Elizabeth Louise Kahn – författare

Marie Laurencin, in spite of the noticeable reputation she made in Paris in the first half of the twentieth century, has attracted only sporadic attention by late-twentieth century art historians. Until now the substance of her art and the feminist issues that were entangled in her life have been narrowly examined or reduced by an author's chosen theoretical format; and the terms of her lesbian identity have been overlooked. In this case study of une femme inadaptée and an unfit feminist, Elizabeth Kahn re-situates Laurencin in the on-going feminist debates that enrich the disciplines of art history, women's studies and literary criticism. Kahn's thorough reading of the artist's visual and literary production ensures a comprehensive overview which addresses notable works and passages but also integrates those that are less well known. Incorporating feminist theory and building on the work of contemporary feminist art historians, she avoids the heroics of conventional biography, instead allowing her subject to participate in the historical collective of women's work. Provocative and engagingly written, this fresh new study of Marie Laurencin's life and works also explores the multiple valences by which to connect the histories of, and find new connections between, women artists across the twentieth century.

This volume examines the case of the Camoufleur during World War I by illuminating a number of neglected art historical issues that rightfully belong to the discipline as well as to a larger cultural political ideological context of the period 1914-1918. Within the crisis of the Great War this category of mobilized artists had to struggle with and against the old categories of art and work, the artist as visionary and the artist as cultural warrior, and the private and public nature of artistic creativity.