Famous Bis: Marie Laurencin

By Siobhan Ball

April 10, 2020

Share

Donate

Painter, printmaker, and seminal figure in the Section d'Or — the artistic society that spawned Cubism — Marie Laurencin was a Modernist with a difference. By adding a uniquely queer, feminine aesthetic to the Cubist style, while openly pursuing relationships with men and women alike, the fearless Laurencin was a trailblazer for women artists and proud queer femmes of every profession.

Laurencin grew up in Paris as the illegitimate daughter of a working-class woman who was probably of Creole heritage. She began her artistic career by training as a porcelain painter at the Sèvres factory, where she first discovered her gift for visual art. She then returned to Paris to study fine arts at the Académie Humbert, where she met Picasso and other members of the Section d’Or and what would later become the cubist movement. Though the Parisian art world was very much a boys’ club, Laurencin was talented and persistent enough to persuade the curators to show her work at both the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d'Automne: annual exhibitions that shaped European art in the early decades of the twentieth century.

It was at the Salon des Indépendants that Laurencin met Guillaume Apollinaire, the father of modern surrealism, with whom she had a high-profile affair. The two artists had a profound influence on each other’s work. Apollinaire described them as gender-inverted reflections of each other. Laurencin’s impact on Apollinaire was probably greater than his on her, though her work displays many surrealist features, such as the extensive use of symbolism and an occasionally disorienting oniric quality that forms part of its uniqueness.

An oil on canvas portrait of two young women. The muted colors and stylized poses make them appear dream-like and elegant.
Les Désguisés (1926) by Marie Laurencin

After breaking up with Apollinaire, Laurencin married a German count, with whom she spent the First World War years, exiled in Spain. When the war was over, she left him and took a string of lovers, both male and female. She also joined Gertrude Stein's salon, which was filled with queer women creatives, and befriended the famous lesbian actress Natalie Clifford Barney.

Queer feminine influences were becoming increasingly visible in her work at this time, too. In his 2017 book A Queer Little History of Art, Alex Pilcher describes Laurencin’s work as "queer femme with a Gallic twist" and notes the ubiquity of "sidesaddle Amazons" in her paintings. Though Laurencin always maintained that her work was never really Cubist — in fact, she claimed that she was unable to paint in that style — there is a powerful Cubist element to her paintings and she had a considerable impact on the Cubist movement, even though she didn’t consider herself fully part of it.

Oil painting of 2 women dancing while a third plays an instrument. The elongated shapes and the muted colors make it dreamy.
Marie Laurencin, 1913, Le Bal élégant, La Danse à la campagne

From around 1924, Laurencin adapted her magical high femme aesthetic to the stage as a costume and set designer. She was also beginning to achieve international recognition as a portraitist: she was featured in Vanity Fair and inducted into the French Légion d'honneur. But her increasing fame and commercial success didn’t tempt Laurencin to change her style, which continued to focus on the radical and queer, as we can see in her illustrations of a 1950 translation of Sappho by Edith de Beaumont.

Despite the dangers of being an openly queer artist during the Nazi occupation, Laurencin remained in Paris for the duration of the war, even after her home was requisitioned by the Nazis. Fortunately, after the war ended, she was able to return to her work as a costumer and set designer.

While some critics have dismissed Laurencin's work as trivial because of its feminine aesthetic, others believe that its femininity is its greatest strength, as it allows Laurencin to interrogate masculine norms in both art and society. Her depictions of female agency and sapphic desire also disrupted heteronormative expectations.

Laurencin’s female figures frequently challenge the male gaze — a fact that may make some observers uncomfortable, especially those used to more passive portrayals of female subjects. Her life and art were both equally bold. She defied the Nazis, openly and freely loved whomever she chose, and always refused to compromise on her desires or her values.

Comments

Facebook Comments