Mary-Antoinette Courbebaise is the mother of a 20th-century artist who went by the name Claude Cahun. Claude Cahun was born Lucy Schwob but changed her name at 18. She chose Claude to protest gender and sexual norms, where society generally considered men to be men and women to be women. The result of her lifelong exploration of gender and sexual identity as a photographer and writer is a massive following decades after her death.
So, why do art historians, feminists, and people in the LGBTQ community refer to and praise Claude Cahun’s work? Read on to discover more about the daughter of Mary-Antoinette Courbebaisse and her journey of self-expression.
Claude Cahun Early Life
Claude Cahun was born Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob on 25 October 1894 in Nantes. Her family was provincial but prominent intellectual Jewish. Her father, Maurice Schwob, was the owner and publisher of Le Phare de la Loire, a regional newspaper. Her mother was Victorine Mary-Antoinette Courbebaisse. When she was four, her mother started suffering from mental illness and was later permanently moved to a psychiatric facility. Cahun’s grandmother, Mathilde, brought her up in her mother’s absence.
Lucy attended a boarding school in England at 12 after French classmates began harassing her. She met Suzanne Malherbe when she was about 15, who would become her life-long partner. Suzanne changed her name to Marcel Moore.
Cahun’s father remarried a new wife, Marie Eugenie Malherbe, the mother of Suzanne Malherbe. Cahun and Moore became stepsisters, but it didn’t compromise their seemingly conventional relationship.
Claude Cahun career
Cahun worked as a writer for literary magazines for journals while still studying at the Sorbonne. She published two books and performed in experimental theater. On the other hand, Moore worked as an illustrator and theatrical designer.
Cahun is recognized for creating stark, playful, but deliberately equivocal photos of herself in the racy 1920s Paris. Her work surfaced before the emergence of gender-neutral “they” and terms like queer and transgender.
Her photographs depict herself as a man, a woman, or sometimes a little bit of both. In one of her portraits, she brings together two silhouette portraits of herself, bald and sizing up each other, captioned, “What do you want from me?” In her book published in English as “Disavowals,” she wrote, “Feminine? Masculine? It depends on the situation.” she went on to write, “Neuter is the only gender that always suits me.”
According to scholars, Cahun’s writing is complex and challenging to comprehend, but it gives an insight into the photographs and the weave of her life.
Cahun’s photographs are her most compelling work which received massive recognition in the 1990s as gender issues began raising eyebrows across the globe. She often collaborated with her partner, Marcel Moore.
Cahun’s photography got its first exhibition in a museum in Paris thanks to a French writer named Francois Leperlier. Professors and art students also began writing about her, and art museums wanted her work. Cahun’s photographs have been displayed in a dozen museums in Paris, Washington, London, Warsaw, Melbourne, and elsewhere.
Wrapping Up
Cahun and Moore’s story lives on due to the many channels people use to support self-awareness. The duo symbolizes how people can break free of societal preconceptions and live a life of discovery.