Masters Research - Master of Fine Art / This research is the result of my numerous journeys following the discovery of the French photographer, Claude Cahun, and the many similarities found between her work and that of my own. Included are many other women who were integral to my journey, though I focus on only a few of these women. They are Djuna Barnes, Romaine Brooks and the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. Searching through public archives, located in Washington D.C, USA, Maryland, USA and in Jersey, Channel Islands, I am looking for any evidence to suggest if they knew of Claude Cahun or if their individual works influenced one another in any way. They all moved in different circles though had many of the same acquaintances and all lived in relatively close proximity to one another whilst in Paris in the 1910s and 1920s. The androgynous person dominates my self-portraits. It is the use of the androgynous being in their respective works which led to my research, from the monochrome androgynous portraits of Romaine Brooks, the ribaldry written imagery of androgynous characters in Barnes’ writing, the eccentricity gender crossing of the Baroness to the gender confusing self-portraits of Claude Cahun. A brief history of androgyny is given as it has had many transformations through the ages in religion and mythology which has manifested itself in the art and literature of those respective periods. I focus briefly on the use of androgyny in the art and literature in the period before Cahuns self-portraits and when Brooks, Barnes and the Baroness produced their works. This leads to my own photographic self-portraits and to the work of contemporary photographers, including the photographer, Cindy Sherman and lesser known artists such as Tina Bara. The androgynous image, whether major or minor, is an aspect in all these photographers works, especially my own. I discuss these works and their relevance to Cahun, and of Cahuns influence on them. The use of text and the book as an art form is discussed and the methods used to produce these. Working with a camera and a typewriter from the period of which I write is an integral aspect of my art making process and is also discussed. A ‘return home’ was also ascertained whilst undertaking this research. This manifested itself into the black and white photographs which are presented in bookform and contain a nostalgic aspect. Nostalgia for a place or time is discussed in relevance to my photographs and chosen art medium. All of these elements meet together in an exhibition where the handmade book sits along side twenty-four photographs, which are made up of twelve self-portraits and twelve photographs of significant places visited. They are shown along with material from Cahun and Barnes relevant archives which is both personal and pertinent to my journey. The result is another journey, this one involving not only myself, but also the viewer.

Claude Cahun was an artist and a leader who subverted social binaries by employing a non-determinable style. This intentional ambiguity is omnipresent in all of Cahun’s works, regardless of their style. To demonstrate this commonality, I will analyze her work of theatre, Heroines, five of Cahun’s self-portraits and her autobiography, Aveux Non Avenus. Although Cahun’s artistic mediums are very different respectively, all three of these works use a sense of artistic ambiguity to resist social binaries. Such techniques of indeterminacy include subversive rewritings of famous characters and self-portraits that use motifs such as masks and masquerade to subvert the gaze of the spectator. Additionally, her photomontages include a fleeing gaze, an obstructed gaze, and a gaze that confronts itself. In this thesis, I affirm that Cahun's methods are aligned with queer theory because the way that Cahun uses a queer identity in her works creates a form of political and social resistance against heteronormativity and homophobia. Therefore, I will show all of the ways that Cahun has used visibility as a Jewish gender neutral lesbian for social resistance.

Zugl.: Bonn, Univ., Diss., 2007

L’œuvre polymorphe de Claude Cahun, auteure-artiste de la première moitié du XXe siècle, et de Moore, artiste-plasticienne, repose essentiellement sur l’idée de partage. De 1913 à 1954, Cahun et Moore ont élaboré une œuvre qui relève en grande partie d’une création partagée, c’est-à-dire qu’elle est faite à quatre mains de manière symbiotique, tandis qu’une autre partie est assumée par chacune des collaboratrices. Leur travail prend la double voie de l’écriture et de l’expression artistique (dessin, photographie, photomontage, objet) pour placer leur vision du sujet équivoque et de l’art sous le signe du multiple. Dans la perspective d’étudier l’écriture et l’image comme deux moyens d’expression indissociables, la notion de partage permettra de penser la démarche cahunienne et celle de Moore entre les mouvements et les genres littéraires, entre une auteure et une artiste, entre le sujet et ses doubles, entre les arts et les enjeux médiatiques. En proposant la notion de partage comme concept opératoire, cette thèse de doctorat s’attache à recontextualiser l’œuvre selon la triple appartenance de Cahun-Moore à l’histoire culturelle et littéraire, embrassant à la fois la fin du XIXe siècle et la première moitié du XXe siècle, le symbolisme tardif, le modernisme et l’avant-garde surréaliste. Leur vision de l’œuvre comme espace de partage entre le textuel et le visuel s’accomplit par une collaboration entre auteure et artiste visuelle qui redéfinit le statut du créateur solitaire. Il s’agira également de revoir la démarche d’autoreprésentation à partir de la notion de partage ; la construction du Soi passe par le dédoublement sur le papier ou la pellicule pour exprimer l’être-au-monde d’un sujet qui ne se reconnaît pas dans les catégories genrées et identitaires univoques. L’acte de partage aboutit dans la création d’une œuvre hybride alliant les mots et les images dans un dispositif qui dépasse la relation illustrative du texte par l’image pour favoriser le dialogue des médias. Le partage s’impose comme la notion par excellence pour saisir une œuvre qui a fait du dédoublement – des filiations, des intertextes, du créateur, de l’identité et de l’œuvre même – son modus operandi. / The polymorphic work of Claude Cahun, author and artist from the first half of the 20th century, and Moore, visual artist, is essentially based on the idea of sharing. From 1913 to 1954, Cahun and Moore developed a work that relies in part on shared creation, that is to say, it is produced symbiotically by two collaborators, but whereas another part is undertaken solely by one of the artists. Their work takes on the double path of writing and artistic expression (drawing, photography, photomontage, object) to express their vision of the equivocal subject and art under the sign of the multiple. With the perspective of studying writing and the image as two inseparable means of expression, the notion of sharing will allow to consider both Cahun’s and of Moore’s approach between literary and artistic movements and genres, between an author and an artist, between the subject and its doubles and between the arts and the media issues. By proposing the notion of sharing as an operational concept, this thesis seeks to recontextualize Cahun’s and Moore’s work according to its belonging in the cultural and literary history of late symbolism, modernism and the surrealist avant-garde, embracing both the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. Their vision of the work as a space for sharing between the textual and the visual is accomplished by a collaboration between author and visual artist, which redefines the status of the solitary creator. I will also approach the self-representation approach from the notion of sharing as the identity construction of the Self, through many self-projections on paper or film, goes through duplication to express the être-au-monde of a subject that does not recognize itself within the boundaries of univocal gendered and identity categories. The act of sharing results in the creation of a hybrid work combining words and images in a process that goes beyond the illustration of the text by the image to favor dialogue between media. Sharing is essential as the notion par excellence to capture a work that has made out of duplication – of filiations, intertexts, creator, identity and the oeuvre itself – its modus operandi.

Cette thèse porte sur les processus de constitution – problématiques – de femmes comme intellectuelles au XXe siècle. Pour ce faire, trois cas, nés vers 1900, sont étudiés : l’artiste et écrivaine proche des avant-gardes en général et des surréalistes en particulier dans le Paris des années 1920-1930 Claude Cahun, la journaliste martiniquaise du Paris colonial de ces mêmes années et figure militante et intellectuelle importante de la Martinique d’après-guerre Paulette Nardal ; et enfin Viola Klein, juive tchèque exilée en Angleterre et pionnière oubliée de la sociologie féministe. Cette étude repose sur une analyse conjointe de la trajectoire et de la production culturelle de chacune de ces femmes. Il s’agit de comprendre comment leur expérience intellectuelle s’enracine dans des processus de prise de conscience de soi en tant que sujet renvoyé à l’altérité, femme, mais aussi sujet racialisé, qui déterminent les formes d’entrée dans la pensée. Cette thèse rend également compte du positionnement complexe, dedans/dehors, de ces femmes par rapport aux mouvements (le surréalisme pour Cahun, la culture noire en général et la négritude en particulier pour Nardal), et disciplines (la sociologie de la connaissance et du travail pour Klein) « dans » lesquels elles s’inscrivent et ce qu’elles y apportent ainsi que la pluralité des formes de pensée et d’engagement qu’une telle position liminale révèle. Il s’agit enfin d’interroger le processus de diffusion et de réception des oeuvres et des idées, dans lequel les logiques d’invisibilisation et d’oubli, mais aussi de redécouverte, jouent un rôle fondamental. Ce dernier point ouvre sur une réflexion relative aux logiques (nationales, disciplinaires, idéologiques) de construction du savoir. Cette thèse, interrogeant le devenir sujet des femmes et ce que peut lui faire la postérité, se propose ainsi de contribuer à une histoire intellectuelle transnationale des femmes et du genre. / This thesis analyzes the problematic ways in which women were able to become intellectuals in the XXth century. The cases of three women, born around 1900, are here studied. The artist and writer close to the Avant-Garde in general and the Surrealist movement in particular in the 20s and the 30s Claude Cahun; the Martinican journalist of colonial Paris in those same years Paulette Nardal, an important intellectual and activist figure in Post War Martinique after 1945; and last but not least, Viola Klein, a Czech Jew, exiled in Britain, and a forgotten pioneer of feminist sociology.This study is based upon an analysis of both the itinerary and cultural production of each of these women. It aims to understand how their intellectual experience is rooted in processes of self-awareness – as subjects who have to deal with otherness, as women, but also as racialized subjects – which shape the way in which these women intellectuals come to thought and commitment. This thesis also examines the complex position, Inside/Outside, of these women in relation to the movements and disciplines they join (Surrealism for Cahun, Négritude for Nardal, Sociology of Knowledge for Klein), the contribution they make to these movements and disciplines, and the plurality of the forms of thought and commitment such a liminal position entails. The aim is to question the ways in which works and ideas are spread and received – a process in which “invisibilization”, oblivion, but also rediscovery play a major part. This last idea opens up a reflection about the conceptions (national, disciplinary, ideological) pertaining to the construction of knowledge.

No description available.

Ce mémoire étudie les rapports texte/image dans Vues et visions de Claude Cahun, première œuvre composite créée en collaboration avec la peintre graphiste Marcel Moore. L’objet littéraire protéiforme, appartenant au genre de l’iconotexte (Alain Montandon), instaure un dialogue intermédial entre le textuel et le visuel au point de déconstruire l’horizon d’attente du lecteur : celui-ci est incité à lire et à voir alternativement les poèmes en prose ainsi que les dessins de sorte que les frontières qui définissent l’espace du littéral et du figural apparaissent poreuses. Subdivisé en deux chapitres, notre travail s’attachera dans un premier temps à mettre en lumière le rôle de l’écriture qui intègre certains dessins de Moore. En nous inspirant de l’iconolecture (Emmanuelle Pelard), nous tenterons d’effectuer des liens entre la plasticité et la signification littérale des signes linguistiques qu’illustrent ces images-textes tout en étudiant les correspondances thématiques et formelles qu’elles entretiennent avec les poèmes de Cahun. Le second chapitre étudiera la manière dont le figural investit le texte littéraire en adoptant une approche intermédiale. Après avoir abordé la figure du double, une partie de l’analyse sera consacrée à la figure de l’allusion, une stratégie d’écriture pour introduire le visuel au sein du textuel, ce qui nous permettra d’entrer en matière pour étudier « l’image-en-texte » (Liliane Louvel). Enfin, l’effet-tableau ainsi que l’anamorphose seront employés comme cadre d’analyse afin de penser le dialogue qui se noue entre le pictural et le texte littéraire dans Vues et visions. / This dissertation studies the relationship between text and image in Claude Cahun’s Vues et visions, her first project realized in collaboration with the visual artist Marcel Moore. This heterogeneous object of art belongs to the iconotext genre (Alain Montandon) and establishes a dialogue between Cahun’s prose poems and Moore’s drawings to the point of deconstructing the reader’s horizon of expectation : he is induced to read and behold alternatively the texts and the images so that the boundary line that defines the literary’s and pictorial’s spaces appears porous. Subdivided in two chapters, our work becomes attached in the first place to bring to light the role of the written word which incorporates some graphics of Marcel Moore. Inspired by a reading method called « iconolecture » by Emmanuelle Pelard, we will try to link the plasticity and the literal signification of the linguistic signs illustrated by those hybrid drawings while studying the formal and thematic similarities they share with Cahun’s prose poems. Using an intermedial perspective, the second chapter will study how the visual arts influence the poet’s writing style. After having broached the figure of the double, we will analyze the figure of allusion as a writing strategy to introduce the pictorial register in the literary texts that will lead us to study « l’image-en-texte » (Liliane Louvel). « L’effet-tableau » and the anamorphosis will be explored as frame of reference to conceive how links are tied between visual arts and poetry in Vues et visions.

No description available.

No description available.