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This Hayward Touring exhibition is in collaboration with Jersey Heritage and was first presented at the Women of the World Festival 2015, Southbank Centre.
She is outrageous. She is a woman. She is a man. She is neutral. She is an artist. She is Louise Schwob aka Claude Cahun. She is a rebel artist. In these 42 photographs, most of her subjects are herself. She is model. She is actor. She is masked. She is bare faced. She is bare-backed. She is shaved head. She is full hair floating out on the pillow. She is Jew. She is Aryan. She is always performer and artists. Subject and object.
Yet Cahun’s art is not for its own sake. She is a political subversive. She uses her art to fight fascism. On Nazi-occupied Jersey, she is sentenced to death by a German firing squad on Jersey during the Channel Islands’ Occupation. She is a radical and she proclaims her Jewish identity. She is to die. She lives.
Claude Cahun, Self Portrait, 1928 Courtesy and copyright Jersey Heritage.
Is that a swastika in her mouth?
Cahun was a French Jew who came to Jersey in 1937 when it was a mini-Paradise. She remained there throughout the Nazi-Occupation. For four years she subverted the regime by leaving messages in the coat pockets of soldiers encouraging them to desert. The texts were in German so that the Wehrmacht were deceived into thinking that a fellow- soldier had written them and that defeat was imminent.
The masking she used self-consciously in the 1920s and 1930s photography, morphs into another kind of =concealment in the 1940s. She made herself invisible as she; together with her half-sister and lover Marcel Moore; posted anti-Nazi propaganda. They dressed as middle aged women in loose coats and headscarves to make themselves ‘invisible’. Cahun was caught in 1944 and spent time in solitary confinement in a German jail. After the war she remained on Jersey until her death in 1954. She and Moore are buried there.
Although much of her art works were lost at her arrest, what remains exposes her truly original mind. Critics view her as a surrealist, as she was friendly with André Breton and his peers, but her work is not so easily categorised. Certainly she reflects elements of French Modernism but her images have a hugely individualistic impulse. Her shots are about Claude Cahun and Lucy Schwob. The male/the female/ the fancy- dress theatricality of playing Elle in the gynocide tale Bluebeard and the brutal anti-Impressionist action of placing her naked body against stone. They are the about profiling the Jewish nose and defying the antisemitic stereotype. They are about perceptions of female beauty and how to smash them.
Who was Lucy Schwob/Claude Cahun? We can’t put her work into a box but we know that she deserves our attention for her chutzpah and for her artistic brilliance. The exhibition gives a microcosm of her vision. It does leave you wanting more.
Claude Cahun – Beneath the Mask
A Hayward Gallery Touring Exhibition
Claude Cahun 1894-1954
Now showing until 31 October 2024
Farleys House and Gallery, Muddles Green
1 February – 2 March 2025
Haverhill Arts Centre
This Hayward Touring exhibition is in collaboration with Jersey Heritage and was first presented at the Women of the World Festival 2015, Southbank Centre.
She is outrageous. She is a woman. She is a man. She is neutral. She is an artist. She is Louise Schwob aka Claude Cahun. She is a rebel artist. In these 42 photographs, most of her subjects are herself. She is model. She is actor. She is masked. She is bare faced. She is bare-backed. She is shaved head. She is full hair floating out on the pillow. She is Jew. She is Aryan. She is always performer and artists. Subject and object.
Yet Cahun’s art is not for its own sake. She is a political subversive. She uses her art to fight fascism. On Nazi-occupied Jersey, she is sentenced to death by a German firing squad on Jersey during the Channel Islands’ Occupation. She is a radical and she proclaims her Jewish identity. She is to die. She lives.
Is that a swastika in her mouth?
Cahun was a French Jew who came to Jersey in 1937 when it was a mini-Paradise. She remained there throughout the Nazi-Occupation. For four years she subverted the regime by leaving messages in the coat pockets of soldiers encouraging them to desert. The texts were in German so that the Wehrmacht were deceived into thinking that a fellow- soldier had written them and that defeat was imminent.
The masking she used self-consciously in the 1920s and 1930s photography, morphs into another kind of =concealment in the 1940s. She made herself invisible as she; together with her half-sister and lover Marcel Moore; posted anti-Nazi propaganda. They dressed as middle aged women in loose coats and headscarves to make themselves ‘invisible’. Cahun was caught in 1944 and spent time in solitary confinement in a German jail. After the war she remained on Jersey until her death in 1954. She and Moore are buried there.
Although much of her art works were lost at her arrest, what remains exposes her truly original mind. Critics view her as a surrealist, as she was friendly with André Breton and his peers, but her work is not so easily categorised. Certainly she reflects elements of French Modernism but her images have a hugely individualistic impulse. Her shots are about Claude Cahun and Lucy Schwob. The male/the female/ the fancy- dress theatricality of playing Elle in the gynocide tale Bluebeard and the brutal anti-Impressionist action of placing her naked body against stone. They are the about profiling the Jewish nose and defying the antisemitic stereotype. They are about perceptions of female beauty and how to smash them.
Who was Lucy Schwob/Claude Cahun? We can’t put her work into a box but we know that she deserves our attention for her chutzpah and for her artistic brilliance. The exhibition gives a microcosm of her vision. It does leave you wanting more.
Julia Pascal © 2024.
By Julia Pascal • exhibitions, photography, year 2024 • Tags: art, Julia Pascal, photography