Exist Otherwise by Jennifer L. Shaw, Hardcover, 9781780237282 | Buy online at The Nile
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Exist Otherwise

The Life and Works of Claude Cahun

Author: Jennifer L. Shaw  

Hardcover

This is the first work in English to tell the full story of Claude Cahun's art and life. It both recounts her life and analyzes her complex writings and images, making them available to a wide audience.

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Summary

This is the first work in English to tell the full story of Claude Cahun's art and life. It both recounts her life and analyzes her complex writings and images, making them available to a wide audience.

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Description

This is the first work in English to tell the full story of Claude Cahun's art and life. It both recounts her life and analyses her complex writings and images,making them available to a wide audience. Shaw's account embeds Cahun's work in the exciting milieu of Paris between the wars and follows it into the dangerous territory of the Nazi-occupied Isle of Jersey. Using letters and diaries, Shaw brings Cahun's ideas and feelings to life and contributes to our understanding of photography, Surrealism and the histories of women artists and queer culture.

This book includes a full range of illustrations by Cahun and other renowned photographers, as well as writings never before translated into English. It will appeal to art and photography lovers and scholars alike.

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Critic Reviews

“"Shaw has written the first full biography of Cahun in English. . . . The originality of Shaw's approach lies in her situating Cahun's work and thought within contemporary Symbolist and Surrealist aesthetic and political positions, while drawing on recent feminist theory, unlike Leperlier, who tends to bypass Cahun's lesbianism, and unlike some recent scholarly work which, in seeking to integrate Cahun into the corpus of women artists of the late twentieth century, can risk losing sight of her historical and cultural specificity. . . . This study is a richly documented and well-balanced account of a major twentieth-century artistic figure, in which Cahun's life and work are interwoven in such a way that they illuminate each other."”

"Claude Cahun's writings and artworks tell the story of her own critical self-discovery, and Shaw follows suit, placing the works at the center of her gripping biography of Cahun as a woman artist and lesbian who managed to 'exist otherwise' long before transgender and gay rights. In the graceful flow of Shaw's prose, Cahun's photographic projects illuminate and amplify her life, from the French provinces to Surrealist Paris to the occupied island of Jersey, where her guerilla anti-Nazi art led to harrowing arrest and near execution. Shaw calls Cahun her hero, and convinces us that Cahun should be ours as well, in our moment of Brexit and Trump."
--Christina Kiaer, Northwestern University
"Scholars of Cahun will appreciate Shaw's survey as a well-organized and well-researched biographical resource, as well as a compendium of Cahun's extensive oeuvre. Exist Otherwise is a valuable contribution to the scant body of English-language scholarship on Cahun, one that hopefully opens the door to further excavations and analyses toward an 'otherwise' history in the face of more dominant accounts of the era."--Erin Silver "CAA Reviews"
"Exist Otherwise is elegantly written and beautifully illustrated with artwork, and includes an appendix with short, translated excerpts of Cahun's writings. . . . In Shaw's telling, Cahun models how to practice radical art and action during politically fraught times like hers--and our own."-- "Wellesley Review"
"As a Jewish, gender-nonconforming artist living amid the rise of fascism and widespread anti-Semitism, Cahun's artwork challenged social norms of the time. The new book Exist Otherwise . . . features her photographs, sculptures, and illustrations along with diary entries and writing clips that have never before been translated in English."-- "The Cut"
"Claude Cahun may not be particularly well known outside the art world, but this highly readable biography of the twentieth-century French writer, artist, and photographer ought to help change this situation. Shaw has written a fascinating book about a gender-bending lesbian intellectual who challenged ideas of gender and sexuality in both her life and art. . . . Filled with reproductions of photographs and detailed descriptions and analyses of her writings, Exist Otherwise is a comprehensive introduction to Claude Cahun's art and writing. With any luck it will bring readers back to her unique body of work."-- "Gay & Lesbian Review"

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About the Author

Jennifer L. Shaw is Professor of Art History at Sonoma State University, California. Her previous books include Reading Claude Cahun's Disavowals (2013) and Dream States: Puvis de Chavannes, Modernism and the Fantasy of France (2002).

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More on this Book

This is the first work in English to tell the full story of Claude Cahun's art and life. It both recounts her life and analyses her complex writings and images,making them available to a wide audience. Shaw's account embeds Cahun's work in the exciting milieu of Paris between the wars and follows it into the dangerous territory of the Nazi-occupied Isle of Jersey. Using letters and diaries, Shaw brings Cahun's ideas and feelings to life and contributes to our understanding of photography, Surrealism and the histories of women artists and queer culture.This book includes a full range of illustrations by Cahun and other renowned photographers, as well as writings never before translated into English. It will appeal to art and photography lovers and scholars alike.

Read more

Product Details

Publisher
Reaktion Books
Published
1st May 2017
Pages
256
ISBN
9781780237282

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$100.84
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