Exist Otherwise: The Life and Works of Claude Cahun

by Jennifer L. Shaw

Overview

Offering some of Cahun’s writings never before translated into English alongside a wide array of her artworks and those of her contemporaries, this book is a must-have for any fan of this iconic artist, now in paperback.

In the turmoil of the 1920s and ’30s, Claude Cahun challenged gender stereotypes with her powerful photographs, montages, and writings, works that appear to our twenty-first-century eyes as utterly contemporary, or even from the future. She wrote poetry and prose for major French literary magazines, worked in avant-garde theater, and was both comrade of and critical outsider to the Surrealists. Exist Otherwise is the first work in English to the tell the full story of Claude Cahun’s art and life, one that celebrates and makes accessible Cahun’s remarkable vision. 
           
Jennifer L. Shaw embeds Cahun within the exciting social and artistic milieu of Paris between the wars. She examines her relationship with Marcel Moore—Cahun’s stepsister, lover, and life partner—who was a central collaborator helping make some of the most compelling photographs and photomontages of Cahun’s oeuvre, dreamscapes of disassembled portraiture and scenes that simultaneously fascinate and terrify. Shaw follows Cahun into the horrors of World War II and the Nazi occupation of the island of Jersey off the coast of Normandy, and she explores the powerful and dangerous ways Cahun resisted it. Reading through her letters and diaries, Shaw brings Cahun’s ideas and feelings to the foreground, offering an intimate look at how she thought about photography, surrealism, the histories of women artists, and queer culture.
           
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789147001
Publisher:	Reaktion Books, Limited
Publication date:	05/22/2023
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	7.50(w) x 9.75(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Jennifer L. Shaw is professor of art history at Sonoma State University in California. She is the author of Reading Claude Cahun’s Disavowels and Dream States: Puvis de Chavannes, Modernism, and the Fantasy of France.
 

Table of Contents

Introduction 7

1 Views and Visions: Nantes, 1894-1920 13

2 Heroines, Theatre, Masquerade: The 1920s in Paris 47

3 To Embody My Own Revolt: Surrealism and Politics in the 1930s 129

4 Spiritual Arms Instead of Firearms: Cahun and Moore on the Isle of Jersey 197

Conclusion: Return to the Farm Without a Name 259

Appendix: A Selection of Claude Cahun's Writings The Border Post, 1918 269

The Idea-mistress (excerpts), 1921 271

Meditation of Mademoiselle Lucie Schwob, 1925 279

Response to the review Inversions, 1925 282

Bedroom Carnival, 1926 284

Response to the question 'For Whom Do You Write?', 1933 287

References 297

Select Bibliography 309

Acknowledgements 313

Photo Acknowledgements 315

Index 316

What People are Saying About This

Tirza T. Latimer

“Shaw has crafted mounds of archival information—including memoirs, letters, press clippings, rare books, and photographs—into a story of Claude Cahun’s life and works. Exist Otherwise: The Life and Works of Claude Cahun, a highly readable page-turner, nevertheless engages fully with the complexities that make Cahun one of the twentieth century’s most intriguing artist-activists and an inspiration to today’s culture makers.”

Editorial Reviews

Exist Otherwise is elegantly written and beautifully illustrated with artwork, and includes an appendix with short, translated excerpts of Cahun’s writings. . . . In Shaw’s telling, Cahun models how to practice radical art and action during politically fraught times like hers—and our own.

Wellesley Review

Claude Cahun’s writings and artworks tell the story of her own critical self-discovery, and Shaw follows suit, placing the works at the center of her gripping biography of Cahun as a woman artist and lesbian who managed to ‘exist otherwise’ long before transgender and gay rights. In the graceful flow of Shaw’s prose, Cahun’s photographic projects illuminate and amplify her life, from the French provinces to Surrealist Paris to the occupied island of Jersey, where her guerilla anti-Nazi art led to harrowing arrest and near execution. Shaw calls Cahun her hero, and convinces us that Cahun should be ours as well, in our moment of Brexit and Trump.”
 

Christina Kiaer

"Claude Cahun may not be particularly well known outside the art world, but this highly readable biography of the twentieth-century French writer, artist, and photographer ought to help change this situation. Shaw has written a fascinating book about a gender-bending lesbian intellectual who challenged ideas of gender and sexuality in both her life and art. . . . Filled with reproductions of photographs and detailed descriptions and analyses of her writings, Exist Otherwise is a comprehensive introduction to Claude Cahun’s art and writing. With any luck it will bring readers back to her unique body of work."

Gay & Lesbian Review

As a Jewish, gender-nonconforming artist living amid the rise of fascism and widespread anti-Semitism, Cahun’s artwork challenged social norms of the time. The new book Exist Otherwise . . . features her photographs, sculptures, and illustrations along with diary entries and writing clips that have never before been translated in English.

The Cut

Shaw has written the first full biography of Cahun in English. . . . The originality of Shaw’s approach lies in her situating Cahun’s work and thought within contemporary Symbolist and Surrealist aesthetic and political positions, while drawing on recent feminist theory, unlike Leperlier, who tends to bypass Cahun’s lesbianism, and unlike some recent scholarly work which, in seeking to integrate Cahun into the corpus of women artists of the late twentieth century, can risk losing sight of her historical and cultural specificity. . . . This study is a richly documented and well-balanced account of a major twentieth-century artistic figure, in which Cahun’s life and work are interwoven in such a way that they illuminate each other.

H-France

"Scholars of Cahun will appreciate Shaw’s survey as a well-organized and well-researched biographical resource, as well as a compendium of Cahun’s extensive oeuvre. Exist Otherwise is a valuable contribution to the scant body of English-language scholarship on Cahun, one that hopefully opens the door to further excavations and analyses toward an 'otherwise' history in the face of more dominant accounts of the era."

CAA Reviews - Erin Silver

In this first full biography of the pseudonymous visual artist and writer Claude Cahun, Shaw is intensely responsive to Cahun’s life and work (verbal, visual, political). In the process of examining and commenting on Cahun’s unique life, Shaw travels across time and across surrealism, Dada, a world war, and the anti-fascists and their effect on art and life in Paris, Jersey, and Germany. . . . Homosexuality is an important focal point, as are the anti-fascists and the active rebellion of the modern against the traditional. Shaw writes that as an outsider woman, lesbian, and Jew, Cahun ‘trumpeted her role.’ This book deserves a wide readership. . . . Highly recommended.

Choice

“Shaw has crafted mounds of archival information—including memoirs, letters, press clippings, rare books, and photographs—into a story of Claude Cahun’s life and works. Exist Otherwise: The Life and Works of Claude Cahun, a highly readable page-turner, nevertheless engages fully with the complexities that make Cahun one of the twentieth century’s most intriguing artist–activists and an inspiration to today’s culture makers.

Tirza T. Latimer

★ 07/01/2017
Claude Cahun (1894–1954) had an eclectic career in France during the first half of the 20th century as an actress, photographer, writer, and member of the surrealists. Shaw (art history, Sonoma State Univ; Reading Claude Cahun's Disavowals) provides the first English-language biography of Cahun that will leave readers enthralled by this artist who lived life on her own terms despite numerous challenges, including Nazi imprisonment for resistance activities. In her self-portraits and writings, Cahun often questioned gender roles and sexual identity that she considered societal indoctrinations. She rejected norms related to femininity by shaving her head and dressing androgynously. Despite her cutting-edge work, Cahun and her contributions largely went unnoticed until the late 1980s. Interspersed with many of Cahun's photographs, which Shaw expertly analyzes and which accentuate the narrative, this book provides a lot of interesting detail—the chapter on surrealism is so rich in content that it could have been split into two separate chapters. English translations of selected writings by Cahun are included in an appendix. VERDICT This excellent biography is wide-ranging and will appeal to readers interested in art history, French literature, LGBT studies, photography, and surrealism.—Erica Swenson Danowitz, Delaware Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Media, PA

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