Hide/Seek Week #3: Romaine Brooks' Self-Portrait

For anyone visiting the greater DC area over Thanksgiving, a trip to the Smithsonian's Hide/Seek show is mandatory enlightenment.

Romaine Brooks, Self-Portrait, 1923

The must-have catalog by Jonathan Katz and David Ward says the artist

"...deploys a complex set of codes and pictorial conventions to assert her membership in the elite coterie of lesbians living in Paris between the world wars... Her position on a balcony, the threshold between public and private space -- her sleek masculinized attire coupled with her brightly rouged lips and thickly powdered face, the shadow that obscures (but does not mask) her eyes -- all signify, in various ways, her self-conscious performance of a lesbian identity. As a wealthy woman, Brooks never had to sell her paintings to support her art, so she was freer than most artists to accurately portray the largely queer social universe she inhabited."

[Click the image for a closer view, including her eyes.]

Comments

[D]

The exhibit is great with good traffic and the 295 page hardcover catalog at $29.00 from Amazon is a treasure. It is nice to have Katz's and Ward's extensive critiques.

[Nightstorm]

Damn it all to Hell! I always miss the real cool art exhibits!!!