Unmasking Claude Cahun: Self-Portraiture as a Primary Source

Christie Dooley

In her essay “A Mutable Mirror: Claude Cahun,” first published in Artforum in 1992, Therese Lichtenstein attempts to unmask the obscure identity of Surrealist artist Claude Cahun. She begins with a formal analysis of an untitled photomontage made by Cahun ca. 1930 for the opening page of an autobiography.  Lichtenstein’s descriptive language is notable here—she characterizes Cahun’s image as a distorted projection of selfhood, made up of “disembodied,” “anamorphic” and “grotesque” elements.  Unfamiliar with Cahun’s frontispiece, the reader must imagine the cosmically charged arrangement according to these words, for Lichtenstein intentionally withholds contextual information until the end of her formal description.  Lichtenstein's introduction only further obscures the complex nature of Cahun’s identity.

Nobody can straightforwardly answer, “Who was Claude Cahun?” Cahun’s identity is inextricably linked to her own struggle for empowerment and recognition. Though the facts are important—Cahun, born Lucy Schwob, was a Jewish, homosexual, and radical female activist—the self-portraits that “circulate obsessively through all her work” are our primary sources of information. Lichtenstein interprets these self-portraits as an exploration “of the self as an accumulation of selves, or a shifting set of social relations.”  Furthermore, Lichtenstein considers Cahun’s self-portraiture (and androgyny) an act of liberation in a male-dominated Surrealist sphere. Indeed, Cahun seemed to wrest herself from definitive societal roles in her eruptive I.O.U (Self-Pride), which reads “Sous ce masque un autre masque. Je n’en finirai pas de soulever tous ces visages.”  Here is the image:

Are these stacked masks just another riddle pumped out of an Exquisite corpse game, or as Lichtenstein suggests, a representation of her multi-faceted and unfolding identity? Though some of Cahun’s fragmented images seem to reflect incoherence and crisis, I agree with Lichtenstein—Cahun deliberately chose to assert her differences through spectacle.