22nd Annual Student Research Conference
Marie Laurencin: The Modern via the Feminine
Natalie M. Meyers
Dr. Sara Orel, Dr. Julia DeLancey, Prof. James Pauls, and Dr. Betty McLane Iles, Faculty Mentors
During the first three decades of the twentieth century, Parisian artist Marie Laurencin achieved notable commercial success and a reputation as one of the most famous women in France. Her relationships with artists and writers associated with the Cubist movement established her reputation as a serious painter and constructed her public persona as an entirely feminine and modern woman. Laurencin openly embraced her femininity and used her painting to perpetuate it through her distinctive style and characteristic female figures. This acceptance of and adherence to a feminine style allowed the artist to maneuver within the male-dominated artistic culture while simultaneously critiquing it through parodies of well-known works by prominent artists. As a result of her financial stability and celebrity, Marie Laurencin was able to use her art as both a vehicle to assert her modernity and as a means of promoting her own ideas concerning gender roles.
Keywords: Marie Laurencin, Paris, women artists, feminism, modernism, twentieth-century painting, gender roles
Topic(s):Art History
French
Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: 3-3
Location: OP 2210
Time: 8:45