![]() 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. Following this, Cahun 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. In 1932, Cahun joined the Association des Écrivains et Artistes Révolutionnaires, where she met André Breton and René Crevel. Ĭahun'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. ![]() Scholar Miranda Welby-Everard has written about the importance of theatre, performance, and costume that underlies Cahun's work, suggesting how this may have informed the artist's varying gender presentations. 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. 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. This plaque on Cahun's house in Saint Brélade, Jersey, celebrates her photographic innovationĬahun's works encompassed writing, photography, and theatre, of which the most remembered are the highly staged self-portraits and tableaux that incorporated the visual aesthetics of Surrealism. Among the regulars who would attend were artists Henri Michaux and André Breton and literary entrepreneurs Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier. The two published articles and novels, notably in the periodical Mercure de France, and befriended Henri Michaux, Pierre Morhange, and Robert Desnos.Īround 1922 Cahun and Moore began holding artists' salons at their home. For the rest of their lives together, Cahun and Moore collaborated on various written works, sculptures, photomontages and collages. : 70 The two became step-sisters 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. During the early 1920s, she settled in Paris with lifelong partner Suzanne Malherbe, who adopted the pseudonym Marcel Moore. She began making photographic self-portraits as early as 1912 (aged 18), and continued taking images of herself throughout the 1930s.Īround 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). ![]() She attended the University of Paris, Sorbonne. Ĭahun attended a private school ( Parsons Mead School) in Surrey after experiences with antisemitism at high school in Nantes. In her mother's absence, Cahun was brought up by her grandmother, Mathilde. ![]() 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. Avant-garde writer Marcel Schwob was her uncle and Orientalist David Léon Cahun was her great-uncle. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me." ĭuring World War II, Cahun was also active as a resistance worker and propagandist.Ĭahun was born in Nantes in 1894, into a well-off literary Jewish family. For example, in Disavowals, Cahun writes: "Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. ![]() In her writing she consistently referred to herself as "elle" (she), and this article follows her practice but she also said that her actual gender was fluid. Cahun is best known as a writer and self-portraitist, who assumed a variety of performative personae. Schwob adopted the pseudonym Claude Cahun in 1914. ![]()
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