
Claude Cahun
French Photographer, Writer, and Political Activist
Movements and Styles: Modern Photography, Dada, Surrealism, Proto-Feminist Artists
Born: October 25, 1894 - Nantes, France
Died: December 8, 1954 - St Helier, Jersey, Great Britain

Important Art by Claude CahunThe below artworks are the most important by Claude Cahun - that both overview the major creative periods, and highlight the greatest achievements by the artist. | |
![]() Artwork Images | Self Portrait as a Young Girl (1914)Artwork description & Analysis: This photograph is one of the earliest known examples of a self-portrait by Cahun and displays an intense and penetrating outward stare. The artist's head is strikingly and disconcertedly disembodied, suggesting an imbalance, as though the head is disproportionately heavy and the body somehow redundant. Lying in bed with the sheets pulled up to her chin, Sarah Howgate, an art historian specializing in Cahun's work, argues that "she looks like an invalid in a hospital bed", and suggests that this may be a visual reference to the periods of acute depression from which both she and her mother suffered. Indeed, this line of enquiry can be taken further, for it appears that the woman lies dead in a morgue. Unusually though, apparently deathly, Cahun's eyes are wide open and she definitely lives, perhaps though constantly burdened by interior knowledge of the darker and more hidden aspects of life. Photographic print |
![]() Artwork Images | Self Portrait, Head Between Hands (1920)Artwork description & Analysis: In this striking photograph, the artist has further transitioned from her childhood/teenage identity of Lucy Schwob to the gender-neutral persona of Claude Cahun. Her long hair is gone, and is replaced by a shaved scalp, stripping away traditional associations of allure made between women and their flowing locks. The bald-headed portrait is one of a number made in the same year. This version bears reference to Edvard Munch's existential image of The Scream (1893), whilst another depicts Cahun hand on hip dressed in a man's suit, and a further hairless picture shows the artist cross-legged in profile meditating in a monk-like pose. All three of the images present a vision of gender-neutrality, which - produced whilst immersed within a flourishing Parisian lesbian avant-garde community - well illustrate Cahun's personal journey at the time. Indeed, it is noteworthy that throughout post-war Europe, an overall questioning of gender constructions becomes significant. This was definitely the case for Frida Kahlo, who typically wore a man's suit in family photographs during the 1920s and then later, in 1940, painted Self Portrait with Cropped Hair. Photographic print |
![]() Artwork Images | Photograph from the series "I am in training don't kiss me" (c.1927)Artwork description & Analysis: Unlike in earlier works, in this image and others made in the latter years of the 1920s, Cahun presents an obviously constructed identity using props, highly stylized clothing, and make-up. The photograph comes from a series of images in which she adopts the paradoxical representation of a feminized strongman and performs various poses as such. Using this persona, Cahun conflates masculine and feminine stereotypes: she holds charmingly painted weights on her lap, psuedo-nipples are sewn onto her flat costume shirt, and even the traditional weight-lifter handlebar mustache has been displaced onto the curls of her cropped hair. With coquettishly pursed lips, the English words across her chest humorously read: "I am in training don't kiss me." With her gaze coy and inviting, it is at the same time contemptuous and mocking, ridiculing the viewer for being attracted to what is blatantly not on offer. The theatrical nature of the strongman series combines contradictory notions of gender to highlight the interesting space of slippage between opposite poles of identity. Indeed, it was not long after this photograph was taken, in 1929, that Cahun published articles in journals stating controversial theories that introduced the possibility of a third sex, uniting masculine and feminine traits but existing as neither one nor the other. Photographic print |
![]() Artwork Images | Plate no.1 from Aveux non Avenus (1930)Artwork description & Analysis: This is the first illustration found in Cahun's autobiographical text Aveux non Avenus (translated as "Disavowals"). It shows several different pairs of hands holding an eye, a globe, and a magnifying glass or hand mirror. There is also a pair of isolated lips where one pair of hands are severed and a double-headed bird at the pinnacle. There is a possible breast, a shell, and an abundance of folded fabric all pasted on top of a dark, star-filled sky. The overall effect is evocative, celestial, and dream-like. It demonstrates the phase of Cahun's career when she was most engaged with the ideas behind Surrealism and was open to outside influences. Indeed, the image is made using a popular surrealist technique known as photomontage. The technique was pioneered by Hannah Hoch, Max Ernst, and Hans Arp, and it is possible that Cahun may have encountered this work whilst living in Paris. Ernst and Arp used lots of birds in their early collages whilst Hoch often used eyes, and like Cahun (in other photomontages), would transform a multitude of eyes into the petals of a flower. This work is actually signed "Moore", illustrating that although much of the re-appropriated photographs have been made by Cahun, that it may have been Marcel Moore who put them together to create a coherent composite work. The collage/photomontage was photographed upon completion to make it reproducible in Disavowels. Re-photographed Photomontage |
![]() Artwork Images | Untitled (Self-Portrait with Mirror) (undated)Artwork description & Analysis: Here, Cahun presents herself as bold, androgynous, and doubled by her mirrored-reflection. The image is lush with textures and tones: her checkerboard jacket, highlighted hair, and smooth sun-kissed skin all make the image vivid with the abundance of life. Traditionally, the inclusion of a mirror in art was used as a convenient way to expose two enticing views of a female subject or, alternatively, as a way to emphasize a woman's vanity. In this case however, the 'real' Cahun looks away from the mirror and engages with and meets the viewer's gaze. She rejects being typecast as a passive woman who is visually consumed by admiring herself. There is no sin of vanity at work here, and instead qualities of thoughtfulness, exploration, and self-assurance confront the viewer. Art historian Shelley Rice argues that "'refusing to be imprisoned in her own glass, Cahun decided to live the imaginary life within the jealously guarded walls of her own introverted mental theatre." As such, the 'false' Cahun, the one in the mirror, by virtue of the reflection, seems to look away and out of the frame, perhaps feeling a greater freedom in the world of her imagination than she does in everyday society. Photographic print |
![]() Artwork Images | Self-Portrait with Masked Face and Graveyard (c.1947)Artwork description & Analysis: Interested in the constant oscillation between life instinct and the death drive, Cahun brings her art to the cemetery in this relatively late work. Sadly, it is in fact the church yard where she herself would be buried seven years later, when she died at age 60. Prior to this image being made, Cahun had spent a horrific year in a Nazi prison, only to be freed in 1945 with her health irrevocably damaged by the experience. While imprisoned, thoughts of mortality likely plagued her, especially as her health deteriorated and loneliness increased. She hides her face behind a soft, blank mask, her features only vaguely suggested through the fabric-like covering. Her hands are raised; holding the mask on either side, echoing the earlier pose of Self Portrait, Head Between Hands (1920), making Cahun's work, her life, and her worldview, all cyclical. Photographic print |
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Content compiled and written by Anna Souter
Edited and revised, with Synopsis and Key Ideas added by Dr Rebecca Baillie
" Artist Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by Anna Souter
Edited and revised, with Synopsis and Key Ideas added by Dr Rebecca Baillie
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