Claude Cahun: A Sensual Politics of Photography
by Gen Doy
from I. B. Tauris
This lively and original book looks at Cahun and her oeuvre in the contexts of the turbulent times in which she lived. Surveying standard postmodernist approaches to Cahun, born Lucy Schwob, Doy goes further, positioning Cahun's photographs as part of her life as a woman, lesbian and political activist in the early twentieth century. Doy considers Cahun's relationships with Symbolism and then Surrealism and her approach to dress and masquerade, assessing the images in the context of the situation of women at the time and within the prevailing fashion and beauty culture. She also pays attention to her curious images of constructed objects and re-evaluates the status of Cahun's small-scale snapshots as photographs.
Enormously readable, 'Claude Cahun' at last provides a fuller picture of this important artist's life and work.
Inverted Odysseys: Claude Cahun, Maya Deren, Cindy Sherman
from The MIT Press
Claude Cahun, Maya Deren, and Cindy Sherman were born in different countries, in different generations--Cahun in France in 1894, Deren in Russia in 1917, and Sherman in the United States in 1954. Yet they share a deeply theatrical obsession that shatters any notion of a unified self. All three try out identities from different social classes and geographic environments, extend their temporal range into the past and future, and transform themselves into heroes and villains, mythological creatures, and sex goddesses. The premise of Inverted Odysseys is that this expanded concept of the self--this playful urge to "try on" other roles-is more than a feminist or psychological issue. It is central to our global culture, to our definition of human identity in a world where the individual exists in a multicultural and multitemporal environment. This book is an "odyssey" through historical, theoretical, critical, and literary perspectives on the three artists viewed in the context of these issues. Contributors include Lynn Gumpert, Lucy Lippard, Jonas Mekas, Ted Mooney, Shelley Rice, and Abigail Solomon-Godeau.
Central to the book is Claude Cahun's "Heroines" manuscript, a series of fifteen stream-of-consciousness monologues written in the voices of major women of literature and history, such as the Virgin Mary, Sappho, Cinderella, Penelope, Delilah, and Helen of Troy. Translated by Norman MacAfee, these perverse and hilarious vignettes make their English-language debut here. This is also the first time that Cahun's text has appeared in its entirety.
The book accompanies an exhibit cocurated by Lynn Gumpert and Shelley Rice at the Grey Art Gallery, New York University.
Published in cooperation with the Grey Art Gallery, New York University.
EXHIBITION SCHEDULE:
Grey Art Gallery
New York, New York
November 16, 1999 - January 29, 2000
Museum of Contemporary Art
North Miami, Florida
March - May 2000
Inverted Odysseys: Claude Cahun, Maya Deren, Cindy Sherman
Claude Cahun: Masks and Metamorphoses
Lavishly illustrated, the first English biography of surrealism's doyenne. Claude Cahun (1894-1954), poet, actress, translator, polemicist, and, above all, photographer, was one of the most unusual and talented women to be associated with the surrealist movement. Until recently, she was also the most neglected, to the point where some commentators have assumed she was a man, others that she died in the Second World War. Nevertheless, in the pre-war period she was an important participant in surrealism's artistic and political activity and close to many of its best-known figures.
One reason for her disappearance from history may have been her move, with her companion Suzanne Malherbe, to Jersey in the Channel Islands in 1937. During the Nazi occupation of the islands, the two women engaged in a series of remarkable acts of resistance, leading to their arrest and a death sentence. But the sentence was never carried out and Cahun remained on Jersey until her death in 1954. At last Cahun's work is being rediscovered and has featured in recent major exhibitions in London, New York, and Paris, Cahun was a notable writer but it is her extraordinary talent as a photographer which has attracted the most attention, a talent revealed especially in her photomontages and a long series of self-portraits. Exploring every aspect of bisexuality and androgyny, her work has a powerful contemporary resonance. Lavishly illustrated with her striking photography, this is the definitive biography, this is the definitive biography of this remarkable woman. Franois Leperlier provides the first full-length study of the philosophical and political dimensions of Cahun's work and a profound reflection on the multiple facets of her personality. His book is a vital contribution to our understanding of surrealism, sexuality and photography.
Don't Kiss Me: the Art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore
Inverted Odysseys, Claude Cahun, Mara Deren, Cindy Sherman"
Inverted Odysseys. Claude Cahun, Maya Deren, Cindy Sherman. Edited by Shelley Rice, with contributions by Lynn Gumpert, Lucy Lippard, Jonas Mekas, Ted Mooney, Shelley Rice, Abigail Solomon-Godeau.
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