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The surrealists have sometimes been criticised for the way
they portrayed women: often as the object of male sexual desires,
or excessively idealised - like Joseph Cornell's homages to
glamorous female stars shown here. However, such stereotypes
can be considered as a counter-attack against the equally
limiting view of women as mothers or wholesome virgins promoted
by church and state.
The surrealists' re-definition of the feminine went hand-in-hand
with a questioning of masculinity and the boundaries of gender
identity. In 1920 Marcel Duchamp began producing works of
art under a female pseudonym, Rose Sélavy. He later
explained, 'Rose was the corniest name for a girl at the time,
in French, anyway.' It also sounded like the word 'Eros'.
Sélavy was a pun on the French 'c'est la vie', or 'that's
life'. Man Ray photographed Duchamp dressed up as Rose.
Gender ambiguity was central to the recently rediscovered
work of Claude Cahun. Born Lucie Schwob, she adopted the more
androgynous sounding name Claude Cahun and lived in Paris
as part of an openly lesbian couple. She moved in surrealist
circles, but never actively promoted herself as either writer
or artist: her photographs, for example, were not exhibited
in her lifetime. However, shaving her hair off, or wearing
various disguises, Cahun used her self-portrait photographs
to suggest that all forms of self-representation involved
an element of masquerade.
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