Claude Cahun was a Surrealist artist who, together with her half-sister and life partner Marcel Moore, anticipated discussions on topics of extreme relevance in contemporary society, such as gender and identity. In her practice she used a variety of media: photography, writing, collage, sculpture, disguise, transformation, performance and theatre.
The majority of her works are part of the collections of the Musée d'arts de Nantes (France) and of the Jersey Heritage (UK).
Her work has been exhibited in galleries, museums, fairs, and biennials worldwide, including: Art Basel Miami (Miami, FL, USA); MoMA (New York City, NY, USA); La Biennale di Venezia (Venice, Italy); Centre Pompidou (Paris, France); Jeu de Paume (Paris, France); White Cube (London, UK); National Portrait Gallery (London, UK); The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL, USA); Punta della Dogana - Pinault Collection (Venice, Italy); Tate Liverpool (Liverpool, UK); Arken Museum of Modern Art (Ishøj, Denmark); Kunsthal (Rotterdam, The Netherlands); Cobra Museum (Amsterdam, The Netherlands); Voor Moderne Kunst (Amsterdam, The Netherlands); Giacometti Institute (Paris, France); Whitechapel Art Gallery (London, UK); Ottawa Art Gallery (Ottawa, Canada); Contemporary Jewish Museum (San Francisco, CA, USA); Monnaie de Paris (Paris, France); Museo Picasso (Malaga, Spain).
"Claude Cahun, as a forerunner in rejecting a determined and stable sexuality, may be considered 'queer' avant la lettre. She had a politically and culturally destabilizing body, consciously removed from the function of reproduction and from the realm of economics. Consistently, she turned towards the sterile myth of the androgynous, the image of the fullness of being, the simultaneous presence of the opposing male and female elements.
'Neuter is the only gender that always suits me', wrote Cahun, removing herself from the natural imperfection of a generated body, inclining towards the artistic ambition for the perfection of an ideal body. I am in training, don’t kiss me, we read on Claude’s chest in a self-portrait in which she is dressed as a clown. It is her programmatic manifesto: not identifying with anyone, being in progress and in fieri.
Claude Cahun, named Lucy Renée Mathilde Schwob when born in Nantes on 25 October 1894, was the rebellious daughter of Maurice Schwob, owner and editor of the newspaper Le Phare de la Loire. Suzanne Alberte Eugénie Malherbe, daughter of Albert Hyppolite, was born on 19 July 1892. Like Claude, she too was an artist, adopting the pseudonym Marcel Moore. In 1917, Claude’s father married Suzanne’s mother who had been widowed in 1915 – a strange coincidence that made them sisters as well as lovers. Claude would take literature and philosophy courses at the Sorbonne, while Suzanne would study painting and drawing at the Fine Arts Academy in Nantes until 1920, when they settled in Paris and became inseparable. Lucy Schwob took on a new name, Claude Cahun. In French, Claude is a name suspended between the masculine and feminine genders, while the choice of renaming herself Cahun, as Marcel Duchamp did with Rrose Sélavy, paradoxically reinforced her Jewish origins.
Claude Cahun / Marcel Moore, then, was an all-round artist, who used a blend of stylistic approaches and cannot be circumscribed to photography alone: there are no landscapes, structures, or portraits plain and simple, but a universe populated with symbols. Claude Cahun’s identity is uncertain and inexpressible until it encounters and is welded to that of Marcel Moore, the missing piece needed to complete it. Her writing, photography, and dressing up, nourished by her collaboration with her partner, are the antidote to solitude and madness."
Extract from a text by researcher and curator Silvia Mazzucchelli
