’s objects of resistance

Allison O’Sullivan

A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

School of Art and Design

September 2016

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Date 3 CLAUDE CAHUN’S OBJECTS OF RESISTANCE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 5

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 6

CAHUN’S TEXTS 8

INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW 9

CHAPTER ONE: OBJECT THEORY 38

CHAPTER TWO: LITERARY WORKS RESISTING INTERPRETATION 77

CHAPTER THREE: THE OBJECTS OF 1936 112

CHAPTER FOUR: DEHARME AND LE COEUR DE PIC 158

CHAPTER FIVE: OBJECTS OF RESISTANCE 187

CONCLUSION 212

BIBLIOGRAPHY 228

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my initial supervisors, Associate Professor Alan Krell, and Professor Susan Best, who supported me through the early planning and research stages of my thesis; and my subsequent supervisors Dr Scotte East and Dr Michael Garbutt, who assisted me in rethinking my theoretical framework, and who provided a large amount of support over a very intense period of writing towards submission. I would also like to thank Professor Maaike Bleeker, who very kindly agreed to meet with me during a visit to Sydney. Prof Bleeker provided very insightful feedback on my progress and made many helpful research suggestions in the areas of materiality and object theory. Thanks also go to the staff at the Heritage Trust Archives, who provided documents and images throughout my research. I would also like to thank my family for their support over the last few years. Lastly, very special thanks to Chris Mitchenson, for all his patience, support and assistance throughout.

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

MOORE, MARCEL, AND CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1929. UNTITLED. PLATE 1, DISAVOWALS. CAMBRIDGE. MA: THE MIT PRESS, 2008.

MOORE, MARCEL, AND CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1929. I.O.U (SELF PRIDE). PLATE 9, DISAVOWALS. CAMBRIDGE. MA: THE MIT PRESS, 2008.

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1936. UN AIR DE FAMILLE. JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST, JHT/1995/00032/C. HTTP://CATALOGUE.JERSEYHERITAGE.ORG/

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1914. SELF-PORTRAIT, JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST, JHT/2003/00001/008, HTTP://CATALOGUE.JERSEYHERITAGE.ORG/

MILLER, LEE. 1930 TANYA RAMM IN BELL JAR. VARIANT ON HOMAGE Á D.A.F. DE SADE, ARCHIVES.

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1925. SELF-PORTRAITS WITH BELL JAR, JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST. JHT/1995/00027/O, JHT/1995/00027/P, JHT/1995/00027/Q, JHT/1995/00027/R. HTTP://CATALOGUE.JERSEYHERITAGE.ORG/

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1916. SELF-PORTRAIT AGAINST GRANITE WALL. JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST. JHT/1995/00026/P. HTTP://CATALOGUE.JERSEYHERITAGE.ORG/

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1920. SELF-PORTRAIT. REPRODUCED IN “CLAUDE CAHUN: A SENSUAL POLITICS OF PHOTOGRAPHY,” GEN DOY, 2007. NY, I.B. TAURUS.

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1921. SELF-PORTRAIT. JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST.

CAHUN, CLAUDE. CA 1921. SELF-PORTRAIT. JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST.

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1914. CAHUN READING WITH “L’IMAGE DE LA FEMME.” JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST.

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1931. FROM THE SERIES ENTRE NOUS. JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST.

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1931. FROM THE SERIES ENTRE NOUS. JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST.

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1936. OBJET/SOURIS VALSEUSES. ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO.

HUGO, VALENTINE. 1931. SYMBOLIC OBJECT.

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1936. QUI NE CRAINT PAS LE GRAND MECHANT LOUP, REMET LA BARQUE SUR SA QUILLE ET VOGUE A LA DERIVE. JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST.

RAY, MAN. 1936. UNTITLED (EXPOSITION SURRÉALISTE D’OBJETS).

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1936. UN AIR DE FAMILLE. JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST. 6

REDON, ODILON. 1979. VISION FROM DANS LE RÊVE. BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON.

CAHUN, CLAUDE. SKETCH. JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST.

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1930. SELF-PORTRAIT. BIFUR MAGAZINE, 1930.

BRETON, ANDRÉ. 1935/6. JE VOIS J’IMAGINE.

RAY, MAN. UNTITLED (EXPOSITION SURRÉALISTE D’OBJETS).

DEHARME, LISE, AND CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1937. LE COEUR DE PIC (FRONT COVER).

RAY, MAN. 1931. LA REINE DE PIC (). PRIVATE COLLECTION.

BRETON, ANDRÉ. 1937. POUR JACQUELINE. PRIVATE COLLECTION.

CAHUN, CLAUDE 1936. LA NERF MA PETIT DENT. FROM LE COEUR DE PIC.

CAHUN, CLAUDE 1936. PREND UN BATON POINTU. JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST.

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1936. UNTITLED (LA DEBONNAIRE SAPONAIRE). FROM LE COEUR DE PIC.

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1936. LE COEUR DE PIC (BACK COVER).

CAHUN, CLAUDE. 1936. LES ENNUIS DE PIC. FROM LE COEUR DE PIC.

JE NE VOIS PAS LA [FEMME] CACHÉE DANS LA FORÊT, IN LA RÉVOLUTION SURRÉALISTE, , NO.12, DECEMBER 15TH 1929

CAHUN, CLAUDE AND MOORE, MARCEL. C.1940-44. TYPEWRITTEN NOTE, DER SOLDAT OHNE NAME SERIES. JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST.

UNKNOWN. 1950. PORTRAIT OF MARCEL MOORE AND CLAUDE CAHUN. JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST.

MOORE, MARCEL (?). 1937. GASGOYNE, ELT MESENS, ANDRÉ BRETON, AND CLAUDE CAHUN AT THE LONDON EXHIBITION. JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST.

MOORE, MARCEL (?) DAY OF RELEASE 1945 WITH NAZI BADGE. JERSEY HERITAGE TRUST.

RAY, MAN (1936) . L’OCÉAN GLACIAL. ANDRÉ BRETON, 1935. PRIVATE COLLECTION.

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CAHUN’S TEXTS

VUES ET VISIONS. MERCURE DE , NO. 406. 1914

HEROÏNES. , NO. 639. 1925

AVEUX NON AVENUS. EDITIONS DU CARREFOUR. 1930

LE PARIS SONT OUVERTS. PARIS: JOSÉ CORTI. 1934

PRENEZ GARDE AUX OBJETS DOMESTIQUES! CAHIERS D'ART, VOL. 11. 1936

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INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW

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CLAUDE CAHUN: AN INTRODUCTION

Claude Cahun was a writer, photographer and artist who worked both in Paris and on the Island of Jersey from the turn of the twentieth century until her death in 1954. After her death her body of work slipped into obscurity until the rediscovery of a collection of her photographs in the late 1980s.1 François Leperlier’s 1992 biography of Cahun, Claude

Cahun: Masks and metamorphoses,2 was the first major publication on her life and work.

Since then interest in her work has continued to grow. Since the rediscovery of the collection of Claude Cahun’s photography and correspondence on the Island of Jersey discussion and examination of Cahun’s work has produced a large volume of new literature on the subject. Theorists from the fields of feminism, art history and gender studies have all completed analyses of her photography and, to a lesser extent, her writing, including Tirza True Latimer, Gen Doy, Rosalind Krauss, , Whitney

Chadwick, Carolyn Dean, and Katy Kline,3 whose contributions to literature on Cahun I will examine in this introduction, in order to provide a context for my investigation of her objects. An overview of this previous scholarship on Cahun will reveal the current gaps in understanding her work, with particular regard to her object manufacture, the

1 Downie, L. (2005). Sans nom: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. Heritage.: 8–9. 2 Downie, L. (2005). 8. Leperlier, F. (2001). Claude Cahun: Masks and metamorphoses. London, United Kingdom: Verso Books. 3 See Caws, M. A. (1992). The eye in the text: Essays on perception, mannerist to modern. United States: Princeton University Press; Caws, M. A. (1997). The Surrealist Look: An erotics of encounter. Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press; Dean, C. J. (1996). Claude Cahun’s double. Yale French Studies. Yale University Press. 71-92; Kline, K. (1998). In or out of the picture: Claude Cahun and Cindy Sherman, in W. Chadwick (Ed.), Mirror images: Women, surrealism, and self-representation. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press. 67-81; Knafo, D. (2001). Claude Cahun: The third sex. Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 2.1, 29– 61; Krauss, R. (1999). Claude Cahun and : By way of introduction, in R. Krauss (Ed.), Bachelors. Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press. 1-50; Krauss, R. E., Livingston, J., & Ades, D. (1985). L’amour fou: Photography & surrealism. Washington, D.C.: Abbeville Press Inc.; Latimer, T. T. (2006). Acting out: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, in L. Downie (Ed.), Don’t kiss me: The art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, London: Tate; Latimer, T. T. (2003) Looking like a lesbian: portraiture and sexual identity in 1920s Paris, in W. Chadwick, T. T. Latimer (Eds.), The modern woman revisited: Paris between the wars. The State University, USA: Rutgers. 127-143. 10 theoretical underpinnings of which have received less attention than her photographic self-portraits.

Claude Cahun was born in , France, into a family prominent in symbolist literature and leftist journalism.4 Her literary talents were fostered in this intellectual atmosphere, and she moved to Paris as a young woman where she wrote for numerous newspapers and journals.5 Initially influenced by the symbolists and the bohemian aesthetic movement of England, in the early 1930s Cahun entered a period of intense experimentation and political discourse as a new member of the surrealist group.

It is apparent that Cahun’s work moved through an interesting period in 1936, in which she concentrated on the production of plastic objects and surrealist assemblages, some of which she subsequently photographed or displayed. It is my belief that this phase is particularly notable as it brings to our attention the point at which Cahun worked most closely with several artists and writers associated with the surrealist group in Paris prior to her departure for Jersey in early 1937. Cahun’s close association with the surrealists at this time, notably André Breton, Benjamin Péret and , also re-opens speculation as to the (predominantly male) surrealists’ relationships with and attitude towards both women and homosexual artists. As previously stated, analysis of Cahun’s work to date has largely focussed on her photographic practice. Her self-portraits blurred the boundaries of gender and identity and added layers and double binds to the process of interpretation which has led to much debate between researchers of her photographic works. As Amy Lyford points out, “in a society such as France’s that relied on well- defined ideas about sexual difference and gendered social roles, changes in the

4 Downie, L. (2005). 8. 5 Chadwick, W., & Latimer, T. T. (2003). The modern woman revisited: Paris between the wars. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. 165. 11 understanding of masculinity or femininity had the potential to alter the entire social order.”6 Prior to her work in the 1930s, Cahun experimented with the depiction of gender in her photographs. As her photographic work shows, and as I will discuss in chapter two,

Cahun was aware of the power of the gaze, and its role in the delineation of subject and object, particularly in relation to gendered objectivity.

The publication of her book Aveux non avenus in 1930 appears to have been a cathartic moment for Cahun, allowing her to shift her emphasis from the personal to the universal, and to take the universal more personally. At a time when Breton and other members of the surrealist group, such as Salvador Dalí, were shifting their priorities towards the exploration of the political potential inherent in objects, there appears to have been a recognition by Breton and Cahun of their mutual concerns. Previously uninterested in each other the two writers came together to work on the same projects with the same aims. As art historian Sarane Alexandrian stated, “in his role of militant activist, Breton acted as a true apostle, trying to persuade organizations of the left that true revolutionary art was not simply art which made the most of a propaganda content, but an art which took human desire into account with audacity and originality.”7 Cahun began to associate with these organisations of the left, and as a result quickly became closely involved with Breton and his visions of inventing and disseminating a truly revolutionary art form.

Katy Kline states in her essay In or out of the picture: Claude Cahun and Cindy

Sherman, that “though the mask is generally considered a tool of evasion or concealment,

6 Lyford, A. (2007). Surrealist masculinities: Gender anxiety and the aesthetics of post-world war I reconstruction in France. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 2. 7 Alexandrian, S. (1985). Surrealist art. New York, NY: Thames and Hudson. 94. 12

Cahun’s many masks and manoeuvres reflect rather than deflect.”8 Cahun’s use of the mask as a metaphor for personal identity – a mask which reflects true nature, rather than disguising it – appeared often in her writing, and many theorists have developed strong links between her writing and photography on this basis. More prosaically, of course, masks are also physical objects. In this thesis I will explore Cahun’s investigation of identity in her plastic objects, and how her production of these objects acts as a fluid extension of her oeuvre. Furthermore, this concept of the mask as a reflective surface, obscuring the identity concealed beneath, goes straight to the heart of Cahun as a symbol of resistance: in this case, resistance to objectification, and resistance to being read and interpreted by others.

THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LANDSCAPE: PARIS BETWEEN THE TWO

WORLD WARS

The interwar France of Cahun’s active years was a time and place of rapid change.

Post-World War I a worrying neo-conservatism began to spread; fascism was becoming a genuine concern throughout the region. Anti-Semitism, long a problem in Europe, was also on the rise.9 In Russia, the heroes of the left-wing intelligentsia had been replaced by the autocratic Joseph Stalin. Disagreements over the direction Communism was taking led left-wing groups that had originally come together to unite in the face of conservatism to begin to bicker among themselves. They splintered into smaller, less effective groups,

8 Kline, K. (1998). In or out of the Picture: Claude Cahun and Cindy Sherman, in W. Chadwick (Ed.), Mirror images: Women, surrealism, and self-representation. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press. 68. 9 Hobsbawm, E. (1995). Age of extremes: The short twentieth century, 1914-1991. London: Abacus. 112, 119. 13 or in the case of the remains of the French Communist Party (PCF) in the mid-1930s, aligned themselves with a major party such as the Popular Front, which was seen as a betrayal of communist principles by many of the surrealists.10

The surrealist group had been politicised from their inception in 1924. One of their initial efforts to engage with French politics was the publication of La revolution surrealiste, a journal distributed from 1924 to 1929, the aims of which the surrealist group described as “the systematic denunciation of bourgeois thought.”11 While the journal was intended to disseminate revolutionary ideas inspired by communism, it became more and more preoccupied with the ability of violence, sexuality and perversion to provoke a reaction in their audience, with issues dedicated to subjects such as the writings of the

Marquis de Sade.12

Robert S. Short summarised the objectives of surrealist politics into three main goals:

the reconciliation of a generalized spirit of revolt with revolutionary action; the reconciliation of the idea of a 'spiritual revolution' and its accompanying insistence on ethical 'purity' with the practical necessities of political effective-ness; the reconciliation of an independent revolutionary art with the demands for propaganda and didacticism made by the communist party.13

In 1927 the surrealists Breton, , Paul Eluard and Benjamin Péret attempted to reconcile surrealism with communism by applying for membership of the PCF.

However, once they had joined the party the PCF leadership consistently questioned

10 Short, R. S. (1966). The politics of surrealism, 1920-36. Journal of Contemporary History, 1:2. 18. 11 Short, R. S. (1966). 8. 12 Naville, P. (1976). La revolution surrealiste, numbers 1-12, 1924-1929. United Kingdom: Ayer Co Pub. 13 Short, R. S. (1966). 3. 14

Breton’s insistence on calling himself a surrealist once he became a communist.14 By the early 1930s, the majority of surrealists had found the PCF too restrictive, and consequently left the party. Aragon however remained a committed member, which caused a permanent rift between himself and Breton. Their argument became the subject of Cahun’s 1934 political tract, Les paris sont ouverts, which is discussed in chapter five of this thesis. The last issue of La revolution surrealiste in 1929 contained Breton’s

Second , which was designed to restate the direction of the group and affirm their commitment to collective political action, and which signalled the beginning of dissent and further fractures between its members.15 At this point Bataille formed the new group Contre-Attaque, in order to work with other exiled surrealists such as Roger

Callois, , and André Masson.16 Cahun also became a member of this association, and appears to be one of the few at this point who were able to move freely between the estranged groups. 17

In the 1920s the revolutionary intellectuals of France consisted largely of liberal- minded people of middle class backgrounds, sharing the same social background as the original Leninists of Russia, held together by the rather paternalistic but well-intentioned belief that it was the role of the intelligentsia to fight for the freedom of the proletariat on their behalf, as the working classes possessed neither the means nor the education to be able to free themselves.18 The combination of political turmoil, both domestically and abroad, with personal conflicts caused by strong opposition to communist party ethics,

14 Short, R. S. (1966). 10. 15 Gemerchak, C. M. (2003). The Sunday of the negative: Reading Bataille, reading Hegel. United States: State University of New York Press. 10. 16 Gemerchak, C. M. (2003). 10. 17 Heron, L., & Williams, V. (Eds.). (1997). Illuminations: Women writing on photography from the 1850’s to the present (international library of historical studies). London, United Kingdom: I.B.Tauris. 92. 18 Gemerchak, C. M. (2003). 92. 15 contributed to the artists and writers active in surrealism throughout the 1930s developing into one of the most politically charged creative alliances in modern history.

MODERNITY, MODERNISMS, AND THE OBJECT

By the early twentieth century, the advent of industrial modes of production and distribution led to an exponential increase in the turnover of goods. This in turn created a change in attitude to the value of consumable items, and the acquisition of possessions had become central to the essence of modern life.19 People of previous eras had displayed an acquisitive nature, but now the phenomenon of gauging success by the constant attainment and upgrading of consumer goods had filtered down through the middle and lower middle classes to the working class.

The term modernity was coined by Baudelaire, in his 1864 work The painter of modern life. Describing the modern man, Baudelaire theorised in his passage on modernity:

And so, walking or quickening his pace, he goes his way, for ever in search. In search of what?... He is looking for that indefinable something we may be allowed to call ‘modernity’, for want of a better term to express the idea in question. The aim for him is to extract from fashion the poetry that resides in its historical envelope, to distil the eternal from the transitory…Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable.20

19 Trentmann, F. (Ed.). (2012). The Oxford handbook of the history of consumption. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 413. 20 Baudelaire, C. (1964). The painter of modern life and other essays. London: Phaidon Press. 13. 16

Here, Baudelaire neatly described the predicament facing artists who wish to interrogate the repercussions of modernity for both art and life: how to depict the transitory essence of contemporary society through the traditional media of painting, sculpture, and literature.

Breton and his associates during this period were united not by concerns over stylistic methodologies but by a philosophical approach to the social and political issues facing modern men and women. By the early 1930s this philosophical methodology became increasingly politicised in response to the tensions rising throughout Europe and the wider world. As these surrealists sought the answer to revolutionising modern life, they engaged with ideas from theorists as diverse as Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and, later, Theodor Adorno. Increasingly their focus shifted to manipulation of the objects themselves, rather than merely depicting or describing them, as a method of highlighting the central role objects played in the examination of modernity. Cahun’s strong political views coupled with her strong interest in objects brought her into the surrealist group at this time. The objects she created then utilised these tensions between art and modern life, between substance and ephemera, in order to interrogate the truths of modernity and to find new ways to communicate their intent to her audience.

GENDER, CONFUSION AND MODERNITY IN INTERWAR FRANCE

Following the First World War, French government and social policy was geared towards removing women from the professions they had entered during the war’s labour crisis and reinserting them into the home as wives and mothers. Repopulation was now

17 popularly seen as a French woman’s primary occupation and an obligation to her nation.21

In Paris, as elsewhere in the Western world, ‘boyish’ girls and young women (garçonnes) were decried for overturning the natural order of civilization. Mary Louise Roberts claims that such as Cahun protested (through exaggeration and parody) notions of the modern woman in portraiture and dress.22 These women artists believed that modern fashions created not freedom, but the illusion of freedom: many women spent hours conforming to the new bodily stereotype of la garçonne, including strict regimes of diet, exercise and beauty therapies, as well as the donning of restrictive undergarments and tight tube dresses. Writing on the author Collette, Isabelle de Courtivron also points out that these ‘women of the Left Bank’ were socially, politically and artistically active “at a time when French women had the legal and economic status of minors, and in a culture that operated under rigid definitions of femininity.”23 As Roberts elaborates:

gender was central to how change was understood in the postwar decade. The discursive obsession with female identity during these years reveals that a wide variety of French men and women made it a privileged site for a larger ideological project: how to come to terms with rapid social and cultural change, and how to articulate a new, more appropriate order of social relationships.24

Cahun’s period of the production of Aveux non avenus (1924-29, pub. 1930), which coincided with this growing era of uncertainty over gender roles and relations, predated her involvement with the surrealists; nevertheless, her interest in Freudian

21 Chadwick, W., & Latimer, T. T. (Eds.). (2003). 6. 22 Roberts, M. L. (2003). Samson and Delilah revisited: The politics of fashion in 1920s France, in W. Chadwick, T. T. Latimer (Eds.), The modern woman revisited: Paris between the wars. The State University, USA: Rutgers. 4. 23 de Courtivron, I. (2003). Never admit!: Colette and the freedom of paradox, in W. Chadwick, T. T. Latimer (Eds.), The modern woman revisited: Paris between the wars. The State University, USA: Rutgers. 56. 24 Roberts, M. L. (2003). 5. 18 psychoanalysis and debates on sexuality and the ‘modern woman’ was apparent in her admiration and translation of such authors as Havelock Ellis,25 a British sexologist and social reformer whose publications on the ‘third sex’ and inversion shocked the international public.26 Cahun’s attempt to translate one of Ellis’ works is discussed in more detail in chapter two of this thesis.

MODERN WOMANHOOD AND THE SURREALISTS

Feminist commentators are divided on the issue of whether there is a distinct and eternal female experience, and such world-views have also informed different positions on Surrealist women. Essentialist feminist writers such as Danielle Knafo and Jennifer

Shaw are critical in their assessments of surrealist practice. Knafo writing in 2001 stated:

It should not come as a surprise that the majority of Surrealist representations of women reflect a strong, traditional masculine bias. Women are exalted, feared, or degraded in the photographs of , Jacques-Andre Boiffard, Raoul Ubac, , and .27

Although kinder in her assessment of surrealism’s relationship with women, Shaw has written largely in agreement. She claims that “even in the more radical circles of the surrealists, this relationship between male artist and female muse predominated”, and that

25 Shaw, J. (2003). Singular plural: Collaborative self-images in Claude Cahun's Aveux non avenus, in W. Chadwick, T. T. Latimer (Eds.), The modern woman revisited: Paris between the wars. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. 159. 26 Shaw, J. (2003). 159. 27 Knafo, D. (2001). Claude Cahun: The third sex. Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 2.1. 35. 19 surrealism ultimately displayed a “failure to leave space for female creativity and female desire.”28 Mary Ann Caws offers the most succinct description of feminist reactions to surrealist depictions of women: “We have been angry at the images; we still are.”29

Shaw, Knafo, and Caws’ views stand in direct opposition to those of Rosalind

Krauss. Knafo claims that Cahun breaks with this surrealist practice of the depiction of women because her photographs:

were self-portraits, works in which she was both artist and model, [and which] subverted the social and sexual hierarchy in which the artist is quintessentially male and his material female.30

The post-structuralist art historian Krauss contests these long held views about the place of women within surrealism and challenges many previous assumptions regarding misogyny and sexism in her 1998 book Bachelors. In a chapter entitled Claude Cahun and Dora Maar: by way of introduction, she claims that Cahun’s practice, far from existing in opposition to male surrealist practice, instead illustrated the experimental blurring of boundaries which existed in all surrealist literature, and subsequently in its art and photography.31 Krauss refutes the claim of many feminist academics that women in the surrealist movement were expected to replicate male surrealist examinations of the female as object.32 She does this by elaborating on the so called fold created in identity originally described by , which can be explained as a blurring of the borders between different identities – what she calls an alteration or de-classing of the

28 Shaw, J. (2003). 158-9. 29 Caws, M. A. (2006). Glorious eccentrics: Modernist women painting and writing. New York: Palgrave McMillan. xv. 30 Caws, M. A. (2006). 36. 31 Krauss, R. (1999). Claude Cahun and Dora Maar: By way of introduction, in R. Krauss (Ed.), Bachelors. Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press. 37. 32 Krauss, R. (1999). 17. 20 subject. With regards to this folding of identity she argues that artists who worked on both sides of the line of this fold such as Cahun simply cannot be understood in terms of essentialist feminist criticism. As she states:

[as they] are continually changing places, it is not possible to take such a project [i.e. the work of the artist] seriously and at one and the same time to proclaim the subject-position of the work’s instigator as stable and female, as has been urged for Cahun.33

Taking into account these differing interpretations of Cahun’s work, it becomes apparent that both Cahun and her practice occupy a space which is difficult to describe or delineate, resisting a clear interpretation using methodologies or theoretical discourses which assume a stable identity position of the artist. It this inscrutability which I will examine in relation to the notion of resistance, particularly as it applies to her objects.

Kristine von Oehsen is one of the few scholars to discuss Cahun’s practice with regards to the design and creation of surrealist objects. Von Oehsen’s central thesis is designed around her academic expertise in the literary accomplishments of Cahun with reference to her family’s extensive avant-garde literary background, and Cahun’s symbolist influences in this environment. In regard to Cahun’s associations and motivations during the year of 1936 von Oehsen’s information is also concise and valuable: she lists the dissolution of the contentious Contre-Attaque, a short-lived anti- fascist movement in which Cahun was an active member; Cahun’s signed pledge to the surrealist anti-fascist declaration; her work on the illustrations for Lisa Deharme’s book of poetry Le coeur du pic (published in 1937); and the surrealist exhibitions in London

33 Krauss, R. (1999). 50. 21 and Paris.34 All of the above provide insight on the inspiration for her practices during the year of 1936.

Von Oehsen also provides an excellent chronology of what she refers to as

Cahun’s practice of ‘assemblages’. Over the ten-year period to 1936 she notes that

Cahun’s “self-interrogation becomes increasingly marginal.”35 It is von Oehsen who notes that it was specifically in 1936 that Cahun began to create plastic objects for exhibition, rather than temporary objects for the purpose of creating photographic works.

Von Oehsen also provides a brief but important visual analysis of one of Cahun’s plastic works, namely the Object of 1936.

In Gen Doy’s essay entitled Another side of the picture: Looking differently at

Claude Cahun, the author briefly explores the link between Freud’s notion of the

‘uncanny’, Cahun’s surrealist assemblages, and her essay of the same year. Doy links

Cahun’s “poetic espousal of the irrational” 36 with the political and social movements of the time, and with the attendant aspirations to social and cultural revolution. In this thesis

I will build on Doy’s scholarship on Cahun by performing an in-depth analysis of the objects which Cahun lauded, and by exploring the potential for a thorough analysis of the political significance of their existence and the nature of their public display.

Mary Ann Caws has suggested that the later stages of surrealism, marked by a

“fluid interpenetration” such as we see in Cahun’s objects (and indeed as mentioned above, is also to be found in Cahun’s analysis of the self, which for her is frequently neither subject nor object) have been overlooked in academic examinations of the

34 Von Oehsen, K. (2006). The lives of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, in L. Downie (Ed.), Don’t kiss me: The art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. London: Tate Publishing. 15-17. 35 Von Oehsen, K. (2006). 16. 36 Doy, G. (2006). Another side of the picture: Looking differently at Claude Cahun, in L. Downie (Ed.), Don’t kiss me: the art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. London: Tate Publishing. 79. 22 movement in favour of the study of automatism, which is more easily explained.37 This emphasis on the earlier period of surrealism could provide us with an alternative explanation for Cahun’s lack of stature within the surrealist canon: the period of her closest involvement with the group has simply not received as much recognition in the literature. At the time of its publication her incisive political tract of 1934, Les paris sont ouverts, was highly regarded by her peers. By the 1980s her reputation had been so obscured that the few commentators still referring to the tract assumed she was a man.38

This thesis aims to investigate the power of the object in Cahun’s work through an examination of how ideas about objects can be traced throughout her written and photographic work, from a period before her association with the surrealists to the moment culminating in her objects of 1936. A study of Cahun’s plastic works will yield valuable information, expanding on interpretations of her entire oeuvre, and augmenting understanding of the group dynamics that were fundamental to the work of those associated with surrealist art throughout the era of its production.

CAHUN AND THE SURREAL EYE

I have briefly mentioned Cahun’s awareness of gendered objectivity above and will return to this in greater detail in chapter one in a discussion of her photographic self- portraits. Central to this notion of subject and object is the gaze, the physical embodiment of this being the eye of the beholder. Cahun’s attraction to the symbolism of the eye is apparent throughout much of her work, including Aveux non avenus. Jennifer Shaw

37 Caws, M. A. (2006). 14. 38 Doy, G. (2007). 9. 23 engages in an analysis of Cahun’s written work in relation to the eye from a surrealist perspective, specifically through her reading of the images contained within Aveux non avenus, in her essay Narcissus and the magic mirror. Shaw posits that Cahun’s major literary work of 1930 is for the most part an interpretation of the classic tale of Narcissus.

Using both Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytical theory as well as literary analysis

Shaw provides an in depth visual analysis of the cupped hands which form the centre of the featured on the frontispiece of the book. Shaw focusses on mirror imaging as the basis for her discussion of the image. Shaw attributes Cahun’s use of the cupped eye resting on a woman’s lips as symbols of “I”/”eye” and interprets this as a passive offering of self to the viewer in an act of devotion.39 This interpretation represents an habitual gender construction of the relationship between subject and object on the part of Shaw, in which she is automatically positioning the male as the active viewer and the viewed as passively female. Shaw concedes that the image also forms a larger whole; the eye as the clitoris, the arms as labia, and the mouth upon which they rest as anus, however Shaw does not perform a further analysis of this imagery. As I will discuss in chapter three in an analysis of the two objects which Cahun created for the surrealist object exhibition, this image is also significant in that it highlights the surrealist phallic eye as feminised by

Cahun, a concept which Cahun made concrete in the production of her objects.

In another article entitled Singular plural: Collaborative self-images in Claude

Cahun’s Aveux non avenus, Jennifer Shaw investigates Cahun’s response to the social status of women depicted within another of the contained in the 1930 publication.

In her interpretation of the ninth plate contained in the book, entitled I.O.U (self pride),

Shaw interprets the Russian nesting dolls as not only a symbol of postwar pressure on

39 Shaw, J. (2006). Narcissus and the magic mirror, in L. Downie (Ed.), Don’t kiss me: the art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. London: Tate Publishing. 39. 24

French women to begin repopulating the nation, but also as a comment on women’s role in the creative process. She draws the conclusion that;

the only place for creative potential left to women in the dominant discourse of postwar France was the potential to create a child…Cahun and Moore recognized that the notions of creativity that dominated their culture were based on idealized versions of romantic love that reduced women’s ‘creativity’ to childbearing.40

Shaw’s interpretation of this particular plate invites a close comparison to Cahun’s object

Un air de famille – a comparison which I will discuss in greater detail in chapter three.

While Shaw effectively interprets the collages which form the beginning of each chapter of Aveux non avenus within her own paradigm, utilising in her analysis of the images

Narcissus and the mirror stage, I wish to extend these insights by investigating the assertively psychosexual and political imagery contained within Cahun’s collages, and consequently their importance as a precursor to the creation of her plastic objects.

IDENTITY, GENDER AND QUEER THEORY

Tirza True Latimer has written extensively on Cahun, again focussing principally on her photographic work. Her research includes such essays as Looking like a lesbian:

Portraiture and sexual identity in 1920s Paris and Becoming modern: Gender and sexual identity after World War I (with Whitney Chadwick). These studies are primarily concerned with Cahun’s photographic art as a metaphor for her relationship with life

40 Shaw, J. (2003). 159. 25 partner Suzanne Malherbe (also known as Marcel Moore). Latimer’s essays are contributions to the history of Cahun and Moore from a Queer Theory perspective.

Latimer is concerned with the couple’s relationship to the culture they inhabited socially and professionally, that is both as a lesbian couple and as lesbian artists. Latimer frames her judgment of Cahun’s relationship with her peers in suspicious terms: for example, she claims that Cahun was able to earn “Breton’s grudging respect (despite his acute homophobia)”, suggesting that there was a strained relationship between the two writers.41 It has been said that when Claude Cahun would arrive at André Breton’s favourite café, dressed in a suit, with shaved head dyed gold, pink or green, arm-in-arm with lover/stepsister Moore, Breton would drop everything and abruptly leave.42 Katy

Kline echoes this impression when she states that “Breton, however, is said to have been so put off by her assertively unconventional manner and appearance that he would abandon his favourite café upon her arrival.”43 It does appear that Breton initially found

Cahun’s outlandish attire and bold wit (evident in much of her personal correspondence) disconcerting. However, the basis for these judgments is largely anecdotal in nature, and this reading of their early relationship has coloured much writing on the subject and, consequently, interpretations of Cahun’s contribution to surrealist politics as a whole. It is incongruous that Breton would have continued to work with someone whom he found abhorrent, and to whom he wrote:

You dispose of a very extensive magic ability. I find also – and don’t repeat it – that you must write and publish. You know well that I think you are one of the most curious spirits of these times.44

41 Latimer, T. T. (2006). Acting out: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, in L. Downie (Ed.), Don’t kiss me: The art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. London: Tate Publishing. 67. 42 Caws, M. A. (2006). 133. 43 Kline, K. (1998). 68. My Italics. 44 Leperlier, F. (2007). Afterword. Disavowals. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 213. 26

Cahun wrote to Breton shortly before her death: “I dangerously upset my mind for those

I love. Warning; you are among them.”45 It is difficult to believe that a collaborative friendship that spanned twenty years (and was cut short only by Cahun’s early death) was based on anything other than mutual respect.

Of concern with regards to surrealism and homosexuality has also been Breton’s profound distaste for ‘pederasty.’46 The cognate pédérastie is the word generally used to describe male homosexuality in French which leads to some confusion when attempting to understand his meaning in English. Whatever his opinion on male homosexuality,

Breton certainly appears to have found lesbianism less confronting than manifestations of male homosexuality. Indeed, Carolyn J Dean asserts that within the surrealist group

“lesbianism served a complicated and sometimes parallel function to idealized heterosexuality in the Surrealist imaginary.”47 Indeed, although much of her analysis was couched in veiled terms, it is clear in Cahun’s literary works that she considered herself a kind of ‘other’ other: indefinable. This is crucial to the understanding of her object manufacture, relating as it does to Cahun’s relationship to those who perceive her, and speaks to Cahun’s attempts to renegotiate the traditional subject/object relationship.

45 Caws, M. A. (2006). Glorious eccentrics: Modernist women painting and writing. New York: Palgrave McMillan. 140. 46 Schehr, L. R. (2012). Alcibiades at the door: Gay disCourses in french literature. California: Stanford University Press. 31. 47 Dean, C. J. (1996). Claude Cahun’s double. Yale French Studies, 90. Yale University Press. 78. 27

THEORETICAL OBJECTS AND RESISTANCE

This thesis is not intended to provide a broad survey of Cahun’s object production and photography, but rather as an examination of a particular period of Cahun’s practice with relation to objects, spanning approximately 1930 to 1937, with some discussion of her subsequent resistance actions on Jersey during the Second World War and how this was influenced by her beliefs regarding the political and social potential of objects to effect change. In order to explore Cahun’s plastic contributions to the surrealist movement during this period I will therefore be concentrating on the two objects which Cahun produced for exhibition while associated with members of the surrealist group. I will first attempt to unravel the conflicting information available on each object. Secondly, while academics and historians such as Doy, von Oehsen, and Shaw have made mention of

Cahun’s objects none, with the exception of Canadian art historian Steven Harris, have made an in-depth visual or theoretical analysis of her practice in this area, or of the motivation behind it. My efforts to augment research in this field have also involved the investigation not only of her productions, but also the complex and increasingly tense social and political environment in which Cahun was working and with which she was always so deeply involved. Important to the interpretation of these selected objects is an understanding that Cahun was primarily a writer and her photographic archive, which now draws so much attention, was never intended for public display. It is my position that while evidence of an interest in the importance of objects occurs early in her literary output she had never intended to extend these theories to physical production until she came into contact with the earlier attempts of surrealism to discover the essence of objects. Cahun also made liberal use of text within her sculptures and assemblages,

28 generally utilised to expand upon a political or social issue being raised in the work which will be discussed in detail with regards to each object in chapter three.

In order to read and interpret Cahun’s objects, and her writings about objects, it is first necessary to formulate a methodology to support this enquiry. Hubert Damisch states, “a theoretical object is one that is called on to function according to norms that are not historical. It is not sufficient to write a history of this object.”48. Like her textual works, Cahun’s objects are embedded with layers of obscured meaning, and it is impossible to develop an understanding of these objects without first teasing out the complex social, cultural and political messages her objects contained. In order to do so, one must think in theoretical terms, and as Damisch continued:

A theoretical object is something that obliges one to do theory; we could start there. Second, its an object that obliges you to do theory but also furnishes you with the means of doing it. Thus, if you agree to accept it on theoretical terms, it will produce effects around itself. Third, its a theoretical object because it forces us to ask ourselves what theory is. It is posed in theoretical terms; it produces theory; and it necessitates a reflection on theory.49

Damisch’s contention that a theoretical object must be accepted on theoretical terms is particularly relevant to Cahun’s objects, which communicate their meaning by resisting casual interpretation: as I shall argue, the viewer must consent to the theoretical discussion proposed by the object, before the object may be read. A theoretical object thus becomes a model for a particular perspective. Part of this thesis is concerned with understanding exactly how Cahun’s objects are theorised.

48 Bois, Y.-A., Hollier, D., Krauss, R., & Damisch, H. (1998). A conversation with Hubert Damisch.October, 85. 5. 49 Bois, Y.-A., et al. (1998). 5. 29

Mieke Bal has extended Damisch’s concept of theoretical objects in her interpretation of artworks. Bal defines theoretical objects as “works of art that deploy their own artistic…medium to offer and articulate thought about art.”50 Thus Bal offers a narrower interpretation of the concept of ‘theoretical object’ within the discussion of art theory, in which sculptures become theoretical objects when they make you think about art. While Cahun’s objects certainly do this, as did all the other objects in the surrealist exhibition alongside which they were displayed, I argue that Cahun’s works went further.

Much like Damisch’s definition of the theoretical object Cahun’s primary purpose in creating her plastic objects, as foreshadowed in her prior written works, was to force the viewer to think by creating objects which actively resisted the traditional subject/object, active/passive dynamic of conversation. In these objects Cahun begins to embody the notion of objects as possessing a form of active agency and that they perform this agency through resistance.

OBJECTS OF RESISTANCE

In contending that Cahun’s objects are ‘objects of resistance’ a definition of that concept is required. I will argue that, according to the definitions of both Bal and

Damisch, Cahun’s objects are both objects that think and theoretical objects in that they make their viewers think. The purpose of this, for Cahun, was for the object to force the viewer into new modes of thought by offering resistance to traditional interpretation. If the subject fought to impose a human interpretation upon the object, it would resist. If the subject chose to ‘listen’ to the object it would share its thoughts.

50 Bal, M. (1999). Narrative inside out: Louise Bourgeois’ spider as theoretical object. Oxford Art Journal, 22:2. 104. 30

Francis Ponge was another French literary figure contemporary to the surrealists whose work has only recently been re-examined. His great work, Le parti pris des choses

(The voice of things) was first published in 1942. In it he sought to minutely describe the experiences of objects as they interact with, and are interacted with, by human subjects.

A contemporary of Cahun’s, Ponge began working on this concept at around the same time as the exhibition in which Cahun’s objects were displayed. Like Cahun, during the war Ponge became a member of the French resistance.51 Ponge was also, like Cahun, briefly associated with the surrealists, and joined the Communist Party in 1937.52 The timeline of his involvement with the group is such that his great prose-poetry work may, in part, have been inspired by the 1936 surrealist object exhibition, and the concepts under discussion at the time. Esther Rowlands is one writer who has since returned to Ponge’s object poetry in any detail, and it is she who first described the objects in Ponge’s poetic works as objects of resistance.

For Ponge, his battle was, in part, against the meaning of the words themselves. As Ponge stated, in order for language to engage in resistance, then the writer must master “the art of resisting words, the art not to say that is what it does mean, the art of assaulting [words] and making them submit.”53 Unlike Ponge however, neither words nor objects were the enemy for Cahun. Cahun spoke of writing in resistance to herself, but ultimately Cahun’s objects of resistance push outwards: they resist interpretation by the subject, unless the subject is willing to submit to the rules of communication as defined by the object.

Furthermore, Ponge sought to break resistant objects by describing them in minute detail, forcing their secrets out of them by imposing his own language upon them. Cahun

51 Rowlands, E. (2004). Redefining resistance: The poetic wartime discourses of , Benjamin Péret, Henri Michaux and . Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi B.V. 9. 52 Eburne, J. P. (2008). Surrealism and the art of crime. United States: Cornell University Press. 245. 53 Rowlands, E. (2004). 55. 31 wished for her objects to communicate with their viewers, to engage them in critical thinking by first asking them to throw their own preconceptions, their own human descriptive and prescriptive language away. Her objects, in the first instance, are objects of resistance in that they resist language, like Ponge’s. However, Cahun wished for a free flow of information between subject and object, a de-privileging of both, in order for mutual conversation to flow.

Cahun’s objects therefore only work in resistance to interpretation, whereas

Ponge’s objects work only when every drop of information has been dragged from them with human language, and when their resistance has been neutralised. Ponge saw the wilful resistance of objects as a quality to be subdued. Cahun saw possibilities in this passive resistance that Ponge did not. Cahun’s objects of resistance are a liberatory force, rather than an obstructive one.54

While Rowlands has associated Ponge with these ‘objects of resistance,’ no one has yet done so for Cahun. The importance of reading Cahun’s objects as objects of resistance is that it opens up new possibilities for understanding her wider body of work.

As stated in earlier examples of discussions of Cahun’s work, theorists such as Knafo and

Krauss both agree that Cahun’s photographic self-portraits defy interpretation according to considerations of the relationship between subject and object as understood in art history and theory. Yet no theory has yet been formulated for Cahun in order to describe an alternative to these readings. Like her objects, Cahun’s written works and self-portraits also resist easy interpretation, layered as they are with complex language and symbols. It is my assertion that understanding her objects as objects of resistance will also provide a key to understanding Cahun’s wider body of work.

54 Rowlands, E. (2004). 68. 32

A NOTE ON TRANSLATIONS

The main texts by Cahun referred to in this thesis are Vues et visions (Views and visions, 1914), Heroïnes (Heroines, 1925), Aveux non avenus (translated as both

Disavowals and Cancelled confessions, 1930), Les paris sont ouverts (which translates as

All bets are off, 1933-4), and Prenez garde aux objets domestiques! (Beware of domestic objects! 1936). Other materials used include correspondence to and from both Cahun and

Lise Deharme, as well as various other notes in the Cahun collection housed by the Jersey

Heritage Trust. All of these minor sources only exist as untranslated source materials.

Aveux non avenus, Heroïnes, and Prenez garde aux objets domestiques! have all been translated into English, and where these translations are available they have been used as the basis for my interpretation of Cahun’s literary works. The other materials included have not yet been translated in their entirety: sections of Les paris sont ouverts and Vues et visions are available, having been translated previously by other scholars.

Wherever these translations exist I have made use of them in the first instance. Where I have felt that the translation misses the original meaning of the work, I have provided further commentary and explanation.

Cahun’s language is opaque and often obfuscatory, making translation a slow and difficult process. While translation of the correspondence and other sundry notes was a relatively simple process other sources, more literary in nature, presented some challenges. In these works, contemporary events with which only Cahun and her immediate circle were aware of are occasionally referenced, as well as colloquialisms from the era, and political events of the day, which required a wide-reaching understanding of both language and Cahun’s contemporaneous culture in order to attempt

33 translations. These elements are combined with a strong, poetic voice which renders any literal translation of the text impossible. Cahun was an obscurantist, and readers in French had to read closely in order to understand her original meaning. Thus, any great translation will capture her meaning as best as possible while sacrificing some of the content, and a good translation will provide at least a sense of her meaning, or as is often the case with Cahun’s work, several, layered interpretations of the text.

The expertise and time required to translate these works in their entirety was not possible so, for the purposes of this thesis, I have performed conscientious translations of the most relevant passages. Where these translations are my own, they are marked in the footnotes as such. Thus, any potential differences in interpretation that may arise due to my translations are my own responsibility.

Cahun’s written works certainly deserve more examination than they have received so far. The difficulty of teasing meaning from her words is very much in keeping with the argument of this thesis: Cahun herself as writer, and her works, resisted definition, as she moved between styles and genres, poetry and prose, fiction and non- fiction, burying her meaning in layers of wordplay.

THESIS STATEMENT AND CHAPTER SUMMARY

This thesis positions Claude Cahun’s plastic objects as theoretical objects that provide a key to reading Cahun’s life and work, including her literary, photographic, and book illustrations. Cahun’s theorisation, production, and use of objects constructed them as agents of social and political action. An understanding of her deliberations on the

34 nature and use of plastic objects, as well as gendered objectivity, is crucial to an understanding of her methodologies and output as a whole. I will, in the first instance, discuss theoretical frameworks which will help to further illuminate her position, particularly with regard to object manufacture. Cahun’s early literary works, and her later political tracts, all help to illuminate her stance on the theoretical possibilities of objects and will be discussed at length. In the final instance, an in-depth analysis and discussion of the nature of Cahun’s work with objects, in the fields of sculpture, photography and political resistance in the form of performance will be undertaken, in order to provide an analysis of the ways in which Cahun’s thinking on the nature and importance of objects culminated in a new theoretical framework.

Claude Cahun’s theorisation, production, and use of objects constructed them as agents of social and political action in order to disrupt the status quo. Reading Cahun’s work through this lens provides the impetus to re-evaluate her oeuvre and her relationship to the surrealists, and to the broader avant-garde. In particular, this focus provides an opportunity to consider Cahun’s political activism as an important, integrated component of her artistic endeavours. While the way in which Cahun’s photography and performance of her personal identity blurred established gender categories has received significant scholarship, this thesis argues the disruption of categories of subject and object provides a useful framework for understanding her wider body of work. Cahun’s work with plastic objects is an extension of her previous literary and photographic works, and her exploration of objects culminates in her resistance action on Jersey during the second world war and explores the notion of Cahun as object.

To understand Cahun’s object manufacture I will first attempt to locate it within the academic and philosophical body of object theory. In chapter one I will begin by examining past and current theories of the object, in order to draw out tensions relevant 35 to a discussion of Cahun’s objects and their manufacture. Prior to her experiments in object production Cahun created a considerable body of literary work, including fiction, poetry, modern prose and political tracts. I will conduct a partial survey of these works in chapter two, with an emphasis on those writings in which Cahun discussed objects and their significance. Cahun’s writing makes it apparent that her interest in objects and their potential sphere of influence began in her teenage years and developed towards a working theory which would come to the fore during her time of experimental object making and political association with the surrealist group in Paris during the mid-1930s. These earlier works suggest Cahun’s association with the surrealist group at this point was not only a matter of political affiliation but also the culmination of more than a decade of Cahun’s own thinking about the significance of objects.

Another important aspect of Cahun’s writing on objects was her use of gender.

Specifically, Cahun explored gender in relation to traditional understandings of subject and object relations, both active and passive, and the gendered assumptions made about activity and passivity of subject/object relations, both within artistic practice and the wider social sphere. As explored in this introduction, her examinations of and experimentation with gender identity have been discussed with relation to her self- portraits, and some of her published works, by writers such as Latimer and Shaw.

However, her concern with gender has not yet been examined within the field of object theory as it relates to her plastic practice.

In chapter three I will provide a detailed analysis of the two aforementioned objects created by Cahun in 1936, in the light of this new understanding of her conceptualisation of objects prior to their production. These objects are also extremely important in their associations with her political beliefs which were always her core concern. In chapter four I will also discuss Cahun’s apparent return to photography and 36 how she modified this practice by returning not to self-portraiture, but by capturing images of objects and assemblages which stood in place of bodily matter.

Chapter five examines Cahun’s work with the resistance movement on the Island of Jersey during the second world war, and the ways in which her object manufacture synthesised with her political ideas to create concrete objects of resistance. In this way

Cahun’s objects played with the notion of resistance on more than one level: as actors in a political resistance network, and as art objects whose meaning resisted traditional methods of interpretation.

By re-examining Cahun’s work in relation to these objects I will demonstrate that re-reading her other work, both literary and photographic, with reference to these important objects creates new frameworks by which Cahun and her work can be understood. Cahun as an individual had a lot to resist – as a woman, a lesbian, and a

Jewish intellectual, as a left-wing radical, and finally as a political prisoner. Cahun’s life began in natural opposition to the status quo, and she continued to work from this oppositional position throughout her life. If Cahun’s inscrutability is not examined as part of her larger intent to employ defiance and resistance as a means of communicating her ideas but is merely accepted as the personal quality of being mysterious and ultimately unreadable, then her intent can only ever be partially recognised.

37

CHAPTER ONE: OBJECT THEORY

38

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS

This chapter sets out to survey theories of the object which inform discussions of art and social action in the twentieth century, in order to further clarify the terms of discussion of Cahun’s plastic object manufacture. There exists already extensive scholarship on the nature of objects and their relationship to human society, therefore in this chapter I have selected a cross-section of exemplary scholarship in these areas in order to survey each of the theories which are most of relevance to Cahun’s own object work. In this chapter I discuss key theories regarding mediation, agency, and the dissolution of boundaries between subject and object. The ways in which Cahun’s own work on objects was informed by various positions on objects that were circulating at the time of their production is canvassed, as well as current theories of the object. In order to establish a framework for the ways in which Cahun’s objects resisted, this chapter introduces some key statements Cahun made about objects, and some of her work in relation to selected understandings of objects. This discussion of objects is motivated by

Cahun’s own work throughout the 1920s and 30s, which repeatedly returned to a concern with objects, specifically the importance of objects in the world, and the question of their ability to communicate with and influence human subjects.

In this way, by following Cahun’s interests, the thesis constructs her plastic art as ‘theoretical objects’ in the sense Mieke Bal and Hubert Damisch suggest, which can both generate theoretical discourse and engage us in critical reflection. Put simply, in general terms theoretical objects prompt you to think, but they don’t tell you what to think. Hanneke Grootenboer frames this as, “not so much a method as an attitude, a way of looking to art rather than at it, in order to understand what it does as much as what it

39 is.”1 Cahun’s often contradictory or confounding stance on the nature and importance of objects also revealed the tensions which exist between competing theoretical approaches in various discourses on objects. Furthermore, while Cahun did not directly state her own theory of the object, her plastic artworks can be understood as theoretical objects, that is, as forms of thinking and reflecting about 20th century experience, and the means of resisting alienation and exploitation.

The surrealist exhibition of 1936 was the culmination of several years’ investigation into the nature of objects, conducted by various artists and writers associated with the group, most notably Breton’s musings on the power of object encounters in works such as his novel Nadja (1928) and Dalí’s experiments with objets surréaliste and symbolically functioning objects. Dalí also wrote several articles on the relationship between subject and object between 1928 and 1936, and while Cahun does not explicitly refer to these works as influences on her own, their effect can nevertheless be felt in both her objects and her published tracts of the 1930s.

Marx’s stinging critique of modernity, in which he had identified that humanity’s interactions and intrinsic worth were dominated by the concerns of capitalist methods of production, establishes objects and their manufacture as central to modern life. Many of

Cahun’s works, for example, Un air de famille (a family resemblance) (1936) directly referenced the experience of alienation and the exploitation of labour, in particular, of women. In considering how objects figure in the modern subject’s experience of alienation, the discussion in this chapter then follows various historical materialist perspectives and their importance to surrealist practice. Cahun’s approach to objects departed from a strict historical materialist framework in one key respect: objects are

1 Grootenboer, H. (2013). Treasuring the gaze: Intimate vision in late eighteenth-century eye miniatures. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 9. 40 capable of influencing the actions of the people around them, but according to Cahun their influence is not purely of a physical nature; part of an object’s ability to fascinate us lies in its secrecy, and that part of it exists beyond our comprehension. In this respect the dual character of the object reflects the two key dimensions of surrealism, in both its revolutionary critique of bourgeois society, and its appeal to the liberatory power of the unconscious.

Writing after Marx, many theorists from the surrealists’ contemporary Walter

Benjamin through to Jean Baudrillard and later scholars such as Ulrich Lehmann would continue to interrogate objects and their relationship to and influence on human nature and society. The chapter then discusses German philosopher and social theorist Theodor

Adorno’s exploration of the object’s ability to mediate interactions with human subjects.

Both Adorno and later theories of the object, such as Graham Harmon’s object-oriented ontology (OOO), also discussed in this chapter, can be used as a key to reading aspects of agency in Cahun’s work.

Harman’s OOO bears particular relevance to the work of Cahun and surrealist object manufacture in its attempts to de-privilege the subject within subject/object interactions, an idea also pursued by Bruno Latour and Tim Morton with their discussions of quasi-subjects and quasi-objects, and later by political theorist Jane Bennett whose theory imbues objects with their own agency. My discussion of these various, often competing theories of the object culminates in a suggested direction that one could take in utilising these theories as a basis for understanding Cahun’s own work.

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CONTEMPORARY CRITIQUES – SURREALISM AND THE OBJECT

The French art historian Sarane Alexandrian claimed in 1969 that “the object is an even more typically surrealist creation than the collage.”2 His assertion was made at least partially in response to the success of objects in representing the beautiful/disturbing dialectic within Breton’s ‘convulsive beauty’: the notion that true beauty must be disconcerting in order to affect its audience.3 This beauty, which was an attempt to simultaneously evoke feelings of both attraction and revulsion in the viewer, was rooted in Freud’s notions of the unheimlich, or the uncanny or uncomfortable. Breton’s conception of convulsive beauty was also closely tied to his talismanic concept of the

‘marvellous’. As he stated: “the marvelous is always beautiful, anything marvelous is beautiful, in fact only the marvelous is beautiful.”4 Breton’s experiences in the flea market, and reminiscences of childhood delight in collecting pebbles met at just this theoretical point: the moment of shocked recognition of something new and strange, when the eye alighted on a utilitarian, discarded or natural object, stripped of context, revealed as something unique and, until this moment, unknowable. The feeling of the marvellous meets the jarringly pleasant sensation invoked by discovering an object of convulsive beauty. In Breton’s philosophy, only art which provoked this dissonant sensation was worth creating.

Speaking on a lecture tour in Prague in 1935, Breton introduced the recent focus of surrealist concerns which he termed the ‘crisis of the object’:

2 Alexandrian, S. (1985). Surrealist art. New York: Thames and Hudson. 140. 3 “Convulsive Beauty will be veiled-erotic, fixed-explosive, magic-circumstantial or will not be.” Breton, A., & Caws, M. A. (1987). Mad love (French modernist library). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 19. 4 Breton, A., Seaver, R., & Lane, H. R. (1969). Manifestoes of surrealism. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 14. 42

It is essentially on the object that the more and more clear-sighted eyes of Surrealism have remained open in recent years…It is the very attentive examination of the numerous recent speculations that this object has publicly given rise to (the oneiric object, the symbolic object, the real and virtual object, the , etc.), and this examination alone, that will allow one to understand all the implications of the present temptation of Surrealism. It is essential that interest be focused on this point.5

Breton had addressed this ‘crisis of the object’, and proposed an answer in the creation of surrealist objects (that is, the concretisation of imagined or dreamed objects), as early as the first surrealist manifesto (1924):

Man, that inveterate dreamer, daily more discontent with his destiny, has trouble assessing the objects he has been led to use, objects that his nonchalance has brought his way, or that he has earned through his own efforts, almost always through his own efforts, for he has agreed to work, at least he has not refused to try his luck (or what he calls his luck!).6

The conception of surrealist objects, which, as an experiment in convulsive beauty, were to be both “problematic and troubling (problématique et troublant)”, was lauded by Dalí in his article on Millet’s The angelus (1933) as “surrealism’s most lucid and prophetic moment” and which “proposed to realize as closely as possible, as a means of faithful verification, delirious objects designed to be put in to circulation, that is to say to intervene, to collide commonly, on a daily basis with life’s other objects in the clear light of reality.”7 Dalí called them delirious, Cahun irrational, but their essential character remained the same: as Breton stated, “for a total revision of real values, the plastic work of art will either refer to a purely internal model or will cease to exist.”8 For Cahun, the plastic work of art would become an object whose language needed to be interpreted,

5 Breton, A., et al. (1969). 257. 6 Breton, A., et al. (1969). 10. 7 Malt, J. (2004). Obscure objects of desire: Surrealism, fetishism, and politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 87. 8 Bates, D. V. (2003). Photography and surrealism: Sexuality, colonialism and social dissent. London: I. B. Tauris. 75. 43 before it could be understood by the viewer. Cahun believed this could only be achieved by resistance to interpretation, a resistance to the natural instinct of its audience to ascribe quotidian meanings to everyday objects.

In 1931, Dalí instigated an investigation into what he termed ‘symbolically functioning objects’, an experiment which is discussed in more detail in chapter three as an important precursor to Cahun’s own object manufacture throughout the period of

1935-7. Dalí claimed that art should be committed to what he called ‘the poetic autonomy of things’9, and whereas Breton thought the importance of objects lay in their effect on the human subject, Dalí thought objects mattered precisely because of their existence, their ‘thingness’.10 As I will argue, this point of view can also be found in Cahun’s work with objects. Roger Rothman states that Dalí believed “the role of the artist was not to identify particular things that best serve the subject, but instead to liberate all things – especially the tiniest of things – from the minds that would control them.”11 I will argue that with her objects, Cahun attempted not only to free objects from the constraints of their human subject, but to then use the freedom of her newly liberated objects to free the subject in turn.

In 1928 Dalí described the beauty of mass-produced industrial objects, and claimed that they displayed a “spirituality and nobility of the object that is beautiful in itself.”12 In 1936, in her tract Beware domestic objects!, Cahun herself would argue that humanity’s complacency with regards to the power inherent in objects had led them to ignore the intrinsic beauty of those particular objects which Marx described as

‘commodities’: objects manufactured and acquired for their utilitarian value only.

9 Dalí, S., and Finkelstein, H. (1998). The collected writings of Salvador Dalí. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 80. 10 Rothman, R. (2016). Object-oriented surrealism; Salvador Dalí and the poetic autonomy of things. Culture, Theory and Critique, 57:2. 186 11 Rothman, R. (2016). 186 12 Dalí, S. (1998). 59 44

Influenced by Graham Harman’s theory of object-oriented ontology (OOO), which I will examine in further detail later in this chapter, Roger Rothman argues that these early surrealist objects are therefore best understood through the writings of

Salvador Dalí, rather than those of Andre Breton or Georges Bataille. Rothman makes the claim that “the most object-oriented thinker of the Surrealist movement was Dalí.”13

Unlike Dalí and Cahun, Breton ultimately concluded that objects are enlivened by human subjects interacting with them: that in and of themselves, objects are still ultimately passive.14 in Dalí’s writings “the human subject is understood as a mere thing among other things in the world.”15 This de-privileging of the human subject over the object is something Cahun would also closely consider.

One of the objects Cahun created was a disembodied eye, floating between a cloud and text. As discussed in chapter three, this object owes a lot in terms of its apparent symbology to Dalí’s Un Chien Andalu of 1929. Dalí was particularly fascinated by the eye, and he asked “what would an eyeball do if it were suddenly freed from the skull that holds it and the brain that controls its movements? What if an eyeball were released from the subject-object relation and set upon the world as one object among others?”16 In

Cahun’s eyeball, and the accompanying text, one can see Dalí’s concerns reflected. Both

Cahun and Dalí strove for what Bryant called a “democracy of objects.”17

Dalí’s foundational work on the nature and importance of objects prefigures the work that Breton and Cahun would perform with regards to objects as agents of social change in the lead up to the surrealist object exhibition of 1936. Dalí’s influence on

Cahun’s own thoughts is never overly referred to in her own writing on the subject, but

13 Rothman, R. (2016). 180. 14 Rothman, R. (2016). 182. 15 Rothman, R. (2016). 179. 16 Rothman, R. (2016). 188. 17 Rothman, R. (2016). 188. 45 nevertheless can be traced through these important early works. As I will expand in the following chapters, Dalí and Cahun’s ideas on the importance and autonomy of objects continue to grow together over the next several years. Dalí also wrote in 1932 of

“Psychoatmospheric-anamorphic objects”, in which he described specifically surrealist objects as “acting and growing under the sign of eroticism.”18 As I will contend in chapter three, Cahun also wished for her objects a kind of sensual communication much akin to

Dalí’s own, exhorting the viewers of her objects to touch them in the dark.

Rothman claims for the three protagonists of surrealism that “Breton’s idealism incorporates things into a dialectically expanding subjectivity, while Bataille’s materialism provokes the mutual annihilation of subject and object. Only Dalí’s approach insists upon the ontological persistence of things outside of human subjectivity.”19 Like

Cahun, Dalí concept of objects is democratic; he argues for the freedom of all objects, human and non-human. Rothman goes so far as to conclude that, because of his theory of the relationship between subject and object, Dalí should not ever have been considered a surrealist.20 In this Dalí’s involvement with the surrealist group also parallels Cahun’s own, as Cahun was never truly considered a surrealist either, although unlike Dalí the relationship between Breton and Cahun was never abruptly severed.

While it is apparent that Cahun’s own thoughts on objects certainly drew from those of her contemporaries with whom she worked closely, it nevertheless stood as unique. In order to understand Cahun’s objects one must understand the other theories, both political and poetic, which informed Cahun’s thoughts, and much of her creative output.

18 Dalí, S. (1998). 245. 19 Rothman, R. (2016). 193. 20 Rothman, R. (2016). 192. 46

MARXIST THEORIES OF THE OBJECT

An investigation of Cahun’s motivation in the production and discussion of objects pivots on an understanding of her personal philosophies and politics. Importantly,

Cahun was involved in several groups with socialist underpinnings, such as the AEAR

(L'Association des écrivains et artistes révolutionnaires, or Society of revolutionary writers and artists). Her slow disenchantment with Marxist groups in Paris was, as I will discuss in chapter four, due to her flagging faith in the ability of many of her contemporary artists and writers to adequately address social issues: specifically, how contemporary modes of production (of objects in industrial manufacture) were objectifying and exploiting large sections of society.

Cahun’s critiquing of objects bore, in some parts, close relations to Marx’s critique of what he termed the ‘circuit of capital’, in which the non-owners, the working classes, are responsible for the creation of objects which they will never possess. For

Marx then, objects were central in the alienation of the working classes in modern life, as workers were themselves alienated from the objects which they produced. As Marx claimed:

the worker cannot use the things he produces to keep alive or to engage in further productive activity... The worker's needs, no matter how desperate, do not give him a licence to lay hands on what these same hands have produced, for all his products are the property of another.21

21 Ollman, B. (1977). Alienation: Marx’s conception of man in a capitalist society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 143. 47

Marx stated that the one thing all man-made objects have in common in terms of value is human labour22: that is, it is the interaction of humans with objects, in their manufacture and distribution, which gives them value. As he wrote; “A use-value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because human labour in the abstract has been embodied or materialised in it.”23 Marx was of course concerned with use-value in so far as it pertains to the value of labour within the capitalist market, and thus with the working conditions, lifestyles and recompense of men (and perhaps women) for their labour. His concern was therefore of a material nature. He did however ponder the nature of the human/object relationship as an expression of fulfilment of desire: “A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference.”24

While Marx’s primary concern was with value in terms of commercial value, nevertheless his definition is a starting point for the various surrealist attempts to describe the nature of the relationship between human beings, and the objects with which they interacted on a daily basis. Marx described what he called ‘useful’ objects as things which were “an assemblage of many properties, and may therefore be of use in various ways”25 Nevertheless, Marx was also willing to concede that human beings were also capable of ascribing value to objects that falls outside his own definition of use-value, and that emotional attachment to objects could imbue them with a value which at least partly stemmed from a non-commercial concern:

22 Marx, K. (1867). Capital: A critique of political economy. volume I: The process of capitalist production. Retrieved from http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/marx-capital-a-critique-of-political-economy- volume-i-the-process-of-capitalist-production. 46. 23 Marx, K. (1867). 46. 24 Marx, K. (1867). 42. 25 Marx, K. (1867). 43. 48

A thing can be useful, and the product of human labour, without being a commodity. Whoever directly satisfies his wants with the produce of his own labour, creates, indeed, use-values, but not commodities. In order to produce the latter, he must not only produce use-values, but use-values for others, social use-values. Lastly, nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value.26

The fetishism of commodities as described by Marx 27 is particular to the human labour which is attached to objects, it is a human perception of differing forms of labour, and the perceived skill and effort involved, which charges the object with not only value, but also meaning. In terms of commodification, this has an impact on the objects’ perceived commercial value, however for an artist like Cahun this perception of the value of human interaction with the object would result in a more ephemeral, philosophical value which Marx had not considered. This ‘fetishism’ as defined by Marx is also of particular relevance to art objects. Cahun and Breton among others in the group sought as I shall discuss to declass art and culture; to create an egalitarianism not only of people, as envisioned by Marx, but also a democracy of objects, in which subject and object interact freely in a sensual, non-hierarchical fashion.

In a recent examination of Marxist theory as it relates to modernist investigations of the object, Christina Kiaer has discussed the potential agency of objects as theorised by the Russian Constructivists. Kiaer states that, unlike traditional interpretations of radical art objects which seek to abolish bourgeois ideas of fine art and the attendant commercial value of objects, that Constructivism instead sought “to harness the power of the commodity fetish”28 in the service of socialism. Kiaer suggests that, in a similar vein to the surrealists, Constructivist objects can be used to inform and enrich the relationships

26 Marx, K. (1867). 47-8 27 Marx, K. (1867). 84. 28 Kiaer, C. (2005). Imagine no possessions: the socialist objects of Russian constructivism. Cambridge: The MIT Press. 125. 49 that exist between people, rather than distance them from each other as is commonly understood within the Marxist model. As she states, “whereas Marx laments that the commodity fetish resulted in ‘material relations between persons and social relations between things,’ [Constructivist Boris] Arvatov wants to recuperate thing like relations between persons and social relations between things for the benefit of proletarian culture.”29

The founder of Constructivism, Alexander Rodchenko wrote in Paris in 1925,

“Objects in our hands should also be equal, also be comrades, and not black, gloomy slaves like they have here.”30 In beginning to formulate a theory of objects to serve the

Russian socialist ideal, Rodchenko identified what the surrealists also saw in their post- war Paris: “black, gloomy slaves” in need of liberation. While Kiaer’s research successfully discusses the idea of the power of an object to influence the human subject and brings to our attention that the investigation of this power was not limited to the research of the surrealists at roughly the same time, their political aims and individual results differed remarkably. Significantly, critic Duy Lap Nguyen argues that Kiaer has missed the point of Marx’s argument with regards to commodity fetishism and has thus misrepresented the Constructivists’ interrogation of capitalism as a whole. Nguyen asserts that the underlying idea of “the ‘socialist object’” was predicated on this misunderstanding of Marxist theory, and under the New Economic Plan “merely served to perpetuate capitalism by unwittingly affirming the fetishism of labour upon which capitalism is founded,”31 and as I shall argue, Cahun’s methodology and execution

29 Kiaer, C. (2005). 32. 30 Lavrentiev, A., Bowlt, J. E, Gambrell, J. & Rodchenko A. (2005). Experiments for the future: Diaries, essays, letters and other writings. New York: The Museum of Modern Art. 169. 31 Nguyen, D. L. (2014) Imagine no possessions: the socialist objects of Russian Constructivism. Russian Journal of Communications, 6.2. 222. 50 differed in several important respects from these other socialist studies regarding the importance of objects.

Sociologist Professor Christian Fuchs has argued that Marx’s description of capitalist exchange describes not only the trading of physical commodities, but also a form of communication. Fuchs argues that this is described by the transferring of objects from one person to another, as well as through the labour exchange and therefore labourer’s relationships to, and communication with, the objects they produce.32 Fuchs suggests that the closest Marx ever came to discussing what Fuchs describes as modes of communication, with relation to people and the objects they handled or transmitted, was through the analysis of traffic or exchange in a capitalist economy.33 Writing on Marx with similar concerns in mind, Baudrillard claimed that:

the Marxist theory of production is irredeemably partial, and cannot be generalised…the theory of production (the dialectical chaining of contradictions linked to the development of productive forces) is strictly homogenous with its object – material production – and is non- transferable, as a postulate or theoretical framework, to contents that were never given for it in the first place.34

While Baudrillard claimed that Marx’s theories were “non-transferable,” Fuchs contends that Marx laid the ground for a communication theory through his description of the relationship between workers and objects, and that this area has been ignored or dismissed by the vast majority of analysts in the intervening period.

While Fuchs’ emphasis is on proving a predictive analysis of modern media and associated technologies, his analysis of Marxist communication theory is also relevant to

32 Fuchs, C. (2009). Grounding critical communication studies: An inquiry into the communication theory of Karl Marx. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 34.1. 16. 33 Fuchs, C. (2009). 16. 34 Baudrillard, J., & Levin, C. (1981). For a critique of the political economy of the sign. United States: Telos Press, 165. 51 understanding of a kind of ‘Marxist object theory’, which can be applied to Cahun’s own theories regarding the object. Cahun and Marx were both concerned with the alienation of workers, however by the 1930s Cahun’s theorisation differed in several distinct respects. Where Marx saw the physical process of commodity production as the alienating factor, Cahun declared that because the working classes were closer than other citizens to the means of production, they were therefore closer to the true meanings of the objects which they created and handled. For Cahun, the alienation occurred when layers of prescribed meaning were attributed to objects, obscuring their truth. As she stated at the zenith of her object manufacture in 1936:

In contemporary society, we are not all or always able to make ourselves pliant, good conductors of liberating forces, and we surprise ourselves sometimes in resembling more the little mimic than the grand paranoiac…on all sides, our reality founders: the shackles of forced labour, mind-destroying, the golden bridle of the passions will be broken and broken again, perhaps before the fading of the photographs of perishable objects which are displayed before my eyes.35

While Marx’ theory of alienation is important to Cahun’s philosophy with particular regards to the importance of objects and object manufacture, ultimately

Cahun’s own theory diverged from the Marxist canon. Writing in 1936, Cahun declared that the worker was more likely to understand or develop an affinity with surrealist objects than less, due to their handling and creating of objects on a daily basis. She stated that workers alone were, at that point in the surrealist experiment, the only people capable of understanding the intrinsic meaning of the objects in front of them, rather than any symbolic value they may possess.36 The idea of objects containing hidden meaning, or in her words, speaking a “secret language”37 which humankind would struggle to

35 Cahun, C. (1936) Prenez garde aux objets domestiques. Cahiers d'Art, vol. 11. 45. 36 Cahun, C. (1936). 45. 37 Cahun, C. (1914). Vues et visions. Mercure de France, no. 406. 272. 52 understand, surrounded as they are by layers of socially-prescribed meanings and actions, is a theory which Cahun first wrote about in 1916. By 1934, Cahun’s beliefs on Marxist theories of production and commodity fetishism became apparent through the publication of her first major political tract, Les paris sont ouverts (All Bets Are Off), I will trace

Cahun’s interest in these ideas through her writings in the next chapter.

One of Cahun’s objects created in 1936, Un air de famille (a family resemblance), is an excellent example of Cahun’s representation of working class women as producers of “surplus value” within a Marxist definition, surplus value being a value within the labour chain which is not paid for and can best be described as exploitation. The most obvious application of this definition is in the analysis of slavery; however, this theory can also be extended in order to be applied to discussions on the contribution that women make as unpaid members of the work force, largely through home duties (an area which

Marx largely neglected)38. While Marx made passing reference to the emancipation of women and compared their former employment in unregulated industries to exploitation and slavery, he tended to subsume the struggles of women into the general struggle of the working classes. What Marx was lamenting was only the ‘capitalistic’ exploitation of women (and children). Marx appears to have taken less issue with women being exploited for their surplus value production in the form of domestic labour, with husband and children as their employers and clients, and it becomes apparent through the study of her body of work that Cahun had a serious problem with this exclusion.

Cahun’s Un air de famille consisted of the disembodied representation of a woman’s body and could be interpreted as woman as a series of useful objects, giving sustenance to her family, broken down into composite pieces in the process, and never

38 Vogel, L. (2013). Marxism and the oppression of women: Toward a unitary theory. United States: Brill Academic Publishers. 161. 53 considered as a whole. While Marx has been accused of having ignored women in his formulation of capitalist production theory,39 40 Cahun also used her object manufacture to reinsert women into the Marxist dialogue regarding objects and their relationship to the working classes.

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AND THE OBJECT

While Marx was the progenitor of historical materialism, he was not the last to examine the complex human relationship with objects on both a physical and psychological level. Theorists from such wide-reaching disciplines as anthropology, psychology, philosophy and the political sciences have since analysed the multifaceted relationship which exits between human beings and objects, be it those needed for survival, those produced as part of a wider network of production and supply, or those that form part the complex network that exists between human beings and their desires.

Candlin and Guin’s Object reader provides several examples, from Jean Baudrillard’s

Subjective discourse or the non-functional system of objects, in which he explores, among other things, the narcissism inherent in the collection of objects,41 to Griselda Pollock’s

Maternal object: matrixial subject, in which she examines object theory in relation to feminist discussions of the subject/object binary in gendered human relations, and alternative, affective methodologies in the interpretation of objects.42

Professor Ulrich Lehmann, an academic working in the field of material history, in his paper The Uncommon object: Surrealist concepts and categories for the material

39 Hartmann, H. I. (1979). The unhappy marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards a more progressive union. Capital & Class, 3.2. 1–33. 40 Hartsock, N. C. M. (1984). Money, sex and power: Towards a Feminist historical materialism. New York: Longman Higher Education. 41 Guins, R., & Candlin, F. (2009). The object reader. London: Taylor & Francis. 42. 42 Guins, R., & Candlin, F. (2009). 484. 54 world, examines the increasing commercialisation of surrealist art in relation to their primarily socialist values, and provides a unique perspective on the motivation for surrealist object production at this time. Lehmann argues that the surrealist object exhibitions in 1936 and 1938 were, in part, a reaction by a revolutionary group against the increasing acceptance of their previously shocking aesthetics within mainstream cultural production – to put it another way, that having become de rigeur, surrealism sought a way to re-radicalise itself through a change in output from fine art, photography and literature to, in Cahun’s words, “irrational sproutings of flesh”43, as exemplified by their plastic art. Breton himself stated at a lecture in Prague in 1935:

Perhaps the greatest danger threatening Surrealism today is the fact that because of its spread throughout the world, which was very sudden and rapid, the word found favour much faster than the idea and all sorts of more or less questionable creations tend to pin the Surrealist label on themselves.44

Incongruously, at this point Breton was so outraged by the idea of “counterfeiters of surrealism” for commercial purposes that he seriously entertained an idea by Man Ray of introducing a surrealism trademark.45 This idea was never put in to practise, most likely because it did not solve the fundamental problem of commercialisation of their art, and more importantly it was entirely anathema to the reformatory aims of the group. Of particular relevance is Lehmann’s analysis of surrealism’s relationship with radical politics, and their attempts to reconcile art as a commercial enterprise with their radical political stance on capitalism and class. Several of those involved with the group, including Cahun, sought to attempt this by reaffirming their stance on Marxism as a

43 Cahun, C. (1998). Beware domestic objects! (trans.) in P. Rosemont (Ed.), Surrealist women: An international anthology. London: Continuum International Publishing Group. 59. 44 Breton, A., et al. (1969). 257. 45 Breton, A., et al. (1969). 258. 55 political philosophy. As Lehmann states, for the surrealists the most important focus at this time was “Marx’s notion that under commodity production, relations between men take on the form of relations between things. Social and cultural relations are therefore indirect relations mediated through objects.”46 The group’s examination of objects in the light of Marxist materialism was the perfect opportunity to free themselves from previous associations with mainstream culture and commercial success, and to re-insert themselves into the political argument as agents of change. During the latter stages of their experiment, the surrealists extended their exploration of subject/object relations with regards to Marxist class and production theories in order to test the agency of objects. At this stage, the surrealist stance on this appears to shift away from a true materialist approach, as they explored a world in which objects no longer simply mediated relationships between humans but were also capable of unmediated discussions between themselves.

One prominent philosopher who had much to say on historical materialism and

Marxism was Walter Benjamin, who was conflicted in his views of the usefulness of historical materialism as a theoretical framework. While Benjamin expressed concerns as to materialism’s viability as a theory of social constructions, he also wrote shortly before his death in 1940:

Class struggle, which for a historian schooled in Marx is always in evidence, is a fight for the crude and material things without which no refined and spiritual things could exist...There is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a document is never free of barbarism, so barbarism taints the manner in which it was transmitted from one hand to another. The historical materialist therefore dissociates himself from this process of transmission

46 Lehmann, U. (2007). The Uncommon object: Surrealist concepts and categories for the material world, in G. Wood (Ed.), Surreal things: Surrealism and design. London: Victoria & Albert Pubns. 36. My italics. 56

as far as possible. He regards it as his task to brush history against the grain.47

The surrealists’ entire raison d’être was to “brush history against the grain,” to expose the dishonesty of modern life through opposition to the status quo, as had been stated repeatedly by Breton in his manifestoes, and it was this surrealist liberatory force inherent in objects, rather than Marx’s assertion of their role in the oppression of workers, which

Cahun harnessed. In the First Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, Breton declared, “The case against the realistic attitude demands to be examined, following the case against the materialistic attitude.”48 Realism was anathema to truth in the eye of many associated with surrealism, who characterised the ‘real’ as a definition which was applied to objects by human subjects, and claimed that ‘reality’ was in fact created by intervention and intellectual corruption of the original subject matter. These surrealists applied this definition to all forms of human relations, both with each other and with the wider world, tackling such subjects as sexuality and traditional relationships, class, economics, conflict and politics. As the 1920s wore on, the surrealists identified these disparate concerns as one and the same, part of a larger, single ‘reality’ which they required to be deconstructed in order to arrive at the ‘truth’, and indeed this endeavour formed the theoretical and philosophical underpinning of the entire movement. Furthermore, by the 1930s the surrealists had turned their sights towards those “crude and material things without which no refined and spiritual things could exist.” By initiating an experiment into the nature of everyday objects, the surrealists who worked on this project hoped to break down this binary distinction between “crude” and “refined” objects altogether.

47 Benjamin, W. (1988). Illuminations. New York, NY: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. 254-5. 48 Breton, A., et al. (1969). 6. 57

This statement by Benjamin, while written shortly after the fact, nevertheless encapsulated the surrealist politics of object production during the 1930s: the idea that objects are the key to both understanding the plight of the proletariat, and the means by which they will be elevated from their current condition. Rather than drawing a distinction between ‘crude’ and ‘refined’ objects however, the surrealists worked to dissolve the distinction between the two, simultaneously elevating the status of one, and deflating the value of the other, until a throng of objects of no fixed value appeared.

For the surrealists, objects were “portrayed as communicating and interacting with each other without the need for human intervention.”49 This dismissal of the necessity for human intervention in order to activate objects, or to bring meaning to the relationship between objects, was fundamental to the surrealist experiment. Cahun embraced this experiment but took her objects one step further. By introducing gender into her objects,

Cahun was also able to examine the subject/object dichotomy through a discussion of the objectification of women, and the traditional role of woman as object in both art and life: passive, malleable, awaiting action to be performed upon her, to be ‘activated’ by the gaze of the subject. Cahun also agreed with other members of the surrealist group when she argued heavily against prevailing interpretations of Marxist aesthetics in Les paris sont ouverts, which favoured the socialist realism of Soviet Russia, thereby denying the creative agency of many practitioners of modern art and literature, and it was this stance

(among others) which moved her towards collaborations with other socialist dissenters, including Bataille and Breton.

49 Lehmann, U. (2007). 36-7. 58

ADORNO AND THE DICHOTOMY OF SUBJECT AND OBJECT

As highlighted in the previous section, many philosophers and logicians after

Marx continued to build on this theorisation of the human relationship to objects, most notably in regard to consumerism and advertising, a subject analysed by the Frankfurt school, which included Theodor Adorno and his examination of what he termed the

‘culture industry’. Adorno’s early discussions of the mediation of relationship networks between subject and object, which began in Kierkegaard: Construction of the aesthetic in 1933, were formulated concurrently with and independently from Cahun’s own mediations via objects in the mid-1930s, and parallel the development of Cahun’s own theories of subject and object relationships. Adorno ultimately rejected the traditional dialectical model as being too limited.50

Adorno’s original discourse on the relationship between subject and object followed a very prescribed pattern within the school of Hegelian analysis: the idea that images or objects contained a fixed set of keys or codes, and once broken down into their constituent parts could be rebuilt into a new framework of codes which unlocked new meaning. Margherita Tonon describes this as a method “which would make visible a new interpretation of the real.”51 This theory is simultaneously reminiscent of the surrealist stance on imagery and object making, which required a disassembly of apparent meaning in order to present inherent truths, and in direct opposition to their stance on what constituted the ‘real,’ in so far as while the surrealists with whom Cahun was working were engaged in an experiment which sought to break down the prescribed constituents of objects, both physically and symbolically, in order to recombine these parts into a ‘true’

50 Tonon, M. (2013). Theory and the object: Making sense of Adorno’s concept of mediation. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 21.2. 186. 51 Tonon, M. (2013). 187. 59 interpretation of the object, they were also leery of anything which purported to be ‘real’.

‘Real’ for the surrealist group stood in polar opposition to ‘true’, truth to the surrealists being the essential kernel of the thing, while they saw reality as a veneer overlaid upon an object which detracted from its underlying value.52 For the surrealists, their investigation into objects was an investigation of the inherent versus apparent meaning of the objects we are surrounded by on a daily basis, rather than a mere methodology whereby the constituent parts of an object could be taken apart like a jigsaw and reassembled into an equally false object, or the false representation of one (in the manner of Magritte’s pipe). The notion of interpretation of the ‘real’ did not sit well with Cahun and others, such as Breton and Dalí, working within the surrealist oeuvre, as substituting one version of the real for another would therefore be replacing one socially prescribed falsehood with another. Adorno was also ultimately dissatisfied with this method, which merely replaced a whole image with that of what he termed a ‘montage’,53 and in this respect Adorno’s speculation on this problem began to mirror Cahun’s, in that he stepped away from this methodology to one which he termed ‘mediation’, and which concept he first explored in his correspondence with Walter Benjamin in the 1930s.54

Adorno’s rejection of traditional dialectics – because they contain within them a dichotomy of attempting “to achieve something positive by means of negation,”55 which for him represented an irreconcilable methodology – was nevertheless contradictory to

Cahun’s interpretation of objects, including her observations on objects, recorded throughout much of her literary work, which will be discussed in detail in the following chapter. While Adorno sought to reformulate the discussion by introducing a new

52 Breton, A., et al. (1969). 4. 53 Tonon, M. (2013). 187. 54 Tonon, M. (2013). 186. 55 Adorno, T. W. (1990). Negative dialectics. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis. xix. 60 methodology he termed “negative dialectics”, Cahun sought to present objects as a series of irreconcilable, impenetrable messages which in one sense could only be understood by, incongruously, failing to understand them (or at least understanding that they cannot be understood). While Adorno sought only to “free dialectics from such affirmative traits without reducing its determinacy,”56 Cahun wished to discard determinacy altogether.

This is both the heart of Cahun’s theory, and the biggest obstacle to discovering her meaning. Cahun wished to discover truths through opposition, for as she stated, “I think that progress is only made through opposition.”57 Cahun’s experiment utilised such a concept, by attempting to achieve something positive through negation.

In a letter to Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno also stated that “if the use value of things dies,” these objects can come to be charged with new subjectivity, and although the objects develop into illustrations of subjective intentions, this does not eliminate their fundamental nature as objects.58 Rather, the object becomes charged with a new subjectivity, or what art critic and art historian Sven Lütticken refers to as a ‘quasi- subject’.59 As Lütticken states:

Adorno neither attempts to eradicate the object nor does he recoil from the horror of the hybrid; the ruined object, charged with new subjective intentions means, becomes precisely a quasi-subject, one that offers a glimpse of a world beyond the false objectivity constituted by the quasi- natural “necessities” ruling industrial production.60

These ‘quasi-subjects’, a construct first suggested by Morton as an answer to some of the issues raised by the de-privileging of the human subject in object-oriented ontology, is

56 Adorno, T. W. (1990). xix. 57 Cahun, C., & Leperlier, F. (2002). Les ecrits de Cahun. France: Jean-Michel Place. 538. 58 Adorno, T. W. supplement to a letter to Walter Benjamin, August 5, 1935, in Lonitz, H. (Ed). (1994). Adorno/Benjamin Briefwechsel 1928-1940. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. 151–152. 59 Lütticken, S. (2010). Art and thingness, Part I: Breton’s ball and Duchamp’s carrot. e-flux, 13. Retrieved from http://www.e-flux.com/journal/art-and-thingness-part-one-breton%E2%80%99s-ball-and- duchamp%E2%80%99s-carrot/. 60 Lütticken, S. (2010). 61 useful in my examination of objects created by the surrealists for the 1936 Paris exhibition. Adorno was also adamant that Hegel understood that subject and object were sublimated into each other through mediation: “[Hegel] preserves the distinct moment of subjective and objective while grasping them as mediated by one another.”61 Adorno also made reference to “an irrational unit of subject and object”62 and claims that both he and

Hegel are adherents of the role of mediation in performing this, whilst claiming that the subject and object can also remain separate and definable. By contrast, both Cahun’s

“irrational objects” and their subjects must, by her own exhortation, defy conventional methods of communication altogether: her objects will only be able to “speak” if we can

“touch them in the dark.”63 Cahun’s objects were designed not only to communicate, but to do so, paradoxically, in a non-discursive fashion, though a sensual, embodied engagement.

Adorno’s theory of mediation attempted to dissolve the dualism inherent in the relationship between subject and object, by proposing a relationship of co-dependence.64

This theory however was unable to escape the traditional definitions: it was still very much about the subject’s actions upon the object, and that it is through the struggle of interpretation that an object’s true nature will be revealed. Ultimately, Adorno’s theory returned to the Hegelian trap he sought to avoid, by continuing to argue subjectively.

Cahun believed that the dialogue between subject and object must flow both ways if its real meaning is to be discovered, and indeed, that sometimes the subject must be silent and listen to the object before constructive meanings can be built. Cahun also built this dialogue through sensual, embodied object relations, rather than just as communication.

61 Buchwalter, A., Adorno, T. W., & Nicholsen, S. W. (1995). Hegel: Three studies. The Philosophical Review, 104.2. 257. 62 Buchwalter, A., et al. (1995). 257. 63 Cahun, C. (1998). 59. 64 Tonon, M. (2013). 188. 62

OBJECT-ORIENTED ONTOLOGY AND QUASI-OBJECTS

Object-oriented ontology (or OOO) is a relatively new theoretical school of thought, whose key proponents include the previously discussed Timothy Morton, and

Graham Harman, who first coined the term “object oriented philosophy”, which he published in Tool-being: Heidegger and the metaphysics of objects in 2002.65 OOO’s primary aim is to de-privilege the position of the human subject over the inanimate object.

While formulated after the period under discussion, this de-privileging is useful when attempting to understand surrealist object manufacture. The instigators of OOO philosophies, such as Harman, worked to deconstruct the anthropocentric tradition of active subject/passive object dominant within Western Philosophical discourse. In Tool- being: Heidegger and the metaphysics of objects, Harman theorized that the relationship between subject and object is, to a certain extent, one of mutual influence, in that objects under certain conditions may perform the more active role in the relationship dynamic.66

Harman begins by splitting the primary category of ‘object’ into two parts, renaming them ‘real objects’, and ‘sensual objects’. He then applies two further categories, ‘sensual qualities’ and ‘real qualities’. By combining these different categories, as real objects with sensual qualities, or sensual objects with real qualities, and so on, Harman is able to argue that the qualities of objects combine in different ways to create different effects within their relationship networks. This then allows for a deeper understanding of the ways in which objects come to be, and of their ability to influence each other as well as any active human subjects they may come into contact with.

Harman’s and the surrealists’ conceptions of ‘the real’ are different, as Harman gives the

65 Harman, G. (2002). Tool-being: Heidegger and the metaphysics of objects. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Co. 20. 66 Harman, G. (2002). 296. 63 value of ‘real’ as objects understood by intellectual processes. As Breton had stated, this is confused by the categorisation between ‘real’ and ‘true’: intellectually understood properties of objects can be a smokescreen, an artificial, socially prescribed meaning, which obscures the ‘true’ value or meaning of an object.67

The surrealists’ struggle to discover and define the difference between the inherent and apparent meaning of the objects goes to the heart of their definition of real versus true. While the aforementioned surrealists with whom Cahun was working shared

Harman’s aim of de-privileging the human in subject/object relationships, the surrealists’ sought to move beyond the real and therefore would seem at odds with Harman’s emphasis on the ‘real.’ Interestingly, Harman does move closer to the methodologies employed by the surrealists, such as the imagining of the potential of objects. However, in emphasising the real, Harman misses the opportunity for objects to break with the real, which the surrealists felt was so important to a ‘true’ understanding of the importance of subject/object relationships. Harman also stated in Aesthetics as First Policy that “vision of holistic interactions in a reciprocal web . . . this blurring of boundaries between one thing and another, has held the moral high ground in philosophy for too long.”68 The blurring of boundaries is precisely what these surrealists, and Cahun in particular, were chasing in their investigations of object manufacture.

Bruno Latour had also attempted to address some of these concerns when he formulated his theory of ‘quasi-objects’69. Put simply, in Latour’s definition a quasi- object is a man-made object which is capable of performing an action. These quasi- objects perform their true function when they come into contact with a human subject,

67 Breton, A., et al. (1969). 201. 68 Harman, G. (2007) Aesthetics as first philosophy: Levinas and the non-human. Naked Punch 9 (Summer/Fall 2007). 21–30. 69 Latour, B. (1993). We have never been modern. Harlow, Essex: Prentice Hall/Harvester Wheatsheaf. 51. 64 who motivates its potential through an interaction, be that sensual or intellectual.70 As such they stand in opposition to OOO’s argument for the total de-privileging of the human subject, Latour’s quasi-objects requiring as they do activation by the subject in order to fulfil their role as object. This can be used in order to consider a certain respect Cahun’s notion of objects. Cahun wanted not only to broaden out the definition of interaction, but also to reverse the polarity of this argument, so that her objects could perform either or both the active and passive role in any encounter with a subject. Cahun desired her objects to perform their required action in a sensual manner, and to be just as capable of acting on the subject as vice versa.

Tim Morton’s further theorisation of the existence of quasi-subjects, as previously discussed, further extends Latour’s theories in this field, and is useful when applied

Cahun’s work with objects. Morton came to the field of OOO through his studies of ecological theory and environmental crises, although he also works using key theories in these areas regarding subject/object interaction, insofar as they can be extended to apply to a myriad of situations. During the course of Morton’s work in OOO he also devised the concept of the ‘hyperobject’, which he used to describe complex and often semi- abstract objects, such as global warming or plastic pollutants, in order to describe the impact of such large objects.71 Morton’s sub-category of ‘Interobjective hyperobjects’, which he described as those which form relations between multiple objects, and which are often only recognisable by the impression they leave or the impact they have, rather than by any tangible or visibly single form. This sub-category of hyperobjects is particularly interesting when compared to the concepts the surrealists struggled with: modernity, sexuality, and class oppression. These concepts could all potentially be

70 Latour, B. (1993). 51-55. 71 Morton, T. (2010). The ecological thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 130. 65 described as one of Morton’s larger-scale hyperobjects: systems created by the complex interrelationship between the subject and a network of objects, and visible only in their wide-ranging effects. Morton’s hyperobjects present as a particularly intriguing theory with regards to surrealist desires to work against largely abstract concepts, namely what they saw as falsely prescribed realities. While not objects in the traditional sense of the word, surrealist concepts such as ‘real’ and ‘true’ become hyperobjects in Morton’s framework: they are composed of many parts, both concrete and sensual in origin, and recognisable only by the system created by the interactions between different objects, and the effects of these systems are both sensual and intellectual.

These theories, while attempting to break with the traditional analysis of models of subject/object relationships, ultimately work within such frameworks, which are difficult to escape. Cahun and her surrealist collaborators sought to explore the potential to disintegrate these traditional models, and this was exemplified in their object exhibition of 1936, which forms the basis of chapter three of this thesis.

LATOUR AND BENNETT, AND THE AGENCY OF OBJECTS

Latour proposes that objects have agency – that is, that they are capable of acting upon, or influencing, their surroundings, and the persons who inhabit them. He ascribes the previous lack of acknowledgement of this state to the definition of actors and agencies which is most often understood, that is, that of the idea of action as being limited to

‘intentional’ actions, which can, of course, only be carried out by sentient subjects.72 He ascribes this to a basic understanding of ‘causal’ relations, but not a deeper understanding

72 Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 66 of the ‘reflexive’ or ‘symbolic’ domain of social relations. By widening the definition of actors to objects, he theorises that “anything that does modify a state of affairs by making a difference is an actor.”73 Latour is however quick to point out that objects do not replace human actors, but rather supplement the action.74 Latour’s ‘Actor-network theory’

(ANT), as he termed it, was primarily concerned with the importance of objects within social networks, and sought to de-class the traditional relationship between subject and object, in much the same way that the surrealists sought to de-class art and culture with their Paris object exhibition of 1936. Latour’s ANT specifically rejected binary interrogations of traditional subject/object relationships, and therefore notions of ‘true’ and ‘false’, preferring to place value on the complex interrelationships between actors in a social network for their own intrinsic value. Latour is not particularly concerned with the effect of gender within these dynamic systems,75 as such his concept of agency is largely undifferentiated. In this respect Cahun’s highly-attuned attention to issues of gender allows a means to disintegrate the divisions between ‘subject’ and ‘object.’

In his essay of 2004, Why has critique run out of steam?, Bruno Latour suggests that the vast majority of contemporary social criticism utilises one of two approaches, which he terms "the fact position and the fairy position."76 The fairy position is anti- fetishist (in the anthropological sense of the word ‘fetish’, being a cultural artefact or an object imbued with spiritual significance – a very important concept in light of the surrealist 1936 exhibition and its inclusion of ‘fetishes’), arguing that “objects of belief”, such as those situated within religion and the arts, are merely concepts created by the projected wishes and desires of the "naive believer.” Conversely, the “fact position”

73 Latour, B. (2005). 71. 74 Latour, B. (2005). 46. 75 Lykke, N. (2010). Feminist studies: A guide to intersectional theory, methodology and writing. New York: Taylor & Francis. 117. 76 Latour, B. (2004). Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern. Critical Inquiry, 30.2. 273. 67 argues that individuals are dominated, often covertly and without their awareness, by external forces (such as economics and gender).77 He contends that social critics tend to use anti-fetishism against ideas they personally reject; to use “an unrepentant positivist” approach for fields of study they consider valuable: a situation which can only lead to confirmation bias.78 These inconsistencies and double standards go largely unrecognized in social critique because “there is never any crossover between the two lists of objects in the fact position and the fairy position.”79 In this, Latour echoes the philosophical dilemma the surrealists were attempting to address with their object manufacture, who found similar binaries operating within French interwar society: the fetish operating as a reductive symbol of ‘primitive’ races, creating difference (or at the least justifying perceptions of said difference), for example, or the distinction and qualification of skill between the working classes and the bourgeoisie. For the surrealists, working as they were to dissolve categories both within art and culture, and within the wider sphere of cultural and political discourse, this binary of ‘fact’ and ‘fairy’ describes in hindsight exactly that which the group sought to dispel.

Contemporary political theorist Jane Bennett complements and extends upon many of Latour’s theories of object agency, albeit working within a specifically political framework. Bennett states that objects are essentially alive in their complex interrelationships, and therefore possess an ability to influence change.80 Bennett’s central thesis revolves around the idea that much of the time, without consciously realizing it, humanity (acting within a Western tradition) has a tendency to think of objects as passive and stable things, and furthermore, to make the assumption that inanimate

77 Latour (2004). 238. 78 Latour (2004). 241. 79 Latour (2004). 241. 80 Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Durham: Duke University Press. 10- 16. 68 means static and non-acting.81 Subsequently, humans unconsciously navigate their environment under the assumption that they are the sole active subjects in the subject/object relationship. In this fundamental respect, Bennett’s theory not only resonates with the assumed dynamic which Latour found so troubling, but also with

Cahun and the surrealists’ object theory of decades earlier. Much like the surrealists did decades earlier, Bennett wants to dissolve the dualism between subject and object.

Bennett postulates that objects are alive because of their potential to make a difference in the world, to have an effect, to shape the web of interrelationships of which they are a part. Conversely, humans aren’t sovereign or autonomous subjects; we are ourselves composed of a complex web of active bodies and materials.

For Bennett, there are no such things as ‘objects’ or ‘subjects’ from a certain perspective: they (and we) are never entirely passive or stable; they are crystallizations of processes, and everything is in process, constantly undergoing transformation, constantly experiencing modification. Therefore, according to Bennett, all matter is alive and, and always in process, a state of flux: a complex, interwoven web of materials, all affecting each other, competing, forming alliances, initiating new processes and dissipating others. Humans are inextricably enmeshed in these webs that Bennett calls

‘assemblages.’ ‘Assemblages’ as a definition also has a strong association with surrealist experiments in object manufacture, as it was a term frequently employed by the group to describe their sculptures consisting of found objects. Perhaps, in hindsight, Cahun’s constant arranging and re-arranging of her object constructions could be understood as an attempt to visualise the vibrancy of her materials.

Bennett’s primary concern in her analyses of object agency is within the sphere of modern politics, which is particularly relevant to Cahun’s period of association with

81 Bennett, J. (2010). 56. 69 surrealism, in terms of a closer reading of Bennett’s theories on how objects play a part in political consciousness. While Bennett’s examples often operate on a far grander scale

(for example, a power blackout which affected 50 million US residents in 2003), they are significant to my contention that Cahun’s objects from 1936 onwards functioned as agents of political resistance, both in terms of the plastic art displayed at the Ratton Gallery exhibition, and later the protest objects (notes) produced on Jersey during the Nazi occupation. Bennett’s theories with regards to agency can be utilised to offer an insight into the aims of Cahun’s objects in the Ratton exhibition. In Bennett’s own words, even an object which has become an actor never acts entirely alone: “Its efficacy or agency always depends on the collaboration, cooperation, or interactive interference of many bodies and forces.”82 Here Bennett concedes that, like Latour, she is not willing to concede an active autonomy to any one object, however unlike other theorists who object to the premises of OOO she does not qualify whether the “collaboration, cooperation or interactive interference” occurs as a result of a relationship with an active or passive subject, a network of other objects, or a combination of any or all of the above possibilities

– only that these actions are performed by other “bodies and forces.” In the context of

Cahun’s object manufacture this is a significant statement: the objects created by members of the surrealist group in the 1930s were not intended as merely static objets d’art, but as agents provocateurs, as actors expressing opinions and provoking reactions, often visceral or erotic, in their audience, while the audience themselves project meaning onto the works on display. In the surrealist experiment, object and subject were required to collaborate, in order to extract meaning from the experience. One such piece exhibited at the 1936 exhibition is the well-known sculpture by , Boule suspendu

(Suspended ball). Originally conceived and created in 1931, it was chosen for the

82 Bennett, J. (2010). 21. 70 surrealists’ exhibition as an inclusion not only because of its obvious sexual imagery, but also for its sensual quality which required its audience to imagine a kind of bodily movement in which the still item rocked, in order to understand its intent.

Bennett’s description of objects also bears a striking resemblance to Breton’s earlier analysis of the importance of objects within his theory of the ‘marvellous’. Her epiphany at the sight of a gutter full of debris is similar to Breton’s childhood delight in discovering the shape and texture of seemingly random pebbles on a beach, or random items discovered at a flea market, which are then imbued with new meaning. Breton and the surrealists had interests similar to contemporary object theorists in many ways: this conception of the marvellous as it relates to objects gives them an agency, in that they act on a person’s imagination, and therefore on their decisions to think or behave in particular ways. As Bennett states, “Thing-power perhaps has the rhetorical advantage of calling to mind a childhood sense of the world as filled with all sorts of animate beings, some human, some not, some organic, some not.”83 The childhood sense of marvel, which

Breton believed needed to be reclaimed by adults, is therefore also described and elaborated upon by Bennett, in her claim that it can be activated by imbuing these objects with agency.

ANTI-MATERIALISM

Many of the pieces in the 1936 exhibition, including both of the objects created by Cahun, were a combination of plastic and found objects: everyday items reworked by the imagination. Much like Bennett’s gutter debris, the surrealist trouvaille was not simply a found object, but one that in some way defied explanation. It was frequently, at

83 Bennett, J. (2010). 20. 71 least initially, resistant to easy interpretation, and while it was rare and unique, it was often so only in the eye of its beholder and was not necessarily of any commercial value.

In his essay Black materialism: Surrealist faces the commercial world (2007), Krzysztof

Fijalkowski states that the found object is “unlikely to be a refugee from the everyday commodity sphere; on the contrary, it was viewed as a lost object from the underside of progress, from a secret, ‘other’ part of capitalist exchange.”84 Breton described the discovery of just such an object in his 1928 novel Nadja. Finding himself in a flea market, his gaze alighted upon an everyday object for sale on a table, the kind of object which he described as capable of abruptly “admitting me to an almost forbidden world of sudden parallels, petrifying coincidences, and reflexes particular to each individual, of harmonies struck as though on the piano, flashes of lights that would make you see, really see.”85

As Cahun herself wrote in 1934:

The most revolutionary experiment in poetry under the capitalist regime having been incontestably, for France and perhaps for Europe the Dadaist- surrealist experiment, in that it has tended to destroy all the myths about art that for centuries have permitted the ideologic as well as economic exploitation of painting, sculpture, literature, etc. (e.g. the frottages of , which, among other things, have been able to upset the scale of values of art-critics and experts, values based chiefly on technical perfection, personal touch and the lastingness of the materials employed), this experiment can and should serve the cause of the liberation of the proletariat. It is only when the proletariat has become aware of the myths on which capitalist culture depends, when they have become aware of what these myths and this culture mean for them and have destroyed them, that they will be able to pass on to their own proper development. The positive lesson of this negating experiment, that is to say its transfusion among the proletariat, constitutes the only valid revolutionary poetic propaganda.86

84 Fijalkowski, K. (2007). Black materialism: Surrealist faces the commercial world, in G. Wood (Ed.), Surreal things: Surrealism and design. London: Victoria & Albert Pubns. 109. 85 Breton, A. (1978). What is surrealism? In P. Rosemont (Ed.), Selected writings. London: Pluto Press. 61. 86 Young, A. (1981). and after: Extremist modernism and English literature. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 123. 72

This statement so neatly encapsulated the surrealist ideals of 1936 that André Breton quoted it in full in his 1936 essay, What is surrealism? Though speaking specifically about art and its commercial exploitation, Cahun’s sentiments here sit at the heart of the definition of anti-materialism: objects do not automatically negatively affect our relationship with other people, but rather the value we place on those objects. Again,

Cahun and the surrealists struck at the notion of ‘real’ value, preferring instead the ‘true’ meaning of objects. The truth of these objects is, once de-classed, they are all of equal merit, equally capable of producing a response, and being responded to.

AGENTS OF RESISTANCE

Also important to an understanding of Cahun’s object work, alongside mediation, agency, and the dissolution of boundaries between subject and object, is the notion of resistance. In this respect Cahun not only proposed an antithetical ‘synthesis’ of subject and object, of mutually incompatible dialogues (at least within western traditional philosophies), but that these ideas only worked when pitted against each other: their mutual incompatibility was what created their mediation and allowed the viewer to understand the secret language of her objects. The relationship between subject and object existed not only between viewer and object, but also artist and object, and when artist becomes object the lines blur further still. In formulating this, Cahun creates herself as object. This self-in(ter)vention culminated in her protest works on the Island of Jersey during its occupation by the Nazis, which I will analyse in chapter five.

Cahun’s ‘anti-duality’ approach became more than an object that contains its own negation, in that it reached out to negate the viewing audience and their preconceived notions. Perhaps it is best to think of Cahun as an anti-Hegelian sublation: the indefinable

73 yet perfectly understood act of destruction, preservation and transcension, simultaneously existing in an incompatible synthesis of ideas. Cahun played the role of the sublating mechanism herself – Cahun was the mediation, the object and the subject. Cahun’s role, as she saw it – as writer, creator, actor – was not just to form a relationship with the object, but to act as one who crawled inside the definition of the object in order to subvert the entire network of relationships. It is these ideas that began to take root in her earliest literary outings.

Through this discussion of significant theories of the object, a number of clear dimensions emerged which are useful in approaching the object works of Cahun: objects are central to modern experience; they not only mediate human relationships but may have agency in themselves; central to Breton’s interest in the object to unlock liberatory forces was the notion of the marvellous. While Marxist theories were no doubt important to Cahun’s views, the assertion that objects produced by people contribute to their alienation was an incomplete view for Cahun, who credited the workers responsible for the production of these objects with the power to understand their inherent value and meaning. Marx also failed to produce a complete model of the effects of this on women in particular, his focus on capital being tied to production, rather than the surplus value contributed by women in the domestic sphere. The circuit of capital, in which objects stand in place of human communications and have the ability to mediate human communication, sounds like a very Cahunian idea, however again Marx placed too much emphasis on this action as a devaluing or alienating experience, whereas Cahun suggested that the same interaction has the possibility, with the complicity of workers, to empower the people involved in this exchange, as long as they are willing to ‘listen’ to the objects under production and exchange.

74

Both new materialism and OOO provide perspectives, which highlight the agency of objects. However, the particular emphasis on, for example, the ‘real’ in Harman’s framework is limited in relation to interpreting Cahun’s objects, concerned as she was moving beyond the ‘real’ as it applied to the apparent versus inherent meanings of objects.

Nevertheless, Harman’s descriptions of relationship webs or networks, in which subjects and objects are interlaced in a form of reciprocal action and reaction is a useful perspective when considering Cahun’s objects. These relationship networks begin to model the reciprocity Cahun argued for, however the OOO model seeks to de-privilege the subject in favour of the object, whereas Cahun sought a model which achieved a true symbiosis of subject and object, in which the power to communicate or activate flows freely from one actor to the other.

Adorno’s theory of mediation is a valuable insight, however with regards to the examination of Cahun’s objects, it continued to privilege the subject in its ability to activate the object. Quasi-subject and quasi-object theories attempt to diffuse the binary absolute, yet they still insist on the power of one to activate the other. The relationship between subject and objects in all of these models ultimately still privileges one over the other.

As I have outlined, the majority of these theoretical models argue, to a greater or lesser degree, within the model of privileging or de-privileging either subject or object.

My theoretical model will therefore need to be an experimental one, which takes influence from a range of relevant positions on the object. Cahun’s early writings, and the objects which followed, also asserted a natural opposition to this binary method of critical thought. Cahun’s writings on this subject were involved with teasing out the difference between the apparent and inherent meaning of the objects she discusses, and in the course of these deliberations it becomes clear that Cahun was seeking a method of describing 75 and interacting with objects which did not simply imbue objects with agency, but worked to resist any stable theoretical model used to describe the relationship between subject and object, rendering them always inscrutable, and ultimately resistant to interpretation.

I now turn to Cahun’s written works, to trace her perspective on objects as I continue to establish the theoretical framework for her objects.

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CHAPTER TWO: LITERARY OBJECTS RESISTING INTERPRETATION

77

INTRODUCTION – EARLY WORKS

In this chapter, I will examine Cahun’s writing in relation to her later object manufacture. Cahun’s interest in the relevance of objects to human experience is traceable from as early as 1914, long before she began to experiment with plastic art forms. Cahun’s trajectory towards object manufacture can be traced through political motivations, early literary works and published political tracts, and her forays into theatre and photography.

Her earlier literary works, in particular, reveal an interest in the value of objects, their relationships to each other and their human observers. Although these literary vignettes are a non-plastic art form, their writing serves as a powerful precursor to her object manufacture of the 1930s, which culminated both in her contribution to surrealist object exhibitions and the illustration of a most unusual children’s book. This chapter will also examine the relevance of previously discussed object theories with regards to Cahun’s developing awareness of the power of objects, including the theories of gender and otherness that are so readable in her photographic self-portraits. In doing so I find that there is a new, greater theoretical significance in her early works, both photographic and literary, that reveals Cahun’s seminal contributions to object theory: in short, an entirely new way of reading and working with objects and objectivity that was her own.

Cahun developed both a prodigious love of reading and a natural talent for writing during her early years1, and due to the considerable literary influence of her family and their sphere of acquaintance, Cahun was able to publish fairly frequently, and from a young age. Throughout the 1910s and early 1920s she produced various short works of

1 Monahan, L. J. (1997). Claude Cahun, in M. Mihajlovic, L. Shrimpton (Eds.), Dictionary of women artists: Introductory surveys artists, A-I. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. 340-1. 78 both poetry and prose, which appeared in numerous publications including Mercure de

France, La Gerbe, Le phare de la Loire (a journal owned and edited by her father Maurice

Schwob, to which her uncle Marcel and great uncle Leon Cahun also contributed on a regular basis), Le Journal littéraire, Philosophies, and Le disque vert, and the short-lived review L’Amitie,2 among others. Her contributions to the earlier publications were frequently submitted under pseudonyms including Daniel Douglas and Claude Courlis, suggesting an attempt to shift focus away from both her literary heritage and her gender.

While making these contributions to various periodicals, Cahun also created two more substantial works, Vues et visions (1914), and Hêroïnes (1925), in which Cahun’s exploration of the meaning of objects began in earnest. That Cahun wished to defy pre- existing categories, already threatening to subsume her individual contributions, was apparent from early in her career in her decision to assume these pseudonyms: it seems that, even from a young age, Cahun was aware that her family’s name was as much a curse as a blessing, closing as many doors as it opened. Their reputation as orientalists and symbolists, the forward thinkers of the nineteenth century, made this particularly so among the Parisian avant garde, who had begun their pursuit of the twentieth century artistic concerns surrounding modern life.

At a time when dadaism and the precursors to surrealism were making noise and creating a new artistic landscape, railing against the iniquities of war and its devastating impact on Europe, Cahun seemed mired in sentimentality and poesy. As a young writer she was viewed as ‘out of touch’, even conservative, despite her relatively open stance regarding her sexuality, and her unconventional appearance – her shaved head and adoption of men’s clothing appear to have been regarded as affectations, actions devoid

2 Monahan L. J. (1997). 340. 79 of any real substance or meaning, and her presence sometimes made members of the

Parisian scene uncomfortable.3 This apparent inability to remain fresh seems to have alienated Cahun from many of her contemporaries: Cahun referred to her own “symbolist entrapment” in a letter to publisher Adrienne Monnier as late as 19284, and Monnier even advised her during the 1920s that she simply was not good enough to publish.5 Gertrude

Stein disparagingly referred to her only as “the niece of ” as late as 1933, in her work The autobiography of Alice B. Toklas,6 Stein’s attempt to write an

‘autobiography by proxy’ of her partner Toklas. There is, however, no surviving record of Cahun’s response to this rejection by such prominent members of the Parisian literary avant garde. By the close of the twenties however, Cahun had made stronger connections within the artistic fringe, struck up professional relationships with André Breton and

Georges Bataille, and published a photographic self-portrait in dadaist Georges

Ribemont-Dessaignes’ controversial Bifur in 1930 – the same year of the publication of her semi-autobiographical book, Aveux non avenus.7

After Cahun’s mother was institutionalized for mental health problems, Cahun was sent to live with her paternal grandmother, Mathilde. It was from this branch of the family that Cahun borrowed her final pseudonym, shedding her birth name of Lucy

Schwob. As Cahun herself wrote in a letter to the French writer, poet and journalist Jean

Schuster, she chose Claude Cahun “for the familial relationship with Leon Cahun, brother of my paternal grandmother” and to distance herself from “the unbearable ‘Y’ of the first

3 Monahan, L. J. (1997). 340. 4 Cahun, C., Orlan, P. M., Mundy, J., Leperlier, F., de Muth, S., & Lhermitte, A. (2007). Disavowals: Or, cancelled confessions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. xi-xii. 5 Latimer, T. T. (2006). Acting out: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, in L. Downie (Ed.), Don’t kiss me: The art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. London: Tate Publishing. 6 Stein, G. (1997). The autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. New York: Modern Library. 7 Conley, K. (2004). Claude Cahun’s iconic heads. Papers of Surrealism. Issue 2. 1. 80 name chosen by my mother,”8 implying a growing distaste for her connection to a family so deeply connected with symbolism, among other issues. Cahun’s relationship with her family was never stable: her family suspected that she was predisposed to the same mental illness that affected her mother, and as Doy states, “Cahun wrote that the men in her family thought that the opinions of women were of no importance.”9 Her father’s uncle,

Leon Cahun, the prominent orientalist, was responsible for detailed geographical and historicised fictional accounts of Egypt, Nubia and Asia Minor.10 He travelled extensively as part of his work, and his influence on his grand-niece is arguably traceable in such works as Vues et Visions, with its grand narratives of travel to the great capitals of

Mediterranean antiquity.

SEXUALITY AND GENDER IN CAHUN’S LITERATURE

Jennifer Shaw has also suggested that Cahun’s involvement with symbolism was not merely a result of her familial ties, but rather a natural fellowship for many of its adherents: as she states, “the evocation of Symbolism and Aestheticism as models for homophile reconstructions of antiquity in Vues et visions were a prelude to many of the themes taken up later in Disavowals.”11 Leperlier describes Cahun’s works as “a baroque thematic (ambivalence, metamorphosis, theatricality, distancing) both Symbolist and

8 Oberhuber, A. (2007). Letter to Jean Schuster, in Claude Cahun, Marcel Moore, Lise Deharme and the surrealist book. History of Photography, 31.1. 40. The “Y” refers to something previously stated in the text of the letter, and is unclear from the partial transcription by Oberhuber. 9 Doy, G. (2007). Claude Cahun: A sensual politics of photography. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 30. 10 For example, Cahun, L. (1878) A prisoner of war in Russia: My experience amongst the refugees, with the Red Crescent; or, The blue banner ; or, The adventures of a Mussulman, a Christian, and a Pagan, in the time of the crusades and Mongol conquest. 11 Shaw, J. L. (2013). Reading Claude Cahun’s disavowals. United Kingdom: Ashgate Publishing. 12. 81 surrealist, filled with paradox, redundancy, rhetorical effects.”12 Cahun’s interest in social, psychoanalytical and medical constructions of homosexuality is apparent in more than her symbolist-influenced works. Cahun was a great admirer of Oscar Wilde and others involved in the English Aestheticism movement, and was naturally concerned by his treatment both under law and in the press.13 One biographer of Oscar Wilde, Joseph

Bristow, asserted that Cahun learned a powerful lesson from the prosecution of Wilde: namely, that an artist in their position (that is, a homosexual) should not only avoid overt revelations regarding their own personal sexuality in the course of daily life, but also avoid the temptation to record too many of these secrets in their art, as autobiographical elements of fictionalised accounts may then be used against them at any time.14 This desire to veil her lesbianism for her own and Suzanne’s protection can be seen in the title of her book Disavowals, or Cancelled confessions, which is nevertheless regarded by

Jennifer Shaw and Tirza True Latimer as being at least semi-autobiographical.15 By disavowing the contents of the book, or ‘cancelling’ her ‘confessions’, Cahun gained some leeway between the thoughts expressed in the book, and whatever her own may have been. She remained safely impenetrable to her audience, while hypothetically laying herself bare when she so chose.

Cahun’s personal investigation of the politics of personal identity and sexuality also led her to an interest in the works of English sexologist Havelock Ellis, whose work

Sexual inversion (1897) she began a translation of, which was never finished.16 Ellis’ efforts to demystify and, to a certain extent, normalize sexual difference were an

12 Leperlier, F. (2011). L’image premiere. Claude Cahun. Hazan/éditions du Jeu de Paume. 54. 13 Thynne, L. (2008). “Surely you are not claiming to be more homosexual than I?': Claude Cahun and Oscar Wilde, in J. Bristow (Ed.), Oscar Wilde and modern culture: The making of a legend. Ohio University Press. 89. 14 Thynne, L. (2008). 89. 15 Latimer, T. T. (2006), Shaw J. L. (2013), et al. 16 Doy, G. (2007). 180. 82 extension of the Freudian sexual psychoanalysis which served the surrealists so well in their early investigations into sexuality and social mores, however Freud sought only to demonstrate that every individual is a mixture of masculine and feminine traits and believed that homosexuality was essentially a deviancy caused by the incorrect focusing of the sexual drive in childhood, rather than an innate characteristic of the individual.17

Ellis went further by seeking to demonstrate that sexual identity is not simply a dualistic concept. The opening passage of the book states: “In this particular field the evil of ignorance is magnified by our efforts to suppress that which can never be suppressed, though in the effort of suppression it may become perverted.”18 Ellis’ assertion that the suppression of homosexual desire could lead to perversion, rather than labelling the desire itself a perversion, would not only have been reassuring to Cahun on a personal level, but also spoke directly to her theoretical concerns regarding truth in the meaning of all things, and the suppression of that truth by socially constructed and commonly held ‘realities’, such as the reality Cahun was expected to perform as a hetero-feminine archetype.

Although he framed his theories in largely negative terms, Ellis was nevertheless the first medical writer to profess the opinion that homosexuality was a genetic trait, rather than an illness or proclivity:

Probably not a very large number of people are even aware that the turning in of the sexual instinct towards persons of the same sex can ever be regarded as in-born, so far as any sexual instinct is in-born.19

Ellis draws a large distinction between ‘congenital inversion’, which he regards almost as a form of psychological birth defect, or in his words, an “inborn constitutional

17 Rose, G. A.-S., & Fiorini, L. G. (Eds.). (2010). On Freud’s “femininity.” London: Karnac Books. 87. 18 Ellis, H. (2012). Sexual inversion. United States: Nabu Press. Vi. 19 Ellis, H. (2012). Xiv. 83 abnormality,”20 and the more Freudian concept of sexual attraction to those of the same sex, which he considers more spontaneous and incidental – and, like Freud, ultimately treatable. Although progressive among his colleagues, Cahun must have found Ellis’ analysis limited and frustrating for this reason. His work also focussed on male homosexuality only, and Ellis still made frequent reference to ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ people, employing a medicalised binary in his diagnosis of difference, as if the differences to which he referred could be treated, or even ‘cured’. Ellis persistently referred to the examples in his book as ‘cases’, and so while he sought to explain and bring into the open such differences, he did not seek to justify or normalize the behaviours of those about whom he wrote. Furthermore, he referred to the “sexual secrecy of life” as “disastrous”21, yet many homosexuals who found themselves in the same circumstances as Cahun would have had to live in such secrecy. While sodomy had been decriminalised by omission (i.e. the removal of legislation criminalising homosexual acts) in the French Penal Code of

1791, homosexuality was still considered morally and ethically bankrupt, and openly homosexual men and women were often discriminated against through inequitable application of public decency laws.22 In contrast to the prevailing attitudes towards homosexuality, Ellis wrote that “Sex lies at the root of life, and we can never learn to reverence life until we know how to understand sex.”23 Cahun’s interest in this area was clearly personal, and was exemplified in much of her writing. Her struggle for personal identity is often discussed in relation to her self-portrait photography, however Cahun freely explored sexuality in all of her works, some examples masquerading as heterosexual love, others more obscured in their meaning, but none of them idealised

20 Ellis, H. (2012). 1. 21 Ellis, H. (2012). Vii. 22 Garrity, J. (2006). Mary Butts's 'Fanatical Pédérastie': Queer urban life in 1920s London and Paris, in L. Doan, J. Garrity (Eds.), Sapphic modernities: sexuality, women, and national culture. USA: Palgrave Macmillan. 242. 23 Ellis, H. (2012). X. 84 representations of infatuation or the popularised, romantic notion of ‘true love’. Even before her association with the surrealists Cahun was of the same mind as Breton who saw the heterosexual, romantic love idealised by popular culture as anathema to real love, or as he described it in 1937, “mad love.”24 Cahun’s cynicism regarding the ideation of sexual attraction, love and marriage was apparent from the outset, and is obvious in the often ambiguous, amorphous sensuality of Vues et visions, Heroïnes and Disavowals.

VUES ET VISIONS

Among Cahun’s earliest published works, Vues et visions first appeared in serialised form in Mercure de France in 1914, when Cahun was only eighteen years of age, before being published in its entirety as a book in 1919 with illustrations by Marcel

Moore. A literary diptych, the narrative in this work shifts between the perspectives of two travellers: one local, French, observing everyday life with a jaded sense of whimsy; the other a traveller of exotic lands, in search of elegance, excitement and sophistication.

However hard Cahun fought to get away from her literary roots, both observers speak in strongly symbolist language: every object, figure, movement, is a metaphor for something grander, representative of a larger concept than the spectacle immediately described.

Vues et visions opens in the seaside resort town of Le Croisic, the location of the

Schwob family’s holiday home. The piece is written as a series of short vignettes which move between the two observers, one holidaying in the coastal village, the other

24 In Mad love (1937) Breton explores how the circumstances that led to his discovery of love, of , of found objects in the flea market, of phrases and inspiration for his poetry are dictated by desire and by delirium. 85 luxuriating in the spectacles of the heart of great European cities. One character seeks solitude and rest; the other, exoticism and excitement. The Schwob family often stayed in an impressive waterfront terrace on the Quai de la petite chambre in Le Croisic overlooking (as its name suggests) a small harbour full of chaloupes, or dinghies. The opening vignettes in the Le Croisic of Vues et visions include references to little fishing boats making their way to the 19th century poissonerie, or fish market, crews laughing and calling to each other, late night fights among the sailors and drunks, the smells of fish and seaweed wafting in through windows, while the sea breezes stirred the curtains, sights and sounds that Cahun herself is likely to have experienced first-hand.

The ‘views’ of her Le Croisic observer mingle with those of the international traveller, confusing and transforming their observations into ‘visions’: the sweeping trail of a woman’s dress in Rome becomes a sail on the choppy seas off the Breton coast; the sails of the little boats become rays of light at dawn, and their boats seashells rolling in the waves. The roughening sea enacts Achilles “avenging the death of Patroclus”25, before the sea itself metamorphoses into a fine Italian wine. Vues et visions is also filled with contradictions and oxymorons, such as the passage entitled “Vague and precise”, in which a child is described near an “equivocal statue”26, determinedly separate entities and at the same time confused and intermingled in the eye of the beholder. Cahun constructed deliberate obfuscations, which formed the basis for all of her work: defying category, denying binary definitions. Cahun’s treatment of the objects confused their objectivity without denying it and seemed to hint at the idea that there is no such thing as an objective truth, a theme that appeared throughout her entire body of work. Through her Le Croisic narrator, she declared:

25 Cahun, C. (1914). Vues et visions. Mercure de France, no. 406. 265. 26 Cahun, C. (1914). 262. 86

If I knew how to paint, I would choose this blue veil, half deployed, and its ambiguous poses…

but the skilful artist should be able to complete [their task] without a model.27

At this point, Cahun is stating that a true artist does not need to imitate life – indeed, that anyone who attempts to do so (which is the subject of this entire vignette) is doomed to find that their efforts fall short. Cahun’s character repeatedly attempts to recreate her ocean view, only to chastise herself for making the wrong marks, for not being able to capture the reality of the objects before her. Cahun’s search for ‘truth’ in objects and their representation is revealed: not only is she frustrated by her lack of ability to accurately render an honest depiction of the scene before her, this frustration becomes an acknowledgement of the ultimate futility of attempting the deception of mere

‘representation’ in the first instance. No image of an object can truly be ‘real’ for the image is only a poor reproduction of the object itself. These ideas find further traction in later works such as Heroïnes, in which Cahun also discussed the notion that all artists merely create representation of reality, rather than reality itself. Magritte’s The treachery of images, completed in 1929, which contains the now famous statement “This is not a pipe.”28 is the shining standard for this school of thought, which was very much influenced by surrealist investigations into the nature of reality throughout the 1920s, which they carried out at the Bureau of Surrealist Research in Paris between 1924-25.29

At the end of it all, neither of Cahun’s world-weary travellers is satisfied with their lot. One finds that everything is dull. The other discovers one glorious spectacle after

27 Cahun, C. (1914). 276. 28 As it is more commonly known in the original French, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe.” 29 Balakian, A. (1987). Surrealism: The road to the absolute. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 144. 87 another, only to be dissatisfied and disappointed by each in its turn. Neither quite reach the heights of the sensations that they both crave. Ultimately the problem lies within both spectators: they expect too much from the external world and turn themselves from the subjects of their own internal monologues into passive objects trapped within their own existence, failing to understand that self-determination is what will bring them satisfaction that they so crave. In laying the blame on external factors for their unhappiness, they will never be happy. Everyone and everything else is either too quiet or too loud, and rather than simply experiencing life for the sake of it, or taking definitive action to change their circumstances, they pile expectations upon external systems that can never be satisfied, then leave feeling oddly disappointed. Viewed through this lens,

Vues et visions can also be seen as an early expression of her views on commodity fetishism, a position Cahun held in common with the surrealists. As a comment on modernity and commodity, Vues et visions also goes some way to explaining Cahun’s trajectory towards the surrealist group in the 1930s, where so many of her ideas, here seen in their earliest form, became central to the debate engendered by the politicisation of surrealist object manufacture.

While no one yet has attempted a full English translation, it is worthy of consideration in relation to her later works, particularly in regard to her object manufacture. At a point when the unnamed Le Croisic character is musing on the language and form of hieroglyphs, she begins to contemplate her observations in the abstract, and her reflections suddenly bring her to a startling conclusion. Having spent several days lingering at the Quai, pondering the sight of the flimsy boats ploughing the ocean waves beyond and into the little harbour through the narrowly built channel (‘du

Traict’), Cahun is struck by a sudden thought:

88

The gray sea is stained with black signs of different shape and size. An idea surprises me today, unforeseen, sharp, strange: That inanimate objects yet have their dark soul, ignored by humans, and on this quiet, grey sea, the black spots, deliberately arranged, form a mysterious language that only the gods understand.30

While Cahun did not elaborate further at this point, she spoke here directly for the first time on the innate nature of objects. As I shall explore, this is a subject that she returned to repeatedly, as her fascination for the language and influence of inanimate objects grew.

Through this fictionalised voice we hear Cahun’s own description of the moment when, at eighteen years of age, she first gave voice to her contemplation of the nature of objects, and their ability to interact with and influence those who observe them.

Like so much of Cahun’s theorising on the nature of the world, she framed her observation in a spiritual context. Nevertheless, her philosophical discovery can clearly be interpreted as an early realisation of the latent agency of the objects surrounding her.

This realisation, to wit, that objects have their own ‘language’, and as such are able to communicate, formed an essential basis for the later construction of her plastic objects, laden as they were with both literal and figurative subtexts. For the time being Cahun’s output continued to be predominantly literary in nature. However, by the time Heroïnes was published in 1925 she had increased her production of self-portrait photography, and although the vast majority of these photographs were never intended for publication, they reveal much regarding Cahun’s musings on the body as object.

30 Cahun, C. (1914). 272. 89

CAHUN’S PHOTOGRAPHIC OBJECTS

While much of Cahun’s writing touched on her concerns regarding gender, sexuality, and objectivity, it is also through the maturing of her photographic practice that we can see many of these ideas being explored. As previously noted, her literary output often touched upon the objectifying gaze, and this is arguably more pronounced in many of her self- portrait images, being as it is a more objectifying medium. Cahun had been experimenting with self-portrait photography from a young age, and many photographs exist of her from approximately the same period as the publication of Vues et visions.

These photographs are, for the most part, candid in their depictions of the young Cahun, however one in particular from this time is worthy of note, in which Cahun’s artistic sensibilities with regards to photography, self-portraiture, and the power of figurative imagery can be seen coming in to play.

This self-portrait, taken in 1914, the same year of the publication of Vues et visions, depicts Cahun with free flowing, almost wild hair, and a white sheet pulled tightly up to her neck, leaving her head exposed as a kind of disembodied object, floating against the background of her white-sheeted bed. Her eyes stare vacantly, and her glassy, unfocussed gaze invokes the feeling of looking at a corpse. Doy describes Cahun’s hair in the image as recreating the wild mass of snakes writhing on the head of the gorgon, at the point when she has been beheaded, and her grisly visage is attached to Hercules’ shield in order to paralyse his foes.31 In this sense, Cahun’s head is not that of an innocent young girl lying in her bed, but a weapon whose gaze can destroy the viewer. Medusa was an important figure in symbolism, and this may well be what Cahun is trying to

31 Doy, G. (2007). 16-17. 90 invoke. However, the photograph is interesting not only for its literary allusions, but also in its objectifying of Cahun, and its stripping away of context and meaning. Cahun’s face becomes an unattached object, separated from its regular context, and we are left to draw what we can know from her face alone. This image also has great significance with regards to Cahun’s objects because it signals an aesthetic concern with the objectification of the body through the alienation of body parts. Much of Cahun’s object manufacture consists of creating images of women and womanhood from deconstructed body parts, both literal and figurative in form. As such it is a precursor to much of Cahun’s work as an early feminist, and particularly her output within the surrealist group, as her objects examine both the disembodiment and objectification of women.

This self-portrait of Cahun also precedes Lee Miller’s portrait of a seemingly decapitated Tanja Ramm’s head in a bell jar, which first appeared in France in Le

Surréalisme au service de la revolution in 1930. Miller’s image, presenting as it does a woman’s head as a kind of hunter’s or collector’s trophy, was a common image of disembodiment and objectification by this stage of surrealism. This image created by

Miller, and originally attributed to Man Ray, is a visualisation of Miller’s objectification in front of the lens, as a fashion model and ‘muse’.32 This image reflects Miller’s acute awareness of the gaze, and her frustrated professional ambitions. Miller wished to reverse the polarity of the situation in her desire to be recognised as a photographer – rendering the original misattribution of the image to Man Ray as truly ironic. Cahun also pre-empted these images in 1925, with a series of her own self-portraits in bell jars, her disdainful head trapped inside the glass bowl. Unlike Miller’s beheaded Ramm however, Cahun’s incorporeal head carries an air of defiance, and one could well believe that she is about to

32 Sheets, H. M. (2016, 17 Feb). ‘The indestructible Lee Miller’ celebrates a daring surrealist and war photographer. Art & Design. The New York Times. 91 smash her ornamental trap, or alternatively, that the jar is something that she is aware of, representing the voyeurism of the flaneur. She is aware of her objectification and turns it back on the viewer, challenging their subjectivity, and shattering the moment for the collector of these spectacles of women’s bodies. The creation of these images a decade before her plastic objects anticipated the later works, in which Cahun’s disembodied parts and semi-abstracted assemblages represented women. In the photographs, Cahun’s objectified form becomes the decapitated Olympia of Edouard Manet, defying the gaze of her observer and resisting objectification. In this way, Cahun’s head became one of her earliest objects of resistance.

By 1920, Cahun’s approach to self-representation had changed dramatically.

Contrary to social expectations regarding ‘femininity’ and the acceptable presentation of

‘ladies’, Cahun had chosen a more dramatic look for herself, and by as early as 1916 she had shaved her head, which accentuated her angular features, was often pictured make- up free, and frequently dressed in a man’s suit. In this, Cahun anticipated the post-war fashion for men’s clothing, known popularly as mode garçonne (boy style), adopted by many women by the end of the decade, however Cahun’s choice of clothing would have stood out as an extreme oddity several years beforehand. Several photographs exist from this period of Cahun’s metamorphosis from conventional young woman to shaven androgyne, in which she subverted the notions of feminine characterised as physically attractive, and by societal standards ‘worth’ looking at. Two of these photographs, which appear to have been taken at the same studio session in 1920, feature Cahun’s pale face and body against a black backdrop. In the first image, Cahun is seated, her shoulders bare.

Her body is loosely encased in black and white blocks of fabrics, which drape across her in horizontal bands. In this image she averts her gaze, imitating the pose of the demure artist’s model favoured for the depiction of the paradigm of women – placid, receptive, 92 non-threatening – and inviting the viewer’s gaze, while simultaneously rejecting the voyeuristic standards of that same viewer with her smooth head, shorn of the primary indicator of her femininity. In the second pose Cahun appears to stand, her back to the camera but her head in profile, accentuating her strong, angular features, now no longer hidden or flattered by a flowing coiffure. As a form of protection against the unwanted gaze she has turned her back, but still remains aware of the uninvited stare of her observer.

The glance backwards over her shoulder is not coquettish but wary, and perhaps even menacing, as if she is prepared to challenge the spectator’s gaze and take back her body from the eye of her objectifying beholder.

Cahun’s stance on the objectification of women came to form the basis of some of her most important theories on the political importance of objects, not only as the key to emancipating the working class but particularly working-class women. This plight of proletarian women was one of the practical issues ignored within the French socialist movements of the time. When compared to a staged portrait of Cahun created with Marcel

Moore several years earlier, in which she appears as a demure and studious young woman absorbed in reading the book L’image de la femme (The image of woman), published in

1899 as a compendium of exemplary women and their public images throughout the ages, it becomes apparent that Cahun had already wrestled with this notion of gendered subjectivity for several years. This desire to signal or exhort a return of control to women, and particularly working-class women, is the key to understanding her object work and photography of the next decade.

Cahun’s self-portraiture then moved towards a more complicated representation of the self. In the early 1920s Cahun and Moore became involved in the experimental theatrical productions of Pierre Albert-Birot, among others, and many of Cahun’s self- portraits from this point in time are of her in either theatrical costume for a particular 93 production or feature theatrically inspired costuming and composition. These images frequently make use of costumes and masks, and the observer is never quite sure whether they are gaining fleeting glimpses of the multifaceted aspects of her intrinsic nature, or simply being thwarted by mask after mask. As surveyed in my introduction, much discussion and debate has already occurred surrounding Cahun’s use of the mask as a metaphor, but not of her use of masks as representative objects.

As Cahun stated in Disavowals, “I will never stop taking off all these faces.”33

Here again, Cahun demonstrated an innate dissatisfaction with the objectifying gaze, which makes all women into objects. Cahun’s decision to make of herself a deliberate spectacle therefore functions as a defence mechanism, a reaction to the objectification and marginalisation she endured socially both as a Jew and a lesbian, and professionally as a member of a family already prominent in the arts. By choosing this path Cahun invented a method of making herself comfortable in her objectification, by choosing the way in which she was objectified. The mask then becomes a representation of this chimera identity she has chosen for herself, both objectifiable and defying objective examination: the truth constantly fleeing away from observers of Cahun the Object.

Rosalind Krauss was referring to photography when she claimed, “we see with a shock of recognition the simultaneous effect of displacement and condensation, the very operations of symbol formation, hard at work on the flesh of the real.”34 While this statement is certainly representative of Cahun’s photography, it also applies to Cahun herself. When exploring the works of Cahun, both literary and photographic, there is a blurring of the line between real and surreal similar to that which the surrealists were

33 Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 183. 34 Krauss, R., Livingston, J., & Ades, D. (1985). L’amour fou: Photography & surrealism. Washington, D.C.: Abbeville Press Inc. 19. 94 attempting to invoke, long before Cahun began any association with the group. While still working from what can be readily identified as her symbolist background, throughout her earlier years Cahun’s photographic practice slowly moved, alongside her writing, towards this confluence with surrealism in the 1930s. In doing this, she anticipated Breton’s assertion that, in Krauss’ words, “this distinction between writing and vision is one of the many antinomies that Breton speaks of wanting surrealism to dissolve in the higher synthesis of a surreality that will, in this case, ‘resolve the dualism of perception and representation.’”35 As such, it is easy to understand the collaborations that occurred between Cahun and Breton in the following decade.

By the close of the 1920s, Cahun’s photography was becoming far less figurative, including those incorporating masks, which now no longer covered aspects of Cahun’s identity in order to highlight them: instead, the mask began to stand for Cahun herself.

One such example, a series of photographs entitled Entre nous (Between Us), taken in

1931, depicts two masks with varying ornamentation displayed on a sandy beach. One reading is that the masks represent Cahun and her partner Marcel Moore (Suzanne

Malherbe), their individuality marked out by flowers, a feather, matchsticks, a comb.

These photographs form part of a larger collection in which Cahun began to make what

Leperlier termed “perishable objects,” perhaps borrowing the term from the catalogue for the 1936 exhibition.36 Cahun’s transformation from woman as object enters a new stage, that of object standing for woman, and this is the mode of representation she employed in the construction of her objects. This transformation became crucial over the coming decade as Cahun’s increasingly political output began to question the place of both women and the arts in politics and society.

35 Krauss, R. et al. (1985). 24. 36 Leperlier, F. (2011). L’image premiére, in Claude Cahun. Hazan/éditions du Jeu de Paume. 67. 95

Prior to this Cahun continued to write, and this remained her primary method of expressing her ideas in a public forum throughout the 1920s – indeed, while her photographic self-portraits are fascinating, they were only ever intended for her private collection (Cahun only officially exhibited one photograph, at the 1937 surrealist exhibition in London, although no mention is made of it in the catalogue, and therefore no information exists to confirm which image it was. One other image, a distorted version of an aforementioned self-portrait, was published in Bifur in 1930.) Cahun continued to publish short stories and articles in various French publications, however her next major exploration of objects and objectification occurred in Heroïnes, published in 1925.

HEROÏNES

Following Vues et visons, Cahun published several short stories and articles on various topics, many of which were incorporated into her longer work Aveux non avenus, titled alternatively in English as Cancelled confessions or Disavowals (and as both by the publisher, MIT Press), a project which Cahun worked on intermittently between 1919 and

1928. Before the publication of Disavowals, however, came Heroïnes, published in 1925.

Heroïnes is a boldly proto-feminist re-reading of popular tropes of women, femininity and female transgression as symbolized by several powerful female characters drawn from history, religion and myth. These traditional stories of women are invariably morality tales, and the women are cast as one of the two moral binaries of ‘good woman’ and ‘bad woman’. Cahun takes the ‘bad’ women, such as the vengeful Judith, the treacherous Delilah and the violently bloodthirsty Salome and recasts them as misunderstood, their actions reimagined as those of strong willed and defiant women. The

96 good women are boldly re-presented as skilful and cunning, having learned to play the game, such as Penelope the Tease for being so stubborn as to refuse to choose between her suitors, and by extension for daring to have her own opinion on the subject; and Helen the Rebel, who believes that she is ugly, but has somehow managed to hide this fact with a combination of cosmetics and charm, thereby illustrating the timelessness of women’s insecurities regarding their personal appearance, and the way in which they will be publicly judged. Many of the roles of men within these tales are reinvented as well: in

Cahun’s version, Adam suffers from impotence which can only be cured by the apple offered by Eve, who is them blamed for exposing his weakness; Holofernes is a handsome and magnetic warrior; and Cinderella captivates her Prince with a secret knowledge of his (very Freudian) fetish for fur-lined shoes. While Cahun’s title seemingly rejected an autobiographical reading of the text, it is hard to dismiss the autobiographical element to several of the tales in this anthology, such as that of Sophie the Symbolist, a young, precocious girl who “trusted her own reason earlier than normal”, or in Sappho the

Misunderstood, who states “To create is my joy. No matter how little it is.”37 The story of Sappho was also dedicated to Cahun’s good friend, the sculptor Chana Orloff, who had created a bust of Cahun in 1921.

The strongest theme to run through Heroïnes, after the reimagining of women in these powerful roles, is that of perception versus reality. Cahun investigates this through the examination of desires, particularly the desire for the idea of an object, which then becomes an idealised object, rather than the true object itself. Her lesson throughout is that one must embrace the meaning of an object in order to appreciate its value. The first of Cahun’s Heroïnes, ‘Eve the too credulous’, equates the promises of the snake in the

37 Cahun, C. (1925). Heroïnes. Mercure de France, no 639. 634. 97

Garden of Eden to those of the ‘snake oil’ salesmen and hucksters of early newspaper advertisements. Eve is taken in by the advertising, and feeds Adam the apple because she has been convinced that it will effect a miraculous cure (with allusions to impotency on his part: “BE A MAN…Make your sex life a joy! Quick Results. PEP TABS”38). The biblical outcome and its moral lesson is of course that taking the medicine will lead to the acquisition of knowledge which brings with it the capacity to knowingly perpetrate evil.

Cahun’s cynical version of the tale describes those who have partaken of the forbidden fruit as “those who are happier but even more mischievous,” suggesting that humanity is ultimately happier with knowledge, even if it carries with it a propensity to make each other unhappy through perpetrating bad deeds. According to Cahun, those she has labelled happier are also those “who arrange objects in two distinct armies, [and] have all bitten, each into a different flesh (of the Apple that is the apple of discord.)”39 Those “who arrange objects into two distinct armies” is an obvious reference in this context to the

Judeo-Christian dialectic of Good and Evil, God and the Devil. It can also be read as an allusion to a tendency to ascribe meaning to objects according to their own limited understanding, again calling to mind the problem with objects that both Breton and Cahun attempted to resolve: that of the separation of perception and representation. Cahun’s concern that objects have their own language which humanity is currently not capable of comprehending was first voiced in Vues et visions and is an issue to which she repeatedly returned. The biblical theme of the dichotomy of good and evil was also a theme that

Cahun returned to constantly throughout her writing.

38 Cahun, C. (1925). 624. 39 Cahun, C. (1925). 625. 98

With regards to perception, “Helen the Rebel” gives some sage advice, which was later echoed in Cahun’s exhortations to experience the beauty of objects by “touching them in the dark”40:

The most important beauty exercise is as follows: To sit comfortably in a darkened room…and think of nothing. Just that, every day, for a few minutes – gradually and indefinitely increasing in time.41

Helen’s tale – that she believes that she is truly ugly, and yet through a series of artful designs and flirtations is able to pass herself off as the most desirable woman in the world

– speaks to the objectification of women, the attendant insecurities, and the role they are forced to play in order to move in society. That Helen enacts various entrapments of other men at the exhortation of her husband Menelaus, who gains fame and fortune through

Helen’s purported beauty and his assumed right to protect and defend that beauty as his possession, reflects Cahun’s strong distaste for the position of women in France - as not much more than possessions of their male family members, trophies to be displayed, like beautiful, mute statues, or interesting specimens in bell jars. She explored this idea more fully in her later works, particularly throughout Disavowals, which I will elaborate further on later in this chapter, and in Beware domestic objects, which is discussed at length in the following chapter.

Cahun’s retelling of Salome’s tale as “Salome the Skeptic”, dedicated to

“O.W.,”42 highlights the confusion engendered by the desire for objects we do not fully comprehend. Cahun contends that human desires, which we so often mistakenly ascribe

40 Cahun, C. (1998). Beware domestic objects, in P. Rosemont (Ed.), Surrealist women: An international anthology. London: Continuum International Publishing Group. 61. 41 Cahun, C. (1925). 633. 42 That is, Oscar Wilde. 99 to needs rather than wants, ultimately lead to a dissatisfaction with that which we do have.

For example, having passionately called for the head of John the Baptist, Salome is at the end perplexed by her own original request:

Why did I ask for that?... It seemed as though I could touch it, take it in my hands, kiss it…It’s no big deal! How can an object so ridiculous frighten us? My repulsion is entirely aesthetic.43

As the blood stains her clothes, she cries:

What does that prove? Simply that I was right: Art, life: it’s the same either way. It is what will be furthest from the dream – even from the nightmare.44

Salome ascribes her desire for this object – the head – to a misconception of what she actually desires, brought about by a theatrical production in which a replica head, dripping false blood onto a cardboard plate, is brought, oozing, to the protagonist of the play.

Having seen the image of the object rather than the object itself, Salome believes she is deceived into desiring the image of a thing, rather than the thing itself.

I quickly understood the horrible trap: painters, writers, sculptors, even musicians, copy life… How could I admire their colour reproductions, I who never loved the originals?45

43 Cahun, C. (1925). 643. 44 Cahun, C. (1925). 643. 45 Cahun, C. (1925). 641. 100

Although Salome believes herself to be wary of the illusions of the arts, she is nevertheless ensnared by this powerful artifice, consumed by an irrational and bloodthirsty desire for an object she does not truly need or want. This desire for objects speaks directly to Cahun’s growing concern not only for the true nature of objects, but also the ways in which their false objectification could lead to confusion and dishonesty.

Sophie the Symbolist appears to be the only character in this series of tales who is not drawn from history or fable. She is perhaps the most highly charged of all Cahun’s

Heroïnes, as well as one of the most autobiographical if only in a figurative or fantastical sense. Sophie is unashamedly bloodthirsty: she kills for pleasure, and revels in inflicting pain. She experiences sensual delight in the destruction of her first doll and ponders whether fish feel pain as they are dissected. Sophie explains that she “makes bleed only what she loves: the black chicken, the squirrel, the donkey, and her cousin Paul.”46

Although Sophie’s progression towards more and more violently personal acts is disturbing, Cahun, via authorial intrusion, says admiringly of her: “We should delight in her admirable progression.” In this vignette Cahun’s relationship to objects and the material world is most clearly stated: “To make an object dead, to destroy it, is to prove that it has really lived. Sophie understood that quite well.”47 Various incarnations of this claim resonate throughout her works, culminating in her equation for the production of objects: “to create = to destroy + χ.” At the end of this short story Sophie’s assessment of the situation could echo Cahun’s own conclusions in her search for identity, and the casting off of her symbolist roots: “Even before we were five we had exhausted all the

46 “Sophie the Symbolist” did not originally appear in the 1925 version published in the Mercure de France. Passages here are taken from the unpublished translation by Norman McAfee, who worked from the original manuscript discovered by François Leperlier on Jersey in 1992. This translation originally appeared online but has since been removed after a hard copy was printed. McAfee, N. (unknown date). 87. 47 McAfee, N. 86. 101 games of love; when one began with the symbol, one had little taste for the thing itself.”48

With these words, Cahun seems to be distancing herself from the symbolic, and beginning to immerse herself in the tangible world. Cahun’s “games of love” refer here to desire for symbols, clouding the judgement of the participants who lose interest in “the thing itself.”

In order to reawaken this interest, Sophie discovers that she must disassemble objects, in order to disassemble her preconceived perceptions of them. This work is bloody and brutal, but it is also vital and honest. With this, Cahun implies that the psychological journey towards a true understanding of objects will be a difficult and brutal process: in order to shift one’s comprehension one must deconstruct the false objects of one’s perceptions.

AVEUX NON AVENUS

In 1928, Cahun published her literary magnum opus, Aveux non avenus. The title of her work has been translated as either Disavowals or Cancelled confessions, and both are equally valid while not entirely accurate: like all of Cahun’s other works, wordplay is central, making her literary works difficult to translate while retaining her authentic meaning. Disavowals is the product of ten years’ writing, several sections of which were individually published as smaller articles, brought together for the first time as a compendium of Cahun’s thoughts and ideas over the previous decade.

Cahun opens with a rigorous self-assessment in the face of her material. Again, she grapples with the confusion between perception and reality, between her internal thoughts and what lies before her:

48 Cahun, C. (1936). 60. 102

No point in making myself comfortable. The abstraction, the dream, are as limited for me as the concrete and the real. What to do? Show a part of it only, in a narrow mirror, as if it were the whole?49

Perception plagues Cahun’s narrator throughout Disavowals: her own sense of reality, her struggle to communicate her thoughts on the matter to others, and her disappointment at the failure of so many to understand what is in front of them. Speaking through the character Aurige, whom she describes as weak and egotistical, and whose aims include the desire “to reconstruct oneself”50, Cahun confides, “I am not suited to grasping objective realities, or adapting to the incessant vicissitudes of life.”51 Aurige would make a good subject for Sophie the Symbolist’s ministrations. Aurige wishes to reconstruct herself, however one must destroy before one can create. Aurige stands for the everyday person and lacks the internal fortitude and the knowledge to examine her own objectivity, to deconstruct her perception of “objective realities.”

Cahun also acknowledges the comfort to be found in familiar objects, and the role they can play in awakening the mind. Speaking of a series of marble statues, Cahun says:

…for those who humanely seek The evocation of a memory, What relief these tangible images provide!52

For the observers of these statues, their physical presence as objects in our world enables them to evoke thoughts and emotions which may have otherwise been difficult to access.

The statues, in this sense, have a language with which they communicate with our unconscious minds, unlocking memories which had all but become secrets, even from ourselves.

49 Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 1. 50 Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 52. 51 Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 53. 52 Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 41. 103

Cahun also returns to the idea of dismemberment or dislocation of the human form as a method of construction, and again she uses the human body as a model:

Human body. It should be stuck upside down in a vase so that it arranges itself elegantly, so that it blooms, so that it has four branches, four flowers and the bulb is hidden.53

Like her photographic self-portraits, Cahun dislocates the human body, repurposing its parts to create a different object entirely, one that confuses the senses even as it transforms, but one no less fascinating or full of life than the original object. The “bulb”, referring to the head, should by her instructions remain obscured, and this idea of obscuring or blinding a person appears to follow on from Cahun’s exhortations in Vues et visions, via her heroine Helen, to seek beauty by doing nothing in the dark. Again in

Disavowals Cahun urges her readers to “blind oneself in order to see better,”54 once more disdaining the sense of sight, too often relied upon by humankind as the method by which to glean the whole and entire truth of a thing, in favour of a voluntary surrender to the other senses – to feel, to smell, to hear or to taste objects, or perhaps even do nothing: to metaphorically sit quietly in the dark, willingly discarding personal agency and allowing the interaction to be initiated by the objects before us, in order to fully experience their true value.

In order to address the inherent truth of objects, Cahun adapts a well-known proverb, so as to neatly illustrate the problem as she perceives it:

A rolling stone gathers no moss, but covers the original form in clay where gravel sticks, debris so well bound together by the movement, so

53 Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 73. 54 Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 152. 104

thoroughly incorporated, that its form is no longer visible, nor its point of origin.55

Following Cahun’s logic regarding the objective truth, objects, when disguised, by layers of alternative meanings, personal interpretations, and the flawed perceptions of individuals, are no longer recognisable as the object they once were. The problem this then raises for Cahun is, whether we are now viewing a new object, one which has accreted new meaning with every roll, or whether it is now damaged or obscured beyond repair. By Cahun’s own interpretation, the object before us is now both a new object, created in part through its own destruction, and an original thing, stripped of all meaning as its matter becomes concealed. The question before the observer is to decide which it is, or whether it can simultaneously be both. Cahun seeks to arm the viewer with the deconstructive/reconstructive tools needed to make the decision for themselves.

As the book progresses, Cahun appears to shift her stance to accommodate this new interpretation of objective reality, a task which, as we have already seen, she has declared herself to be almost incapable of. As she begins to admit to herself, “in the final reckoning we are forced to rely on the unknown, with a great algebraic X.”56 Cahun decides that her method can only be categorised as one of exceptions – a methodology that defies the rules even as she creates them:

The abstract, the absolute, the absurd, are a malleable element, a plastic material, the word one appropriates. That is all for me alone. And so, at ease, I associate, dissociate – and formulate without laughing the odious rule of my collection of exceptions.57

55 Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 194-5. 56 Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 102. 57 Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 152. 105

Cahun’s definitions resist interpretation in that they can both agree with and contradict one another: both she and the objects she contemplates destroy the rules, even as they create them.

Towards the end of the decade, Cahun had slowly become more involved in the socialist political movement, by joining such groups as the previously mentioned AEAR, which was also patronised by several writers associated with the surrealist group, most notably André Breton and Georges Bataille. Cahun’s rising interest in the political situation in France, and her frustration at the major players on both sides, both conservative and communist, can be heard in her statement, which occurred almost a propos of nothing in the middle of Disavowals: “Politics and the erotic are reduced to the vocabulary of libertinage.”58 For Cahun politics and the erotic had already become irrevocably interlaced with negative connotations. While the surrealists had conducted their own investigations into the nature of sexuality and transgression, they had largely failed to bring these investigations to bear in their political actions in a positive or constructive manner. Cahun was always interested in a synthesis of everything, of all things coming together. For her the amalgamation of politics and the erotic was a natural one, which need not be reduced to the level of lasciviousness or bawdiness. Recalling the words of Havelock Ellis: “Sex lies at the root of life, and we can never learn to reverence life until we know how to understand sex.” For Cahun, politics and sex occupied the same confused space as any other object, obscured by preconception and perception.

58 Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 130. 106

THE IMAGERY OF ‘DISAVOWALS’

While the text of Disavowals provides many insights into Cahun’s construction of the meaning and utility of objects, it is also important to read her text alongside the images that accompanied it. These images comprise a series of collages whose authorship has been sometimes been questioned. Writing on Cahun, Tirza True Latimer and Gen

Doy have analysed the collages and agree that they were predominantly the work of

Marcel Moore, however the extent to which Cahun was involved is often debated.

Certainly, the collages contain many of Cahun’s original photographs, and the text that figures in several is also arguably Cahun’s work, reflecting as it does the content of the text in the book. Shaw and Latimer therefore state that the images were a collaborative venture between the two women, but more important is the methodology and meaning behind the images.59

Shaw has investigated what she interprets as Cahun’s response to the social status of women depicted within one of the collages contained in Disavowals. In her interpretation of the ninth plate contained in the book, entitled I.O.U (self pride), Shaw interprets the Russian nesting dolls as not only a symbol of post-war pressure on French women to begin repopulating the nation, but also as a comment on women’s role in the creative process. As well as utilising the imagery in this collage, Cahun also made mention of nesting objects within the text, although there is no direct link to the image

I.O.U: “Every living being – Russian doll, nest of tables – is expected to contain all the

59 Shaw, Latimer, et al (2006), in L. Downie (Ed.), Don’t kiss me: The art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. London: Tate Publishing. 107 others.”60 Later in the same text, Cahun also referred to Paris as a Russian doll61, broken as it is into arrondissements, nestled into one another. Shaw concludes that:

[t]he only place for creative potential left to women in the dominant discourse of postwar France was the potential to create a child […] Cahun and Moore recognized that the notions of creativity that dominated their culture were based on idealized versions of romantic love that reduced women’s ‘creativity’ to childbearing.62

Since Disavowals contains the first iteration of Cahun’s idea “To create = to destroy + χ”, her choice to illustrate this work with collages appears as an embodiment of that formula.

The collages in the book could also be taken to represent an early form of the object to be destroyed: Cahun’s preoccupation with the shattering of the ‘real’ in favour of the true.

The collages then become a visual interpretation of Cahun’s contradictory theory, as her original photographs are both destroyed and simultaneously incorporated into a new form of imagery by the act of their destruction. The surrealists and dadaists had long experimented with collage, particularly in the period immediately following the First

World War, as a method of interrogating the violence of the conflict and its impact on civilian populations, as well as an attempt to challenge the conventional notions of ‘fine art.’ More importantly, these artists began to work with the elements of collage, not as elements of a larger cohesive whole, but, in the words of R. Bruce Elder, as “aesthetic signifiers without having first undergone any semiotic transformation.”63 Elder argues that in order to do this, these elements within the collage must “function as signs of

60 Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 103. 61 Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 108. 62 Shaw, J. (2003). Singular plural: Collaborative self-images in Claude Cahun's Aveux non avenus, in W. Chadwick, T. T. Latimer (Eds.), The modern woman revisited: Paris between the wars. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. 159. 63 Elder, B. R. (2012). Dada, surrealism, and the cinematic effect. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. 151. 108 themselves, for only by being signs of themselves can they escape being subjected to the artist’s preconceived ideas.”64 The dadaist experiments in collage were a theoretical pre- cursor to Cahun’s work in the same medium. Moore and Cahun’s collage works extended the idea of negating the artist’s preconceived ideas of the object to encapsulate the viewer in the same perspective: to carefully strip away the idea of the object by removing layers of context, leaving only the object itself, reassembled as part of something new.

The frontispiece of the final section of the book, simply entitled 1928, states: “I want to change skin: tear the old one from me.”65 After its publication, Cahun indeed shed her skin as literary auteur, and began to focus almost entirely on expressing her creative opinions through political action, and the publication of political manifestos and tracts.

TOWARDS A POLITICAL AGENCY

Cahun’s three major literary works – Vues et visions, Heroïnes, and Disavowals

– all exhibit Cahun’s interest in objects as not merely a short phase which aligned with or was brought about by her collaborations with key surrealist figures, but rather as stemming from a long-standing interest in the vital need to understand the subject/object relationship as it pertains to human existence. Two decades prior to her fabrication of plastic objects, Cahun had already identified the ability of objects to communicate and interact with their subjects in a far more dynamic manner than is traditionally assumed, and to interact within their own system networks, operating in a “secret language” which

64 Elder, B. R. (2012). 151. 65 Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 199. 109 humanity had yet to decode. Furthermore, Cahun had identified what she perceived to be a crucial element in that communication: the notion of resistance, be it conscious resistance to traditional or popular interpretation of objects, or resistance to interpretation from the objects themselves, which coloured the next stages of her work.

Cahun’s writing throughout the 1920s was the pursuit of a way to understand that secret language, to decode and manipulate it, and, ultimately, to decode it for others, so that they might be empowered by this knowledge, and galvanised into action in what was becoming increasingly fraught times for the average French citizen. Cahun also considered the importance of objects to the internal life of humans – their capacity to store an individual’s memories and return them to us through the briefest of interactions is just one way that they ‘speak’ to us. Not just through sight, but through sound, smell and touch.

From this examination of the first ten years of Cahun’s career, it becomes clear that she was aware of the importance of objects and our relationship to them, and their importance to human relationships, and began formulating her own approach to objects as early as 1916. This development continued throughout the 1920s, developing into a hybrid form consisting of feminism and a precursor to an idea of object agency. As Cahun became more politicised throughout the first few years of the next decade, her focus shifted to the plight of the working class of France, and specifically to working class women, who for Cahun embodied the result of objectification – by men, by family, and by employers, for all of whom these women were simply useful tools. This new focus would also bring some of Cahun’s ideas of resistance into direct service with regards to the production of her objects. For Cahun, people were made by their experiences from birth, and they could not be unmade, despite what they constructed around themselves.

The construction of objects, and the commensurate construction of meaning surrounding 110 those objects and their subject, clouded the true nature of the self and the objects, and contributed to a false reality. Cahun’s objects came to resist this reality.

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CHAPTER THREE: CAHUN’S PLASTIC OBJECTS OF 1936

112

INTRODUCTION

Immediately prior to making the objects exhibited in the 1936 exhibition Cahun became increasingly associated with political movements such as the AEAR and Contre attaque.1 Prior to her manufacture of plastic objects, this phase in Cahun’s development as a writer and artist was characterised by a move towards a form of abstraction utilising objects standing in place of figurative subject matter. As discussed in the previous chapter in relation to Cahun’s literary works of the 1910s and 20s, Cahun was not only fascinated with the role objects played in the lives of people and their ability not only to influence behaviour, but their potential as revelatory instruments. In the growing climate of unrest which typified 1930s Paris the object’s ability to communicate revelations also imbued it with the ability to act as a potential prophet in a revolution. While Cahun was involved in French left wing political discussion, she attempted to utilise this revelatory and revolutionary aspect of the potential of objects about which she had previously only written. The later stage of this project was Cahun’s creation of plastic objects which was initiated in response to the surrealist object exhibitions planned for London and Paris.

This chapter will interpret them as a synthesis of previous thinking on the nature of objects, and as a thinking through of the conflict and resistance between subject and object.

Cahun’s refusal to accept the definitions of revolutionary art during this period brought her, and others such as André Breton and Georges Bataille, into direct conflict with many of her new political allies within the Communist movement. The split which

1 Heron, L., & Williams, V. (Eds.). (1997). Illuminations: Women writing on photography from the 1850’s to the present (international library of historical studies). London, United Kingdom: I.B.Tauris. 92. 113 occurred between members of Paris’ Marxism adherents in the early 1930s, which culminated in an explosive argument over the meaning and effectiveness of Louis

Aragon’s poem “Red front” that became known as the Aragon affair,2 left André Breton,

Georges Bataille, and Claude Cahun standing on the same side. This split is ultimately what led to their continuing collaborations throughout the ensuing decade in the face of increasing conservatism from both the left and right of French politics and under the impending threat of another European war.

Carolyn J Dean states that Cahun was solely drawn to the surrealists by their mutual political aspirations, an assertion which has validity. Writing in 1929 Walter Benjamin

“locates the energies of Surrealist poetic practice within the rhetoric of civil rebellion at a point of historical crisis”:3 Cahun was increasingly attracted to the politics of the surrealists. As Christopher Wilk states, many of the artists working in Paris at the time were brought together by:

a utopian desire to create a better world, to reinvent the world from scratch… these principles were frequently combined with social and political beliefs (largely left-leaning) which held that art and design could, and should, transform society.4

In 1935 and ‘36 Cahun became a member of the short-lived Contre attaque, a group formed by Bataille with the aim of combating the rise of Fascism in Europe through indirect political action in the form of artistic and literary endeavours.5 It is this association which immediately predates the object exhibition.

2 Eburne, J. P. (2008). Surrealism and the art of crime. United States: Cornell University Press. 174. 3 Lusty, N. (2007). Surrealism, feminism, psychoanalysis. Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing. 4 Wilk, C. (2006). What is modernism?. Modernism, 1914-1939: Designing a new world. London: V & A Publications. 12. 5 Eburne, J. P. (2008). 90. 114

This analysis of the 1936 exhibition also understands it in relation to the political and social context. During the interwar years in France there was a strong neo-natalist call for ‘femininity’ from women: that is, a strict adherence to pre-war social norms of dress, character and behaviour including a strong emphasis on domesticity and a fulfilling of the female biological imperative through reproduction and child-rearing. This combined in the late twenties and early thirties with the rising popularity of totalitarian ideals of ‘social order’ to effectively strangle suffrage and associated political movements.6

From the outset Cahun did not set out to discover or create for herself a place within the prevailing culture of hetero-normative, anti-suffragist social conservatism, aspects of which she openly derided in her objects (especially Un air de famille). Rather, she worked consistently in opposition to it, both philosophically and ethically.7 While educational opportunities for girls grew steadily throughout the early 20th century the women of France did not gain the right to stand for office nor to vote until 1944.8 Thus a certain level of frustration could be felt in the rising number of educated, eloquent women who were still without an effective voice in national politics. Cahun epitomised the situation of such women. Gender studies academic Natalya Lusty posits that the bulk of

Cahun’s gender- and identity-interrogating self-portraits were produced in the 1920s in direct response to the changing social landscape, particularly with regards to women’s fashion, consumer culture and the debates over suffrage.9 By the 1930s however, worsening economic conditions, especially among the working classes, had overtaken them as the primary concern of most French men and women. Thus, because in Lusty’s

6 Chadwick, W., & Latimer, T. T. (Eds.). (2003). The modern woman revisited: Paris between the wars. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. 5. 7 Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’oeil. Oxford Art Journal, 24.1. 102. 8 Chadwick, W., & Latimer, T. T. (Eds.). (2003). 5. 9 Lusty, N. (2007). 98. 115 words, Cahun’s “interest in and knowledge of sexual politics was inseparable from her wider political and aesthetic interests”, she began to move away from portraiture and individualistic self-representation to expand her practice and explore in detail the complex relationships between identity, gender, poverty and social inequality.10

After the publication of Disavowals in 1930 Cahun’s work began to move towards a more abstract mode of thinking about objects. Kristine Von Oehsen provides a detailed chronology of what she refers to as Cahun’s practice of “assemblages”. Over the ten-year period to 1936 she notes that Cahun’s “self-interrogation becomes increasingly marginal.”11 Von Oehsen notes that it was specifically in 1936 that Cahun began to create

“plastic objects”.12 She also provides a brief but important visual analysis of one of

Cahun’s plastic works, namely Object of 1936, in which she employs the techniques of

Freudian psychoanalysis, that is, an examination of the unconscious mind with heavy reference to sexuality and suppression within a surrealist discourse in order to extend

Cahun’s previous explorations of gender identity into her change in practice.13 She argues that Cahun successfully reverses the imagery of the eye in surrealism from a phallic object to a symbol of castration anxiety or female empowerment by rotating the eye and crowning it in pubic hair. This thus echoes the scene in Bataille’s L’histoire de l’oeil, in which the female protagonist murders a priest and inserts his disembodied eye into her vagina.14 Von Oehsen’s thorough visual analysis provides the foundation from which to analyse the underlying philosophical and methodological motivations behind Cahun’s object manufacture.

10 Lusty, N. (2007). 109. 11 Von Oehsen, K. (2006). The lives of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, in L. Downie (Ed.), Don’t kiss me: The art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. London:Tate Publishing. 16. 12 Von Oehsen, K. (2006). 16. 13 Von Oehsen, K. (2006). 17.. 14 Von Oehsen, K. (2006). 17. 116

SURREALISM AND THEORETICAL DISCOURSES

Freudian psychoanalysis was an important concept during the first years of surrealism. Until the close of the 1920s the practitioners of surrealism had tended to focus on human sexuality and the potential of the unconscious through exercises such as automatic writing. Dream theory also formed an important basis for the works of many artists associated with surrealism, most recognizably Salvador Dalí, whose many works during this period, such as The metamorphosis of narcissus and Burning giraffe (both

1937) are attempts to depict dreams in the waking state. The uncanny (unheimlich) was a term Sigmund Freud coined to delineate the specific feeling of discomfort experienced when confronted with something unfamiliar. The German term unheimlich resonates somewhat more than its English translation, in that its common meaning is ‘unfamiliar’, but its literal translation is ‘unhomely’: lacking the feeling of homeliness, or possessing the quality of feeling as if you are in familiar territory.15 Although the surrealists were well-versed in Freudian terminology it is interesting that both Dalí in 1931, and Breton and Cahun in 1936, avoided the use of the term ‘uncanny’ in their descriptions of surrealist objects.16 Joanna Malt has asserted quite convincingly that the study of fetishism most suits the 1936 object exhibition as a method of analysis: first, many of the objects created contain elements of sexual fetishism; secondly, they simultaneously critique commodity fetishism, as well as providing comment on the fetishisation of art and cultural artefacts (which were actually referred to as ‘fetishes’ in contemporary

French society) as privileged objects within bourgeois culture.17 As discussed in chapter

15 Freud, S., McLintock, D., & Haughton, H. (2007). The uncanny. New York: Penguin Group. 16 Cahun’s choice of terminology is ‘disturbed’, Dalí’s is ‘delirious’. 17 Malt, J. (2004). Obscure objects of desire: Surrealism, fetishism, and politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 108. 117 one surrealism was also at a crisis point with regards to commercialism and was seeking new ways in order to re-radicalise its production and its reputation as an avant garde art movement. To achieve this end the surrealist exhibition displayed an array of objects – natural, found, ethnographic and tribal objects, and the deliberately constructed surrealist and ‘disturbed’ objects – in a haphazard organisation throughout their venue, the Charles

Ratton Gallery, in a deliberate attempt to de-class art and culture by blending their chosen categories together. This forced the viewer to randomly navigate their way between objects with a socially designated commercial value, such as Giacometti’s fine art sculptures, and those whose inclusion in a gallery were more confusing in terms of capitalistic value systems, such as pot plants and pebbles. Breton explained their aim in doing so:

The objects which assume their places within the framework of the surrealist exhibition of May 1936 are, above all, likely to lift the prohibition resulting from the overpowering repetition of those objects which meet our glance daily and persuade us to reject as illusion everything that might exist beyond them.18

With this exhibition, Breton and the other participants were asking their audience to resist typical interpretations, to question the assumed meaning of the objects present in their everyday world and asking them to meditate on the potential for the meaning of objects in their own lives.

Steven Harris argues that surrealism is a practice in which its theoretical components combine in dynamic ways. He gives examples such as “Hegelianising psychoanalysis” and “Freudianising Marxism.”19 Harris argues that the objects created

18 Breton, A., Seaver, R., and Lane, H R. (1969). Manifestoes of surrealism. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. 257. 19 Harris, S. (2001). Beware of domestic objects: Vocation and equivocation in 1936. Art History, 24.5. 739. 118 by women surrealist artists such as Meret Oppenheim and Claude Cahun were doing just this: their work was not simply a subversion or criticism of gender roles in contemporary

Europe, but an attempt to wrest control of the means of production (artistic or otherwise) away from the bourgeoisie, while commenting on the political issues of the era from a female perspective.20 At the point of first contact, the uncomfortable aesthetic of Cahun’s hairy eyeball or Oppenheim’s furry tea cup (Le Déjeuner en fourrure,1936, also exhibited at the Ratton show) therefore distances everyone equally. The shock of discomfort causes the viewer to pause, and to try and understand their instinctive aversion to these uncanny objects. Harris argues that by this stage of surrealism, artists were not simply investigating the theories of psychoanalysis and the human psyche, they had become directors of it, and were invoking trauma and repression in their audience in order to accomplish a specific reaction of discomfort.21 This feeling of discomfort in the viewer, engendered by the viewing of these objects, could also provoke thought about issues of gender and equality as well as political justice for the working class, homosexuals and women.

SURREALIST OBJECTS AND THE POLITICAL CLIMATE

Throughout 1935, the year leading up to the Exposition surréaliste d'objets,

Breton and his followers amongst the surrealists (Cahun among them) had clashed with the Communists and the Popular Front over the definition and form of revolutionary art.22

Breton declared:

20 Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’oeil. 109. 21 Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’oeil. 110. 22 Lusty, N. (2007). 86. 119

any attempt to explain social phenomena other than by Marx is to my mind as erroneous as any effort to defend or illustrate a so-called ‘proletarian’ literature and art at a time in history when no one can fairly claim any real kinship with the proletarian culture, for the very excellent reason that this culture does not yet exist, even under proletarian regimes.23

In this preliminary statement of his newly politicised theory, Breton made a miscalculation. He purported to understand the lack of ‘proletariat culture’ from his own privileged perspective of middle class ‘culture’, a perspective which stood at odds with the entire surrealist notion of de-classing art and culture. By doing so he revealed his own class prejudices, dismissing a rich working-class culture in the form of craft and folk art, traditional music, religion, and long standing societal traditions. Nevertheless, the beginnings of the surrealist experiment in which they imagined that objects would act as the instigators of revolutionary class war had begun. This new stance was formulated in direct response to Stalinist-inspired Socialist Realism, which had been adopted by the

French Communist party (PCF). This was proving problematic for the surrealists due to the PCF’s inflexibility regarding the value of art as a tool of propaganda and their insistence on literalism in the service of the revolution. The PCF were of a ‘majority rules’ mind when it came to understanding and interpreting works of art: they believed art should contain a single, focused message that was easy for the layperson to understand if it was to inspire radical action, and that any potentially individualistic interpretation would lead to confusion over the revolutionary message. What Breton wanted was objects that described the interior, in the sense that they evoked the marvellous, but in a way that was accessible to all. The objects of 1936 were far more successful in realising this aim. Lucy Lippard posits however that “Breton’s judgments of Surrealist plastic art

23 Lippard, L. (Ed.). (1971). Surrealists on art. United States: Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall. 34. 120 were not always the most perceptive, since his writings were so often coloured by current enmities among the group, and by dominant literary preoccupations.”24 These enmities at this point in time were influenced by the growing rift between artist members of the PCF following Louis Aragon’s expulsion from the surrealist circle. Breton and Cahun were among those who objected to the PCF’s oversimplification of artistic representation and interpretation, and the consequent denial of their own works as ‘revolutionary art’.25

By May of 1936 the Popular Front, France’s conservative, socialist political party, appeared to have seized victory in the national elections. In Stephen Harris’ opinion, this further cemented together “the two authoritative voices of law and Party, which, in Contre attaque’s view, [had] recently come together so disastrously.”26 In contrast to the emerging conservatism of the Popular Front, Breton saw himself as what Historian Roger

Griffin describes as a propheta: the charismatic leader as personified in both the left and right politics of interwar Europe.27 Griffin states that Breton was typical of the avant garde artist/philosopher who believes that he is capable of recognizing “a lightning flash of fearsome lucidity about the yawning void just beneath our feet”, thus steering humanity away from potential calamity.28 Cahun certainly admired Breton and his philosophies, and as Natalya Lusty asserts that in her political writing, Cahun strove to “reconcile Marx and Freud in a way that reflects her strong allegiance to Breton’s own beleaguered struggle to define art and life as part of the same radical drive.”29 In relation to this struggle Cahun wrote in 1933:

24 Lippard, L. (Ed.). (1971). 51. 25 Eburne, J. P. (2008). 174. 26 Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’oeil. 109.. 27 Griffin, R. (2008). Modernity, modernism, and fascism. A “mazeway resynthesis.” Modernism/modernity, 15.1. 15.. 28 Griffin, R. (2008). 11.. 29 Lusty, N. (2007). 82. 121

One must write against all those who know how to read, because I consider that progress is never made other than through opposition. It’s up to the readers to benefit from what the writer has thought against their past, and against his own. It’s enough today that I write, that I wish to write above all against myself.”30

Cahun here first clearly articulated her thoughts on the value of resistance: that no action or idea is worthy unless it is working in resistance against another. This concept formed the basis of both her object work and her political commentary from this point onwards.

Perhaps Stephen Harris articulates Cahun’s stance most succinctly when he observes

“against the métier, Cahun posed the ruination of skill and talent.”31 Cahun’s drive to create by first destroying was anathema to typical understandings of the creative process and was one of the core concepts which brought her into alignment with Breton and his surrealist followers at this time.

CAHUN’S OBJECT THINKING, 1936

Cahun would continue to write on the importance of objects as she was in the process of imagining and creating them. The objects Cahun exhibited in the Paris exposition were complemented by an article written by Cahun, published in ‘Cahiers d’Art’. She claimed in her article, entitled Prenez garde au objet domestique! (Beware domestic objects!), that only those labourers involved in the production of everyday domestic items could fully appreciate “irrational” objects – those objects taken from their

30 Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’oeil. 93. My italics. 31 Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’oeil. 96. The surrealists who left the AEAR opposed the elevation of the artist to the level of professional or genius: the métier as prescribed by Louis Aragon. This was one of the reasons the surrealists left the AEAR and disassociated with the Popular Front. 122 everyday setting and given new meaning in the manner of found objects such as

Duchamp’s Bottle rack, a reproduction of which was given prime position at the Ratton exhibition.32 Cahun also wrote:

What differentiates the human animal, what constitutes its own peculiarity and best describes it is that it tends to surpass the irrational field…Only the civilised human possesses this ferocious power and the unbridled luxury of nursing it – that is, of preserving and cultivating such a variety of vain ornamentations, exhibiting leprosy and tumors – terrifying invented or found objects, irrational sproutings of flesh.33

Cahun believed that humanity, alone of all the animals, had the potential to assign meaning and value to objects which were often unnatural, absurd or fantastical in nature.

Cahun had exhorted readers to contemplate the secret language of objects in her Vues et visions of 1914. As we have seen, Breton likewise wished for the general public to experience objects by taking the time to contemplate them in fresh, unencumbered surroundings, stripped of their artificially prescribed meanings. Thus, Cahun’s understanding of objects again enlarged on the theories espoused by Breton during the same time period:

The pressing need to ‘deconcretize’ the various geometries so as to free the researcher into all directions and permit the ulterior coordination of the results obtained, is rigorously superimposed on the need in art to break down the barriers separating the déjà vu from the visible, the commonly proved from the provable, etc. In this regard, modern scientific and artistic thought present the same structure: the real has too long been confused with the given, for one like the other spreads out in all directions of the possible and tends to become one with it.34

32 Cahun, C. (1936). 59-60. 33 Cahun, C. (1936). 59. 34 Breton, A. (1936). The crisis of the object, in L. Lippard (Ed.), Surrealists on art. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. 53. 123

Breton also stated that “Here as elsewhere, the mad beast of custom must be hunted down.”35 Breton’s objection in the wider political context of object construction and usage was to an overfamiliarity which dulled the senses; the quotidian being allowed to override the marvellous in our experience of the world. For Breton, ‘concrete objects’ were representative of the “complete folly of usage.”36

One of Breton’s most important projects was the attempt to depict what he termed

‘Convulsive Beauty’: a beauty that simultaneously evokes feelings of both attraction and revulsion, similar to Freud’s notions of unheimlich, or the uncanny or uncomfortable. The aim of this philosophical project was to awaken people from the long standing Western tradition of rational thought, which Breton claimed was a falsehood, a veneer over what he perceived as true reality. Thus, explorations of convulsive beauty, or the ‘marvellous’, would allow everyday humanity to explore their own personal truths. Rosalind Krauss argues that “representation is the very core of his definition of Convulsive Beauty, and

Convulsive Beauty is another term for the Marvellous: the great talismanic concept at the heart of surrealism itself.”37 As Breton himself put it: “the marvelous is always beautiful, anything marvelous is beautiful, in fact only the marvelous is beautiful.”38 Beauty was therefore not to be judged by a preconceived universal standard, but by what moved people to think, and to re-examine the true value of the objects they found themselves surrounded by.

35 Breton, A. (1936). 54. 36 Breton, A. (1936). 54. 37 Krauss, R. E., Livingston, J., & Ades, D. (1985). L’amour fou: Photography & surrealism. Washington, D.C.: Abbeville Press Inc. 24. 38 Breton, A., et al. (1969). 14. 124

The creation of surrealist objects at this time also fulfilled another function: “the necessity of establishing, in Paul Eluard’s decisive phrase, a veritable ‘physics of poetry’.”39 Although initiated by Breton it was Salvador Dalí who instigated the first major surrealist investigation of objects in 1931, the creation of which was accompanied by his essay ‘The object as revealed in surrealist experiment’. As Haim Finkelstein states:

Dalí’s invention and Breton’s objections to some of its aspects turn out to be symptomatic, in the overall context of Surrealism, of a change in emphasis and a movement away from dream and automatism to an active soliciting of the mind to discharge the images hidden in the unconscious.40

Several members of the surrealist group, including Breton, Dalí, and Gala Eduard, created ‘objects of symbolic function’ as part of Dalí’s experiment, images and/or descriptions of which were published with his essay in Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution.41 Breton found this first major output of objects created by the surrealists to be unsatisfactory on two main counts, “first because they were too contrived, especially in their deliberate incorporation of sexual suggestion, which eliminated the uncanny effect generated by repression and psychical censorship; secondly, because they were too personal to be meaningful to others in the same way.”42 One such example from this experiment was a pair of hands submitted by Hugo, a newer arrival to the group.

Alexandrian described Hugo’s symbolically functioning object simply, and with little analysis: “Valentine Hugo made a symbolically functioning object which included two hands – one white, and holding a dice, and the other red, placed together on a green roulette cloth, and caught in a network of white threads.”43 From Dalí’s description of

39 Breton, A. (1936). 53. 40 Malt, J. (2004). 89. 41 Malt, J. (2004). 88. 42 Malt, J. (2004). 88. 43 Alexandrian, S. (1985). Surrealist art. New York: Thames and Hudson. 148. 125

Hugo’s object however, we gain significant detail that is not clear from examining photographs of the object: Hugo’s object consisted of two hands, one wearing in a white glove, the other hand painted red, both with ermine cuffs, which were resting on a green roulette cloth from which the last four numbers have been removed. “The gloved hand is palm upwards and holds a die between its thumb and forefinger. All the fingers of the red hand are movable and this hand is made to seize the other, its forefinger being put inside the glove’s opening which it raises slightly. The two hands are enmeshed in white threads like gossamer, which are fastened to the roulette cloth with red- and white-topped drawing pins in a mixed arrangement.”44 The imagery of the glove utilised Breton’s own symbol for infatuation or ‘mad love’, and was possibly a reference to Lisa Deharme, the ‘lady of the glove’, or to Breton’s obsession with Nadja. The object also included a love poem to

Breton. Such objects ultimately formed part of the basis for Breton’s objection to the objects as being ‘too personal’, although another object created as part of this exercise – and considered far more successful by Breton in terms of its fulfilling the aims of the experiment – was Giacometti’s Suspended ball, which featured in the 1936 exhibition.

1936 EXHIBITION

The surrealist preoccupation with objects and their political significance culminated in the May 1936 Exhibition of surrealist objects at the Charles Ratton Gallery in Paris, followed by an International Surrealist Exhibition at the New Burlington

Galleries in London in June of the same year. It was hoped that the multiplication of irrational objects would naturally lead to, in Breton’s words, a “depreciation of those whose convenient utility (although often questionable) encumbers the supposedly real

44 Dalí, S. (1931) Objets surréalistes. Le Surréalisme au service de la revolution, 3. 16-17. 126 world.”45 The objects assembled for this exhibition were split into the following categories: Natural Objects; Interpreted Natural Objects; Disturbed Objects; Found

Objects; Objects from the Americas; Objects from Oceania; and the largest category,

Surrealist Objects.46 The surrealists’ objects were placed alongside these found and anthropological objects in the gallery, in a deliberate attempt to de-class art and culture.

The surrealist objects submitted for display in this exhibition varied greatly.

Examples included Salvador Dalí’s Aphrodisiac jacket, a tongue-in-cheek object, consisting of a dinner jacket covered in shot glasses, and Giacometti’s sculptural works, as well as the conspicuously naïve attempts of artists such as Cahun. These unrefined works displayed a distinctly handmade quality, in an attempt to emphasise the work of the non-artist or amateur and their role in creation of everyday objects, thus becoming a symbol of the value of the work of the labouring classes. In the spirit of experimentation, several writers associated with surrealism were invited to create objects for this exhibition: the emphasis was on a de-skilling of the art of sculpture in order to illustrate the value of all interactions between the subject and every object present without assigning a pre-constructed notion of value to each. It is important to bear this aim in mind when attempting an analysis of any of the objects submitted by those in this

‘amateur’ category which included Penrose, who was instrumental in organising the

London exhibition later the same year.47 Although their works were readable in art- theoretical terms, in that they have meaning, materials, style and form, their true importance was as political signifiers, highlighting both the purpose of the exhibition and

45 Breton, A. (1936). 53. 46 Charles Ratton Gallery (1936). Exposition surréaliste d'objets, exhibition at the Charles Ratton Gallery, Paris, 22-29 May 1936. Exhibition catalogue. Paris. 47 International Surrealist Bulletin. (1936, Sep). No. 4. 127 the political ideology of the surrealists as a whole. Penrose wrote of the excitement that these projects engendered, both within the group and amongst the general public:

Surrealism had for ten years been treated generally as a childish pastime or a public nuisance; now it’s concern with the complete revolution of values in the arts and in life had come to be considered as a force of undeniable strength in the intellectual world.48

The exhibition itself deliberately resembled a mixture of museum displays and the shop fittings of a commercial boutique in which ethnographic artefacts and traditional tribal art were indiscriminately displayed alongside everyday found objects and modernist sculpture in glass cases and upon rows of shelves. The Charles Ratton Gallery, as specialists in ‘primitive’ art sales, was chosen for this very reason.49 It was hoped by the group that the gallery’s reputation as bourgeois purveyors of primitive art would increase the sensation of the uncanny among its regular patrons, viewing the confused and uncategorised surrealist show, accustomed as they were to the strict cultural delineations of fine, primitive, and folk art, and the traditional socio-economic value placed on each category.50

Two writers who visited the exhibition cast some light on how successful the objects displayed at the 1936 exhibition were in expressing these ideas to the public.

Maurice Henry described the confusion which resulted from such an eclectic display;

“from an Eskimo mask in the form of a duck, a carnivorous plant, a glass deformed by lava from a volcano to a surrealist object, there is but a step. It is quickly taken by the visitor.”51 The journalist Guy Crouzet declared that the simultaneously deliberate, yet

48 Penrose, R. (1975). Man Ray. United States: New York Graphic Society Books.126. 49 Krauss, R. (1981). Passages in modern sculpture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 294. 50 Conley, K. (2013). Surrealist ghostliness. Philadelphia, PA: University of Nebraska Press. 77. 51 Henry, M. (1936, May 24). Une exposition d’objets surrealists. Quand la poésie deviant tangible. Le Petit Journal. 128 haphazard juxtaposition of the objects gave them “a family likeness”, possibly a pun on the title of one of Cahun’s objects on display, namely Un air de famille. Henry and

Crouzet’s reviews illustrated that the aims of the group with regards to the confusion of the categories of the objects displayed were successfully interpreted by patrons of the gallery.

CAHUN’S OBJECT CONFUSION

The catalogue for the exhibition lists two works submitted by Cahun: the aforementioned Un air de famille, and Souris valseuses52, now regarded as a lost work by

Laurie J Monahan and Steven Harris. Monahan contends in her entry on Cahun in The

Dictionary of women artists that Souris valseuses was an earlier variation on the object

Qui ne craint pas de grand mechant loup, remet la barque sur sa quille et vogue a la derive53 also of 1936, and was dismantled in order to furnish the objects used to create the latter work.54 Un air de famille, the details of which are now only available through photographs taken at the time of the exhibition in 1936, is no longer extant having been remodelled for use as a photographic plate in Lise Deharme’s 1937 poetry anthology, Le

Coeur de pic, before being dismantled again to furnish components for further objects.

Thus, the first issue complicating this analysis is some confusion surrounding the total number of works created or submitted for exhibition that year by Cahun. Although only two works were listed, another object created by Cahun in 1936 is still extant: the

52 Charles Ratton Gallery (1936). 4-5. 53 “Who’s not afraid of the big, bad wolf, reset the ship on its keel and drift in a fashion.” My translation. 54 Monahan, L. J. (1997). 342. 129 untitled Object now in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.55 Further complicating matters Steven Harris insists, in his excellent analysis of Object, that it was displayed by Cahun in the Paris exhibition despite the fact that there is no mention of a third work in the exhibition catalogue.56

In order to fully analyse Cahun’s plastic contributions to the surrealist movement during this period I will therefore first unravel the increasingly conflicting information available on each piece. Secondly, while many academics and historians have made mention of Cahun’s objects, it is primarily Harris who has provided a close analysis of her practice in this area and the motivation behind it. My efforts to augment research in this field have involved the investigation not only of her work, but also the complex and increasingly tense social and political environment in which Cahun was working and with which she was always so deeply involved. Also important to my analysis of Cahun’s objects is an understanding that Cahun was not necessarily working consciously within the scope of a particular tradition (be it one of painter or sculptor), but rather co-opted other modes of expression as an extension of her primary written works. This is evidenced by her liberal use of text within her sculptures and assemblages, generally utilised to expand upon a political or social issue being raised in the work, which I will discuss in detail in relation to each object.

UN AIR DE FAMILLE

55 The Art Institute of Chicago. Claude Cahun, object, 1936: Exhibition, publication and ownership histories. Retrieved from http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/189807. 56 Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’oeil. 130

Given it is not contested that Un air de famille was one of the objects Cahun diaplayed at the 1936 Ratton exhibition, I will begin my analysis here. Only two photographs by Cahun and Man Ray have recorded the form Un air de famille took at the time of this exhibition. The object, the title of which translates as A family resemblance, consisted of a doll’s bed containing a selection of toys and crowned with a veil and flowers, evocative of both a bed curtain and a bride’s veil. Unfortunately, the colour of the wreath is not known, and although it appeared to be red and white, without contemporary descriptions this cannot be confirmed. The scale of the object was small and doll-like, and its placement within the gallery was unusual for the rest of the exhibition. Man Ray’s photographs show that while the majority of the gallery was set up like a museum or salesroom, Cahun’s object was placed as a ‘domestic object’ on an elegant side table such as might be found in a middle class Parisian parlour or entrance hall.

The bed contained many objects, including a recorder, a symbol of childhood

‘femininity’ training for girls in the form of an education in the arts, the holes of which appear to be partially blocked; a sash, arranged to appear like the arms of a body in repose, folded gently across the body; several ornate glass perfume stoppers; and various other unidentifiable objects. Alongside the pillow is what appears to be a teated toy milk bottle

(or possibly a feeding bottle for animal use). Dominating the bed’s surface is a strange vessel, possibly a doll’s tri-corner hat, with a target on its side, containing pen nibs and shards of broken glass which have a dangerous look to them, almost like brandished weapons or the sharpened stakes of a pitfall. This vessel appears to sit in the position of the heart. If the objects on the bed are read in this way – as severed and disjointed head, hands, and heart - we can see how a length of string threads its way from the top of the 131 arrangement – the apex of the bed curtain, or the bride’s ‘head’ – down through the ‘heart’ of the object (the black vessel), and down into the ‘mouth’ of an object tucked lovingly into the bed, which appears to portray a symbolic melding of the child and phallus.57

Cupid’s broken arrow also lies discarded, tucked through the dowel sides of the bed like an object once useful, now unfeathered and useless; the bull’s eye on the side of ‘heart’ remains unpierced.

The most obvious reference is to motherhood, marriage and procreation, as the suckling object feeds on the mother’s head and heart. I propose that the object is a reference to the contemporaneous debate over the legalisation of abortion in relation to the size of working class families, and the economically related stresses of raising a large family on low wages. As discussed below, variations of the word Ange – angel – appear throughout the text attached to the object. Faiseuses d’anges was a term still in common usage in this period.58 Originally, a ‘maker of angels’ was a woman responsible for the death of young children in her care, however by the 20th century it’s meaning had altered to specifically refer to a backyard abortionist: one whom women would deliberately consult in order to end an unwanted pregnancy. These procedures were naturally fraught with danger and posed a serious threat to the lives of women who underwent them. With the advent of medicalised abortion, the term has largely fallen out of use. It is therefore possible that Cahun’s image hints at the lengths women must go to in order to maintain the appearance of respectability, or to practice economic rationalism by curbing their growing families by quasi-medical intervention, and the danger women were placed in by their own reproductive biology. These ‘angels’ were both saviours, angels of mercy to

57 An interesting precursor to Louise Bourgeois’ La fillette of 1968. 58 Dyer, C. L. (1978). Population and society in twentieth century France. New York: Holmes and Meier. 79. 132 whom women could turn as a last resort, and harbingers of death, responsible not only for the termination of pregnancies but also for the painful deaths of many of their clients.

The primary goal of those who supported the opportunity to legalise abortion was to give working class women equal access to a safe, medicalised procedure currently only available (illegally) to the upper and middle classes. At the time, abortion was still legally punishable by decapitation at the guillotine.59 The Popular Front, supported by the PCF, had flip-flopped on their stance on abortion during the lead up to their electoral victory: initially in favour of legalising the procedure to benefit working class families, the party had realised that this stance had to be reversed in order to garner the number of votes required to win the election.60 Thus the abortion debate at the time politicised both class and gender.

Cahun’s preliminary meaning can be read thus: once wed, domesticated, the wife becomes another ‘domestic object’ – she is simply the sustenance required by others.

There is no more love to be found in this domestic scene, as the bride becomes the fodder for her family and society: the body and mind of the working-class mother is revealed as the provisions upon which the nation survives. Furthermore, a pen nib points a condemning finger at the figure cradled in the bed. The accusatory positioning of the pen confers upon it a central role in the composition of the piece. The pointed glass stopper embedded in the vessel points upwards and draws the eye to the mysterious note pinned above the bed.

59 Chadwick, W., & Latimer, T. T. (2003). 6. 60 Sowerwine, C. (2009). France since 1870: Culture, society and the making of the republic. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 148. 133

UN CHANT REVOLUTIONAIRE

Adding further complexity to the object is the inclusion of text on a card tacked to the bedpost. The handwritten message on the card can be read both in terms of a straight visual analysis and of its written content. Beginning with a visual analysis, the label is a card on which a child would practice forming their letters – in this case, the letter ‘m’.

The alliteration in the text appears to stem from this compulsory ‘m’ repeated down the side of the page, as if the author/subject is not completely in control of the artistic process, dictated to her as it is by the markings already on the page. The writing is also the slow, careful stroke of a beginner; even-handed, yet clumsy in the attempt. Cahun has also included a deliberate error in the forming of the J/G letter on the bottom line of the card

– a conscious and careful mistake, reminiscent of a child’s slow and painful correction of an error. This correction also suggests further ambiguity in the play of words contained within the poem.

The word play itself is, like Cahun’s other works (both visual and verbal) rich and complex. The actual text reads: non vivre pour manger. Honneur á aux qui sont m___

m m m m m m m m m m m dANGEr manger m ange z menge je mens mange j/ge manje

134

Leaving aside the first two lines for later analysis, the wordplays in the body of the text are as follows: the first line, “dANGEr”, spells danger in its entirety, while the capitalized section alone spells angel. The d that prefixes this could also be seen as the definite article, making it the angel. The pre-existing ‘m’ printed at the beginning of the line could also render another interpretation possible: my danger. The second line consists firstly of the infinitive form of the verb “manger”, to eat, and secondly the oddly spaced “m ange z”.

This can be read simultaneously as “m’ange/s”, my angel/s, and “mangez”, you eat, an imperative or command in the singular polite form (the inference being the exhortations of a polite host: “Please, I insist”). The next two lines play more directly with pronunciation and several are not in fact ‘real’ words at all but nonsense syllables that sound like words. The next line, “menge je mens”, consists secondly of a straight statement – I lie – preceded by a syllabic play that sounds both like a mirror version of the same statement – lie I – and a nonsense version of the singular imperative, you eat.

Thus, the line in its entirety resembles: You must eat/lie I I lie. The last line, “mange j/ge manje” is more wordplay and nonsense: the first word is eat, followed by a syntactically incorrect phonetic variation on I eat (je mange).

The play on the word angel exists in almost every line, through the repetition of the syllable ange/enge. Furthermore, the word danger in French has a more specific meaning than it does in English: ‘danger’ is specifically the exposure to risk of evil or harm by another; to put yourself in peril is instead translated by ‘risque’ – to take a risk.61

Thus the danger referred to here is an evil that comes from an ‘other’, an outside source.

The syllable man/men throughout also develops a strong phonetic resemblance through

61 Corréard, M.-H. (1997). The Oxford-Hachette French dictionary. New York: Oxford University Press. 135 repetition to ‘manne’, the French word for manna, the miraculous foodstuff sent from heaven.

Although it would be impossible to translate the entire piece into English, an approximation of its meaning would be as follows

There is danger for the angel (my danger) Eat, my angel, eat, you must (please, I insist) You must eat! I lie (my angel) I lie, Eat, my angel, I eat (my angel) (I am my angel).

The simple beauty and complexity of the text is impossible to render perfectly in another language, and I have not delivered a complete interpretation in this instance.

Across the top of the card are two short sentences; the platitude “non vivre pour manger”

– don’t live to eat – and a partially obscured phrase which most likely translates as something approximating “Honour (to) those (that) are eaten/eating”. Although some guesswork is required concerning the form of the final word (most likely a declension of manger, to eat), and thus no definite conclusion can be drawn as to its meaning, the sentence may be a play on the commonly quoted Latin phrase, “morituri te salutant”, or as it is recognised in English, “Those who are about to die salute you”. Unfortunately, without confirmation of form of the final word, its meaning remains ambiguous: who extends the honour, and is it to those who eat, or who are eaten? The original phrase may have even carried this same ambiguity.

By introducing this phrase Cahun not only co-opted a gladiator’s oratory salute, but also a very masculine concept of sacrifice for the pleasure of the leader, and bravery in the face of almost certain death. This machismo is thus claimed for the women of

France who could be just as resilient when fighting for their rights. Reading this in terms 136 of the surrealists’ political ideals it becomes an announcement of a battle that has been enjoined, and a promise that Cahun will fight on behalf of subjugated women.

I.O.U. YOU SELF PRIDE

Elements of Un air de famille also exhibit a parallel to an earlier collage created by Cahun and her partner Suzanne Malherbe (Marcel Moore). Plate 9 of Aveux non avenus, entitled I.O.U (self pride), contains many references to the same set of social and political signifiers: family; femininity; masking of identity; and power, both religious and secular. This particular plate has previously been examined by several researchers, including Jennifer Shaw and Natalya Lusty, and I will now extend these important analyses to the study of Cahun’s object.

The top third of the collage contains a tongue-in-cheek reference to the holy family (“La sainte famille”). The woman’s body is grotesquely tethered to both husband and child, torn in two directions by the aggressive stance of the father and the waywardness of the young child – a boy – violently brought to heel by the father, who grabs him by the hair. Again, the woman’s body exists only as a function of others – a support, a supply point, pulled brutally in many directions by the desires of her family.

The father is endowed with a god-like power, clutching a fistful of Zeus’ thunderbolts ready to hurl down upon the unrighteous (or disobedient). Surrounded by this image of the sanctified heterogeneric family are various illustrations of the foetus in utero, in a macabre sequence of disemboweled or vivisected Matryoshka dolls.62 The inference

62 Russian nesting dolls, called Matryoshkas after the Russian word Matryona, meaning mother (thus ‘little mother’ or ‘mummy’ dolls is an appropriate translation). The biological inference of the physical 137 seems apparent: the faceless march of reproductive duty, the endless replication of life which is woman’s biological and sole function in society. Cahun’s preoccupation with the family as it related to personal identity and womanhood is unmistakable in this collection of images. As Shaw interprets the collage:

The only place for creative potential left to women in the dominant discourse of post-war France was the potential to produce a child. The paradigm of artist and muse mimicked the more general unequal relationship in romance and marriage between men and women. It reinforced the notion that the only role women should play in creation was the role of vessel for the gestation of a child.63

Directly below this section in the centre of the collage is a decapitated male statue, its genitals mutilated, lying prone across the picture plane. From its bloodied navel sprouts a monstrous tree, which blooms with female sensory organs: mouth, hand, nose, ear and eye: the castrated or disempowered male becomes the gestational vessel from which female sensory experience and freedom blossoms into the world, a depiction of social castration anxiety writ large. With the blossoming of female sensory and intellectual experience comes a desire to participate in alternative acts of creativity. For Cahun, female artistic creativity stood in a double for, or alternative to, creativity through biological reproduction. Furthermore, as the title suggests, this path is one that should be taken when desired rather than passively awaiting an opportunity that may never be

nature of the dolls is thus rendered more clearly using the correct terminology: each ‘little mummy’ doll reproduces a smaller, perfect rendition of itself. 63 Shaw, J. (2003). Singular plural: Collaborative self-images in Claude Cahun's Aveux non avenus, in W. Chadwick, T. T. Latimer (Eds.), The modern woman revisited: Paris between the wars. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. 159. 138 extended by others: I.O.U (self-pride) is a note to the self, reminding the female viewer of their obligation to reach for what brings them self-completion and happiness.

The collage also contains the phrase “Under this mask another mask: I shall never stop removing all the faces.”64 This maxim surrounds a phallic pile of heads, each one a different portrait or ‘mask’ of Cahun herself. Cahun’s masks, symbols of her intellectual creativity, become a symbol of masculinised strength, a phallic figure wielding authority that forcibly inserts itself into the frame.

MOTHERHOOD AS A MASQUERADE

Returning to her depiction of the hardships of motherhood in Un air de famille, I will now examine the inference of the wordplay in the object. At first it appears that the mother exhorts her ‘angel’ to eat, in a soothing, nurturing, ‘mothering’ fashion. But is her child the angel, or is she her own angel? If the mother is referring to herself as the angel, then she is in fact exhorting the child (or whomever the text is addressed to) to consume her. Is there danger for her angel, or is the danger ‘my (her) danger’? The self-sacrifice of the mother is willing, and as contemporary society would have it for the good of the family, but for Cahun it was exploitative labour nevertheless. The mother hides behind layers of meaning, each one a mask; is she the bride, the angel, or the meal? Much like

Joan Riviere’s Womanliness as a masquerade (1929), in which Riviere unpacked the ways in which women engage in a kind of quotidian performance, enacting socially prescribed feminine identities in order to conform to societal expectations of womanhood,

64 The original text reads “Sous ce masque un autre masque. Je n’en finirai pas de soulever tous ces visages.” 139 in Cahun’s object “the mask represents a complex grammar of identity that refuses an instrumental distinction between appearance and reality, a performative and ‘real’ self”’.65 The ‘family resemblance’ in this object can thus be interpreted as the mother’s performance of socially acceptable motherhood, rather than of her ‘real’ self’ In this work, while the mask is metaphorical rather than physically present, the concept of the mask represents the absence of woman’s true identity from contemporary society.

The wordplay contained within the title of Un air de famille requires further analysis for an English-speaking audience. The family resemblance could on one level be a simple description of the object: here is something which looks like a family, a mother nurturing a child. There is another resemblance that could be evoked, the mother also bears a family resemblance to her mother, and all mothers before her: anonymous, drained, and silenced. The mother hides behinds so many masks of motherhood that she also comes to resemble her family: as her body goes to make up their being, eventually her individuality is subsumed by her husband and children and the only likeness that remains at her disposal is her visibility as defined by their outline in the world.

The placement of Un air de famille within the gallery as a decorative item on an expensive side table serves as a reminder of the marginalisation of women in French society – unable to take part in the democratic process they are reduced to items of domestic utility or decoration, depending on their class. Women themselves are largely absent from the political debate on the role of women, and poor women even more so.

Imbued with the nature of a conversation piece, it renders the socially invisible woman visible to those who would exploit her most, forcing them to acknowledge their contribution to her slow destruction.

65 Lusty, N. (2007). 84. 140

SOURIS VALSEUSES - FOUND OBJECTS

Cahun’s only other surviving object from this period, known as Object, is now owned by the Art Institute of Chicago. The Object is a perfect representation of Cahun’s blurring of socially and biologically designated gender categories in her work. Here we see an eyeball rolled onto its side and surrounded by a mass of pubic hair. Above it hovers an amorphous cloud-like object and standing in the foreground we see a disembodied hand. Made largely with found objects and reclaimed materials including a painted tennis ball, the surrealist imagery within the work is apparent; the eye is one of the most common motifs in surrealism. The most obvious reading of the disembodied hand in the foreground in a surrealist context is as a representation of castration, although Steven Harris also deciphers it as a symbol of the act of masturbation.66 Mary Ann Caws also offers possible interpretations of the hand with specific reference to Cahun’s habitual set of signifiers, and speculates that it could represent a hand-held mirror, or even a mask.67

A powerful precursor to Object is the symbolist Odilon Redon’s 1879 lithograph

The vision, plate no. 8 of Danse le réve. In this and other images Redon reduces the eyeball to a nightmare vision. Disembodied and stripped of all referential meaning within the canon of western art:

Redon’s startling instance of the eye on stage is another of the early metavisual images as perfect examples of a self-referring temper: the observers here stare at a theatrical eye, itself forming the subject of the sight. The Surrealists could go no further than this.68

66 Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’oeil. 100-01. 67 Caws, M. A. (1997). The surrealist look: An erotics of encounter. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 117. 68 Caws, M. A. (1992). The eye in the text: Essays on perception, mannerist to modern. United States: Princeton University Press. 100. 141

Another is an undated earlier duogram by Claude herself, consisting of a pair of lips resting on an eyeball, crowned with a reaching hand and balanced precariously on a fashionable ladies’ shoe. Tirza True Latimer reads this image as a synthesis of Moore and

Cahun: Lucie Schwob, creator of words, reaches for the sky, while Suzanne Malherbe, creator of visual imagery, keeps her grounded.69 The imagery in this work bears a striking resemblance to Object, created some ten to fifteen years later. In another of Cahun’s works, a photographic self-portrait published in the surrealist review Bifur in 1930 we can see a blurring of gender boundaries similar to those contained in the Object. Titled

Frontières humaines, the portrait depicts a bald Cahun in a feminine off the shoulder dress, her head distorted and oddly phallicised.70 Thus Cahun at first depicted herself as the phallicised woman, a symbol of social castration and the assumption of male power.

The Object also enters into a dialogue with French modernist depictions of the gaze of the female subject, typified by Manet’s Olympia or Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon. Unlike a romantic odalisque Cahun’s disembodied eyeball stares us down, daring us to break our gaze first, or to keep staring at the spectacle of the unashamed woman who has been reduced to a single, naked eye. With her body no longer extant, it is the spectator, in turn, who is ogled. Stephen Harris reads this object as an interpretation of Bataille’s L’histoire du l’oeil, in which the heroine removes the eye of a priest and places it in her vagina: a symbol of castration anxiety created by the feminising of the phallic eye.71

69 Latimer, T. T. (2006). Entre nous: Between Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. GLQ. Duke University Press, 12.2. 206. 70 Latimer, T. T. (2006). 209. 71 Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’œil. 98. 142

Expounding briefly, the chapter entitled “Granero’s eye” tells the story of the protagonist and his lover, Simone, attending a bullfight in Spain with a much older

English gentleman, who is currently paying their board and keep in exchange for sexual favours. Having first demanded that the raw testicles of the first slain bull be delivered to her on a plate (for purposes which become apparent), Simone and her companions then settle down to watch the main event. The moment climaxes when the famous bullfighter,

Granero, is gored to death by a bull, his eyeball popping from the socket at the same moment that Simone is gripped by a lustful frenzy, inserting a raw bull’s testicle into her vagina for all in the audience to see.72 Her actions escalate in the following chapters, where the trio capture, sexually torture and murder a priest in a church vestry, culminating in Simone demanding the priest’s eye for a similar purpose:

[Simone] grabbed the beautiful eyeball from the hands of the tall Englishman, and with a staid and regular pressure from her hands, she slid it into her slobbery flesh, in the midst of the fur…while Simone lay on her side, I drew her thighs apart…I even felt as if my eyes were bulging from my head, erectile with horror; in Simone’s hairy vagina, I saw the wan blue eye of Marcelle, gazing at me through tears of urine.73

In this sequence of events it is Simone who is in control: the men who desire her sexual favours eventually turn to theft, fraud and grisly murder in order to appease her sensual appetite. First published 1928, the character of Simone epitomised the contemporary

European man’s fear of a woman in total control.74 Harris’ work in linking the two artists is thorough and withstands scrutiny. Having accepted this link between Cahun and

72 Bataille, G. (2001). Story of the eye. London: Penguin. 53. 73 Bataille, G. (2001). 66-7. 74 Reader, K. (2006). The abject object: Avatars of the phallus in contemporary french theory, literature and film. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi B.V. 58. 143

Bataille, my analysis of this object will take this linkage further, in an attempt to explain its provenance, and therefore meaning.

In an essay on Bataille’s story of the eye, Roland Barthes claims that the “essential form” of the eye persists through the constant presence of its metaphors that occur throughout the novel (the egg, the testicle, the sun) in a strangely literal interpretation of objects:

The eye’s substitutes are declined in every sense of the term: recited like flexional forms of the one word; revealed like states of the one identity…here each inflexion is a new noun, speaking a new usage.75

The never-ending cycle of metaphors contained within the story – eye, egg, testicle – provide an important opportunity in relation to the reading of Cahun’s Object.

The Art Institute of Chicago, which acquired the untitled hand and eye sculpture in 2007, refers both to the title of the piece as Object, and its display (“debut”) in the 1936

Surrealist Exhibition at the Charles Ratton Gallery, which subsequently owned the object until it was sold at some point before 1986 to the Zabriskie Gallery in New York.76 Object is not listed in the exhibition catalogue for either the Paris or London shows.77 Steven

Harris solves this problem by stating that Cahun must have produced three objects for the

1936 exhibition, rather than simply the two listed in the Paris catalogue.78 Janine Mileaf echoes this conclusion when she states that Cahun submitted a small object to the Ratton exhibition which was “known simply as Object.”79 In order to solve this puzzle it was

75 Bataille, G. (2001). 120-21. 76 Hogan, E. (2007, 24 Apr). Art Institute of Chicago acquires surrealist object by Claude Cahun. Press release. 1-2. 77 In London she exhibited a photograph only. 78 Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’œil. 90. 79 Mileaf, J. A. (2010). Please touch: Dada and surrealist objects after the readymade. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England. 142. 144 necessary to attempt an approach from a contemporaneous point of view, and after studying Cahun’s objects and her love of wordplay, I have returned to the other named object listed in the catalogue, Souris valseuses.

As previously stated, Souris valseuses is believed to have been destroyed, and no photographic depictions of it are known to exist. The title of the work literally translates as ‘Waltzing Mice’. A waltzing mouse is a particular strain of mouse breed native to Asia with a genetic inner ear disorder, causing it to turn in endless spiraling circles, sometimes hundreds or thousands of times over, in order to move from one place to another.80

Waltzing mice were popular test subjects in experiments on genetics from the late 19th

Century in France, and their importance in these published studies grew with the rising interest in eugenics and the heated debate surrounding the totalitarian notion of purging genetic ‘impurities’.81 Souris valseuses was also a common derogatory term for lovers of modernism and modernity, who were often referred to as scurrying about like “waltzing mice”: that is to say, always busy, yet achieving very little.82

While the word souris has one literal meaning – mouse – it also possesses several other meanings in the vernacular. The most common usage is for ‘girl’: a souris can be a girl you fancy; petit souris (little mouse) can be a pet name, or a term meaning ‘mousy girl’; souris grises, or ‘grey mice’ was the derogatory name given to Nazi servicewomen stationed in France during the occupation83 In contrast the Australian born resistance

80 National Institute of Allergy. (1979). Origins of inbred mice. New York: Academic Press. 503. 81 Newman, H. H. (1921). Readings in evolution, genetics, and eugenics. University of Chicago Press. 398. 82 Ueland, B. (1988). If you want to write: A book about art, independence and spirit. Cambridge, MA: Graywolf Press. 32. 83 de Quétel, C. (2006). Femmes dans la guerre: 1939-1945. Larousse Collection: L’oeil des archives, Broché. 145 fighter, Nancy Wake, was known as La souris blanche – The White Mouse.84 These are just some of the many instances in which souris has the meaning of ‘girl’.85

Valseuses similarly has other meanings. Literally ‘the waltzers’, (les) valseuses is also slang for testicles – the equivalent in the English vernacular of ‘bollocks’.86 Bataille’s story also draws parallels between detached eyeballs, skinless testicles and peeled eggs, all allegedly similar in appearance, feel, and consistency, and as Barthes points out, oeuf

(egg) is also a contemporaneous French slang word for testicle.87 Furthermore, les valseuses is a feminine plural; its use as a term for testicles is an automatic linguistic confusion of gender.

Thus, Souris valseuses is not necessarily about ‘Waltzing Mice’ at all, but rather a ‘Girl Testicle’, or allowing a little more latitude in translation given the colloquial nature of the language being used, ‘The Bollocks Babe’. With its obvious visual references to the feminizing of phallic objects, I suggest that the Object held by the Art Institute of

Chicago is, most likely, the ‘lost’ Souris valseuses.

UN CHANT REVOLUTIONAIRE II

84 Spence, N. C. W. (2001).The human bestiary. The Modern Language Review, 96.4. 918-9. 85 In current slang usage, souris also has meanings as diverse as penis and tampon, although I cannot with any certainty ascribe these usages to the period in question. 86 Written references to this usage are difficult to source, however the 1974 movie Les valseuses is one example, and the modern novel Pulse by Julian Barnes (2011, p. 27) attests to this usage over an extended period of time. Anecdotal evidence is also available from native French speakers: “I’ve always wanted to call a restaurant Les valseuses. ‘Valseuses’ is a really old French word for a man’s balls. But it also means the female Waltz dancer and of course the movie by Blier with Depardieu from 1974. There was one restaurant in Paris called Les valseuses once, but it’s closed now.” http://www.stilinberlin.de/2012/08/in- kitchen-les-valseuses.html. 87 Bataille, G. (2001). 121. 146

Like Un air de famille, the base of the Souris valseuses/Object, also contains handwritten text: ‘La Marseillaise est un chant révolutionnaire, la loi punit le contrefacteur des travaux forcés’, which translates as ‘The Marseillaise is a revolutionary song, the law punishes the counterfeiter of/with hard labour.’ The second sentence originally appeared on Belgian bank notes and was the treasury warning to counterfeiters of the punishment they would receive.88 The national anthem was originally a revolutionary song, which then became the official anthem of France. The phrase ‘La

Marseillaise is a revolutionary song’ was a phrase used by one of the Popular Front’s leaders in the lead up to the election of 1936 which they were poised to win in May of the same year.89 Due to its adoption by the Popular Front as part of their campaign, Cahun and her surrealist associates would have viewed this statement as manifestly false: the

PCF, as one of the factions which had been absorbed into the Popular Front, were no longer revolutionary and thus neither was their chosen anthem. The second half of the phrase literally refers to how the workers (for whom she makes these objects) will rise up against ‘le contrefacteur’. So, in one sense Cahun here lamented what the revolution has become, in the age of industrialization and the exploitation of the working class, as well as the rise of The Popular Front – the working man’s ‘false’ political choice.

Harris makes the confident assertion that ‘the juxtaposition of the two found texts can only be a criticism of the party.’90 That it is a criticism of the Popular Front is undeniable, however more can be drawn from the accompanying text. Writing on the poem “Le Contrefacteur” by Louis Aragon, from Le Mouvement perpetual (1925), Mary

Ann Caws states that the literal translation of ‘Contrefacteur’ is indeed forger, faker or

88 Raeburn, M., & Sylvester, D. (1993). Rene Magritte: Catalogue raisonne, III: Oil paintings, objects and bronzes 1949-1967. Antwerp: Menil Foundation. 119. 89 Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’oeil. 106-7. 90 Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’oeil. 109. 147 counterfeiter, however she goes on to assert that ‘Contrefacteur’ can also be extended to describe a person who ‘[goes] against the facts or ‘faits’’.91 Thus we have another interpretation of the ‘counterfeiter’ within the object: the woman masquerading as the phallic, empowered male, parading herself against the known facts.

RE-READING SOURIS VALSEUSES/OBJECT

Cahun’s Souris valseuses/Object “disturbs the normal terms of sexual difference” as Harris states.92 But to what end? In relation to Bataille’s eye/egg/testicle chain of signifiers, Barthes asks the question; “Do all the significants in this ‘step-ladder’ refer to a stable thing signified, one all the more secret for being buried beneath a whole architecture of masks?”93 The same question can now be redirected towards Cahun’s

Souris valseuses.

Natalya Lusty states that automatism was gradually replaced in the surrealist agenda by a fascination with the marvellous, usually represented by the enigma of female sexuality, and that “while feminine sexuality inspired the male artist…its excessive and disturbing qualities also threatened to contaminate his innovative, critical endeavours.”94

Thus Cahun’s representation of the phallicised eye can be read as a protest at previous depictions of the female form by male surrealist artists, such as Man Ray and Hans

Bellmer. Furthermore, as Harris states, “what is traditionally invisible or absent in western discourse, the vagina, is here made eminently visible as an image of power.”95

91 Caws, M. A. (1992). 90. 92 Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’oeil. 94. 93 Bataille, G. (2001). 122. 94 Lusty, N. (2007). 13. 95 Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’oeil. 98. 148

Like the forced visibility of the mother in Un air de famille, again Cahun compels her audience to see what is usually hidden. According to Barthes’ in his analysis of Bataille’s story, “the erotic theme is never directly phallic (what we have here is a ‘round phallicism’)”96 so Souris valseuses/Object could also be described as an attempt to depict yonic strength.

The disembodied hand in the object has been described by Harris and Caws as representative of castration, a mask, and a mirror.97 In ascribing a value to the hand as a symbol of masturbation Harris alludes to forbidden pleasure. However, another, darker reading of forbidden gratification can be drawn from the object: the violent image of the subjugated woman as castrator destroying masculine dominance. The symbolic assumption of phallic power is therefore overtly aggressive. This is one potential result,

Cahun seems to say, of ignoring the situation of women. ‘If you do not pay attention to our needs and opinions, we will take your phallic power: we will take your balls in our hand and we will own them.’ This threat to power can also be more widely interpreted as a threat to those who did not stand with the surrealists on matters of social significance, such as the Popular Front, the USSR, or the fascists of Spain and Germany.

Cahun’s object, in visualising Bataille’s greatest moment of castration anxiety, accompanied by the politically charged message written on the work, is in equal parts both a sculptural object, and a potent symbol of the collective political struggle in which she and the surrealists were engaged. The castration anxiety being represented here is perhaps also one of a social castration; a fear of the impending loss of social and artistic liberties in the political climate of pre-war France. Cahun’s objects also tell a story of resistance by explaining, in the first instance, the issues of most importance to the women

96 Bataille, G. (2001). 122. 97 Harris, S. (2001). Coup d’oeil. 100-01. Caws, M. A. (1997). 117. 149 of France and then depicting an alternative: a female symbol of strength which both serves as a warning and exhorts the viewer to action.

Attention to Cahun’s objects reveals how Cahun was actively disrupting the borders between male and female, horrifying and titillating, visual and verbal, real and surreal. Gayle Zachmann suggested of Cahun’s photographic work that she “re-envisions the boundaries of the visual and the verbal.”98 Cahun’s Un air de famille and Souris valseuses/Object can also be seen as a re-inscription of the female form upon the phallic; a reclaiming of woman’s bodily existence and the right to assert its continuing existence as an independent form. As Tirza True Latimer states, both Cahun and Moore “launched

[their] critique…from a self-consciously (and irrevocably) off-centre position” as women still legally and culturally on the periphery of power with “no stake in maintaining the integrity of these categories of social subjectivity.”99 Thus, rather than disguising the unpalatable, Cahun’s objects reflect and amplify that which others would prefer to remain masked; those who are objectified and subsumed by modernity and modernisms. If her

I.O.U is read as a promise to deliver self-pride to all women, then Un air de famille could be seen as an attempt to fulfil that promise; to draw attention to the identity crisis facing women, produced by the social, cultural and political realities of contemporary France.

Cahun’s work during this period can also be seen as a reaction to the myth of freedom for the modern woman: as Mary Louise Roberts contends, popular expectations were that women would be preoccupied with “sex, marriage, career, and consumerism – rather than politics”.100

98 Zachmann, G. (2003). Surreal and canny selves: Photographic figures in Claude Cahun. Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, 27.2. 302. 99 Latimer, T. T. (2006). 210. 100 Roberts, M. L. (1994). Civilization without sexes: Reconstructing gender in postwar France, 1917- 1927. United States: University of Chicago Press. 69. 150

UGLY COLLAGES AND POEM OBJECTS

As previously discussed, the symbolic meaning of a surrealist object was always more important than its final form, the skill employed by its fabricator, or the means by which it was produced. As William S. Rubin summarizes:

The Surrealist object was essentially a three-dimensional collage of ‘found’ articles that were chosen for their poetic meaning rather than their possible visual value. It’s entirely literary character opened the possibility of its fabrication – or, better, its confection – to poets, critics, and others who stood professionally outside, or on the margins of, the plastic arts.101

Cahun’s objects created during this period conform to this notion: their form was often anything but visually pleasing (in conventional terms), while their “literary character,” evidenced by the didactic nature of many of the objects, such as Cahun’s, was usually more apparent. Cahun and Deharme, like Breton, were first and foremost writers, and their creation of objects for the 1936 exhibition illustrated their radical political and philosophical positions, and intent to provoke debate, rather than to provoke an admiration of the forms chosen or the skill in their fabrication.

Breton submitted several objects for the exhibition, including objects created with his wife Jacqueline Lamba-Breton, such as Le grand paranoïaque and Le petit mimetique, as well as objects in the ‘Found’ and ‘Primitive’ art categories. However, the objects of perhaps the greatest significance were his Poèmes-objets (Poem-objects), in which Breton attempted to actively fuse written and visual components into a surrealist whole. The poem-object was a synthesis of all the experiments of the surrealist group that had come

101 Rubin, W. S. (1990). Dada surrealism and their heritage. New York: Museum of Modern Art. 143. 151 before it: automatism, poetry, collage, and now object-making, were combined to create objects designed to deliberately confuse the consciousness of the viewer. Alexandrian describes the poem-object as a new form of object, “invented by André Breton, who was in fact the only person to provide valid examples”, and he describes them as “a kind of relief which incorporates objects in the words of a poetic declaration so as to form a homogenous whole.”102 One such poem-object is the one now held by the National

Gallery of Scotland. Created in 1935, this poem-object was one of the ones included in the 1936 exhibition. The object consists of a broken pocket mirror, a pair of wings and a plaster egg, on which is inscribed “Je vois, J’imagine” (“I see, I imagine”). Breton saw a broken mirror, lying discarded, and imagined a winged creature taking flight. Below the object collage is a poem, written by means of the automatic method:

A l’intersection de lignes de force invisibles

Trouver

Le point de chant vers quoi les arbres se font la courte échelle

L’épine de silence

Qui veut que le seigneur des navires livre au vent son panache de chiens bleus

At the intersection of lines of invisible force

Find

The point in the song where trees give each other a leg up

The thorn of silence

That wants the lord of the ships to give his book of wind a plume of blue dogs103

102 Alexandrian, S. (1985). 147. 103 My translation 152

Like all automatic writing its meaning is opaque; its primary function was to illustrate the effects of surrendering to the creativity which was believed by Breton to dwell in the unconscious mind, and to demonstrate that by liberating the unconscious, true meaning can be found. Cahun’s objects, incorporating text, function in a similar fashion, although

Cahun’s text was not generated by supposedly unconscious action, but very carefully constructed in order to demand introspection, and participation in interpretation, on the part of her audience. Cahun’s aim in the creation of her objects was to exhort the viewer to action, to participate actively in the revolutionary power of the language of objects.

POLITICAL ART AND OBJECTS OF RESISTANCE

As Steven Harris states in his examination of surrealist practices in the 1930s, the group began “the development of a parti pris that, while breaking conceptually with bourgeois cultural values and precepts, resisted any instrumentalization of the aesthetic sphere in the political struggle (which would use art as a weapon), in favour of a broader conception of what culture could be.”104 The surrealists claimed such work was an essential undertaking in the struggle for proletarian rights, as at the time of the surrealist object project the working class did not possess the means or knowledge to fight for themselves. Breton was expressing an abhorrence of ‘real objects’ as early as the First surrealist manifesto of 1924.105 He encapsulated their philosophy as it stood at the beginning of the decade in the second manifesto of surrealism, published in 1929:

104 Harris, S. (2004). Surrealist art and thought in the 1930s: Art, politics, and the psyche. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2. 105 Breton, A., et al.. (1969). 3. 153

I do not believe in the present possibility of an art or literature which expresses the aspirations of the working class. If I refuse to believe in such a possibility, it is because, in any pre-revolutionary period the writer or artist, who of necessity is a product of the bourgeoisie, is by definition incapable of transmitting these aspirations.106

This earlier attempt to formulate a debate surrounding the importance of art to the working class is somewhat pessimistic in tone. As previously highlighted, Breton’s early attempts to articulate his stance on this matter dismissed all forms of traditional and folk art, popular entertainment, and other forms of cultural expression mediated by the working class. By doing so, Breton appears to have fallen into his common trap of valuing certain arts forms over others. By 1936 he appears to have recognised this issue in his own theories however, and in his May 1936 article ‘The crisis of the object’, published to coincide with the Parisian exhibition in the same month, Breton argued for nothing less than “a total revolution of the object.”107 The subsequent de-classing of artistic production – removing it from the exclusive sphere of privileged, bourgeois ‘creativity’

– opened, in the words of Penelope Rosemont, “inexhaustible possibilities of genuine discovery to all, even those without formal artistic training.”108 Rosemont argues that the practices of the surrealist group at this time in both collage and object-making “radically challenged the very foundations of the bourgeois, androcentric art movement.”109

Surrealist object making had thus evolved to challenge contemporary notions regarding the relationship between class and politics; politics and art; art and class. Cahun pre-

106 Lippard, L. (1971). 34. 107 Breton, A. (1936). 54. 108 Rosemont, P. (Ed.). (1998). Surrealist women: An international anthology. London: The Althone Press. 47. 109 Rosemont, P. (Ed.). (1998). 48. 154 empted Breton’s own theory of object manufacture in Les paris sont ouverts in 1934, when she wrote:

The Dadaist-surrealist experiment, therefore, can and should serve the cause of working-class emancipation. Only when the proletariat has become conscious of the real meaning of the myths that uphold capitalist culture – indeed, only when the proletariat has destroyed these myths and revolutionized this culture – will working men and women be able, as a class, to proceed to their own self-development. The positive lesson of this experience in negation – that is, the dissemination of the surrealist experiment among the working class – is the only valid revolutionary poetic propaganda in our time.110

As the surrealists’ noted contemporary and admirer Yves Duplessis declared: “The surrealists make the art critics despair by annihilating the concept of talent.”111 This statement is not entirely true. Talent, as defined by the ability to create fine art products, i.e. those with a high commercial value, ran counter to the aims of the surrealists in 1936, and was certainly anathema to their goals. But talent can be defined in many ways, and the surrealists by no means sought to annihilate talent as defined by the skills of working class men and women, or those dedicated to seeking out truth. As Cahun said of her own objects, in 1936 in Beware domestic objects:

I insist upon this primordial truth: one must oneself discover, manipulate, tame, and construct irrational objects to be able to appreciate the particular or general value of those displayed here [i.e. at the Charles Ratton Gallery exhibition]. That is why, in certain respects, manual laborers may be in a better position than intellectuals to understand them, were it not for the fact that the whole of capitalist society – communist propaganda included – diverts them from doing so.112 CREATION AND DESTRUCTION

110 Cahun, C. (1998). Surrealism and working class emancipation, in P. Rosemont (Ed.), Surrealist women: An international anthology. London: The Althone Press. 58. 111 Duplessis, Y. (1978). Surrealism. United States: Greenwood Press. 75. 112 Cahun, C. (1936). 60. 155

The relationship between creation and destruction in surrealist objects is also essential to an understanding of their role and symbolic function. In the construction of these objects creation and destruction were no longer mutually exclusive concepts but rather two methods working in tandem to produce the truly ‘irrational object’. Breton himself referred to surrealist object manufacture in ‘The crisis of the object’ as a process which involved “reconstructing it [the object] from all the fragments,”113 the utilisation of fragments in reconstruction suggesting the idea of previous destruction, in order to make the creative process possible.

He went on to explain how these objects, regardless of their final form, would assist the group in fulfilling their political aims: “Objects thus reassembled have in common the fact that they derive from, and succeed in differing from the objects which surround us, by simple change of role.”114 A version of this philosophy had long been part of modern art practice in the form of the readymade, however Breton wanted to take

Marcel Duchamp’s original assertion – that is, an object becomes art when the artist designates it so – and extend this concept of mutability to the entire network of tangible objects surrounding mankind. Breton saw that not only could these objects become art, they could become anything their handlers desired: their use value was not to be designated by their form or originally designated function. Cahun had also long held opinions on the creative ability of mutability, and the potential inherent in the destruction of the traditional form and role of objects. She expressed it as: “whatever I have said about it, in any case, is only to get you to construct (to destroy + χ) with your own ideas and findings, which, however much they may have in common with ours, nonetheless

113 Breton, A. (1936). 54. 114 Breton, A. (1936). 54-5. 156 remain – partly or entirely – still unknown.”115 Where Cahun’s theory differs markedly from Breton’s, is her exhortation to the viewer to actively participate in the process being offered by the object. Where for Breton it was enough to show people how roles could be altered in the material world, Cahun wanted people to physically and psychically engage with the process, becoming an active protagonist in the mutation.

While the surrealists involved in this exhibition were engaged in the common task of overthrowing traditional perceptions of art and objects, Cahun used her objects to encourage viewers to participate in the interrogation of the existing social order. She did this with a view to deconstructing it entirely in favour of a new philosophy, within which it was possible for the viewer to construct her objects as agents of social change. While

Breton’s objects retain their poetic, literary nature, Cahun’s objects were designed to function as political agitators, and as agents of resistance. Her objects of resistance did not resist in an antagonistic or antithetical sense, however: rather their resistance functioned as a method of challenging the perception of their audience to liberate their consciousness, in order to fully understand and engage with her objects.

115 Cahun, C. (1936). 61. 157

CHAPTER FOUR: DEHARME AND LE COEUR DE PIC

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CAHUN AFTER PARIS

Following Cahun’s investigations regarding the relationship between subject and object, and the ability of objects to act upon the consciousness of their viewers through a form of resistance, and to acts as agents of radical social and political change, she continued her involvement with surrealist political activities. Cahun continued to support

Breton’s search for a revolutionary art form, which culminated in the publication of the manifesto Towards a free, revolutionary art, written with Trotsky in Mexico in 1938.

This manifesto included a call for the formation of an international association of revolutionary artists, which came to fruition briefly as the Fédération internationale des artistes révolutionaires indépendents, and whose declaration Cahun signed in 1939.1

Cahun’s objects in the Ratton Gallery exhibition represented a synthesis of her own personal philosophies – the result of nearly thirty years of personal introspection, observation and political engagement – and the myriad external influences which had combined to form part of her experiences. These influences spanned from the “symbolist entrapment” of her youth, to her more recent collaborations with the surrealists with whom she had worked closely over the previous three years, to a growing alarm at the increasingly conservative political situation in France, and the impending war in Europe, which was already being felt in Germany with Hitler’s remilitarization of the Rhineland, bordering France, and the growing Fascist movements and commensurate tensions in both

Italy and Spain.

While Souris valseuses and Un air de famille were the only two objects Cahun created specifically for public exhibition, prior to the Ratton Gallery show she had created

1 Doy, G. (2007). Claude Cahun: A sensual politics of photography. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 114-5. 159

many more in order to photograph them, and it was to this practice that she returned in

1937. Sometime after the exhibition in 1936, Cahun and Moore also decided to permanently relocate to Jersey, where both women had often holidayed as children with their family, and later together as life partners.2 Thereafter, while Cahun’s association with the surrealists and other avant garde artists and writers of Paris continued, the relationship was predominantly sustained by correspondence, although she occasionally received guests from Paris until June 1940, when the German army invaded and began their occupation of the island which lasted for the next five years. One of these visits was from Jacqueline Lamba and a little Aube Breton, of which several photographs survive.3

Henri Michaux, a friend of her family since Cahun’s childhood and an early mentor, also continued to visit after the women had moved away from the Parisian epicentre of creativity. Due to the destruction of her personal archives by the occupying German forces during the war,4 the true extent of her correspondence with her friends and collaborators during these years is difficult to establish.

Political rifts were also beginning to deepen within the intelligentsia of Paris, as tensions continued to worsen across Europe. Spanish expatriate Salvador Dalí had been slowly developing sympathies with the fascist government of his homeland, a position that saw him shunned by many of the Paris left.5 Breton in particular had grown increasingly irate with Dalí, and was allegedly enraged by Dalí’s depiction of Lenin in

The enigma of William Tell (1934).6 Breton also continued to dictate social relations

2 Downie, L. (2005). Sans nom: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. Heritage Magazine. 8. 3 A telegram from Jacqueline Lamba, dated 24 April 1939 and informing Cahun of their expected arrival on Jersey the following day, is held in the Jersey Archives, which also holds the surviving photographs of Jacqueline and Aube’s holiday there. Cat no: JHT/1995M/00045/21. Jersey Heritage. Archives and collections online. Retrieved from http://catalogue.jerseyheritage.org/collection/Details/collect/103075?rank=14 4 Shaw, J. L. (2013). Reading Claude Cahun’s Disavowals. United Kingdom: Ashgate Publishing. 218. 5 Greely, R. A. (2001). Dalí’s fascism; Lacan’s paranoia. Art History, 24.4. 466. 6 Shanes, E. (2012). The life and masterworks of Salvador Dalí. New York: Parkstone International. No page numbers. 160

within, and ‘membership’ of, the surrealist group. Other members of the previously amicable group splintered further to the left, such as the poet Benjamin Péret, who joined the Independent Army in late 1936, and fought against Franco’s troops during the Spanish

Civil War, an action which Breton later spoke of in laudatory terms, although Péret was only one of the surrealists to actively engage in combat on behalf of the working classes.7

Cahun’s relocation also brought a change in focus in her practice. A surviving archive of photography and some correspondence indicates that Cahun moved, for a period of time, away from portrait photography and towards the photography of objects.

One series of photographs was taken on Jersey in 1936/37 as part of a collaboration with

Lise Deharme, which were then published and therefore saved in 1937. The subject matter of these photographs consisted of a collection of seemingly disparate objects – for example, a flower, a dolls’ head, feathers, pipe cleaners, a pair of scissors – arranged in a manner suggestive at once of both tableau and a kind of living collage. Thus, although a departure from Cahun’s objects in terms of medium, the photographs continue to function as an extension of her object work, and the collages which preceded them. Several other photographs from this period also appear to have been taken for consideration by

Deharme, but for unknown reasons were not included in the anthology.

DEHARME AND THE SURREALISTS

The author and poet Lise Deharme was associated with the surrealists’ inner circle, both as ‘the lady of the glove’ from Breton’s Nadja, and as the wife of the writer and broadcaster Paul Deharme. Deharme was a successful author in her own right and

7 Gubern, R., & Hammond, P. (2011). Luis Bunuel: The red years, 1929-1939. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. 344. 161

regularly contributed to various surrealist projects, including the initial experiments with object making in 1931.8

Deharme published four volumes of her own magazine, Le Phare de Neuilly, through 1933 and 34, which included contributions from the crème of Parisian writers, including Robert Desnos, , Jean Follain and George Ribemont-Dessaignes.

By 1936 Deharme had already published two volumes of poetry, both of which were illustrated by prominent artists and friends: Joan Miro illustrated Il etait une petite pie, published in 1928, and Valentine Hugo supplied sketches for Cahier de curieuse personne in 1933. Deharme eventually published more than twenty-five books, as well as making contributions to journals, newspapers and magazines throughout her life, making her one of the most successful writers from within her creative circle.

Deharme was also a contributor to the 1936 object exhibition, presenting two pieces.9 Deharme’s objects were the only representatives of the Objets naturels: Règne vegetal (Natural Objects: Vegetable Kingdom) section. Entitled Sensitive and Plante carnivore, to the casual observer these two objects were nothing more than pot plants from a lady’s greenhouse; nevertheless, their inclusion in an exhibition of this kind is worthy of comment. Deharme’s choice of plants for inclusion in this exhibition also foreshadowed the illustration of her children’s book Le Coeur de pic by Cahun in 1937, as many of the objects Cahun created for this work contained elements of plants and flowers. Of Deharme’s contributions, one photograph from the exhibition, taken by Man

Ray, appears to include one of them, which seems at a cursory glance to be nothing more than a tall, spindly, potted houseplant. This image also features, on the bottom shelf of the same cabinet, Cahun’s Objet/Souris valseuses. The first of her contributions, Plante

8 Rosemont, P. (Ed.). (1998). 69. 9 Exposition surréaliste d'objets, exhibition at the Charles Ratton Gallery, Paris, 22-29 May 1936. Exhibition catalogue. Paris: Charles Ratton Gallery. 162

carnivore, is quite self-explanatory – a carnivorous plant – and suggests a Venus Flytrap or something similar. Her second contribution, simply entitled Sensitive, is slightly more obscure, but probably refers to a Mimosa plant – sensitive is the French designation for plants which react to external stimuli by moving.10 The Mimosa is an uncanny plant, with the ability to move rapidly in a sensual manner when stroked, closing around the fingers.

The Mimosa’s fernlike leaves will also close in darkness, reopening when it senses light.11

More mature specimens also feature hooked prickles along the main stem, a stark contrast to the soft, feathery sensation of stroking the closing leaves. The plant featured in Man

Ray’s photograph of the exhibition lends weight to this assertion, as the plant featured in the image does look like a cultivated Mimosa Nuttallii.

Thus, there were two objects, removed from their ‘natural’ setting and placed awkwardly in a gallery, amongst more traditionally privileged art and cultural objects: to what end? A vegetable that eats animals, and a plant that responds to light and darkness, and appears to like to be petted by humans, were in line with the aims of the exhibition as outlined by Cahun and Breton: the rediscovery of “irrational” objects by removing them from the setting in which they remained safe and comfortable for the audience, requiring them to reacquaint themselves with the objects in question, and so “tame” them.

That is, by manipulating objects, and allowing oneself to be manipulated by them in return, Cahun believed that the audience could better come to understand the true nature of the object before them. As Cahun summarized, regarding the nature of the objects included in the exhibition: “I could go on and on about these objects: they will speak to you better themselves, and they would speak still better if we could touch them in the

10 Gregory, M. E. (2006). Diderot and the metamorphosis of species. London: Taylor & Francis. 148. 11 Australian Plant Name Index - Mimosa pudica. (2016, February). Retrieved from https://biodiversity.org.au/nsl/services/apniFormat/display/74352. 163

dark.”12 Cahun’s exhortation to listen, and to touch, while disregarding visual information, seems particularly apt in regards to Deharme’s contributions, urging as

Cahun did the de-privileging of sight in favour of an unsettling, haptic experience. I contend that these most ordinary objects, displaced as they are within the gallery setting, had the most potential to induce feelings of displacement in the viewing audience. Yves

Duplessis claimed that:

the Surrealists’ aim is extraliterary, since their aspiration is nothing less than to free man from the constraints of a too-utilitarian civilization, to shake him from his torpor, and to do this they have had to stress everything that can disconcert him.13

Cahun and Deharme, like the surrealists with whom they were associated, had moved away from their primary focus of the 1920s, which was the production of literature and poetry. Duplessis elaborates on this change of direction within the surrealist oeuvre:

Thus, a statue in a ditch has entirely different values from the same statue on its pedestal, and similarly, to isolate a hand from its arm alters its significance. The thing is to detach objects from each other, to no longer consider them in any particular relationship, but as they are in themselves.14

Deharme’s “statues in a ditch,” her carnivorous, moving herbiary, with its pleasurable, tickling leaves concealing a harshly dissonant scratch, were arguably a decisive moment in disconcerting, extraliterary objects. It was with such surrealist objects, perhaps even more than the poems and paintings, that the exhibition aimed to disconcert the public.15

12 Cahun, C. (1936). 60. 13 Duplessis, Y. (1978). 3. 14 Duplessis, Y. (1978). 28. 15 Duplessis, Y. (1978). 47. 164

While the vast majority of the objects in the exhibition were constructed pieces, whether Oceanic or American traditional art, surrealist objects or manufactured pieces, in the words of Joanna Malt “the raw materials used are transformed, just as they are in any form of plastic art, by their reconfiguration as an art object. But what is particular to the surrealists is the desire to alter the categories of the object world, and our perceptions of it.”16 The inclusion of Objets naturels in an art exhibition was designed to question these designated categories. Deharme’s contributions, though among the simplest in their initial appearance, contributed significantly to the complex theoretical dialogue the exhibition attempted to engage in with its audience, and therefore contributed significantly to the objectives of the exhibition overall.

CAHUN AND DEHARME

The inception of the collaboration which eventuated between Cahun and Deharme in 1936-37 is hard to determine, but clearly stemmed from the period of Cahun’s association with the inner circle of surrealism over the previous few years. At first glance,

Cahun and Deharme were very different people: Cahun was a serious, socially discreet, intellectually and ethically driven writer and artist, whereas Deharme was a wealthy, urbane sophisticate, famous for her hosting of fashionable parties in her suburban home on the outskirts of Paris.17 Despite the differences, common ground stemmed from not only their association with the surrealist group, but also from commonly held opinions.

Although it is uncertain when Claude Cahun and Lise Deharme first became acquainted, they were firm friends by June of 1934, when Cahun wrote a letter to invite

16 Malt, J. (2004). Obscure objects of desire: Surrealism, fetishism, and politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 85-6. My italics. 17 Jenkins, C. (2014). Dora versus Picasso. United Kingdom: Matador. 120. 165

an unknown friend to a salon in her home, along with “Lise Deharme, whom I have already told you about and who loves your books, [Robert] Desnos and Youki Foujita, and two friends of Lise Deharme, who I know little but whom I like well enough, I believe.”18 Cahun and Moore had held regular salons in their Paris home for several years now, and it is clear from this correspondence that Cahun and Deharme had spent time together, participating in group discussions on mutually important subjects. Both women had also participated in the 1936 exhibition before deciding to collaborate on an illustrated anthology of children’s poems, published in 1937 as Le Coeur de pic. Deharme was planning to produce an illustrated children’s book as early as April 1935, when she mentioned the project in a letter to her close friend Valentine Hugo, although it appears she was originally considering a collaboration with an artist other than Cahun in order to illustrate her book.19

The objects in Deharme’s book are interesting in the first instance in that they represent the last major project in which Cahun was involved with the members of the surrealist group. After this project, Cahun and partner Moore permanently relocated to the Island of Jersey, shortly before its occupation by German forces, her subsequent imprisonment, and the destruction of her work by the Nazis. Many of the photographs which Cahun created for Deharme’s anthology appear to have been taken on Jersey, either around the garden or inside La Roquaise, the home in St Brélade that Cahun acquired with Moore. There is no evidence that Deharme ever visited Cahun during this period of collaboration, or whether the illustration of the book occurred purely by written correspondence between Jersey and Deharme’s home in the wealthy Parisian enclave of

18 Cahun, C. (1934). Draft copy of a letter to an unknown recipient. Jersey Archives. Cat no: JHT/1995M/00045/19. 19 Deharme, L. (1933). Letter to Valentine Hugo. University of Texas, Carlton Lake Collection. Cat no: TXRC06-A16. 166

Neuilly-sur-Seine. However, handwritten notes on the back of photographic prints suggest that the photographs were sent backwards and forwards between the two women for discussion and comment.

My interest in the images arises secondly from my understanding that Cahun was always a very politically motivated artist and writer. The imagery of these photographs, and the objects constructed within them, are blended interpretations of both Deharme’s poetic intent and Cahun’s personal ideologies, particularly with regards to the power and agency of the surrealist object. Cahun’s love of wordplay, as previously evidenced in both her literary works and her objects created for the 1936 exhibition, also takes on a new dimension here, as she interprets the words and wordplay of another writer in her own particular style. Several levels of meaning can be drawn from the book as a whole:

Deharme’s original poetic implications blend with Cahun’s political ones, creating a subtle, third meaning for the works. Deharme’s poetry is perfectly suited to Cahun’s visual interpretations. Through this collaboration both women were able to explore the conceptual and archetypically surrealist issues of what constitutes inherent, as opposed to apparent, meaning, taking young readers on an exploration of the real versus the true.

Furthermore, Deharme’s surrealist imagery gives Cahun and her photographed objects a form of agency, allowing the images to analyse, deconstruct and reconstruct the meaning of her original poems.

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A WOODPECKER, A SPADE OR A LITTLE BOY?

The title of the book, Le coeur de pic, has been translated as ‘The heart of the woodpecker,”20 however only a slight word play is required to translate the title alternatively as ‘The heart of spades’.21 Indeed, more recent references to the book have tended to prefer the latter title.22 The pun on playing cards is rendered obvious, and highlighted by Cahun’s choice of imagery for the front cover, which consists of a figure holding a playing card from the suit of spades. Adding another layer to the interpretation of the title, Art Historian Sarah Wilson contends that ‘Pic’ is none other than the

Deharme’s son Tristan – a nickname. The book could therefore be identified as a dedication to a young Tristan Deharme.23 Presumably he was their little woodpecker, or their little soldier. Gen Doy has also asserted that pique, meaning a pike, can also mean a pikeman, or medieval infantryman, thus identifying the pic with the figure in the image.24

Pic/pique can also refer to: a mountain peak; a mason’s pickaxe; a punch or thrust; or the usage we are perhaps most familiar with in English, as anger or spite25. To score thirty points in the then-popular card game piquet was also known as a pic.26 If the playing cards used in Cahun’s object are real (and as Cahun often used found objects rather than creating replicas for her object work one could reasonably assume that they are), the

20 Beckett, S. L. (2013). Crossover picturebooks: A genre for all ages. London, United Kingdom: Routledge. 29-30. Rosemont, P. (1998). 45. 21 Pic can be translated as either spade, particularly as the suit in playing cards; or is one common word in French for woodpecker. The red-headed woodpecker, for example, is known as the pic á tête rouge. The other word for woodpecker in French is pivert, which is a contraction of pic vert, or the common green woodpecker. The Linnean genus for woodpecker is Picus, which is the most likely reason for the use of pic in French. Beckett, S. L. (2013). 29-30. Winkler, H., Christie, D. A., & Nurney, D. (1995). Woodpeckers: A guide to the woodpeckers, piculets and wrynecks of the world. London, United Kingdom: Pica Press. 22 Christie’s Auction House (2009). Photobooks. Auction Catalogue. UK. 108. 23 Wilson, S. (2011) Femininities/masquerades. The Courtauld Institute of Art. 24 Doy, G. (2007). 120. 25 Collectif (2016). Retrieved from http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/french-english/ 26 Fraser, K. J. (2015). Total card games! The biggest and best collection of solo & group card games. United States: Lulu.com. 229. 168

figure in comparison stands approximately 40cm tall, not including the pike it is holding.

The figure is ultimately androgynous in appearance, although this may be due to the simplicity of its design, which includes simple button eyes. Wearing a beret and trench coat, on its front is a heart-shaped trinket box, pinned to its breast like a butterfly, a visual clue to the nature of the coeur of the title and again naming the figure as Pic, the possessor of the heart in question. The identification of the figure as Pic is left in no doubt by the lettered playing cards at his feet. This little figure of Pic holds a pike upon which we find the Queen of ‘pikemen’, La dame de pic, or the queen of spades. The cards which surround the base of the figure are the Joker, standing directly next to the figure, and three more spades: a four, an ace and a seven, the meanings of which are as of yet undeciphered

(although they could refer to the above-mentioned game of piquet, thus representing another pun within the image which relates to the title). It is possible that choice of these particular cards holds a meaning now lost. The joker is also a wildcard, and it is easy to see that this is a favourite concept for Cahun, appearing as it does in such other works as

1934’s Les paris sont ouverts.27 It should signify to the reader – particularly the surrealist one – that ‘all bets are off’, and anything could happen next.28

In Les paris, Cahun argued for “the Romantic definition of poetry and the surrealist revolution of the mind against the old and superseded understanding of poetry simply as a means of expression.”29 In Le coeur de pic, we see an evolution of Cahun’s approach: even in a children’s book, or perhaps especially in a children’s book, Cahun was carefully laying the foundations for a critical poetic dialectic, so that they could quietly foment in young, questioning minds. Le coeur and its accompanying illustrations

27 Cahun, C. (1934). Le paris sont ouverts. Paris: José Corti. 9. 28 The vernacular translation of Les Paris sont ouverts is ‘all bets are off’, which is how the phrase is generally understood; the literal translation is ‘The Parises are open’. 29 Bower, G. J. (2013). Claude Cahun: The soldier with no name. London, United Kingdom: Zero Books. No page numbers. 169

was not simply a children’s book of poetry, but rather a key to unlocking the secrets of the analytical mind.

That the cover image of the book is able to be interpreted in so many different ways, and with several possible meanings, and yet remain ultimately impenetrable, is typical both of Cahun’s methodologies and of the collection of images contained within the book. Cahun’s obscured interpretation of the already cryptic title of the book signalled a resistance to clear interpretation that features throughout, not only in either the poetry of Deharme and the imagery of Cahun, but also in the combined reading of the two.

THE QUEEN OF SPADES

Cahun’s choice of imagery for the book’s front cover was foreshadowed by a series of playing card portraits produced by Man Ray in 1931, an artist with whom Cahun had contact with throughout her period of surrealist collaboration. Although no firsthand evidence of any close relationship between the two artists exists, as I have previously shown through Cahun’s photographs of bell jars and other objects associated with Man

Ray’s style, Cahun was aware of and clearly admired Man Ray’s work.

Man Ray’s playing cards consisted of portraits of four of the women frequently associated with the surrealists, although typically in the position of lover or muse, rather than as primary members of the group. Each is designated an identity through the suit cards of a typical deck. They are; Valentine Hugo, as the queen of diamonds; Nusch

Eluard, as the queen of clubs; Jacqueline Lamba, as the knave of hearts; and Lisa Deharme as the queen of spades. Three of the cards (not including Eluard’s) were framed together and may have originally been a gift to Deharme from Ray. The cards were separated and

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auctioned separately in recent years.30 Cahun’s visual pun on the book’s cover seems to suggest that she was in on this little surrealist game and that she was aware that Lise had previously been ‘crowned’ the Queen of Spades by the inner circle of surrealism. The little man on the cover of Le coeur de pic does indeed hold aloft La reine (or dame) de pic, identifying Deharme as the author of the work, while simultaneously labelling her the Queen of Spades, the Queen of ‘Pic’, and thus the Queen of ‘Pic’s’ heart. Although the origins of these designations are as yet unknown, the label of the ‘queen of spades’ appeared to have stuck for Deharme, who published a short story in the journal Lilliput in 1947, also entitled ‘The Queen of spades.’ Writing on Le coeur in 1998, Marie-Claire

Barnet has said of this depiction that:

the choice of the malevolent symbol of the Queen of Spades suggests that we would be wrong to relegate her [Deharme’s] work to the “fragile charm” category of “feline and floral femininity". Beware: the charm of Deharmian humor is more poisonous than we have been led to believe, even in the best reference books.31

The inclusion of Deharme’s court card on the cover of the book thus functioned not only as a visual signature of sorts, but also a warning as to the dark nature of the poems contained in the anthology.

The jack or knave of hearts was an intriguing choice for Jaqueline Lamba on the part of Ray, as she was the only woman not depicted as a queen within the set. If the

30 The portrait of Lise Deharme as the Queen of Spades was sold individually on 6 October 2010. Its provenance states that it came from the collection of noted homoerotic illustrator Jean Boullet, who sold his collection c.1969 due to financial hardship. Christie’s, New York, Photographs, 6 Oct 2010. 31 Barnet, M.-C. (1998). La femme cent sexes ou les genres communicatives: Deharme, Mansour, Prassinos. Bern: Verlag Peter Lang. 79. “Le choix du symbole maléfique de la Dame de Pique nous suggère donc qu’on aurait tort de reléguer ses ouvres dans la rubrique “charme fragile” de la “féminité féline et végétale”. Méfiance, le charme de l’humour deharmien est plus vénéneux qu’on a pu le laisser entendre, même dans le meilleurs ouvrages de références.” 171

traditional French symbolism of the deck of cards was known to the surrealists, and it is reasonable to believe that it was, given their preoccupation with signs and symbols, then

Ray was familiar with the personification of the Jack of Hearts as the historical figure known as Le hire (“The Ire”), the epithet of famed French soldier Etienne de Vignolles, the loyal captain of Joan of Arc and fabled inventor of the modern four suit deck of cards and of the game Piquet.32 Whether Ray was making a reference to Jacqueline’s position as the lieutenant of surrealism’s modern prophet, her husband Breton, or to her disposition, remains unknown. The King of Hearts is also traditionally associated with

Charlemagne,33 thus Jacqueline’s nomination as the right-hand man of the King may again be a reference to Breton’s position as the absolute ruler of the group.

For reasons unknown, no single queen of hearts appears to have ever been designated within the group. Of all four cards it is the symbolism and imagery of the queen of spades that appears to have formed the basis of a running joke among members of the surrealist group or, perhaps, became understood as a kind of code for a set of particular ideas they shared. It is plausible that their enduring interest in this particular

Queen is also a reference to Gustav Courbet’s disparaging criticism of Eduard Manet’s

Olympia, which he famously declared resembled “the Queen of Spades getting out of the bath,” referring to Manet’s (then outrageously) flattened picture plane.34

One of Breton’s poem objects, entitled Pour Jacqueline, and created in 1937, also contained a queen of spades. The image consists of a black backing board, sewn through with ribbon, reminiscent of raw surgical stitching. A collection of small machine parts

32 Fraser, K. J. (2015). 227. 33 Foley, M. P. (2006). Why do Catholics eat fish on Friday? The Catholic origin to just about everything. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 70. 34 Cole, B., Gealt, A., & Wood, M. (1991). Art of the western world: From ancient Greece to post modernism. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group. 241. 172

float in the image of a disembodied face, above a menacing depiction of the queen of spades, who is partially obscured by a skeletal leaf.

The text reads:

Pour Jacqueline, 12.2.37 For Jacqueline, 12.2.37 Sur un banc de liège On a cork bench En pleine Méditerranée In the middle of the Mediterranean Tandis qu'elles riaient While they were laughing Tordant les draps sur leur piano Twisting the sheets on their piano Pour faire des vagues To make waves O vieux registre de l'amour O the old register of love35

The poem is typical of Breton’s automatic poems, and to try and analyse his text in the manner of regular literary criticism runs counter to the primary aims of automatic writing.

What is clear is that it is a love poem to Jacqueline Lamba. No direct reference is made to the queen of spades who appears on the image, and yet she is clearly an important form of imagery for the group. Perhaps, in the context of my argument outlined above, Lamba is Breton’s Olympia, or perhaps Breton wished to reassure her that Deharme was not the only queen of spades.

These many portraits and uses of playing cards within surrealist imagery also form a noteworthy precursor to the Jeu de Marseilles, the surrealist card game invented by the group in 1940 as they waited in Marseilles for evacuation to the United States.36 Again lending credence to the theory that the surrealists were familiar with the symbolic

35 From the object, own translation. 36 Belton, R. J. J. (1995). The beribboned bomb: The image of woman in male surrealist art. Calgary, Canada: University of Calgary Press. 12. 173

meanings of standard playing cards, Breton and his associates occupied themselves by creating an anti-royalist and distinctly surrealist set of playing cards, the court cards of which were comprised of the Genius, Magus and Siren. New suits were also created: flames (red) for love and desire, stars (black) for dreams, wheels (red) for revolution, and locks (black) for knowledge. An illustration of Albert Jarry’s Ubu roi was chosen as the joker. The Magus of stars (dreams) was, of course, Freud.

CAHUN AND DEHARME: COLLABORATIVE METHODOLOGIES

Cahun’s objects of the previous year revelled in a complex dialogue between words and images, and thus it is in the context of Deharme’s words that we must look at

Cahun’s objects as they appeared in this anthology. The images from this book which have been investigated up to this point tend to be the more visceral ones, such as the image for La nerf ma petit dent discussed below, or those more easily interpreted in terms of gender relations and sexuality, as this tends to be the main concern of writers concerned with surrealism, especially those working in the field of and the sexual politics of the surrealist movement.

One of the objects from this book that has already gained attention is the one that accompanies the poem La nerf ma petit dent.

La nerf de ma petit dent The nerve in my little tooth me mord. bites me. Prends un petit baton pointu Take a small sharp stick Pan [just a] sliver c’est un petit serpent it is a little snake mort. dead.

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Notably, the phrase “Prends un petit baton pointu” also appears as the title of a photograph by Cahun which was not included in Le coeur de pic. Cahun’s biographer Francois

Leperlier has suggested that this figure was originally meant to be included in the book of poems, but Gen Doy disagrees, stating that “this figure probably has political meanings which would not have been appropriate for inclusion in the children’s poems collection”.

However, she acknowledges that the given title of the work seems to suggest a correlation between the poupée and the poem by Deharme.37 I contend that this object and the extant photographs of it are characteristic of the boundaries set during this creative collaboration, and the degree of freedom which Cahun was to enjoy while working on images for the book. Deharme appears to have had the final say on which images were to be used, as one would expect (as the more overtly ‘grown-up’ political poupée was never included), but

Cahun was seemingly given free creative rein to design objects and photograph them for consideration. This is essential to an interpretation of the imagery contained in the book: they may have been inspired by Deharme’s poems, but the creation of these objects appears to have been all Cahun’s own. Elisabeth Lebovici rightly associates the poupée with the contemporary political upheaval in Europe, noting that “Hitlerian fascism constitutes the left arm, Spanish republicanism the right arm.”38 Tirza True Latimer also relates the poupée to the conflict in Spain, but without making the connection between the figure, the title of the photograph, and the recurrence of the word dent (teeth) as well as the insertion of toothpicks all over the papier mache figure’s body.39 The original print of the image, held by the Jersey Heritage Trust, along with other surviving artefacts belonging to Cahun and Moore, is labelled on the reverse Prends un petit baton pointu.

37 Doy, G. (2007). 117. 38 Lebovici, E. (1995). I am in training don’t kiss me, in Claude Cahun photographie. Paris: Jean Michel Place/Paris Musées. 19. 39 Latimer, T. T. (2006). Acting out: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, in L. Downie (Ed.), Don’t kiss me: The art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. London: Tate Publishing. 67. 175

A direct association to the poem by Deharme solves all these problems, and thus we should conclude that this image was originally submitted for inclusion in Le coeur, pending Deharme’s approval.

It is possible that Prende un petit baton pointu was not the only image ultimately rejected by Deharme for inclusion in the anthology. Another image, featured on the rear cover of the book, which consists of a prone sunflower, with doll hands that feature prominently in the images created for the book, are arranged like the components of a sun dial, and visually evoke one of the poems included in the book without an accompanying illustration:

La Dame d’onze heures The Lady of the Eleventh hour et le Compagnon blanc And the white Companion ne s’éveillent pas au meme instant Do not awaken at the same instant à l’horloge des fleurs As by the clock of flowers ils se poursuivent d’heure en heure They continue hour after hour vainement In vain.

While it cannot be definitively concluded that this image was originally intended to illustrate this particular poem, I contend that there is a strong possibility of this being the case.

As previously stated, Laurie J Monahan claimed in Cahun’s entry in the

Dictionary of Women Artists that Souris valseuses was an earlier variation on the object

Qui ne craint pas de grand mechant loup, remet la barque sur sa quille et vogue à la derivé which no longer exists and was photographed by Cahun in 1936. Based on my own

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research I now dispute this, identifying the Object as Souris valseuses40, thus ruling out

Qui ne craint… in this context, as it is an object comprised of entirely different materials.

The unusually long title of this object, which translates as “Who’s not afraid of the big, bad wolf, reset the ship on its keel and drift in a fashion” is unusual for Cahun, but certainly fits the style of the poems that Deharme was working on for inclusion in Le coeur de pic. As an illustration Cahun may have submitted for Deharme’s consideration, the object begins to make more sense in relation to the other images depicted in the anthology: an animal jawbone functions symbolically as the vessel, filled with a riot of miniature toys. A small doll, a model church, a lightbulb, a child’s dummy and a hummingbird are among the ‘passengers’ of the boat, as a butterfly leads the way, hovering over the prow as a kind of figurehead. Monahan accuses the object quite rightly of “verging on sentimental cliché,” an effect which is nevertheless “offset by the sinister effect produced by the chaotic jumble of toys, many perched precariously on the skeletal jaws.”41 This succinct description of Qui ne craint… could easily apply to any of the images Cahun produced for Le coeur de pic, all of them equal parts whimsical and menacing. While arguably not one of Cahun’s most remarkable or compelling images, this particular relic of her object manufacture, now housed at the Jersey Heritage Trust, may in fact include the only surviving copy of a poem written by Lise Deharme in 1936.

40 Chapter three, pages 30-36. 41 Monahan, L. J. (1997). 342. 177

REIMAGINING UN AIR DE FAMILLE

Another object mentioned by Gen Doy is the remodelling of Un air de famille, one of the objects Cahun displayed at the Ratton exhibition. The poem accompanying this image reads as follows:

La dèbonnaire Saponaire The easy-going Soapwort et la Centaurée déprimée and the despondent Knapweed se sont ce matin have this morning levees du mauvais pied. gotten off on the wrong foot.

The relationship between word and image here is an example of how Cahun has used this poem (the work of another writer) to rework her object Un air de famille, lending her own interpretation, and one that can be read on many levels.

I argued in the previous chapter that this object in its original form represented the relationship of the mother to the family: specifically, the negative consequences of poverty for working class women. The reworking of this object, which I will refer to in its second incarnation as La dèbonnaire saponaire to avoid confusion (as all the pictures in Deharme’s book are untitled), appears to bear out my original examination of Un air de famille. Cahun has cunningly reworked her original object to meet the interpretation of Deharme’s poem, imbuing the final object with a further meaning that anyone who had seen both objects would immediately understand.

The fundamental components of Un air de famille remain intact: the doll’s bed with a curtain, containing a prone figure surrounded by various objects including a sash.

In La dèbonnaire saponaire we see two figures composed of flowers arranged around a bed. One figure stands over the other in a menacing stance. It holds one limb aloft, either pointing imperiously as if giving a lecture, or possibly brandishing an object. The second

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figure lies still on the bed. The simplicity of Deharme’s verse is belied by the weighted inferences of the visual accompaniment. The “debonair soapwort” can easily be read as the husband or lover, standing over his wife lying prone on the bed, in a compromised position. His air is one of unassailable authority, with more than a hint of menace and reproach. The petals strewn in the foreground, and the disarray of the figure lying down, point to a moment of domestic violence. A violent splatter of blood streams out across the floor, the victim prostrated on the bed, likewise covered in a mess of bloody petals, while the aggressor stands over the victim, either finishing the attack with a round of streaming invective or brandishing the murder weapon: ‘That’ll learn you.’ Interpreted in this way, this work can also be seen as a true sequel to Un air de famille: the first object hinted at the violence and subjugation that awaited the new bride – depicted here is the threat made real. It can be inferred from these objects that Cahun thought little of conventional marriage, or at least its effects on the quality of women’s lives.

POEMS AND OBJECTS

Deharme’s work in this anthology seems quite bleak and serious, and many would consider it too dark for children. As one commentator has put it, “surrealist children must have been made of sterner stuff than ordinary kids.”42 Like all writers associated with surrealism, though, Deharme revelled in word play, and seems to have believed, like

Breton and Cahun, that childhood is a time for the marvellous, and that if not nurtured the natural sense of the marvellous with which children are endowed can be lost during adolescence.43 Regarding the question of what would have been considered appropriate

42 Christie’s Auction House (2009). 108. 43 Breton, A. (1924). The first surrealist manifesto. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. 10-11. 179

for children, Deharme herself seems to have not been too concerned with exposing children to the darker side of life in order to stir the imagination. As the preface to this book by Paul Eluard stated, in the persona of La belle dame sans raison (‘The beautiful woman without reason’); “This picture book is a bouquet picked from the garden of the fairies, stolen from the bees and the butterflies, for whatever age you want it to be.”44 For the surrealists, and especially Breton, a book of this kind would therefore have been considered eminently suitable for an adult attempting to reconnect with the lost aspects of his childhood imagination and sense of the marvellous. Similarly, the book operates as a celebration of the imaginative capabilities of children, and the marvellous, as another term for Breton’s convulsive beauty, being in this context what Rosalind Krauss refers to as “the great talismanic concept at the heart of surrealism itself.”45

While Breton may have been the only surrealist to name his creations poem- objects, the amalgamation of text and object was a strong theme in Cahun’s objects as well, although Cahun tended to allow her objects to ‘speak’ in their own poetic terms, rather than provide a form of subtitles, as Breton did. Nevertheless, Cahun’s assemblages were always about the play between words and objects. They were never a simple visual pun, but rather representations of complex linguistic responses to key critical issues.

The images created for Deharme’s book illustrate the complex and symbiotic relationship between text and the visual that was previously seen in Cahun’s object work.

Taking this looser interpretation of the poem-object, we can see Deharme and Cahun’s collaboration as an extension of the poem-object project initiated by Breton. While

Breton’s poem objects are presented within a frame, a similar framing device can be argued for Cahun’s photographed objects: the artwork being the photograph, not just the

44 Eluard, P. (2004). Preface, in L. Deharme, Le coeur de pic. Paris: editions MeMo. My italics. 45 Krauss, R. E., Livingston, J., & Ades, D. (1985). L’amour fou: Photography & surrealism. Washington, D.C.: Abbeville Press Inc. 24. 180

object depicted in the photograph. Christian Bouqueret emphasizes that the images in this volume are not merely records of constructed objects, but instead purely photographic works.46 As Gen Doy explains, “the photographic image of the fabricated material reality works on the nature of the real by capturing it on film, and then producing the resulting image – it does not simply copy.”47 While the text is not included within this frame, the objects do not function without the inclusion of the poem on the facing page: indeed, many of them defy interpretation without the accompanying text. Thus, each pair of pages

(poem to the left, image to the right) represents a single work, two halves to be interpreted as a whole. Breton conceived of poem-objects as “compositions which tend to combine the resources of poetry and plasticity and to speculate on their power of reciprocal exhalation.”48

While many of the poems in the book, such as La debonaire saponaire, are simple little rhymes, others are more overtly surrealist in their construction, and the function between poem and object is more symbiotic. One example is Les ennuis de pic (the only poem with a title in the anthology):

LES ENNUIS DE PIC THE TROUBLES OF ‘PIC’ Il faut toujours jouer It is always necessary to play avec les petites filles dans les hotels with the little girls in hotels meme belles even the ones as beautiful comme des fees as the fairies j’aime mieux m’ennuyer I prefer my boredom ou alors qu’on m’amène which brings me le Diable the devil ou meme or even le bonhomme de sable the sandman quelques sauvages a few savages un ivrogne a drunkard un accident an accident

46 Bouqueret, C. (1997). Des années folles aux années noires: La nouvelle vision photographique en France 1920-1940. Paris: Marval. 73. 47 Doy, G. (2007). 123. 48 Rubin, W. S. (1990). Dada, surrealism, and their heritage. New York: Museum of Modern Art. 181

les bagarres brawls ou tout simplement or simply qu’on me prête lends me un moment a moment une boîte d’allumettes. a box of matches. Ah quelle belle flambée Oh, what a beautiful blaze mes infants. my children.

The accompanying photograph illustrates the images here, but in a method reminiscent of Breton’s poem-object: what appear to be half a pair of broken scissors and a fork for the devil, the sandman symbolically by a clock, and various figures representing savages, drunkards, an accident.

What is striking here in relation to Breton’s first poem-object, Je vois, j’imagine, discussed in the previous chapter is that, rather than provide the viewer with a reader’s manual – here is the original object that I see (a hinged mirror), here is what I imagine when I look at it (wings, flight), and here is the key to unlocking this visual mystery (an egg, a symbol of birth, literally inscribed with instructions on how to read the object), accompanied by an automatic poem, Cahun and Deharme took this methodology one step further. What is depicted here are already ‘interpreted’ objects, objects taken from their ordinary setting and given new meaning: the ultimate surrealist objects, born of both creation and destruction. To use Cahun’s own terminology, these images are of

“domesticated” objects which have been “tamed”; created through the destruction

(“creation = to destroy + χ”) of everyday “irrational objects”.

Cahun and Deharme’s collaboration is thus emblematic of the surrealist theory of childhood, that period of existence when humans are naturally in tune with the marvellous: this is then gradually lost during adolescence, whittled away by the responsibilities of adulthood and a ‘reality’ which they believed detracted from the search for true meaning, and which the surrealists so abhorred. Cahun and Deharme not only sought to encourage children to develop their sense of wonder, but also created a book 182

that encouraged adults to reconnect with these lost aspects of imagination, through dreams and fantasy. While it was originally Breton who contended in this context that objects and their perception are part of the problem, it was Cahun who was one of the most successful of the group in terms of developing and questioning the nature of objects, and our relationship to them. This refers in turn back to Cahun’s ‘irrational objects’ of

1936. They represent the repression of the unconscious mind, and from Cahun’s political viewpoint, the creativity of the working classes.

IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES: WORDS AND IMAGES

Rosalind Krauss has argued that traditional contradictions between writing and image making were not irreconcilable within the context of surrealist practice:

Normally we consider writing as absolutely banned from the photographic field, exiled by the very nature of the image – the ‘message without a code’ – to an external location where language functions as the necessary interpreter of the muteness of the photographic sign.49

While in this context Krauss was speaking of captions, which create an artificial construction of meaning when applied to photographic images, prior to the emphasis on object making, this construction in surrealism is frequently evidenced by the inclusion of text within their photomontage and collage practices, such as the iconic image of I can’t

49 Krauss, R., et al. (1985). 35. 183

see [the woman] for the forest. (1929).50 The inclusion of text in collages such as Cahun’s

I.O.U (self-pride), and in Breton’s poem-objects, can be interpreted as early attempts to move away from their earlier, literary preoccupations – to become ‘extraliterary’ in their mode of expression, as objects became more important to their primary concerns.

Likewise, the inclusion of text in Cahun’s plastic images was both a parallel of Breton’s own poem-object work and a precursor to her work with Deharme. In a further evolution of practice there is an interpretive reversal of roles in Deharme’s book – while the primary text was necessary in order to inspire the images, so too did the images describe the text to which they were referring. The subject no longer dictated the form and meaning of the object.

While Alexandrian states that Breton was the only surrealist to create poem- objects and label them as such,51 the nature of surrealist object manufacture, which leaves open the definition of the forms created, and method used to produce each object, also leaves the definition of a poem-object open to some interpretation. Surrealist objects are theoretical objects: they make one think, and they make one do theory in order to understand them. As such, they function as surrealist objects regardless of their form, as it is the intent in their creation that is the key. I contend that Cahun’s objects also functioned, in this sense, as poem-objects. Furthermore, I contend that Cahun and

Deharme’s collaboration worked more successfully in the creation of a synthesis of poetry and object, as a form of Bretonian poem-object, in which known elements combine to create a new synthesised object, with a new interpretation.

50 Adamowicz, E. (1998). Surrealist collage in text and image: Dissecting the exquisite corpse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 174. 51 Alexandrian, S. (1985). 147. 184

Cahun’s relocation certainly brought with it a change of practice – while she continued to create objects, her focus changed from the creation of objects for exhibition

(a focus which was only pertinent to the existence of the surrealist exhibitions of the previous year in any case) to the creation of objects for the primary purpose of photographing them. While this change in focus can be attributed in part to the project on which she collaborated with Deharme there also appears to be a lengthened halt in her self-portrait photography as well as her writing. From 1937 to the outbreak of the war

Cahun’s focus appears to remain on objects, and involvement in political arts movements which were ultimately unsuccessful in their goals. Cahun’s objects continued to offer resistance to interpretation, even when a gloss is provided, in this case the poems of

Deharme.

While Cahun appears to have functioned on the margins of surrealism, her political beliefs were not only closely aligned with Breton’s, but at times appear to have exceeded them in intensity. In her examination of surrealist theory, Rosalind Krauss states that “[the] distinction between writing and vision is one of the many antinomies that

Breton speaks of wanting surrealism to dissolve in the higher synthesis of a surreality that will… ‘resolve the dualism of perception and representation.’”52 Cahun’s experiments in the dissolving of text and image, subject and object, preceded Breton’s own, and were equally successful.

Ultimately however, from this period of Cahun’s life, it becomes apparent that she was only involved with the surrealist group for the duration in which their political aspirations aligned, and when it was time to turn to other networks, and to other pursuits, she was happy to reinvent herself as she had done many times before. Like her objects,

52 Krauss, R, et al. (1985). 24. 185

there is no one true definition of Cahun. Cahun’s next major reinvention of her practice occurred due to events beyond her control as the political face of Jersey was altered dramatically by the arrival of the German occupying forces.

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CHAPTER FIVE: OBJECTS OF RESISTANCE

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INTRODUCTION

In the previous chapters I have explored Cahun’s association and experimentation with objects, initially in written form, then through production, to the photography of objects. I have established that Cahun’s core premise was that objects must exist in resistance to interpretation if they are to have an effect on their viewers. Cahun’s objects are thus theoretical objects as defined by Damisch and Bal, in that her primary goal was to prompt her audience to critical reflection about society by pointing to current events, in order to interpret them. Cahun also imbued her objects with a form of agency, giving them the power to resist casual interpretation, and to direct the conversation by exhorting their audience to engage with the object in order to understand it. Furthermore, I have discussed the notion that Cahun had also positioned herself as resistant to her own work, declaring her intent to “work in opposition” to all external and internal forces in order to be an effective voice for change, as she saw it as the only way to remain truly revolutionary. Over the years, Cahun’s ideas on objects had moved from a position in which she declared that objects speak a secret language to which humans are not privy, through to an investigation of the language and power of objects to effect change, and experiments in the production of objects to achieve that end. Her previous attempts at object manufacture combined the use of found objects and textual guides in a methodology similar to Breton’s poem-objects, and it is the synthesis of these two mediums which would serve Cahun in the years immediately following the object exhibition.

This chapter interprets Cahun and Moore’s political activism on Jersey during the war, drawing out how it extended Cahun’s thinking and practice regarding surrealist objects. Cahun’s last act as a member of the group AEAR (Association of revolutionary

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writers and artists – Association ecrivains et artistes revolutionaire), which she had joined in 1932, had been to publish the article Les paris sont ouverts (1933-4). As part of her response to the political debate leading up to the object exhibition in 1936, in Les paris sont ouverts Cahun explored the power of indirect action, and the activist potential inherent in the relationship between the arts and political action.1 When the occupation of the Island of Jersey by the German Army began in 1940, Cahun found herself in a position to put these unique perspectives, first expressed in 1934, into action. Utilising previously formulated political theory and past object practice, Cahun combined poetry, performance and object creation to perform her activities of resistance.

Lizzie Thynne has noted that by the final meeting of Contre attaque (Counter attack), the short-lived group initiated by Bataille as an alternative to the French

Communist Party (PCF) after the Aragon-inspired split, Cahun seems to have begun doubting the ability of the surrealist splinter group to have any real impact in terms of promoting pacifism over nationalism or Stalinism, in the face of impending war throughout Europe.2 This likely played a part in Cahun and Moore’s decision to permanently relocate to Jersey, along with the seemingly inevitable arrival of German forces in Paris. After a flurry of activity in politics Cahun and Moore removed themselves to Jersey, where they pursued their own interests, unhindered by argument and dissent.

1 Short, R. S. (1966). The politics of surrealism, 1920-36. Journal of Contemporary History, 1:2. 18-19. 2 Thynne, L. (2010) Indirect action: Politics and the subversion of identity in Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore’s resistance to the occupation of Jersey. Papers of Surrealism, Issue 8. 10. 189

THE RELOCATION TO JERSEY: REPERCUSSIONS

Cahun and her partner Moore had often holidayed on Jersey with their family from their teenage years at a hotel in St Brelade’s Bay. Cahun and Moore had subsequently developed a friendship with the hotel’s owners. Disavowals is believed to have been written on, and certainly about, parts of Jersey and its inhabitants.3 One character in particular was a sailor, known only in Disavowals as Bob, on whom Cahun had an unrequited crush for several years until Bob married another woman. Cahun and Moore had continued to visit Jersey regularly together over the intervening years, until they decided to settle there in about 1937, purchasing a house which they called La

Rocquaise,4 opposite their old friend’s hotel in St Brelade.

The Island of Jersey, in the Channel Islands, occupies a unique political and cultural niche in Europe. Considerably closer geographically to France than to England, its cultural influence is more French than British. It is a political remnant of the Duchy of

Normandy, retained by the Crown of England after the Duchy was lost to the French in the 13th century. It is one of the few remaining territories in the world governed by the system of Bailiwick. The Bailiwick of Jersey currently occupies an almost unique position in modern politics and governance, along with the neighbouring Bailiwick of

Guernsey. While it is an independent, self-governing Bailiwick, a now obscure form of government which stems from the medieval era, it is still technically a crown dependency of the UK, as it was in the 1930s and 40s. The community of approximately 45,000 (in

1945) on the Island of Jersey was, and is, extremely close-knit. The legal system is

3 Shaw, J. L. (2013). Reading Claude Cahun’s Disavowals. United Kingdom: Ashgate Publishing. 61. 4 Bower (2013) notes that the property was “nicknamed ‘the farm with no name’; its real title, ‘La Rocquaise’, ‘the one made from rocks’ in which ‘the one’ is an object or, if read as a pun in French a tough, hardy woman. 190

recognisable as an earlier form of Westminster Law. Criminal trials are heard by the

Bailiff and twelve elected jurors. Other positions on the island, such as community policing, are performed by either nomination or election, and each candidate agrees to take on the position for a few years only. All of these community positions are unpaid.

The citizens of Jersey are accustomed, as they have been for centuries, to acting in a number of civic roles, and participating in a shared sense of community and civic responsibility.

Jersey’s location also made it strategically important to both Germany and Britain during the Second World War. The largest of the Channel Islands, Jersey is situated in an area of the channel sheltered on several sides by the provinces of both Normandy and

Brittany, in turn exposing the island to large stretches of the French coast. Its capture by the German army deprived England of an important staging point and gave the Germans a strong vantage point from which to counter British military strikes along the south coast of England, as well as to plan and launch attacks of their own, while defending their position as the occupying force in France.5

WAR AND SURREALIST POLITICAL REACTIONS

Until the outbreak of the war, Cahun and Moore continued to receive guests from

Paris and farther afield, including a visit from Jacqueline Lamba and Aube Breton. It was during this period that Cahun worked on her images for Deharme, as well as photographing many other object constructions, several of the negatives of which survive

5 Sanders, P. (2005). The British Channel Islands under German occupation: 1940-1945. St. Helier: Jersey Heritage Trust. 13. 191

today in the Jersey Heritage Trust archives. After the book was completed Cahun continued with her photographic studies of ephemeral objects, as evidenced by the photographs held by the Trust. Once the Nazis seized Paris in 1939 however, the vast majority of their friends and associates fled via the Mediterranean ports outside the Vichy- controlled area of France to other countries, including the UK and the US. Several of the surrealist group, including Breton and his family, spent a number of fraught months in

Marseilles awaiting approval to travel to the US. It was during this time that they designed the Jeu de Marseilles card game, discussed in the previous chapter, to occupy themselves.

Cahun and Moore were left isolated following the German occupation of Paris, but for the time being safe, at their home La Rocquaise. In 1940, the German army seized control of the island.

With most of the surrealist group having fled to Marseilles a few activists associated with them, such as , had stayed behind in Paris. The remaining members of the group had consciously abandoned surrealist action in the urgency of the moment in favour of literal, political action, temporarily putting aside previous differences of ideology and re-aligning themselves with organisations such as the PCF.

Tzara stated in hindsight that he saw no practical use for surrealist ideas during the period of direct conflict:

It is far from my intention to reproach those who left France at the time of the Occupation. But one must point out that Surrealism was entirely absent from the preoccupations of those who remained because it was no help whatsoever on an emotional or practical level in their struggles against the Nazis.6

The other members of the PCF agreed with him and saw no use for what Breton and

Cahun had described as poetic revolution, encapsulated in the concept of the power of

6 Tzara, T. (1966). Le surréalisme et l’après-guerre. Nagel: Paris. 74. My italics. 192

indirect action, preferring to perform acts of direct and overt resistance to the occupying

German forces, such as espionage and sabotage.

Cahun and Moore were confined to the Island of Jersey. This did not mean, however, that Cahun abandoned her politics for the sake of her own safety, nor that she had abandoned her practice. Cahun and Moore had more reason than many trapped there to avoid notice from the occupying authorities: although their legal status and public profile was as co-habiting, spinster step-sisters, they were of course Lesbian women in a long-term partnership. Due to the social climate in Europe regarding homosexuality it could be difficult for people in same sex relationships to live quietly among others as it was. But the Nazis in particular defined homosexuality as an abomination and a criminal offense, with severe penalties for those caught, although they did not regard Lesbianism as severely as male homosexuality.7 To add to these concerns, Cahun was of course

Jewish as well. Upon arrival on Jersey, Cahun had also reverted to the use of her birth name, Lucie Schwob. This was just as recognisable to the average German as a potentially

Jewish surname as Cahun certainly was (Cahun being a Gallicized version of Cohen).8

Although Cahun and Moore had technically left France they had in no way managed to avoid the conflict between the German army and the Anglo-French resistance movement.

Contrary to Tzara’s assessment of the involvement of surrealists in the resistance, or the effectiveness of surrealist philosophies as a practical weapon against the enemy, not only did Cahun and Moore design and activate an ingenious campaign of psychological subversion against the German occupying forces on Jersey, but they did so in the full spirit of surrealist ideology. They utilised Cahun’s previous experiments with not only

7 Persecution of homosexuals in the Third Reich. (2016, July 2). Retrieved from United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005261 8 Consolidated Jewish surname index. (1995). Retrieved from http://www.avotaynu.com/csi/csi-home.htm 193

gender and non-binary identities, but also her use of surrealist objects, and her desire to see them activated as agents of the resistance.

In Les paris sont ouverts, Cahun had discussed Freudian latent meaning in the context of poetry. She contended that a poem contains ‘secrets’, much like the secret language in which she claimed all objects speak, and which she contended in 1914 in

Vues et visions no one could yet understand. By 1933 this philosophy, extended to poetry, describes the way in which this secret language can be used in non-propagandistic art, as a means by which one can communicate revolutionary ideas without making them explicit

(unlike the more overt messaging in the methods espoused by Louis Aragon and the PCF, with their decided adherence to the principles of Social Realism in the arts). Cahun’s trajectory through various incarnations of the object, through the poem-object to her note- objects of her resistance years described one continuous thread in her practice. Cahun stated that propagandists, or communist journalists, and poets are two distinct entities:

“poets act in their own way on men’s sensibilities. Their attacks are more cunning, but their most indirect blows are sometimes mortal.”9 These indirect blows from poets also echo the indirect method of communication which Cahun imparted in her objects, and her photographs of objects. This indirect, somewhat opaque method of delivery forces the recipient to become involved in the exchange, increasing their level of participation in order to increase their psychological and emotional engagement with the material. This approach came to the fore in the objects which Cahun deployed in the service of the resistance movement.

Breton had been impressed with this declaration of Cahun’s in Les paris sont ouverts and wrote specifically of Cahun’s theories of radical art and poetry in Minotaure:

9 Humanities Underground. (2011, January). The mirage in the pupil. Retrieved from http://humanitiesunderground.org/the-mirage-in-the-pupil/ 194

“In the recent polemics with Aragon, Claude Cahun has presented conclusions that for a long time will be the most valid.”10 This assertion by Breton was physically tested by

Cahun’s active resistance on Jersey. As we have seen through her previous investigation and creation of objects, and her attempts to marry these theoretical considerations with the practice of the creation of revolutionary objects, Cahun had lighted on the methodology of creating objects which, like her poetry and prose, resisted easy interpretation, creating objects which were indeed cunning and capable of striking indirect blows which cut deep into the consciousness of their audience.

Ultimately Cahun concluded that the only effective action is this method of

“indirect action,”11 and that only by producing either poetry or propaganda in this fashion can either be said to be truly revolutionary. Objects in service of the resistance must therefore speak in a language which resists interpretation and requires effort to understand, for without effort on the part of the audience there is no engagement with the material. The reader or viewer of these objects are required to discover the subtext of the objects by themselves. This is exactly what Cahun’s acts of resistance on Jersey set out to achieve. Rather than stating what the reader should believe, the objects of resistance which Cahun distributed were deliberately designed to encourage the receiver to question perceived truths, by allowing the audience to “read” her propagandistic objects in a way that spoke to them personally.

10 Bower, G. J. (2013). No page numbers. 11 Bower, G. J. (2013). No page numbers. 195

CAHUN’S OBJECTS OF RESISTANCE

Cahun’s resistance took on the various forms her work had taken so far: poetic prose, found objects, surrealist-inspired constructions inscribed with cryptic messages.

The primary physical evidence of her resistance work which remains are a series of notes, held in the Jersey Heritage Trust archives. Breton’s first poem-object, created in 1935, anticipated Cahun’s note objects created during the 1940s, and which were sometimes inserted into the cigarette packets of German soldiers. Breton’s object consisted of a cigarette packet, decorated with a short poem. The text reads:

L’ocean glacial Jeune fille aux yeux bleues Dont les cheveux Étaient déjà blancs

The glacial ocean Girl with blue eyes Whose hair Was already white

Leaving aside an artistic interpretation of Breton’s object, its form is typical of the poem- objects created by both Cahun and Breton in the second half of the previous decade, and serves as an interesting precursor to Cahun’s notes, both in terms of its physical delivery

(the cigarette packet) and the simple poem which delivers Breton’s message via the object itself. Several of Cahun’s propaganda notes follow a similar, poetic style: a simple meter, paring down the message to its most concise form. L’ocean glacial also resists a simple interpretation, marrying as it does (and as Breton’s poem-objects often did) the

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incongruous form of the mundane found or discarded object – the cigarette packet – with a love poem, presumably written for Jacqueline Lamba. Likewise, Cahun’s notes to the soldiers were careful, sensitive exhortations to consider their actions, their loved ones at home, the people whose lives they were affecting; they were never harsh or accusatory.

Cahun and Moore produced these notes at home, between 1940 and 1944. Some of the notes are handwritten, some typed, and were created to be dropped as propaganda leaflets where they would be discovered by German soldiers stationed on Jersey. The notes were designed to instil doubt in the soldiers’ minds: doubt as to the validity of the war, and doubt regarding the true intentions of their superiors. Much has already been written about the contents of the notes by Lizzie Thynne and François Leperlier. Their effects on the morale of the German forces stationed on Jersey were noticeable – certainly the officers were concerned enough to devote time and energy to discovering the shadowy miscreants responsible for such sedition. My interest in the notes however, is how they function as an extension of Cahun’s object theories. As a form of indirect action, Cahun gives the notes the same latent agency that she ascribed to her other plastic objects.

Cahun’s notes were carefully handwritten or typed onto tissue paper, rolled or folded into the smallest size possible, then subtly delivered to the soldiers of the German

Army in a variety of ways.12 Often bold in her execution, Cahun dropped the folded notes through the crack of a car’s driver seat window, slipped them into newspapers or coat pockets, or in at least one alleged incident, deftly inserted a rolled note into the cigarette packet of a German soldier relaxing at a table in a busy café.13 In order to execute these bold manoeuvres, Cahun adopted the character of an anonymous and untraceable local –

12 Carr, G, Willmot, L., & Sanders, P. P. (2014). Protest, defiance and resistance in the channel islands: German occupation, 1940-45. London, United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Academic. 187. 13 Carr, G, et al. (2014). 187. 197

often male, and a common fisherman or labourer.14 Cahun’s diminutive build, and experience in Pierre Albert-Birot’s theatrical productions of the 1920s made these forays, although bold, relatively simple as long as she kept her resolve and stayed in character despite the dangers she was exposing herself to in performing these actions.

The notes were short and simple, and spoke in the voice of a German soldier, whom Cahun had dubbed Der Soldat ohne Namen, or the ‘Soldier without a name’. The unnamed soldier’s notes functioned as a plea to the conscience of his compatriots, imploring his fellow soldiers to think about the true cause and meaning of the conflict they were fighting, and to think about the inevitable suffering of those they had left at home. One surviving note, now held by the Jersey Heritage Trust archives, reads:

What man has the right to sacrifice a people to save a government? Revolution in Germany? – Certainly. And the longer the war, the longer and more confused the inevitable revolution, the worse the suffering of our women and children. -Thus speaks the soldier without a name15

Cahun attempted to plant in the minds of soldiers isolated far away from home, not only a lingering doubt over the purpose of the conflict in which they were engaged, but also the suspicion that they were being “sacrificed” to save those on top – Hitler and the Reich were not representative of the Volk: the soldiers and their families. Once this conclusion is accepted, as Cahun’s anonymous messenger suggests, then a revolution against the

Reich for the good of the people is all but inevitable. Cahun’s anonymous soldier asks the

German troops to consider what would happen next: if women and children already suffer

14 Johnson, S. (2015, April 28). Claude Cahun: A very curious spirit. Retrieved from http://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/7358/claude-cahun-a-very-curious-spirit 15 Jersey Heritage Trust (1945). Archives and collections online. Retrieved from http://catalogue.jerseyheritage.org/collection/Details/archive/110003107?page=2&rank=48. Cat no: JHT/1995/00045/53. 198

at home, under constant threat of invasion or bombardment, will they suffer again when the soldier returns home, and the war begin anew for the freedom of the German people?

The soldier without a name plants the seeds of doubt in his fellows’ minds, both with the ominous content of his message, but also through his ephemeral identity.

Her objects began as found objects, such as cigarette packets, which she inscribed with the words “Ohne Ende” (without end), taken from the Nazi war slogan “Terror without an end or an end to terror.”16 The pseudonym she eventually arrived at also derived from this, a play on words to constantly remind the recipients of her messages that the horror was indeed seemingly without end. These and other objects similarly inscribed were left in various places to be casually discovered by the German troops – the shock of discovery hopefully magnifying the hopeless message combined with the repetition of discovering the message repeatedly. Cahun and Moore also disguised themselves and slipped in to German military events, where they left the notes to be discovered.17

Another note distributed by Cahun and Moore reads:

HITLER leads us GOEBBELS speaks for us GOERING eats for us LEY drinks for us Himmler? HIMMLER MURDERS FOR… But no one dies for us. NO ONE DIES FOR US.18

16 Thynne, L. (2010). 10. 17 Carr, G, et al. (2014). 18 Jersey Heritage Trust (1945). Cat no: JHT/1995/00045/53. 199

Cahun’s notes certainly take an indirect path, both in their physical delivery, and in their content. The latent worry empathises, rather than entreats or threatens. The notes are with the soldiers, not against them. It was Cahun’s approach as a surrealist poet, rather than as a propagandist, that enabled her to write so artfully against the peace of mind of the

German soldiers.

Tellingly, unlike many other left-wing groups in France before the outbreak of the war, the politicised surrealists of the group Contre attaque refused to condemn wholesale the entire German nation for the military aggression of the state. They saw the antagonists as being the German government and their military heads only with the everyday people of Germany, regardless of background or circumstances, powerless underneath this

Fascist occupation.19 This understanding is borne out in the method of communication chosen by Cahun in her notes: they empathise with, rather than condemn the common

German soldier. They gently encourage the everyday soldier to question orders, to question authority, and therefore the very purpose of their ordered mission. Cahun’s method of using objects to persuade led the soldiers to believe that they had reached conclusions of their own design. Most importantly, in terms of their propaganda value, they reminded them to worry about those they had left behind, trapped in an oppressive state.

Cahun never wavered in her belief that the German soldiers to whom her notes were addressed were capable of critically assessing their own situation and arriving independently at their own conclusion regarding the futility of the war and the bastardry of their commanders and overlords. In this she remained unchanged from her position in

19 Follain, C. (1997). Constructing a profile of resistance: Lucy Schwob [Claude Cahun] and Suzanne Malherbe as paradigmatic résistantes. BA Contemporary History with French dissertation, University of Sussex. 92. 200

1934 when, in Les paris sont ouverts, she declared that only literature which acts indirectly is true propaganda,20 as it must lead people to their own conclusion, rather than forcing facts or a point of view down their throat. Her attitude towards the soldiers also reflected her belief in 1936 in the ability of the working class to recognise the value of the ‘irrational’ objects placed before them without intervention, and to be able to interpret their meaning.

Cahun and Moore continued these drops successfully throughout most of the war, growing bolder as the conflict progressed. Other actions they performed included affixing notes to the graves of German soldiers buried on Jersey. In one instance they left a message declaring “Hitler is greater than Jesus. Jesus died for men, but men are dying for

Hitler” on the altar of the local church.21 The Germans were determined to catch this mastermind of sedition: a shadowy figure who seemed to be able to infiltrate the personal space of the German troops like a ghost. For a long time Cahun was able to operate with impunity despite the immediate risks inherent in each operation. The temerity of the women was exacerbated by La Rocquaise’s proximity to the St Brelade hotel where the

Luftwaffe officers were billeted.22 It never occurred to the occupying forces that they were looking for a pair of middle-aged, middle class French women, initially operating alone, and never as part of an extensive network.

Cahun’s disguises and masks are where her play with identity as a human figure of agency coincide with her object work. Both Cahun and her cigarette-notes thus combine to become an object of resistance. Taken as a performance of resistance, Cahun’s combination of disguise and object become the theoretical object introduced at the outset

20 Cahun, C. (1934). Le paris sont ouverts. Paris: José Corti. 8. 21 Carr, G, et al. (2014). 187. 22 Thynne, L. (2010). 16. 201

of this thesis. Leperlier has suggested that Cahun’s entire life on Jersey during the war constituted nothing less than one, continuous surrealist act.23 Cahun’s actions also illustrate the contention of Mieke Bal, who stated that theoretical objects are “works of art that deploy their own artistic…medium to offer and articulate thought.”24 The purpose of a theoretical object is to make you think and Cahun, as object, in these actions was directed at this outcome, by specifically forcing her intended audience, the German troops, to reflect on their actions, their orders, the safety of themselves and their family: in short, their entire system of values, and their place within that system. Previous writers such as Thynne have concentrated on Cahun’s masking and mimicry in her actions of

Jersey often in terms of her quest for personal identity. As Thynne contends, the larger mimicry at work in these notes is the appropriation of the identity of a young male Aryan soldier by a middle-aged, lesbian, Jewish, French woman, which struck at the heart of

Nazi ideology.25 In the spirit of true surrealism, Cahun had successfully “othered herself” in a more practical sense, by assuming the identity of an unknown soldier. As the soldier without a name Cahun resisted identification and therefore circumvented the chain of command.

INCARCERATION AND THE DISSEMBLING SELF

The German commanders on Jersey dubbed these unknown propagandists

“spiritual snipers,” such was the deleterious effect it was feared they might have on the

23 Leperlier, F. (2011). L’image premiere. Claude Cahun, Hazan/éditions du Jeu de Paume. 61. 24 Bal, M. (1999). Narrative inside out: Louise Bourgeois’ spider as theoretical object. Oxford Art Journal, 22.2. 104. 25 Thynne, L. (2010). 16. 202

morale of the troops.26 Finally, after one too many tip offs, Cahun and Moore were stopped in public one day after a leaflet drop. A thorough search was instigated at La

Rocquaise where their supplies for the production of their resistance material were found including Cahun’s typewriter which was matched to the typeface on some of the distributed notes. Cahun and Moore were imprisoned by the Nazis who charged them with inciting the German soldiers to riot based on the contents of a leaflet which they had distributed.27 Cahun’s imprisonment meant she could no longer distribute her objects of resistance. However, she continued to perform resistance, becoming the object of resistance herself. She continued her resistance from within her cell through continuing conversations with the German troops with whom she came in to contact.

When Cahun and Moore were tried, they received a nine-year, six-month sentence for owning a radio with which they had been listening to the BBC, and the death sentence for the note which had encouraged German soldiers to shoot their superior officers. Much to the chagrin of the presiding German officers, Cahun’s response sent the courtroom into gales of laughter: “Are we to do the nine years six months before we are shot?”28 Cahun’s dark humour, often employed in her notes, was a welcome contrast to the literal and humourless existence of the troops and appears to have won her not only respect, but also friends in unlikely places.29 Of course the reality of their situation was far from humorous.

Cahun and Moore attempted suicide several times during their incarceration,30 convinced that they were being held only to be inevitably executed anyway. Cahun and Moore

26 Thynne, L. (2010). 10. 27 Cahun, C. & Leperlier, F. (2002). Les ecrits de Cahun. France: Jean-Michel Place Editions. 721-2. 28 Cahun, C. & Leperlier, F. (2002). 721. 29 Follain, C. (1997). 92. 30 Carr, G, et al. (2014). 188. 203

received their sentence of death in November 1944.31 The sentences were not carried out immediately and Cahun and Moore were returned to the cells.

As Cahun wrote in her memoir Confidences (secrets) in the mirror, which was not published during her lifetime, she was received kindly by the soldiers in the military prison in 1944: she was much moved by the “experience of the fraternal welcome I received from those in whose name I wrote.”32 Cahun’s ability to blend into her surroundings and charm when she needed to extended to her prison guards, who eventually allowed Cahun and Moore brief trips from the cells to visit other prisoners, including one German soldier who was to be executed for speaking of desertion. These actions are a very odd decision for a guard to make, which suggests that many of the soldiers, although fearful of the obvious repercussions for desertion, or even thinking about it, had an admiration for Cahun and Moore. Although Der Soldat ohne Name had been unmasked as two fifty-year-old women rather than a young German soldier, the soldiers’ regard for Der Soldat ohne Name remained undiminished. Speaking what many of them were already feeling, the messages in the notes felt like common sense: their own internal dialogue of fear and doubt made concrete.

While in prison, Cahun developed a friendship with one of the guards from the military prison in St Helier, who then appears to have granted her small favours where possible. In perhaps the most extraordinary example of Cahun’s ability to influence others as Der Soldat ohne Name, this guard, one Heinrich Ebbers, stayed in contact after the war’s end, writing to Cahun and Moore from a prisoner of war camp in Yorkshire in

January, 1946. Due to kindly treatment by guards such as Ebbers, when kept in separate

31 Shaw, J. L. (2013). 218. Original text states November 1945, but this must be an error in printing as Jersey was liberated by British troops on 9 May 1945. 32 Cahun, C. & Leperlier, F. (2002). 584. 204

cells, Cahun and Moore were able to maintain a correspondence when in prison, writing to each other on scraps of toilet paper.33

Towards the end of the conflict, Cahun and Moore were kept in the same cell, and security became laxer. They were able to communicate with other prisoners, particularly with another German soldier who had been arrested. Notes from their unnamed fellow inmate were pushed under Cahun’s cell door (presumably by a sympathetic guard), and

Cahun was able to keep them safe in the lining of her coat. Excerpts of these notes survive in the Jersey Archives today. Cahun’s Soldat had transformed her into an object of protest:

Cahun as her true self had become a representation of what resistance could achieve.

Cahun, as a combination of her object production and performance, had become the embodiment of an idea: the theoretical object which forced the audience to think.

The German commanders had originally planned to send her to an internment camp on the mainland for her execution. However, as the tide of war turned against them the German authorities had grown increasingly nervous about their hold on Jersey.

Cahun’s execution was scheduled to be carried out on the Island.34 It has been asserted by Claire Follain that the German officers were aware of Cahun and Moore’s popularity among both the general population and their own troops, and were afraid to carry out the sentence for fear of widespread backlash.35 When the Germans finally withdrew from

Jersey Cahun and her fellow prisoners were left behind to be freed by the incoming Allied army.

33 Carr, G, et al. (2014). 190. 34 Carr, G, et al. (2014). 115. 35 Follain, C. (1997). 101. 205

CAHUN AS OBJECT OF RESISTANCE

Lizzie Thynne discusses the way in which Cahun’s campaign of resistance spoke to her constant reinvention of herself, “imagining I am something different”36. Thynne takes the something here as ‘someone’, but it can also be understood in its literal translation of ‘something’; that is, her examination of subject/object relationships, and her frequent reflections on the nature and importance of objects to the everyday existence of modern men and women. The ‘something’ Cahun aspired to be is not necessarily limited by living, breathing flesh. Thynne further identifies that Cahun sought to present herself as the other, but like many who have previously sought to examine Cahun’s work she concentrates on Cahun’s identity as ‘other’ within a human scope. The repetition of the imagery of masks, and of otherness, is common throughout her work, but I maintain that this interpretation must also include her discourse on objects, and their relationship to human beings. Through her work on Jersey, Cahun othered herself by becoming a kind of object, one who offers resistance to those who would read her by becoming “something different”, inviting them to seek out the truth of her communications before she can be understood. Cahun said herself that her resistance work with Moore on Jersey was a logical extension of her earlier, literary endeavours.37 Previous theorists such as Thynne have largely assumed that this referred to the examination of identity from a human perspective. Another way of reading Cahun’s assertion that her resistance work was a logical extension of her previous work is to see that she was also referring to her discussion on the ability of objects to speak another language, and to create objects that could effect change. Her resistance work can then be seen as an extension of her object

36 Thynne, L. (2010). 2. 37 Jersey Heritage Trust. Cat no: JHT/1995/00045/25. 206

work, which in turn stemmed from her literary works and political tracts, in which, as I have discussed in the previous chapters, she discussed the latent agency of objects.

Cahun’s deliberate confusion of her identity, of the way people perceive her, was in part coloured by her confusion of gender. Cahun once said: “Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that suits me.”38 Perhaps it is possible that, in rejecting gender binaries, Cahun similarly sought to slough off the binary of animate and inanimate, subject and object in its entirety. Her entire oeuvre – her writing, photography and object manufacture – take on a new, more comprehensive meaning when read as a total decentralisation of the self, and a removal of the division between the human subject/object and all other conceivable subject/objects. French is a gendered language, and each noun is encumbered with its own, permanent, immutable gender, much like the static and binary assignations of gender prescribed to human beings at birth.

Cahun’s reference to neuter can therefore also be taken in the linguistic sense, and her frequent wordplay adds weight to such an interpretation. Cahun wanted to transcend not only human gender, but the gendering, or linguistic cataloguing, of ‘thingness’, to simply be a thing without definition. Rather than attempting to rediscover, explore, or mask her identity, her aspiration in this context was to resist definition altogether.

Finally freed from their imprisonment, Cahun and Moore returned to their home.

The Nazi soldiers had ransacked their house, searching for evidence of any kind to prove insurgent or degenerate activity. Much of their furniture had been seized and sold, and their archives of both written and photographic works were rifled through.39 We will never know how much of Cahun’s body of work was destroyed during this period. While not the subject of this thesis, it would be a disservice to forget that Moore was also a

38 Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 151-2. 39 Thynne, L. (2010). 207

talented and moderately successful illustrator, in a similar style to Aubrey Beardsley.

Very little of her work remains that is not in published form, and we must assume that the

German troops destroyed much of her archive as well. After the war Cahun no longer appeared to work with any of the objects she once used as props for her photographs, and it is possible that they were confiscated and/or destroyed during the period of their imprisonment.

After their release Cahun also began working on an autobiography with the help of Moore, which may explain the shift in emphasis in her photography. In poor health after their experiences in prison she relied more heavily on Moore to facilitate both her written and pictorial works. She stated as much in a letter to Michaux in 1952, when she described her process for getting down some memories of what had happened during her imprisonment. In the letter Cahun also declared that she felt better for it and actually enjoyed the process.40 Moore was assisting her to deconstruct herself, in order to construct the story of her life, in a similar methodology she employed in the writing of Disavowals.

Cahun seems to have always found writing cathartic so it is natural that this is the format she returned to after such a traumatic experience.

Cahun’s self-portrait taken on the day of her release shows her standing in the doorway of the reclaimed La Rocquaise, clenching a Nazi insignia badge between her teeth. Both Cahun and Moore were allegedly gifted these badges by fellow prisoners,41 who were themselves German soldiers, upon the liberation of the island, again attesting to their popularity among the troops stationed on Jersey. Cahun’s clenching of the badge between her teeth is a very powerful symbol: Cahun, the object of resistance, takes

40 Jersey Heritage Trust. Cat no: JHT/1995/00045/25. 41 Smith, K. (2015). Claude Cahun as anti-Nazi resistance fighter - grey gallery. Retrieved from https://greyartgallery.nyu.edu/2015/12/claude-cahun-as-anti-nazi-resistance-fighter/ 208

another object, symbolising her oppression, and violently asserts her domination over it.

After this photograph was taken, Cahun’s practice returns to self-portraiture, as well as landscapes, taking in the natural features and haunting ruins of the many castles in Jersey, although in many the self-portraits she does not appear as easy with the camera as she once was. One cannot escape the impression that Cahun is tired, and perhaps more than a little broken: many of the images are every day, candid shots of an older woman and her companion.

One such portrait of herself and Moore in swim suits, taken in 1950, has been curiously and aggressively defaced; Cahun’s face and abdomen seemingly burned and scratched away from the print's surface in a violent act against representation of the self.

Although I cannot be sure that Cahun was responsible for the damage to the photograph, it is hard to believe that Moore would be responsible for the savaging of her beloved’s image – and if she was, it seems unlikely that she would have kept the damaged print throughout the decades following Cahun’s death. Although it is not possible to know with certainty who defaced it or what their motives were, a desire to obliterate an image in order to construct a new image from its remains seems very much in keeping in the way

Cahun worked. This photograph displays a pattern of erasure, of deconstruction, which

Cahun had followed through much of her career. In another photograph taken at the

London surrealist exhibition in 1937 we see, neatly framed, Andre Breton, ELT Mesens,

Roland Penrose and David Gascoyne. The negative of this photograph originates from the Cahun archival material at the Jersey Heritage Trust, identifying the photograph and its subsequent mark up as the work of either Cahun or Moore. In the proof image stands five figures, not four: Breton, Mesens, Penrose, Gascoyne, and Cahun. A rough square has been etched into the negative, excising Cahun from the final print. It seems that even

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at the height of her public involvement with surrealism and French politics Cahun wished to be erased from the picture, in order to resist being read by others.

CONCLUSION

While Cahun’s relocation to Jersey was intended as a respite from the rigours of the wider intellectual and political landscape, through circumstances beyond her control she was drawn to inadvertently complete her work with objects of resistance, ultimately at a great personal cost to both herself and Moore. Though it was not her original aim

Cahun’s object manufacture culminated in her production of objects to be utilised in the resistance against the occupying forces on Jersey. Cahun had spent many years theorising on the nature of the revolution and was both rationally capable of participating, and highly motivated to engage in the resistance activities on Jersey.

After the suicide attempts in prison, and the general conditions of incarceration,

Cahun’s health was permanently damaged.42 She spent her final years living quietly with

Moore at the reclaimed La Rocquaise, before she passed away in 1954. Her legacy in terms of the resistance is ultimately unmeasurable: contributions to the resistance are arguably best measured as a collective achievement in any case. The cooperative efforts of thousands of French men and women, and many others of various nationalities resulted in the demoralisation, infiltration and sabotage of German forces throughout the Second

World War. I believe that both Cahun and Moore would prefer to be seen as part of that collective, rather than any kind of heroes or liberators from a narrative stereotype.

42 Downie, L. (2005). Sans nom: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. Heritage. 16. 210

However, Cahun’s methodologies were so unique and effective, and so profoundly theoretical, that they are worthy of being singled out and examined. This chapter has discussed them in relation to ideas developed as part of Cahun’s work with the surrealist object. The impact of her resistance is also apparent in the recorded effects she had on

German morale, the reaction of the Luftwaffe to her activities, and the strange affection which developed among the German troops for Der Soldat ohne Name.

Cahun and Moore’s notes took on the characteristics of Cahun’s objects: to put it simply, they resisted. As theoretical objects it is not simply sufficient to write a history of them, they must be acknowledged as progenitors of thought, and as the instigators of change. Cahun worked constantly against the grain, in opposition to herself and others, and by the end of her life, she had succeeded in transforming herself into her own object to be destroyed. With so much of Cahun’s archive destroyed by the German troops who ransacked their home, ultimately Cahun as writer and artist remains unknowable: in death she becomes another object resisting the interpretation of the viewer. This is most likely the reason her legacy remained obscure for so long after her death.

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CONCLUSION

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TOWARDS A FREE, REVOLUTIONARY ART

In this thesis I have examined Cahun’s practice with a particular emphasis on her object work and interest in objects. Building on existing interpretations of Cahun’s practice this focus reveals not a series of fragmented artistic ventures but rather a coherent arc concentrated on the idea that objects are key to personal revelations and as such larger social change. Through her work with objects Cahun also introduced the idea that resistance and inscrutability can function as liberatory forces rather than obstacles to comprehension, something that at first glance seems anathema to modern critical thought.

Cahun’s explanations of, and work with, objects open up new possibilities for understanding their meaning and potential as resistant agents of change. Through a discussion of significant theories of the object, a number of clear themes emerged which are useful in approaching the object works of Cahun. Namely, that objects are central to modern experience: they not only mediate human relationships but may have agency in themselves.

That Cahun was fascinated by the role objects played in everyday life is obvious in her written, photographic and artistic productions. This fascination was earlier voiced in her literary works. But as her practice progressed and her focus changed she found objects to be representative of far wider reaching political and social problems, drawing her in to the circle of surrealist politics. Influenced by socialist politics regarding the potential of objects to play a role in social revolution she began to use objects to formulate solutions to those problems through actions of resistance to the governing balances of power – to false realities, and to socially prescribed roles that she found abhorrent.

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With regards to the plastic objects exhibited by Cahun at the 1936 Paris exposition surréaliste D’objets, close interpretation of both objects displayed was undertaken. As part of this investigation Un air de famille has now been examined and described in close detail. The formerly labelled Object has been given a new context by regaining its original title; as Souris valseuses it is now imbued with a new meaning and a greater significance both within Cahun’s personal body of work and objects of surrealism as a whole. As such,

I have asserted that there were only ever the two objects listed in the catalogue displayed, rather than the three purported by Harris. Gayle Zachmann suggested of Cahun’s photographic work that she “re-envisions the boundaries of the visual and the verbal.”1

When speaking of her objects, it could be said that in many ways none of the surrealists came as close as Cahun to disturbing those borders – between male and female, horrifying and titillating, visual and verbal, real and surreal. Her obvious talent at exploring the

‘folds of identity’ also offers us an explanation for her involvement with the surrealists at this time and a reason as to why her input was so valued by key members of the group.

If, as Knafo claims, “the Surrealist female nudes, cut to phallic form, represent the artistic solution to the male surrealists’ castration anxiety: the reinscription of the phallus on or as the female body that was originally found to lack it,”2 then Cahun’s Un air de famille and Souris valseuses can also be seen as a re-inscription of the female form upon the phallic; a reclaiming of woman’s bodily existence, and the right to assert its continuing existence as an independent form. Through the examination of these objects it is also now apparent that Cahun’s use of the mask as metaphor, originally utilised in her photographic self-portraits and autobiographical writing, began to take on a more political significance through the production of objects. As Tirza True Latimer states,

1 Zachmann, G. (2003). Surreal and canny selves: Photographic figures in Claude Cahun. Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, 27.2. 302. 2 Knafo, D. (2001). Claude Cahun: The third sex. Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 2.1. 36 214

both Cahun and Moore “launched [their] critique…from a self-consciously (and irrevocably) off-centre position” as women who were legally and culturally on the periphery of power with “no stake in maintaining the integrity of these categories of social subjectivity.”3 Rather than disguising the unpalatable, in Cahun’s objects the mask reflected and amplified that which others would prefer to remain masked; those who were objectified and subsumed by modernity and modernisms. Cahun’s work during this period can also be seen as a reaction to the myth of freedom for the modern woman. All such concepts were anathema to Cahun’s vision of the world as it should be.

Cahun’s objects of the 1936 exhibition played a vital role in the communication of surrealism’s key political assertions. Her relationship to several key figures within surrealism suggested not an ostracized or feared artist working on the periphery of a great cultural movement, but one deeply embedded in the process, and imbued with the confidence of those who surrounded her. Cahun’s work with the surrealists should perhaps now be re-examined in light of her close associations with Breton, Péret and

Bataille during this period, as it appears that her contributions were far more central to the aims of the group than has previously been recognised. I suggest that Cahun and other women such as Meret Oppenheim were not simply called upon by Breton to even out the gender imbalance in the group, as has been postulated by Haim Finkelstein,4 but rather respected members of the movement who were actively encouraged to participate in all aspects of surrealist activities during this period. Breton’s assumed dislike of Cahun should most importantly be re-evaluated: his opinion of her is vital to an understanding of her place within the group. It is hard to believe that a woman to whom Breton wrote,

3 Latimer, T. T. (2006) Entre nous: Between Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. GLQ. Duke University Press: 12.2. 210. 4 Finkelstein, H. N. (1980). Surrealism and the crisis of the object. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press. 117. 215

“you dispose of a very extensive magic ability. I find also - and don't repeat it - that you must write and publish. You know well that I think you are one of the most curious spirits of these times” was someone whom he found repugnant in any aspect.5 Unlike the tempestuous relationships many of Breton’s other associates endured, his regard for

Cahun remained strong and constant. It is possible to understand Cahun as a central figure in the surrealist movement of the 1930s. Cahun should no longer be situated on the periphery of a male-dominated movement but understood as having a critical part to play in the evolution of surrealist political thought and artistic development.

Mary Ann Caws suggested that the later stages of surrealism have been overlooked in academic examinations of the movement in favour of the study of automatism.6 This emphasis on the earlier period of surrealism could provide us with an alternative explanation for Cahun’s lack of stature within the surrealist canon: the period of her closest involvement with the group has simply not received as much recognition in the literature. This thesis makes a contribution to redressing that imbalance.

On the surface, Cahun’s 1936 objects seem at first to be unusually gendered in the feminine, as opposed to her usual method of blurring and confounding categories of gender. I believe that this change in her practice – reflected also in the shift from writing to object making – reflected the larger concerns of the surrealist group as a whole, including their increasing politicisation in the face of the impending Popular Front government and the rise of Fascist governments throughout Europe. For the first time

Cahun was making statements specifically for the benefit of women at large, and although her objects continued to blur social and biological definitions of gender they are

5 Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 213. 6 Caws, M. A. (1997). 14. 216

ultimately for the wider community, in much the same way that a younger, more introspective Cahun was always, ultimately, for herself.

Cahun arguably came closer than others working within the surrealist group to a true depiction of aspects of Freudian psychoanalytical theory. Freud’s theory of the unconscious posited that common truths regarding the nature of identity previously held as self-evident were in fact socially inscribed upon the individual, and that these socially created individuals thus wore masks of “multiple and competing identities and identifications.”7 As Caws summarises in Cahun’s case, “no one had more ways of looking than Claude Cahun. She fascinates. She horrifies. She is monstrous. There is no better way of putting it.”8 Therefore, just as Freud claims that there is no such thing as

‘I’, so Cahun exclaims wearily that “I shall never stop removing all these faces.”9

Likewise, the disembodied mother represented in Un air de famille consists of nothing but a tangle of socially prescribed, indecipherable identities, and the Souris valseuses asserts its existence as a ‘counterfeiter’ of phallic identity and power.

Francois Leperlier dubbed Cahun “surrealism’s first female photographer.”10

Leaving aside the heavily implied snub of Lee Miller in this context, whose Mastectomy breast and Ramm Bell jar series alone arguably place her photography firmly within surrealist practice, Cahun was not, at the time when she was active, a photographer per se. It is only in hindsight that her collection of personal photographs has come to light.

Considering Cahun within the context of her active participation in literature, art and politics, it is more accurate to state that Cahun was surrealism’s first woman. The

7 Lusty, N. (2007). 16. 8 Caws, M. A. (1997). 95. 9 Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 183. 10 Leperlier, F. (2001). Claude Cahun: Masks and metamorphoses. London, United Kingdom: Verso Books. vii. 217

appellation of ‘photographer’ is not relevant to either her professional practice, or to the impact she had on surrealist politics of the object during her lifetime. As Leperlier has noted, Cahun rebelled against all creative specialisations – poet, essayist, critic, novelist, translator, actor, costumier, mask maker, object maker, photographer, and revolutionary activist.11

In Les paris sont ouverts, Cahun claimed for poetry the ability to keep its secrets, while simultaneously handing over its secrets.12 When combined with Cahun’s earlier musings on the secret language of objects in Vues et visions, and her frequent interrogation of the meaning and power of objects in Heroïnes, it is clear that Cahun was working towards a synthesis of these ideas, in which poetic objects were capable of revealing truths to their audience whilst simultaneously maintaining their mysterious secrets.

CAHUN AND THEORIES OF THE OBJECT

As stated above, by performing an analysis of the various theories of the object, it has become apparent that no one object theory, be it one which predates, is contemporary with, or traces its inception to the period after Cahun’s own meditations on the nature of the object’s relationship with mankind, is adequate as a standalone tool for the analysis of Cahun’s objects. Rather, Cahun’s objects oblige us to think about the how they are to be read. Hubert Damisch’s definition of the theoretical object is a useful launching point for understanding the work that Cahun’s objects do, and the idea that her objects also

11 Leperlier, F. (2011). L’image premiere. Claude Cahun. Hazan/éditions du Jeu de Paume. 12 Cahun, C. (1934). 8-10. 218

make us do work. Cahun’s objects certainly fulfil the requirements of being theoretical objects in that they oblige the observer to consider theory, but Damisch’s model also requires a toolbox for the examination of theoretical objects, and for that one must look to the objects themselves for guidance.

Theories of the object such as those espoused by Marx in his analysis of industrialised methods of production, while providing a firm foundation for an analysis

Cahun’s work, are ultimately only a point from which to begin. In the case of Cahun they are certainly an excellent point from which to do that as their influence is apparent across her entire body of work. Likewise, contemporaries as diverse as Theodor Adorno and

Francis Ponge contributed valuable thought to the importance of objects to concepts of modernity, and the new relationship of the modern man and woman with those objects.

However, neither Adorno nor Ponge managed to capture the essence of opacity which

Cahun sought to celebrate. Indeed, although Ponge was arguably also working on objects of resistance, his methodology was anathema to Cahun’s own interpretation, seeking as he did to rule objects by destroying their secrecy, dominating them as viewer by breaking them down into minute, describable portions to render them tame. Cahun also exhorted the viewer to destroy in order to tame, but her objective was not to dominate, but rather to co-exist in a mutual relationship of an ebb and flow of information.

Recently, theorists such as Graham Harman, Jane Bennett, Tim Morton, et al, have introduced key concepts such as agency, and the fluid ability of objects to act as agents within the relationship networks which include all other matter, active and passive, human or otherwise. Such approaches have been useful in drawing my attention to the liveliness of Cahun’s objects. Nevertheless, these theories of the later twentieth and early twenty-first century which seek to describe all the permutations of subject/object relationships all inevitably return to a form of privileging one over the other, either subject 219

or object, or even as quasi-subject or quasi-object, methods of interpretation which Cahun had previously attempted to dispense with, in order to truly de-privilege all the actors within the network.

Having conducted my analysis of the major theories of the object, it is my conclusion that Cahun’s objects must ultimately be read at the point of tension between all these competing theories: each theory brings a little to the enlightenment of the viewer, and is useful in teasing out Cahun’s intentions, but Cahun’s objects are objects of resistance, and will not allow themselves to be categorised. Cahun’s objects can only be understood by relinquishing the power in the subject/object relationship and allowing them to resist interpretation on their own terms.

CAHUN’S THEORISING OF THE OBJECT

As well as a selective survey of Cahun’s object production, I have also undertaken a partial survey of Cahun’s literary works in relation to her thinking on objects. While this was not exhaustive, having excluded several short stories and journal reviews, it is possible to glean from Cahun’s writings a sense of her constant interest in the nature and importance of objects. From what I have been able to include here it becomes apparent from as early as 1914, at the age of eighteen, that Cahun’s interest in objects was already formed, and that it was an unceasing interest that informed her entire body of work. As

Patrice Allain notes, “Cahun composes her personal myth as she composes her theatres of objects.”13

13 Allain, P. (2011). Contre qui écrivez-vous? in Claude Cahun. Hazan/éditions du Jeu de Paume. 136-7. 220

Much previous analysis of her literature has focussed on gender and sexuality, however by unpacking the passages concerning objects the field of study on Cahun has been added to considerably. By understanding Cahun’s objects one can better understand her stance on objectivity. Her analysis of objects moved from the notion of the secrecy of objects and a fascination with the idea that they had a language which, given time, could be learned and understood by their observers, to a more politicised understanding of their importance. However, from the outset they were already opaque, unreadable, and this early observation came to form the basis for her objects of resistance which, in the first instance, maintained their effectiveness as objects by resisting interpretation.

Heroïnes is often analysed from a feminist perspective, and it is easy to understand why this is the case. Each vignette tells the story of an infamous woman, reinscribing her in the literature of the West as empowered, and endowing many of these women, from

Eve in the garden of Eden, to the ultimate female symbol of objectivity, Helen of Troy, with a voice of their own. Heroïnes, however, is also ripe with depictions of objects, and these objects in turn play an active role in the stories of all these women. There are objects which stubbornly refuse to be that which they imagined, such as the case of Salome’s art- inspired fantasy for an object she did not fully comprehend until it was too late, and many objects to be destroyed, particularly those that people the narrative of Sophie the

Symbolist, who kills things in order to understand that they lived.

Already Cahun is populating her works with objects to be destroyed, and these manifest in the theory first iterated in its entirety in Disavowals: “to create = to destroy +

χ.”14 In Disavowals, we see deconstruction, particularly of the human form, in order to create new objects, in both the written text and in the collages which illustrate the work.

14 Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 221

In this volume Cahun first clearly articulated the theory which will synthesise her objects to be destroyed with her objects of resistance: is an object which has been irreparably changed, accreting new parts over the old, a destroyed old object, or a re-imagined new one? It is both. This dichotomy between destruction and completion formed a tension which informed the construction of her plastic objects, rendering them resistant to interpretation by traditional methodologies as they stood as both destroyed and created.

CAHUN’S INSCRUTABLE OBJECTS

The focus of this thesis, Cahun’s object manufacture, presented a new opportunity to examine the two objects she exhibited at the surrealist exhibition of 1936. In doing so, particularly in reference to her previous non-object works, it has become apparent that the purpose of Cahun’s creation of plastic objects was not merely to share in a group activity, or simply at the invitation of Breton to participate in an exhibition, but rather the extension of a long-standing fascination with objects, and a strong theoretical interest in the potential of objects to communicate ideas to humanity.

I believe I have built a strong case for the identification of Object as Souris valseuses. More important, however, for the purpose of this thesis is the significance of both the objects displayed to Cahunian ideas on the nature of objects and the relationship she sought to represent between them and their viewing audience. The politics of interwar

Europe also became more apparent in Cahun’s work at this stage of her production, both in her objects and her writing, as she moved away from creative expression to a more politicised output, which was, no doubt, given urgency by the crisis approaching Europe in the face of impending war. 222

Cahun’s seemingly irreconcilable methodologies regarding the nature of creation, destruction, communication and inscrutability also manifested within these objects. Her objects resisted interpretation by refusing to communicate in terms familiar to an audience thinking in socially prescribed terms: the feminised eye which identifies itself in the masculine is a device by which she allowed her object to command the direction of the audience’s thoughts by confusing traditional binaries of interpretation. By rendering itself inscrutable, the eye forced the viewer to pause, and actively consider ways in which to interpret the object. The object thus acts as an agent within its relationship network initiating conversation on the nature of resistance.

More overtly political in its intent, Un air de famille nevertheless contributed to

Cahun’s desire to communicate revolutionary ideas through the medium of object manufacture. Its depiction of feminine crisis and confusion returns to earlier concerns regarding gender and identity but adds a layer of interpretation in the form of a proto- feminist concern with women’s rights. Of the two objects, Souris valseuses/Object has received more attention from other writers, most notably Steven Harris. However, it is surprising that Un air de famille had received comparatively little attention from the many writers on Cahun’s performance of gender, sexuality and identity. By performing a detailed analysis of this artwork, I have begun to redress this imbalance.

The concerns surrounding gender and identity which have always been apparent in Cahun’s work and have previously been given much consideration by other authors, also began to be amalgamated into what Cahun saw as wider social matters regarding poverty, violence, and revolution. The economic and social crises which had arisen in

France after the First World War were about to be eclipsed by the far greater social disasters of the second.

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CAHUN’S POETIC OBJECTS OF RESISTANCE

Having explored the nature of plastic objects, Cahun’s practice returned to photography from 1937 until the outbreak of the war. However, the images she created never had quite the same figurative quality as those she had produced before her involvement in surrealist politics in art. Cahun’s photography prior to this moment had concentrated on the depiction of objectivity and objectification through the human form, but now she began to create assemblages in the surrealist style in order to further examine the ability of objects to communicate with an audience. Her assemblages are ephemeral, with their many components arranged and rearranged in non-permanent displays, as evidenced by their repetitive use in several different images.

At this point in time she illustrates Lise Deharme’s book of poetry for children, and Cahun’s intention of creating objects which resist interpretation can be seen even here. Combined with this theoretical methodology is an interest in Bretonian poem- objects, which yet again represent another synthesis of two very Cahunian ideas: the notion that poetry is the true language of resistance and revolution, and that objects are most perfectly placed to deliver the message of revolution. Cahun’s decision to participate in this project may also signal the beginning of her desire to step away from the increasingly fractious politics of Paris’ left-wing intelligentsia before her permanent settlement on the Island of Jersey with her partner Marcel Moore. As discussed in earlier chapters Cahun may have also begun to lose faith in the ability of the groups with which she was associated to affect any real political or social change. It should be noted however that Cahun’s decision to remove herself from direct association with many of these

224

connections did not in any way signal a decrease in her commitment to politics. A position which became clear when the German army invaded France and occupied Jersey.

CAHUN AS AN OBJECT OF RESISTANCE

Cahun’s growing disenchantment with the politics of Paris, and the growing unrest in the wider world prompted an attempt to retreat, but world events did not allow her to do so. Her activism on Jersey was born not only of necessity but also of her innate passion for justice and equality: the philosophies of Nazism were anathema to everything

Cahun believed in, and her actions demonstrate that she felt no other option was open to her other than to actively resist.

First through their notes and then through their own inscrutability and humour

Cahun and Moore embarked on a campaign that caused untold damage to the morale of the German troops stationed on Jersey until 1944. Cahun became at last the embodiment of the dissolution of subject into object, as her poetic objects espousing revolution combined with her performance of variations on the self, until all that was left available to her as an object of resistance was her own body.

Although the success of their campaign could be counted as Cahun (and Moore’s) greatest triumph, the experience appears to have left Cahun a shadow of her former self.

Her creative output from after the war that is still extant is quotidian and shows little trace of the remarkable woman from before the war. Cahun began her own self-effacement through a slow withdrawal from former concerns. It was not long after her death before

225

the knowledge of Cahun’s work, and her pivotal role in surrealist politics and art theory during her short association with group, passed out of memory.

THE OBJECT TO BE DESTROYED

The effacement of Cahun continued into modern interpretations of surrealism. She is not mentioned in the seminal compendiums on the history of surrealism by Maurice

Nadeau or Gérard Durozoi. The few earlier scholars to mention her by name all invariably assumed she was a man. Gavin Bower has proffered the idea that her gender may be partly to blame, and indeed this could be seen as a valid contention, given that other women surrealists including Meret Oppenheim and Lee Miller received scant attention in earlier anthologies. With regards to Cahun’s omission, Bower states:

It’s nevertheless quite reasonable to wonder how Cahun could be both unidentified and missing for so long from the history of the movement. She is absent from Maurice Nadeau’s the History of Surrealism – first published in 1944, and in English in 1965 – as well as Rene Passeron’s Encyclopedie du surrealisme (1975) and Edouard Jaguer’s Dictionnaire général du surréalisme et ses environs (1982). Leperlier suggests that Cahun’s ‘profoundly introverted attitude’ explains, in part, her historical occlusion. Indeed, her sexuality wasn’t enough to make her an outsider – but what of her gender?”15

Leperlier’s contention that her private nature, combined with the destruction of her work during the war, may go some way to explaining her absence from the histories prior to the rediscovery of her work. However, even contemporary surveys of surrealism such as the Surrealism and the object exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2013-14 failed

15 Bower, G. J. (2013). 25. NB: The Dictionnaire général du surréalisme et ses environs (1982) was edited by Biro and Passeron, not Jaguer. 226

to mention Cahun at all, let alone include examples of her work. This thesis demonstrates a need for the reconsideration of Cahun’s importance with regards to surrealist object manufacture.

Marcel Moore chose a biblical quote for Cahun’s grave, which may seem like an unusual choice for someone like Cahun, nevertheless its sentiment in the context of her life is extremely apt: “I saw new heavens, and a new earth.” Cahun re-imagined the objects around her, saw the objects we are all surrounded by in a different light, and sought to re-evaluate, renegotiate and redescribe the relationships between all matter. In her last years, Cahun chose fragmentation over resistance: she wrote of “pulling her[self] apart” with Moore to her friend Henri Michaux, in reference to their work on her autobiography – reconstructing an image of herself from the fragments she and Moore created together by destroying her previous selves. For Cahun, this final fragmentation works as a form of camouflage, a final defiance of categorisation. Her deconstruction functions as a refusal of objectification on any terms other than her own. The scratching and burning away of her own photograph as obliteration of her own image in this context speaks volumes. Cahun became, in her final years, a culmination of all her previous work: the ultimate object of resistance. In Cahun’s own words, “In the end, we are forced to rely on the unknown, with a great algebraic χ.”16

16 Cahun, C., et al. (2007). 102. 227

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