Marie Laurencin 1885-1956

I have just discovered from a friend the lovely paintings of Marie Laurencin and think they deserve wider acclaim. Ceramicist, painter and printmaker, she also became  the mistress of Apollinaire. They have a soft and appealing, lyrical and delicate quality that can be seen in the pastel above which is called “Le Chant”. Many of her drawings are in the keeping of The Art Institute of Chicago like this one below right, executed in graphite and coloured pencils.

According to one easily accessible website on her,”Marie Laurencin was a French painter and printmaker. Laurencin was born in Paris, where she was raised by her mother and lived much of her life. At 18, she studied porcelain painting in Sevres. She then returned to Paris and continued her art education at the Academie Humbert, where she changed her focus to oil painting. During the early years of the 20th century, Laurencin was an important figure in the Parisian avant-garde and a member of the circle of Pablo Picasso. She became romantically involved with Picasso’s friend, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, and has often been identified as his muse. In addition, Laurencin had important connections to the salon of the American expatriate and famed lesbian writer Natalie Clifford Barney. During the First World War, Laurencin left France for exile in Spain with her German-born husband, Baron Otto von Waetjen, since through her marriage she had automatically lost her French citizenship. The couple subsequently lived together briefly in Dusseldorf. After they divorced in 1920, she returned to Paris, where she lived for the rest of her life and where she achieved great success as an artist.”

Her portraits have a hieratic quality; an adjective which derives from the Greek ἱερατεία (hierateia meaning “priesthood”). By hieratic in relation to art one means very stylised, formal or restrained. The term is used particularly of figurative art with” piquantly tipped heads and mask-like faces”-as Peter Schjeldahl referred to the work of Amedeo Mondigliani.

This is a wonderful clip at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CDT5whWuGM

Here is a poem from Appolonaire to Marie

Vous y dansiez petite fille
Y danserez-vous mère-grand
C’est la maclotte qui sautille
Toute les cloches sonneront
Quand donc reviendrez-vous Marie

Les masques sont silencieux
Et la musique est si lointaine
Qu’elle semble venir des cieux
Oui je veux vous aimer mais vous aimer à peine
Et mon mal est délicieux

Les brebis s’en vont dans la neige
Flocons de laine et ceux d’argent
Des soldats passent et que n’ai-je
Un cœur à moi ce coeur changeant
Changeant et puis encor que sais-je

Sais-je où s’en iront tes cheveux
Crépus comme mer qui moutonne
Sais-je où s’en iront tes cheveux
Et tes mains feuilles de l’automne
Que jonchent aussi nos aveux

Je passais au bord de la Seine
Un livre ancien sous le bras
Le fleuve est pareil à ma peine
Il s’écoule et ne tarit pas
Quand donc finira la semaine

(La maclotte est une danse ardennaise )

Marie Laurencin, c.1924 (b/w photo) by Man Ray