Female Genealogies of Creation: Marie Darrieussecq and Paula Modersohn-Becker, Tatiana de Rosnay and Tamara de Lempicka

ABSTRACT

Excluding women’s art from public attention significantly affects the possibility of building female genealogies of creation. As such, women artists must constantly recreate their foremothers, because all too often history has erased them from view. Nonetheless, women creators are redressing this imbalance, by rewriting women into history. This article analyses two such contemporary examples: Marie Darrieussecq’s text on Paula Modersohn-Becker [Être ici est une splendeur: Vie de Paula M. Becker (2016)], and Tatiana de Rosnay’s work on Tamara de Lempicka [Tamara par Tatiana (2018)]. Paula Modersohn-Becker was an artist of many firsts, having painted the first (known) nude self-portrait by a woman, the first (known) nude pregnant self-portrait in art history (destroyed in 1943), and having the first museum in the world dedicated exclusively to the works of a woman (opened in 1927). Tatiana de Rosnay in collaboration with her daughter, Charlotte Jolly de Rosnay, unpacks the glamourous life of Tamara de Lempicka, the queen of Art Deco, highlighting the struggles and identity quests of a woman artist in the Parisian art world of the 1920s. This article comparatively examines the way Darrieussecq and de Rosnay adapt the traditional artist’s biography to facilitate the emergence of female genealogies of creation.

KEYWORDS:

• Women artists
• biographical genre
• female genealogies of creation
• identity
• Marie Darrieussecq
• Paula Modersohn-Becker
• Tatiana de Rosnay
• Charlotte Jolly de Rosnay
• Tamara de Lempicka

Introduction

In her famous 1983 work, How to Suppress Women’s Writing, Joanna Russ identified five different ways in which women’s literary work is excluded from public view: denial of agency, pollution of agency, double standard of content, false categorizing, and simple exclusion. These types of exclusion and marginalization are not limited to the literary world, as shown by Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock’s seminal work Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology (Parker and Pollock 2013). Even more worryingly, in the foreword to the 2018 edition of Russ’s work, Jessa Crispin notes that ‘there’s not an enormous difference between the world she [Russ] describes and the world we inhabit’ (xi). While recently there has been more attention given to women artists (for example, the widely advertised Artemisia exhibition at the National Gallery or the more recent Paula Rego retrospective at Tate Britain),¹ the simple fact that it is so easy to single out these events, while still referring to the artists as ‘women’ artists, demonstrates that parity and equal representation still lie in the future. Moreover, this sporadic and selective presence of women artists on the public stage means that contemporary (women) artists have incomplete histories and aesthetic languages to resort to, having constantly to reinvent their foremothers.

According to Crispin, ‘[i]f the official history neglects to tell you where you come from, you can always create those pathways yourself’ (2018, xv). The focus of this article is to analyse precisely such pathways, examining how contemporary women writers carve out a space for women visual artists of the twentieth century. Two recent texts have been chosen for this investigation: Marie Darrieussecq’s Être ici est une splendeur: Vie de Paula M. Becker [Being Here Is Everything: The Life of Paula M. Becker] (Darrieussecq 2016) and Tatiana de Rosnay’s Tamara par Tatiana: Sur les traces de Tamara de Lempicka [Tamara by Tatiana: In the Footsteps of Tamara de Lempicka] (de Rosnay 2018).² Darrieussecq and de Rosnay have each marked the French literary scene in different ways: Darrieussecq burst onto it with her first novel Truismes in 1996, usually publishing one work every year since. Her works have attracted both critical and academic acclaim,³ the latter especially in the Anglo-American milieux. Tatiana de Rosnay is one of France’s most well-known and bestselling contemporary authors, having shot to fame after the publication of Elle s’appelait Sarah (de Rosnay 2007), adapted for the screen in 2010. She is ‘one of France’s most read authors: in 2009, she was the eighth bestselling fiction writer in Europe’.⁴ She has also ventured into the field of biography, her work on Daphné du Maurier — Manderley for ever (de Rosnay 2015) — having been nominated for the 2015 ‘Goncourt de la biographie’. Despite her success (or possibly due to it), her work is rarely examined by scholars of French.⁵ We can observe similar discrepancies in engagement when it comes to the study of the two women artists chosen by Darrieussecq and de Rosnay: Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) is often quoted by art historians as one of the first German expressionists, but is not easily recognizable to the untrained eye, while Tamara de Lempicka’s (1898–1980) works have entered popular culture, but have often been dismissed by critics. While German expressionism and de Lempicka’s art deco style might have little in common, a closer examination of the lives of the two artists reveals similar struggles (linked to forging an identity as an artist), themes (motherhood, the female body), and geographies (the importance of Paris cannot be overstated for either of them).⁶ Furthermore, despite the social and political advancements for women brought about by the twentieth century, Parker and Pollock (2013) observed opposing trends when it came to art history:

Women artists only ‘disappeared’ in the twentieth century, in the moment of modernism, when the first museum of modern art was open to tell the story of then recent and contemporary art (MoMA, New York 1929), when art history expanded in the universities, when art publishing houses were founded to create and feed a market for knowledge about art. (xxiii)

Therefore, writing the stories of Paula Modersohn-Becker and Tamara de Lempicka, who both had their most prolific period at the start of the twentieth century, is simultaneously an artistic and a political act. This article comparatively examines the way Darrieussecq and de Rosnay adapt the traditional artist’s biography to facilitate the emergence of female genealogies of creation, genealogies that act against the suppression of women’s contributions, be they literary or artistic. The first part studies the form of the two chosen texts, focusing on genre adaptations and the use of sources, while the second part explores the way textual choices reflect the artists’ aesthetic languages, before unpacking the painters’ struggles around identity formation. The third and final part comes back to the underlying framework of female genealogies of creation, positing the idea that women can draw sustenance from reading and being read together,⁷ thus counteracting their relegation to the margins of the artistic world.

Adapting the Biographical Genre

According to Parker and Pollock, ‘the most common form of art historical writing is the monograph on a named artist’ (2013, 68). While both Être ici and Tamara only focus on one artist, they cannot be easily classified as a particular genre; rather, they are ‘hovering between biography and biofiction’ (van Montfrans 2020, 204). It is this very process of hovering that will be the focus of this first part. In addition to mirroring the adaptation of the biographical genre, this process of hovering also reflects the artists’ identity quests (explored in the second part of this article), and our own ‘hovering’ as readers, as we are encouraged to occupy multifaceted readerly positions, weaving together art history, biography, gaps in knowledge, and the ‘writerly’ imagination used to respond to these gaps. The uncertainty of genre is noticeable from the subtitles of the works: ‘Vie de Paula M. Becker’ and ‘Sur les traces de Tamara de Lempicka’. ‘Vie de’ highlights the focus on the lived experience, while ‘Sur les traces de’ suggests that someone is following de Lempicka and, as such, the story we are reading is at least that of two people.

Jonathan Shirland observes that Darrieussecq ‘slips into and out of more settled biographical conventions’ (2019, 431), which is visible from the structure of the text, the use of sources, and the narrative point of view. Être ici is divided into five parts of unequal length, the start and end of which are usually marked by major life events, such as death, marriage, or separation (for example, the death of Hélène Modersohn at the end of part I; or Paula leaving her husband Otto at the start of part V).⁸ Chronology is not the guiding thread of the text, and chronological jumps are effected whenever required: for example, Part II often seems to focus more on Rilke (1875–1926) than on Paula, thus covering a period longer than Paula’s life. Moreover, in the same part, Darrieussecq draws a comparison between the poets Rilke and Paul Celan (1920–1970) as a way of punctuating the fate of the European continent, alternating between the two halves of the twentieth century. In addition, there are also jumps to the 2010s, when Darrieussecq visited some of the sites mentioned in the text. Akin to more conventional artists’ biographies, Darrieussecq draws on ‘recherches minutieuses’ (Barnet 2020, 95), with bibliographical references found at the end of the text. Nonetheless, the presence of the biographer is very visible in Être ici, as highlighted by the frequent changes from third- to first- person narration. On occasion, these changes are so subtle that the reader is left wondering who is talking: ‘En décembre 1905, le couple retourne chez les Hauptmann, y rencontre le sociologue Werner Sombart, admire les montagnes sous la neige. Oui, Otto fait des efforts’ (Être ici, 95, author’s italics). The first sentence settles the reader into biographical conventions: third-person narration in the past tense, with clear spatio-temporal coordinates and the presence of known contemporaries. The second sentence, referring to Otto and Paula’s marriage, is much more ambiguous: is it a narratorial observation or Paula’s imagined thoughts in the shape of discours indirect libre? The latter is a feature of Darrieussecq’s fictional writing,⁹ which further blurs the genre boundaries of ‘ce texte biographique, parfois lu précisément “comme un roman”’ (Barnet 2020, 95).

Besides scholarly sources, Darrieussecq also uses published diaries and correspondence, which are sometimes quoted or paraphrased in the text. However, the way these personal artefacts were used to inform Être ici is much more complex:

Quand on superpose les journaux – Rilke, Otto, Paula, Clara – ça fait des trous. Les uns ne parlent pas de ce dont parlent les autres. Ou pas pareil, et d’une façon qui crée encore des trous. Et ces journaux eux-mêmes sont troués. Les pages publiées, je ne sais pas si leurs brèches temporelles sont la marque de feuillets perdus, ou omis, ou non écrits. Le plein qui m’apparaît est évasif. (49, author’s italics)

Et par toutes ces brèches j’écris à mon tour cette histoire, qui n’est pas la vie vécue de Paula M. Becker mais ce que j’en perçois, un siècle après, une trace. (50, author’s italics)

Être ici, resembling Darrieussecq’s other works, revolves around gaps, fault lines, and absences. The ‘hovering’ mentioned by Manet van Montfrans is visible in this imagery of the gap. Rather than trying to fill in these gaps, Darrieussecq hovers above them, following the traces left by the four protagonists, be they written, painted, or physical.¹⁰ She then adds her own trace to the known story, not as an ending, but as a continuation. The readers are invited to hover further, to être ici with Paula, in the(ir) lived present, almost as they would if they were looking at one of Paula’s paintings (moving closer to or further from it, looking at it from an angle, etc.).

The conventional artist’s biography is similarly adapted by de Rosnay when considering structure, chronology, and the visibility of the biographer. The text is divided into six parts of comparable lengths, guided by the letters of Tamara’s name: ‘T comme talentueuse, A comme ambitieuse, M comme magnétique, A comme arrogante, R comme rebelle, A comme artiste’ (5). While the chronological flow is mainly respected, there are jumps in time when the themes require it. Moreover, the space dedicated to each period clearly reflects its importance to de Lempicka’s development (for example, the twenty years between 1942 and 1962 are quickly dealt with, in three and a half pages of text, as they were not very productive professionally, nor memorable personally). The visibility of the biographer is highlighted as early as the title: Tamara par Tatiana. The use of the first name denotes a close connection between the two women.¹¹ The subtitle ‘sur les traces de Tamara de Lempicka’ suggests that the reader is following Tatiana following Tamara, hinting at the research work that had to be carried out (i.e., finding and following these traces). As in Darrieussecq’s case, this research work was both scholarly (mirrored in the bibliography on page 222) and exploratory (visiting places where Tamara herself had been, for example one of the buildings she lived in at the start of her Parisian life is described on page 58 and shown in the photograph on page 59). In addition, de Rosnay also managed to connect with the women in de Lempicka’s family: ‘Victoria, une de tes petites-filles, préfère m’écrire pour me parler de toi’ (210); ‘[j]’ai longuement parlé par téléphone à Marisa et Cristina, les filles de Victoria. Tes arrière-petites-filles’ (211). Therefore, the reader has a direct connection to de Lempicka herself, a connection that might be missing from more traditional biographies. Unlike the latter, Tamara is written in the second person singular, as an open letter to the painter. However, as a letter written in 2018, de Lempicka would not be able to read it (since she passed away in 1980). Moreover, even if she were still alive in 2018 and able to read it, the letter would not be providing de Lempicka with any new information, since it mostly covers major moments from her life and work. Therefore, the letter must serve another purpose. We get a hint of this possible purpose on page 110: ‘Maintenant que je suis arrivée à la moitié de cette aventure littéraire’ (author’s italics). The literary adventure does not affect the biographical validity of the events presented, since ‘tes biographes on tout raconté, je n’invente rien’ (97).¹² However, it does affect the way events are presented and thus read, and it allows for more unconventional links to be established (for example, imagining de Rosnay’s Russian great-grandmother crossing paths with de Lempicka in Saint-Petersburg [35], or imagining the painter seeing Daphné du Maurier, one of de Rosnay’s favourite authors, at Le Dôme in Paris [92]). Therefore, the open letter becomes a way for de Rosnay to start constructing a female genealogy of creation, tasking the reader with the continuation of the literary adventure and the expansion of this genealogy.

The genealogy of creation is further enhanced by the fact that the photographs complementing the text were taken by de Rosnay’s own daughter, Charlotte Jolly de Rosnay. In interviews discussing the genesis of the book,¹³ the mother-daughter duo mentioned that Jolly de Rosnay was approached by Michel Lafon (who is not de Rosnay’s usual editor) due to her previous photographic work. The idea for the collaborative work came via the daughter, reversing standard conceptions of a genealogy. Moreover, the ‘aventure littéraire’ mentioned above becomes ‘une aventure pictorio-littéraire’ for the reader, since the book presents itself as both an open letter and a rich photo album. The photographs in the text can be divided into three broad categories: high-quality reproductions of de Lempicka’s works, photographs of events and personalities that marked the sociopolitical contexts in which de Lempicka lived and worked, and the photos taken by Jolly de Rosnay. The latter are meant to go hand in hand with the open letter, but they do not illustrate it; on the contrary, the photographs add another layer of mystery to the written text. Rather than stifling the reader’s imagination by transforming words into images, the photographs further fuel the reader’s creative work. For example, page 98 mentions de Lempicka’s visits to the quays of the Seine, while the photograph on page 99, to the right of the text, combines variations of midnight blue with the faint outlines of a bridge and a quay. The small water ripples confuse the viewer even more, as it is unclear whether something or someone has fallen into the river. It is only on the following four pages that the text and photograph are clarified, the reader realizing that the visits to the quays were aimed at finding sexual partners, men and women. This clarification materializes in part with the help of reproductions from de Lempicka’s work depicting the female nude in various poses, portraying different intensities of (sexual) desire. The story of Tamara is told by the text of the open letter, the photographs (original or reproductions), and their carefully selected order. Thus, both Être ici and Tamara are championing feminist epistemologies, with Darrieussecq and de Rosnay diversifying our ways of knowing by supplementing historical and biographical data, with lived experience, oral histories, sensory and emotional knowledge, and the literary imagination.

Visual-textual Reflections and Constructions of Identity

One of the main differences between Être ici and Tamara is the fact that the former has no photographs or reproductions (with the one exception of the reproduction on the cover). According to Marie-Claire Barnet, Être ici can also be read as a ‘catalogue alternatif, qui accompagnait l’exposition d’une artiste méconnue à Paris, sous la houlette de Darrieussecq’ (Barnet 2020, 94).¹⁴ One can easily imagine visitors reading Darrieussecq’s text to complement the exhibition. Moreover, the text can be seen as a ‘catalogue alternatif’ specifically because it does not have any images. Writing the images thus becomes one of the underlying aims of Darrieussecq’s literary endeavour: ‘Comment écrire les tableaux? […] L’espace bée entre les mots et les images’ (98, author’s italics). The image of the fault line discussed in the first part re-emerges here, as Darrieussecq ‘hovers’ not just between biography and biofiction, but also between words and images. In response to ‘comment écrire les tableaux’, Darrieussecq’s writing ‘feels in keeping with the painter’s own search for pictorial intimacy through formal simplicity’ (Shirland 2019, 426–427). The directness and simplicity of the writing style reflect Modersohn-Becker’s visual aesthetics. The descriptions of two portraits painted during the ‘féconde année 1902’ (77)¹⁵ are an example of just such reflection; they close Part III (77–78), further highlighting the importance of these paintings for Paula’s artistic development.¹⁶ The first painting, Girl’s head in front of a window (see endnote 15), is set into words by Darrieussecq as follows:

1902. Une jeune fille devant une fenêtre. Le visage est encadré de deux vases. Derrière, des arbres, et toujours la colline en triangle. Le visage est penché, le regard ailleurs, mélancolique et pensif. (77)

The description is brief, almost telegraphic, with very few adjectives, two of which are used to describe ‘le regard’ — ‘mélancolique et pensif’ — underlining the importance assigned to emotions by both Modersohn-Becker and Darrieussecq. We get a sense of the composition, but there is no detail about the young girl or the landscape.¹⁷ The sentences are short, two of them with no main verbs, reducing the description to the bare minimum, as if talking about a sketch rather than a finished painting. The unadorned language echoes Modersohn-Becker’s gradual abandonment of perspective (Être ici, 78), to reach an almost two-dimensional arrangement. Darrieussecq distils textual language in the same way Modersohn-Becker distils pictorial language to capture the very essence of her subjects.

A similar reflection of the visual in the textual can be observed in Tamara, but to a much more cinematic effect. One of the most richly cinematic sections starts on page 81, with de Rosnay’s words: ‘Laisse-moi te suivre, le temps d’une nuit, Tamara. Laisse-moi devenir ton ombre’. The section (from page 81 to page 101) covers the various stages of a typical night out: from de Lempicka’s sartorial choices to her return home, going through the various Parisian cafés, and the search for sexual partners on the quays of the Seine. The section is framed as a car journey, echoing one of de Lempicka’s most famous paintings — the 1929 Self-portrait (Tamara in a green Bugatti) — reproduced on page 146 and on the cover, and considered to be a representation of the strong, free, and emancipated woman of the 1920s, as embodied by de Lempicka herself. While reading the section, we come to understand that the meetings described cannot all have happened in one night (with Gertrude Stein, Natalie Clifford Barney, in addition to many other artists at Le Dôme or La Rotonde). Nonetheless, the contraction of time and space effected by the image of the car journey echoes de Lempicka’s speed of creation, the voracity with which she wanted to take over the art world, and the desire marking her paintings. The writer takes over the role of camerawoman — ‘Ne te retourne pas, Tamara. Je suis juste derrière toi’ (88) — helping the reader follow de Lempicka’s frantic rhythm. The writing is rich in figures of speech — ‘La nuit se déroule comme un long ruban soyeux devant toi. C’est l’heure que tu préfères. Une heure bleutée riche de promesses’ (88; author’s italics) — mirroring the carefully studied elegance and sophistication of many of de Lempicka’s portraits (see for example the portraits of the Boucard family [158–159]). Without overcharging the text, de Rosnay uses literary tools, especially sequences of adverbs and attributive constructions (‘tu sirotes langoureusement ton champagne, l’œil toujours contemplatif et énigmatique’ (94); ‘[l]a nuit est encore jeune, frémissante de tant de possibilités’ (98); ‘une crue centennale glutonne’ (98)¹⁸; author’s italics) to allude to the atmosphere of the 1920s, rich in artifice, pleasure, and even excess. The same atmosphere seeps into de Lempicka’s paintings, via the attention to and refinement of the fabrics, the (almost unnatural) beauty of the subjects, and the unveiled play between suggestion and sexual desire.

These three characteristics — refinement, beauty, and sensuality — can easily be attributed to de Lempicka herself, especially since her public image was as carefully crafted as her works: ‘Tu peaufines ton maquillage comme tu peaufines tes tableaux’ (Tamara, 87). The text refers to this identity crafting in multiple places (for example pp. 31, 95, 147, 180) not in a disparaging manner, but rather reflexively, showing how gender, age, nationality, and appearance can be manipulated to contribute to the construction of the desired identity. Nonetheless, these manipulations can have negative consequences, which the text does not hide (‘tu lui [à Victor Manuel Contreras] avoues tes erreurs d’antan: trop de sorties, qui ont saboté ta réputation d’artiste’ [207]). The text opens with de Lempicka’s self-fashioning with regards to her date and place of birth (11). Even her biographers find it difficult to pin down these details: ‘Ce serait plutôt, selon tes biographes, entre 1895 et 1898’ (11). When deemed necessary, de Lempicka (re)creates her life story, becoming almost a fictional character; as such, any biographical endeavour would be partly ‘une aventure littéraire’. Some of these deliberate confusions can be linked to a desire to appear younger, to be associated with more glamorous locations, or to avoid admitting being pregnant before marriage: ‘Là encore tu génères un flou artistique savant autour de la date et du lieu de ton mariage, ainsi que de la date et du lieu de la naissance de ta fille’ (31). While critics can detect a certain vanity in these attempts at self-fashioning, de Rosnay characterizes them as a ‘flou artistique savant’, focusing on the effective strategies employed by de Lempicka to succeed in the Parisian art world of the 1920s: in today’s world, we would consider her a marketing expert! More significantly, these processes of self-fashioning also allow us to glean de Lempicka’s identity quests, as a woman and as an artist: ‘[D]ans cette fièvre d’amours féminines, tu pousses même le vice jusqu’à signer tes tableaux avec l’orthographe masculine du patronyme polonais de ton mari: “de Lempitzky”’ (95). Adopting, albeit briefly, the masculine spelling of the signature, raises questions about the possibility of being a woman artist. In addition, she was a wife and mother, known for her bisexual escapades, all marginalizing elements when it comes to asserting oneself as an artist. As such, it does not come as a surprise that de Lempicka wanted to be in control of her biography. Settling for the feminine version of the signature (which appears on most of her works) is also a way of straddling (if not overcoming) the woman/artist or procreator/creator binaries.

Paula Modersohn-Becker was also troubled by these self-identificatory questions, which are subsequently reflected in Darrieussecq’s questioning:

Mais elle surtout, comment l’appeler? Modersohn-Becker, de son nom de future épouse, du nom des catalogues consacrés à son œuvre? Becker-Modersohn, comme à son musée de Brême? Becker, de son nom de jeune fille, de son nom de vierge qui est le nom de son père? (41–42, italics in original)

The link to the patronymic (be it the father’s or the husband’s) is inescapable, complicating women’s entry and growth in the art world, which seem always to be linked to a man. Darrieussecq finds a double solution to this conundrum: in the text, she calls the artist Paula, in a gesture of friendship, wanting to honour her memory (Darrieussecq and Zambreno 2017; see also note 11) and further cementing an artistic genealogy between women. In the subtitle, the husband’s name is reduced to ‘M.’, to highlight the freedom craved and (partly) achieved by the artist. However, for Paula herself, a solution was never truly reached, as highlighted by a quotation from her diaries: ‘“Une moitié de moi est toujours Paula Becker, et l’autre moitié y joue”’ (84). The self is unstable, divided between its own wishes and those of others. The choice of words — ‘y joue’ — makes us think of a play, Paula becoming a (fictional) character in her own life. In the section immediately following this quotation, Darrieussecq mentions a self-portrait signed at the bottom with large, red capital letters: PAULA MODERSOHN (84).¹⁹ The size, colour, and placement of the large signature suggest that Paula was trying too hard to become something that was incompatible with her artistic aspirations. Darrieussecq’s juxtaposition of the diary entry with the reference to this self-portrait emphasizes the (unsurmountable) struggles raised by processes of naming and signing in the case of women artists.

These struggles are only partly resolved by Paula’s move to Paris and her separation from her husband, which removed the few reference points she had for identification — the artists’ colony in Worpswede and her family life; thus, the identity quest is resumed:

‘Je ne suis plus Modersohn et ne je suis plus Paula Becker non plus.

Je suis

Moi,

Et j’espère devenir Moi de plus en plus’. (102; formatting in original)

Sa signature est en forme de question: ‘Votre Paula - - - ?’ (111; formatting in original, referring to the signature in a letter to Rilke)

The capitalization of the ‘Moi’ reflects Paula’s desire to assert herself as an individual and a creator, whose boundaries are no longer marked by others. There is a very mature and acute awareness that this process is a continuous work-in-progress (‘devenir Moi de plus en plus’) that might not succeed (‘j’espère’ rather than the more assertive ‘je vais’). The process starts with self-questioning, which is graphically marked by Paula, in her letter to Rilke, by an ellipsis and a question mark. The ellipsis replaces the surname(s), highlighting yet again the tensions raised by masculine/feminine dichotomies and their lasting impact on women’s identities. The question mark complicates the signature even further: is it questioning the (lack of) surnames or the name as well? Does becoming ‘Moi de plus en plus’ mean relinquishing only the patriarchal ties (represented by the two patronyms) or the entire identity built so far (represented by the given name)?

Paula’s untimely death, eighteen days after giving birth, meant that she was unable to provide a definitive answer to this question, hovering between her two incompatible identities: woman (with the variations of mother and wife) and artist. This state of being in flux is marked on one of her most famous and recognizable paintings, Self-portrait on the sixth wedding anniversary (1906).²⁰ In the bottom right corner of the painting, the inscription reads ‘J’ai peint ceci à l’âge de trente ans, à l’occasion de mon sixième anniversaire de mariage, P.B.’ (Être ici, 121; translated from German). Firstly, the dates do not match, as in 1906 Paula would have celebrated her fifth wedding anniversary.²¹ More importantly, the signature (P.B.) carries no mark of her married name, despite the inscription clearly mentioning a wedding anniversary. This ironic play with dates and names suggests that Paula had to live with the woman/artist duality without being able to overcome it. While such ‘in-betweenness’ can be productive, Paula’s death at thirty-one years old prevented her from exploring its full creative potential. The above-mentioned onomastic challenges faced by both Modersohn-Becker and de Lempicka further highlight the extreme difficulties of carving out a space in (art) history as a woman artist, difficulties exacerbated by having very few known artistic and creative foremothers.

Female Genealogies of Creation

Given the complex identity quests undertaken by both artists, it is important to turn towards their networks of support, which were often feminine, and examine how, under the pens of Darrieussecq and de Rosnay, they can help us set the basis for new and lasting female genealogies of creation. I would argue that it is essential for women to lift each other up if we are to avoid the fall into oblivion that has too often been our lot. Early in Être ici, we see Paula accompanied by her best friend, the sculptor Clara Westhoff, Rilke’s future wife. Part I is very much under the sign of their friendship and shared adventures. After their respective marriages (in the second half of Part II) and Clara’s pregnancy, the sculptor disappears from the text; she is spoken about in letters or mentioned in quotations from Paula’s diary, but gradually fades from the main narrative: ‘Clara Westhoff, désormais Clara Rilke est interrompue’ (Être ici, 68). The change in name is significant, since it marks Clara’s erasure: ‘She was very promising — she seemed more powerful than Paula. She did not resist marriage. Marriage killed her’ (Darrieussecq and Zambreno 2017). Once she becomes a wife and mother, ‘she’s a ghost in [the] text, she flutters in the margins’ (Darrieussecq and Zambreno 2017). As such, the reader cannot help but wonder if Clara’s and Paula’s lives, both personal and professional, would have been different had they been able to support each other through the trials and tribulations of motherhood and married life. Regrettably, they had no model of a female genealogy of creation they could follow in their own developments. Fortunately, Paula’s links with women in her family were more fruitful, and their support should not be underestimated, whether it was financial, emotional, or professional. For example, in February 1905, while on the train to Paris, she wrote to her sister Herma, who worked as a governess in the French capital. When they meet, ‘un grand amour sororal, un amour particulier qui se lit dans les leurs lettres, va s’épanouir’ (Être ici, 90–91). This deep emotional connection also has a practical side, since during Paula’s last stay in Paris in 1906, she asks Herma ‘de lui [à Otto] écrire pour lui demander de l’argent … Et à son autre sœur Milly, soixante francs pour payer les modèles’ (105). The financial support provided by family and friends (who were often women patrons) should not be undervalued: having sold very little during her life, Paula needed a steady source of income to be able to finance her Parisian training and work.

This reliance on women in the family is even more prominent in de Lempicka’s case, as underlined by her own great-granddaughter:

Elle me fait remarquer qu’elle descend d’une lignée de femmes, entourée par des femmes […] il n’y a pas d’hommes dans cette histoire familiale, et que c’est certainement à cause de toi. (Tamara, 212)

A female genealogy (be it familial or creative) does not require the exclusion of men, but rather the act of women lifting and supporting other women to carve out a stable place for them in history, to avoid the sliding in and out of collective memory which is too often the fate of women artists. This support is present throughout de Lempicka’s life and career: from her grandmother taking her to Italy and hiring a drawing teacher to tutor her when she was twelve (15), to her sister encouraging her to train as a painter (65) or looking after her daughter (121), to the latter joining de Lempicka in Mexico to look after her in old age (209). The need for backing from outside the family is underlined by the existence of women’s salons, such as that of Natalie Clifford Barney (94–95): ‘Tu saisis l’importance de rentrer dans le cercle exclusif des femmes qui règnent sur le Montparnasse artistique’ (90). In addition, the support offered by women models and partners (for example, Ira Perrot [64–65], la duchesse de La Salle [122–123], Rafaela [150–151], Suzy Solidor [179]) contributed to de Lempicka’s success and her entry into various artistic and social circles of the time. She, in turn, carved out a place for them in posterity through the portraits she painted of them, which are still in circulation. The process of strengthening women’s place in history is now continued by de Rosnay and her daughter through their work on Tamara. This repetition of the act of setting women into posterity should not be seen as redundant, but rather as an unrelenting struggle that ‘might yield something that lasts’ (Micir 2019, 139). It becomes even more relevant if we consider that women’s exclusion from the arts was enacted through incessant repetition of the same socially constructed sexist norms (Micir 2019, 131). As such, fighting against this relegation to the peripheries needs similar levels of repetition. It is through the retelling of women’s stories that we can expand current knowledge and diversify our ways of knowing, undoing the grip stereotypes and acquired norms have upon societal frameworks.

Darrieussecq’s and de Rosnay’s biographical projects speak directly to this fight, since ‘the act of stepping away from the biographical is the privilege of those who are already remembered, whose lives are already imprinted upon history’ (Micir 2019, 140). Both Être ici and Tamara can be seen to undertake a corrective act, imprinting upon history the life and work of women who should not have slipped out of remembrance or who should not only be remembered for their glamourous and unconventional lifestyles, as is often the case with Tamara de Lempicka. We are invited to look again and see differently. However, we are not the only ones who are supposed to see differently. Within the confines of both texts, other historical personalities, contemporaries of the two artists, become key characters: for example, Rilke and Otto in Être ici, or the members of the Parisian avant-garde in the 1920s in Tamara (i.e., Man Ray, Jean Cocteau, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti to name only a few). In the narratives we are reading, these contemporaries are compelled (by the narrators) to look at Paula and Tamara again, acknowledging their presence and influence. This is a retrospective way of seeing differently, which does not just correct the past but also challenges patriarchal epistemologies, since what we know now is very much influenced by what was deemed worthy of recording in the past, and women’s stories did not often pass muster. Indeed, women were very rarely able effectively to influence such recording and passing on of knowledge, as shown by Modersohn-Becker’s absence from Rilke’s volume on the Worpswede artists’ colony (Être ici, 30–31)²² or by the focus on de Lempicka’s private life in a book published by Franco Maria Ricci in 1977 (Tamara, 207–208).

In addition to facilitating these different ways of seeing through their texts, both Darrieussecq and de Rosnay weave creative female genealogies across times and across the arts. For example, in Être ici there are references to Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (68). While this is a text that speaks directly to the choices Modersohn-Becker and Clara Westhoff had to make as women artists, it is also a text for which Darrieussecq provided a new French translation, published in 2016 (the same year as Être ici).²³ Moreover, there are references to Darrieussecq’s 2002 text, Le Bébé, linking Modersohn-Becker’s depictions of motherhood²⁴ to the author’s search for a new language ‘[pour] lutter contre les clichés, contre le “qu’est-ce qu’une mère”’ (Être ici, 113).²⁵ Even more personally for Darrieussecq, Paula’s short life is linked to another, even shorter life: ‘Et je sais que je parle pour un autre mort, mais il viendra, les morts reviennent, j’écrirai sa courte vie, c’était mon frère, et il s’appelait Jean, il a vécu deux jours, mais il n’est pas encore temps’ (137). Therefore, the text facilitates the weaving of both creative and familial genealogies. This type of weaving is present in Tamara too, as reflected by the links to de Rosnay’s Russian great-grandmother, to Daphné du Maurier (on whom de Rosnay wrote a highly acclaimed biography published in 2015),²⁶ or to Gaëtan de Rosnay, the author’s painter grandfather (72–73). Working on Tamara as a mother-daughter duo further cements these artistic and familial genealogies. The richer this tapestry of women creators and the stronger the links between them, the harder it will be to rip through its seams and marginalize women or cast them into oblivion. By crossing literary and art histories, Darrieussecq and de Rosnay ensure that future suppression of women’s creativity will be much more difficult to enact.

Conclusion

This article started with Crispin’s bleak observation that not much had changed between 1983 (when Russ examined the different mechanisms used to marginalize women’s writing) and 2018 (when Crispin wrote the ‘Foreword’ to the 2018 edition of Russ’s text); however, I would propose a more optimistic outlook, bolstered by what female genealogies of creation can achieve. Both Darrieussecq and de Rosnay used their notoriety to lift other women, creating artistic families that can resist the vagaries of time and patriarchal exclusion. Having these rich tapestries of women easily accessible (bringing together artists, writers, patrons, models, family members) means we no longer have constantly to reinvent our foremothers; we can continue weaving our own stories, adding to the tapestry and keeping it alive and vibrant. Writing about female genealogies of creation in a Festschrift dedicated to Dr Adalgisa Giorgio was very much intentional, since throughout her career Dr Giorgio has constantly lifted other women, giving us the tools, love, and care to write our own stories.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sandra Daroczi

Sandra Daroczi is a Lecturer in French Studies at the University of Bath, having carried out her doctoral research at the University of Exeter with a project analysing the reception of fictional works by contemporary French women writers. She guest coedited a special issue of L’Esprit Créateur (2018) and has an article on depictions of food in Marie Darrieussecq’s work in a special issue of the Journal of Romance Studies. She has also contributed to edited collections, with chapters on Darrieussecq, Julia Kristeva, and the Mouvement de Libération des Femmes. She is currently working on a monograph examining the reading dialogues put forward by Monique Wittig’s fiction.

Notes

1. The Artemisia exhibition ran at the National Gallery in London from 3 October 2020 to 24 January 2021 (https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/exhibitions/past/artemisia); the Paula Rego retrospective was scheduled at Tate Britain from 7 July to 24 October 2021 (https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/paula-rego).

2. Hereafter referred to as Être ici and Tamara, respectively, followed by page numbers in brackets.

3. For example, her 2013 novel Il faut beaucoup aimer les hommes was awarded both the Prix Médicis and the Prix des Prix.

4. http://2019.beyondwordslitfest.co.uk/bios/tatiana-de-rosnay/

5. With the very notable exception of Diana Holmes (2018, 178–206).

6. For more on the artistic possibilities offered to women in Paris, at the turn of the twentieth century, see Susanne Böhmisch (2021).

7. This is an adaptation of Helena Reckitt’s observation about second-wave feminists who ‘drew sustenance from seeing, and being seen, together’ (2019, 8).

8. Dr Elizabeth Benjamin provided an original reading of these major life events through the lens of trauma theories, in a paper presented at the 2021 Society for French Studies Annual Conference (organized online).

9. For more on the various types of discours employed by Darrieussecq in her fiction, see Simon Kemp (2008).

10. For example, Darrieussecq mentions her trips to Bremen and Worpswede, following the protagonists’ (physical) footsteps (137).

11. Parker and Pollock note that women artists are often ‘casually patronized […] by the use of the Christian name alone’ (2013, 28). However, in the case of the two women artists studied here, the use of their first name (by another woman artist) is a way of establishing an artistic and emotional connection across time.

12. This quotation appears in a section where de Rosnay talks about de Lempicka’s drug consumption; as such, it could also be read as an answer to a potential reproach de Lempicka addresses to the author for sharing the more unpleasant elements of her biography.

13. See the first two minutes and a half of the interview available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wnx89riawM&ab_channel=VL.

14. Darrieussecq was one of the advisers to the first Paula Modersohn-Becker retrospective organized in France (from 8 April to 21 August 2016 at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris), with contributions to the exhibition and catalogue (see more at https://www.mam.paris.fr/en/expositions/exhibitions-paula-modersohn-becker).

15. The two portraits are Girl’s head in front of a window (https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/girl-s-head-in-front-of-a-window-paula-modersohn-becker/wwG2BHU-r9nWVQ?hl=en) and Elsbeth in the Brünjes Garden. Unfortunately, no high-quality reproduction of the latter was found freely available to the public. As such, the analysis will focus on the former.

16. As mentioned in the first part, Darrieussecq selects significant events to open and close the five parts of Être ici.

17. In the subsequent paragraph (only two paragraphs are dedicated to this painting), we learn of the dominant colour, as ‘la robe, les vases, les yeux, tirent un gris sombre’ from the slate on which the portrait was painted. The slate also affected the structural integrity of the portrait, since it has a crack, and it cannot be moved (77).

18. In reference to the 1910 Great Flood of Paris.

19. The self-portrait referenced is most probably Self-portrait in front of flowering trees (1902); a good reproduction is available at https://www.artandobject.com/slideshows/history-paula-modersohn-becker-10-paintings.

20. For a high-quality reproduction, see https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/self-portrait-on-the-6th-wedding-anniversary/vwGzxtfrdiuFDA?hl=en-GB.

21. For a discussion around the depiction of Paula’s pregnancy see Être ici (121–122) and Sandra Daroczi (2020, 315–316).

22. See also Darrieussecq and Zambreno (2017) for the absence of Paula’s name in Rilke’s Requiem for a Friend, dedicated to her; and Être ici (144, note 1) for the way Rilke distanced himself from Paula in a 1924 interview.

23. For a review of both works, see Françoise Le Corre (2016).

24. For more on this, see Rosemary Betterton (1996).

25. Another reference to Le Bébé appears on page 141 of Être ici.

26. For both links see the first part of this article; for the link to Daphné du Maurier see also the introduction.