Dimensions: 237 x 178 mm
Copyright: © The estate of Claude Cahun | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Curator: This photograph, simply titled "Untitled," is by Claude Cahun. The date is unknown, but it resides in the Tate Collections. It strikes me as a self-contained world. Editor: It does, a carefully constructed still life, almost like a stage set. The monochrome intensifies the focus on shape and texture. Curator: Right, the figure is a mannequin, a surrogate self perhaps? The turtle introduces a potent symbol of endurance, while the other objects speak to identity and its fragility. Editor: And the glass dome, visually isolating the mannequin, also serves to highlight its artificiality. A fascinating use of light and shadow. Curator: These objects speak to Cahun's explorations of gender and identity, of interiority and the external world. Editor: Exactly. By drawing attention to this assemblage, Cahun compels us to consider the relationship between the objects and, indeed, the artistic act. Curator: It is a very personal statement, encoded in objects. Editor: Agreed. It rewards careful viewing with its strange poetics.
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This is one of a group of photographs Cahun produced in 1936 from assemblages involving a bell jar and a wooden artist’s mannequin. While the mannequin in Untitled, 1936 (P79317) has been feminised with the addition of a lock of hair, in this miniature mise-en-scène the figure is crowned with tall, pointed structure (possibly made from the quill of a feather), that evokes a phallic spear or a single rosebud, coming out of a disc set on his head at an angle. Seated on his podium, the mannequin clasps symbols of power to his groin with his wooden hand. These include an unwieldy object on its side – from other photographs in the group (reproduced in Downie, pp.180-1) it may be seen that this is a large key – and what appears to be the fist of a larger doll. His right arm holds aloft a wispy plant in a tiny vase as though it is an accessory of some importance. Outside the jar, a turtle shell leans against the glass, suggesting a shield. To the jar’s right, two porcelain dolls’ heads arranged with another turtle shell and a miniature gilded chair represent subjects, possibly attendants, in thrall to the enthroned figure enclosed in the jar. Their vacant stares and apparently chaotic arrangement emphasise the comic debunking of the display of the trappings of power staged by the assemblage. Another version of this work (reproduced in Claude Cahun: Photographe, p.105, cat.152) shows the mannequin in the same position viewed from a slightly different angle, with the second turtle shell and a porcelain doll’s head shifted to be next to the first. The same mannequin poses with an upraised sword and set of scales in the bell jar in a further image in the same group (reproduced in Claude Cahun: Photographe, p.104, cat.155).
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