Marie
Laurencin
Sapphic
Paris
Dylan Grossmann
T
his past Penn Parents weekend – between our gluttonous meals in Center City – I decided to entertain my parents by taking them to the Barnes Foundation, to show them the walls that cure my worst days on campus. Off we went to my refuge; I had practically memorized my route to view my favorite pieces, but my comfortable monotony was broken by Barnes’s sparkling new exhibition. “Marie Laurencin: Sapphic Paris,” turned my trite family outing, along with my understanding of modern art, upside down. Immediately captivated by the exhibition’s drawing point “Laurencin’s World Without Men”, my mom and I stepped into the
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sapphic, ultra-feminine life of Laurencin. A jovial ambiance enveloped us as we viewed Laurencin’s self-portraits. I was enthralled by how she captured her changing self view through her chronological portraits, how her depictions not only followed the fluidity of her artistic voice but established her aura as deeply feminine, nearly ethereal. She skillfully highlights the most nuanced facets of her identity in each portrait – her suspected Creole heritage to her lesbianism – grappling with herself through a canvas medium. Born in Paris as an illegitimate child to politician Alfred-Stanislas Toule, Laurencin had abundant access to a renowned art education. In 1904, she entered the Académie
