#Suzanne Malherbe

[makingqueerhistory]

Liberated: The Radical Art and Life of Claude Cahun

Kaz Rowe

At the turn of the 20th century in Nantes, France, Lucy Schwob met Suzanne Malherbe, and lightning struck. The two became partners both artistically and romantically and transformed themselves into the creative personas Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. Together, the couple embarked on a radical journey of Surrealist collaboration that would take them from conservative provincial France to the vibrancy of 1920s Paris to the oppression of Nazi-occupied Jersey during World War II, where they used art to undermine the Nazi regime. Cahun and Moore challenged gender roles and championed freedom at a time when strict societal norms meant that the truth of their relationship had to remain secret. Featuring 10 photographs by Cahun and Moore, this graphic biography by cartoonist Kaz Rowe brings Cahun's inspiring story to life.

(Affiliate link above)

[mote-historie]

Claude Cahun (Lucy Schwob), La vitrine de chaussures (shoe showcase), London, 1936

Claude Cahun (French pronunciation: [klod ka.œ̃], born Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob; 25 October 1894 – 8 December 1954) was a French surrealist. Lucy Schwob was a writer, actress, and outspoken member of the Parisian lesbian community between the two world wars. She and Suzanne Malherbe, her stepsister, became partners in life, love, and art, and took the ambiguously gendered pseudonyms Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore for their collaborative theatrical and photographic works. The images they made mostly depict Cahun, and sometimes Moore, in a variety of masculine, androgynous, and feminine personas set in minimally staged scenes in their home. (x)

Claude Cahun and his companion Suzanne Malherbe accompanied Jacqueline Lamba and André Breton to London during the first international exhibition of surrealism, organized by David Gascoyne, Roland Penrose and ELT Mesens, inaugurated on June 11, 1936.

[Anne Egger, 2023, Atelier André Breton] (x)

[harvardfineartslib]

It’s National Read a Book Day! We have books, of course, but the Fine Arts Library is a home to more than art books. We have photographs, artists’ books, facsimiles, digital content, and expert librarians. Come visit us!

Self-portrait (reading, with "L'Image de la femme" ("The Image of woman") Cahun, Claude, 1894-1954, French [photographer] Malherbe, Suzanne, French illustrator, 1892-1972 [photographer] Black and white photography 110 x 82 mm. Collaboration between Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore (pseudonym for Suzanne Malherbe.) French 1915 Repository: Jersey Heritage Collections, Saint Hélier, Jersey island, Jersey HOLLIS number: 8001614130

This image is part of FAL’s Digital Images and Slides Collection (DISC), a collection of images digitized from secondary sources for use in teaching and learning. FAL does not own the original artworks represented in this collection, but you can find more information at HOLLIS Images.

[transbookoftheday]

Liberated: The Radical Art and Life of Claude Cahun by Kaz Rowe

Illustrator Kaz Rowe’s graphic biography Liberated: The Radical Art and Life of Claude Cahun, reveals how the creative and courageous Surrealist artist championed freedom at every turn, from rejecting gender norms and finding queer love to risking death to sabotage the Nazis.

At the turn of the 20th century in Nantes, France, Lucy Schwob met Suzanne Malherbe, and lightning struck. The two became partners both artistically and romantically and transformed themselves into the creative personas Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. Together, the couple embarked on a radical journey of Surrealist collaboration that would take them from conservative provincial France to the vibrancy of 1920s Paris to the oppression of Nazi-occupied Jersey during World War II, where they used art to undermine the Nazi regime.

Cahun and Moore challenged gender roles and championed freedom at a time when strict societal norms meant that the truth of their relationship had to remain secret. Featuring 10 photographs by Cahun and Moore, this graphic biography by cartoonist Kaz Rowe brings Cahun’s inspiring story to life.

[artdecoandmodernist]

Claude Cahun (Lucy Schwob), La vitrine de chaussures, London, 1936.

Claude Cahun (French pronunciation: [klod ka.œ̃], born Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob; 25 October 1894 – 8 December 1954) was a French surrealist. Lucy Schwob was a writer, actress, and outspoken member of the Parisian lesbian community between the two world wars. She and Suzanne Malherbe, her stepsister, became partners in life, love, and art, and took the ambiguously gendered pseudonyms Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore for their collaborative theatrical and photographic works. The images they made mostly depict Cahun, and sometimes Moore, in a variety of masculine, androgynous, and feminine personas set in minimally staged scenes in their home. (x)

Claude Cahun and his companion Suzanne Malherbe accompanied Jacqueline Lamba and André Breton to London during the first international exhibition of surrealism, organized by David Gascoyne, Roland Penrose and ELT Mesens, inaugurated on June 11, 1936.

[Anne Egger, 2023, Atelier André Breton] (x)

[idontwannabeyourmama]

I Extend My Arms by Claude Cahun (1931)

"When 15-year-old Lucy Schwob first met 17-year-old Suzanne Malherbe in Nantes in 1909, it was, said Schwob, a ‘thunderbolt encounter’. The pair’s artistic collaboration, later carried out under the gender-neutral pseudonyms Claude Cahun (Schwob) and Marcel Moore (Malherbe), would endure for more than 40 years. In fact, eight years after that first encounter, Malherbe’s widowed mother married Schwob’s divorced father, and the lovers also became step-sisters.

After 17 years in Paris, where they mixed in Surrealist circles, Cahun and Moore moved to the small island of Jersey, which would become the only part of Britain to be occupied by German forces during the Second World War. While both women produced poetry, Moore also worked as an illustrator, and collaborated with Cahun on her pioneering photographic self-portraits.

Both women were sentenced to death in 1944 for disseminating demoralising propaganda among German troops. The liberation of the island by Allied forces saved them, but Cahun’s health suffered during her imprisonment, and she died in 1954. Much of her art had been destroyed by the Germans. Moore committed suicide in 1972, and was buried in the same grave as her partner."

[a2lezread]

Nov/Dec Lezread: Mimosa and Paper Bullets

Date: December 10, 4-5:30pm, via Zoom

Official Post here: https://fb.me/e/1tcNPjqRt

Because of the holidays it's difficult for us to have regularly scheduled meetings in November and December. We do, however, have a specially scheduled meeting on December 10th to discuss the novel Paper Bullets by Jeffrey H. Jackson, and the graphic novel Mimosa by Archie Bongiovanni. Scroll down for details on each book.

I'll post the zoom information in the private facebook group. If you do not use facebook, you can also message or email me (kerene.moore@gmail.com).

=== Book Descriptions: Paper Bullets, by Jeffrey H. Jackson

Paper Bullets is the first book to tell the history of an audacious anti-Nazi campaign undertaken by an unlikely pair: two French women, Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe, who drew on their skills as Parisian avant-garde artists to write and distribute “paper bullets”—wicked insults against Hitler, calls to rebel, and subversive fictional dialogues designed to demoralize Nazi troops occupying their adopted home on the British Channel Island of Jersey. Devising their own PSYOPS campaign, they slipped their notes into soldier’s pockets or tucked them inside newsstand magazines.

Hunted by the secret field police, Lucy and Suzanne were finally betrayed in 1944, when the Germans imprisoned them, and tried them in a court martial, sentencing them to death for their actions. Ultimately they survived, but even in jail, they continued to fight the Nazis by reaching out to other prisoners and spreading a message of hope.

Better remembered today by their artist names, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, the couple’s actions were even more courageous because of who they were: lesbian partners known for cross-dressing and creating the kind of gender-bending work that the Nazis would come to call “degenerate art.” In addition, Lucy was half Jewish, and they had communist affiliations in Paris, where they attended political rallies with Surrealists and socialized with artists like Gertrude Stein.

Paper Bullets is a compelling World War II story that has not been told before, about the galvanizing power of art, and of resistance === Source: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/49150999 ---- ---- Mimosa, by Archie Bongiovanni

Best friends and chosen family Chris, Elise, Jo, and Alex work hard to keep themselves afloat. Their regular brunches hold them together even as the rest of their lives threaten to fall apart. In an effort to avoid being the oldest gays at the party, the crew decides to put on a new queer event called Grind—specifically for homos in their dirty 30s.

Grind is a welcome distraction from their real after a messy divorce, Chris adjusts to being a single parent while struggling to reconnect to their queer community. Elise is caught between feelings for her boss and the career of her dreams. Jo tries to navigate the murky boundaries of being a supportive friend and taking care of her own needs. And Alex is guarding a secret that might change his friendships forever. While navigating exes at work, physical and mental exhaustion, and drinking way, way too much on weekdays, this chosen family proves that being messy doesn’t always go away with age. Paper Bullets is a compelling World War II story that has not been told before, about the galvanizing power of art, and of resistance === Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60310672-mimosa ---- ---- About LezRead: LezRead is Ann Arbor’s premier book club for queer women. We are informally organized through the Jim Toy Community Center and meet on the fourth Sunday of the month. We have both virtual and in-person meetings. Please review the description for any schedule changes. *To support JTCC and its work, please regularly donate at jimtoycenter.org. * New members welcome! Email kerene.moore@gmail.com to join the private Facebook group.

[somosexpresionistas]

Claude Cahun: la identidad de género surrealista

Cuando comenzamos a investigar sobre el surrealismo, nos topamos con un exponente que nos resultó muy contemporáneo, ya que su arte y su vida conectan con lo que hoy está más despierto que nunca: la identidad de género fuera de la heteronorma.

Claude Cahun fue un artista judía, andrógino y surrealista que exploró su identidad de género a través del autorretrato, además de enfrentarse al régimen nazi con sus subversivas obras de arte.

La ambigüedad formaba parte del lenguaje de sus obras y se expresaba sexualmente "neutral" ante las definiciones cisheteronormadas que en ese momento demandaba la sociedad. Por otro lado, durante toda su vida mantuvo una relación afectiva con una mujer, quien también fue una artista muy importante de la época del año 1894, llamada Suzanne Malherbe.

Formó parte de un movimiento vanguardista llamado "Femmes de la rive gauche" o Mujeres de la orilla izquierda, donde artistas femeninas y disidentes buscaban un lugar de expresión lejos de sus propias sociedades.

A pesar de su afiliación al surrealismo, el supuesto creador de esta vanguardia la discriminó a raíz de su identidad de género y su preferencia sexual lésbica, por lo que no le permitió formar parte del movimiento cultural, ya que André Breton era abiertamente homofóbico.

Como grupo creemos que Claude Cahun fue un excelente exponente del surrealismo ya que en sus obras expresaba la salida del subconsciente, en relación a su visión del mundo como una realidad alternativa a todo lo que en ese momento se consideraba normal o normativo.

Su obra surrealista es una construcción y una deconstrucción ilimitada de su identidad, donde considera que la sexualidad es una noción que puede ser representada como máscara, de la cual podemos disponer a nuestra voluntad.

[surrealistnyc]

L'art de resister: A funding call for an intriguing film project on the subversive activities and arrest of Claude Cahun and Suzanne Malherbe during the German occupation of Jersey in the Second World War.

[vortexstreet]

Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, Untitled (The Mystery of Adam), 1929, Gelatin silver print, 4 in. x 3 in. (10.16 cm x 7.62 cm) SF MoMA, San Francisco

[bigtickhk]

Paper Bullets: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis by Jeffrey H. Jackson https://amzn.to/33MAciM

https://bookshop.org/a/17891/9781616209162

[las-microfisuras]

• Claude Cahun y Suzanne Malherbe (Marcel Moore)

[queerographies]

[Oltre lo specchio][Silvia Mazzucchelli]

Oltre lo specchio di Silvia Mazzucchelli introduce ai lettori italiani la figura di Claude Cahun e la sua tensione allo scardinamento dei riferimenti culturali e sociali.

Claude Cahun (1894-1954) è un’artista, fotografa e scrittrice vissuta nella Francia della prima metà del Novecento, in pieno fervore surrealista. Al centro della sua ricerca artistica e letteraria vi sono i temi dell’identità, del superamento dei confini di genere e delle proprie origini ebraiche in un contesto sociale fortemente antisemita. Nei suoi scatti radicali ed enigmatici ritrae se stessa…

[365daysoflesbians]

OCTOBER 25: Claude Cahun (1894-1954)

The groundbreaking French artist and photographer, Claude Cahun, was born on this day in 1894. Her work is known for its daring disregard for 20th century gender roles, Claude herself even famously saying, “Shuffle the cards. Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me.”

A self-portrait by Claude Cahun (x).

Claude was born Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob on October 25, 1894 in Nantes, France. She was born to a wealthy Jewish family that boasted the well-known avant-garde artist Marcel Schwob as one of its brood. Tragically, when Claude was just 4-years-old, her mother began to show signs of serious mental illness and was put in a psychiatric facility to live out her days. Claude was then raised by her grandmother. She suffered a great deal of antisemitic bullying during her time at the local schools in Nantes and eventually transferred to a private high school in Surrey. After high school, she enrolled in the University of Paris, Sorbonne.

One of her most well-known pieces is this surrealist self-portrait titled “What Do You Want From Me?” (x).

It was while she was at college when Claude began to practice photography. She began with self-portraits and would continue to work in that mode throughout the 1920s and 1930s. In 1919, she officially changed her name to Claude Cahun. She briefly considered the name Daniel Douglas, inspired by fellow gay historical icon Lord Alfred Douglas, but Claude Cahun won out in the end for its seeming gender neutrality. Although she had been working consistently since 1912, she didn’t find fame until she joined the group of European surrealists in the early 1930s. In 1936, she was featured in both the London International Surrealist Exhibition and The Exposition surréaliste d'Objets.

Claude and her partner Suzanne invent the mirror selfie in 1920 with the piece “Self-Portraits Reflected in a Mirror” (x).

Claude’s life partner was Suzanne Malherbe, who often went by the name Marcel Moore. In 1922, they began holding salon meetings inside their home and became known as a power couple in the artist world. Attendees of their salon were iconic artists such as Henri Michaux, André Breton, Sylvia Beach, and Adrienne Monnier. At the rise of World War II, they both fled Europe and settled on the island of Jersey, right off the coast of Normandy, France. Despite being in America, Claude and Suzanne became active in the Nazi resistance movement and started to publish anti-German pamphlets. In 1944, Claude was arrested for her work in the resistance. Although she was eventually released, her health never recovered from the poor conditions of the jail and she passed away on December 8, 1954. Today, Claude and Suzanne are buried side by side at St Brelade's Church.

-LC

[areyouraisingstars]

eldest child; the caretaker, the atlas

(surface pressure, encanto (2021) // stephanie malherbe, complicity iv // tabitha suzama, forbidden // the darjeeling limited (2007) // suzanne collins, the hunger games // goodbye, MARINA // supernatural (2005-2020), 1x18: something wicked // maya angelou, mom & me & mom // surface pressure, encanto (2021) // @sadg0rltingz via tiktok // @yuhkady via tiktok // when older siblings step into parents’ shoes, NPR // sketch by baldassare tommaso peruzzi // surface pressure, encanto (2021) // m.h. // belle and sebastian, i don’t love anyone // the reynolds pamphlet, hamilton (2015) // suzanne collins, the hunger games // jazmin hughes, from conversations with thora siemsen // do you REALLY have the eldest daughter syndrome - uquiz // Becks_Rylnn, how the light gets in // holly warburton, sisters // surface pressure, encanto (2021) // john corey whaley, where things come back)