Gender Performance in Portrait Photography: Unmasking Claude Cahun
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Gender Performance in Portrait Photography: Unmasking Claude Cahun Shannon Moriarty Moriarty 2 Abstract This thesis examines the French artist Claude Cahun. During the early twentieth century, Cahun, working in collaboration with their partner, Marcel Moore, used photography to capture exaggerated gender performances. By visually analyzing the couple’s photographs and comparing such work to images of normative gender in interwar Paris, such as la femme moderne and the Surrealist muse, I analyze how Cahun launched a multi-layered attack against the role of the traditional “feminine” subject. Considering the feminist frameworks that were previously used to research Cahun’s photographs, this thesis pivots from such discussions to argue that Cahun’s and Moore’s gender is better understood as “neuter” and therefore expressing a gaze that is inherently queer. Through these dramatic subversions, Cahun and Moore’s work remains vitally relevant to contemporary feminist and queer theory and the critique of normative gender. Moriarty 3 Introduction Sitting in a chair is a person with close-cropped hair and a split fringe with feminine inward curls. They are adorned with painted hearts on their cheeks, eye shadow decorating each eyelid to the brow, and dark rouge-tinted lips that pucker coyly towards the viewer. Their tilted gaze is direct, demanding attention. The person wears the theatrical attire of a strongman at a circus performance, the accompanying dumbbell rests securely on their lap. The weights are highly phallic, a masculine symbol of strength. This hypermasculine performance of a strongman is distorted by the added elements of femininity, such as the exaggerated makeup, the ornamental comic characters Totor and Popol painted on the dumbbell, and the recurring symbols of hearts and lips. The costume worn by the individual is a tight, flesh colored bodysuit that is embellished with two false nipples, framing the phrase “I AM IN TRAINING DON’T KISS ME,” which is punctuated by an illustrated outline of lips. Despite the feminine features added to the costume, the individual’s chest is de-emphasized, appearing more masculine through its flatness. By displaying the seductiveness of a coy woman and the power of a strongman, the artist of I am in training, don’t kiss me, 1927 (figure 1), Claude Cahun, subverts the conventional gender role of a masculine figure. This image and other photographs by Cahun continue to challenge contemporary ideas about gender when viewed by today’s audiences. The use of theatrical costumes, props, gesture, and bodily posing exaggerate the role of performativity in expressing gender. Cahun often worked in collaboration with their1 partner, Marcel Moore, to capture images including archetypal representations of gender, such as a dandy, a sailor, and 1 Throughout this essay, the singular they/them/theirs pronouns will be used instead of she/her/hers when referring to both Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. It is not the place of the historian to label these artists with gender identities based on contemporary understanding of gender. Based on my research, using the pronouns she/her/hers for these artists does not feel appropriate due to the many ways in which they subvert gender. Moriarty 4 even a hyperfeminine damsel. By exaggerating poses and costuming, Cahun acts in transgression against normative gender roles while creating these performances. Cahun challenges the idea that gender is static through creating images that depict dynamic gender performances, expressing their own dynamic gender identity. Claude Cahun’s work also challenges the prevalent image of women as Surrealist muse, a role reinforced by André Breton, as well as complicates the capitalist image of la femme moderne—an image of free womanhood perpetuated by 1920s Parisian advertisements—through their de-gendered portraiture. Who was Claude Cahun? Claude Cahun was born in 1894 as Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob to a prominent Jewish family in Nantes, France. In 1917 they adopted the French name “Claude,” which could be recognized as masculine or feminine, adding to Cahun’s de-gendered, neutral expression of themself. Cahun met their partner and lifelong artistic collaborator, Suzanne Alberte Malherbe, as a teenager, and the two became stepsisters after Cahun’s divorced father married Malherbe’s widowed mother.2 Around the same time of Cahun adopted their final pseudonym, Malherbe followed suit and adopted a masculine name: Marcel Moore. The two lived in Paris during the 1920’s, producing photographs and photomontages and authoring publications of poetry and illustrations. During this time, Cahun was affiliated with the Surrealist movement; they exhibited their work in Surrealist exhibitions, and their publications were read in Surrealist circles. In 1937, Cahun and Moore moved to their permanent residence in Jersey, where they would be held captive during World War II. During their time in Jersey, both artists would resist Nazi soldiers and circulate anti-Nazi propaganda by placing flyers directly into the pockets of soldiers. Both 2 Louise Downie, "Sans Nom: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore," (Heritage Magazine, 2005.), 8-10. Moriarty 5 were imprisoned by the Gestapo and Cahun’s health was greatly weakened during their imprisonment. After the partners were liberated, their art focused thematically on death until Cahun succumbed to weakened health and died in 1954.3 Cahun and Moore’s relationship is central to their photography. The two created images for their joint viewership, adopting codes of homophilia in early works such as the mythological figure Narcissus and mirrored images in their joint works: Untitled (author portrait) and Untitled (Moore with mirror image) (figures 2 and 3, respectively). The use of the same space emphasizes the duo’s joint authorship of these images, which foregrounds the intimate role of the subject as the object of the photographer’s desire. The image of Cahun is analyzed later in this essay to highlight its role in gender performativity; but, as a pair, these images provide a clearer understanding of the co-authorship of many of the artists’ photographs. In her book, Women Together/Women Apart: Portraits of Lesbian Paris, Tirza True Latimer defined Cahun and Moore as lesbians4 and used that definition to analyze the role of their intimate partnership in the duo’s work. Latimer’s writing is valuable in understanding the role of the general queer gaze in the duo’s work in addition to the production of their photographs, which are typically of Cahun and taken by Moore. As an artist working in tandem with their partner, their joint creative visions are actualized in their collection of photographs, which includes numerous intimate images seemingly for private viewership. In addition to these photographs, their writings and photomontages were published in Disavowels, a book published in 1930 in an edition of five hundred copies.5 3 Ibid., 16. 4 I am hesitant to define Cahun and Moore’s relationship as a lesbian one due to their non-normative gender expression, but the reading of their relationship as a lesbian one is helpful in understanding the context of their artistic creation. 5 Jennifer Mundy, “Introduction” in Claude Cahun’s Disavowels (Cancelled Confessions), 7. Moriarty 6 Explorations of Gender Gender is a socio-cultural construct based on the cisgender, heteronormative impulse to confine gender identity into a binary: masculine or feminine. The use of the terms “masculine” and “feminine,” instead of “male” and “female” or “men” and “women,” is intentional throughout this essay. This distinction separates a discussion of gender from terminology that typically refers to biological sex, focusing on the way that gender performance is dictated by socio-cultural norms. In her book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Gender Identity, Judith Butler argues that “gender is culturally constructed… neither the causal result of sex nor as seemingly fixed as sex,” asserting “there is no reason to assume that genders ought to also remain as two,” and, further, that “gender ought not to be conceived merely as the cultural inscription of meaning on a pregiven sex… gender must also designate the very apparatus of production whereby the sexes themselves are established.”6 The very categories of biological sex (“male” and “female”) thus operate in conjunction with the cultural production of gender.7 One’s expression of gender identity is a performance. According to Butler, it is the repetition of acts with socially established meanings that legitimizes their significance as “inherent,” “truthful,” or “natural,”8 reminding one that gender roles are reinforced when they are not questioned. By simply following the expectations of one’s assigned gender or the many actions that combine to establish a gender role in society, one is reinforcing societal expectations of gender roles. 6 Ibid., 9-11. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid., 178. Moriarty 7 Normative gender performance maintains and naturalizes gender within a binary frame of masculine and feminine. Gender performance is individual, but operates more broadly within each performer’s culture and may be externally labeled due to the repetition of acts necessary to maintain an expressed gender; essentially, “gender reality is created through sustained social performances.”9 Gender performance can be normative, aligning with the binary gender system of cisgender heteronormative society. Subversive gender performance, or queerly performed gender, is negatively viewed by normative society because it is a transgression, an action that is against or challenges the socio-culturally established binary gender system. Cahun’s performances rely on blending masculine costuming and feminine forms, expressing non-normative gender identities outside the binary. Cahun’s choice to creatively combine elements from normative gender roles allows for their establishment of a gender that openly rejects those that are already well-established through the binary. Cahun described themself as “neuter,”10 in a passage they wrote in Disavowels: Shuffle the cards. Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter in the only gender that always suits me.