Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob (October 25, 1894–December 8, 1954), better known as Claude Cahun, was a French surrealist photographer, sculptor, and writer.
Cahun was the alias Schwob adopted in 1914.
Author and self-portraitist Cahun is most recognized for his many performative personae.
It is both political and personal in Cahun’s writings. As she explains in her book Disavowals, ” “Is this sexy? Feminine? Situational factors play a role. In my opinion, neutrality is the only gender that is always appropriate for me.”
During World War II, Cahun served as a saboteur and a publicist for the resistance movement.
Early Life And Career:
Born in Nantes in 1894, Cahun was a member of a well-known intellectual Jewish family from a small town. Marcel Schwob, an avant-garde writer, was her uncle, and David Léon Cahun, an Orientalist, was her great-uncle. Her mother, Mary-Antoinette Courbebaisse, began to suffer from mental illness when Cahun was just four years old, which eventually led to her mother’s long-term psychiatric confinement. Cahun was raised by her grandmother, Mathilde, after her mother could not be found.
Before moving to Surrey, Cahun attended a private school in Nantes where he was subjected to antisemitism.
She studied at the Sorbonne University in Paris. [8][9] She began taking photographs of herself in 1912, when she was 18 years old, and continued doing so well into the 1930s.
Claude Cahun was born Claude Courlis (after the curlew) in 1914, after previously using the names Daniel Douglas and Claude Courlis (after the curlew) (after Lord Alfred Douglas). Suzanne Malherbe chose the pseudonym Marcel Moore when she moved to Paris in the early 1920s. When Moore’s mother married Cahun’s father in 1917, the two became step-siblings, eight years after Cahun and Moore began their artistic association. When Cahun and Moore first met, they began working together on a variety of different artistic endeavors. These included written works, photomontages, and collages. Aside from Mercure de France, they authored essays and novels and were friends with Henri Michaux, Pierre Morhange and Robert Desnos.
Cahun and Moore began hosting artists’ salons at their house in 1922. Attendees included painters Henri Michaux, André Breton, and literary entrepreneurs Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier, among others.
What was Claude Cahun known for?
It wasn’t until the late 1980s that her images were included in an exhibition of Surrealist photography that she was recognized as an artist. As a result, they are noted for their confusing self-portraits. Additionally, they are also a novelist.
Was Claude Cahun a nonbinary?
Claude was, in fact, a nonbinary person, notwithstanding his long-term lesbian relationship with Marcel Moore. It was nearly impossible to identify the gender they felt most comfortable with. Those who were transgender, butch lesbians, and genderqueer had a strong affinity for them.
What did Cahun identify as?
Claude believed that one’s identity might change or be unstable. Self-portraits depicted them as either male or female, androgynous or so heavily made up and costumed that it was impossible to tell the difference between the two.
What pronouns did Claude Cahun use?
In their autobiography, Disavowels, Cahun noted, “It depended on the situation.” They went on to say, “Neuter is the only gender that always suits me.”. Cahun prefers to use “they” pronouns and fluctuates between “she” and “he” when describing a person.
World War II activism
Cahun and Moore arrived in Jersey in 1937 and made it their home. Resistance workers and propagandists began active after France’s defeat and the German control of the Channel Islands. The two labored tirelessly to produce anti-German fliers as a protest against war. Poems and strong condemnation of the Nazis were created by combining snatches of BBC translations of English-to-German stories on the Nazi crimes and insolence. The German alias Der Soldat Ohne Namen, or The Soldier Without a Name, was used to trick German soldiers into believing that the occupation troops were conspiring against them. While attending German military engagements in Jersey, the pair dressed up as German soldiers and strategically placed their leaflets in soldiers’ pockets, on their chairs, and in cigarette boxes. Additionally, they flung their flyers into automobiles and windows in a low-key manner.
“Jesus is great, but Hitler is greater—because Jesus died for humanity while people died for Hitler.” hung a banner at a local church on one occasion. Many of Cahun and Moore’s notes in Paris featured the same dark humor that they used in their artwork. Their resistance efforts were not only political but artistic, in which they used their creative talents to manipulate and destroy the power they despise in order to achieve their objectives. Although Cahun’s advocacy put her in danger, she devoted her life to subverting a certain authority. Jeffrey H. Jackson’s Paper Bullets, the classic study on her resistance to the Nazi occupation during World War II, states that for Cahun and Moore, “the German conquest of Jersey was the culmination of lifetime patterns of resistance that had always bore a political edge.” The politics was always extremely personal for them.”
Cahun and Moore were condemned to death in 1944, but the island was liberated from German rule in 1945, therefore the punishment was never carried out.
[18] Although she was imprisoned, Cahun’s health never fully improved, and she passed away in 1954. Marcel Moore and Cahun are buried in St Brelade’s Church. At her trial, Cahun reportedly told the German judge that the Germans would have to shoot her twice because she was both a Resister and a Jew (according to John Nettles’ documentary on the Occupation of the Channel Islands). The court is said to have burst into laughter at this and was one of the reasons the execution was postponed (Martin Sugarman, AJEX Archivist).
The legacy of social criticism
To avoid becoming a celebrity, Cahun worked for herself and did not seek recognition. Cahun’s work was only recognized 40 years after her death. Many aspects of Cahun’s life were distinguished by behaviors that defied the norms of gender, attractiveness, and logic, and her public image has subsequently become a commentary on these concepts.
Photography as a record of reality was meant to be challenged by her art. She also pushed the bounds of gender roles, as well as social and economic boundaries, in her poems.
As a member of the Parisian Surrealist group, Cahun’s contributions added a new dimension of diversity to the group’s work. The majority of Surrealist painters were men, and her principal images of women represented them as isolated symbols of sexuality rather than as the chameleonic, gender nonconforming figure that Cahun presented.. Cahun’s images, essays, and general existence as an artist and political activist continue to inspire artists today..
Claude Cahun – Écrits (ISBN 2-85893-616-1), edited by François Leperlier, was published in 2002.
For the first time, in 2018, a street in Paris was named after Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, who resided in the same region of Saint-Germain-des-Prés – Montparnasse as Claude and Suzanne.
On the real-life experiences of Cahun and Moore, Rupert Thomson built his 2018 novel, Never Anyone But You. The London Review of Books’ Adam Mars-Jones gave it a positive review.
Paper Bullets: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis, by Jeffrey H. Jackson, will be published in 2020.
On the anniversary of Claude Cahun’s 127th birthday, October 25, 2021, Google will display an animated Doodle on its homepage in various countries.