Aegis 2018
the invention of lithography half a century earlier allowed for mass images to be reproduced at a high rate, including depictions of scantily-clad women in poster advertisements. One example is Alphonse Mucha’s Job Cigarette Paper (1896, Mucha Foundation, Prague). In the lithograph, a beautiful woman is smoking a cigarette, her hair flying across her face. It was not uncommon for artworks like Mucha’s to be displayed around Paris because artists used the objectification of female beauty and sexuality to sell manufacturers’ products. As de Lempicka’s fame rose, Paris held the exhibition, Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, in 1925 to highlight the new Style Moderne. Organized by the French government, this unique exhibition featured architecture, artwork, and arts and crafts on display for several months. It was a revolutionary exhibition since it featured artwork that focused on the attraction to the modern lifestyle, rather than moments of the past. In a sense, it was an exciting breath of fresh air for most of the world, which had shakily rebuilt itself after the end of the First World War. Although this specific exhibition did not feature any of de Lempicka’s works, it was an important time for artists and viewers to gather and appreciate the modern advancements in art. It could even be said that de Lempicka’s artwork served as a source of inspiration for the exhibition because of her distinctive style. Inspired by Cubist and Neo-Cubist artists like Pablo Picasso and Lhote, she also studied paintings of Renaissance bodies to better understand the human form.5 Furthermore, she enjoyed being around beauty and depicted her female subjects as outrageously attractive and voluptuous, with her male subjects receiving the same amount of exaggeration. Specifically, she created harsh shadows to show the curvature of breasts, chest muscles, or the glint in one’s eyes as the subject gazed indignantly at the viewer, challenging the viewer to dismay their own desire. An example of this is in de Lempicka’s Adam and Eve (1931, Private Collection, U.S.A.), a painting featuring Adam and Eve, both nude, in a tender moment. The light falls softly on them from the left side of the canvas, highlighting Adam’s perfect physique, reminiscent of classical Greek beauty ideals, and Eve’s ample curves. Generally, the subjects of de Lempicka’s paintings were portrayed as lovers and posed together in sexual positions, further acting as an indicator of her bisexuality and fascination with sex. She painted these subjects mostly in her earlier works to demonstrate the sexual power that the modern woman had over her own flesh. An early painting of hers that shows this sexual power is Group of Four Nudes (1925, Private Collection, U.S.A.) which features four nude women in various poses. The angularity of their bodies is selfish and intimidating, as if each woman wants her own spotlight on the canvas. Their red mouths, open in exhale either from pain or pleasure, and the dark shadows around their cold eyes makes their gaze impenetrable, yet there is still a sensual air about them. There is no way of telling if these women were separate compositions built on top of one another or were intimately related. Viewing the painting clockwise, one could infer that it may be the replication of the same woman in various poses as she engages in sex with a ‘come hither’ look. Regarding this painting, French art historian Germain Bazin comments, “I know of no other work so akin to ‘Turkish Bath’ by Ingres than this group of nudes, where every inch of canvas is devoted to flesh” since Ingres’s painting also features a large group of nude women in the classical reclining position, enjoying themselves with music, dancing, and lovemaking.6 This clarifies de Lempicka’s interest in depicting the female nude as pleasing herself and those around her. The women in de Lempicka’s work could easily be interpreted as having a pleasant group sexual encounter. Likewise, there are glimpses of Pablo Picasso’s
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