Marie Laurencin: Sapphic Paris
Revealing the vital influence of the French artist Marie Laurencin, her visual idiom, and her sexual expression on the modernism of twentieth-century Paris This book offers a long-overdue reassessment of the career of the Parisian-born artist Marie Laurencin (1883–1956), who moved seamlessly between the Cubist avant-garde and lesbian literary and artistic circles, as well as the realms fashion, ballet, and decorative arts. Critical essays explore her early experiments with Cubism; her exile in Spain during World War I; her collaborative projects with major figures of her time such as André Mare, Serge Diaghilev, Francis Poulenc, and André Groult; and her role in the emergence of a “Sapphic modernity” in Paris in the 1920s. Along with more than 60 full-color plates, Laurencin’s life and career are documented through an illustrated chronology and exhibition history, as well as an appendix charting her network of female patrons and associates. Laurencin became a fixture of the contemporar