Monthly Archives: February 2012

Although she’s away at a conference this week, Heather wanted to share her own art-historical crush — a quick Valentine tribute to the master draftsman with the rock-star locks, Albrecht Dürer.

Who could resist that hair? (Or his hare, for that matter?)

And if you missed them the first time around, be sure to check out our three earlier Valentine’s Day posts about the artists we adore from afar:

Valentine #1 — for Tamara de Lempicka, from Eva
Valentine #2 — for Claude Cahun, from Madeline
Valentine #3 — for Sophie Calle, from Josh

And finally, here’s the third of three Valentine’s Day posts celebrating some of the artists who make us weak in the knees.

Valentine #1 — for Tamara de Lempicka, from Eva
Valentine #2 — for Claude Cahun, from Madeline
Valentine #3 — for Sophie Calle, from Josh
Bonus Valentine! — for Albrecht Dürer, from Heather

 

Oh Sophie – I’ve Calle-d and called but you never answer…

You encounter so many inspiring artists here in the Art Library that you can never have a crush on just one. In the way of crushes, the flame will burn bright for one artist for a couple of days only to shift to another when the next sexy new book comes along.

My choice for Valentine’s Day came down to two artists: Sophie Calle and Marcel Duchamp – or more accurately his female alter ego, Rrose Selavy. Ever the painful punster, Duchamp’s cross-dressing name is pronounced “Eros, c’est la vie…”

Yes, love is life, and since we’ve already featured another gender-bending representative in Claude Cahun, I’ll gush about Sophie Calle this time.

What can I say, I love the literary types. Her biography in Oxford Art Online describes her as a French photographer, but photography is such a small part of her work. Her photographs aren’t objects for aesthetic appreciation – they’re not “retinal art,” as Duchamp would call it. Instead, they are documentary, telling the elaborate, intimate, obsessive stories which are her true works of art.

In one project that eventually becomes the artist’s book Suite Venitienne, she meets a man at an exhibition opening in Paris and learns that he is soon taking a trip to Venice. She decides to follow him and photograph him there, completely unknown to him.

She bases another book project (Take care of yourself) on an email she receives from a lover breaking up with her. She shares the email with 107 colleagues in different professions – actresses and opera singers, professional archers and chess players – and asks them all to interpret it. Their responses are gathered together into an exhibition and a book that is by turns heartbreaking and hilarious.

Sophie’s work is the logical result of Duchamp’s desire to replace “retinal” art that’s appealing to the eye with an art of ideas and concepts. She has turned herself into a readymade. Just as Duchamp made a simple snow shovel into a work of art by calling it one, she has made portions of her life into a work of art by declaring them so. So maybe I’m not choosing between Marcel Duchamp and Rrose Selavy and Sophie Calle at all – one is the other is the other.

When asked what he did after he gave up making works of art, Duchamp called himself “un respirateur” — a ‘breather.’ I would call Sophie Calle “une obsessioniste.” And what better obsession is there than a good crush?

– Josh

[With apologies to my wife, Margarite, the greatest possible artist-crush. Happy Valentine's Day!]

In celebration of Valentine’s Day, here’s the second of three posts celebrating some of the artists who make us weak in the knees.

Valentine #1 — for Tamara de Lempicka, from Eva
Valentine #2 — for Claude Cahun, from Madeline
Valentine #3 — for Sophie Calle, from Josh
Bonus Valentine! — for Albrecht Dürer, from Heather

 

“Don’t kiss me, I’m in training”

Gender benders make me swoon – from Judith Butler to Lady Gaga, I just can’t help myself. Most alluring of all are the visual artists whose works are characterized by slippages, sauciness, and shifting identities – the masculine, the feminine, and beyond. Claude Cahun, who began making photographs over 90 years ago, created images of unimaginable complexity.

Portraying a multitude of personas, her photographs pre-figure Cindy Sherman‘s work but with a surreal twist. She often stares into the camera with a fierce gaze – in braids and theater makeup, or a saucy driving jacket. In one carefully composed image, her perfectly round bald head sprouts twice from the same neck – two Claudes in one. Constantly shifting ground, her photographs and writings de-center gender in ways both playful and extremely serious, and deal with sexuality in a manner that defies labels.

Her biography is a remarkable one. In the 1920s she began living with her stepsister, who went by the name Marcel Moore. Lovers and collaborators for life, they moved to the Island of Jersey in 1937. During the war, they created a secret counter-propaganda office to produce literature in opposition to the Nazi occupation. Imprisoned and barely spared execution, they made it out of the war alive, although Cahun passed away soon after, in 1954.

In Disavowals – or Cancelled Confessions, a recent English translation of a series of “poem-essays” originally published in 1930, Cahun’s narrative voice shape-shifts over the course of nine sections, many of which are equally literary and lusty. Seriously, you might find yourself blushing… Of art she writes:

“art is the very great morose delight,
A sad and tender attempt to immortalize our
    pleasures,
To remember passing love.”

 

– Madeline

Information and images from: Don’t Kiss Me: The Art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore

So, you’ve long wondered what nerdy passions lurk beneath the surface of your friendly art library staff. Well, today’s your lucky day. In the following series of posts you’ll find accounts of the art historical crushes that we carry in our hearts as we stamp your checkouts or tidy up the stacks. They cause us to pause by a familiar monograph, to take it down from the shelf as our hearts skip a beat. Today we share these three posts, which serve as our collective valentine to some of the artists we so adore.

Valentine #1 — for Tamara de Lempicka, from Eva
Valentine #2 — for Claude Cahun, from Madeline
Valentine #3 — for Sophie Calle, from Josh
Bonus Valentine! — for Albrecht Dürer, from Heather

 

Look out – dandy coming through

Tamara de Lempicka: The queen of modern.

Tamara de Lempicka: Goddess of the automobile age.

And my particular favorite, from a blurb for the latter book:

Tamara de Lempicka: “…a female dandy brimming with cool elegance”

Tamara de Lempicka could not even begin her artistic career in a boring way. Debuting in Paris in the Salon d’Automne in 1922, Tamara was widely admired as Monsieur Lempitzky, her male Russian alter ego.

Images and egos, alter or not, were a big part of Tamara’s life. She cultivated her image as a glamorous, fast-moving, aristocratic artist/starlet (an artlet?), and she seems to have been more than happy living the life. Tamara had a reputation even at the time for her love of elegant automobiles, the modern metropolis, and beautiful women.

Her art bears this reputation out. In her most famous self-portrait, she depicts herself with flowing scarf and immaculate gloves, slouching languorously behind the wheel of a convertible, an untouchable poise in her eyes.

She also produced myriad images of those aforementioned beautiful women, including a particularly sensual series featuring one model, Rafaela. The unabashedly gorgeous lines and shapes in her paintings just lure me in further, as does Tamara’s clearly evident appreciation of them. The recent publication of a novel exploring her relationship with Rafaela, The Last Nude, doesn’t hurt my interest, either. (We don’t have a copy at Sloane yet, although there is one at Davis Library. Did I mention that my birthday is coming up?)

Of course, this high-flying lifestyle probably wouldn’t make her the best choice for a life partner — but aren’t crushes supposed to be a little unreasonable?

– Eva

Information and images from: Tamara de Lempicka: The Queen of Modern