Claude Cahun
Claude Cahun, born Lucy Schwob, was a French surrealist photographer, sculptor, and writer, who assumed a variety of performative personae, and was known for her androgynous appearance, which challenged the strict gender roles of her time. Schwob adopted the pseudonym Claude Cahun in 1914. In her writing, Cahun mostly referred to herself with grammatically feminine words, but she also said that her actual gender was fluid. For example, in Disavowals, Cahun writes: "Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me."
Cahun’s self-portraits, many made with their partner Marcel Moore (also assigned female at birth and working under a male name), blur traditional gender lines. Their imagery draws on male archetypes—not hypermasculine ones, but rather the refined, dandyish aesthetic of late 19th-century homosexual culture. In the well-known photo where Cahun wears an Oscar Wilde-style part and a shirt reading “I am in training, don’t kiss me,” gender becomes performative and ambiguous.
P.S. Read more about the life and work of Claude Cahun—a groundbreaking queer artist!
Dear DailyArt users, we are planning to introduce new language versions of our app – Danish, Finnish, and Norwegian. Therefore, we are looking for volunteers who would like to help us translate our articles into these languages. If you are interested, please fill out this form:)