily socialist values, and provides a unique perspective on the motivation for

surrealist object production at this time. Lehmann argues that the surrealist object

exhibitions in 1936 and 1938 were, in part, a reaction by a revolutionary group against

the increasing acceptance of their previously shocking aesthetics within mainstream

cultural production – to put it another way, that having become de rigeur, surrealism

sought a way to re-radicalise itself through a change in output from fine art, photography

and literature to, in Cahun’s words, “irrational sproutings of flesh” 43, as exemplified by

their plastic art. Breton himself stated at a lecture in Prague in 1935:

Perhaps the greatest danger threatening Surrealism today is the fact that
because of its spread throughout the world, which was very sudden and
rapid, the word found favour much faster than the idea and all sorts of
more or less questionable creations tend to pin the Surrealist label on
themselves. 44

Incongruously, at this point Breton was so outraged by the idea of “counterfeiters of

surrealism” for commercial purposes that he seriously entertained an idea by Man Ray of

introducing a surrealism trademark. 45 This idea was never put in to practise, most likely

because it did not solve the fundamental problem of commercialisation of their art, and

more importantly it was entirely anathema to the reformatory aims of the group. Of

particular relevance is Lehmann’s analysis of surrealism’s relationship with radical

politics, and their attempts to reconcile art as a commercial enterprise with their radical

political stance on capitalism and class. Several of those involved with the group,

including Cahun, sought to attempt this by reaffirming their stance on Marxism as a

43
Cahun, C. (1998). Beware domestic objects! (trans.) in P. Rosemont (Ed.), Surrealist women: An
international anthology. London: Continuum International Publishing Group. 59.
44
Breton, A., et al. (1969). 257.
45
Breton, A., et al. (1969). 258.
55
political philosophy. As Lehmann states, for the surrealists the most important focus at

this time was “Marx’s notion that under commodity production, relations between men

take on the form of relations between things. Social and cultural relations are therefore

indirect relations mediated through objects.” 46 The group’s examination of objects in the

light of Marxist materialism was the perfect opportunity to free themselves from previous

associations with mainstream culture and commercial success, and to re-insert themselves

into the political argument as agents of change. During the latter stages of their

experiment, the surrealists extended their exploration of subject/object relations with

regards to Marxist class and production theories in order to test the agency of objects. At

this stage, the surrealist stance on this appears to shift away from a true materialist

approach, as they explored a world in which objects no longer simply mediated

relationships between humans but were also capable of unmediated discussions between

themselves.

One prominent philosopher who had much to say on historical materialism and

Marxism was Walter Benjamin, who was conflicted in his views of the usefulness of

historical materialism as a theoretical framework. While Benjamin expressed concerns as

to materialism’s viability as a theory of social constructions, he also wrote shortly before

his death in 1940:

Class struggle, which for a historian schooled in Marx is always in

evidence, is a fight for the crude and material things without which no
refined and spiritual things could exist...There is no document of culture
which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a
document is never free of barbarism, so barbarism taints the manner in
which it was transmitted from one hand to another. The historical
materialist therefore dissociates himself from this process of transmission

46
Lehmann, U. (2007). The Uncommon object: Surrealist concepts and categories for the material world,
in G. Wood (Ed.), Surreal things: Surrealism and design. London: Victoria & Albert Pubns. 36. My
italics.
56
 as far as possible. He regards it as his task to brush history against the
grain. 47

The surrealists’ entire raison d’être was to “brush history against the grain,” to expose

the dishonesty of modern life through opposition to the status quo, as had been stated

repeatedly by Breton in his manifestoes, and it was this surrealist liberatory force inherent

in objects, rather than Marx’s assertion of their role in the oppression of workers, which

Cahun harnessed. In the First Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, Breton declared, “The case

against the realistic attitude demands to be examined, following the case against the

materialistic attitude.” 48 Realism was anathema to truth in the eye of many associated

with surrealism, who characterised the ‘real’ as a definition which was applied to objects

by human subjects, and claimed that ‘reality’ was in fact created by intervention and

intellectual corruption of the original subject matter. These surrealists applied this

definition to all forms of human relations, both with each other and with the wider world,

tackling such subjects as sexuality and traditional relationships, class, economics, conflict

and politics. As the 1920s wore on, the surrealists identified these disparate concerns as

one and the same, part of a larger, single ‘reality’ which they required to be deconstructed

in order to arrive at the ‘truth’, and indeed this endeavour formed the theoretical and

philosophical underpinning of the entire movement. Furthermore, by the 1930s the

surrealists had turned their sights towards those “crude and material things without which

no refined and spiritual things could exist.” By initiating an experiment into the nature of

everyday objects, the surrealists who worked on this project hoped to break down this

binary distinction between “crude” and “refined” objects altogether.

47
Benjamin, W. (1988). Illuminations. New York, NY: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. 254-5.
48
Breton, A., et al. (1969). 6.
57
 This statement by Benjamin, while written shortly after the fact, nevertheless

encapsulated the surrealist politics of object production during the 1930s: the idea that

objects are the key to both understanding the plight of the proletariat, and the means by

which they will be elevated from their current condition. Rather than drawing a distinction

between ‘crude’ and ‘refined’ objects however, the surrealists worked to dissolve the

distinction between the two, simultaneously elevating the status of one, and deflating the

value of the other, until a throng of objects of no fixed value appeared.

For the surrealists, objects were “portrayed as communicating and interacting with

each other without the need for human intervention.” 49 This dismissal of the necessity for

human intervention in order to activate objects, or to bring meaning to the relationship

between objects, was fundamental to the surrealist experiment. Cahun embraced this

experiment but took her objects one step further. By introducing gender into her objects,

Cahun was also able to examine the subject/object dichotomy through a discussion of the

objectification of women, and the traditional role of woman as object in both art and life:

passive, malleable, awaiting action to be performed upon her, to be ‘activated’ by the

gaze of the subject. Cahun also agreed with other members of the surrealist group when

she argued heavily against prevailing interpretations of Marxist aesthetics in Les paris

sont ouverts, which favoured the socialist realism of Soviet Russia, thereby denying the

creative agency of many practitioners of modern art and literature, and it was this stance

(among others) which moved her towards collaborations with other socialist dissenters,

including Bataille and Breton.

49
Lehmann, U. (2007). 36-7.
58
ADORNO AND THE DICHOTOMY OF SUBJECT AND OBJECT

As highlighted in the previous section, many philosophers and logicians after

Marx continued to build on this theorisation of the human relationship to objects, most

notably in regard to consumerism and advertising, a subject analysed by the Frankfurt

school, which included Theodor Adorno and his examination of what he termed the

‘culture industry’. Adorno’s early discussions of the mediation of relationship networks

between subject and object, which began in Kierkegaard: Construction of the aesthetic

in 1933, were formulated concurrently with and independently from Cahun’s own

mediations via objects in the mid-1930s, and parallel the development of Cahun’s own

theories of subject and object relationships. Adorno ultimately rejected the traditional

dialectical model as being too limited. 50

Adorno’s original discourse on the relationship between subject and object

followed a very prescribed pattern within the school of Hegelian analysis: the idea that

images or objects contained a fixed set of keys or codes, and once broken down into their

constituent parts could be rebuilt into a new framework of codes which unlocked new

meaning. Margherita Tonon describes this as a method “which would make visible a new

interpretation of the real.” 51 This theory is simultaneously reminiscent of the surrealist

stance on imagery and object making, which required a disassembly of apparent meaning

in order to present inherent truths, and in direct opposition to their stance on what

constituted the ‘real,’ in so far as while the surrealists with whom Cahun was working

were engaged in an experiment which sought to break down the prescribed constituents

of objects, both physically and symbolically, in order to recombine these parts into a ‘true’

50
Tonon, M. (2013). Theory and the object: Making sense of Adorno’s concept of mediation.
International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 21.2. 186.
51
Tonon, M. (2013). 187.
59
interpretation of the object, they were also leery of anything which purported to be ‘real’.

‘Real’ for the surrealist group stood in polar opposition to ‘true’, truth to the surrealists

being the essential kernel of the thing, while they saw reality as a veneer overlaid upon

an object which detracted from its underlying value. 52 For the surrealists, their

investigation into objects was an investigation of the inherent versus apparent meaning

of the objects we are surrounded by on a daily basis, rather than a mere methodology

whereby the constituent parts of an object could be taken apart like a jigsaw and

reassembled into an equally false object, or the false representation of one (in the manner

of Magritte’s pipe). The notion of interpretation of the ‘real’ did not sit well with Cahun

and others, such as Breton and Dalí, working within the surrealist oeuvre, as substituting

one version of the real for another would therefore be replacing one socially prescribed

falsehood with another. Adorno was also ultimately dissatisfied with this method, which

merely replaced a whole image with that of what he termed a ‘montage’, 53 and in this

respect Adorno’s speculation on this problem began to mirror Cahun’s, in that he stepped

away from this methodology to one which he termed ‘mediation’, and which concept he

first explored in his correspondence with Walter Benjamin in the 1930s. 54

Adorno’s rejection of traditional dialectics – because they contain within them a

dichotomy of attempting “to achieve something positive by means of negation,” 55 which

for him represented an irreconcilable methodology – was nevertheless contradictory to

Cahun’s interpretation of objects, including her observations on objects, recorded

throughout much of her literary work, which will be discussed in detail in the following

chapter. While Adorno sought to reformulate the discussion by introducing a new

52
Breton, A., et al. (1969). 4.
53
Tonon, M. (2013). 187.
54
Tonon, M. (2013). 186.
55
Adorno, T. W. (1990). Negative dialectics. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis. xix.
60
methodology he termed “negative dialectics”, Cahun sought to present objects as a series

of irreconcilable, impenetrable messages which in one sense could only be understood

by, incongruously, failing to understand them (or at least understanding that they cannot

be understood). While Adorno sought only to “free dialectics from such affirmative traits

without reducing its determinacy,” 56 Cahun wished to discard determinacy altogether.

This is both the heart of Cahun’s theory, and the biggest obstacle to discovering her

meaning. Cahun wished to discover truths through opposition, for as she stated, “I think

that progress is only made through opposition.” 57 Cahun’s experiment utilised such a

concept, by attempting to achieve something positive through negation.

In a letter to Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno also stated that “if the use

value of things dies,” these objects can come to be charged with new subjectivity, and

although the objects develop into illustrations of subjective intentions, this does not

eliminate their fundamental nature as objects. 58 Rather, the object becomes charged with

a new subjectivity, or what art critic and art historian Sven Lütticken refers to as a ‘quasi-

subject’. 59 As Lütticken states:

Adorno neither attempts to eradicate the object nor does he recoil from the
horror of the hybrid; the ruined object, charged with new subjective
intentions means, becomes precisely a quasi-subject, one that offers a
glimpse of a world beyond the false objectivity constituted by the quasi-
natural “necessities” ruling industrial production. 60

These ‘quasi-subjects’, a construct first suggested by Morton as an answer to some of the

issues raised by the de-privileging of the human subject in object-oriented ontology, is

56
Adorno, T. W. (1990). xix.
57
Cahun, C., & Leperlier, F. (2002). Les ecrits de Cahun. France: Jean-Michel Place. 538.
58
Adorno, T. W. supplement to a letter to Walter Benjamin, August 5, 1935, in Lonitz, H. (Ed). (1994).
Adorno/Benjamin Briefwechsel 1928-1940. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. 151–152.
59
Lütticken, S. (2010). Art and thingness, Part I: Breton’s ball and Duchamp’s carrot. e-flux, 13.
Retrieved from http://www.e-flux.com/journal/art-and-thingness-part-one-breton%E2%80%99s-ball-and-
duchamp%E2%80%99s-carrot/.
60
Lütticken, S. (2010).
61
useful in my examination of objects created by the surrealists for the 1936 Paris

exhibition. Adorno was also adamant that Hegel understood that subject and object were

sublimated into each other through mediation: “[Hegel] preserves the distinct moment of

subjective and objective while grasping them as mediated by one another.” 61 Adorno also

made reference to “an irrational unit of subject and object” 62 and claims that both he and

Hegel are adherents of the role of mediation in performing this, whilst claiming that the

subject and object can also remain separate and definable. By contrast, both Cahun’s

“irrational objects” and their subjects must, by her own exhortation, defy conventional

methods of communication altogether: her objects will only be able to “speak” if we can

“touch them in the dark.” 63 Cahun’s objects were designed not only to communicate, but

to do so, paradoxically, in a non-discursive fashion, though a sensual, embodied

engagement.

Adorno’s theory of mediation attempted to dissolve the dualism inherent in the

relationship between subject and object, by proposing a relationship of co-dependence. 64

This theory however was unable to escape the traditional definitions: it was still very

much about the subject’s actions upon the object, and that it is through the struggle of

interpretation that an object’s true nature will be revealed. Ultimately, Adorno’s theory

returned to the Hegelian trap he sought to avoid, by continuing to argue subjectively.

Cahun believed that the dialogue between subject and object must flow both ways if its

real meaning is to be discovered, and indeed, that sometimes the subject must be silent

and listen to the object before constructive meanings can be built. Cahun also built this

dialogue through sensual, embodied object relations, rather than just as communication.

61
Buchwalter, A., Adorno, T. W., & Nicholsen, S. W. (1995). Hegel: Three studies. The Philosophical
Review, 104.2. 257.
62
Buchwalter, A., et al. (1995). 257.
63
Cahun, C. (1998). 59.
64
Tonon, M. (2013). 188.
62
OBJECT-ORIENTED ONTOLOGY AND QUASI-OBJECTS

Object-oriented ontology (or OOO) is a relatively new theoretical school of

thought, whose key proponents include the previously discussed Timothy Morton, and

Graham Harman, who first coined the term “object oriented philosophy”, which he

published in Tool-being: Heidegger and the metaphysics of objects in 2002. 65 OOO’s

primary aim is to de-privilege the position of the human subject over the inanimate object.

While formulated after the period under discussion, this de-privileging is useful when

attempting to understand surrealist object manufacture. The instigators of OOO

philosophies, such as Harman, worked to deconstruct the anthropocentric tradition of

active subject/passive object dominant within Western Philosophical discourse. In Tool-

being: Heidegger and the metaphysics of objects, Harman theorized that the relationship

between subject and object is, to a certain extent, one of mutual influence, in that objects

under certain conditions may perform the more active role in the relationship dynamic. 66

Harman begins by splitting the primary category of ‘object’ into two parts,

renaming them ‘real objects’, and ‘sensual objects’. He then applies two further

categories, ‘sensual qualities’ and ‘real qualities’. By combining these different

categories, as real objects with sensual qualities, or sensual objects with real qualities,

and so on, Harman is able to argue that the qualities of objects combine in different ways

to create different effects within their relationship networks. This then allows for a deeper

understanding of the ways in which objects come to be, and of their ability to influence

each other as well as any active human subjects they may come into contact with.

Harman’s and the surrealists’ conceptions of ‘the real’ are different, as Harman gives the

65
Harman, G. (2002). Tool-being: Heidegger and the metaphysics of objects. Chicago: Open Court
Publishing Co. 20.
66
Harman, G. (2002). 296.
63
value of ‘real’ as objects understood by intellectual processes. As Breton had stated, this

is confused by the categorisation between ‘real’ and ‘true’: intellectually understood

properties of objects can be a smokescreen, an artificial, socially prescribed meaning,

which obscures the ‘true’ value or meaning of an object. 67

The surrealists’ struggle to discover and define the difference between the

inherent and apparent meaning of the objects goes to the heart of their definition of real

versus true. While the aforementioned surrealists with whom Cahun was working shared

Harman’s aim of de-privileging the human in subject/object relationships, the surrealists’

sought to move beyond the real and therefore would seem at odds with Harman’s

emphasis on the ‘real.’ Interestingly, Harman does move closer to the methodologies

employed by the surrealists, such as the imagining of the potential of objects. However,

in emphasising the real, Harman misses the opportunity for objects to break with the real,

which the surrealists felt was so important to a ‘true’ understanding of the importance of

subject/object relationships. Harman also stated in Aesthetics as First Policy that “vision

of holistic interactions in a reciprocal web . . . this blurring of boundaries between one

thing and another, has held the moral high ground in philosophy for too long.” 68 The

blurring of boundaries is precisely what these surrealists, and Cahun in particular, were

chasing in their investigations of object manufacture.

Bruno Latour had also attempted to address some of these concerns when he

formulated his theory of ‘quasi-objects’ 69. Put simply, in Latour’s definition a quasi-

object is a man-made object which is capable of performing an action. These quasi-

objects perform their true function when they come into contact with a human subject,

67
Breton, A., et al. (1969). 201.
68
Harman, G. (2007) Aesthetics as first philosophy: Levinas and the non-human. Naked Punch 9
(Summer/Fall 2007). 21–30.
69
Latour, B. (1993). We have never been modern. Harlow, Essex: Prentice Hall/Harvester Wheatsheaf.
51.
64
who motivates its potential through an interaction, be that sensual or intellectual. 70 As

such they stand in opposition to OOO’s argument for the total de-privileging of the human

subject, Latour’s quasi-objects requiring as they do activation by the subject in order to

fulfil their role as object. This can be used in order to consider a certain respect Cahun’s

notion of objects. Cahun wanted not only to broaden out the definition of interaction, but

also to reverse the polarity of this argument, so that her objects could perform either or

both the active and passive role in any encounter with a subject. Cahun desired her objects

to perform their required action in a sensual manner, and to be just as capable of acting

on the subject as vice versa.

Tim Morton’s further theorisation of the existence of quasi-subjects, as previously

discussed, further extends Latour’s theories in this field, and is useful when applied

Cahun’s work with objects. Morton came to the field of OOO through his studies of

ecological theory and environmental crises, although he also works using key theories in

these areas regarding subject/object interaction, insofar as they can be extended to apply

to a myriad of situations. During the course of Morton’s work in OOO he also devised

the concept of the ‘hyperobject’, which he used to describe complex and often semi-

abstract objects, such as global warming or plastic pollutants, in order to describe the

impact of such large objects. 71 Morton’s sub-category of ‘Interobjective hyperobjects’,

which he described as those which form relations between multiple objects, and which

are often only recognisable by the impression they leave or the impact they have, rather

than by any tangible or visibly single form. This sub-category of hyperobjects is

particularly interesting when compared to the concepts the surrealists struggled with:

modernity, sexuality, and class oppression. These concepts could all potentially be

70
Latour, B. (1993). 51-55.
71
Morton, T. (2010). The ecological thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 130.
65
described as one of Morton’s larger-scale hyperobjects: systems created by the complex

interrelationship between the subject and a network of objects, and visible only in their

wide-ranging effects. Morton’s hyperobjects present as a particularly intriguing theory

with regards to surrealist desires to work against largely abstract concepts, namely what

they saw as falsely prescribed realities. While not objects in the traditional sense of the

word, surrealist concepts such as ‘real’ and ‘true’ become hyperobjects in Morton’s

framework: they are composed of many parts, both concrete and sensual in origin, and

recognisable only by the system created by the interactions between different objects, and

the effects of these systems are both sensual and intellectual.

These theories, while attempting to break with the traditional analysis of models

of subject/object relationships, ultimately work within such frameworks, which are

difficult to escape. Cahun and her surrealist collaborators sought to explore the potential

to disintegrate these traditional models, and this was exemplified in their object exhibition

of 1936, which forms the basis of chapter three of this thesis.

LATOUR AND BENNETT, AND THE AGENCY OF OBJECTS

Latour proposes that objects have agency – that is, that they are capable of acting

upon, or influencing, their surroundings, and the persons who inhabit them. He ascribes

the previous lack of acknowledgement of this state to the definition of actors and agencies

which is most often understood, that is, that of the idea of action as being limited to

‘intentional’ actions, which can, of course, only be carried out by sentient subjects. 72 He

ascribes this to a basic understanding of ‘causal’ relations, but not a deeper understanding

72
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
66
of the ‘reflexive’ or ‘symbolic’ domain of social relations. By widening the definition of

actors to objects, he theorises that “anything that does modify a state of affairs by making

a difference is an actor.” 73 Latour is however quick to point out that objects do not replace

human actors, but rather supplement the action. 74 Latour’s ‘Actor-network theory’

(ANT), as he termed it, was primarily concerned with the importance of objects within

social networks, and sought to de-class the traditional relationship between subject and

object, in much the same way that the surrealists sought to de-class art and culture with

their Paris object exhibition of 1936. Latour’s ANT specifically rejected binary

interrogations of traditional subject/object relationships, and therefore notions of ‘true’

and ‘false’, preferring to place value on the complex interrelationships between actors in

a social network for their own intrinsic value. Latour is not particularly concerned with

the effect of gender within these dynamic systems, 75 as such his concept of agency is

largely undifferentiated. In this respect Cahun’s highly-attuned attention to issues of

gender allows a means to disintegrate the divisions between ‘subject’ and ‘object.’

In his essay of 2004, Why has critique run out of steam?, Bruno Latour suggests

that the vast majority of contemporary social criticism utilises one of two approaches,

which he terms "the fact position and the fairy position." 76 The fairy position is anti-

fetishist (in the anthropological sense of the word ‘fetish’, being a cultural artefact or an

object imbued with spiritual significance – a very important concept in light of the

surrealist 1936 exhibition and its inclusion of ‘fetishes’), arguing that “objects of belief”,

such as those situated within religion and the arts, are merely concepts created by the

projected wishes and desires of the "naive believer.” Conversely, the “fact position”

73
Latour, B. (2005). 71.
74
Latour, B. (2005). 46.
75
Lykke, N. (2010). Feminist studies: A guide to intersectional theory, methodology and writing. New
York: Taylor & Francis. 117.
76
Latour, B. (2004). Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern.
Critical Inquiry, 30.2. 273.
67
argues that individuals are dominated, often covertly and without their awareness, by

external forces (such as economics and gender). 77 He contends that social critics tend to

use anti-fetishism against ideas they personally reject; to use “an unrepentant positivist”

approach for fields of study they consider valuable: a situation which can only lead to

confirmation bias. 78 These inconsistencies and double standards go largely unrecognized

in social critique because “there is never any crossover between the two lists of objects

in the fact position and the fairy position.” 79 In this, Latour echoes the philosophical

dilemma the surrealists were attempting to address with their object manufacture, who

found similar binaries operating within French interwar society: the fetish operating as a

reductive symbol of ‘primitive’ races, creating difference (or at the least justifying

perceptions of said difference), for example, or the distinction and qualification of skill

between the working classes and the bourgeoisie. For the surrealists, working as they

were to dissolve categories both within art and culture, and within the wider sphere of

cultural and political discourse, this binary of ‘fact’ and ‘fairy’ describes in hindsight

exactly that which the group sought to dispel.

Contemporary political theorist Jane Bennett complements and extends upon

many of Latour’s theories of object agency, albeit working within a specifically political

framework. Bennett states that objects are essentially alive in their complex

interrelationships, and therefore possess an ability to influence change. 80 Bennett’s

central thesis revolves around the idea that much of the time, without consciously

realizing it, humanity (acting within a Western tradition) has a tendency to think of objects

as passive and stable things, and furthermore, to make the assumption that inanimate

77
Latour (2004). 238.
78
Latour (2004). 241.
79
Latour (2004). 241.
80
Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Durham: Duke University Press. 10-
16.
68
means static and non-acting. 81 Subsequently, humans unconsciously navigate their

environment under the assumption that they are the sole active subjects in the

subject/object relationship. In this fundamental respect, Bennett’s theory not only

resonates with the assumed dynamic which Latour found so troubling, but also with

Cahun and the surrealists’ object theory of decades earlier. Much like the surrealists did

decades earlier, Bennett wants to dissolve the dualism between subject and object.

Bennett postulates that objects are alive because of their potential to make a difference in

the world, to have an effect, to shape the web of interrelationships of which they are a

part. Conversely, humans aren’t sovereign or autonomous subjects; we are ourselves

composed of a complex web of active bodies and materials.

For Bennett, there are no such things as ‘objects’ or ‘subjects’ from a certain

perspective: they (and we) are never entirely passive or stable; they are crystallizations of

processes, and everything is in process, constantly undergoing transformation, constantly

experiencing modification. Therefore, according to Bennett, all matter is alive and, and

always in process, a state of flux: a complex, interwoven web of materials, all affecting

each other, competing, forming alliances, initiating new processes and dissipating

others. Humans are inextricably enmeshed in these webs that Bennett calls

‘assemblages.’ ‘Assemblages’ as a definition also has a strong association with surrealist

experiments in object manufacture, as it was a term frequently employed by the group to

describe their sculptures consisting of found objects. Perhaps, in hindsight, Cahun’s

constant arranging and re-arranging of her object constructions could be understood as an

attempt to visualise the vibrancy of her materials.

Bennett’s primary concern in her analyses of object agency is within the sphere

of modern politics, which is particularly relevant to Cahun’s period of association with

81
Bennett, J. (2010). 56.
69
surrealism, in terms of a closer reading of Bennett’s theories on how objects play a part

in political consciousness. While Bennett’s examples often operate on a far grander scale

(for example, a power blackout which affected 50 million US residents in 2003), they are

significant to my contention that Cahun’s objects from 1936 onwards functioned as agents

of political resistance, both in terms of the plastic art displayed at the Ratton Gallery

exhibition, and later the protest objects (notes) produced on Jersey during the Nazi

occupation. Bennett’s theories with regards to agency can be utilised to offer an insight

into the aims of Cahun’s objects in the Ratton exhibition. In Bennett’s own words, even

an object which has become an actor never acts entirely alone: “Its efficacy or agency

always depends on the collaboration, cooperation, or interactive interference of many

bodies and forces.” 82 Here Bennett concedes that, like Latour, she is not willing to

concede an active autonomy to any one object, however unlike other theorists who object

to the premises of OOO she does not qualify whether the “collaboration, cooperation or

interactive interference” occurs as a result of a relationship with an active or passive

subject, a network of other objects, or a combination of any or all of the above possibilities

– only that these actions are performed by other “bodies and forces.” In the context of

Cahun’s object manufacture this is a significant statement: the objects created by

members of the surrealist group in the 1930s were not intended as merely static objets

d’art, but as agents provocateurs, as actors expressing opinions and provoking reactions,

often visceral or erotic, in their audience, while the audience themselves project meaning

onto the works on display. In the surrealist experiment, object and subject were required

to collaborate, in order to extract meaning from the experience. One such piece exhibited

at the 1936 exhibition is the well-known sculpture by Alberto Giacometti, Boule suspendu

(Suspended ball). Originally conceived and created in 1931, it was chosen for the

82
Bennett, J. (2010). 21.
70
surrealists’ exhibition as an inclusion not only because of its obvious sexual imagery, but

also for its sensual quality which required its audience to imagine a kind of bodily

movement in which the still item rocked, in order to understand its intent.

Bennett’s description of objects also bears a striking resemblance to Breton’s

earlier analysis of the importance of objects within his theory of the ‘marvellous’. Her

epiphany at the sight of a gutter full of debris is similar to Breton’s childhood delight in

discovering the shape and texture of seemingly random pebbles on a beach, or random

items discovered at a flea market, which are then imbued with new meaning. Breton and

the surrealists had interests similar to contemporary object theorists in many ways: this

conception of the marvellous as it relates to objects gives them an agency, in that they act

on a person’s imagination, and therefore on their decisions to think or behave in particular

ways. As Bennett states, “Thing-power perhaps has the rhetorical advantage of calling to

mind a childhood sense of the world as filled with all sorts of animate beings, some

human, some not, some organic, some not.” 83 The childhood sense of marvel, which

Breton believed needed to be reclaimed by adults, is therefore also described and

elaborated upon by Bennett, in her claim that it can be activated by imbuing these objects

with agency.

ANTI-MATERIALISM

Many of the pieces in the 1936 exhibition, including both of the objects created

by Cahun, were a combination of plastic and found objects: everyday items reworked by

the imagination. Much like Bennett’s gutter debris, the surrealist trouvaille was not

simply a found object, but one that in some way defied explanation. It was frequently, at

83
Bennett, J. (2010). 20.
71
least initially, resistant to easy interpretation, and while it was rare and unique, it was

often so only in the eye of its beholder and was not necessarily of any commercial value.

In his essay Black materialism: Surrealist faces the commercial world (2007), Krzysztof

Fijalkowski states that the found object is “unlikely to be a refugee from the everyday

commodity sphere; on the contrary, it was viewed as a lost object from the underside of

progress, from a secret, ‘other’ part of capitalist exchange.” 84 Breton described the

discovery of just such an object in his 1928 novel Nadja. Finding himself in a flea market,

his gaze alighted upon an everyday object for sale on a table, the kind of object which he

described as capable of abruptly “admitting me to an almost forbidden world of sudden

parallels, petrifying coincidences, and reflexes particular to each individual, of harmonies

struck as though on the piano, flashes of lights that would make you see, really see.” 85

As Cahun herself wrote in 1934:

The most revolutionary experiment in poetry under the capitalist regime

having been incontestably, for France and perhaps for Europe the Dadaist-
surrealist experiment, in that it has tended to destroy all the myths about
art that for centuries have permitted the ideologic as well as economic
exploitation of painting, sculpture, literature, etc. (e.g. the frottages of
Max Ernst, which, among other things, have been able to upset the scale
of values of art-critics and experts, values based chiefly on technical
perfection, personal touch and the lastingness of the materials employed),
this experiment can and should serve the cause of the liberation of the
proletariat. It is only when the proletariat has become aware of the myths
on which capitalist culture depends, when they have become aware of
what these myths and this culture mean for them and have destroyed them,
that they will be able to pass on to their own proper development. The
positive lesson of this negating experiment, that is to say its transfusion
among the proletariat, constitutes the only valid revolutionary poetic
propaganda. 86

84
Fijalkowski, K. (2007). Black materialism: Surrealist faces the commercial world, in G. Wood (Ed.),
Surreal things: Surrealism and design. London: Victoria & Albert Pubns. 109.
85
Breton, A. (1978). What is surrealism? In P. Rosemont (Ed.), Selected writings. London: Pluto Press.
61.
86
Young, A. (1981). Dada and after: Extremist modernism and English literature. Manchester:
Manchester University Press. 123.
72
This statement so neatly encapsulated the surrealist ideals of 1936 that André Breton

quoted it in full in his 1936 essay, What is surrealism? Though speaking specifically

about art and its commercial exploitation, Cahun’s sentiments here sit at the heart of the

definition of anti-materialism: objects do not automatically negatively affect our

relationship with other people, but rather the value we place on those objects. Again,

Cahun and the surrealists struck at the notion of ‘real’ value, preferring instead the ‘true’

meaning of objects. The truth of these objects is, once de-classed, they are all of equal

merit, equally capable of producing a response, and being responded to.

AGENTS OF RESISTANCE

Also important to an understanding of Cahun’s object work, alongside mediation,

agency, and the dissolution of boundaries between subject and object, is the notion of

resistance. In this respect Cahun not only proposed an antithetical ‘synthesis’ of subject

and object, of mutually incompatible dialogues (at least within western traditional

philosophies), but that these ideas only worked when pitted against each other: their

mutual incompatibility was what created their mediation and allowed the viewer to

understand the secret language of her objects. The relationship between subject and object

existed not only between viewer and object, but also artist and object, and when artist

becomes object the lines blur further still. In formulating this, Cahun creates herself as

object. This self-in(ter)vention culminated in her protest works on the Island of Jersey

during its occupation by the Nazis, which I will analyse in chapter five.

Cahun’s ‘anti-duality’ approach became more than an object that contains its own

negation, in that it reached out to negate the viewing audience and their preconceived

notions. Perhaps it is best to think of Cahun as an anti-Hegelian sublation: the indefinable

73
yet perfectly understood act of destruction, preservation and transcension, simultaneously

existing in an incompatible synthesis of ideas. Cahun played the role of the sublating

mechanism herself – Cahun was the mediation, the object and the subject. Cahun’s role,

as she saw it – as writer, creator, actor – was not just to form a relationship with the object,

but to act as one who crawled inside the definition of the object in order to subvert the

entire network of relationships. It is these ideas that began to take root in her earliest

literary outings.

Through this discussion of significant theories of the object, a number of clear

dimensions emerged which are useful in approaching the object works of Cahun: objects

are central to modern experience; they not only mediate human relationships but may

have agency in themselves; central to Breton’s interest in the object to unlock liberatory

forces was the notion of the marvellous. While Marxist theories were no doubt important

to Cahun’s views, the assertion that objects produced by people contribute to their

alienation was an incomplete view for Cahun, who credited the workers responsible for

the production of these objects with the power to understand their inherent value and

meaning. Marx also failed to produce a complete model of the effects of this on women

in particular, his focus on capital being tied to production, rather than the surplus value

contributed by women in the domestic sphere. The circuit of capital, in which objects

stand in place of human communications and have the ability to mediate human

communication, sounds like a very Cahunian idea, however again Marx placed too much

emphasis on this action as a devaluing or alienating experience, whereas Cahun suggested

that the same interaction has the possibility, with the complicity of workers, to empower

the people involved in this exchange, as long as they are willing to ‘listen’ to the objects

under production and exchange.

74
 Both new materialism and OOO provide perspectives, which highlight the agency

of objects. However, the particular emphasis on, for example, the ‘real’ in Harman’s

framework is limited in relation to interpreting Cahun’s objects, concerned as she was

moving beyond the ‘real’ as it applied to the apparent versus inherent meanings of objects.

Nevertheless, Harman’s descriptions of relationship webs or networks, in which subjects

and objects are interlaced in a form of reciprocal action and reaction is a useful

perspective when considering Cahun’s objects. These relationship networks begin to

model the reciprocity Cahun argued for, however the OOO model seeks to de-privilege

the subject in favour of the object, whereas Cahun sought a model which achieved a true

symbiosis of subject and object, in which the power to communicate or activate flows

freely from one actor to the other.

Adorno’s theory of mediation is a valuable insight, however with regards to the

examination of Cahun’s objects, it continued to privilege the subject in its ability to

activate the object. Quasi-subject and quasi-object theories attempt to diffuse the binary

absolute, yet they still insist on the power of one to activate the other. The relationship

between subject and objects in all of these models ultimately still privileges one over the

other.

As I have outlined, the majority of these theoretical models argue, to a greater or

lesser degree, within the model of privileging or de-privileging either subject or object.

My theoretical model will therefore need to be an experimental one, which takes influence

from a range of relevant positions on the object. Cahun’s early writings, and the objects

which followed, also asserted a natural opposition to this binary method of critical

thought. Cahun’s writings on this subject were involved with teasing out the difference

between the apparent and inherent meaning of the objects she discusses, and in the course

of these deliberations it becomes clear that Cahun was seeking a method of describing
75
and interacting with objects which did not simply imbue objects with agency, but worked

to resist any stable theoretical model used to describe the relationship between subject

and object, rendering them always inscrutable, and ultimately resistant to interpretation.

I now turn to Cahun’s written works, to trace her perspective on objects as I continue to

establish the theoretical framework for her objects.

76
CHAPTER TWO: LITERARY OBJECTS RESISTING INTERPRETATION

77
INTRODUCTION – EARLY WORKS

In this chapter, I will examine Cahun’s writing in relation to her later object

manufacture. Cahun’s interest in the relevance of objects to human experience is traceable

from as early as 1914, long before she began to experiment with plastic art forms. Cahun’s

trajectory towards object manufacture can be traced through political motivations, early

literary works and published political tracts, and her forays into theatre and photography.

Her earlier literary works, in particular, reveal an interest in the value of objects, their

relationships to each other and their human observers. Although these literary vignettes

are a non-plastic art form, their writing serves as a powerful precursor to her object

manufacture of the 1930s, which culminated both in her contribution to surrealist object

exhibitions and the illustration of a most unusual children’s book. This chapter will also

examine the relevance of previously discussed object theories with regards to Cahun’s

developing awareness of the power of objects, including the theories of gender and

otherness that are so readable in her photographic self-portraits. In doing so I find that

there is a new, greater theoretical significance in her early works, both photographic and

literary, that reveals Cahun’s seminal contributions to object theory: in short, an entirely

new way of reading and working with objects and objectivity that was her own.

Cahun developed both a prodigious love of reading and a natural talent for writing

during her early years 1, and due to the considerable literary influence of her family and

their sphere of acquaintance, Cahun was able to publish fairly frequently, and from a

young age. Throughout the 1910s and early 1920s she produced various short works of

1
Monahan, L. J. (1997). Claude Cahun, in M. Mihajlovic, L. Shrimpton (Eds.), Dictionary of women
artists: Introductory surveys artists, A-I. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. 340-1.
78
both poetry and prose, which appeared in numerous publications including Mercure de

France, La Gerbe, Le phare de la Loire (a journal owned and edited by her father Maurice

Schwob, to which her uncle Marcel and great uncle Leon Cahun also contributed on a

regular basis), Le Journal littéraire, Philosophies, and Le disque vert, and the short-lived

review L’Amitie, 2 among others. Her contributions to the earlier publications were

frequently submitted under pseudonyms including Daniel Douglas and Claude Courlis,

suggesting an attempt to shift focus away from both her literary heritage and her gender.

While making these contributions to various periodicals, Cahun also created two more

substantial works, Vues et visions (1914), and Hêroïnes (1925), in which Cahun’s

exploration of the meaning of objects began in earnest. That Cahun wished to defy pre-

existing categories, already threatening to subsume her individual contributions, was

apparent from early in her career in her decision to assume these pseudonyms: it seems

that, even from a young age, Cahun was aware that her family’s name was as much a

curse as a blessing, closing as many doors as it opened. Their reputation as orientalists

and symbolists, the forward thinkers of the nineteenth century, made this particularly so

among the Parisian avant garde, who had begun their pursuit of the twentieth century

artistic concerns surrounding modern life.

At a time when dadaism and the precursors to surrealism were making noise and

creating a new artistic landscape, railing against the iniquities of war and its devastating

impact on Europe, Cahun seemed mired in sentimentality and poesy. As a young writer

she was viewed as ‘out of touch’, even conservative, despite her relatively open stance

regarding her sexuality, and her unconventional appearance – her shaved head and

adoption of men’s clothing appear to have been regarded as affectations, actions devoid

2
Monahan L. J. (1997). 340.
79
of any real substance or meaning, and her presence sometimes made members of the

Parisian scene uncomfortable. 3 This apparent inability to remain fresh seems to have

alienated Cahun from many of her contemporaries: Cahun referred to her own “symbolist

entrapment” in a letter to publisher Adrienne Monnier as late as 1928 4, and Monnier even

advised her during the 1920s that she simply was not good enough to publish. 5 Gertrude

Stein disparagingly referred to her only as “the niece of Marcel Schwob” as late as 1933,

in her work The autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, 6 Stein’s attempt to write an

‘autobiography by proxy’ of her partner Toklas. There is, however, no surviving record

of Cahun’s response to this rejection by such prominent members of the Parisian literary

avant garde. By the close of the twenties however, Cahun had made stronger connections

within the artistic fringe, struck up professional relationships with André Breton and

Georges Bataille, and published a photographic self-portrait in dadaist Georges

Ribemont-Dessaignes’ controversial Bifur in 1930 – the same year of the publication of

her semi-autobiographical book, Aveux non avenus. 7

After Cahun’s mother was institutionalized for mental health problems, Cahun

was sent to live with her paternal grandmother, Mathilde. It was from this branch of the

family that Cahun borrowed her final pseudonym, shedding her birth name of Lucy

Schwob. As Cahun herself wrote in a letter to the French writer, poet and journalist Jean

Schuster, she chose Claude Cahun “for the familial relationship with Leon Cahun, brother

of my paternal grandmother” and to distance herself from “the unbearable ‘Y’ of the first

3
Monahan, L. J. (1997). 340.
4
Cahun, C., Orlan, P. M., Mundy, J., Leperlier, F., de Muth, S., & Lhermitte, A. (2007). Disavowals: Or,
cancelled confessions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. xi-xii.
5
Latimer, T. T. (2006). Acting out: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, in L. Downie (Ed.), Don’t kiss me:
The art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. London: Tate Publishing.
6
Stein, G. (1997). The autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. New York: Modern Library.
7
Conley, K. (2004). Claude Cahun’s iconic heads. Papers of Surrealism. Issue 2. 1.
80
name chosen by my mother,” 8 implying a growing distaste for her connection to a family

so deeply connected with symbolism, among other issues. Cahun’s relationship with her

family was never stable: her family suspected that she was predisposed to the same mental

illness that affected her mother, and as Doy states, “Cahun wrote that the men in her

family thought that the opinions of women were of no importance.” 9 Her father’s uncle,

Leon Cahun, the prominent orientalist, was responsible for detailed geographical and

historicised fictional accounts of Egypt, Nubia and Asia Minor. 10 He travelled extensively

as part of his work, and his influence on his grand-niece is arguably traceable in such

works as Vues et Visions, with its grand narratives of travel to the great capitals of

Mediterranean antiquity.

SEXUALITY AND GENDER IN CAHUN’S LITERATURE

Jennifer Shaw has also suggested that Cahun’s involvement with symbolism was

not merely a result of her familial ties, but rather a natural fellowship for many of its

adherents: as she states, “the evocation of Symbolism and Aestheticism as models for

homophile reconstructions of antiquity in Vues et visions were a prelude to many of the

themes taken up later in Disavowals.” 11 Leperlier describes Cahun’s works as “a baroque

thematic (ambivalence, metamorphosis, theatricality, distancing) both Symbolist and

8
Oberhuber, A. (2007). Letter to Jean Schuster, in Claude Cahun, Marcel Moore, Lise Deharme and the
surrealist book. History of Photography, 31.1. 40. The “Y” refers to something previously stated in the
text of the letter, and is unclear from the partial transcription by Oberhuber.
9
Doy, G. (2007). Claude Cahun: A sensual politics of photography. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 30.
10
For example, Cahun, L. (1878) A prisoner of war in Russia: My experience amongst the refugees, with
the Red Crescent; or, The blue banner ; or, The adventures of a Mussulman, a Christian, and a Pagan, in
the time of the crusades and Mongol conquest.
11
Shaw, J. L. (2013). Reading Claude Cahun’s disavowals. United Kingdom: Ashgate Publishing. 12.
81
surrealist, filled with paradox, redundancy, rhetorical effects.” 12 Cahun’s interest in

social, psychoanalytical and medical constructions of homosexuality is apparent in more

than her symbolist-influenced works. Cahun was a great admirer of Oscar Wilde and

others involved in the English Aestheticism movement, and was naturally concerned by

his treatment both under law and in the press. 13 One biographer of Oscar Wilde, Joseph

Bristow, asserted that Cahun learned a powerful lesson from the prosecution of Wilde:

namely, that an artist in their position (that is, a homosexual) should not only avoid overt

revelations regarding their own personal sexuality in the course of daily life, but also

avoid the temptation to record too many of these secrets in their art, as autobiographical

elements of fictionalised accounts may then be used against them at any time. 14 This

desire to veil her lesbianism for her own and Suzanne’s protection can be seen in the title

of her book Disavowals, or Cancelled confessions, which is nevertheless regarded by

Jennifer Shaw and Tirza True Latimer as being at least semi-autobiographical. 15 By

disavowing the contents of the book, or ‘cancelling’ her ‘confessions’, Cahun gained

some leeway between the thoughts expressed in the book, and whatever her own may

have been. She remained safely impenetrable to her audience, while hypothetically laying

herself bare when she so chose.

Cahun’s personal investigation of the politics of personal identity and sexuality

also led her to an interest in the works of English sexologist Havelock Ellis, whose work

Sexual inversion (1897) she began a translation of, which was never finished. 16 Ellis’

efforts to demystify and, to a certain extent, normalize sexual difference were an

12
Leperlier, F. (2011). L’image premiere. Claude Cahun. Hazan/éditions du Jeu de Paume. 54.
13
Thynne, L. (2008). “Surely you are not claiming to be more homosexual than I?': Claude Cahun and
Oscar Wilde, in J. Bristow (Ed.), Oscar Wilde and modern culture: The making of a legend. Ohio
University Press. 89.
14
Thynne, L. (2008). 89.
15
Latimer, T. T. (2006), Shaw J. L. (2013), et al.
16
Doy, G. (2007). 180.
82
extension of the Freudian sexual psychoanalysis which served the surrealists so well in

their early investigations into sexuality and social mores, however Freud sought only to

demonstrate that every individual is a mixture of masculine and feminine traits and

believed that homosexuality was essentially a deviancy caused by the incorrect focusing

of the sexual drive in childhood, rather than an innate characteristic of the individual.17

Ellis went further by seeking to demonstrate that sexual identity is not simply a dualistic

concept. The opening passage of the book states: “In this particular field the evil of

ignorance is magnified by our efforts to suppress that which can never be suppressed,

though in the effort of suppression it may become perverted.” 18 Ellis’ assertion that the

suppression of homosexual desire could lead to perversion, rather than labelling the desire

itself a perversion, would not only have been reassuring to Cahun on a personal level, but

also spoke directly to her theoretical concerns regarding truth in the meaning of all things,

and the suppression of that truth by socially constructed and commonly held ‘realities’,

such as the reality Cahun was expected to perform as a hetero-feminine archetype.

Although he framed his theories in largely negative terms, Ellis was nevertheless

the first medical writer to profess the opinion that homosexuality was a genetic trait, rather

than an illness or proclivity:

Probably not a very large number of people are even aware that the turning
in of the sexual instinct towards persons of the same sex can ever be
regarded as in-born, so far as any sexual instinct is in-born. 19

Ellis draws a large distinction between ‘congenital inversion’, which he regards almost

as a form of psychological birth defect, or in his words, an “inborn constitutional

17
Rose, G. A.-S., & Fiorini, L. G. (Eds.). (2010). On Freud’s “femininity.” London: Karnac Books. 87.
18
Ellis, H. (2012). Sexual inversion. United States: Nabu Press. Vi.
19
Ellis, H. (2012). Xiv.
83
abnormality,” 20 and the more Freudian concept of sexual attraction to those of the same

sex, which he considers more spontaneous and incidental – and, like Freud, ultimately

treatable. Although progressive among his colleagues, Cahun must have found Ellis’

analysis limited and frustrating for this reason. His work also focussed on male

homosexuality only, and Ellis still made frequent reference to ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’

people, employing a medicalised binary in his diagnosis of difference, as if the differences

to which he referred could be treated, or even ‘cured’. Ellis persistently referred to the

examples in his book as ‘cases’, and so while he sought to explain and bring into the open

such differences, he did not seek to justify or normalize the behaviours of those about

whom he wrote. Furthermore, he referred to the “sexual secrecy of life” as “disastrous” 21,

yet many homosexuals who found themselves in the same circumstances as Cahun would

have had to live in such secrecy. While sodomy had been decriminalised by omission (i.e.

the removal of legislation criminalising homosexual acts) in the French Penal Code of

1791, homosexuality was still considered morally and ethically bankrupt, and openly

homosexual men and women were often discriminated against through inequitable

application of public decency laws. 22 In contrast to the prevailing attitudes towards

homosexuality, Ellis wrote that “Sex lies at the root of life, and we can never learn to

reverence life until we know how to understand sex.” 23 Cahun’s interest in this area was

clearly personal, and was exemplified in much of her writing. Her struggle for personal

identity is often discussed in relation to her self-portrait photography, however Cahun

freely explored sexuality in all of her works, some examples masquerading as

heterosexual love, others more obscured in their meaning, but none of them idealised

20
Ellis, H. (2012). 1.
21
Ellis, H. (2012). Vii.
22
Garrity, J. (2006). Mary Butts's 'Fanatical Pédérastie': Queer urban life in 1920s London and Paris, in L.
Doan, J. Garrity (Eds.), Sapphic modernities: sexuality, women, and national culture. USA: Palgrave
Macmillan. 242.
23
Ellis, H. (2012). X.
84
representations of infatuation or the popularised, romantic notion of ‘true love’. Even

before her association with the surrealists Cahun was of the same mind as Breton who

saw the heterosexual, romantic love idealised by popular culture as anathema to real love,

or as he described it in 1937, “mad love.” 24 Cahun’s cynicism regarding the ideation of

sexual attraction, love and marriage was apparent from the outset, and is obvious in the

often ambiguous, amorphous sensuality of Vues et visions, Heroïnes and Disavowals.

VUES ET VISIONS

Among Cahun’s earliest published works, Vues et visions first appeared in

serialised form in Mercure de France in 1914, when Cahun was only eighteen years of

age, before being published in its entirety as a book in 1919 with illustrations by Marcel

Moore. A literary diptych, the narrative in this work shifts between the perspectives of

two travellers: one local, French, observing everyday life with a jaded sense of whimsy;

the other a traveller of exotic lands, in search of elegance, excitement and sophistication.

However hard Cahun fought to get away from her literary roots, both observers speak in

strongly symbolist language: every object, figure, movement, is a metaphor for something

grander, representative of a larger concept than the spectacle immediately described.

Vues et visions opens in the seaside resort town of Le Croisic, the location of the

Schwob family’s holiday home. The piece is written as a series of short vignettes which

move between the two observers, one holidaying in the coastal village, the other

24
In Mad love (1937) Breton explores how the circumstances that led to his discovery of love, of
Jacqueline Lamba, of found objects in the flea market, of phrases and inspiration for his poetry are
dictated by desire and by delirium.
85
luxuriating in the spectacles of the heart of great European cities. One character seeks

solitude and rest; the other, exoticism and excitement. The Schwob family often stayed

in an impressive waterfront terrace on the Quai de la petite chambre in Le Croisic

overlooking (as its name suggests) a small harbour full of chaloupes, or dinghies. The

opening vignettes in the Le Croisic of Vues et visions include references to little fishing

boats making their way to the 19th century poissonerie, or fish market, crews laughing

and calling to each other, late night fights among the sailors and drunks, the smells of fish

and seaweed wafting in through windows, while the sea breezes stirred the curtains, sights

and sounds that Cahun herself is likely to have experienced first-hand.

The ‘views’ of her Le Croisic observer mingle with those of the international

traveller, confusing and transforming their observations into ‘visions’: the sweeping trail

of a woman’s dress in Rome becomes a sail on the choppy seas off the Breton coast; the

sails of the little boats become rays of light at dawn, and their boats seashells rolling in

the waves. The roughening sea enacts Achilles “avenging the death of Patroclus” 25,

before the sea itself metamorphoses into a fine Italian wine. Vues et visions is also filled

with contradictions and oxymorons, such as the passage entitled “Vague and precise”, in

which a child is described near an “equivocal statue” 26, determinedly separate entities and

at the same time confused and intermingled in the eye of the beholder. Cahun constructed

deliberate obfuscations, which formed the basis for all of her work: defying category,

denying binary definitions. Cahun’s treatment of the objects confused their objectivity

without denying it and seemed to hint at the idea that there is no such thing as an objective

truth, a theme that appeared throughout her entire body of work. Through her Le Croisic

narrator, she declared:

25
Cahun, C. (1914). Vues et visions. Mercure de France, no. 406. 265.
26
Cahun, C. (1914). 262.
86
 If I knew how to paint, I would choose this blue veil, half deployed, and
its ambiguous poses…

but the skilful artist should be able to complete [their task] without a
model. 27

At this point, Cahun is stating that a true artist does not need to imitate life –

indeed, that anyone who attempts to do so (which is the subject of this entire vignette) is

doomed to find that their efforts fall short. Cahun’s character repeatedly attempts to

recreate her ocean view, only to chastise herself for making the wrong marks, for not

being able to capture the reality of the objects before her. Cahun’s search for ‘truth’ in

objects and their representation is revealed: not only is she frustrated by her lack of ability

to accurately render an honest depiction of the scene before her, this frustration becomes

an acknowledgement of the ultimate futility of attempting the deception of mere

‘representation’ in the first instance. No image of an object can truly be ‘real’ for the

image is only a poor reproduction of the object itself. These ideas find further traction in

later works such as Heroïnes, in which Cahun also discussed the notion that all artists

merely create representation of reality, rather than reality itself. Magritte’s The treachery

of images, completed in 1929, which contains the now famous statement “This is not a

pipe.” 28 is the shining standard for this school of thought, which was very much

influenced by surrealist investigations into the nature of reality throughout the 1920s,

which they carried out at the Bureau of Surrealist Research in Paris between 1924-25. 29

At the end of it all, neither of Cahun’s world-weary travellers is satisfied with

their lot. One finds that everything is dull. The other discovers one glorious spectacle after

27
Cahun, C. (1914). 276.
28
As it is more commonly known in the original French, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe.”
29
Balakian, A. (1987). Surrealism: The road to the absolute. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 144.
87
another, only to be dissatisfied and disappointed by each in its turn. Neither quite reach

the heights of the sensations that they both crave. Ultimately the problem lies within both

spectators: they expect too much from the external world and turn themselves from the

subjects of their own internal monologues into passive objects trapped within their own

existence, failing to understand that self-determination is what will bring them

satisfaction that they so crave. In laying the blame on external factors for their

unhappiness, they will never be happy. Everyone and everything else is either too quiet

or too loud, and rather than simply experiencing life for the sake of it, or taking definitive

action to change their circumstances, they pile expectations upon external systems that

can never be satisfied, then leave feeling oddly disappointed. Viewed through this lens,

Vues et visions can also be seen as an early expression of her views on commodity

fetishism, a position Cahun held in common with the surrealists. As a comment on

modernity and commodity, Vues et visions also goes some way to explaining Cahun’s

trajectory towards the surrealist group in the 1930s, where so many of her ideas, here seen

in their earliest form, became central to the debate engendered by the politicisation of

surrealist object manufacture.

While no one yet has attempted a full English translation, it is worthy of

consideration in relation to her later works, particularly in regard to her object

manufacture. At a point when the unnamed Le Croisic character is musing on the

language and form of hieroglyphs, she begins to contemplate her observations in the

abstract, and her reflections suddenly bring her to a startling conclusion. Having spent

several days lingering at the Quai, pondering the sight of the flimsy boats ploughing the

ocean waves beyond and into the little harbour through the narrowly built channel (‘du

Traict’), Cahun is struck by a sudden thought:

88
 The gray sea is stained with black signs of different shape and
size.
An idea surprises me today, unforeseen, sharp, strange:
That inanimate objects yet have their dark soul, ignored by
humans, and on this quiet, grey sea, the black spots, deliberately
arranged, form a mysterious language that only the gods
understand. 30

While Cahun did not elaborate further at this point, she spoke here directly for the first

time on the innate nature of objects. As I shall explore, this is a subject that she returned

to repeatedly, as her fascination for the language and influence of inanimate objects grew.

Through this fictionalised voice we hear Cahun’s own description of the moment when,

at eighteen years of age, she first gave voice to her contemplation of the nature of objects,

and their ability to interact with and influence those who observe them.

Like so much of Cahun’s theorising on the nature of the world, she framed her

observation in a spiritual context. Nevertheless, her philosophical discovery can clearly

be interpreted as an early realisation of the latent agency of the objects surrounding her.

This realisation, to wit, that objects have their own ‘language’, and as such are able to

communicate, formed an essential basis for the later construction of her plastic objects,

laden as they were with both literal and figurative subtexts. For the time being Cahun’s

output continued to be predominantly literary in nature. However, by the time Heroïnes

was published in 1925 she had increased her production of self-portrait photography, and

although the vast majority of these photographs were never intended for publication, they

reveal much regarding Cahun’s musings on the body as object.

30
Cahun, C. (1914). 272.
89
CAHUN’S PHOTOGRAPHIC OBJECTS

While much of Cahun’s writing touched on her concerns regarding gender,

sexuality, and objectivity, it is also through the maturing of her photographic practice that

we can see many of these ideas being explored. As previously noted, her literary output

often touched upon the objectifying gaze, and this is arguably more pronounced in many

of her self- portrait images, being as it is a more objectifying medium. Cahun had been

experimenting with self-portrait photography from a young age, and many photographs

exist of her from approximately the same period as the publication of Vues et visions.

These photographs are, for the most part, candid in their depictions of the young Cahun,

however one in particular from this time is worthy of note, in which Cahun’s artistic

sensibilities with regards to photography, self-portraiture, and the power of figurative

imagery can be seen coming in to play.

This self-portrait, taken in 1914, the same year of the publication of Vues et

visions, depicts Cahun with free flowing, almost wild hair, and a white sheet pulled tightly

up to her neck, leaving her head exposed as a kind of disembodied object, floating against

the background of her white-sheeted bed. Her eyes stare vacantly, and her glassy,

unfocussed gaze invokes the feeling of looking at a corpse. Doy describes Cahun’s hair

in the image as recreating the wild mass of snakes writhing on the head of the gorgon, at

the point when she has been beheaded, and her grisly visage is attached to Hercules’

shield in order to paralyse his foes. 31 In this sense, Cahun’s head is not that of an innocent

young girl lying in her bed, but a weapon whose gaze can destroy the viewer. Medusa

was an important figure in symbolism, and this may well be what Cahun is trying to

31
Doy, G. (2007). 16-17.
90
invoke. However, the photograph is interesting not only for its literary allusions, but also

in its objectifying of Cahun, and its stripping away of context and meaning. Cahun’s face

becomes an unattached object, separated from its regular context, and we are left to draw

what we can know from her face alone. This image also has great significance with

regards to Cahun’s objects because it signals an aesthetic concern with the objectification

of the body through the alienation of body parts. Much of Cahun’s object manufacture

consists of creating images of women and womanhood from deconstructed body parts,

both literal and figurative in form. As such it is a precursor to much of Cahun’s work as

an early feminist, and particularly her output within the surrealist group, as her objects

examine both the disembodiment and objectification of women.

This self-portrait of Cahun also precedes Lee Miller’s portrait of a seemingly

decapitated Tanja Ramm’s head in a bell jar, which first appeared in France in Le

Surréalisme au service de la revolution in 1930. Miller’s image, presenting as it does a

woman’s head as a kind of hunter’s or collector’s trophy, was a common image of

disembodiment and objectification by this stage of surrealism. This image created by

Miller, and originally attributed to Man Ray, is a visualisation of Miller’s objectification

in front of the lens, as a fashion model and ‘muse’. 32 This image reflects Miller’s acute

awareness of the gaze, and her frustrated professional ambitions. Miller wished to reverse

the polarity of the situation in her desire to be recognised as a photographer – rendering

the original misattribution of the image to Man Ray as truly ironic. Cahun also pre-empted

these images in 1925, with a series of her own self-portraits in bell jars, her disdainful

head trapped inside the glass bowl. Unlike Miller’s beheaded Ramm however, Cahun’s

incorporeal head carries an air of defiance, and one could well believe that she is about to

32
Sheets, H. M. (2016, 17 Feb). ‘The indestructible Lee Miller’ celebrates a daring surrealist and war
photographer. Art & Design. The New York Times.
91
smash her ornamental trap, or alternatively, that the jar is something that she is aware of,

representing the voyeurism of the flaneur. She is aware of her objectification and turns it

back on the viewer, challenging their subjectivity, and shattering the moment for the

collector of these spectacles of women’s bodies. The creation of these images a decade

before her plastic objects anticipated the later works, in which Cahun’s disembodied parts

and semi-abstracted assemblages represented women. In the photographs, Cahun’s

objectified form becomes the decapitated Olympia of Edouard Manet, defying the gaze

of her observer and resisting objectification. In this way, Cahun’s head became one of her

earliest objects of resistance.

By 1920, Cahun’s approach to self-representation had changed dramatically.

Contrary to social expectations regarding ‘femininity’ and the acceptable presentation of

‘ladies’, Cahun had chosen a more dramatic look for herself, and by as early as 1916 she

had shaved her head, which accentuated her angular features, was often pictured make-

up free, and frequently dressed in a man’s suit. In this, Cahun anticipated the post-war

fashion for men’s clothing, known popularly as mode garçonne (boy style), adopted by

many women by the end of the decade, however Cahun’s choice of clothing would have

stood out as an extreme oddity several years beforehand. Several photographs exist from

this period of Cahun’s metamorphosis from conventional young woman to shaven

androgyne, in which she subverted the notions of feminine characterised as physically

attractive, and by societal standards ‘worth’ looking at. Two of these photographs, which

appear to have been taken at the same studio session in 1920, feature Cahun’s pale face

and body against a black backdrop. In the first image, Cahun is seated, her shoulders bare.

Her body is loosely encased in black and white blocks of fabrics, which drape across her

in horizontal bands. In this image she averts her gaze, imitating the pose of the demure

artist’s model favoured for the depiction of the paradigm of women – placid, receptive,
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non-threatening – and inviting the viewer’s gaze, while simultaneously rejecting the

voyeuristic standards of that same viewer with her smooth head, shorn of the primary

indicator of her femininity. In the second pose Cahun appears to stand, her back to the

camera but her head in profile, accentuating her strong, angular features, now no longer

hidden or flattered by a flowing coiffure. As a form of protection against the unwanted

gaze she has turned her back, but still remains aware of the uninvited stare of her observer.

The glance backwards over her shoulder is not coquettish but wary, and perhaps even

menacing, as if she is prepared to challenge the spectator’s gaze and take back her body

from the eye of her objectifying beholder.

Cahun’s stance on the objectification of women came to form the basis of some

of her most important theories on the political importance of objects, not only as the key

to emancipating the working class but particularly working-class women. This plight of

proletarian women was one of the practical issues ignored within the French socialist

movements of the time. When compared to a staged portrait of Cahun created with Marcel

Moore several years earlier, in which she appears as a demure and studious young woman

absorbed in reading the book L’image de la femme (The image of woman), published in

1899 as a compendium of exemplary women and their public images throughout the ages,

it becomes apparent that Cahun had already wrestled with this notion of gendered

subjectivity for several years. This desire to signal or exhort a return of control to women,

and particularly working-class women, is the key to understanding her object work and

photography of the next decade.

Cahun’s self-portraiture then moved towards a more complicated representation

of the self. In the early 1920s Cahun and Moore became involved in the experimental

theatrical productions of Pierre Albert-Birot, among others, and many of Cahun’s self-

portraits from this point in time are of her in either theatrical costume for a particular
93
production or feature theatrically inspired costuming and composition. These images

frequently make use of costumes and masks, and the observer is never quite sure whether

they are gaining fleeting glimpses of the multifaceted aspects of her intrinsic nature, or

simply being thwarted by mask after mask. As surveyed in my introduction, much

discussion and debate has already occurred surrounding Cahun’s use of the mask as a

metaphor, but not of her use of masks as representative objects.

As Cahun stated in Disavowals, “I will never stop taking off all these faces.”33

Here again, Cahun demonstrated an innate dissatisfaction with the objectifying gaze,

which makes all women into objects. Cahun’s decision to make of herself a deliberate

spectacle therefore functions as a defence mechanism, a reaction to the objectification

and marginalisation she endured socially both as a Jew and a lesbian, and professionally

as a member of a family already prominent in the arts. By choosing this path Cahun

invented a method of making herself comfortable in her objectification, by choosing the

way in which she was objectified. The mask then becomes a representation of this chimera

identity she has chosen for herself, both objectifiable and defying objective examination:

the truth constantly fleeing away from observers of Cahun the Object.

Rosalind Krauss was referring to photography when she claimed, “we see with a

shock of recognition the simultaneous effect of displacement and condensation, the very

operations of symbol formation, hard at work on the flesh of the real.” 34 While this

statement is certainly representative of Cahun’s photography, it also applies to Cahun

herself. When exploring the works of Cahun, both literary and photographic, there is a

blurring of the line between real and surreal similar to that which the surrealists were

33
Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 183.
34
Krauss, R., Livingston, J., & Ades, D. (1985). L’amour fou: Photography & surrealism. Washington,
D.C.: Abbeville Press Inc. 19.
94
attempting to invoke, long before Cahun began any association with the group. While still

working from what can be readily identified as her symbolist background, throughout her

earlier years Cahun’s photographic practice slowly moved, alongside her writing, towards

this confluence with surrealism in the 1930s. In doing this, she anticipated Breton’s

assertion that, in Krauss’ words, “this distinction between writing and vision is one of the

many antinomies that Breton speaks of wanting surrealism to dissolve in the higher

synthesis of a surreality that will, in this case, ‘resolve the dualism of perception and

representation.’” 35 As such, it is easy to understand the collaborations that occurred

between Cahun and Breton in the following decade.

By the close of the 1920s, Cahun’s photography was becoming far less figurative,

including those incorporating masks, which now no longer covered aspects of Cahun’s

identity in order to highlight them: instead, the mask began to stand for Cahun herself.

One such example, a series of photographs entitled Entre nous (Between Us), taken in

1931, depicts two masks with varying ornamentation displayed on a sandy beach. One

reading is that the masks represent Cahun and her partner Marcel Moore (Suzanne

Malherbe), their individuality marked out by flowers, a feather, matchsticks, a comb.

These photographs form part of a larger collection in which Cahun began to make what

Leperlier termed “perishable objects,” perhaps borrowing the term from the catalogue for

the 1936 exhibition.36 Cahun’s transformation from woman as object enters a new stage,

that of object standing for woman, and this is the mode of representation she employed

in the construction of her objects. This transformation became crucial over the coming

decade as Cahun’s increasingly political output began to question the place of both

women and the arts in politics and society.

35
Krauss, R. et al. (1985). 24.
36
Leperlier, F. (2011). L’image premiére, in Claude Cahun. Hazan/éditions du Jeu de Paume. 67.
95
 Prior to this Cahun continued to write, and this remained her primary method of

expressing her ideas in a public forum throughout the 1920s – indeed, while her

photographic self-portraits are fascinating, they were only ever intended for her private

collection (Cahun only officially exhibited one photograph, at the 1937 surrealist

exhibition in London, although no mention is made of it in the catalogue, and therefore

no information exists to confirm which image it was. One other image, a distorted version

of an aforementioned self-portrait, was published in Bifur in 1930.) Cahun continued to

publish short stories and articles in various French publications, however her next major

exploration of objects and objectification occurred in Heroïnes, published in 1925.

HEROÏNES

Following Vues et visons, Cahun published several short stories and articles on

various topics, many of which were incorporated into her longer work Aveux non avenus,

titled alternatively in English as Cancelled confessions or Disavowals (and as both by the

publisher, MIT Press), a project which Cahun worked on intermittently between 1919 and

1928. Before the publication of Disavowals, however, came Heroïnes, published in 1925.

Heroïnes is a boldly proto-feminist re-reading of popular tropes of women, femininity

and female transgression as symbolized by several powerful female characters drawn

from history, religion and myth. These traditional stories of women are invariably

morality tales, and the women are cast as one of the two moral binaries of ‘good woman’

and ‘bad woman’. Cahun takes the ‘bad’ women, such as the vengeful Judith, the

treacherous Delilah and the violently bloodthirsty Salome and recasts them as

misunderstood, their actions reimagined as those of strong willed and defiant women. The

96
good women are boldly re-presented as skilful and cunning, having learned to play the

game, such as Penelope the Tease for being so stubborn as to refuse to choose between

her suitors, and by extension for daring to have her own opinion on the subject; and Helen

the Rebel, who believes that she is ugly, but has somehow managed to hide this fact with

a combination of cosmetics and charm, thereby illustrating the timelessness of women’s

insecurities regarding their personal appearance, and the way in which they will be

publicly judged. Many of the roles of men within these tales are reinvented as well: in

Cahun’s version, Adam suffers from impotence which can only be cured by the apple

offered by Eve, who is them blamed for exposing his weakness; Holofernes is a handsome

and magnetic warrior; and Cinderella captivates her Prince with a secret knowledge of

his (very Freudian) fetish for fur-lined shoes. While Cahun’s title seemingly rejected an

autobiographical reading of the text, it is hard to dismiss the autobiographical element to

several of the tales in this anthology, such as that of Sophie the Symbolist, a young,

precocious girl who “trusted her own reason earlier than normal”, or in Sappho the

Misunderstood, who states “To create is my joy. No matter how little it is.” 37 The story

of Sappho was also dedicated to Cahun’s good friend, the sculptor Chana Orloff, who had

created a bust of Cahun in 1921.

The strongest theme to run through Heroïnes, after the reimagining of women in

these powerful roles, is that of perception versus reality. Cahun investigates this through

the examination of desires, particularly the desire for the idea of an object, which then

becomes an idealised object, rather than the true object itself. Her lesson throughout is

that one must embrace the meaning of an object in order to appreciate its value. The first

of Cahun’s Heroïnes, ‘Eve the too credulous’, equates the promises of the snake in the

37
Cahun, C. (1925). Heroïnes. Mercure de France, no 639. 634.
97
Garden of Eden to those of the ‘snake oil’ salesmen and hucksters of early newspaper

advertisements. Eve is taken in by the advertising, and feeds Adam the apple because she

has been convinced that it will effect a miraculous cure (with allusions to impotency on

his part: “BE A MAN…Make your sex life a joy! Quick Results. PEP TABS” 38). The

biblical outcome and its moral lesson is of course that taking the medicine will lead to the

acquisition of knowledge which brings with it the capacity to knowingly perpetrate evil.

Cahun’s cynical version of the tale describes those who have partaken of the forbidden

fruit as “those who are happier but even more mischievous,” suggesting that humanity is

ultimately happier with knowledge, even if it carries with it a propensity to make each

other unhappy through perpetrating bad deeds. According to Cahun, those she has

labelled happier are also those “who arrange objects in two distinct armies, [and] have all

bitten, each into a different flesh (of the Apple that is the apple of discord.)” 39 Those “who

arrange objects into two distinct armies” is an obvious reference in this context to the

Judeo-Christian dialectic of Good and Evil, God and the Devil. It can also be read as an

allusion to a tendency to ascribe meaning to objects according to their own limited

understanding, again calling to mind the problem with objects that both Breton and Cahun

attempted to resolve: that of the separation of perception and representation. Cahun’s

concern that objects have their own language which humanity is currently not capable of

comprehending was first voiced in Vues et visions and is an issue to which she repeatedly

returned. The biblical theme of the dichotomy of good and evil was also a theme that

Cahun returned to constantly throughout her writing.

38
Cahun, C. (1925). 624.
39
Cahun, C. (1925). 625.
98
 With regards to perception, “Helen the Rebel” gives some sage advice, which was

later echoed in Cahun’s exhortations to experience the beauty of objects by “touching

them in the dark” 40:

The most important beauty exercise is as follows:

To sit comfortably in a darkened room…and think of nothing. Just that,
every day, for a few minutes – gradually and indefinitely increasing in
time. 41

Helen’s tale – that she believes that she is truly ugly, and yet through a series of artful

designs and flirtations is able to pass herself off as the most desirable woman in the world

– speaks to the objectification of women, the attendant insecurities, and the role they are

forced to play in order to move in society. That Helen enacts various entrapments of other

men at the exhortation of her husband Menelaus, who gains fame and fortune through

Helen’s purported beauty and his assumed right to protect and defend that beauty as his

possession, reflects Cahun’s strong distaste for the position of women in France - as not

much more than possessions of their male family members, trophies to be displayed, like

beautiful, mute statues, or interesting specimens in bell jars. She explored this idea more

fully in her later works, particularly throughout Disavowals, which I will elaborate further

on later in this chapter, and in Beware domestic objects, which is discussed at length in

the following chapter.

Cahun’s retelling of Salome’s tale as “Salome the Skeptic”, dedicated to

“O.W.,” 42 highlights the confusion engendered by the desire for objects we do not fully

comprehend. Cahun contends that human desires, which we so often mistakenly ascribe

40
Cahun, C. (1998). Beware domestic objects, in P. Rosemont (Ed.), Surrealist women: An international
anthology. London: Continuum International Publishing Group. 61.
41
Cahun, C. (1925). 633.
42
That is, Oscar Wilde.
99
to needs rather than wants, ultimately lead to a dissatisfaction with that which we do have.

For example, having passionately called for the head of John the Baptist, Salome is at the

end perplexed by her own original request:

Why did I ask for that?... It seemed as though I could touch it, take it in
my hands, kiss it…It’s no big deal! How can an object so ridiculous
frighten us? My repulsion is entirely aesthetic. 43

As the blood stains her clothes, she cries:

What does that prove? Simply that I was right: Art, life: it’s the same either
way. It is what will be furthest from the dream – even from the
nightmare. 44

Salome ascribes her desire for this object – the head – to a misconception of what she

actually desires, brought about by a theatrical production in which a replica head, dripping

false blood onto a cardboard plate, is brought, oozing, to the protagonist of the play.

Having seen the image of the object rather than the object itself, Salome believes she is

deceived into desiring the image of a thing, rather than the thing itself.

I quickly understood the horrible trap: painters, writers, sculptors, even

musicians, copy life… How could I admire their colour reproductions, I
who never loved the originals? 45

43
Cahun, C. (1925). 643.
44
Cahun, C. (1925). 643.
45
Cahun, C. (1925). 641.
100
Although Salome believes herself to be wary of the illusions of the arts, she is

nevertheless ensnared by this powerful artifice, consumed by an irrational and

bloodthirsty desire for an object she does not truly need or want. This desire for objects

speaks directly to Cahun’s growing concern not only for the true nature of objects, but

also the ways in which their false objectification could lead to confusion and dishonesty.

Sophie the Symbolist appears to be the only character in this series of tales who

is not drawn from history or fable. She is perhaps the most highly charged of all Cahun’s

Heroïnes, as well as one of the most autobiographical if only in a figurative or fantastical

sense. Sophie is unashamedly bloodthirsty: she kills for pleasure, and revels in inflicting

pain. She experiences sensual delight in the destruction of her first doll and ponders

whether fish feel pain as they are dissected. Sophie explains that she “makes bleed only

what she loves: the black chicken, the squirrel, the donkey, and her cousin Paul.”46

Although Sophie’s progression towards more and more violently personal acts is

disturbing, Cahun, via authorial intrusion, says admiringly of her: “We should delight in

her admirable progression.” In this vignette Cahun’s relationship to objects and the

material world is most clearly stated: “To make an object dead, to destroy it, is to prove

that it has really lived. Sophie understood that quite well.” 47 Various incarnations of this

claim resonate throughout her works, culminating in her equation for the production of

objects: “to create = to destroy + χ.” At the end of this short story Sophie’s assessment of

the situation could echo Cahun’s own conclusions in her search for identity, and the

casting off of her symbolist roots: “Even before we were five we had exhausted all the

46
“Sophie the Symbolist” did not originally appear in the 1925 version published in the Mercure de
France. Passages here are taken from the unpublished translation by Norman McAfee, who worked from
the original manuscript discovered by François Leperlier on Jersey in 1992. This translation originally
appeared online but has since been removed after a hard copy was printed. McAfee, N. (unknown date).
87.
47
McAfee, N. 86.
101
games of love; when one began with the symbol, one had little taste for the thing itself.”48

With these words, Cahun seems to be distancing herself from the symbolic, and beginning

to immerse herself in the tangible world. Cahun’s “games of love” refer here to desire for

symbols, clouding the judgement of the participants who lose interest in “the thing itself.”

In order to reawaken this interest, Sophie discovers that she must disassemble objects, in

order to disassemble her preconceived perceptions of them. This work is bloody and

brutal, but it is also vital and honest. With this, Cahun implies that the psychological

journey towards a true understanding of objects will be a difficult and brutal process: in

order to shift one’s comprehension one must deconstruct the false objects of one’s

perceptions.

AVEUX NON AVENUS

In 1928, Cahun published her literary magnum opus, Aveux non avenus. The title

of her work has been translated as either Disavowals or Cancelled confessions, and both

are equally valid while not entirely accurate: like all of Cahun’s other works, wordplay is

central, making her literary works difficult to translate while retaining her authentic

meaning. Disavowals is the product of ten years’ writing, several sections of which were

individually published as smaller articles, brought together for the first time as a

compendium of Cahun’s thoughts and ideas over the previous decade.

Cahun opens with a rigorous self-assessment in the face of her material. Again,

she grapples with the confusion between perception and reality, between her internal

thoughts and what lies before her:

48
Cahun, C. (1936). 60.
102
 No point in making myself comfortable. The abstraction, the dream, are
as limited for me as the concrete and the real. What to do? Show a part of
it only, in a narrow mirror, as if it were the whole? 49

Perception plagues Cahun’s narrator throughout Disavowals: her own sense of

reality, her struggle to communicate her thoughts on the matter to others, and her

disappointment at the failure of so many to understand what is in front of them. Speaking

through the character Aurige, whom she describes as weak and egotistical, and whose

aims include the desire “to reconstruct oneself” 50, Cahun confides, “I am not suited to

grasping objective realities, or adapting to the incessant vicissitudes of life.” 51 Aurige

would make a good subject for Sophie the Symbolist’s ministrations. Aurige wishes to

reconstruct herself, however one must destroy before one can create. Aurige stands for

the everyday person and lacks the internal fortitude and the knowledge to examine her

own objectivity, to deconstruct her perception of “objective realities.”

Cahun also acknowledges the comfort to be found in familiar objects, and the role

they can play in awakening the mind. Speaking of a series of marble statues, Cahun says:

…for those who humanely seek

The evocation of a memory,
What relief these tangible images provide! 52

For the observers of these statues, their physical presence as objects in our world enables

them to evoke thoughts and emotions which may have otherwise been difficult to access.

The statues, in this sense, have a language with which they communicate with our

unconscious minds, unlocking memories which had all but become secrets, even from

ourselves.

49
Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 1.
50
Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 52.
51
Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 53.
52
Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 41.
103
 Cahun also returns to the idea of dismemberment or dislocation of the human form

as a method of construction, and again she uses the human body as a model:

Human body.
It should be stuck upside down in a vase so that it arranges itself elegantly,
so that it blooms, so that it has four branches, four flowers and the bulb is
hidden. 53

Like her photographic self-portraits, Cahun dislocates the human body, repurposing its

parts to create a different object entirely, one that confuses the senses even as it

transforms, but one no less fascinating or full of life than the original object. The “bulb”,

referring to the head, should by her instructions remain obscured, and this idea of

obscuring or blinding a person appears to follow on from Cahun’s exhortations in Vues

et visions, via her heroine Helen, to seek beauty by doing nothing in the dark. Again in

Disavowals Cahun urges her readers to “blind oneself in order to see better,” 54 once more

disdaining the sense of sight, too often relied upon by humankind as the method by which

to glean the whole and entire truth of a thing, in favour of a voluntary surrender to the

other senses – to feel, to smell, to hear or to taste objects, or perhaps even do nothing: to

metaphorically sit quietly in the dark, willingly discarding personal agency and allowing

the interaction to be initiated by the objects before us, in order to fully experience their

true value.

In order to address the inherent truth of objects, Cahun adapts a well-known

proverb, so as to neatly illustrate the problem as she perceives it:

A rolling stone gathers no moss, but covers the original form in clay where
gravel sticks, debris so well bound together by the movement, so

53
Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 73.
54
Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 152.
104
 thoroughly incorporated, that its form is no longer visible, nor its point of
origin. 55

Following Cahun’s logic regarding the objective truth, objects, when disguised, by layers

of alternative meanings, personal interpretations, and the flawed perceptions of

individuals, are no longer recognisable as the object they once were. The problem this

then raises for Cahun is, whether we are now viewing a new object, one which has

accreted new meaning with every roll, or whether it is now damaged or obscured beyond

repair. By Cahun’s own interpretation, the object before us is now both a new object,

created in part through its own destruction, and an original thing, stripped of all meaning

as its matter becomes concealed. The question before the observer is to decide which it

is, or whether it can simultaneously be both. Cahun seeks to arm the viewer with the

deconstructive/reconstructive tools needed to make the decision for themselves.

As the book progresses, Cahun appears to shift her stance to accommodate this

new interpretation of objective reality, a task which, as we have already seen, she has

declared herself to be almost incapable of. As she begins to admit to herself, “in the final

reckoning we are forced to rely on the unknown, with a great algebraic X.” 56 Cahun

decides that her method can only be categorised as one of exceptions – a methodology

that defies the rules even as she creates them:

The abstract, the absolute, the absurd, are a malleable element, a

plastic material, the word one appropriates. That is all for me alone.
And so, at ease, I associate, dissociate – and formulate without
laughing the odious rule of my collection of exceptions. 57

55
Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 194-5.
56
Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 102.
57
Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 152.
105
Cahun’s definitions resist interpretation in that they can both agree with and contradict

one another: both she and the objects she contemplates destroy the rules, even as they

create them.

Towards the end of the decade, Cahun had slowly become more involved in the

socialist political movement, by joining such groups as the previously mentioned AEAR,

which was also patronised by several writers associated with the surrealist group, most

notably André Breton and Georges Bataille. Cahun’s rising interest in the political

situation in France, and her frustration at the major players on both sides, both

conservative and communist, can be heard in her statement, which occurred almost a

propos of nothing in the middle of Disavowals: “Politics and the erotic are reduced to the

vocabulary of libertinage.” 58 For Cahun politics and the erotic had already become

irrevocably interlaced with negative connotations. While the surrealists had conducted

their own investigations into the nature of sexuality and transgression, they had largely

failed to bring these investigations to bear in their political actions in a positive or

constructive manner. Cahun was always interested in a synthesis of everything, of all

things coming together. For her the amalgamation of politics and the erotic was a natural

one, which need not be reduced to the level of lasciviousness or bawdiness. Recalling the

words of Havelock Ellis: “Sex lies at the root of life, and we can never learn to reverence

life until we know how to understand sex.” For Cahun, politics and sex occupied the same

confused space as any other object, obscured by preconception and perception.

58
Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 130.
106
THE IMAGERY OF ‘DISAVOWALS’

While the text of Disavowals provides many insights into Cahun’s construction

of the meaning and utility of objects, it is also important to read her text alongside the

images that accompanied it. These images comprise a series of collages whose authorship

has been sometimes been questioned. Writing on Cahun, Tirza True Latimer and Gen

Doy have analysed the collages and agree that they were predominantly the work of

Marcel Moore, however the extent to which Cahun was involved is often debated.

Certainly, the collages contain many of Cahun’s original photographs, and the text that

figures in several is also arguably Cahun’s work, reflecting as it does the content of the

text in the book. Shaw and Latimer therefore state that the images were a collaborative

venture between the two women, but more important is the methodology and meaning

behind the images. 59

Shaw has investigated what she interprets as Cahun’s response to the social status

of women depicted within one of the collages contained in Disavowals. In her

interpretation of the ninth plate contained in the book, entitled I.O.U (self pride), Shaw

interprets the Russian nesting dolls as not only a symbol of post-war pressure on French

women to begin repopulating the nation, but also as a comment on women’s role in the

creative process. As well as utilising the imagery in this collage, Cahun also made

mention of nesting objects within the text, although there is no direct link to the image

I.O.U: “Every living being – Russian doll, nest of tables – is expected to contain all the

59
Shaw, Latimer, et al (2006), in L. Downie (Ed.), Don’t kiss me: The art of Claude Cahun and Marcel
Moore. London: Tate Publishing.
107
others.” 60 Later in the same text, Cahun also referred to Paris as a Russian doll 61, broken

as it is into arrondissements, nestled into one another. Shaw concludes that:

[t]he only place for creative potential left to women in the dominant
discourse of postwar France was the potential to create a child […]
Cahun and Moore recognized that the notions of creativity that
dominated their culture were based on idealized versions of romantic
love that reduced women’s ‘creativity’ to childbearing. 62

Since Disavowals contains the first iteration of Cahun’s idea “To create = to destroy + χ”,

her choice to illustrate this work with collages appears as an embodiment of that formula.

The collages in the book could also be taken to represent an early form of the object to be

destroyed: Cahun’s preoccupation with the shattering of the ‘real’ in favour of the true.

The collages then become a visual interpretation of Cahun’s contradictory theory, as her

original photographs are both destroyed and simultaneously incorporated into a new form

of imagery by the act of their destruction. The surrealists and dadaists had long

experimented with collage, particularly in the period immediately following the First

World War, as a method of interrogating the violence of the conflict and its impact on

civilian populations, as well as an attempt to challenge the conventional notions of ‘fine

art.’ More importantly, these artists began to work with the elements of collage, not as

elements of a larger cohesive whole, but, in the words of R. Bruce Elder, as “aesthetic

signifiers without having first undergone any semiotic transformation.” 63 Elder argues

that in order to do this, these elements within the collage must “function as signs of

60
Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 103.
61
Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 108.
62
Shaw, J. (2003). Singular plural: Collaborative self-images in Claude Cahun's Aveux non avenus, in W.
Chadwick, T. T. Latimer (Eds.), The modern woman revisited: Paris between the wars. New Brunswick,
NJ: Rutgers University Press. 159.
63
Elder, B. R. (2012). Dada, surrealism, and the cinematic effect. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier
University Press. 151.
108
themselves, for only by being signs of themselves can they escape being subjected to the

artist’s preconceived ideas.” 64 The dadaist experiments in collage were a theoretical pre-

cursor to Cahun’s work in the same medium. Moore and Cahun’s collage works extended

the idea of negating the artist’s preconceived ideas of the object to encapsulate the viewer

in the same perspective: to carefully strip away the idea of the object by removing layers

of context, leaving only the object itself, reassembled as part of something new.

The frontispiece of the final section of the book, simply entitled 1928, states: “I

want to change skin: tear the old one from me.” 65 After its publication, Cahun indeed

shed her skin as literary auteur, and began to focus almost entirely on expressing her

creative opinions through political action, and the publication of political manifestos and

tracts.

TOWARDS A POLITICAL AGENCY

Cahun’s three major literary works – Vues et visions, Heroïnes, and Disavowals

– all exhibit Cahun’s interest in objects as not merely a short phase which aligned with or

was brought about by her collaborations with key surrealist figures, but rather as

stemming from a long-standing interest in the vital need to understand the subject/object

relationship as it pertains to human existence. Two decades prior to her fabrication of

plastic objects, Cahun had already identified the ability of objects to communicate and

interact with their subjects in a far more dynamic manner than is traditionally assumed,

and to interact within their own system networks, operating in a “secret language” which

64
Elder, B. R. (2012). 151.
65
Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 199.
109
humanity had yet to decode. Furthermore, Cahun had identified what she perceived to be

a crucial element in that communication: the notion of resistance, be it conscious

resistance to traditional or popular interpretation of objects, or resistance to interpretation

from the objects themselves, which coloured the next stages of her work.

Cahun’s writing throughout the 1920s was the pursuit of a way to understand that

secret language, to decode and manipulate it, and, ultimately, to decode it for others, so

that they might be empowered by this knowledge, and galvanised into action in what was

becoming increasingly fraught times for the average French citizen. Cahun also

considered the importance of objects to the internal life of humans – their capacity to store

an individual’s memories and return them to us through the briefest of interactions is just

one way that they ‘speak’ to us. Not just through sight, but through sound, smell and

touch.

From this examination of the first ten years of Cahun’s career, it becomes clear

that she was aware of the importance of objects and our relationship to them, and their

importance to human relationships, and began formulating her own approach to objects

as early as 1916. This development continued throughout the 1920s, developing into a

hybrid form consisting of feminism and a precursor to an idea of object agency. As Cahun

became more politicised throughout the first few years of the next decade, her focus

shifted to the plight of the working class of France, and specifically to working class

women, who for Cahun embodied the result of objectification – by men, by family, and

by employers, for all of whom these women were simply useful tools. This new focus

would also bring some of Cahun’s ideas of resistance into direct service with regards to

the production of her objects. For Cahun, people were made by their experiences from

birth, and they could not be unmade, despite what they constructed around themselves.

The construction of objects, and the commensurate construction of meaning surrounding

110
those objects and their subject, clouded the true nature of the self and the objects, and

contributed to a false reality. Cahun’s objects came to resist this reality.

111
CHAPTER THREE: CAHUN’S PLASTIC OBJECTS OF 1936

112
INTRODUCTION

Immediately prior to making the objects exhibited in the 1936 exhibition Cahun

became increasingly associated with political movements such as the AEAR and Contre

attaque. 1 Prior to her manufacture of plastic objects, this phase in Cahun’s development

as a writer and artist was characterised by a move towards a form of abstraction utilising

objects standing in place of figurative subject matter. As discussed in the previous chapter

in relation to Cahun’s literary works of the 1910s and 20s, Cahun was not only fascinated

with the role objects played in the lives of people and their ability not only to influence

behaviour, but their potential as revelatory instruments. In the growing climate of unrest

which typified 1930s Paris the object’s ability to communicate revelations also imbued it

with the ability to act as a potential prophet in a revolution. While Cahun was involved

in French left wing political discussion, she attempted to utilise this revelatory and

revolutionary aspect of the potential of objects about which she had previously only

written. The later stage of this project was Cahun’s creation of plastic objects which was

initiated in response to the surrealist object exhibitions planned for London and Paris.

This chapter will interpret them as a synthesis of previous thinking on the nature of

objects, and as a thinking through of the conflict and resistance between subject and

object.

Cahun’s refusal to accept the definitions of revolutionary art during this period

brought her, and others such as André Breton and Georges Bataille, into direct conflict

with many of her new political allies within the Communist movement. The split which

1
Heron, L., & Williams, V. (Eds.). (1997). Illuminations: Women writing on photography from the
1850’s to the present (international library of historical studies). London, United Kingdom: I.B.Tauris.
92.
113
occurred between members of Paris’ Marxism adherents in the early 1930s, which

culminated in an explosive argument over the meaning and effectiveness of Louis

Aragon’s poem “Red front” that became known as the Aragon affair, 2 left André Breton,

Georges Bataille, and Claude Cahun standing on the same side. This split is ultimately

what led to their continuing collaborations throughout the ensuing decade in the face of

increasing conservatism from both the left and right of French politics and under the

impending threat of another European war.

Carolyn J Dean states that Cahun was solely drawn to the surrealists by their mutual

political aspirations, an assertion which has validity. Writing in 1929 Walter Benjamin

“locates the energies of Surrealist poetic practice within the rhetoric of civil rebellion at

a point of historical crisis”: 3 Cahun was increasingly attracted to the politics of the

surrealists. As Christopher Wilk states, many of the artists working in Paris at the time

were brought together by:

a utopian desire to create a better world, to reinvent the world from

scratch… these principles were frequently combined with social and
political beliefs (largely left-leaning) which held that art and design
could, and should, transform society. 4

In 1935 and ‘36 Cahun became a member of the short-lived Contre attaque, a

group formed by Bataille with the aim of combating the rise of Fascism in Europe through

indirect political action in the form of artistic and literary endeavours. 5 It is this

association which immediately predates the object exhibition.

2
Eburne, J. P. (2008). Surrealism and the art of crime. United States: Cornell University Press. 174.
3
Lusty, N. (2007). Surrealism, feminism, psychoanalysis. Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing.
4
Wilk, C. (2006). What is modernism?. Modernism, 1914-1939: Designing a new world. London: V & A
Publications. 12.
5
Eburne, J. P. (2008). 90.
114
 This analysis of the 1936 exhibition also understands it in relation to the political

and social context. During the interwar years in France there was a strong neo-natalist

call for ‘femininity’ from women: that is, a strict adherence to pre-war social norms of

dress, character and behaviour including a strong emphasis on domesticity and a fulfilling

of the female biological imperative through reproduction and child-rearing. This

combined in the late twenties and early thirties with the rising popularity of totalitarian

ideals of ‘social order’ to effectively strangle suffrage and associated political

movements. 6

From the outset Cahun did not set out to discover or create for herself a place

within the prevailing culture of hetero-normative, anti-suffragist social conservatism,

aspects of which she openly derided in her objects (especially Un air de famille). Rather,

she worked consistently in opposition to it, both philosophically and ethically. 7 While

educational opportunities for girls grew steadily throughout the early 20th century the

women of France did not gain the right to stand for office nor to vote until 1944. 8 Thus a

certain level of frustration could be felt in the rising number of educated, eloquent women

who were still without an effective voice in national politics. Cahun epitomised the

situation of such women. Gender studies academic Natalya Lusty posits that the bulk of

Cahun’s gender- and identity-interrogating self-portraits were produced in the 1920s in

direct response to the changing social landscape, particularly with regards to women’s

fashion, consumer culture and the debates over suffrage. 9 By the 1930s however,

worsening economic conditions, especially among the working classes, had overtaken

them as the primary concern of most French men and women. Thus, because in Lusty’s

6
Chadwick, W., & Latimer, T. T. (Eds.). (2003). The modern woman revisited: Paris between the wars.
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. 5.
7
Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’oeil. Oxford Art Journal, 24.1. 102.
8
Chadwick, W., & Latimer, T. T. (Eds.). (2003). 5.
9
Lusty, N. (2007). 98.
115
words, Cahun’s “interest in and knowledge of sexual politics was inseparable from her

wider political and aesthetic interests”, she began to move away from portraiture and

individualistic self-representation to expand her practice and explore in detail the

complex relationships between identity, gender, poverty and social inequality. 10

After the publication of Disavowals in 1930 Cahun’s work began to move towards

a more abstract mode of thinking about objects. Kristine Von Oehsen provides a detailed

chronology of what she refers to as Cahun’s practice of “assemblages”. Over the ten-year

period to 1936 she notes that Cahun’s “self-interrogation becomes increasingly

marginal.” 11 Von Oehsen notes that it was specifically in 1936 that Cahun began to create

“plastic objects”. 12 She also provides a brief but important visual analysis of one of

Cahun’s plastic works, namely Object of 1936, in which she employs the techniques of

Freudian psychoanalysis, that is, an examination of the unconscious mind with heavy

reference to sexuality and suppression within a surrealist discourse in order to extend

Cahun’s previous explorations of gender identity into her change in practice. 13 She argues

that Cahun successfully reverses the imagery of the eye in surrealism from a phallic object

to a symbol of castration anxiety or female empowerment by rotating the eye and

crowning it in pubic hair. This thus echoes the scene in Bataille’s L’histoire de l’oeil, in

which the female protagonist murders a priest and inserts his disembodied eye into her

vagina. 14 Von Oehsen’s thorough visual analysis provides the foundation from which to

analyse the underlying philosophical and methodological motivations behind Cahun’s

object manufacture.

10
Lusty, N. (2007). 109.
11
Von Oehsen, K. (2006). The lives of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, in L. Downie (Ed.), Don’t kiss
me: The art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. London:Tate Publishing. 16.
12
Von Oehsen, K. (2006). 16.
13
Von Oehsen, K. (2006). 17..
14
Von Oehsen, K. (2006). 17.
116
SURREALISM AND THEORETICAL DISCOURSES

Freudian psychoanalysis was an important concept during the first years of

surrealism. Until the close of the 1920s the practitioners of surrealism had tended to focus

on human sexuality and the potential of the unconscious through exercises such as

automatic writing. Dream theory also formed an important basis for the works of many

artists associated with surrealism, most recognizably Salvador Dalí, whose many works

during this period, such as The metamorphosis of narcissus and Burning giraffe (both

1937) are attempts to depict dreams in the waking state. The uncanny (unheimlich) was a

term Sigmund Freud coined to delineate the specific feeling of discomfort experienced

when confronted with something unfamiliar. The German term unheimlich resonates

somewhat more than its English translation, in that its common meaning is ‘unfamiliar’,

but its literal translation is ‘unhomely’: lacking the feeling of homeliness, or possessing

the quality of feeling as if you are in familiar territory. 15 Although the surrealists were

well-versed in Freudian terminology it is interesting that both Dalí in 1931, and Breton

and Cahun in 1936, avoided the use of the term ‘uncanny’ in their descriptions of

surrealist objects. 16 Joanna Malt has asserted quite convincingly that the study of

fetishism most suits the 1936 object exhibition as a method of analysis: first, many of the

objects created contain elements of sexual fetishism; secondly, they simultaneously

critique commodity fetishism, as well as providing comment on the fetishisation of art

and cultural artefacts (which were actually referred to as ‘fetishes’ in contemporary

French society) as privileged objects within bourgeois culture. 17 As discussed in chapter

15
Freud, S., McLintock, D., & Haughton, H. (2007). The uncanny. New York: Penguin Group.
16
Cahun’s choice of terminology is ‘disturbed’, Dalí’s is ‘delirious’.
17
Malt, J. (2004). Obscure objects of desire: Surrealism, fetishism, and politics. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. 108.
117
one surrealism was also at a crisis point with regards to commercialism and was seeking

new ways in order to re-radicalise its production and its reputation as an avant garde art

movement. To achieve this end the surrealist exhibition displayed an array of objects –

natural, found, ethnographic and tribal objects, and the deliberately constructed surrealist

and ‘disturbed’ objects – in a haphazard organisation throughout their venue, the Charles

Ratton Gallery, in a deliberate attempt to de-class art and culture by blending their chosen

categories together. This forced the viewer to randomly navigate their way between

objects with a socially designated commercial value, such as Giacometti’s fine art

sculptures, and those whose inclusion in a gallery were more confusing in terms of

capitalistic value systems, such as pot plants and pebbles. Breton explained their aim in

doing so:

The objects which assume their places within the framework of the
surrealist exhibition of May 1936 are, above all, likely to lift the
prohibition resulting from the overpowering repetition of those objects
which meet our glance daily and persuade us to reject as illusion
everything that might exist beyond them. 18

With this exhibition, Breton and the other participants were asking their audience to resist

typical interpretations, to question the assumed meaning of the objects present in their

everyday world and asking them to meditate on the potential for the meaning of objects

in their own lives.

Steven Harris argues that surrealism is a practice in which its theoretical

components combine in dynamic ways. He gives examples such as “Hegelianising

psychoanalysis” and “Freudianising Marxism.” 19 Harris argues that the objects created

18
Breton, A., Seaver, R., and Lane, H R. (1969). Manifestoes of surrealism. Ann Arbor: The University
of Michigan Press. 257.
19
Harris, S. (2001). Beware of domestic objects: Vocation and equivocation in 1936. Art History, 24.5.
739.
118
by women surrealist artists such as Meret Oppenheim and Claude Cahun were doing just

this: their work was not simply a subversion or criticism of gender roles in contemporary

Europe, but an attempt to wrest control of the means of production (artistic or otherwise)

away from the bourgeoisie, while commenting on the political issues of the era from a

female perspective. 20 At the point of first contact, the uncomfortable aesthetic of Cahun’s

hairy eyeball or Oppenheim’s furry tea cup (Le Déjeuner en fourrure,1936, also exhibited

at the Ratton show) therefore distances everyone equally. The shock of discomfort causes

the viewer to pause, and to try and understand their instinctive aversion to these uncanny

objects. Harris argues that by this stage of surrealism, artists were not simply investigating

the theories of psychoanalysis and the human psyche, they had become directors of it,

and were invoking trauma and repression in their audience in order to accomplish a

specific reaction of discomfort. 21 This feeling of discomfort in the viewer, engendered by

the viewing of these objects, could also provoke thought about issues of gender and

equality as well as political justice for the working class, homosexuals and women.

SURREALIST OBJECTS AND THE POLITICAL CLIMATE

Throughout 1935, the year leading up to the Exposition surréaliste d'objets,

Breton and his followers amongst the surrealists (Cahun among them) had clashed with

the Communists and the Popular Front over the definition and form of revolutionary art.22

Breton declared:

20
Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’oeil. 109.
21
Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’oeil. 110.
22
Lusty, N. (2007). 86.

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 any attempt to explain social phenomena other than by Marx is to my mind
as erroneous as any effort to defend or illustrate a so-called ‘proletarian’
literature and art at a time in history when no one can fairly claim any real
kinship with the proletarian culture, for the very excellent reason that this
culture does not yet exist, even under proletarian regimes. 23

In this preliminary statement of his newly politicised theory, Breton made a

miscalculation. He purported to understand the lack of ‘proletariat culture’ from his own

privileged perspective of middle class ‘culture’, a perspective which stood at odds with

the entire surrealist notion of de-classing art and culture. By doing so he revealed his own

class prejudices, dismissing a rich working-class culture in the form of craft and folk art,

traditional music, religion, and long standing societal traditions. Nevertheless, the

beginnings of the surrealist experiment in which they imagined that objects would act as

the instigators of revolutionary class war had begun. This new stance was formulated in

direct response to Stalinist-inspired Socialist Realism, which had been adopted by the

French Communist party (PCF). This was proving problematic for the surrealists due to

the PCF’s inflexibility regarding the value of art as a tool of propaganda and their

insistence on literalism in the service of the revolution. The PCF were of a ‘majority rules’

mind when it came to understanding and interpreting works of art: they believed art

should contain a single, focused message that was easy for the layperson to understand if

it was to inspire radical action, and that any potentially individualistic interpretation

would lead to confusion over the revolutionary message. What Breton wanted was

objects that described the interior, in the sense that they evoked the marvellous, but in a

way that was accessible to all. The objects of 1936 were far more successful in realising

this aim. Lucy Lippard posits however that “Breton’s judgments of Surrealist plastic art

23
Lippard, L. (Ed.). (1971). Surrealists on art. United States: Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall. 34.
120
were not always the most perceptive, since his writings were so often coloured by current

enmities among the group, and by dominant literary preoccupations.” 24 These enmities at

this point in time were influenced by the growing rift between artist members of the PCF

following Louis Aragon’s expulsion from the surrealist circle. Breton and Cahun were

among those who objected to the PCF’s oversimplification of artistic representation and

interpretation, and the consequent denial of their own works as ‘revolutionary art’. 25

By May of 1936 the Popular Front, France’s conservative, socialist political party,

appeared to have seized victory in the national elections. In Stephen Harris’ opinion, this

further cemented together “the two authoritative voices of law and Party, which, in Contre

attaque’s view, [had] recently come together so disastrously.” 26 In contrast to the

emerging conservatism of the Popular Front, Breton saw himself as what Historian Roger

Griffin describes as a propheta: the charismatic leader as personified in both the left and

right politics of interwar Europe. 27 Griffin states that Breton was typical of the avant

garde artist/philosopher who believes that he is capable of recognizing “a lightning flash

of fearsome lucidity about the yawning void just beneath our feet”, thus steering humanity

away from potential calamity. 28 Cahun certainly admired Breton and his philosophies,

and as Natalya Lusty asserts that in her political writing, Cahun strove to “reconcile Marx

and Freud in a way that reflects her strong allegiance to Breton’s own beleaguered

struggle to define art and life as part of the same radical drive.” 29 In relation to this

struggle Cahun wrote in 1933:

24
Lippard, L. (Ed.). (1971). 51.
25
Eburne, J. P. (2008). 174.
26
Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’oeil. 109..
27
Griffin, R. (2008). Modernity, modernism, and fascism. A “mazeway resynthesis.”
Modernism/modernity, 15.1. 15..
28
Griffin, R. (2008). 11..
29
Lusty, N. (2007). 82.

121
 One must write against all those who know how to read, because I consider
that progress is never made other than through opposition. It’s up to the
readers to benefit from what the writer has thought against their past, and
against his own. It’s enough today that I write, that I wish to write above
all against myself.” 30

Cahun here first clearly articulated her thoughts on the value of resistance: that no action

or idea is worthy unless it is working in resistance against another. This concept formed

the basis of both her object work and her political commentary from this point onwards.

Perhaps Stephen Harris articulates Cahun’s stance most succinctly when he observes

“against the métier, Cahun posed the ruination of skill and talent.” 31 Cahun’s drive to

create by first destroying was anathema to typical understandings of the creative process

and was one of the core concepts which brought her into alignment with Breton and his

surrealist followers at this time.

CAHUN’S OBJECT THINKING, 1936

Cahun would continue to write on the importance of objects as she was in the

process of imagining and creating them. The objects Cahun exhibited in the Paris

exposition were complemented by an article written by Cahun, published in ‘Cahiers

d’Art’. She claimed in her article, entitled Prenez garde au objet domestique! (Beware

domestic objects!), that only those labourers involved in the production of everyday

domestic items could fully appreciate “irrational” objects – those objects taken from their

30
Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’oeil. 93. My italics.
31
Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’oeil. 96. The surrealists who left the AEAR opposed the elevation of the artist
to the level of professional or genius: the métier as prescribed by Louis Aragon. This was one of the
reasons the surrealists left the AEAR and disassociated with the Popular Front.
122
everyday setting and given new meaning in the manner of found objects such as

Duchamp’s Bottle rack, a reproduction of which was given prime position at the Ratton

exhibition.32 Cahun also wrote:

What differentiates the human animal, what constitutes its own peculiarity
and best describes it is that it tends to surpass the irrational field…Only
the civilised human possesses this ferocious power and the unbridled
luxury of nursing it – that is, of preserving and cultivating such a variety
of vain ornamentations, exhibiting leprosy and tumors – terrifying
invented or found objects, irrational sproutings of flesh. 33

Cahun believed that humanity, alone of all the animals, had the potential to assign

meaning and value to objects which were often unnatural, absurd or fantastical in nature.

Cahun had exhorted readers to contemplate the secret language of objects in her Vues et

visions of 1914. As we have seen, Breton likewise wished for the general public to

experience objects by taking the time to contemplate them in fresh, unencumbered

surroundings, stripped of their artificially prescribed meanings. Thus, Cahun’s

understanding of objects again enlarged on the theories espoused by Breton during the

same time period:

The pressing need to ‘deconcretize’ the various geometries so as to free

the researcher into all directions and permit the ulterior coordination of the
results obtained, is rigorously superimposed on the need in art to break
down the barriers separating the déjà vu from the visible, the commonly
proved from the provable, etc. In this regard, modern scientific and artistic
thought present the same structure: the real has too long been confused
with the given, for one like the other spreads out in all directions of the
possible and tends to become one with it. 34

32
Cahun, C. (1936). 59-60.
33
Cahun, C. (1936). 59.
34
Breton, A. (1936). The crisis of the object, in L. Lippard (Ed.), Surrealists on art. Englewood Cliffs,
New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. 53.
123
Breton also stated that “Here as elsewhere, the mad beast of custom must be hunted

down.” 35 Breton’s objection in the wider political context of object construction and

usage was to an overfamiliarity which dulled the senses; the quotidian being allowed to

override the marvellous in our experience of the world. For Breton, ‘concrete objects’

were representative of the “complete folly of usage.” 36

One of Breton’s most important projects was the attempt to depict what he termed

‘Convulsive Beauty’: a beauty that simultaneously evokes feelings of both attraction and

revulsion, similar to Freud’s notions of unheimlich, or the uncanny or uncomfortable. The

aim of this philosophical project was to awaken people from the long standing Western

tradition of rational thought, which Breton claimed was a falsehood, a veneer over what

he perceived as true reality. Thus, explorations of convulsive beauty, or the ‘marvellous’,

would allow everyday humanity to explore their own personal truths. Rosalind Krauss

argues that “representation is the very core of his definition of Convulsive Beauty, and

Convulsive Beauty is another term for the Marvellous: the great talismanic concept at the

heart of surrealism itself.” 37 As Breton himself put it: “the marvelous is always beautiful,

anything marvelous is beautiful, in fact only the marvelous is beautiful.” 38 Beauty was

therefore not to be judged by a preconceived universal standard, but by what moved

people to think, and to re-examine the true value of the objects they found themselves

surrounded by.

35
Breton, A. (1936). 54.
36
Breton, A. (1936). 54.
37
Krauss, R. E., Livingston, J., & Ades, D. (1985). L’amour fou: Photography & surrealism.
Washington, D.C.: Abbeville Press Inc. 24.
38
Breton, A., et al. (1969). 14.
124
 The creation of surrealist objects at this time also fulfilled another function: “the

necessity of establishing, in Paul Eluard’s decisive phrase, a veritable ‘physics of

poetry’.” 39 Although initiated by Breton it was Salvador Dalí who instigated the first

major surrealist investigation of objects in 1931, the creation of which was accompanied

by his essay ‘The object as revealed in surrealist experiment’. As Haim Finkelstein states:

Dalí’s invention and Breton’s objections to some of its aspects turn out to
be symptomatic, in the overall context of Surrealism, of a change in
emphasis and a movement away from dream and automatism to an active
soliciting of the mind to discharge the images hidden in the unconscious. 40

Several members of the surrealist group, including Breton, Dalí, Valentine Hugo

and Gala Eduard, created ‘objects of symbolic function’ as part of Dalí’s experiment,

images and/or descriptions of which were published with his essay in Le Surréalisme au

service de la révolution. 41 Breton found this first major output of objects created by the

surrealists to be unsatisfactory on two main counts, “first because they were too contrived,

especially in their deliberate incorporation of sexual suggestion, which eliminated the

uncanny effect generated by repression and psychical censorship; secondly, because they

were too personal to be meaningful to others in the same way.” 42 One such example from

this experiment was a pair of hands submitted by Hugo, a newer arrival to the group.

Alexandrian described Hugo’s symbolically functioning object simply, and with little

analysis: “Valentine Hugo made a symbolically functioning object which included two

hands – one white, and holding a dice, and the other red, placed together on a green

roulette cloth, and caught in a network of white threads.” 43 From Dalí’s description of

39
Breton, A. (1936). 53.
40
Malt, J. (2004). 89.
41
Malt, J. (2004). 88.
42
Malt, J. (2004). 88.
43
Alexandrian, S. (1985). Surrealist art. New York: Thames and Hudson. 148.

125
Hugo’s object however, we gain significant detail that is not clear from examining

photographs of the object: Hugo’s object consisted of two hands, one wearing in a white

glove, the other hand painted red, both with ermine cuffs, which were resting on a green

roulette cloth from which the last four numbers have been removed. “The gloved hand is

palm upwards and holds a die between its thumb and forefinger. All the fingers of the red

hand are movable and this hand is made to seize the other, its forefinger being put inside

the glove’s opening which it raises slightly. The two hands are enmeshed in white threads

like gossamer, which are fastened to the roulette cloth with red- and white-topped drawing

pins in a mixed arrangement.” 44 The imagery of the glove utilised Breton’s own symbol

for infatuation or ‘mad love’, and was possibly a reference to Lisa Deharme, the ‘lady of

the glove’, or to Breton’s obsession with Nadja. The object also included a love poem to

Breton. Such objects ultimately formed part of the basis for Breton’s objection to the

objects as being ‘too personal’, although another object created as part of this exercise –

and considered far more successful by Breton in terms of its fulfilling the aims of the

experiment – was Giacometti’s Suspended ball, which featured in the 1936 exhibition.

1936 EXHIBITION

The surrealist preoccupation with objects and their political significance

culminated in the May 1936 Exhibition of surrealist objects at the Charles Ratton Gallery

in Paris, followed by an International Surrealist Exhibition at the New Burlington

Galleries in London in June of the same year. It was hoped that the multiplication of

irrational objects would naturally lead to, in Breton’s words, a “depreciation of those

whose convenient utility (although often questionable) encumbers the supposedly real

44
Dalí, S. (1931) Objets surréalistes. Le Surréalisme au service de la revolution, 3. 16-17.

126
world.” 45 The objects assembled for this exhibition were split into the following

categories: Natural Objects; Interpreted Natural Objects; Disturbed Objects; Found

Objects; Objects from the Americas; Objects from Oceania; and the largest category,

Surrealist Objects. 46 The surrealists’ objects were placed alongside these found and

anthropological objects in the gallery, in a deliberate attempt to de-class art and culture.

The surrealist objects submitted for display in this exhibition varied greatly.

Examples included Salvador Dalí’s Aphrodisiac jacket, a tongue-in-cheek object,

consisting of a dinner jacket covered in shot glasses, and Giacometti’s sculptural works,

as well as the conspicuously naïve attempts of artists such as Cahun. These unrefined

works displayed a distinctly handmade quality, in an attempt to emphasise the work of

the non-artist or amateur and their role in creation of everyday objects, thus becoming a

symbol of the value of the work of the labouring classes. In the spirit of experimentation,

several writers associated with surrealism were invited to create objects for this

exhibition: the emphasis was on a de-skilling of the art of sculpture in order to illustrate

the value of all interactions between the subject and every object present without

assigning a pre-constructed notion of value to each. It is important to bear this aim in

mind when attempting an analysis of any of the objects submitted by those in this

‘amateur’ category which included Penrose, who was instrumental in organising the

London exhibition later the same year. 47 Although their works were readable in art-

theoretical terms, in that they have meaning, materials, style and form, their true

importance was as political signifiers, highlighting both the purpose of the exhibition and

45
Breton, A. (1936). 53.
46
Charles Ratton Gallery (1936). Exposition surréaliste d'objets, exhibition at the Charles Ratton Gallery,
Paris, 22-29 May 1936. Exhibition catalogue. Paris.
47
International Surrealist Bulletin. (1936, Sep). No. 4.
127
the political ideology of the surrealists as a whole. Penrose wrote of the excitement that

these projects engendered, both within the group and amongst the general public:

Surrealism had for ten years been treated generally as a childish pastime
or a public nuisance; now it’s concern with the complete revolution of
values in the arts and in life had come to be considered as a force of
undeniable strength in the intellectual world. 48

The exhibition itself deliberately resembled a mixture of museum displays and the

shop fittings of a commercial boutique in which ethnographic artefacts and traditional

tribal art were indiscriminately displayed alongside everyday found objects and modernist

sculpture in glass cases and upon rows of shelves. The Charles Ratton Gallery, as

specialists in ‘primitive’ art sales, was chosen for this very reason. 49 It was hoped by the

group that the gallery’s reputation as bourgeois purveyors of primitive art would increase

the sensation of the uncanny among its regular patrons, viewing the confused and

uncategorised surrealist show, accustomed as they were to the strict cultural delineations

of fine, primitive, and folk art, and the traditional socio-economic value placed on each

category. 50

Two writers who visited the exhibition cast some light on how successful the

objects displayed at the 1936 exhibition were in expressing these ideas to the public.

Maurice Henry described the confusion which resulted from such an eclectic display;

“from an Eskimo mask in the form of a duck, a carnivorous plant, a glass deformed by

lava from a volcano to a surrealist object, there is but a step. It is quickly taken by the

visitor.” 51 The journalist Guy Crouzet declared that the simultaneously deliberate, yet

48
Penrose, R. (1975). Man Ray. United States: New York Graphic Society Books.126.
49
Krauss, R. (1981). Passages in modern sculpture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 294.
50
Conley, K. (2013). Surrealist ghostliness. Philadelphia, PA: University of Nebraska Press. 77.
51
Henry, M. (1936, May 24). Une exposition d’objets surrealists. Quand la poésie deviant tangible. Le
Petit Journal.
128
haphazard juxtaposition of the objects gave them “a family likeness”, possibly a pun on

the title of one of Cahun’s objects on display, namely Un air de famille. Henry and

Crouzet’s reviews illustrated that the aims of the group with regards to the confusion of

the categories of the objects displayed were successfully interpreted by patrons of the

gallery.

CAHUN’S OBJECT CONFUSION

The catalogue for the exhibition lists two works submitted by Cahun: the

aforementioned Un air de famille, and Souris valseuses 52, now regarded as a lost work by

Laurie J Monahan and Steven Harris. Monahan contends in her entry on Cahun in The

Dictionary of women artists that Souris valseuses was an earlier variation on the object

Qui ne craint pas de grand mechant loup, remet la barque sur sa quille et vogue a la

derive 53 also of 1936, and was dismantled in order to furnish the objects used to create

the latter work. 54 Un air de famille, the details of which are now only available through

photographs taken at the time of the exhibition in 1936, is no longer extant having been

remodelled for use as a photographic plate in Lise Deharme’s 1937 poetry anthology, Le

Coeur de pic, before being dismantled again to furnish components for further objects.

Thus, the first issue complicating this analysis is some confusion surrounding the

total number of works created or submitted for exhibition that year by Cahun. Although

only two works were listed, another object created by Cahun in 1936 is still extant: the

52
Charles Ratton Gallery (1936). 4-5.
53
“Who’s not afraid of the big, bad wolf, reset the ship on its keel and drift in a fashion.” My translation.
54
Monahan, L. J. (1997). 342.
129
untitled Object now in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. 55 Further

complicating matters Steven Harris insists, in his excellent analysis of Object, that it was

displayed by Cahun in the Paris exhibition despite the fact that there is no mention of a

third work in the exhibition catalogue. 56

In order to fully analyse Cahun’s plastic contributions to the surrealist movement

during this period I will therefore first unravel the increasingly conflicting information

available on each piece. Secondly, while many academics and historians have made

mention of Cahun’s objects, it is primarily Harris who has provided a close analysis of

her practice in this area and the motivation behind it. My efforts to augment research in

this field have involved the investigation not only of her work, but also the complex and

increasingly tense social and political environment in which Cahun was working and with

which she was always so deeply involved. Also important to my analysis of Cahun’s

objects is an understanding that Cahun was not necessarily working consciously within

the scope of a particular tradition (be it one of painter or sculptor), but rather co-opted

other modes of expression as an extension of her primary written works. This is evidenced

by her liberal use of text within her sculptures and assemblages, generally utilised to

expand upon a political or social issue being raised in the work, which I will discuss in

detail in relation to each object.

UN AIR DE FAMILLE

55
The Art Institute of Chicago. Claude Cahun, object, 1936: Exhibition, publication and ownership
histories. Retrieved from http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/189807.
56
Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’oeil.

130
 Given it is not contested that Un air de famille was one of the objects Cahun

diaplayed at the 1936 Ratton exhibition, I will begin my analysis here. Only two

photographs by Cahun and Man Ray have recorded the form Un air de famille took at the

time of this exhibition. The object, the title of which translates as A family resemblance,

consisted of a doll’s bed containing a selection of toys and crowned with a veil and

flowers, evocative of both a bed curtain and a bride’s veil. Unfortunately, the colour of

the wreath is not known, and although it appeared to be red and white, without

contemporary descriptions this cannot be confirmed. The scale of the object was small

and doll-like, and its placement within the gallery was unusual for the rest of the

exhibition. Man Ray’s photographs show that while the majority of the gallery was set up

like a museum or salesroom, Cahun’s object was placed as a ‘domestic object’ on an

elegant side table such as might be found in a middle class Parisian parlour or entrance

hall.

The bed contained many objects, including a recorder, a symbol of childhood

‘femininity’ training for girls in the form of an education in the arts, the holes of which

appear to be partially blocked; a sash, arranged to appear like the arms of a body in repose,

folded gently across the body; several ornate glass perfume stoppers; and various other

unidentifiable objects. Alongside the pillow is what appears to be a teated toy milk bottle

(or possibly a feeding bottle for animal use). Dominating the bed’s surface is a strange

vessel, possibly a doll’s tri-corner hat, with a target on its side, containing pen nibs and

shards of broken glass which have a dangerous look to them, almost like brandished

weapons or the sharpened stakes of a pitfall. This vessel appears to sit in the position of

the heart. If the objects on the bed are read in this way – as severed and disjointed head,

hands, and heart - we can see how a length of string threads its way from the top of the
131
arrangement – the apex of the bed curtain, or the bride’s ‘head’ – down through the ‘heart’

of the object (the black vessel), and down into the ‘mouth’ of an object tucked lovingly

into the bed, which appears to portray a symbolic melding of the child and phallus. 57

Cupid’s broken arrow also lies discarded, tucked through the dowel sides of the bed like

an object once useful, now unfeathered and useless; the bull’s eye on the side of ‘heart’

remains unpierced.

The most obvious reference is to motherhood, marriage and procreation, as the

suckling object feeds on the mother’s head and heart. I propose that the object is a

reference to the contemporaneous debate over the legalisation of abortion in relation to

the size of working class families, and the economically related stresses of raising a large

family on low wages. As discussed below, variations of the word Ange – angel – appear

throughout the text attached to the object. Faiseuses d’anges was a term still in common

usage in this period. 58 Originally, a ‘maker of angels’ was a woman responsible for the

death of young children in her care, however by the 20th century it’s meaning had altered

to specifically refer to a backyard abortionist: one whom women would deliberately

consult in order to end an unwanted pregnancy. These procedures were naturally fraught

with danger and posed a serious threat to the lives of women who underwent them. With

the advent of medicalised abortion, the term has largely fallen out of use. It is therefore

possible that Cahun’s image hints at the lengths women must go to in order to maintain

the appearance of respectability, or to practice economic rationalism by curbing their

growing families by quasi-medical intervention, and the danger women were placed in

by their own reproductive biology. These ‘angels’ were both saviours, angels of mercy to

57
An interesting precursor to Louise Bourgeois’ La fillette of 1968.
58
Dyer, C. L. (1978). Population and society in twentieth century France. New York: Holmes and Meier.
79.
132
whom women could turn as a last resort, and harbingers of death, responsible not only for

the termination of pregnancies but also for the painful deaths of many of their clients.

The primary goal of those who supported the opportunity to legalise abortion was

to give working class women equal access to a safe, medicalised procedure currently only

available (illegally) to the upper and middle classes. At the time, abortion was still legally

punishable by decapitation at the guillotine. 59 The Popular Front, supported by the PCF,

had flip-flopped on their stance on abortion during the lead up to their electoral victory:

initially in favour of legalising the procedure to benefit working class families, the party

had realised that this stance had to be reversed in order to garner the number of votes

required to win the election. 60 Thus the abortion debate at the time politicised both class

and gender.

Cahun’s preliminary meaning can be read thus: once wed, domesticated, the wife

becomes another ‘domestic object’ – she is simply the sustenance required by others.

There is no more love to be found in this domestic scene, as the bride becomes the fodder

for her family and society: the body and mind of the working-class mother is revealed as

the provisions upon which the nation survives. Furthermore, a pen nib points a

condemning finger at the figure cradled in the bed. The accusatory positioning of the pen

confers upon it a central role in the composition of the piece. The pointed glass stopper

embedded in the vessel points upwards and draws the eye to the mysterious note pinned

above the bed.

59
Chadwick, W., & Latimer, T. T. (2003). 6.
60
Sowerwine, C. (2009). France since 1870: Culture, society and the making of the republic. London:
Palgrave Macmillan. 148.
133
UN CHANT REVOLUTIONAIRE

Adding further complexity to the object is the inclusion of text on a card tacked

to the bedpost. The handwritten message on the card can be read both in terms of a straight

visual analysis and of its written content. Beginning with a visual analysis, the label is a

card on which a child would practice forming their letters – in this case, the letter ‘m’.

The alliteration in the text appears to stem from this compulsory ‘m’ repeated down the

side of the page, as if the author/subject is not completely in control of the artistic process,

dictated to her as it is by the markings already on the page. The writing is also the slow,

careful stroke of a beginner; even-handed, yet clumsy in the attempt. Cahun has also

included a deliberate error in the forming of the J/G letter on the bottom line of the card

– a conscious and careful mistake, reminiscent of a child’s slow and painful correction of

an error. This correction also suggests further ambiguity in the play of words contained

within the poem.

The word play itself is, like Cahun’s other works (both visual and verbal) rich and

complex. The actual text reads:

non vivre pour manger.

Honneur á aux qui sont m___

mmmmmmmmmm
m dANGEr
manger m ange z
menge je mens
mange j/ge manje

134
Leaving aside the first two lines for later analysis, the wordplays in the body of the text

are as follows: the first line, “dANGEr”, spells danger in its entirety, while the capitalized

section alone spells angel. The d that prefixes this could also be seen as the definite article,

making it the angel. The pre-existing ‘m’ printed at the beginning of the line could also

render another interpretation possible: my danger. The second line consists firstly of the

infinitive form of the verb “manger”, to eat, and secondly the oddly spaced “m ange z”.

This can be read simultaneously as “m’ange/s”, my angel/s, and “mangez”, you eat, an

imperative or command in the singular polite form (the inference being the exhortations

of a polite host: “Please, I insist”). The next two lines play more directly with

pronunciation and several are not in fact ‘real’ words at all but nonsense syllables that

sound like words. The next line, “menge je mens”, consists secondly of a straight

statement – I lie – preceded by a syllabic play that sounds both like a mirror version of

the same statement – lie I – and a nonsense version of the singular imperative, you eat.

Thus, the line in its entirety resembles: You must eat/lie I I lie. The last line, “mange j/ge

manje” is more wordplay and nonsense: the first word is eat, followed by a syntactically

incorrect phonetic variation on I eat (je mange).

The play on the word angel exists in almost every line, through the repetition of

the syllable ange/enge. Furthermore, the word danger in French has a more specific

meaning than it does in English: ‘danger’ is specifically the exposure to risk of evil or

harm by another; to put yourself in peril is instead translated by ‘risque’ – to take a risk. 61

Thus the danger referred to here is an evil that comes from an ‘other’, an outside source.

The syllable man/men throughout also develops a strong phonetic resemblance through

61
Corréard, M.-H. (1997). The Oxford-Hachette French dictionary. New York: Oxford University Press.

135
repetition to ‘manne’, the French word for manna, the miraculous foodstuff sent from

heaven.

Although it would be impossible to translate the entire piece into English, an

approximation of its meaning would be as follows

There is danger for the angel (my danger)

Eat, my angel, eat, you must (please, I insist)
You must eat! I lie (my angel) I lie,
Eat, my angel, I eat (my angel) (I am my angel).

The simple beauty and complexity of the text is impossible to render perfectly in

another language, and I have not delivered a complete interpretation in this instance.

Across the top of the card are two short sentences; the platitude “non vivre pour manger”

– don’t live to eat – and a partially obscured phrase which most likely translates as

something approximating “Honour (to) those (that) are eaten/eating”. Although some

guesswork is required concerning the form of the final word (most likely a declension of

manger, to eat), and thus no definite conclusion can be drawn as to its meaning, the

sentence may be a play on the commonly quoted Latin phrase, “morituri te salutant”, or

as it is recognised in English, “Those who are about to die salute you”. Unfortunately,

without confirmation of form of the final word, its meaning remains ambiguous: who

extends the honour, and is it to those who eat, or who are eaten? The original phrase may

have even carried this same ambiguity.

By introducing this phrase Cahun not only co-opted a gladiator’s oratory salute,

but also a very masculine concept of sacrifice for the pleasure of the leader, and bravery

in the face of almost certain death. This machismo is thus claimed for the women of

France who could be just as resilient when fighting for their rights. Reading this in terms
136
of the surrealists’ political ideals it becomes an announcement of a battle that has been

enjoined, and a promise that Cahun will fight on behalf of subjugated women.

I.O.U. YOU SELF PRIDE

Elements of Un air de famille also exhibit a parallel to an earlier collage created

by Cahun and her partner Suzanne Malherbe (Marcel Moore). Plate 9 of Aveux non

avenus, entitled I.O.U (self pride), contains many references to the same set of social and

political signifiers: family; femininity; masking of identity; and power, both religious and

secular. This particular plate has previously been examined by several researchers,

including Jennifer Shaw and Natalya Lusty, and I will now extend these important

analyses to the study of Cahun’s object.

The top third of the collage contains a tongue-in-cheek reference to the holy

family (“La sainte famille”). The woman’s body is grotesquely tethered to both husband

and child, torn in two directions by the aggressive stance of the father and the

waywardness of the young child – a boy – violently brought to heel by the father, who

grabs him by the hair. Again, the woman’s body exists only as a function of others – a

support, a supply point, pulled brutally in many directions by the desires of her family.

The father is endowed with a god-like power, clutching a fistful of Zeus’ thunderbolts

ready to hurl down upon the unrighteous (or disobedient). Surrounded by this image of

the sanctified heterogeneric family are various illustrations of the foetus in utero, in a

macabre sequence of disemboweled or vivisected Matryoshka dolls. 62 The inference

62
Russian nesting dolls, called Matryoshkas after the Russian word Matryona, meaning mother (thus
‘little mother’ or ‘mummy’ dolls is an appropriate translation). The biological inference of the physical
137
seems apparent: the faceless march of reproductive duty, the endless replication of life

which is woman’s biological and sole function in society. Cahun’s preoccupation with

the family as it related to personal identity and womanhood is unmistakable in this

collection of images. As Shaw interprets the collage:

The only place for creative potential left to women in the dominant
discourse of post-war France was the potential to produce a child. The
paradigm of artist and muse mimicked the more general unequal
relationship in romance and marriage between men and women. It
reinforced the notion that the only role women should play in creation was
the role of vessel for the gestation of a child. 63

Directly below this section in the centre of the collage is a decapitated male statue,

its genitals mutilated, lying prone across the picture plane. From its bloodied navel sprouts

a monstrous tree, which blooms with female sensory organs: mouth, hand, nose, ear and

eye: the castrated or disempowered male becomes the gestational vessel from which

female sensory experience and freedom blossoms into the world, a depiction of social

castration anxiety writ large. With the blossoming of female sensory and intellectual

experience comes a desire to participate in alternative acts of creativity. For Cahun,

female artistic creativity stood in a double for, or alternative to, creativity through

biological reproduction. Furthermore, as the title suggests, this path is one that should be

taken when desired rather than passively awaiting an opportunity that may never be

nature of the dolls is thus rendered more clearly using the correct terminology: each ‘little mummy’ doll
reproduces a smaller, perfect rendition of itself.
63
Shaw, J. (2003). Singular plural: Collaborative self-images in Claude Cahun's Aveux non avenus, in W.
Chadwick, T. T. Latimer (Eds.), The modern woman revisited: Paris between the wars. New Brunswick,
NJ: Rutgers University Press. 159.
138
extended by others: I.O.U (self-pride) is a note to the self, reminding the female viewer

of their obligation to reach for what brings them self-completion and happiness.

The collage also contains the phrase “Under this mask another mask: I shall never

stop removing all the faces.” 64 This maxim surrounds a phallic pile of heads, each one a

different portrait or ‘mask’ of Cahun herself. Cahun’s masks, symbols of her intellectual

creativity, become a symbol of masculinised strength, a phallic figure wielding authority

that forcibly inserts itself into the frame.

MOTHERHOOD AS A MASQUERADE

Returning to her depiction of the hardships of motherhood in Un air de famille, I

will now examine the inference of the wordplay in the object. At first it appears that the

mother exhorts her ‘angel’ to eat, in a soothing, nurturing, ‘mothering’ fashion. But is her

child the angel, or is she her own angel? If the mother is referring to herself as the angel,

then she is in fact exhorting the child (or whomever the text is addressed to) to consume

her. Is there danger for her angel, or is the danger ‘my (her) danger’? The self-sacrifice

of the mother is willing, and as contemporary society would have it for the good of the

family, but for Cahun it was exploitative labour nevertheless. The mother hides behind

layers of meaning, each one a mask; is she the bride, the angel, or the meal? Much like

Joan Riviere’s Womanliness as a masquerade (1929), in which Riviere unpacked the

ways in which women engage in a kind of quotidian performance, enacting socially

prescribed feminine identities in order to conform to societal expectations of womanhood,

64
The original text reads “Sous ce masque un autre masque. Je n’en finirai pas de soulever tous ces
visages.”
139
in Cahun’s object “the mask represents a complex grammar of identity that refuses an

instrumental distinction between appearance and reality, a performative and ‘real’

self”’. 65 The ‘family resemblance’ in this object can thus be interpreted as the mother’s

performance of socially acceptable motherhood, rather than of her ‘real’ self’ In this work,

while the mask is metaphorical rather than physically present, the concept of the mask

represents the absence of woman’s true identity from contemporary society.

The wordplay contained within the title of Un air de famille requires further

analysis for an English-speaking audience. The family resemblance could on one level be

a simple description of the object: here is something which looks like a family, a mother

nurturing a child. There is another resemblance that could be evoked, the mother also

bears a family resemblance to her mother, and all mothers before her: anonymous,

drained, and silenced. The mother hides behinds so many masks of motherhood that she

also comes to resemble her family: as her body goes to make up their being, eventually

her individuality is subsumed by her husband and children and the only likeness that

remains at her disposal is her visibility as defined by their outline in the world.

The placement of Un air de famille within the gallery as a decorative item on an

expensive side table serves as a reminder of the marginalisation of women in French

society – unable to take part in the democratic process they are reduced to items of

domestic utility or decoration, depending on their class. Women themselves are largely

absent from the political debate on the role of women, and poor women even more so.

Imbued with the nature of a conversation piece, it renders the socially invisible woman

visible to those who would exploit her most, forcing them to acknowledge their

contribution to her slow destruction.

65
Lusty, N. (2007). 84.

140
SOURIS VALSEUSES - FOUND OBJECTS

Cahun’s only other surviving object from this period, known as Object, is now

owned by the Art Institute of Chicago. The Object is a perfect representation of Cahun’s

blurring of socially and biologically designated gender categories in her work. Here we

see an eyeball rolled onto its side and surrounded by a mass of pubic hair. Above it hovers

an amorphous cloud-like object and standing in the foreground we see a disembodied

hand. Made largely with found objects and reclaimed materials including a painted tennis

ball, the surrealist imagery within the work is apparent; the eye is one of the most common

motifs in surrealism. The most obvious reading of the disembodied hand in the foreground

in a surrealist context is as a representation of castration, although Steven Harris also

deciphers it as a symbol of the act of masturbation. 66 Mary Ann Caws also offers possible

interpretations of the hand with specific reference to Cahun’s habitual set of signifiers,

and speculates that it could represent a hand-held mirror, or even a mask. 67

A powerful precursor to Object is the symbolist Odilon Redon’s 1879 lithograph

The vision, plate no. 8 of Danse le réve. In this and other images Redon reduces the

eyeball to a nightmare vision. Disembodied and stripped of all referential meaning within

the canon of western art:

Redon’s startling instance of the eye on stage is another of the early

metavisual images as perfect examples of a self-referring temper: the
observers here stare at a theatrical eye, itself forming the subject of the
sight. The Surrealists could go no further than this. 68

66
Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’oeil. 100-01.
67
Caws, M. A. (1997). The surrealist look: An erotics of encounter. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 117.
68
Caws, M. A. (1992). The eye in the text: Essays on perception, mannerist to modern. United States:
Princeton University Press. 100.
141
Another is an undated earlier duogram by Claude herself, consisting of a pair of lips

resting on an eyeball, crowned with a reaching hand and balanced precariously on a

fashionable ladies’ shoe. Tirza True Latimer reads this image as a synthesis of Moore and

Cahun: Lucie Schwob, creator of words, reaches for the sky, while Suzanne Malherbe,

creator of visual imagery, keeps her grounded. 69 The imagery in this work bears a striking

resemblance to Object, created some ten to fifteen years later. In another of Cahun’s

works, a photographic self-portrait published in the surrealist review Bifur in 1930 we

can see a blurring of gender boundaries similar to those contained in the Object. Titled

Frontières humaines, the portrait depicts a bald Cahun in a feminine off the shoulder

dress, her head distorted and oddly phallicised. 70 Thus Cahun at first depicted herself as

the phallicised woman, a symbol of social castration and the assumption of male power.

The Object also enters into a dialogue with French modernist depictions of the

gaze of the female subject, typified by Manet’s Olympia or Picasso’s Demoiselles

d’Avignon. Unlike a romantic odalisque Cahun’s disembodied eyeball stares us down,

daring us to break our gaze first, or to keep staring at the spectacle of the unashamed

woman who has been reduced to a single, naked eye. With her body no longer extant, it

is the spectator, in turn, who is ogled. Stephen Harris reads this object as an interpretation

of Bataille’s L’histoire du l’oeil, in which the heroine removes the eye of a priest and

places it in her vagina: a symbol of castration anxiety created by the feminising of the

phallic eye. 71

69
Latimer, T. T. (2006). Entre nous: Between Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. GLQ. Duke University
Press, 12.2. 206.
70
Latimer, T. T. (2006). 209.
71
Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’œil. 98.
142
 Expounding briefly, the chapter entitled “Granero’s eye” tells the story of the

protagonist and his lover, Simone, attending a bullfight in Spain with a much older

English gentleman, who is currently paying their board and keep in exchange for sexual

favours. Having first demanded that the raw testicles of the first slain bull be delivered to

her on a plate (for purposes which become apparent), Simone and her companions then

settle down to watch the main event. The moment climaxes when the famous bullfighter,

Granero, is gored to death by a bull, his eyeball popping from the socket at the same

moment that Simone is gripped by a lustful frenzy, inserting a raw bull’s testicle into her

vagina for all in the audience to see. 72 Her actions escalate in the following chapters,

where the trio capture, sexually torture and murder a priest in a church vestry, culminating

in Simone demanding the priest’s eye for a similar purpose:

[Simone] grabbed the beautiful eyeball from the hands of the tall
Englishman, and with a staid and regular pressure from her hands, she slid
it into her slobbery flesh, in the midst of the fur…while Simone lay on her
side, I drew her thighs apart…I even felt as if my eyes were bulging from
my head, erectile with horror; in Simone’s hairy vagina, I saw the wan
blue eye of Marcelle, gazing at me through tears of urine. 73

In this sequence of events it is Simone who is in control: the men who desire her sexual

favours eventually turn to theft, fraud and grisly murder in order to appease her sensual

appetite. First published 1928, the character of Simone epitomised the contemporary

European man’s fear of a woman in total control. 74 Harris’ work in linking the two artists

is thorough and withstands scrutiny. Having accepted this link between Cahun and

72
Bataille, G. (2001). Story of the eye. London: Penguin. 53.
73
Bataille, G. (2001). 66-7.
74
Reader, K. (2006). The abject object: Avatars of the phallus in contemporary french theory, literature
and film. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi B.V. 58.
143
Bataille, my analysis of this object will take this linkage further, in an attempt to explain

its provenance, and therefore meaning.

In an essay on Bataille’s story of the eye, Roland Barthes claims that the “essential

form” of the eye persists through the constant presence of its metaphors that occur

throughout the novel (the egg, the testicle, the sun) in a strangely literal interpretation of

objects:

The eye’s substitutes are declined in every sense of the term: recited like
flexional forms of the one word; revealed like states of the one
identity…here each inflexion is a new noun, speaking a new usage. 75

The never-ending cycle of metaphors contained within the story – eye, egg, testicle –

provide an important opportunity in relation to the reading of Cahun’s Object.

The Art Institute of Chicago, which acquired the untitled hand and eye sculpture

in 2007, refers both to the title of the piece as Object, and its display (“debut”) in the 1936

Surrealist Exhibition at the Charles Ratton Gallery, which subsequently owned the object

until it was sold at some point before 1986 to the Zabriskie Gallery in New York. 76 Object

is not listed in the exhibition catalogue for either the Paris or London shows. 77 Steven

Harris solves this problem by stating that Cahun must have produced three objects for the

1936 exhibition, rather than simply the two listed in the Paris catalogue. 78 Janine Mileaf

echoes this conclusion when she states that Cahun submitted a small object to the Ratton

exhibition which was “known simply as Object.” 79 In order to solve this puzzle it was

75
Bataille, G. (2001). 120-21.
76
Hogan, E. (2007, 24 Apr). Art Institute of Chicago acquires surrealist object by Claude Cahun. Press
release. 1-2.
77
In London she exhibited a photograph only.
78
Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’œil. 90.
79
Mileaf, J. A. (2010). Please touch: Dada and surrealist objects after the readymade. Hanover, NH:
University Press of New England. 142.
144
necessary to attempt an approach from a contemporaneous point of view, and after

studying Cahun’s objects and her love of wordplay, I have returned to the other named

object listed in the catalogue, Souris valseuses.

As previously stated, Souris valseuses is believed to have been destroyed, and no

photographic depictions of it are known to exist. The title of the work literally translates

as ‘Waltzing Mice’. A waltzing mouse is a particular strain of mouse breed native to Asia

with a genetic inner ear disorder, causing it to turn in endless spiraling circles, sometimes

hundreds or thousands of times over, in order to move from one place to another. 80

Waltzing mice were popular test subjects in experiments on genetics from the late 19th

Century in France, and their importance in these published studies grew with the rising

interest in eugenics and the heated debate surrounding the totalitarian notion of purging

genetic ‘impurities’. 81 Souris valseuses was also a common derogatory term for lovers of

modernism and modernity, who were often referred to as scurrying about like “waltzing

mice”: that is to say, always busy, yet achieving very little. 82

While the word souris has one literal meaning – mouse – it also possesses several

other meanings in the vernacular. The most common usage is for ‘girl’: a souris can be a

girl you fancy; petit souris (little mouse) can be a pet name, or a term meaning ‘mousy

girl’; souris grises, or ‘grey mice’ was the derogatory name given to Nazi servicewomen

stationed in France during the occupation 83 In contrast the Australian born resistance

80
National Institute of Allergy. (1979). Origins of inbred mice. New York: Academic Press. 503.
81
Newman, H. H. (1921). Readings in evolution, genetics, and eugenics. University of Chicago Press.
398.
82
Ueland, B. (1988). If you want to write: A book about art, independence and spirit. Cambridge, MA:
Graywolf Press. 32.
83
de Quétel, C. (2006). Femmes dans la guerre: 1939-1945. Larousse Collection: L’oeil des
archives, Broché.
145
fighter, Nancy Wake, was known as La souris blanche – The White Mouse. 84 These are

just some of the many instances in which souris has the meaning of ‘girl’. 85

Valseuses similarly has other meanings. Literally ‘the waltzers’, (les) valseuses is

also slang for testicles – the equivalent in the English vernacular of ‘bollocks’. 86 Bataille’s

story also draws parallels between detached eyeballs, skinless testicles and peeled eggs,

all allegedly similar in appearance, feel, and consistency, and as Barthes points out, oeuf

(egg) is also a contemporaneous French slang word for testicle. 87 Furthermore, les

valseuses is a feminine plural; its use as a term for testicles is an automatic linguistic

confusion of gender.

Thus, Souris valseuses is not necessarily about ‘Waltzing Mice’ at all, but rather

a ‘Girl Testicle’, or allowing a little more latitude in translation given the colloquial nature

of the language being used, ‘The Bollocks Babe’. With its obvious visual references to

the feminizing of phallic objects, I suggest that the Object held by the Art Institute of

Chicago is, most likely, the ‘lost’ Souris valseuses.

UN CHANT REVOLUTIONAIRE II

84
Spence, N. C. W. (2001).The human bestiary. The Modern Language Review, 96.4. 918-9.
85
In current slang usage, souris also has meanings as diverse as penis and tampon, although I cannot with
any certainty ascribe these usages to the period in question.
86
Written references to this usage are difficult to source, however the 1974 movie Les valseuses is one
example, and the modern novel Pulse by Julian Barnes (2011, p. 27) attests to this usage over an extended
period of time. Anecdotal evidence is also available from native French speakers: “I’ve always wanted to
call a restaurant Les valseuses. ‘Valseuses’ is a really old French word for a man’s balls. But it also means
the female Waltz dancer and of course the movie by Blier with Depardieu from 1974. There was one
restaurant in Paris called Les valseuses once, but it’s closed now.” http://www.stilinberlin.de/2012/08/in-
kitchen-les-valseuses.html.
87
Bataille, G. (2001). 121.
146
 Like Un air de famille, the base of the Souris valseuses/Object, also contains

handwritten text: ‘La Marseillaise est un chant révolutionnaire, la loi punit le

contrefacteur des travaux forcés’, which translates as ‘The Marseillaise is a revolutionary

song, the law punishes the counterfeiter of/with hard labour.’ The second sentence

originally appeared on Belgian bank notes and was the treasury warning to counterfeiters

of the punishment they would receive. 88 The national anthem was originally a

revolutionary song, which then became the official anthem of France. The phrase ‘La

Marseillaise is a revolutionary song’ was a phrase used by one of the Popular Front’s

leaders in the lead up to the election of 1936 which they were poised to win in May of the

same year. 89 Due to its adoption by the Popular Front as part of their campaign, Cahun

and her surrealist associates would have viewed this statement as manifestly false: the

PCF, as one of the factions which had been absorbed into the Popular Front, were no

longer revolutionary and thus neither was their chosen anthem. The second half of the

phrase literally refers to how the workers (for whom she makes these objects) will rise up

against ‘le contrefacteur’. So, in one sense Cahun here lamented what the revolution has

become, in the age of industrialization and the exploitation of the working class, as well

as the rise of The Popular Front – the working man’s ‘false’ political choice.

Harris makes the confident assertion that ‘the juxtaposition of the two found texts

can only be a criticism of the party.’ 90 That it is a criticism of the Popular Front is

undeniable, however more can be drawn from the accompanying text. Writing on the

poem “Le Contrefacteur” by Louis Aragon, from Le Mouvement perpetual (1925), Mary

Ann Caws states that the literal translation of ‘Contrefacteur’ is indeed forger, faker or

88
Raeburn, M., & Sylvester, D. (1993). Rene Magritte: Catalogue raisonne, III: Oil paintings, objects
and bronzes 1949-1967. Antwerp: Menil Foundation. 119.
89
Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’oeil. 106-7.
90
Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’oeil. 109.
147
counterfeiter, however she goes on to assert that ‘Contrefacteur’ can also be extended to

describe a person who ‘[goes] against the facts or ‘faits’’. 91 Thus we have another

interpretation of the ‘counterfeiter’ within the object: the woman masquerading as the

phallic, empowered male, parading herself against the known facts.

RE-READING SOURIS VALSEUSES/OBJECT

Cahun’s Souris valseuses/Object “disturbs the normal terms of sexual difference”

as Harris states. 92 But to what end? In relation to Bataille’s eye/egg/testicle chain of

signifiers, Barthes asks the question; “Do all the significants in this ‘step-ladder’ refer to

a stable thing signified, one all the more secret for being buried beneath a whole

architecture of masks?”93 The same question can now be redirected towards Cahun’s

Souris valseuses.

Natalya Lusty states that automatism was gradually replaced in the surrealist

agenda by a fascination with the marvellous, usually represented by the enigma of female

sexuality, and that “while feminine sexuality inspired the male artist…its excessive and

disturbing qualities also threatened to contaminate his innovative, critical endeavours.” 94

Thus Cahun’s representation of the phallicised eye can be read as a protest at previous

depictions of the female form by male surrealist artists, such as Man Ray and Hans

Bellmer. Furthermore, as Harris states, “what is traditionally invisible or absent in

western discourse, the vagina, is here made eminently visible as an image of power.”95

91
Caws, M. A. (1992). 90.
92
Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’oeil. 94.
93
Bataille, G. (2001). 122.
94
Lusty, N. (2007). 13.
95
Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’oeil. 98.
148
Like the forced visibility of the mother in Un air de famille, again Cahun compels her

audience to see what is usually hidden. According to Barthes’ in his analysis of Bataille’s

story, “the erotic theme is never directly phallic (what we have here is a ‘round

phallicism’)” 96 so Souris valseuses/Object could also be described as an attempt to depict

yonic strength.

The disembodied hand in the object has been described by Harris and Caws as

representative of castration, a mask, and a mirror. 97 In ascribing a value to the hand as a

symbol of masturbation Harris alludes to forbidden pleasure. However, another, darker

reading of forbidden gratification can be drawn from the object: the violent image of the

subjugated woman as castrator destroying masculine dominance. The symbolic

assumption of phallic power is therefore overtly aggressive. This is one potential result,

Cahun seems to say, of ignoring the situation of women. ‘If you do not pay attention to

our needs and opinions, we will take your phallic power: we will take your balls in our

hand and we will own them.’ This threat to power can also be more widely interpreted as

a threat to those who did not stand with the surrealists on matters of social significance,

such as the Popular Front, the USSR, or the fascists of Spain and Germany.

Cahun’s object, in visualising Bataille’s greatest moment of castration anxiety,

accompanied by the politically charged message written on the work, is in equal parts

both a sculptural object, and a potent symbol of the collective political struggle in which

she and the surrealists were engaged. The castration anxiety being represented here is

perhaps also one of a social castration; a fear of the impending loss of social and artistic

liberties in the political climate of pre-war France. Cahun’s objects also tell a story of

resistance by explaining, in the first instance, the issues of most importance to the women

96
Bataille, G. (2001). 122.
97
Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’oeil. 100-01. Caws, M. A. (1997). 117.
149
of France and then depicting an alternative: a female symbol of strength which both serves

as a warning and exhorts the viewer to action.

Attention to Cahun’s objects reveals how Cahun was actively disrupting the

borders between male and female, horrifying and titillating, visual and verbal, real and

surreal. Gayle Zachmann suggested of Cahun’s photographic work that she “re-envisions

the boundaries of the visual and the verbal.” 98 Cahun’s Un air de famille and Souris

valseuses/Object can also be seen as a re-inscription of the female form upon the phallic;

a reclaiming of woman’s bodily existence and the right to assert its continuing existence

as an independent form. As Tirza True Latimer states, both Cahun and Moore “launched

[their] critique…from a self-consciously (and irrevocably) off-centre position” as women

still legally and culturally on the periphery of power with “no stake in maintaining the

integrity of these categories of social subjectivity.” 99 Thus, rather than disguising the

unpalatable, Cahun’s objects reflect and amplify that which others would prefer to remain

masked; those who are objectified and subsumed by modernity and modernisms. If her

I.O.U is read as a promise to deliver self-pride to all women, then Un air de famille could

be seen as an attempt to fulfil that promise; to draw attention to the identity crisis facing

women, produced by the social, cultural and political realities of contemporary France.

Cahun’s work during this period can also be seen as a reaction to the myth of

freedom for the modern woman: as Mary Louise Roberts contends, popular expectations

were that women would be preoccupied with “sex, marriage, career, and consumerism –

rather than politics”. 100

98
Zachmann, G. (2003). Surreal and canny selves: Photographic figures in Claude Cahun. Studies in 20th
& 21st Century Literature, 27.2. 302.
99
Latimer, T. T. (2006). 210.
100
Roberts, M. L. (1994). Civilization without sexes: Reconstructing gender in postwar France, 1917-
1927. United States: University of Chicago Press. 69.
150
UGLY COLLAGES AND POEM OBJECTS

As previously discussed, the symbolic meaning of a surrealist object was always

more important than its final form, the skill employed by its fabricator, or the means by

which it was produced. As William S. Rubin summarizes:

The Surrealist object was essentially a three-dimensional collage of

‘found’ articles that were chosen for their poetic meaning rather than
their possible visual value. It’s entirely literary character opened the
possibility of its fabrication – or, better, its confection – to poets, critics,
and others who stood professionally outside, or on the margins of, the
plastic arts. 101

Cahun’s objects created during this period conform to this notion: their form was often

anything but visually pleasing (in conventional terms), while their “literary character,”

evidenced by the didactic nature of many of the objects, such as Cahun’s, was usually

more apparent. Cahun and Deharme, like Breton, were first and foremost writers, and their

creation of objects for the 1936 exhibition illustrated their radical political and

philosophical positions, and intent to provoke debate, rather than to provoke an admiration

of the forms chosen or the skill in their fabrication.

Breton submitted several objects for the exhibition, including objects created with

his wife Jacqueline Lamba-Breton, such as Le grand paranoïaque and Le petit mimetique,

as well as objects in the ‘Found’ and ‘Primitive’ art categories. However, the objects of

perhaps the greatest significance were his Poèmes-objets (Poem-objects), in which Breton

attempted to actively fuse written and visual components into a surrealist whole. The

poem-object was a synthesis of all the experiments of the surrealist group that had come

101
Rubin, W. S. (1990). Dada surrealism and their heritage. New York: Museum of Modern Art. 143.
151
before it: automatism, poetry, collage, and now object-making, were combined to create

objects designed to deliberately confuse the consciousness of the viewer. Alexandrian

describes the poem-object as a new form of object, “invented by André Breton, who was

in fact the only person to provide valid examples”, and he describes them as “a kind of

relief which incorporates objects in the words of a poetic declaration so as to form a

homogenous whole.” 102 One such poem-object is the one now held by the National

Gallery of Scotland. Created in 1935, this poem-object was one of the ones included in

the 1936 exhibition. The object consists of a broken pocket mirror, a pair of wings and a

plaster egg, on which is inscribed “Je vois, J’imagine” (“I see, I imagine”). Breton saw a

broken mirror, lying discarded, and imagined a winged creature taking flight. Below the

object collage is a poem, written by means of the automatic method:

A l’intersection de lignes de force invisibles

Trouver

Le point de chant vers quoi les arbres se font la courte échelle

L’épine de silence

Qui veut que le seigneur des navires livre au vent son panache de chiens bleus

At the intersection of lines of invisible force

Find

The point in the song where trees give each other a leg up

The thorn of silence

That wants the lord of the ships to give his book of wind a plume of blue dogs 103

102
Alexandrian, S. (1985). 147.
103
My translation
152
Like all automatic writing its meaning is opaque; its primary function was to illustrate the

effects of surrendering to the creativity which was believed by Breton to dwell in the

unconscious mind, and to demonstrate that by liberating the unconscious, true meaning

can be found. Cahun’s objects, incorporating text, function in a similar fashion, although

Cahun’s text was not generated by supposedly unconscious action, but very carefully

constructed in order to demand introspection, and participation in interpretation, on the

part of her audience. Cahun’s aim in the creation of her objects was to exhort the viewer

to action, to participate actively in the revolutionary power of the language of objects.

POLITICAL ART AND OBJECTS OF RESISTANCE

As Steven Harris states in his examination of surrealist practices in the 1930s, the

group began “the development of a parti pris that, while breaking conceptually with

bourgeois cultural values and precepts, resisted any instrumentalization of the aesthetic

sphere in the political struggle (which would use art as a weapon), in favour of a broader

conception of what culture could be.” 104 The surrealists claimed such work was an

essential undertaking in the struggle for proletarian rights, as at the time of the surrealist

object project the working class did not possess the means or knowledge to fight for

themselves. Breton was expressing an abhorrence of ‘real objects’ as early as the First

surrealist manifesto of 1924. 105 He encapsulated their philosophy as it stood at the

beginning of the decade in the second manifesto of surrealism, published in 1929:

104
Harris, S. (2004). Surrealist art and thought in the 1930s: Art, politics, and the psyche. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. 2.
105
Breton, A., et al.. (1969). 3.
153
 I do not believe in the present possibility of an art or literature which
expresses the aspirations of the working class. If I refuse to believe in such
a possibility, it is because, in any pre-revolutionary period the writer or
artist, who of necessity is a product of the bourgeoisie, is by definition
incapable of transmitting these aspirations. 106

This earlier attempt to formulate a debate surrounding the importance of art to the

working class is somewhat pessimistic in tone. As previously highlighted, Breton’s early

attempts to articulate his stance on this matter dismissed all forms of traditional and folk

art, popular entertainment, and other forms of cultural expression mediated by the

working class. By doing so, Breton appears to have fallen into his common trap of valuing

certain arts forms over others. By 1936 he appears to have recognised this issue in his

own theories however, and in his May 1936 article ‘The crisis of the object’, published

to coincide with the Parisian exhibition in the same month, Breton argued for nothing less

than “a total revolution of the object.” 107 The subsequent de-classing of artistic

production – removing it from the exclusive sphere of privileged, bourgeois ‘creativity’

– opened, in the words of Penelope Rosemont, “inexhaustible possibilities of genuine

discovery to all, even those without formal artistic training.” 108 Rosemont argues that the

practices of the surrealist group at this time in both collage and object-making “radically

challenged the very foundations of the bourgeois, androcentric art movement.”109

Surrealist object making had thus evolved to challenge contemporary notions regarding

the relationship between class and politics; politics and art; art and class. Cahun pre-

106
Lippard, L. (1971). 34.
107
Breton, A. (1936). 54.
108
Rosemont, P. (Ed.). (1998). Surrealist women: An international anthology. London: The Althone
Press. 47.
109
Rosemont, P. (Ed.). (1998). 48.
154
empted Breton’s own theory of object manufacture in Les paris sont ouverts in 1934,

when she wrote:

The Dadaist-surrealist experiment, therefore, can and should serve the

cause of working-class emancipation. Only when the proletariat has
become conscious of the real meaning of the myths that uphold capitalist
culture – indeed, only when the proletariat has destroyed these myths and
revolutionized this culture – will working men and women be able, as a
class, to proceed to their own self-development. The positive lesson of this
experience in negation – that is, the dissemination of the surrealist
experiment among the working class – is the only valid revolutionary
poetic propaganda in our time. 110

As the surrealists’ noted contemporary and admirer Yves Duplessis declared: “The

surrealists make the art critics despair by annihilating the concept of talent.” 111 This

statement is not entirely true. Talent, as defined by the ability to create fine art products,

i.e. those with a high commercial value, ran counter to the aims of the surrealists in 1936,

and was certainly anathema to their goals. But talent can be defined in many ways, and

the surrealists by no means sought to annihilate talent as defined by the skills of working

class men and women, or those dedicated to seeking out truth. As Cahun said of her own

objects, in 1936 in Beware domestic objects:

I insist upon this primordial truth: one must oneself discover, manipulate, tame,
and construct irrational objects to be able to appreciate the particular or general
value of those displayed here [i.e. at the Charles Ratton Gallery exhibition]. That
is why, in certain respects, manual laborers may be in a better position than
intellectuals to understand them, were it not for the fact that the whole of capitalist
society – communist propaganda included – diverts them from doing so. 112
CREATION AND DESTRUCTION

110
Cahun, C. (1998). Surrealism and working class emancipation, in P. Rosemont (Ed.), Surrealist
women: An international anthology. London: The Althone Press. 58.
111
Duplessis, Y. (1978). Surrealism. United States: Greenwood Press. 75.
112
Cahun, C. (1936). 60.
155
 The relationship between creation and destruction in surrealist objects is also

essential to an understanding of their role and symbolic function. In the construction of

these objects creation and destruction were no longer mutually exclusive concepts but

rather two methods working in tandem to produce the truly ‘irrational object’. Breton

himself referred to surrealist object manufacture in ‘The crisis of the object’ as a process

which involved “reconstructing it [the object] from all the fragments,” 113 the utilisation

of fragments in reconstruction suggesting the idea of previous destruction, in order to

make the creative process possible.

He went on to explain how these objects, regardless of their final form, would

assist the group in fulfilling their political aims: “Objects thus reassembled have in

common the fact that they derive from, and succeed in differing from the objects which

surround us, by simple change of role.” 114 A version of this philosophy had long been

part of modern art practice in the form of the readymade, however Breton wanted to take

Marcel Duchamp’s original assertion – that is, an object becomes art when the artist

designates it so – and extend this concept of mutability to the entire network of tangible

objects surrounding mankind. Breton saw that not only could these objects become art,

they could become anything their handlers desired: their use value was not to be

designated by their form or originally designated function. Cahun had also long held

opinions on the creative ability of mutability, and the potential inherent in the destruction

of the traditional form and role of objects. She expressed it as: “whatever I have said

about it, in any case, is only to get you to construct (to destroy + χ) with your own ideas

and findings, which, however much they may have in common with ours, nonetheless

113
Breton, A. (1936). 54.
114
Breton, A. (1936). 54-5.
156
remain – partly or entirely – still unknown.” 115 Where Cahun’s theory differs markedly

from Breton’s, is her exhortation to the viewer to actively participate in the process being

offered by the object. Where for Breton it was enough to show people how roles could be

altered in the material world, Cahun wanted people to physically and psychically engage

with the process, becoming an active protagonist in the mutation.

While the surrealists involved in this exhibition were engaged in the common task

of overthrowing traditional perceptions of art and objects, Cahun used her objects to

encourage viewers to participate in the interrogation of the existing social order. She did

this with a view to deconstructing it entirely in favour of a new philosophy, within which

it was possible for the viewer to construct her objects as agents of social change. While

Breton’s objects retain their poetic, literary nature, Cahun’s objects were designed to

function as political agitators, and as agents of resistance. Her objects of resistance did

not resist in an antagonistic or antithetical sense, however: rather their resistance

functioned as a method of challenging the perception of their audience to liberate their

consciousness, in order to fully understand and engage with her objects.

115
Cahun, C. (1936). 61.

157
CHAPTER FOUR: DEHARME AND LE COEUR DE PIC

158
CAHUN AFTER PARIS

Following Cahun’s investigations regarding the relationship between subject and

object, and the ability of objects to act upon the consciousness of their viewers through a

form of resistance, and to acts as agents of radical social and political change, she

continued her involvement with surrealist political activities. Cahun continued to support

Breton’s search for a revolutionary art form, which culminated in the publication of the

manifesto Towards a free, revolutionary art, written with Trotsky in Mexico in 1938.

This manifesto included a call for the formation of an international association of

revolutionary artists, which came to fruition briefly as the Fédération internationale des

artistes révolutionaires indépendents, and whose declaration Cahun signed in 1939. 1

Cahun’s objects in the Ratton Gallery exhibition represented a synthesis of her

own personal philosophies – the result of nearly thirty years of personal introspection,

observation and political engagement – and the myriad external influences which had

combined to form part of her experiences. These influences spanned from the “symbolist

entrapment” of her youth, to her more recent collaborations with the surrealists with

whom she had worked closely over the previous three years, to a growing alarm at the

increasingly conservative political situation in France, and the impending war in Europe,

which was already being felt in Germany with Hitler’s remilitarization of the Rhineland,

bordering France, and the growing Fascist movements and commensurate tensions in both

Italy and Spain.

While Souris valseuses and Un air de famille were the only two objects Cahun

created specifically for public exhibition, prior to the Ratton Gallery show she had created

1
Doy, G. (2007). Claude Cahun: A sensual politics of photography. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
114-5.
159
many more in order to photograph them, and it was to this practice that she returned in

1937. Sometime after the exhibition in 1936, Cahun and Moore also decided to

permanently relocate to Jersey, where both women had often holidayed as children with

their family, and later together as life partners. 2 Thereafter, while Cahun’s association

with the surrealists and other avant garde artists and writers of Paris continued, the

relationship was predominantly sustained by correspondence, although she occasionally

received guests from Paris until June 1940, when the German army invaded and began

their occupation of the island which lasted for the next five years. One of these visits was

from Jacqueline Lamba and a little Aube Breton, of which several photographs survive. 3

Henri Michaux, a friend of her family since Cahun’s childhood and an early mentor, also

continued to visit after the women had moved away from the Parisian epicentre of

creativity. Due to the destruction of her personal archives by the occupying German

forces during the war, 4 the true extent of her correspondence with her friends and

collaborators during these years is difficult to establish.

Political rifts were also beginning to deepen within the intelligentsia of Paris, as

tensions continued to worsen across Europe. Spanish expatriate Salvador Dalí had been

slowly developing sympathies with the fascist government of his homeland, a position

that saw him shunned by many of the Paris left. 5 Breton in particular had grown

increasingly irate with Dalí, and was allegedly enraged by Dalí’s depiction of Lenin in

The enigma of William Tell (1934). 6 Breton also continued to dictate social relations

2
Downie, L. (2005). Sans nom: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. Heritage Magazine. 8.
3
A telegram from Jacqueline Lamba, dated 24 April 1939 and informing Cahun of their expected arrival
on Jersey the following day, is held in the Jersey Archives, which also holds the surviving photographs of
Jacqueline and Aube’s holiday there. Cat no: JHT/1995M/00045/21. Jersey Heritage. Archives and
collections online. Retrieved from
http://catalogue.jerseyheritage.org/collection/Details/collect/103075?rank=14
4
Shaw, J. L. (2013). Reading Claude Cahun’s Disavowals. United Kingdom: Ashgate Publishing. 218.
5
Greely, R. A. (2001). Dalí’s fascism; Lacan’s paranoia. Art History, 24.4. 466.
6
Shanes, E. (2012). The life and masterworks of Salvador Dalí. New York: Parkstone International. No
page numbers.
160
within, and ‘membership’ of, the surrealist group. Other members of the previously

amicable group splintered further to the left, such as the poet Benjamin Péret, who joined

the Independent Army in late 1936, and fought against Franco’s troops during the Spanish

Civil War, an action which Breton later spoke of in laudatory terms, although Péret was

only one of the surrealists to actively engage in combat on behalf of the working classes. 7

Cahun’s relocation also brought a change in focus in her practice. A surviving

archive of photography and some correspondence indicates that Cahun moved, for a

period of time, away from portrait photography and towards the photography of objects.

One series of photographs was taken on Jersey in 1936/37 as part of a collaboration with

Lise Deharme, which were then published and therefore saved in 1937. The subject matter

of these photographs consisted of a collection of seemingly disparate objects – for

example, a flower, a dolls’ head, feathers, pipe cleaners, a pair of scissors – arranged in a

manner suggestive at once of both tableau and a kind of living collage. Thus, although a

departure from Cahun’s objects in terms of medium, the photographs continue to function

as an extension of her object work, and the collages which preceded them. Several other

photographs from this period also appear to have been taken for consideration by

Deharme, but for unknown reasons were not included in the anthology.

DEHARME AND THE SURREALISTS

The author and poet Lise Deharme was associated with the surrealists’ inner

circle, both as ‘the lady of the glove’ from Breton’s Nadja, and as the wife of the writer

and broadcaster Paul Deharme. Deharme was a successful author in her own right and

7
Gubern, R., & Hammond, P. (2011). Luis Bunuel: The red years, 1929-1939. Madison: The University
of Wisconsin Press. 344.
161
regularly contributed to various surrealist projects, including the initial experiments with

object making in 1931. 8

Deharme published four volumes of her own magazine, Le Phare de Neuilly,

through 1933 and 34, which included contributions from the crème of Parisian writers,

including Robert Desnos, Roger Vitrac, Jean Follain and George Ribemont-Dessaignes.

By 1936 Deharme had already published two volumes of poetry, both of which were

illustrated by prominent artists and friends: Joan Miro illustrated Il etait une petite pie,

published in 1928, and Valentine Hugo supplied sketches for Cahier de curieuse

personne in 1933. Deharme eventually published more than twenty-five books, as well

as making contributions to journals, newspapers and magazines throughout her life,

making her one of the most successful writers from within her creative circle.

Deharme was also a contributor to the 1936 object exhibition, presenting two

pieces. 9 Deharme’s objects were the only representatives of the Objets naturels: Règne

vegetal (Natural Objects: Vegetable Kingdom) section. Entitled Sensitive and Plante

carnivore, to the casual observer these two objects were nothing more than pot plants

from a lady’s greenhouse; nevertheless, their inclusion in an exhibition of this kind is

worthy of comment. Deharme’s choice of plants for inclusion in this exhibition also

foreshadowed the illustration of her children’s book Le Coeur de pic by Cahun in 1937,

as many of the objects Cahun created for this work contained elements of plants and

flowers. Of Deharme’s contributions, one photograph from the exhibition, taken by Man

Ray, appears to include one of them, which seems at a cursory glance to be nothing more

than a tall, spindly, potted houseplant. This image also features, on the bottom shelf of

the same cabinet, Cahun’s Objet/Souris valseuses. The first of her contributions, Plante

8
Rosemont, P. (Ed.). (1998). 69.
9
Exposition surréaliste d'objets, exhibition at the Charles Ratton Gallery, Paris, 22-29 May 1936.
Exhibition catalogue. Paris: Charles Ratton Gallery.
162
carnivore, is quite self-explanatory – a carnivorous plant – and suggests a Venus Flytrap

or something similar. Her second contribution, simply entitled Sensitive, is slightly more

obscure, but probably refers to a Mimosa plant – sensitive is the French designation for

plants which react to external stimuli by moving. 10 The Mimosa is an uncanny plant, with

the ability to move rapidly in a sensual manner when stroked, closing around the fingers.

The Mimosa’s fernlike leaves will also close in darkness, reopening when it senses light. 11

More mature specimens also feature hooked prickles along the main stem, a stark contrast

to the soft, feathery sensation of stroking the closing leaves. The plant featured in Man

Ray’s photograph of the exhibition lends weight to this assertion, as the plant featured in

the image does look like a cultivated Mimosa Nuttallii.

Thus, there were two objects, removed from their ‘natural’ setting and placed

awkwardly in a gallery, amongst more traditionally privileged art and cultural objects: to

what end? A vegetable that eats animals, and a plant that responds to light and darkness,

and appears to like to be petted by humans, were in line with the aims of the exhibition

as outlined by Cahun and Breton: the rediscovery of “irrational” objects by removing

them from the setting in which they remained safe and comfortable for the audience,

requiring them to reacquaint themselves with the objects in question, and so “tame” them.

That is, by manipulating objects, and allowing oneself to be manipulated by them in

return, Cahun believed that the audience could better come to understand the true nature

of the object before them. As Cahun summarized, regarding the nature of the objects

included in the exhibition: “I could go on and on about these objects: they will speak to

you better themselves, and they would speak still better if we could touch them in the

10
Gregory, M. E. (2006). Diderot and the metamorphosis of species. London: Taylor & Francis. 148.
11
Australian Plant Name Index - Mimosa pudica. (2016, February). Retrieved from
https://biodiversity.org.au/nsl/services/apniFormat/display/74352.
163
dark.” 12 Cahun’s exhortation to listen, and to touch, while disregarding visual

information, seems particularly apt in regards to Deharme’s contributions, urging as

Cahun did the de-privileging of sight in favour of an unsettling, haptic experience. I

contend that these most ordinary objects, displaced as they are within the gallery setting,

had the most potential to induce feelings of displacement in the viewing audience. Yves

Duplessis claimed that:

the Surrealists’ aim is extraliterary, since their aspiration is nothing less

than to free man from the constraints of a too-utilitarian civilization, to
shake him from his torpor, and to do this they have had to stress everything
that can disconcert him. 13

Cahun and Deharme, like the surrealists with whom they were associated, had moved

away from their primary focus of the 1920s, which was the production of literature and

poetry. Duplessis elaborates on this change of direction within the surrealist oeuvre:

Thus, a statue in a ditch has entirely different values from the same statue
on its pedestal, and similarly, to isolate a hand from its arm alters its
significance. The thing is to detach objects from each other, to no longer
consider them in any particular relationship, but as they are in
themselves. 14

Deharme’s “statues in a ditch,” her carnivorous, moving herbiary, with its pleasurable,

tickling leaves concealing a harshly dissonant scratch, were arguably a decisive moment

in disconcerting, extraliterary objects. It was with such surrealist objects, perhaps even

more than the poems and paintings, that the exhibition aimed to disconcert the public. 15

12
Cahun, C. (1936). 60.
13
Duplessis, Y. (1978). 3.
14
Duplessis, Y. (1978). 28.
15
Duplessis, Y. (1978). 47.
164
 While the vast majority of the objects in the exhibition were constructed pieces,

whether Oceanic or American traditional art, surrealist objects or manufactured pieces, in

the words of Joanna Malt “the raw materials used are transformed, just as they are in any

form of plastic art, by their reconfiguration as an art object. But what is particular to the

surrealists is the desire to alter the categories of the object world, and our perceptions of

it.” 16 The inclusion of Objets naturels in an art exhibition was designed to question these

designated categories. Deharme’s contributions, though among the simplest in their initial

appearance, contributed significantly to the complex theoretical dialogue the exhibition

attempted to engage in with its audience, and therefore contributed significantly to the

objectives of the exhibition overall.

CAHUN AND DEHARME

The inception of the collaboration which eventuated between Cahun and Deharme

in 1936-37 is hard to determine, but clearly stemmed from the period of Cahun’s

association with the inner circle of surrealism over the previous few years. At first glance,

Cahun and Deharme were very different people: Cahun was a serious, socially discreet,

intellectually and ethically driven writer and artist, whereas Deharme was a wealthy,

urbane sophisticate, famous for her hosting of fashionable parties in her suburban home

on the outskirts of Paris. 17 Despite the differences, common ground stemmed from not

only their association with the surrealist group, but also from commonly held opinions.

Although it is uncertain when Claude Cahun and Lise Deharme first became

acquainted, they were firm friends by June of 1934, when Cahun wrote a letter to invite

16
Malt, J. (2004). Obscure objects of desire: Surrealism, fetishism, and politics. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. 85-6. My italics.
17
Jenkins, C. (2014). Dora versus Picasso. United Kingdom: Matador. 120.
165
an unknown friend to a salon in her home, along with “Lise Deharme, whom I have

already told you about and who loves your books, [Robert] Desnos and Youki Foujita,

and two friends of Lise Deharme, who I know little but whom I like well enough, I

believe.” 18 Cahun and Moore had held regular salons in their Paris home for several years

now, and it is clear from this correspondence that Cahun and Deharme had spent time

together, participating in group discussions on mutually important subjects. Both women

had also participated in the 1936 exhibition before deciding to collaborate on an illustrated

anthology of children’s poems, published in 1937 as Le Coeur de pic. Deharme was

planning to produce an illustrated children’s book as early as April 1935, when she

mentioned the project in a letter to her close friend Valentine Hugo, although it appears

she was originally considering a collaboration with an artist other than Cahun in order to

illustrate her book. 19

The objects in Deharme’s book are interesting in the first instance in that they

represent the last major project in which Cahun was involved with the members of the

surrealist group. After this project, Cahun and partner Moore permanently relocated to

the Island of Jersey, shortly before its occupation by German forces, her subsequent

imprisonment, and the destruction of her work by the Nazis. Many of the photographs

which Cahun created for Deharme’s anthology appear to have been taken on Jersey, either

around the garden or inside La Roquaise, the home in St Brélade that Cahun acquired

with Moore. There is no evidence that Deharme ever visited Cahun during this period of

collaboration, or whether the illustration of the book occurred purely by written

correspondence between Jersey and Deharme’s home in the wealthy Parisian enclave of

18
Cahun, C. (1934). Draft copy of a letter to an unknown recipient. Jersey Archives. Cat
no: JHT/1995M/00045/19.
19
Deharme, L. (1933). Letter to Valentine Hugo. University of Texas, Carlton Lake Collection. Cat no:
TXRC06-A16.
166
Neuilly-sur-Seine. However, handwritten notes on the back of photographic prints

suggest that the photographs were sent backwards and forwards between the two women

for discussion and comment.

My interest in the images arises secondly from my understanding that Cahun was

always a very politically motivated artist and writer. The imagery of these photographs,

and the objects constructed within them, are blended interpretations of both Deharme’s

poetic intent and Cahun’s personal ideologies, particularly with regards to the power and

agency of the surrealist object. Cahun’s love of wordplay, as previously evidenced in both

her literary works and her objects created for the 1936 exhibition, also takes on a new

dimension here, as she interprets the words and wordplay of another writer in her own

particular style. Several levels of meaning can be drawn from the book as a whole:

Deharme’s original poetic implications blend with Cahun’s political ones, creating a

subtle, third meaning for the works. Deharme’s poetry is perfectly suited to Cahun’s

visual interpretations. Through this collaboration both women were able to explore the

conceptual and archetypically surrealist issues of what constitutes inherent, as opposed to

apparent, meaning, taking young readers on an exploration of the real versus the true.

Furthermore, Deharme’s surrealist imagery gives Cahun and her photographed objects a

form of agency, allowing the images to analyse, deconstruct and reconstruct the meaning

of her original poems.

167
A WOODPECKER, A SPADE OR A LITTLE BOY?

The title of the book, Le coeur de pic, has been translated as ‘The heart of the

woodpecker,” 20 however only a slight word play is required to translate the title

alternatively as ‘The heart of spades’. 21 Indeed, more recent references to the book have

tended to prefer the latter title. 22 The pun on playing cards is rendered obvious, and

highlighted by Cahun’s choice of imagery for the front cover, which consists of a figure

holding a playing card from the suit of spades. Adding another layer to the interpretation

of the title, Art Historian Sarah Wilson contends that ‘Pic’ is none other than the

Deharme’s son Tristan – a nickname. The book could therefore be identified as a

dedication to a young Tristan Deharme. 23 Presumably he was their little woodpecker, or

their little soldier. Gen Doy has also asserted that pique, meaning a pike, can also mean a

pikeman, or medieval infantryman, thus identifying the pic with the figure in the image. 24

Pic/pique can also refer to: a mountain peak; a mason’s pickaxe; a punch or thrust; or the

usage we are perhaps most familiar with in English, as anger or spite 25. To score thirty

points in the then-popular card game piquet was also known as a pic. 26 If the playing

cards used in Cahun’s object are real (and as Cahun often used found objects rather than

creating replicas for her object work one could reasonably assume that they are), the

20
Beckett, S. L. (2013). Crossover picturebooks: A genre for all ages. London, United Kingdom:
Routledge. 29-30. Rosemont, P. (1998). 45.
21
Pic can be translated as either spade, particularly as the suit in playing cards; or is one common word in
French for woodpecker. The red-headed woodpecker, for example, is known as the pic á tête rouge. The
other word for woodpecker in French is pivert, which is a contraction of pic vert, or the common green
woodpecker. The Linnean genus for woodpecker is Picus, which is the most likely reason for the use of
pic in French. Beckett, S. L. (2013). 29-30. Winkler, H., Christie, D. A., & Nurney, D.
(1995). Woodpeckers: A guide to the woodpeckers, piculets and wrynecks of the world. London, United
Kingdom: Pica Press.
22
Christie’s Auction House (2009). Photobooks. Auction Catalogue. UK. 108.
23
Wilson, S. (2011) Femininities/masquerades. The Courtauld Institute of Art.
24
Doy, G. (2007). 120.
25
Collectif (2016). Retrieved from http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/french-english/
26
Fraser, K. J. (2015). Total card games! The biggest and best collection of solo & group card games.
United States: Lulu.com. 229.
168
figure in comparison stands approximately 40cm tall, not including the pike it is holding.

The figure is ultimately androgynous in appearance, although this may be due to the

simplicity of its design, which includes simple button eyes. Wearing a beret and trench

coat, on its front is a heart-shaped trinket box, pinned to its breast like a butterfly, a visual

clue to the nature of the coeur of the title and again naming the figure as Pic, the possessor

of the heart in question. The identification of the figure as Pic is left in no doubt by the

lettered playing cards at his feet. This little figure of Pic holds a pike upon which we find

the Queen of ‘pikemen’, La dame de pic, or the queen of spades. The cards which

surround the base of the figure are the Joker, standing directly next to the figure, and three

more spades: a four, an ace and a seven, the meanings of which are as of yet undeciphered

(although they could refer to the above-mentioned game of piquet, thus representing

another pun within the image which relates to the title). It is possible that choice of these

particular cards holds a meaning now lost. The joker is also a wildcard, and it is easy to

see that this is a favourite concept for Cahun, appearing as it does in such other works as

1934’s Les paris sont ouverts. 27 It should signify to the reader – particularly the surrealist

one – that ‘all bets are off’, and anything could happen next. 28

In Les paris, Cahun argued for “the Romantic definition of poetry and the

surrealist revolution of the mind against the old and superseded understanding of poetry

simply as a means of expression.” 29 In Le coeur de pic, we see an evolution of Cahun’s

approach: even in a children’s book, or perhaps especially in a children’s book, Cahun

was carefully laying the foundations for a critical poetic dialectic, so that they could

quietly foment in young, questioning minds. Le coeur and its accompanying illustrations

27
Cahun, C. (1934). Le paris sont ouverts. Paris: José Corti. 9.
28
The vernacular translation of Les Paris sont ouverts is ‘all bets are off’, which is how the phrase is
generally understood; the literal translation is ‘The Parises are open’.
29
Bower, G. J. (2013). Claude Cahun: The soldier with no name. London, United Kingdom: Zero Books.
No page numbers.
169
was not simply a children’s book of poetry, but rather a key to unlocking the secrets of

the analytical mind.

That the cover image of the book is able to be interpreted in so many different

ways, and with several possible meanings, and yet remain ultimately impenetrable, is

typical both of Cahun’s methodologies and of the collection of images contained within

the book. Cahun’s obscured interpretation of the already cryptic title of the book signalled

a resistance to clear interpretation that features throughout, not only in either the poetry

of Deharme and the imagery of Cahun, but also in the combined reading of the two.

THE QUEEN OF SPADES

Cahun’s choice of imagery for the book’s front cover was foreshadowed by a

series of playing card portraits produced by Man Ray in 1931, an artist with whom Cahun

had contact with throughout her period of surrealist collaboration. Although no firsthand

evidence of any close relationship between the two artists exists, as I have previously

shown through Cahun’s photographs of bell jars and other objects associated with Man

Ray’s style, Cahun was aware of and clearly admired Man Ray’s work.

Man Ray’s playing cards consisted of portraits of four of the women frequently

associated with the surrealists, although typically in the position of lover or muse, rather

than as primary members of the group. Each is designated an identity through the suit

cards of a typical deck. They are; Valentine Hugo, as the queen of diamonds; Nusch

Eluard, as the queen of clubs; Jacqueline Lamba, as the knave of hearts; and Lisa Deharme

as the queen of spades. Three of the cards (not including Eluard’s) were framed together

and may have originally been a gift to Deharme from Ray. The cards were separated and

170
auctioned separately in recent years. 30 Cahun’s visual pun on the book’s cover seems to

suggest that she was in on this little surrealist game and that she was aware that Lise had

previously been ‘crowned’ the Queen of Spades by the inner circle of surrealism. The

little man on the cover of Le coeur de pic does indeed hold aloft La reine (or dame) de

pic, identifying Deharme as the author of the work, while simultaneously labelling her

the Queen of Spades, the Queen of ‘Pic’, and thus the Queen of ‘Pic’s’ heart. Although

the origins of these designations are as yet unknown, the label of the ‘queen of spades’

appeared to have stuck for Deharme, who published a short story in the journal Lilliput

in 1947, also entitled ‘The Queen of spades.’ Writing on Le coeur in 1998, Marie-Claire

Barnet has said of this depiction that:

the choice of the malevolent symbol of the Queen of Spades suggests that
we would be wrong to relegate her [Deharme’s] work to the “fragile
charm” category of “feline and floral femininity". Beware: the charm of
Deharmian humor is more poisonous than we have been led to believe,
even in the best reference books. 31

The inclusion of Deharme’s court card on the cover of the book thus functioned not only

as a visual signature of sorts, but also a warning as to the dark nature of the poems

contained in the anthology.

The jack or knave of hearts was an intriguing choice for Jaqueline Lamba on the

part of Ray, as she was the only woman not depicted as a queen within the set. If the

30
The portrait of Lise Deharme as the Queen of Spades was sold individually on 6 October 2010. Its
provenance states that it came from the collection of noted homoerotic illustrator Jean Boullet, who sold
his collection c.1969 due to financial hardship. Christie’s, New York, Photographs, 6 Oct 2010.
31
Barnet, M.-C. (1998). La femme cent sexes ou les genres communicatives: Deharme, Mansour,
Prassinos. Bern: Verlag Peter Lang. 79. “Le choix du symbole maléfique de la Dame de Pique nous
suggère donc qu’on aurait tort de reléguer ses ouvres dans la rubrique “charme fragile” de la “féminité
féline et végétale”. Méfiance, le charme de l’humour deharmien est plus vénéneux qu’on a pu le laisser
entendre, même dans le meilleurs ouvrages de références.”
171
traditional French symbolism of the deck of cards was known to the surrealists, and it is

reasonable to believe that it was, given their preoccupation with signs and symbols, then

Ray was familiar with the personification of the Jack of Hearts as the historical figure

known as Le hire (“The Ire”), the epithet of famed French soldier Etienne de Vignolles,

the loyal captain of Joan of Arc and fabled inventor of the modern four suit deck of cards

and of the game Piquet. 32 Whether Ray was making a reference to Jacqueline’s position

as the lieutenant of surrealism’s modern prophet, her husband Breton, or to her

disposition, remains unknown. The King of Hearts is also traditionally associated with

Charlemagne, 33 thus Jacqueline’s nomination as the right-hand man of the King may

again be a reference to Breton’s position as the absolute ruler of the group.

For reasons unknown, no single queen of hearts appears to have ever been

designated within the group. Of all four cards it is the symbolism and imagery of the

queen of spades that appears to have formed the basis of a running joke among members

of the surrealist group or, perhaps, became understood as a kind of code for a set of

particular ideas they shared. It is plausible that their enduring interest in this particular

Queen is also a reference to Gustav Courbet’s disparaging criticism of Eduard Manet’s

Olympia, which he famously declared resembled “the Queen of Spades getting out of the

bath,” referring to Manet’s (then outrageously) flattened picture plane. 34

One of Breton’s poem objects, entitled Pour Jacqueline, and created in 1937, also

contained a queen of spades. The image consists of a black backing board, sewn through

with ribbon, reminiscent of raw surgical stitching. A collection of small machine parts

32
Fraser, K. J. (2015). 227.
33
Foley, M. P. (2006). Why do Catholics eat fish on Friday? The Catholic origin to just about everything.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 70.
34
Cole, B., Gealt, A., & Wood, M. (1991). Art of the western world: From ancient Greece to post
modernism. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group. 241.
172
float in the image of a disembodied face, above a menacing depiction of the queen of

spades, who is partially obscured by a skeletal leaf.

The text reads:

Pour Jacqueline, 12.2.37 For Jacqueline, 12.2.37

Sur un banc de liège On a cork bench
En pleine Méditerranée In the middle of the Mediterranean
Tandis qu'elles riaient While they were laughing
Tordant les draps sur leur piano Twisting the sheets on their piano
Pour faire des vagues To make waves
O vieux registre de l'amour O the old register of love 35

The poem is typical of Breton’s automatic poems, and to try and analyse his text in the

manner of regular literary criticism runs counter to the primary aims of automatic writing.

What is clear is that it is a love poem to Jacqueline Lamba. No direct reference is made

to the queen of spades who appears on the image, and yet she is clearly an important form

of imagery for the group. Perhaps, in the context of my argument outlined above, Lamba

is Breton’s Olympia, or perhaps Breton wished to reassure her that Deharme was not the

only queen of spades.

These many portraits and uses of playing cards within surrealist imagery also form

a noteworthy precursor to the Jeu de Marseilles, the surrealist card game invented by the

group in 1940 as they waited in Marseilles for evacuation to the United States. 36 Again

lending credence to the theory that the surrealists were familiar with the symbolic

35
From the object, own translation.
36
Belton, R. J. J. (1995). The beribboned bomb: The image of woman in male surrealist art. Calgary,
Canada: University of Calgary Press. 12.
173
meanings of standard playing cards, Breton and his associates occupied themselves by

creating an anti-royalist and distinctly surrealist set of playing cards, the court cards of

which were comprised of the Genius, Magus and Siren. New suits were also

created: flames (red) for love and desire, stars (black) for dreams, wheels (red) for

revolution, and locks (black) for knowledge. An illustration of Albert Jarry’s Ubu roi was

chosen as the joker. The Magus of stars (dreams) was, of course, Freud.

CAHUN AND DEHARME: COLLABORATIVE METHODOLOGIES

Cahun’s objects of the previous year revelled in a complex dialogue between

words and images, and thus it is in the context of Deharme’s words that we must look at

Cahun’s objects as they appeared in this anthology. The images from this book which

have been investigated up to this point tend to be the more visceral ones, such as the

image for La nerf ma petit dent discussed below, or those more easily interpreted in terms

of gender relations and sexuality, as this tends to be the main concern of writers concerned

with surrealism, especially those working in the field of women surrealists and the sexual

politics of the surrealist movement.

One of the objects from this book that has already gained attention is the one that

accompanies the poem La nerf ma petit dent.

La nerf de ma petit dent The nerve in my little tooth

me mord. bites me.
Prends un petit baton pointu Take a small sharp stick
Pan [just a] sliver
c’est un petit serpent it is a little snake
mort. dead.

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Notably, the phrase “Prends un petit baton pointu” also appears as the title of a photograph

by Cahun which was not included in Le coeur de pic. Cahun’s biographer Francois

Leperlier has suggested that this figure was originally meant to be included in the book

of poems, but Gen Doy disagrees, stating that “this figure probably has political meanings

which would not have been appropriate for inclusion in the children’s poems collection”.

However, she acknowledges that the given title of the work seems to suggest a correlation

between the poupée and the poem by Deharme. 37 I contend that this object and the extant

photographs of it are characteristic of the boundaries set during this creative collaboration,

and the degree of freedom which Cahun was to enjoy while working on images for the

book. Deharme appears to have had the final say on which images were to be used, as one

would expect (as the more overtly ‘grown-up’ political poupée was never included), but

Cahun was seemingly given free creative rein to design objects and photograph them for

consideration. This is essential to an interpretation of the imagery contained in the book:

they may have been inspired by Deharme’s poems, but the creation of these objects

appears to have been all Cahun’s own. Elisabeth Lebovici rightly associates the poupée

with the contemporary political upheaval in Europe, noting that “Hitlerian fascism

constitutes the left arm, Spanish republicanism the right arm.” 38 Tirza True Latimer also

relates the poupée to the conflict in Spain, but without making the connection between

the figure, the title of the photograph, and the recurrence of the word dent (teeth) as well

as the insertion of toothpicks all over the papier mache figure’s body. 39 The original print

of the image, held by the Jersey Heritage Trust, along with other surviving artefacts

belonging to Cahun and Moore, is labelled on the reverse Prends un petit baton pointu.

37
Doy, G. (2007). 117.
38
Lebovici, E. (1995). I am in training don’t kiss me, in Claude Cahun photographie. Paris: Jean Michel
Place/Paris Musées. 19.
39
Latimer, T. T. (2006). Acting out: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, in L. Downie (Ed.), Don’t kiss
me: The art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. London: Tate Publishing. 67.
175
A direct association to the poem by Deharme solves all these problems, and thus we

should conclude that this image was originally submitted for inclusion in Le coeur,

pending Deharme’s approval.

It is possible that Prende un petit baton pointu was not the only image ultimately

rejected by Deharme for inclusion in the anthology. Another image, featured on the rear

cover of the book, which consists of a prone sunflower, with doll hands that feature

prominently in the images created for the book, are arranged like the components of a sun

dial, and visually evoke one of the poems included in the book without an accompanying

illustration:

La Dame d’onze heures The Lady of the Eleventh hour

et le Compagnon blanc And the white Companion
ne s’éveillent pas au meme instant Do not awaken at the same instant
à l’horloge des fleurs As by the clock of flowers
ils se poursuivent d’heure en heure They continue hour after hour
vainement In vain.

While it cannot be definitively concluded that this image was originally intended to

illustrate this particular poem, I contend that there is a strong possibility of this being the

case.

As previously stated, Laurie J Monahan claimed in Cahun’s entry in the

Dictionary of Women Artists that Souris valseuses was an earlier variation on the object

Qui ne craint pas de grand mechant loup, remet la barque sur sa quille et vogue à la

derivé which no longer exists and was photographed by Cahun in 1936. Based on my own

176
research I now dispute this, identifying the Object as Souris valseuses 40, thus ruling out

Qui ne craint… in this context, as it is an object comprised of entirely different materials.

The unusually long title of this object, which translates as “Who’s not afraid of the big,

bad wolf, reset the ship on its keel and drift in a fashion” is unusual for Cahun, but

certainly fits the style of the poems that Deharme was working on for inclusion in Le

coeur de pic. As an illustration Cahun may have submitted for Deharme’s consideration,

the object begins to make more sense in relation to the other images depicted in the

anthology: an animal jawbone functions symbolically as the vessel, filled with a riot of

miniature toys. A small doll, a model church, a lightbulb, a child’s dummy and a

hummingbird are among the ‘passengers’ of the boat, as a butterfly leads the way,

hovering over the prow as a kind of figurehead. Monahan accuses the object quite rightly

of “verging on sentimental cliché,” an effect which is nevertheless “offset by the sinister

effect produced by the chaotic jumble of toys, many perched precariously on the skeletal

jaws.” 41 This succinct description of Qui ne craint… could easily apply to any of the

images Cahun produced for Le coeur de pic, all of them equal parts whimsical and

menacing. While arguably not one of Cahun’s most remarkable or compelling images,

this particular relic of her object manufacture, now housed at the Jersey Heritage Trust,

may in fact include the only surviving copy of a poem written by Lise Deharme in 1936.

40
Chapter three, pages 30-36.
41
Monahan, L. J. (1997). 342.
177
REIMAGINING UN AIR DE FAMILLE

Another object mentioned by Gen Doy is the remodelling of Un air de famille, one of the

objects Cahun displayed at the Ratton exhibition. The poem accompanying this image

reads as follows:

La dèbonnaire Saponaire The easy-going Soapwort

et la Centaurée déprimée and the despondent Knapweed
se sont ce matin have this morning
levees du mauvais pied. gotten off on the wrong foot.

The relationship between word and image here is an example of how Cahun has used this

poem (the work of another writer) to rework her object Un air de famille, lending her own

interpretation, and one that can be read on many levels.

I argued in the previous chapter that this object in its original form represented the

relationship of the mother to the family: specifically, the negative consequences of

poverty for working class women. The reworking of this object, which I will refer to in

its second incarnation as La dèbonnaire saponaire to avoid confusion (as all the pictures

in Deharme’s book are untitled), appears to bear out my original examination of Un air

de famille. Cahun has cunningly reworked her original object to meet the interpretation

of Deharme’s poem, imbuing the final object with a further meaning that anyone who had

seen both objects would immediately understand.

The fundamental components of Un air de famille remain intact: the doll’s bed

with a curtain, containing a prone figure surrounded by various objects including a sash.

In La dèbonnaire saponaire we see two figures composed of flowers arranged around a

bed. One figure stands over the other in a menacing stance. It holds one limb aloft, either

pointing imperiously as if giving a lecture, or possibly brandishing an object. The second

178
figure lies still on the bed. The simplicity of Deharme’s verse is belied by the weighted

inferences of the visual accompaniment. The “debonair soapwort” can easily be read as

the husband or lover, standing over his wife lying prone on the bed, in a compromised

position. His air is one of unassailable authority, with more than a hint of menace and

reproach. The petals strewn in the foreground, and the disarray of the figure lying down,

point to a moment of domestic violence. A violent splatter of blood streams out across

the floor, the victim prostrated on the bed, likewise covered in a mess of bloody petals,

while the aggressor stands over the victim, either finishing the attack with a round of

streaming invective or brandishing the murder weapon: ‘That’ll learn you.’ Interpreted in

this way, this work can also be seen as a true sequel to Un air de famille: the first object

hinted at the violence and subjugation that awaited the new bride – depicted here is the

threat made real. It can be inferred from these objects that Cahun thought little of

conventional marriage, or at least its effects on the quality of women’s lives.

POEMS AND OBJECTS

Deharme’s work in this anthology seems quite bleak and serious, and many would

consider it too dark for children. As one commentator has put it, “surrealist children must

have been made of sterner stuff than ordinary kids.” 42 Like all writers associated with

surrealism, though, Deharme revelled in word play, and seems to have believed, like

Breton and Cahun, that childhood is a time for the marvellous, and that if not nurtured the

natural sense of the marvellous with which children are endowed can be lost during

adolescence. 43 Regarding the question of what would have been considered appropriate

42
Christie’s Auction House (2009). 108.
43
Breton, A. (1924). The first surrealist manifesto. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. 10-11.
179
for children, Deharme herself seems to have not been too concerned with exposing

children to the darker side of life in order to stir the imagination. As the preface to this

book by Paul Eluard stated, in the persona of La belle dame sans raison (‘The beautiful

woman without reason’); “This picture book is a bouquet picked from the garden of the

fairies, stolen from the bees and the butterflies, for whatever age you want it to be.” 44 For

the surrealists, and especially Breton, a book of this kind would therefore have been

considered eminently suitable for an adult attempting to reconnect with the lost aspects

of his childhood imagination and sense of the marvellous. Similarly, the book operates as

a celebration of the imaginative capabilities of children, and the marvellous, as another

term for Breton’s convulsive beauty, being in this context what Rosalind Krauss refers to

as “the great talismanic concept at the heart of surrealism itself.” 45

While Breton may have been the only surrealist to name his creations poem-

objects, the amalgamation of text and object was a strong theme in Cahun’s objects as

well, although Cahun tended to allow her objects to ‘speak’ in their own poetic terms,

rather than provide a form of subtitles, as Breton did. Nevertheless, Cahun’s assemblages

were always about the play between words and objects. They were never a simple visual

pun, but rather representations of complex linguistic responses to key critical issues.

The images created for Deharme’s book illustrate the complex and symbiotic

relationship between text and the visual that was previously seen in Cahun’s object work.

Taking this looser interpretation of the poem-object, we can see Deharme and Cahun’s

collaboration as an extension of the poem-object project initiated by Breton. While

Breton’s poem objects are presented within a frame, a similar framing device can be

argued for Cahun’s photographed objects: the artwork being the photograph, not just the

44
Eluard, P. (2004). Preface, in L. Deharme, Le coeur de pic. Paris: editions MeMo. My italics.
45
Krauss, R. E., Livingston, J., & Ades, D. (1985). L’amour fou: Photography & surrealism.
Washington, D.C.: Abbeville Press Inc. 24.
180
object depicted in the photograph. Christian Bouqueret emphasizes that the images in this

volume are not merely records of constructed objects, but instead purely photographic

works. 46 As Gen Doy explains, “the photographic image of the fabricated material reality

works on the nature of the real by capturing it on film, and then producing the resulting

image – it does not simply copy.” 47 While the text is not included within this frame, the

objects do not function without the inclusion of the poem on the facing page: indeed,

many of them defy interpretation without the accompanying text. Thus, each pair of pages

(poem to the left, image to the right) represents a single work, two halves to be interpreted

as a whole. Breton conceived of poem-objects as “compositions which tend to combine

the resources of poetry and plasticity and to speculate on their power of reciprocal

exhalation.” 48

While many of the poems in the book, such as La debonaire saponaire, are simple

little rhymes, others are more overtly surrealist in their construction, and the function

between poem and object is more symbiotic. One example is Les ennuis de pic (the only

poem with a title in the anthology):

LES ENNUIS DE PIC THE TROUBLES OF ‘PIC’

Il faut toujours jouer It is always necessary to play

avec les petites filles dans les hotels with the little girls in hotels
meme belles even the ones as beautiful
comme des fees as the fairies
j’aime mieux m’ennuyer I prefer my boredom
ou alors qu’on m’amène which brings me
le Diable the devil
ou meme or even
le bonhomme de sable the sandman
quelques sauvages a few savages
un ivrogne a drunkard
un accident an accident

46
Bouqueret, C. (1997). Des années folles aux années noires: La nouvelle vision photographique en
France 1920-1940. Paris: Marval. 73.
47
Doy, G. (2007). 123.
48
Rubin, W. S. (1990). Dada, surrealism, and their heritage. New York: Museum of Modern Art.
181
les bagarres brawls
ou tout simplement or simply
qu’on me prête lends me
un moment a moment
une boîte d’allumettes. a box of matches.
Ah quelle belle flambée Oh, what a beautiful blaze
mes infants. my children.

The accompanying photograph illustrates the images here, but in a method reminiscent

of Breton’s poem-object: what appear to be half a pair of broken scissors and a fork for

the devil, the sandman symbolically by a clock, and various figures representing savages,

drunkards, an accident.

What is striking here in relation to Breton’s first poem-object, Je vois, j’imagine,

discussed in the previous chapter is that, rather than provide the viewer with a reader’s

manual – here is the original object that I see (a hinged mirror), here is what I imagine

when I look at it (wings, flight), and here is the key to unlocking this visual mystery (an

egg, a symbol of birth, literally inscribed with instructions on how to read the object),

accompanied by an automatic poem, Cahun and Deharme took this methodology one step

further. What is depicted here are already ‘interpreted’ objects, objects taken from their

ordinary setting and given new meaning: the ultimate surrealist objects, born of both

creation and destruction. To use Cahun’s own terminology, these images are of

“domesticated” objects which have been “tamed”; created through the destruction

(“creation = to destroy + χ”) of everyday “irrational objects”.

Cahun and Deharme’s collaboration is thus emblematic of the surrealist theory of

childhood, that period of existence when humans are naturally in tune with the

marvellous: this is then gradually lost during adolescence, whittled away by the

responsibilities of adulthood and a ‘reality’ which they believed detracted from the search

for true meaning, and which the surrealists so abhorred. Cahun and Deharme not only

sought to encourage children to develop their sense of wonder, but also created a book
182
that encouraged adults to reconnect with these lost aspects of imagination, through

dreams and fantasy. While it was originally Breton who contended in this context that

objects and their perception are part of the problem, it was Cahun who was one of the

most successful of the group in terms of developing and questioning the nature of objects,

and our relationship to them. This refers in turn back to Cahun’s ‘irrational objects’ of

1936. They represent the repression of the unconscious mind, and from Cahun’s political

viewpoint, the creativity of the working classes.

IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES: WORDS AND IMAGES

Rosalind Krauss has argued that traditional contradictions between writing and

image making were not irreconcilable within the context of surrealist practice:

Normally we consider writing as absolutely banned from the

photographic field, exiled by the very nature of the image – the ‘message
without a code’ – to an external location where language functions as the
necessary interpreter of the muteness of the photographic sign. 49

While in this context Krauss was speaking of captions, which create an artificial

construction of meaning when applied to photographic images, prior to the emphasis on

object making, this construction in surrealism is frequently evidenced by the inclusion of

text within their photomontage and collage practices, such as the iconic image of I can’t

49
Krauss, R., et al. (1985). 35.
183
see [the woman] for the forest. (1929). 50 The inclusion of text in collages such as Cahun’s

I.O.U (self-pride), and in Breton’s poem-objects, can be interpreted as early attempts to

move away from their earlier, literary preoccupations – to become ‘extraliterary’ in their

mode of expression, as objects became more important to their primary concerns.

Likewise, the inclusion of text in Cahun’s plastic images was both a parallel of Breton’s

own poem-object work and a precursor to her work with Deharme. In a further evolution

of practice there is an interpretive reversal of roles in Deharme’s book – while the primary

text was necessary in order to inspire the images, so too did the images describe the text

to which they were referring. The subject no longer dictated the form and meaning of the

object.

While Alexandrian states that Breton was the only surrealist to create poem-

objects and label them as such, 51 the nature of surrealist object manufacture, which leaves

open the definition of the forms created, and method used to produce each object, also

leaves the definition of a poem-object open to some interpretation. Surrealist objects are

theoretical objects: they make one think, and they make one do theory in order to

understand them. As such, they function as surrealist objects regardless of their form, as

it is the intent in their creation that is the key. I contend that Cahun’s objects also

functioned, in this sense, as poem-objects. Furthermore, I contend that Cahun and

Deharme’s collaboration worked more successfully in the creation of a synthesis of poetry

and object, as a form of Bretonian poem-object, in which known elements combine to

create a new synthesised object, with a new interpretation.

50
Adamowicz, E. (1998). Surrealist collage in text and image: Dissecting the exquisite corpse.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 174.
51
Alexandrian, S. (1985). 147.
184
 Cahun’s relocation certainly brought with it a change of practice – while she

continued to create objects, her focus changed from the creation of objects for exhibition

(a focus which was only pertinent to the existence of the surrealist exhibitions of the

previous year in any case) to the creation of objects for the primary purpose of

photographing them. While this change in focus can be attributed in part to the project on

which she collaborated with Deharme there also appears to be a lengthened halt in her

self-portrait photography as well as her writing. From 1937 to the outbreak of the war

Cahun’s focus appears to remain on objects, and involvement in political arts movements

which were ultimately unsuccessful in their goals. Cahun’s objects continued to offer

resistance to interpretation, even when a gloss is provided, in this case the poems of

Deharme.

While Cahun appears to have functioned on the margins of surrealism, her

political beliefs were not only closely aligned with Breton’s, but at times appear to have

exceeded them in intensity. In her examination of surrealist theory, Rosalind Krauss states

that “[the] distinction between writing and vision is one of the many antinomies that

Breton speaks of wanting surrealism to dissolve in the higher synthesis of a surreality that

will… ‘resolve the dualism of perception and representation.’” 52 Cahun’s experiments in

the dissolving of text and image, subject and object, preceded Breton’s own, and were

equally successful.

Ultimately however, from this period of Cahun’s life, it becomes apparent that she

was only involved with the surrealist group for the duration in which their political

aspirations aligned, and when it was time to turn to other networks, and to other pursuits,

she was happy to reinvent herself as she had done many times before. Like her objects,

52
Krauss, R, et al. (1985). 24.
185
there is no one true definition of Cahun. Cahun’s next major reinvention of her practice

occurred due to events beyond her control as the political face of Jersey was altered

dramatically by the arrival of the German occupying forces.

186
CHAPTER FIVE: OBJECTS OF RESISTANCE

187
INTRODUCTION

In the previous chapters I have explored Cahun’s association and experimentation

with objects, initially in written form, then through production, to the photography of

objects. I have established that Cahun’s core premise was that objects must exist in

resistance to interpretation if they are to have an effect on their viewers. Cahun’s objects

are thus theoretical objects as defined by Damisch and Bal, in that her primary goal was

to prompt her audience to critical reflection about society by pointing to current events,

in order to interpret them. Cahun also imbued her objects with a form of agency, giving

them the power to resist casual interpretation, and to direct the conversation by exhorting

their audience to engage with the object in order to understand it. Furthermore, I have

discussed the notion that Cahun had also positioned herself as resistant to her own work,

declaring her intent to “work in opposition” to all external and internal forces in order to

be an effective voice for change, as she saw it as the only way to remain truly

revolutionary. Over the years, Cahun’s ideas on objects had moved from a position in

which she declared that objects speak a secret language to which humans are not privy,

through to an investigation of the language and power of objects to effect change, and

experiments in the production of objects to achieve that end. Her previous attempts at

object manufacture combined the use of found objects and textual guides in a

methodology similar to Breton’s poem-objects, and it is the synthesis of these two

mediums which would serve Cahun in the years immediately following the object

exhibition.

This chapter interprets Cahun and Moore’s political activism on Jersey during the

war, drawing out how it extended Cahun’s thinking and practice regarding surrealist

objects. Cahun’s last act as a member of the group AEAR (Association of revolutionary

188
writers and artists – Association ecrivains et artistes revolutionaire), which she had joined

in 1932, had been to publish the article Les paris sont ouverts (1933-4). As part of her

response to the political debate leading up to the object exhibition in 1936, in Les paris

sont ouverts Cahun explored the power of indirect action, and the activist potential

inherent in the relationship between the arts and political action. 1 When the occupation

of the Island of Jersey by the German Army began in 1940, Cahun found herself in a

position to put these unique perspectives, first expressed in 1934, into action. Utilising

previously formulated political theory and past object practice, Cahun combined poetry,

performance and object creation to perform her activities of resistance.

Lizzie Thynne has noted that by the final meeting of Contre attaque (Counter

attack), the short-lived group initiated by Bataille as an alternative to the French

Communist Party (PCF) after the Aragon-inspired split, Cahun seems to have begun

doubting the ability of the surrealist splinter group to have any real impact in terms of

promoting pacifism over nationalism or Stalinism, in the face of impending war

throughout Europe. 2 This likely played a part in Cahun and Moore’s decision to

permanently relocate to Jersey, along with the seemingly inevitable arrival of German

forces in Paris. After a flurry of activity in politics Cahun and Moore removed themselves

to Jersey, where they pursued their own interests, unhindered by argument and dissent.

1
Short, R. S. (1966). The politics of surrealism, 1920-36. Journal of Contemporary History, 1:2. 18-19.
2
Thynne, L. (2010) Indirect action: Politics and the subversion of identity in Claude Cahun and Marcel
Moore’s resistance to the occupation of Jersey. Papers of Surrealism, Issue 8. 10.
189
THE RELOCATION TO JERSEY: REPERCUSSIONS

Cahun and her partner Moore had often holidayed on Jersey with their family from

their teenage years at a hotel in St Brelade’s Bay. Cahun and Moore had subsequently

developed a friendship with the hotel’s owners. Disavowals is believed to have been

written on, and certainly about, parts of Jersey and its inhabitants. 3 One character in

particular was a sailor, known only in Disavowals as Bob, on whom Cahun had an

unrequited crush for several years until Bob married another woman. Cahun and Moore

had continued to visit Jersey regularly together over the intervening years, until they

decided to settle there in about 1937, purchasing a house which they called La

Rocquaise, 4 opposite their old friend’s hotel in St Brelade.

The Island of Jersey, in the Channel Islands, occupies a unique political and

cultural niche in Europe. Considerably closer geographically to France than to England,

its cultural influence is more French than British. It is a political remnant of the Duchy of

Normandy, retained by the Crown of England after the Duchy was lost to the French in

the 13th century. It is one of the few remaining territories in the world governed by the

system of Bailiwick. The Bailiwick of Jersey currently occupies an almost unique

position in modern politics and governance, along with the neighbouring Bailiwick of

Guernsey. While it is an independent, self-governing Bailiwick, a now obscure form of

government which stems from the medieval era, it is still technically a crown dependency

of the UK, as it was in the 1930s and 40s. The community of approximately 45,000 (in

1945) on the Island of Jersey was, and is, extremely close-knit. The legal system is

3
Shaw, J. L. (2013). Reading Claude Cahun’s Disavowals. United Kingdom: Ashgate Publishing. 61.
4
Bower (2013) notes that the property was “nicknamed ‘the farm with no name’; its real title, ‘La
Rocquaise’, ‘the one made from rocks’ in which ‘the one’ is an object or, if read as a pun in French a
tough, hardy woman.
190
recognisable as an earlier form of Westminster Law. Criminal trials are heard by the

Bailiff and twelve elected jurors. Other positions on the island, such as community

policing, are performed by either nomination or election, and each candidate agrees to

take on the position for a few years only. All of these community positions are unpaid.

The citizens of Jersey are accustomed, as they have been for centuries, to acting in a

number of civic roles, and participating in a shared sense of community and civic

responsibility.

Jersey’s location also made it strategically important to both Germany and Britain

during the Second World War. The largest of the Channel Islands, Jersey is situated in an

area of the channel sheltered on several sides by the provinces of both Normandy and

Brittany, in turn exposing the island to large stretches of the French coast. Its capture by

the German army deprived England of an important staging point and gave the Germans

a strong vantage point from which to counter British military strikes along the south coast

of England, as well as to plan and launch attacks of their own, while defending their

position as the occupying force in France. 5

WAR AND SURREALIST POLITICAL REACTIONS

Until the outbreak of the war, Cahun and Moore continued to receive guests from

Paris and farther afield, including a visit from Jacqueline Lamba and Aube Breton. It was

during this period that Cahun worked on her images for Deharme, as well as

photographing many other object constructions, several of the negatives of which survive

5
Sanders, P. (2005). The British Channel Islands under German occupation: 1940-1945. St. Helier:
Jersey Heritage Trust. 13.
191
today in the Jersey Heritage Trust archives. After the book was completed Cahun

continued with her photographic studies of ephemeral objects, as evidenced by the

photographs held by the Trust. Once the Nazis seized Paris in 1939 however, the vast

majority of their friends and associates fled via the Mediterranean ports outside the Vichy-

controlled area of France to other countries, including the UK and the US. Several of the

surrealist group, including Breton and his family, spent a number of fraught months in

Marseilles awaiting approval to travel to the US. It was during this time that they designed

the Jeu de Marseilles card game, discussed in the previous chapter, to occupy themselves.

Cahun and Moore were left isolated following the German occupation of Paris, but for

the time being safe, at their home La Rocquaise. In 1940, the German army seized control

of the island.

With most of the surrealist group having fled to Marseilles a few activists

associated with them, such as Tristan Tzara, had stayed behind in Paris. The remaining

members of the group had consciously abandoned surrealist action in the urgency of the

moment in favour of literal, political action, temporarily putting aside previous

differences of ideology and re-aligning themselves with organisations such as the PCF.

Tzara stated in hindsight that he saw no practical use for surrealist ideas during the period

of direct conflict:

It is far from my intention to reproach those who left France at the time of
the Occupation. But one must point out that Surrealism was entirely absent
from the preoccupations of those who remained because it was no help
whatsoever on an emotional or practical level in their struggles against
the Nazis. 6

The other members of the PCF agreed with him and saw no use for what Breton and

Cahun had described as poetic revolution, encapsulated in the concept of the power of

6
Tzara, T. (1966). Le surréalisme et l’après-guerre. Nagel: Paris. 74. My italics.
192
indirect action, preferring to perform acts of direct and overt resistance to the occupying

German forces, such as espionage and sabotage.

Cahun and Moore were confined to the Island of Jersey. This did not mean,

however, that Cahun abandoned her politics for the sake of her own safety, nor that she

had abandoned her practice. Cahun and Moore had more reason than many trapped there

to avoid notice from the occupying authorities: although their legal status and public

profile was as co-habiting, spinster step-sisters, they were of course Lesbian women in a

long-term partnership. Due to the social climate in Europe regarding homosexuality it

could be difficult for people in same sex relationships to live quietly among others as it

was. But the Nazis in particular defined homosexuality as an abomination and a criminal

offense, with severe penalties for those caught, although they did not regard Lesbianism

as severely as male homosexuality. 7 To add to these concerns, Cahun was of course

Jewish as well. Upon arrival on Jersey, Cahun had also reverted to the use of her birth

name, Lucie Schwob. This was just as recognisable to the average German as a potentially

Jewish surname as Cahun certainly was (Cahun being a Gallicized version of Cohen). 8

Although Cahun and Moore had technically left France they had in no way managed to

avoid the conflict between the German army and the Anglo-French resistance movement.

Contrary to Tzara’s assessment of the involvement of surrealists in the resistance, or the

effectiveness of surrealist philosophies as a practical weapon against the enemy, not only

did Cahun and Moore design and activate an ingenious campaign of psychological

subversion against the German occupying forces on Jersey, but they did so in the full

spirit of surrealist ideology. They utilised Cahun’s previous experiments with not only

7
Persecution of homosexuals in the Third Reich. (2016, July 2). Retrieved from United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum, https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005261
8
Consolidated Jewish surname index. (1995). Retrieved from http://www.avotaynu.com/csi/csi-home.htm
193
gender and non-binary identities, but also her use of surrealist objects, and her desire to

see them activated as agents of the resistance.

In Les paris sont ouverts, Cahun had discussed Freudian latent meaning in the

context of poetry. She contended that a poem contains ‘secrets’, much like the secret

language in which she claimed all objects speak, and which she contended in 1914 in

Vues et visions no one could yet understand. By 1933 this philosophy, extended to poetry,

describes the way in which this secret language can be used in non-propagandistic art, as

a means by which one can communicate revolutionary ideas without making them explicit

(unlike the more overt messaging in the methods espoused by Louis Aragon and the PCF,

with their decided adherence to the principles of Social Realism in the arts). Cahun’s

trajectory through various incarnations of the object, through the poem-object to her note-

objects of her resistance years described one continuous thread in her practice. Cahun

stated that propagandists, or communist journalists, and poets are two distinct entities:

“poets act in their own way on men’s sensibilities. Their attacks are more cunning, but

their most indirect blows are sometimes mortal.” 9 These indirect blows from poets also

echo the indirect method of communication which Cahun imparted in her objects, and her

photographs of objects. This indirect, somewhat opaque method of delivery forces the

recipient to become involved in the exchange, increasing their level of participation in

order to increase their psychological and emotional engagement with the material. This

approach came to the fore in the objects which Cahun deployed in the service of the

resistance movement.

Breton had been impressed with this declaration of Cahun’s in Les paris sont

ouverts and wrote specifically of Cahun’s theories of radical art and poetry in Minotaure:

9
Humanities Underground. (2011, January). The mirage in the pupil. Retrieved from
http://humanitiesunderground.org/the-mirage-in-the-pupil/
194
“In the recent polemics with Aragon, Claude Cahun has presented conclusions that for a

long time will be the most valid.” 10 This assertion by Breton was physically tested by

Cahun’s active resistance on Jersey. As we have seen through her previous investigation

and creation of objects, and her attempts to marry these theoretical considerations with

the practice of the creation of revolutionary objects, Cahun had lighted on the

methodology of creating objects which, like her poetry and prose, resisted easy

interpretation, creating objects which were indeed cunning and capable of striking

indirect blows which cut deep into the consciousness of their audience.

Ultimately Cahun concluded that the only effective action is this method of

“indirect action,” 11 and that only by producing either poetry or propaganda in this fashion

can either be said to be truly revolutionary. Objects in service of the resistance must

therefore speak in a language which resists interpretation and requires effort to

understand, for without effort on the part of the audience there is no engagement with the

material. The reader or viewer of these objects are required to discover the subtext of the

objects by themselves. This is exactly what Cahun’s acts of resistance on Jersey set out

to achieve. Rather than stating what the reader should believe, the objects of resistance

which Cahun distributed were deliberately designed to encourage the receiver to question

perceived truths, by allowing the audience to “read” her propagandistic objects in a way

that spoke to them personally.

10
Bower, G. J. (2013). No page numbers.
11
Bower, G. J. (2013). No page numbers.
195
CAHUN’S OBJECTS OF RESISTANCE

Cahun’s resistance took on the various forms her work had taken so far: poetic

prose, found objects, surrealist-inspired constructions inscribed with cryptic messages.

The primary physical evidence of her resistance work which remains are a series of notes,

held in the Jersey Heritage Trust archives. Breton’s first poem-object, created in 1935,

anticipated Cahun’s note objects created during the 1940s, and which were sometimes

inserted into the cigarette packets of German soldiers. Breton’s object consisted of a

cigarette packet, decorated with a short poem. The text reads:

L’ocean glacial
Jeune fille aux yeux bleues
Dont les cheveux
Étaient déjà blancs

The glacial ocean

Girl with blue eyes
Whose hair
Was already white

Leaving aside an artistic interpretation of Breton’s object, its form is typical of the poem-

objects created by both Cahun and Breton in the second half of the previous decade, and

serves as an interesting precursor to Cahun’s notes, both in terms of its physical delivery

(the cigarette packet) and the simple poem which delivers Breton’s message via the object

itself. Several of Cahun’s propaganda notes follow a similar, poetic style: a simple meter,

paring down the message to its most concise form. L’ocean glacial also resists a simple

interpretation, marrying as it does (and as Breton’s poem-objects often did) the

196
incongruous form of the mundane found or discarded object – the cigarette packet – with

a love poem, presumably written for Jacqueline Lamba. Likewise, Cahun’s notes to the

soldiers were careful, sensitive exhortations to consider their actions, their loved ones at

home, the people whose lives they were affecting; they were never harsh or accusatory.

Cahun and Moore produced these notes at home, between 1940 and 1944. Some

of the notes are handwritten, some typed, and were created to be dropped as propaganda

leaflets where they would be discovered by German soldiers stationed on Jersey. The

notes were designed to instil doubt in the soldiers’ minds: doubt as to the validity of the

war, and doubt regarding the true intentions of their superiors. Much has already been

written about the contents of the notes by Lizzie Thynne and François Leperlier. Their

effects on the morale of the German forces stationed on Jersey were noticeable – certainly

the officers were concerned enough to devote time and energy to discovering the shadowy

miscreants responsible for such sedition. My interest in the notes however, is how they

function as an extension of Cahun’s object theories. As a form of indirect action, Cahun

gives the notes the same latent agency that she ascribed to her other plastic objects.

Cahun’s notes were carefully handwritten or typed onto tissue paper, rolled or

folded into the smallest size possible, then subtly delivered to the soldiers of the German

Army in a variety of ways. 12 Often bold in her execution, Cahun dropped the folded notes

through the crack of a car’s driver seat window, slipped them into newspapers or coat

pockets, or in at least one alleged incident, deftly inserted a rolled note into the cigarette

packet of a German soldier relaxing at a table in a busy café. 13 In order to execute these

bold manoeuvres, Cahun adopted the character of an anonymous and untraceable local –

12
Carr, G, Willmot, L., & Sanders, P. P. (2014). Protest, defiance and resistance in the channel islands:
German occupation, 1940-45. London, United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Academic. 187.
13
Carr, G, et al. (2014). 187.
197
often male, and a common fisherman or labourer. 14 Cahun’s diminutive build, and

experience in Pierre Albert-Birot’s theatrical productions of the 1920s made these forays,

although bold, relatively simple as long as she kept her resolve and stayed in character

despite the dangers she was exposing herself to in performing these actions.

The notes were short and simple, and spoke in the voice of a German soldier,

whom Cahun had dubbed Der Soldat ohne Namen, or the ‘Soldier without a name’. The

unnamed soldier’s notes functioned as a plea to the conscience of his compatriots,

imploring his fellow soldiers to think about the true cause and meaning of the conflict

they were fighting, and to think about the inevitable suffering of those they had left at

home. One surviving note, now held by the Jersey Heritage Trust archives, reads:

What man has the right to sacrifice a people to save a government?

Revolution in Germany? – Certainly. And the longer the war, the longer
and more confused the inevitable revolution, the worse the suffering of our
women and children.
-Thus speaks the soldier without a name 15

Cahun attempted to plant in the minds of soldiers isolated far away from home, not only

a lingering doubt over the purpose of the conflict in which they were engaged, but also

the suspicion that they were being “sacrificed” to save those on top – Hitler and the Reich

were not representative of the Volk: the soldiers and their families. Once this conclusion

is accepted, as Cahun’s anonymous messenger suggests, then a revolution against the

Reich for the good of the people is all but inevitable. Cahun’s anonymous soldier asks the

German troops to consider what would happen next: if women and children already suffer

14
Johnson, S. (2015, April 28). Claude Cahun: A very curious spirit. Retrieved from
http://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/7358/claude-cahun-a-very-curious-spirit
15
Jersey Heritage Trust (1945). Archives and collections online. Retrieved from
http://catalogue.jerseyheritage.org/collection/Details/archive/110003107?page=2&rank=48. Cat no:
JHT/1995/00045/53.
198
at home, under constant threat of invasion or bombardment, will they suffer again when

the soldier returns home, and the war begin anew for the freedom of the German people?

The soldier without a name plants the seeds of doubt in his fellows’ minds, both with the

ominous content of his message, but also through his ephemeral identity.

Her objects began as found objects, such as cigarette packets, which she inscribed

with the words “Ohne Ende” (without end), taken from the Nazi war slogan “Terror

without an end or an end to terror.” 16 The pseudonym she eventually arrived at also

derived from this, a play on words to constantly remind the recipients of her messages

that the horror was indeed seemingly without end. These and other objects similarly

inscribed were left in various places to be casually discovered by the German troops – the

shock of discovery hopefully magnifying the hopeless message combined with the

repetition of discovering the message repeatedly. Cahun and Moore also disguised

themselves and slipped in to German military events, where they left the notes to be

discovered. 17

Another note distributed by Cahun and Moore reads:

HITLER leads us
GOEBBELS speaks for us
GOERING eats for us
LEY drinks for us
Himmler? HIMMLER MURDERS FOR…
But no one dies for us.
NO ONE DIES FOR US. 18

16
Thynne, L. (2010). 10.
17
Carr, G, et al. (2014).
18
Jersey Heritage Trust (1945). Cat no: JHT/1995/00045/53.
199
Cahun’s notes certainly take an indirect path, both in their physical delivery, and in their

content. The latent worry empathises, rather than entreats or threatens. The notes are with

the soldiers, not against them. It was Cahun’s approach as a surrealist poet, rather than as

a propagandist, that enabled her to write so artfully against the peace of mind of the

German soldiers.

Tellingly, unlike many other left-wing groups in France before the outbreak of the

war, the politicised surrealists of the group Contre attaque refused to condemn wholesale

the entire German nation for the military aggression of the state. They saw the antagonists

as being the German government and their military heads only with the everyday people

of Germany, regardless of background or circumstances, powerless underneath this

Fascist occupation. 19 This understanding is borne out in the method of communication

chosen by Cahun in her notes: they empathise with, rather than condemn the common

German soldier. They gently encourage the everyday soldier to question orders, to

question authority, and therefore the very purpose of their ordered mission. Cahun’s

method of using objects to persuade led the soldiers to believe that they had reached

conclusions of their own design. Most importantly, in terms of their propaganda value,

they reminded them to worry about those they had left behind, trapped in an oppressive

state.

Cahun never wavered in her belief that the German soldiers to whom her notes

were addressed were capable of critically assessing their own situation and arriving

independently at their own conclusion regarding the futility of the war and the bastardry

of their commanders and overlords. In this she remained unchanged from her position in

19
Follain, C. (1997). Constructing a profile of resistance: Lucy Schwob [Claude Cahun] and Suzanne
Malherbe as paradigmatic résistantes. BA Contemporary History with French dissertation, University of
Sussex. 92.
200
1934 when, in Les paris sont ouverts, she declared that only literature which acts

indirectly is true propaganda, 20 as it must lead people to their own conclusion, rather than

forcing facts or a point of view down their throat. Her attitude towards the soldiers also

reflected her belief in 1936 in the ability of the working class to recognise the value of

the ‘irrational’ objects placed before them without intervention, and to be able to interpret

their meaning.

Cahun and Moore continued these drops successfully throughout most of the war,

growing bolder as the conflict progressed. Other actions they performed included affixing

notes to the graves of German soldiers buried on Jersey. In one instance they left a

message declaring “Hitler is greater than Jesus. Jesus died for men, but men are dying for

Hitler” on the altar of the local church. 21 The Germans were determined to catch this

mastermind of sedition: a shadowy figure who seemed to be able to infiltrate the personal

space of the German troops like a ghost. For a long time Cahun was able to operate with

impunity despite the immediate risks inherent in each operation. The temerity of the

women was exacerbated by La Rocquaise’s proximity to the St Brelade hotel where the

Luftwaffe officers were billeted. 22 It never occurred to the occupying forces that they

were looking for a pair of middle-aged, middle class French women, initially operating

alone, and never as part of an extensive network.

Cahun’s disguises and masks are where her play with identity as a human figure

of agency coincide with her object work. Both Cahun and her cigarette-notes thus

combine to become an object of resistance. Taken as a performance of resistance, Cahun’s

combination of disguise and object become the theoretical object introduced at the outset

20
Cahun, C. (1934). Le paris sont ouverts. Paris: José Corti. 8.
21
Carr, G, et al. (2014). 187.
22
Thynne, L. (2010). 16.
201
of this thesis. Leperlier has suggested that Cahun’s entire life on Jersey during the war

constituted nothing less than one, continuous surrealist act. 23 Cahun’s actions also

illustrate the contention of Mieke Bal, who stated that theoretical objects are “works of

art that deploy their own artistic…medium to offer and articulate thought.” 24 The purpose

of a theoretical object is to make you think and Cahun, as object, in these actions was

directed at this outcome, by specifically forcing her intended audience, the German

troops, to reflect on their actions, their orders, the safety of themselves and their family:

in short, their entire system of values, and their place within that system. Previous writers

such as Thynne have concentrated on Cahun’s masking and mimicry in her actions of

Jersey often in terms of her quest for personal identity. As Thynne contends, the larger

mimicry at work in these notes is the appropriation of the identity of a young male Aryan

soldier by a middle-aged, lesbian, Jewish, French woman, which struck at the heart of

Nazi ideology. 25 In the spirit of true surrealism, Cahun had successfully “othered herself”

in a more practical sense, by assuming the identity of an unknown soldier. As the soldier

without a name Cahun resisted identification and therefore circumvented the chain of

command.

INCARCERATION AND THE DISSEMBLING SELF

The German commanders on Jersey dubbed these unknown propagandists

“spiritual snipers,” such was the deleterious effect it was feared they might have on the

23
Leperlier, F. (2011). L’image premiere. Claude Cahun, Hazan/éditions du Jeu de Paume. 61.
24
Bal, M. (1999). Narrative inside out: Louise Bourgeois’ spider as theoretical object. Oxford Art
Journal, 22.2. 104.
25
Thynne, L. (2010). 16.
202
morale of the troops. 26 Finally, after one too many tip offs, Cahun and Moore were

stopped in public one day after a leaflet drop. A thorough search was instigated at La

Rocquaise where their supplies for the production of their resistance material were found

including Cahun’s typewriter which was matched to the typeface on some of the

distributed notes. Cahun and Moore were imprisoned by the Nazis who charged them

with inciting the German soldiers to riot based on the contents of a leaflet which they had

distributed. 27 Cahun’s imprisonment meant she could no longer distribute her objects of

resistance. However, she continued to perform resistance, becoming the object of

resistance herself. She continued her resistance from within her cell through continuing

conversations with the German troops with whom she came in to contact.

When Cahun and Moore were tried, they received a nine-year, six-month sentence

for owning a radio with which they had been listening to the BBC, and the death sentence

for the note which had encouraged German soldiers to shoot their superior officers. Much

to the chagrin of the presiding German officers, Cahun’s response sent the courtroom into

gales of laughter: “Are we to do the nine years six months before we are shot?” 28 Cahun’s

dark humour, often employed in her notes, was a welcome contrast to the literal and

humourless existence of the troops and appears to have won her not only respect, but also

friends in unlikely places. 29 Of course the reality of their situation was far from humorous.

Cahun and Moore attempted suicide several times during their incarceration, 30 convinced

that they were being held only to be inevitably executed anyway. Cahun and Moore

26
Thynne, L. (2010). 10.
27
Cahun, C. & Leperlier, F. (2002). Les ecrits de Cahun. France: Jean-Michel Place Editions. 721-2.
28
Cahun, C. & Leperlier, F. (2002). 721.
29
Follain, C. (1997). 92.
30
Carr, G, et al. (2014). 188.
203
received their sentence of death in November 1944. 31 The sentences were not carried out

immediately and Cahun and Moore were returned to the cells.

As Cahun wrote in her memoir Confidences (secrets) in the mirror, which was

not published during her lifetime, she was received kindly by the soldiers in the military

prison in 1944: she was much moved by the “experience of the fraternal welcome I

received from those in whose name I wrote.” 32 Cahun’s ability to blend into her

surroundings and charm when she needed to extended to her prison guards, who

eventually allowed Cahun and Moore brief trips from the cells to visit other prisoners,

including one German soldier who was to be executed for speaking of desertion. These

actions are a very odd decision for a guard to make, which suggests that many of the

soldiers, although fearful of the obvious repercussions for desertion, or even thinking

about it, had an admiration for Cahun and Moore. Although Der Soldat ohne Name had

been unmasked as two fifty-year-old women rather than a young German soldier, the

soldiers’ regard for Der Soldat ohne Name remained undiminished. Speaking what many

of them were already feeling, the messages in the notes felt like common sense: their own

internal dialogue of fear and doubt made concrete.

While in prison, Cahun developed a friendship with one of the guards from the

military prison in St Helier, who then appears to have granted her small favours where

possible. In perhaps the most extraordinary example of Cahun’s ability to influence others

as Der Soldat ohne Name, this guard, one Heinrich Ebbers, stayed in contact after the

war’s end, writing to Cahun and Moore from a prisoner of war camp in Yorkshire in

January, 1946. Due to kindly treatment by guards such as Ebbers, when kept in separate

31
Shaw, J. L. (2013). 218. Original text states November 1945, but this must be an error in printing as
Jersey was liberated by British troops on 9 May 1945.
32
Cahun, C. & Leperlier, F. (2002). 584.
204
cells, Cahun and Moore were able to maintain a correspondence when in prison, writing

to each other on scraps of toilet paper. 33

Towards the end of the conflict, Cahun and Moore were kept in the same cell, and

security became laxer. They were able to communicate with other prisoners, particularly

with another German soldier who had been arrested. Notes from their unnamed fellow

inmate were pushed under Cahun’s cell door (presumably by a sympathetic guard), and

Cahun was able to keep them safe in the lining of her coat. Excerpts of these notes survive

in the Jersey Archives today. Cahun’s Soldat had transformed her into an object of protest:

Cahun as her true self had become a representation of what resistance could achieve.

Cahun, as a combination of her object production and performance, had become the

embodiment of an idea: the theoretical object which forced the audience to think.

The German commanders had originally planned to send her to an internment

camp on the mainland for her execution. However, as the tide of war turned against them

the German authorities had grown increasingly nervous about their hold on Jersey.

Cahun’s execution was scheduled to be carried out on the Island. 34 It has been asserted

by Claire Follain that the German officers were aware of Cahun and Moore’s popularity

among both the general population and their own troops, and were afraid to carry out the

sentence for fear of widespread backlash. 35 When the Germans finally withdrew from

Jersey Cahun and her fellow prisoners were left behind to be freed by the incoming Allied

army.

33
Carr, G, et al. (2014). 190.
34
Carr, G, et al. (2014). 115.
35
Follain, C. (1997). 101.
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CAHUN AS OBJECT OF RESISTANCE

Lizzie Thynne discusses the way in which Cahun’s campaign of resistance spoke

to her constant reinvention of herself, “imagining I am something different” 36. Thynne

takes the something here as ‘someone’, but it can also be understood in its literal

translation of ‘something’; that is, her examination of subject/object relationships, and

her frequent reflections on the nature and importance of objects to the everyday existence

of modern men and women. The ‘something’ Cahun aspired to be is not necessarily

limited by living, breathing flesh. Thynne further identifies that Cahun sought to present

herself as the other, but like many who have previously sought to examine Cahun’s work

she concentrates on Cahun’s identity as ‘other’ within a human scope. The repetition of

the imagery of masks, and of otherness, is common throughout her work, but I maintain

that this interpretation must also include her discourse on objects, and their relationship

to human beings. Through her work on Jersey, Cahun othered herself by becoming a kind

of object, one who offers resistance to those who would read her by becoming “something

different”, inviting them to seek out the truth of her communications before she can be

understood. Cahun said herself that her resistance work with Moore on Jersey was a

logical extension of her earlier, literary endeavours. 37 Previous theorists such as Thynne

have largely assumed that this referred to the examination of identity from a human

perspective. Another way of reading Cahun’s assertion that her resistance work was a

logical extension of her previous work is to see that she was also referring to her

discussion on the ability of objects to speak another language, and to create objects that

could effect change. Her resistance work can then be seen as an extension of her object

36
Thynne, L. (2010). 2.
37
Jersey Heritage Trust. Cat no: JHT/1995/00045/25.
206
work, which in turn stemmed from her literary works and political tracts, in which, as I

have discussed in the previous chapters, she discussed the latent agency of objects.

Cahun’s deliberate confusion of her identity, of the way people perceive her, was

in part coloured by her confusion of gender. Cahun once said: “Masculine? Feminine? It

depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that suits me.” 38 Perhaps it is possible

that, in rejecting gender binaries, Cahun similarly sought to slough off the binary of

animate and inanimate, subject and object in its entirety. Her entire oeuvre – her writing,

photography and object manufacture – take on a new, more comprehensive meaning when

read as a total decentralisation of the self, and a removal of the division between the

human subject/object and all other conceivable subject/objects. French is a gendered

language, and each noun is encumbered with its own, permanent, immutable gender,

much like the static and binary assignations of gender prescribed to human beings at birth.

Cahun’s reference to neuter can therefore also be taken in the linguistic sense, and her

frequent wordplay adds weight to such an interpretation. Cahun wanted to transcend not

only human gender, but the gendering, or linguistic cataloguing, of ‘thingness’, to simply

be a thing without definition. Rather than attempting to rediscover, explore, or mask her

identity, her aspiration in this context was to resist definition altogether.

Finally freed from their imprisonment, Cahun and Moore returned to their home.

The Nazi soldiers had ransacked their house, searching for evidence of any kind to prove

insurgent or degenerate activity. Much of their furniture had been seized and sold, and

their archives of both written and photographic works were rifled through. 39 We will

never know how much of Cahun’s body of work was destroyed during this period. While

not the subject of this thesis, it would be a disservice to forget that Moore was also a

38
Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 151-2.
39
Thynne, L. (2010).
207
talented and moderately successful illustrator, in a similar style to Aubrey Beardsley.

Very little of her work remains that is not in published form, and we must assume that the

German troops destroyed much of her archive as well. After the war Cahun no longer

appeared to work with any of the objects she once used as props for her photographs, and

it is possible that they were confiscated and/or destroyed during the period of their

imprisonment.

After their release Cahun also began working on an autobiography with the help

of Moore, which may explain the shift in emphasis in her photography. In poor health

after their experiences in prison she relied more heavily on Moore to facilitate both her

written and pictorial works. She stated as much in a letter to Michaux in 1952, when she

described her process for getting down some memories of what had happened during her

imprisonment. In the letter Cahun also declared that she felt better for it and actually

enjoyed the process. 40 Moore was assisting her to deconstruct herself, in order to construct

the story of her life, in a similar methodology she employed in the writing of Disavowals.

Cahun seems to have always found writing cathartic so it is natural that this is the format

she returned to after such a traumatic experience.

Cahun’s self-portrait taken on the day of her release shows her standing in the

doorway of the reclaimed La Rocquaise, clenching a Nazi insignia badge between her

teeth. Both Cahun and Moore were allegedly gifted these badges by fellow prisoners, 41

who were themselves German soldiers, upon the liberation of the island, again attesting

to their popularity among the troops stationed on Jersey. Cahun’s clenching of the badge

between her teeth is a very powerful symbol: Cahun, the object of resistance, takes

40
Jersey Heritage Trust. Cat no: JHT/1995/00045/25.
41
Smith, K. (2015). Claude Cahun as anti-Nazi resistance fighter - grey gallery. Retrieved from
https://greyartgallery.nyu.edu/2015/12/claude-cahun-as-anti-nazi-resistance-fighter/
208
another object, symbolising her oppression, and violently asserts her domination over it.

After this photograph was taken, Cahun’s practice returns to self-portraiture, as well as

landscapes, taking in the natural features and haunting ruins of the many castles in Jersey,

although in many the self-portraits she does not appear as easy with the camera as she

once was. One cannot escape the impression that Cahun is tired, and perhaps more than

a little broken: many of the images are every day, candid shots of an older woman and

her companion.

One such portrait of herself and Moore in swim suits, taken in 1950, has been

curiously and aggressively defaced; Cahun’s face and abdomen seemingly burned and

scratched away from the print's surface in a violent act against representation of the self.

Although I cannot be sure that Cahun was responsible for the damage to the photograph,

it is hard to believe that Moore would be responsible for the savaging of her beloved’s

image – and if she was, it seems unlikely that she would have kept the damaged print

throughout the decades following Cahun’s death. Although it is not possible to know with

certainty who defaced it or what their motives were, a desire to obliterate an image in

order to construct a new image from its remains seems very much in keeping in the way

Cahun worked. This photograph displays a pattern of erasure, of deconstruction, which

Cahun had followed through much of her career. In another photograph taken at the

London surrealist exhibition in 1937 we see, neatly framed, Andre Breton, ELT Mesens,

Roland Penrose and David Gascoyne. The negative of this photograph originates from

the Cahun archival material at the Jersey Heritage Trust, identifying the photograph and

its subsequent mark up as the work of either Cahun or Moore. In the proof image stands

five figures, not four: Breton, Mesens, Penrose, Gascoyne, and Cahun. A rough square

has been etched into the negative, excising Cahun from the final print. It seems that even

209
at the height of her public involvement with surrealism and French politics Cahun wished

to be erased from the picture, in order to resist being read by others.

CONCLUSION

While Cahun’s relocation to Jersey was intended as a respite from the rigours of

the wider intellectual and political landscape, through circumstances beyond her control

she was drawn to inadvertently complete her work with objects of resistance, ultimately

at a great personal cost to both herself and Moore. Though it was not her original aim

Cahun’s object manufacture culminated in her production of objects to be utilised in the

resistance against the occupying forces on Jersey. Cahun had spent many years theorising

on the nature of the revolution and was both rationally capable of participating, and highly

motivated to engage in the resistance activities on Jersey.

After the suicide attempts in prison, and the general conditions of incarceration,

Cahun’s health was permanently damaged. 42 She spent her final years living quietly with

Moore at the reclaimed La Rocquaise, before she passed away in 1954. Her legacy in

terms of the resistance is ultimately unmeasurable: contributions to the resistance are

arguably best measured as a collective achievement in any case. The cooperative efforts

of thousands of French men and women, and many others of various nationalities resulted

in the demoralisation, infiltration and sabotage of German forces throughout the Second

World War. I believe that both Cahun and Moore would prefer to be seen as part of that

collective, rather than any kind of heroes or liberators from a narrative stereotype.

42
Downie, L. (2005). Sans nom: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. Heritage. 16.
210
However, Cahun’s methodologies were so unique and effective, and so profoundly

theoretical, that they are worthy of being singled out and examined. This chapter has

discussed them in relation to ideas developed as part of Cahun’s work with the surrealist

object. The impact of her resistance is also apparent in the recorded effects she had on

German morale, the reaction of the Luftwaffe to her activities, and the strange affection

which developed among the German troops for Der Soldat ohne Name.

Cahun and Moore’s notes took on the characteristics of Cahun’s objects: to put it

simply, they resisted. As theoretical objects it is not simply sufficient to write a history of

them, they must be acknowledged as progenitors of thought, and as the instigators of

change. Cahun worked constantly against the grain, in opposition to herself and others,

and by the end of her life, she had succeeded in transforming herself into her own object

to be destroyed. With so much of Cahun’s archive destroyed by the German troops who

ransacked their home, ultimately Cahun as writer and artist remains unknowable: in death

she becomes another object resisting the interpretation of the viewer. This is most likely

the reason her legacy remained obscure for so long after her death.

211
CONCLUSION

212
TOWARDS A FREE, REVOLUTIONARY ART

In this thesis I have examined Cahun’s practice with a particular emphasis on her

object work and interest in objects. Building on existing interpretations of Cahun’s

practice this focus reveals not a series of fragmented artistic ventures but rather a coherent

arc concentrated on the idea that objects are key to personal revelations and as such larger

social change. Through her work with objects Cahun also introduced the idea that

resistance and inscrutability can function as liberatory forces rather than obstacles to

comprehension, something that at first glance seems anathema to modern critical thought.

Cahun’s explanations of, and work with, objects open up new possibilities for

understanding their meaning and potential as resistant agents of change. Through a

discussion of significant theories of the object, a number of clear themes emerged which

are useful in approaching the object works of Cahun. Namely, that objects are central to

modern experience: they not only mediate human relationships but may have agency in

themselves.

That Cahun was fascinated by the role objects played in everyday life is obvious

in her written, photographic and artistic productions. This fascination was earlier voiced

in her literary works. But as her practice progressed and her focus changed she found

objects to be representative of far wider reaching political and social problems, drawing

her in to the circle of surrealist politics. Influenced by socialist politics regarding the

potential of objects to play a role in social revolution she began to use objects to formulate

solutions to those problems through actions of resistance to the governing balances of

power – to false realities, and to socially prescribed roles that she found abhorrent.

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 With regards to the plastic objects exhibited by Cahun at the 1936 Paris exposition

surréaliste D’objets, close interpretation of both objects displayed was undertaken. As

part of this investigation Un air de famille has now been examined and described in close

detail. The formerly labelled Object has been given a new context by regaining its original

title; as Souris valseuses it is now imbued with a new meaning and a greater significance

both within Cahun’s personal body of work and objects of surrealism as a whole. As such,

I have asserted that there were only ever the two objects listed in the catalogue displayed,

rather than the three purported by Harris. Gayle Zachmann suggested of Cahun’s

photographic work that she “re-envisions the boundaries of the visual and the verbal.” 1

When speaking of her objects, it could be said that in many ways none of the surrealists

came as close as Cahun to disturbing those borders – between male and female, horrifying

and titillating, visual and verbal, real and surreal. Her obvious talent at exploring the

‘folds of identity’ also offers us an explanation for her involvement with the surrealists at

this time and a reason as to why her input was so valued by key members of the group.

If, as Knafo claims, “the Surrealist female nudes, cut to phallic form, represent

the artistic solution to the male surrealists’ castration anxiety: the reinscription of the

phallus on or as the female body that was originally found to lack it,” 2 then Cahun’s Un

air de famille and Souris valseuses can also be seen as a re-inscription of the female form

upon the phallic; a reclaiming of woman’s bodily existence, and the right to assert its

continuing existence as an independent form. Through the examination of these objects

it is also now apparent that Cahun’s use of the mask as metaphor, originally utilised in

her photographic self-portraits and autobiographical writing, began to take on a more

political significance through the production of objects. As Tirza True Latimer states,

1
Zachmann, G. (2003). Surreal and canny selves: Photographic figures in Claude Cahun. Studies in 20th
& 21st Century Literature, 27.2. 302.
2
Knafo, D. (2001). Claude Cahun: The third sex. Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 2.1. 36
214
both Cahun and Moore “launched [their] critique…from a self-consciously (and

irrevocably) off-centre position” as women who were legally and culturally on the

periphery of power with “no stake in maintaining the integrity of these categories of social

subjectivity.” 3 Rather than disguising the unpalatable, in Cahun’s objects the mask

reflected and amplified that which others would prefer to remain masked; those who were

objectified and subsumed by modernity and modernisms. Cahun’s work during this

period can also be seen as a reaction to the myth of freedom for the modern woman. All

such concepts were anathema to Cahun’s vision of the world as it should be.

Cahun’s objects of the 1936 exhibition played a vital role in the communication

of surrealism’s key political assertions. Her relationship to several key figures within

surrealism suggested not an ostracized or feared artist working on the periphery of a great

cultural movement, but one deeply embedded in the process, and imbued with the

confidence of those who surrounded her. Cahun’s work with the surrealists should

perhaps now be re-examined in light of her close associations with Breton, Péret and

Bataille during this period, as it appears that her contributions were far more central to

the aims of the group than has previously been recognised. I suggest that Cahun and other

women such as Meret Oppenheim were not simply called upon by Breton to even out the

gender imbalance in the group, as has been postulated by Haim Finkelstein, 4 but rather

respected members of the movement who were actively encouraged to participate in all

aspects of surrealist activities during this period. Breton’s assumed dislike of Cahun

should most importantly be re-evaluated: his opinion of her is vital to an understanding

of her place within the group. It is hard to believe that a woman to whom Breton wrote,

3
Latimer, T. T. (2006) Entre nous: Between Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. GLQ. Duke University
Press: 12.2. 210.
4
Finkelstein, H. N. (1980). Surrealism and the crisis of the object. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press.
117.
215
“you dispose of a very extensive magic ability. I find also - and don't repeat it - that you

must write and publish. You know well that I think you are one of the most curious spirits

of these times” was someone whom he found repugnant in any aspect. 5 Unlike the

tempestuous relationships many of Breton’s other associates endured, his regard for

Cahun remained strong and constant. It is possible to understand Cahun as a central figure

in the surrealist movement of the 1930s. Cahun should no longer be situated on the

periphery of a male-dominated movement but understood as having a critical part to play

in the evolution of surrealist political thought and artistic development.

Mary Ann Caws suggested that the later stages of surrealism have been

overlooked in academic examinations of the movement in favour of the study of

automatism. 6 This emphasis on the earlier period of surrealism could provide us with an

alternative explanation for Cahun’s lack of stature within the surrealist canon: the period

of her closest involvement with the group has simply not received as much recognition in

the literature. This thesis makes a contribution to redressing that imbalance.

On the surface, Cahun’s 1936 objects seem at first to be unusually gendered in the

feminine, as opposed to her usual method of blurring and confounding categories of

gender. I believe that this change in her practice – reflected also in the shift from writing

to object making – reflected the larger concerns of the surrealist group as a whole,

including their increasing politicisation in the face of the impending Popular Front

government and the rise of Fascist governments throughout Europe. For the first time

Cahun was making statements specifically for the benefit of women at large, and although

her objects continued to blur social and biological definitions of gender they are

5
Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 213.
6
Caws, M. A. (1997). 14.
216
ultimately for the wider community, in much the same way that a younger, more

introspective Cahun was always, ultimately, for herself.

Cahun arguably came closer than others working within the surrealist group to a

true depiction of aspects of Freudian psychoanalytical theory. Freud’s theory of the

unconscious posited that common truths regarding the nature of identity previously held

as self-evident were in fact socially inscribed upon the individual, and that these socially

created individuals thus wore masks of “multiple and competing identities and

identifications.” 7 As Caws summarises in Cahun’s case, “no one had more ways of

looking than Claude Cahun. She fascinates. She horrifies. She is monstrous. There is no

better way of putting it.” 8 Therefore, just as Freud claims that there is no such thing as

‘I’, so Cahun exclaims wearily that “I shall never stop removing all these faces.” 9

Likewise, the disembodied mother represented in Un air de famille consists of nothing

but a tangle of socially prescribed, indecipherable identities, and the Souris valseuses

asserts its existence as a ‘counterfeiter’ of phallic identity and power.

Francois Leperlier dubbed Cahun “surrealism’s first female photographer.” 10

Leaving aside the heavily implied snub of Lee Miller in this context, whose Mastectomy

breast and Ramm Bell jar series alone arguably place her photography firmly within

surrealist practice, Cahun was not, at the time when she was active, a photographer per

se. It is only in hindsight that her collection of personal photographs has come to light.

Considering Cahun within the context of her active participation in literature, art and

politics, it is more accurate to state that Cahun was surrealism’s first woman. The

7
Lusty, N. (2007). 16.
8
Caws, M. A. (1997). 95.
9
Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 183.
10
Leperlier, F. (2001). Claude Cahun: Masks and metamorphoses. London, United Kingdom: Verso
Books. vii.
217
appellation of ‘photographer’ is not relevant to either her professional practice, or to the

impact she had on surrealist politics of the object during her lifetime. As Leperlier has

noted, Cahun rebelled against all creative specialisations – poet, essayist, critic, novelist,

translator, actor, costumier, mask maker, object maker, photographer, and revolutionary

activist. 11

In Les paris sont ouverts, Cahun claimed for poetry the ability to keep its secrets,

while simultaneously handing over its secrets. 12 When combined with Cahun’s earlier

musings on the secret language of objects in Vues et visions, and her frequent

interrogation of the meaning and power of objects in Heroïnes, it is clear that Cahun was

working towards a synthesis of these ideas, in which poetic objects were capable of

revealing truths to their audience whilst simultaneously maintaining their mysterious

secrets.

CAHUN AND THEORIES OF THE OBJECT

As stated above, by performing an analysis of the various theories of the object, it

has become apparent that no one object theory, be it one which predates, is contemporary

with, or traces its inception to the period after Cahun’s own meditations on the nature of

the object’s relationship with mankind, is adequate as a standalone tool for the analysis

of Cahun’s objects. Rather, Cahun’s objects oblige us to think about the how they are to

be read. Hubert Damisch’s definition of the theoretical object is a useful launching point

for understanding the work that Cahun’s objects do, and the idea that her objects also

11
Leperlier, F. (2011). L’image premiere. Claude Cahun. Hazan/éditions du Jeu de Paume.
12
Cahun, C. (1934). 8-10.
218
make us do work. Cahun’s objects certainly fulfil the requirements of being theoretical

objects in that they oblige the observer to consider theory, but Damisch’s model also

requires a toolbox for the examination of theoretical objects, and for that one must look

to the objects themselves for guidance.

Theories of the object such as those espoused by Marx in his analysis of

industrialised methods of production, while providing a firm foundation for an analysis

Cahun’s work, are ultimately only a point from which to begin. In the case of Cahun they

are certainly an excellent point from which to do that as their influence is apparent across

her entire body of work. Likewise, contemporaries as diverse as Theodor Adorno and

Francis Ponge contributed valuable thought to the importance of objects to concepts of

modernity, and the new relationship of the modern man and woman with those objects.

However, neither Adorno nor Ponge managed to capture the essence of opacity which

Cahun sought to celebrate. Indeed, although Ponge was arguably also working on objects

of resistance, his methodology was anathema to Cahun’s own interpretation, seeking as

he did to rule objects by destroying their secrecy, dominating them as viewer by breaking

them down into minute, describable portions to render them tame. Cahun also exhorted

the viewer to destroy in order to tame, but her objective was not to dominate, but rather

to co-exist in a mutual relationship of an ebb and flow of information.

Recently, theorists such as Graham Harman, Jane Bennett, Tim Morton, et al,

have introduced key concepts such as agency, and the fluid ability of objects to act as

agents within the relationship networks which include all other matter, active and passive,

human or otherwise. Such approaches have been useful in drawing my attention to the

liveliness of Cahun’s objects. Nevertheless, these theories of the later twentieth and early

twenty-first century which seek to describe all the permutations of subject/object

relationships all inevitably return to a form of privileging one over the other, either subject
219
or object, or even as quasi-subject or quasi-object, methods of interpretation which Cahun

had previously attempted to dispense with, in order to truly de-privilege all the actors

within the network.

Having conducted my analysis of the major theories of the object, it is my

conclusion that Cahun’s objects must ultimately be read at the point of tension between

all these competing theories: each theory brings a little to the enlightenment of the viewer,

and is useful in teasing out Cahun’s intentions, but Cahun’s objects are objects of

resistance, and will not allow themselves to be categorised. Cahun’s objects can only be

understood by relinquishing the power in the subject/object relationship and allowing

them to resist interpretation on their own terms.

CAHUN’S THEORISING OF THE OBJECT

As well as a selective survey of Cahun’s object production, I have also undertaken

a partial survey of Cahun’s literary works in relation to her thinking on objects. While

this was not exhaustive, having excluded several short stories and journal reviews, it is

possible to glean from Cahun’s writings a sense of her constant interest in the nature and

importance of objects. From what I have been able to include here it becomes apparent

from as early as 1914, at the age of eighteen, that Cahun’s interest in objects was already

formed, and that it was an unceasing interest that informed her entire body of work. As

Patrice Allain notes, “Cahun composes her personal myth as she composes her theatres

of objects.” 13

13
Allain, P. (2011). Contre qui écrivez-vous? in Claude Cahun. Hazan/éditions du Jeu de Paume. 136-7.
220
 Much previous analysis of her literature has focussed on gender and sexuality,

however by unpacking the passages concerning objects the field of study on Cahun has

been added to considerably. By understanding Cahun’s objects one can better understand

her stance on objectivity. Her analysis of objects moved from the notion of the secrecy of

objects and a fascination with the idea that they had a language which, given time, could

be learned and understood by their observers, to a more politicised understanding of their

importance. However, from the outset they were already opaque, unreadable, and this

early observation came to form the basis for her objects of resistance which, in the first

instance, maintained their effectiveness as objects by resisting interpretation.

Heroïnes is often analysed from a feminist perspective, and it is easy to understand

why this is the case. Each vignette tells the story of an infamous woman, reinscribing her

in the literature of the West as empowered, and endowing many of these women, from

Eve in the garden of Eden, to the ultimate female symbol of objectivity, Helen of Troy,

with a voice of their own. Heroïnes, however, is also ripe with depictions of objects, and

these objects in turn play an active role in the stories of all these women. There are objects

which stubbornly refuse to be that which they imagined, such as the case of Salome’s art-

inspired fantasy for an object she did not fully comprehend until it was too late, and many

objects to be destroyed, particularly those that people the narrative of Sophie the

Symbolist, who kills things in order to understand that they lived.

Already Cahun is populating her works with objects to be destroyed, and these

manifest in the theory first iterated in its entirety in Disavowals: “to create = to destroy +

χ.” 14 In Disavowals, we see deconstruction, particularly of the human form, in order to

create new objects, in both the written text and in the collages which illustrate the work.

14
Cahun, C., et al. (2007).
221
In this volume Cahun first clearly articulated the theory which will synthesise her objects

to be destroyed with her objects of resistance: is an object which has been irreparably

changed, accreting new parts over the old, a destroyed old object, or a re-imagined new

one? It is both. This dichotomy between destruction and completion formed a tension

which informed the construction of her plastic objects, rendering them resistant to

interpretation by traditional methodologies as they stood as both destroyed and created.

CAHUN’S INSCRUTABLE OBJECTS

The focus of this thesis, Cahun’s object manufacture, presented a new opportunity

to examine the two objects she exhibited at the surrealist exhibition of 1936. In doing so,

particularly in reference to her previous non-object works, it has become apparent that

the purpose of Cahun’s creation of plastic objects was not merely to share in a group

activity, or simply at the invitation of Breton to participate in an exhibition, but rather the

extension of a long-standing fascination with objects, and a strong theoretical interest in

the potential of objects to communicate ideas to humanity.

I believe I have built a strong case for the identification of Object as Souris

valseuses. More important, however, for the purpose of this thesis is the significance of

both the objects displayed to Cahunian ideas on the nature of objects and the relationship

she sought to represent between them and their viewing audience. The politics of interwar

Europe also became more apparent in Cahun’s work at this stage of her production, both

in her objects and her writing, as she moved away from creative expression to a more

politicised output, which was, no doubt, given urgency by the crisis approaching Europe

in the face of impending war.

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 Cahun’s seemingly irreconcilable methodologies regarding the nature of creation,

destruction, communication and inscrutability also manifested within these objects. Her

objects resisted interpretation by refusing to communicate in terms familiar to an audience

thinking in socially prescribed terms: the feminised eye which identifies itself in the

masculine is a device by which she allowed her object to command the direction of the

audience’s thoughts by confusing traditional binaries of interpretation. By rendering itself

inscrutable, the eye forced the viewer to pause, and actively consider ways in which to

interpret the object. The object thus acts as an agent within its relationship network

initiating conversation on the nature of resistance.

More overtly political in its intent, Un air de famille nevertheless contributed to

Cahun’s desire to communicate revolutionary ideas through the medium of object

manufacture. Its depiction of feminine crisis and confusion returns to earlier concerns

regarding gender and identity but adds a layer of interpretation in the form of a proto-

feminist concern with women’s rights. Of the two objects, Souris valseuses/Object has

received more attention from other writers, most notably Steven Harris. However, it is

surprising that Un air de famille had received comparatively little attention from the many

writers on Cahun’s performance of gender, sexuality and identity. By performing a

detailed analysis of this artwork, I have begun to redress this imbalance.

The concerns surrounding gender and identity which have always been apparent

in Cahun’s work and have previously been given much consideration by other authors,

also began to be amalgamated into what Cahun saw as wider social matters regarding

poverty, violence, and revolution. The economic and social crises which had arisen in

France after the First World War were about to be eclipsed by the far greater social

disasters of the second.

223
CAHUN’S POETIC OBJECTS OF RESISTANCE

Having explored the nature of plastic objects, Cahun’s practice returned to

photography from 1937 until the outbreak of the war. However, the images she created

never had quite the same figurative quality as those she had produced before her

involvement in surrealist politics in art. Cahun’s photography prior to this moment had

concentrated on the depiction of objectivity and objectification through the human form,

but now she began to create assemblages in the surrealist style in order to further examine

the ability of objects to communicate with an audience. Her assemblages are ephemeral,

with their many components arranged and rearranged in non-permanent displays, as

evidenced by their repetitive use in several different images.

At this point in time she illustrates Lise Deharme’s book of poetry for children,

and Cahun’s intention of creating objects which resist interpretation can be seen even

here. Combined with this theoretical methodology is an interest in Bretonian poem-

objects, which yet again represent another synthesis of two very Cahunian ideas: the

notion that poetry is the true language of resistance and revolution, and that objects are

most perfectly placed to deliver the message of revolution. Cahun’s decision to participate

in this project may also signal the beginning of her desire to step away from the

increasingly fractious politics of Paris’ left-wing intelligentsia before her permanent

settlement on the Island of Jersey with her partner Marcel Moore. As discussed in earlier

chapters Cahun may have also begun to lose faith in the ability of the groups with which

she was associated to affect any real political or social change. It should be noted however

that Cahun’s decision to remove herself from direct association with many of these

224
connections did not in any way signal a decrease in her commitment to politics. A position

which became clear when the German army invaded France and occupied Jersey.

CAHUN AS AN OBJECT OF RESISTANCE

Cahun’s growing disenchantment with the politics of Paris, and the growing

unrest in the wider world prompted an attempt to retreat, but world events did not allow

her to do so. Her activism on Jersey was born not only of necessity but also of her innate

passion for justice and equality: the philosophies of Nazism were anathema to everything

Cahun believed in, and her actions demonstrate that she felt no other option was open to

her other than to actively resist.

First through their notes and then through their own inscrutability and humour

Cahun and Moore embarked on a campaign that caused untold damage to the morale of

the German troops stationed on Jersey until 1944. Cahun became at last the embodiment

of the dissolution of subject into object, as her poetic objects espousing revolution

combined with her performance of variations on the self, until all that was left available

to her as an object of resistance was her own body.

Although the success of their campaign could be counted as Cahun (and Moore’s)

greatest triumph, the experience appears to have left Cahun a shadow of her former self.

Her creative output from after the war that is still extant is quotidian and shows little trace

of the remarkable woman from before the war. Cahun began her own self-effacement

through a slow withdrawal from former concerns. It was not long after her death before

225
the knowledge of Cahun’s work, and her pivotal role in surrealist politics and art theory

during her short association with group, passed out of memory.

THE OBJECT TO BE DESTROYED

The effacement of Cahun continued into modern interpretations of surrealism. She

is not mentioned in the seminal compendiums on the history of surrealism by Maurice

Nadeau or Gérard Durozoi. The few earlier scholars to mention her by name all invariably

assumed she was a man. Gavin Bower has proffered the idea that her gender may be partly

to blame, and indeed this could be seen as a valid contention, given that other women

surrealists including Meret Oppenheim and Lee Miller received scant attention in earlier

anthologies. With regards to Cahun’s omission, Bower states:

It’s nevertheless quite reasonable to wonder how Cahun could be both

unidentified and missing for so long from the history of the movement.
She is absent from Maurice Nadeau’s the History of Surrealism – first
published in 1944, and in English in 1965 – as well as Rene Passeron’s
Encyclopedie du surrealisme (1975) and Edouard Jaguer’s Dictionnaire
général du surréalisme et ses environs (1982). Leperlier suggests that
Cahun’s ‘profoundly introverted attitude’ explains, in part, her historical
occlusion. Indeed, her sexuality wasn’t enough to make her an outsider –
but what of her gender?” 15

Leperlier’s contention that her private nature, combined with the destruction of her work

during the war, may go some way to explaining her absence from the histories prior to

the rediscovery of her work. However, even contemporary surveys of surrealism such as

the Surrealism and the object exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2013-14 failed

15
Bower, G. J. (2013). 25. NB: The Dictionnaire général du surréalisme et ses environs (1982) was
edited by Biro and Passeron, not Jaguer.
226
to mention Cahun at all, let alone include examples of her work. This thesis demonstrates

a need for the reconsideration of Cahun’s importance with regards to surrealist object

manufacture.

Marcel Moore chose a biblical quote for Cahun’s grave, which may seem like an

unusual choice for someone like Cahun, nevertheless its sentiment in the context of her

life is extremely apt: “I saw new heavens, and a new earth.” Cahun re-imagined the

objects around her, saw the objects we are all surrounded by in a different light, and

sought to re-evaluate, renegotiate and redescribe the relationships between all matter. In

her last years, Cahun chose fragmentation over resistance: she wrote of “pulling her[self]

apart” with Moore to her friend Henri Michaux, in reference to their work on her

autobiography – reconstructing an image of herself from the fragments she and Moore

created together by destroying her previous selves. For Cahun, this final fragmentation

works as a form of camouflage, a final defiance of categorisation. Her deconstruction

functions as a refusal of objectification on any terms other than her own. The scratching

and burning away of her own photograph as obliteration of her own image in this context

speaks volumes. Cahun became, in her final years, a culmination of all her previous work:

the ultimate object of resistance. In Cahun’s own words, “In the end, we are forced to rely

on the unknown, with a great algebraic χ.” 16

16
Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 102.
227
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Claude Cahun’s objects of resistance
O'Sullivan, Allison, Art, Faculty of Art & Design, UNSW
2016

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Title Claude Cahun’s objects of resistance
Author / Creator / Curator O'Sullivan, Allison, Art, Faculty of Art & Design, UNSW
Abstract This thesis positions Claude Cahun’s plastic objects as a ‘theoretical object” (Bal 1999: 117) that provides a key to
reading Cahun’s life and work, including her literary, photographic, and book illustrations. Cahun’s theorisation,
production, and use of objects constructs them as agents of social and political action. Reading Cahun’s work
through this lens provides the impetus to re-evaluate her oeuvre and her relation to the Surrealists and the broader
avant-garde. In particular, this focus provides an opportunity to consider Cahun’s political activism as an important,
integrated component of her artistic endeavours. Building on existing literature that has examined Cahun’s
photography and performance of her personal identity as blurring established gender categories, this thesis argues
the disruption of categories of subject and object provides a useful framework for understanding her wider body of
work. Cahun’s work with plastic objects is thus also an extension of her previous literary and photographic works,
which explore the notion of Cahun as object.Cahun’s object manufacture spans a crucial period immediately prior
to and during the Second World War, in which Cahun participates fully by engaging in resistance activities through
the production and distribution of objects of resistance. Ultimately, Cahun herself becomes one of her own objects
of resistance, one that speaks a language only other objects will understand.
Subjects Surrealism
Cahun
Object
Resource Type Ph.D Thesis
Date 2016
Supervisor East, Scotte, Art & Design, Faculty of Art & Design, UNSW; Garbutt, Michael, Art & Design, Faculty of Art & Design,
UNSW
Language English
Persistent link to this http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/60040
record
Additional Information Thesis restricted until April 2020.
Grants Scheme - N/A
Copyright This work is in copyright and subject to the protections of the Copyright Act 1968.
Please see additional information at https://library.unsw.edu.au/copyright/for-researchers-and-creators/unsworks
Permissions This work can be used in accordance with the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license.
Please see additional information at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/au/
Claude Cahun
Claude Cahun (French pronunciation: [klod ka.œ̃], born Lucy
Claude Cahun
Renee Mathilde Schwob,[1] 25 October 1894 – 8 December
1954) was a French surrealist photographer, sculptor, and writer.[2]

Schwob adopted the pseudonym Claude Cahun in 1914.[3] Cahun

is best known as a writer and self-portraitist, who assumed a
variety of performative personae.

Cahun's work is both political and personal. In Disavowals, she

writes: "Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter
is the only gender that always suits me."[4]
Born Lucy Renee Mathilde
During World War II, Cahun was also active as a resistance Schwob
worker and propagandist. 25 October 1894
Nantes, France
Died 8 December 1954
Contents (aged 60)
Saint Helier, Jersey
Early life
Resting St Brelade's Church
Work place 49.1841°N 2.2029°W
Collaboration with Marcel Moore
Known for Photography, writing,
World War II activism sculpture, collage
Social critique and legacy Movement Surrealism
Bibliography (French language) Spouse(s) Marcel Moore
Bibliography (English language)
Film
Theatre
Exhibitions
References
Sources
External links

Early life
Cahun was born in Nantes in 1894,[5] into a provincial but prominent intellectual Jewish family.[6] Avant-
garde writer Marcel Schwob was her uncle and Orientalist David Léon Cahun was her great-uncle. When
Cahun was four years old, her mother, Mary-Antoinette Courbebaisse, began suffering from mental illness,
which ultimately led to her mother's permanent internment at a psychiatric facility.[7] In her mother's
absence, Cahun was brought up by her grandmother, Mathilde.
Cahun attended a private school (Parsons Mead School) in Surrey after experiences with antisemitism at
high school in Nantes.[8][9] She attended the University of Paris, Sorbonne.[8] She began making
photographic self-portraits as early as 1912 (aged 18), and continued taking images of herself throughout
the 1930s.

Around 1914, she changed her 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, she
settled in Paris with lifelong partner Suzanne Malherbe, who adopted the pseudonym Marcel Moore.[6]: 69
The two became step-siblings in 1917 after Cahun's divorced father and Moore's widowed mother married,
eight years after Cahun and Moore's artistic and romantic partnership began.[10] 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 Cahun 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.[11]

Work
Cahun's works encompassed writing, photography, and theatre.
She is most remembered for her 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.[6]: 66

Some 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.[12][13] Scholar Miranda Welby-Everard has written about the
This plaque on Cahun's house in
importance of theatre, performance, and costume that underlies
Saint Brélade, Jersey, celebrates her
Cahun's work, suggesting how this may have informed the artist's
photographic innovation
varying gender presentations.[14]

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.[15]

In 1932, Cahun joined the Association des Écrivains et Artistes Révolutionnaires, where she met André
Breton and René Crevel. Following this, she began 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, her head obscured by a flower arrangement and pigeons perching on her outstretched arms,
appeared in numerous newspapers and was later reproduced in a number of books.[16][17] 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.[18] Breton called
Cahun "one of the most curious spirits of our time."[19]
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 herself as an
androgyne, nymph, model, and soldier.[20]

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.[21]

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 Cahun's collages.[12]

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.[12]

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. They created many of these messages under
the German pseudonym Der Soldat Ohne Namen, or The Soldier With No Name, to deceive German
soldiers that there was a conspiracy among the occupation troops.[22] The couple then dressed up and
attended many German military events in Jersey, strategically placing their pamphlets 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.

On one occasion, they hung a banner in a local church which read “Jesus is great, but Hitler is greater –
because Jesus died for people, but people die for Hitler.” As with much of Cahun and Moore's artistic work
in Paris, many of their notes also used this same style of dark humor. 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. As historian
Jeffrey H. Jackson writes in his definitive study of her wartime resistance Paper Bullets, for Cahun and
Moore, “fighting the German occupation of Jersey was the culmination of lifelong patterns of resistance,
which had always borne a political edge in the cause of freedom as they carved out their own rebellious
way of living in the world together. For them, the political was always deeply personal.”[23]
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.[18] However, Cahun's health never recovered
from her treatment in jail, and she died in 1954. Cahun is buried in St Brelade's Church with partner Marcel
Moore. At the trial, Cahun said to the German judge (according to the documentary on the Occupation of
the Channel Islands, by John Nettles) that the Germans would have to shoot her twice, as she was not only
a Resister but a Jew. This apparently brought a peal of laughter from the court and is said to have been one
reason the execution was not carried out (Martin Sugarman, AJEX Archivist).

Social critique and legacy

Cahun made work for herself and did not want to be famous.[24] It
wasn't until 40 years after her death that Cahun's work became
recognized. In many ways, Cahun's life was marked by actions
which revolted against convention and her public image has since
become a commentary which challenges the public's notions of
gender, beauty, and logic.

Her work was meant to unsettle the audience's understanding of

photography as a documentation of reality. Furthermore, her poetry
challenged gender roles of the time and attacked the increasingly
modern world's social and economic boundaries.

Also, Cahun's participation with the Parisian Surrealist group

brought an element of diversity to the group's output which ushered
in new representations. Most Surrealist artists were men, whose
primary images of women depicted them as isolated symbols of
eroticism rather than as the chameleonic, gender non-conforming
figure that Cahun presented. Cahun’s photographs, writings, and Claude Cahun's gravestone in the
general life as an artistic and political revolutionary continues to cemetery of St. Brelade's Church,
influence artists. Jersey

Cahun's collected writings were published in 2002 as Claude

Cahun – Écrits (ISBN 2-85893-616-1), edited by François Leperlier.

In 2018, a street of Paris took the name of "Allée Claude Cahun –

Marcel Moore"[25] (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.[26]

Cahun and Moore's WWII activism and heroism are documented

Street sign for 'allée Claude Cahun-
by Jeffrey H. Jackson in the 2020 book, Paper Bullets: Two Artists
Marcel Moore' in the 6th
Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis.[27] arrondissement of Paris

Google honored Claude Cahun by showing an animated Doodle

on its home page in many countries on October 25, 2021, on the anniversary of what would have been her
127th birthday.[28][29]

Bibliography (French language)

Vues et Visions (Pseudonym Claude Courlis), Mercure de France, No. 406, 16 May 1914
Electronic edition on Bibliothèque Nationale Gallica (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k
201747v.image.r=mercure+de+france.f40.langFR)
La 'Salomé' d'Oscar Wilde. Le procés Billing et les 47000 pervertis du Livre noir, Mercure de
France, No. 481, 1 July 1918
Electronic edition on Bibliothèque Nationale Gallica (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k
2018216.image.r=mercure+de+france.f73.langFR)
Le poteau frontière (Pseudonym Daniel Douglas), La Gerbe, No. 3, December 1918
Electronic edition on Bibliothèque Nationale Gallica (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k
54155097.image.f4.langEN)
Au plus beau des anges (Pseudonym Daniel Douglas), La Gerbe, No. 3, December 1918
Electronic edition on Bibliothèque Nationale Gallica (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k
54155097.image.r=douglas.f5.langEN)
Cigarettes (Pseudonym Daniel Douglas), La Gerbe, No. 3, December 1918
Electronic edition on Bibliothèque Nationale Gallica (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k
54155097.image.r=douglas.f6.langEN)
Aux Amis des livres, La Gerbe, No. 5, February 1919
Electronic edition on Bibliothèque Nationale Gallica (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k
5415533w.image.r=%22claude+cahun%22.f27.langEN)
La Sorbonne en robe de fête (Pseudonym Daniel Douglas), La Gerbe, No. 5, February 1919
Electronic edition on Bibliothèque Nationale Gallica (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k
5415533w.image.r=daniel+douglas.f23.langEN)
La possession du Monde, par Georges Duhamel, La Gerbe, No. 7, April 1919
Electronic edition on Bibliothèque Nationale Gallica (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k
5415562m.image.f21.langEN)
Les Gerbes (Pseudonym Daniel Douglas), La Gerbe, No. 7, April 1919
Electronic edition on Bibliothèque Nationale Gallica (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k
5415562m.image.f16.langEN)
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
Electronic edition on Bibliothèque Nationale Gallica (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k
5415632t.image.r=daniel+douglas.f25.langFR)
Old Scotch Whisky, La Gerbe, No. 27, December 1920
Electronic edition on Bibliothèque Nationale Gallica (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k
54156441.image.r=claude+cahun.f21.langEN)
 A propos d'une conference and Méditations à la faveur d'un Jazz Band, La Gerbe, No. 27,
December 1920
Electronic edition on Bibliothèque Nationale Gallica (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k
5415654d.image.r=CAHUN.f32.langFR)
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
Electronic edition on Bibliothèque Nationale Gallica (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k
201972m.image.r=claude+cahun.f64.langEN)
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
Electronic edition on Bibliothèque Nationale Gallica (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k
202017x.r=claude+cahun.f72.langEN)
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 (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k2021007.image.r=claude+cahun.f167.pagin
ation.langEN) 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)

Cahun, Claude, Tacinta Dean and Virginia Nimarkoh: Mise-En-Scene: Institute for
Contemporary Arts: London: 1996:
 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.ISBN 0-905263-59-6
Conley, Katharine. "Claude Cahun's Iconic Heads," Papers of Surrealism 2 (Summer 2004):
1-23.
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.
Downie, Louise, Don't Kiss Me: The Art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore: London:
Aperture: 2006: ISBN 1-85437-679-9
Jackson, Jeffrey H., Paper Bullets: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis.
New York: Algonquin Books, 2020. ISBN 978-1616209162.
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
Monahan, Laurie J., "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.
Rice, Shelley, Inverted Odysseys: Claude Cahun, Maya Deren and Cindy Sherman:
Cambridge: Massachusetts: MIT Press: 1999: ISBN 0-262-68106-4
Shaw, Jennifer L., "Narcissus and the Magic Mirror" in Don’t Kiss Me: The Art of Claude
Cahun and Marcel Moore, ed. Louise Downie, Tate Publishing, 2006.
———, "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.
———, "Neonarcissism" in *Nierika* (Mexico City: Universidad Iberoamericana), "La
Política Visual del Narcisismo: estudios de casos," Vol. 2, no. 2, 31 May 2013, 19–26.
———, Reading Claude Cahun's Disavowals, Ashgate, 2013.
———, "From Cabanel to Claude Cahun: More Manifestations of Venus" in Venus as Muse:
Figurations of the Creative ed. Sebastian Goth, Rodopi, 2015.
———, Exist Otherwise: The Life and Works of Claude Cahun, Reaktion Books, 2017.
Thynne, Lizzie, 'Playing a Part: The Story of Claude Cahun,' drama documentary film,
Brighton: Sussex University, 2004. Available from l.thynne@sussex.ac.uk.
Wampole, Christy. "The Impudence of Claude Cahun." L'Esprit Créateur, 2013, 53 (1), 101-
113.
Weaver, M. and Hammond, A. "Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore: Surrealist Sisters." History
of Photography, Summer 1993, 17 (2), 217.
Williamson, Marcus. "Claude Cahun at School in England", Lulu, 2011. ISBN 978-1-257-
63952-6

Film
Playing a Part (http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/16296/), by Lizzie Thynne, 2004
Magic Mirror (http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/film/sarah-pucill-magic-mirror), by
Sarah Pucill, 2013
Confessions to the Mirror (http://film-directory.britishcouncil.org/confessions-to-the-mirror), by
Sarah Pucill, 2016
Theatre
Claude, by Andrea Kleine[30]

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.
Facing Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore (https://oaggao.ca/facing-claude-cahun-marcel-mo
ore) – Ottawa Art Gallery – Ottawa – Canada 14 September 2019 to 9 February 2020.

References
1. "MoMA | Claude Cahun. Untitled c. 1921" (https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/clau
de-cahun-untitled-c-1921). www.moma.org. Retrieved 8 January 2018.
2. "Claude Cahun – Chronology" (http://www.connectotel.com/cahun/cahunchr.html). Retrieved
18 October 2007.
 3. Sarah Howgate, Dawn Ades, National Portrait Gallery (Great Britain), Gillian Wearing and
Claude Cahun Behind the Mask, Another Mask (Princeton University Press, 2017), p. 189.
4. Cahun, Claude (2008). Disavowals: or cancelled confessions. The MIT Press. p. 151.
ISBN 9780262533034. OCLC 922878515 (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/922878515).
5. Phaidon Editors (2019). Great women artists. Phaidon Press. p. 81. ISBN 978-0714878775.
6. 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.
7. Colvile, Georgiana M.M. (2005). "Self-Representation as Symposium: The Case of Claude
Cahun" (http://alliance-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/UO:uo_alma:CP7113193842000145
1). Interfaces: Women, Autobiography, Image, Performance: 265. Retrieved 5 March 2016.
8. Doy, Gen (2007). Claude Cahun: A Sensual Politics of Photography. London/New York: I.B.
Tauris. pp. xv–xvi. ISBN 9781845115517.
9. Williamson, Marcus (2011). Claude Cahun at School in England. Marcus Williamson.
ISBN 978-1257639526.
10. Latimer, Tirza True (2005). Women Together/Women Apart: Portraits of Lesbian Paris.
Rutgers University Press. p. 74.
11. Schirmer, Lothar (2001). Women Seeing Women, A Pictorial History of Women's
Photography. NY: Norton. p. 208.
12. 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.
13. 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 (https://doi.org/10.1353%2Fsym.2003.0012). JSTOR 40536944
(https://www.jstor.org/stable/40536944). S2CID 144901290 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/
CorpusID:144901290).
14. Welby-Everard, Miranda (2006). "Imaging the Actor: The Theatre of Claude Cahun". Oxford
Art Journal. 29 (1): 3–24. doi:10.1093/oxartj/kci044 (https://doi.org/10.1093%2Foxartj%2Fkci
044). ISSN 0142-6540 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/0142-6540). JSTOR 3600491 (https://
www.jstor.org/stable/3600491).
15. Penelope Rosemont, Surrealist Women 1998, University of Texas Press
16. Rosemont, Penelope (1 December 2000). Surrealist Women (https://books.google.com/book
s?id=hMIru5bweYgC&q=sheila). A&C Black. pp. 88–90. ISBN 9780567171283.
17. O'Neill, Alistair (2007). London: After a Fashion (https://books.google.com/books?id=h1_v1I
PBe84C&q=gascoyne+london+surrealist+legge&pg=PA77). London, England: Cambridge
University Press. p. 77. ISBN 9781861893154. Retrieved 19 February 2017.
18. 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 (https://doi.org/10.1353%2Fwfs.2005.0002).
S2CID 192559981 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:192559981).
19. Bower, Gavin James (14 February 2012). "Claude Cahun: Finding a lost great" (https://www.
theguardian.com/books/2012/feb/14/claude-cahun-finding-great). The Guardian. ISSN 0261-
3077 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/0261-3077). Retrieved 8 January 2018.
20. 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
21. "The Art Story - Claude Cahun: French Photographer, Writer and Political Activist" (https://w
ww.theartstory.org/artist-cahun-claude-life-and-legacy.htm). Retrieved 27 March 2019.
22. Jeffrey, Jackson (2020). Paper Bullets: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the
Nazis. New York: Algonquin Books. pp. 122–23. ISBN 978-1616209162.
23. Jackson, Jeffrey (2020). Paper Bullets. New York: Algonquin Books. pp. 267–68. ISBN 978-
1616209162.
24. Colvile, Georgiana M.M. (2005). "Self-Representation as Symposium: The Case of Claude
Cahun". Interfaces: Women, Autobiography, Image, Performance: 263–288.
25. "Conseil de Paris" (http://a06.apps.paris.fr/a06/jsp/site/plugins/solr/modules/ods/DoDownloa
d.jsp?id_document=144541&items_per_page=20&sort_name=&sort_order=&terms=cahun
&query=cahun). Retrieved 25 October 2021.
26. Mars-Jones, Adam (2 August 2018). "I'm a Cahunian" (https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n
15/adam-mars-jones/i-m-a-cahunian). London Review of Books. 40 (15) – via www.lrb.co.uk.
27. "Speaker Series: Jeffrey Jackson In Conversation with Emily Yellin" (https://charlestonlibrary
society.org/event/speaker-series-jeffery-jackson/). Charleston Library Society. Retrieved
13 December 2020.
28. "Claude Cahun's 127th Birthday" (http://www.google.com/logos/doodles/2021/claude-cahun
s-127th-birthday-6753651837109117.4-2xa.gif). Retrieved 25 October 2021 – via
www.google.com.
29. "Claude Cahun Google Doodle | Short Biography of French photographer Claude Cahun" (h
ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3M4qn7jWDE). Archived (https://ghostarchive.org/varchi
ve/youtube/20211212/h3M4qn7jWDE) from the original on 12 December 2021. Retrieved
25 October 2021 – via www.youtube.com.
30. Anderson, Jack (30 March 2002). "In Performance" (https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/30/art
s/in-performance-dance-explosive-encounters-with-perry-como.html). The New York Times.

Sources
Claude Cahun info page (http://www.connectotel.com/cahun)
Claude Cahun tribute and biography page (https://web.archive.org/web/20051221054030/htt
p://vinland.org/scamp/Cahun/index.html)
The Daily Beast, 2015-04-21, "Claude Cahun: The Lesbian Surrealist Who Defied the
Nazis" (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/21/claude-cahun-the-lesbian-surreali
st-who-defied-the-nazis.html)
Feminist Art Archive, University of Washington, 2012, "Claude Cahun" (http://courses.washi
ngton.edu/femart/final_project/wordpress/claude-cahun/)
Bower, Gavin James. "Claude Cahun: Finding a Lost Great (https://www.theguardian.com/bo
oks/2012/feb/14/claude-cahun-finding-great)." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 14
Feb. 2012. Web. 11 Dec. 2012
Elkin, Lauren. "Reading Claude Cahun (https://web.archive.org/web/20160714115525/http://
quarterlyconversation.com/claude-cahun-disavowals)." Quarterly Conversation RSS.
Quarterly Conversation RSS, n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012
Gen, Doy. "Meta: Claude Cahun-A Sensual Politics of Photography (https://web.archive.org/
web/20110430234939/http://www.meta-magazine.com/articles/claude-cahun-a-sensual-polit
ics-of-photography)." Meta-Magazine.com. Mega, n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 201
Guerilla Girls, The. "The 20th Century: Women of Isms." The Guerrilla Girls’ Bedside
Companion to the History of Western Art. New York: Penguin Group, 1998. 62–63. Print
Shaw, Jennifer. Exist Otherwise: The Life and Works of Claude Cahun. United Kingdom:
Reaktion Books, May 2017. Print.
Zachmann, Gayle. The Photographic Intertext: Invisible Adventures in the Work of Claude
Cahun. 3rd ed. Vol. 10. N.p.: Taylor and Francis Group, 2006. CrossRef. Web. 11 Dec. 2012.
Jackson, Jeffrey H., Paper Bullets: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis.
New York: Algonquin Books, 2020. ISBN 978-1616209162 .
External links
Media related to Claude Cahun at Wikimedia Commons
Claude Cahun (https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/claude-cahun-10611) at Tate
De l'Éros des femmes surréalistes et de Claude Cahun en particulier by Georgina M.M.
Colvile (https://web.archive.org/web/20070523135448/http://melusine.univ-paris3.fr/astu/Col
ville.htm) (in French)
Prof. Gen Doy on Claude Cahun (https://web.archive.org/web/20090420041549/http://www.
meta-magazine.com/index.php?id=13)
Claude Cahun (https://web.archive.org/web/20210117002212/http://frenchsculpture.org/en/a
rtist/cahun-claude-lucy-schwob-called) in American public collections, on the French
Sculpture Census website

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