Frida Alvinzi
I had a vivid experience reading Disavowals and experienced it as a living sculpture piece. This essay will explore how Disavowals uses Claude Cahun’s body to create a landscape from images and text. Through this an experiential journey takes place, similar to that of a performance art piece, consisting of time, space, the artist’s body and the relationship between the performer and the audience. The essay will start by investigating how Disavowals references theatrical themes and explores the phenomenon of the ‘book’ as a stage. Here the artist’s body becomes central, being used to question and explore roles and the concept of identity, by means of Cahun’s performance, changing appearance and by her play with photomontages and metaphorical poetic transformations in the text. I argue that the reader is invited into the book to be part of an adventure and to experience the book in real time as a performance. I will discuss Lacan’s Mirror-Stage Theory in relation to the creation of a ‘play’ with mirrors and reflections, and how Disavowals uses the act of looking as a medium to be present with the reader—how the boundaries between the artwork and the other become blurred as the book challenges the reader to activity. The essay goes on to explore how Cahun celebrated the play and freedom of thought she found in children, and challenges especially Freud’s ideas around human psychology and development from childhood into adulthood. It examines Artaud’s ideas in terms of the audience becoming part of the performance, together with similarities between his ideas, on finding a new language for the theatre, and the visual poetry explored in Disavowals. Finally I look at how a book is physically interacted with as an object and experienced within a space.
Inspiration from Theatre
Cahun’s background in theatre is evident throughout the book. Many of the photographic portraits are from earlier parts she had in plays, when she acted in Pierre Albert-Birot’s theatre company Le Plateau, in Paris in the 1920s. The metamorphic ability of dress was something that inspired Cahun and for her roles on stage at Le Plateau she made many of her own costumes with much creative input. Cahun’s sensitivity and understanding of the theatre and the roles she played was an artistic practice that she continued to explore in Disavowals, both within her written texts, and through imagery. The performative experience of Disavowals is highlighted both by the use of dark backgrounds in the images, which create the feeling of lifting Cahun’s body onto a stage where she is lit up like an actor, and by references to classic literature, myths and plays, such as Salome, a biblical myth turned into a play by Oscar Wilde (Welby-Everard, 2006: 1-24).
The Artist Body, Roles and Identity
The use of the artist’s body is central to performance and also central to Disavowals, with the theatre and the masquerade as its heart (Welby-Everard, 2006: 3-6). The photomontages made up of portraits of Cahun are taken by her partner, Marcel Moore. Together they used the photographs to rearrange Cahun’s body so as to carry messages about the desirer, sexuality and love, and also to criticize a society that idealizes stereotypes. Using the metaphor of the snake’s ability to change her skin, Cahun explores how a changed appearance can also transform the self, and she is always switching between the role of a man and that of a woman. The mask is a theme flowing through Disavowals, and reinforces the feeling of theatricality, but instead of condemning the mask to live only on the stage, Cahun explores how people wear masks in society and everyday life, by being assigned roles of how to behave and to live by the “rules”. Cahun uses the concept of mask to her own advantage and encourages the reader to be playful and, through creativity, take control of her own life using Disavowals as a stage, inviting the performative reader to perform with her, and to experience also her own selves (Shaw 2013: 45, 200-210). The image of Cahun posing as a classic statue of Venus in the image below is an example I find particularly striking. Here Cahun has stripped herself of all sensual and female attributes; the idealised statue of beauty has turned into a powerful woman with Cahun’s personal features being visible (Shaw 2013: 105-109).
Image and Text
A photomontage opens up each chapter and the themes in the images are also explored in the text, with added performative aspects. Both costume and text provide additional layers and meanings to the book; for instance in the image below, the featured characters look to me as if they are floating in dark skies or in a black pond. As the eye moves between the many details of the image I feel it creates a sense of movement which is reinforced by sequential imagery, as in the top left corner where Cahun holds up a gun to her head and yet, in the image behind this one, is trying to protect herself from it. This photomontage, as further explored in text, describes a brutal dream that she has had. By using the sense, as I described earlier, of the “floating” movement of the image, opening up to the text about the dream, it feels to me as if the reader has taken a step into Cahun’s inner universe. Looking into the darkness of the background, there are two ribcages; it is as if the viewer really is inside of Cahun’s body (Shaw, 2013: 190-193).
Exploration of Time
As the pages of Disavowals unfold we move back and forth in time, between Cahun’s childhood, her present experiences, and her dreams. She also aims to enter into the time and space of the reader. The non-linear approach of Disavowals renders the book similar to an experience in a person’s life, where past events affect the present and vice versa, challenging the reader’s concept of time. It is furthermore, I feel, as if Cahun and Moore have preserved an experience, which they then pass down to the reader over time and space. In fact the beginning of Disavowals asks the reader to treat the book as an adventure (an experience), and at the end encourages the reader to continue this journey. It seems to me that time is an important concept to Disavowals and also to a performance (Shaw, 2013:1-5).
Games, Challenges, Reality and Imagination
Disavowals challenges the readers to activity by, for instance, involving her/him in the psychoanalysis of characters portrayed in the book. We are referred to psychological and scientific tests which Cahun challenges by shining light on the difficulty of diagnosing an individual, due to the fact that communication can fail. Using imagery to express the subtle mysteriousness of a person’s inner world, contrasted with the text, Disavowals makes the limitations of words visible (Shaw, 2013: 145-151).
The book further involves the reader by encouraging her/him to use their imagination and question the relationship between what is real and what is imagined, doing this by exploring the concept of games. In the photomontage above, Shaw (2013: 180) argues that it looks as if the shadow that would be falling from a large chess piece in the right hand corner would actually come from outside the book, as if beside the book’s viewer. The chess piece is playing itself without being controlled by anybody. By skilfully arranging images Cahun and Moore evoke the power of imagination and become present in our time. The chapter that follows this text lets the reader know that the photomontage is referring to games of love. Cahun shines light on the fact that it usually takes more than one to play. She uses the chessboard to question power struggles within relationships, where the one is often ruled by the other. She wants the reader to challenge concepts of high and low, male and female, good and bad. By introducing the deck of cards in the image she contrasts the chessboard with the card that symbolises chance and the “unknown”. The cards feature images representing a gender neutral Queen and a gender neutral Jack as mythical figures representing gods of creativity, knowledge and fighting. Cahun envisions a new type of game that allows for new roles to be played, invented and imagined together with her readers (Shaw, 2013: 175-210).
In the image opening Chapter V there is one image referring to a game sometimes used by surrealist artists called the Exquisite Corpse. Here a creature is created (as an exquisite corpse) with its limbs made up by both adults and children’s body parts, expressing Disavowals’ longing for liberty and freedom in a society where people “grow up” fast. Cahun is looking for her and her reader’s inner children who are still open minded, free from judgements that come with adulthood, and who have not lost their playfulness. Disavowals contrasts its celebration of childhood with Freud’s theories around sexuality and desire. Freud claims that people who don’t follow the norm, including those who, like Cahun and Moore, are homosexual, are stuck on an infantile stage and not capable of “normal” socialisation. With Disavowals Cahun challenge Freud’s theories, implying that people who follow the norm and only play with the roles given to them as readymade chess pieces will not be capable of finding true love (Shaw 2013; 156-168). Cahun explores the possibility that love is found through dialogue, collaboration and creativity, in art and life, and games of love should be used to explore and evolve rather than oppress both the self as well as the other (Shaw 2013; 186-187).
Mirrors and Reflections
By creating a play with mirrors and reflections Disavowals uses the act of looking as a medium to become present with the reader and explore ways in which a subject matter can be experienced. In Lacan’s Mirror-Stage Theory people become narcissistic when growing up because the image reflected of them is an idealization which in reality they never can live up to. Lacan’s theory says that this is at the root of many imbalances between people and social groups in society, due to feelings of inferiority this creates in people (Walsh, 2013: 52-53). Disavowals wants the reader to break the mirror to see what is behind the reflection, and it becomes a broken mirror, with all the bits stuck back together again to form a new kind of experience. Cahun creates a portrait of reflections that mirror and disclose a person’s imperfections. Cahun and Moore explore themes of self-love as well as love for the other. The viewer and her subject change places with each other. Just as an eye both views and is viewed, so the subject becomes the other. In this way I feel that they erase the borders between a piece of art and its viewer, the artwork comes to life, and Disavowals interacts with its reader. Moore and Cahun need the collaboration of their audience to carry out their intentions (Shaw, 2013: 70-101).
Disavowals in relation to Antonin Artaud’s The Theatre and its Double.
The way in which Cahun uses her body to visualize psychological torments puts the viewer and reader on edge and is reminiscent of Antonin Artaud’s The Theatre and its Double. Artaud argues that in order to shock the viewer out of her/his complacency, theatre must afflict the audience with sharpness, as if it were a knife. Artaud writes about the relationship between the actor, the stage and the audience, and of how to make the viewers part of the performance. Disavowals uses the theme of the mirror likewise and it feels as if Cahun reflects herself all around you, as if you are now a being within her kaleidoscope (Artaud, 1958: 74-83).
Creating a vision where the actor, by use of costume becomes the visual landscape of the play, Artaud envisioned a new type of language created for the theatre where the actor’s body would “speak”, rather than her words, using gestures and costumes to create symbolic shapes similar to poetry. Even though Disavowals features text and written dialogue, the poetic sign language of the use of Cahun’s body, as visualized in the photomontages, I think corresponds to Artaud’s vision (Artaud, 1958; 68-73).
In The Theatre and its Double Artaud also talks abut how he has vivid experiences by looking at paintings such as Lucas van Leyden’s The Daughters of Lot. He feels that these paintings have such great dramatic qualities and writes about how he can even hear and smell them, and that this is how he imagines the theatre to be. This feeling of a painting, in all its two dimensional existence, being capable of evoking the sense of sound and smell parallels how I experienced Disavowals. To experience this book as a performance art piece is made possible by our ability to blur the boundaries between our senses, as well as those between the real and the imaginary, but it is also due to the fact that the reading of a book happens in real time: the reader, when turning the pages, has a physical interaction with the book as object, which is further experienced in a space containing sounds, smells and a certain temperature (Artaud, 1958: 33-47).
Conclusion
Disavowals, by means of its play themes, references to classical literature and myth, mixed with the feeling of theatricality and references to the stage, opens up its performative aspects. The body being the central artistic medium in performance art is also at the heart of Disavowals. An image opens each chapter, functioning like a stage featuring Cahun as the actor, using photographs of her body which, when rearranged and mixed with collage, create a mysterious world of shapes and signs. Disavowals becomes a loaded art piece, inviting its reader to investigate the boundaries between reality and imagination, between past and present, death and life. Cahun and Moore also invite the reader to perform with them, creating a dialogue in which the roles and stereotypes of society are investigated and questioned. By introducing games and challenges the book encourages the reader to be active. Disavowals encourages play and creativity, used to find the power contained in the act of daring to stand out of the norm, to be an artist, a creator, and it blurs the boundaries between art and life.
The concept of the other is challenged by inviting the gaze into the subject matter, hence erasing the idealized version of a reflection, making me feel that she opens up new ways in which to experience a piece of art. The act of looking itself becomes a medium in which, using Cahun’s powerful eyes, the viewer is mirrored and the viewer in turn mirrors Cahun, opening up the possibility of Cahun becoming present and eternal.
I felt reading Disavowals that I, the audience, was at the centre of the performance and that Cahun was acting out Disavowals in multiple reflections all around me. Artaud’s aims in The Theatre and its Double, to create a new language for the theatre, like a visual poetry, is something I feel is also explored in the images of Disavowals.As an object a book is experienced in real time and space and is physically interacted with by its readers. So that Cahun’s and Moores’ ability to use image and text in inventive and fantastical ways opens up a realm, for the imaginative reader, I would argue, of the possibility for Disavowals to be read as a performance art piece.
References
Artaud, A. (1958) The Theater and its Double, New York: Grove Press.
Cahun, C. (2007) Disavowals, London: Tate, First Edition, (1930) Aveux non Anvenus, France: Editions du Carrefour.
Shaw, Jennifer L. (2013) Reading Claude Cahun’s Disavowals, USA: Ashgate Publishing company.
Walsh, M. (2013) Art & Psychoanalysis, London: I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd.
Welby-Everard, M. (2006) ‘The Theatre of Claude Cahun’, Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 3-24.
New Minds Eye 