If you’ve heard of Marie Laurencin (1883–1956), it’s probably as that lone female artist in Picasso’s early circle who painted women in pastel blue and pink. What’s less known, though, is that Laurencin was subtly subversive as Cubism reigned supreme. “Why should I paint dead fish, onions, and beer glasses?” Laurencin said of her subject matter of choice. “Girls are so much prettier.”
Her reasons for painting women differed from those of her male peers, though. One could easily look at her canvases and see a saccharine world of woodland fairies wearing chiffon. Look closer, though, and you’ll find a female-dominated realm where men neither belong nor are welcome, the kind of realm preferred in the lesbian circles of 1920s Paris. “There is a darkness and a mystery and a surrealist aspect to her work that is not just candylike,” says Cindy Kang, curator at Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation and co-curator of the Laurencin solo exhibition there running through January 21, titled Marie Laurencin: Sapphic Paris. “Yes, it’s pink and blue and has flowy fabrics and all that,” Kang adds, “but there is a darkness there that is really speaking to these different worlds that she existed in.”
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Part of Laurencin’s genius lay in painting works that appealed to her own lesbian community and to independent women like Gertrude Stein, Coco Chanel, and Helena Rubinstein, yet were coded enough to engage male collectors such as John Quinn (who acquired seven of her paintings) and Dr. Albert Barnes (who had at least four Laurencins).
A multimedia artist, Laurencin created paintings and prints, illustrated books, designed costumes and sets for ballet, and did collaborative decorative projects during her five-decade career. And it all began for her, the story goes, with a teacup.
Source: artnews.com