Marie Laurencin: Sapphic Paris

This catalogue accompanies an exhibition at Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation about 20th-century French artist Marie Laurencin (1883–1956), the first U.S. exhibition in decades that has been dedicated to her. Laurencin was a member of the cubist avant-garde in Paris; however, her paintings, while adopting some elements of this style, never could be fully classified as cubist. Instead, it falls into an alternative version of modernism, this exhibition argues, with an aesthetic that reflected the “Sapphic modernity” of the Parisian circle of lesbian artists and writers who congregated around the poet Natalie Clifford Barney. The catalogue’s contributors suggest that Laurencin’s art was coded in a lesbian language, in the formal use of pastel pink and blue colors, gauzy brushstrokes, and ethereal forms, as well as in her subject matter of women and their implied intimate relationships with one another. Through the strategic coding and veiling of queer femininity in her paintings, Laurencin was able to achieve success in the male-dominated art world, the exhibition demonstrates. She also designed for the ballet and illustrated books, bringing her aesthetic vision to other mediums. An appendix in the catalogue has biographies of the women in Laurencin’s network and a chronology of her life and work.