Tamara de Lempicka’s seductive and sobering look at the ‘Roaring 20s’

In some of her later still lifes, the painter Tamara de Lempicka signed her name on scraps of trompe l’oeil paper, the curled edges of which seemed to peel away from the painting’s surface Come down. A common trope in Dutch vanity scenes of the Golden Age, this convention at once demonstrates Lempicka’s affinity with the history of painting and serves as a reminder of the ease with which the artist represented his identity. The latest research shows that Lempicka was born in 1894 as Tamara Rosa Hurwitz-Gorska. She was repeatedly called Mr. Lempicki, Tama La de Lempicka and Baroness Cuffner, and continued to change as her career and social status changed. This adaptability first renders her womanhood anonymous and later, when she marries the baron, her status continues to rise. More than simply changing her name, her willingness to change herself to fit the times was crucial to Lempicka’s success and survival during periods of dramatic historical transition, particularly during the peak of Anne’s career in Paris in the 1920s.

Lempica’s personal life is at the forefront of renewed and burgeoning interest in her work, including a feature-length documentary (The True Story of Tamara De Lempicka and the Art of Survival), Broadway musical (Lempicka), and the artist’s first major museum retrospective in the United States, now opening at the de Young Museum in San Francisco and heading to Houston in the spring.

The exhibition opens with a photo of the artist himself, glamorous with dark lips, curly hair and tilted beret. Lempica’s biography provides plenty of fodder for conspiracy. After the 1917 revolution, she helped her first husband escape Russian imprisonment, fleeing St. Petersburg for Paris and later Hollywood, where she painted seductive images of male and female lovers.

Lempica studied painting in the studio of André Lott, and after an early exposure to Cubism and abstraction she developed clear lines and a sensual focus on nude figures. She declared herself an Art Deco painter, and the movement’s shimmering surfaces fit her personality and style. As a portrait painter, Lempicka employed a high-contrast technique that transformed her models into sculptural objects, or sculptures into paintings, as in the 1930 study for Bernini. The Rapture of Saint Teresa. Her work, with its cool tones, is ideal for reproduction and she often appears on the covers of German magazines this lady. Idol of Europe’s “New Woman” this lady Aimed at stylish, independent figures like Lempicka himself; the magazine was also recently briefly revived by art collector and publisher Christian Boros.

Why choose Lempica now? Recent documentaries suggest that the exhibition is part of an ongoing reckoning in the museum world over the limitations of the predominantly white, male art historical canon. Lempica offers a compelling heroine who portrays strong women who transcend the male gaze. Yet Lempicka also has a more concrete way of illuminating our current moment. In the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, before it was clear how long it would last and the extent to which it would exacerbate systemic injustices, there was a sense that the world might be entering another Roaring 20s, one that unleashed and unleashed period. Celebrate collectively. In a way, Lempicka’s work shows us what this might look like: towering skyscrapers, tight dresses, fast cars, free love.

Of course, the 1920s weren’t all that great for everyone, especially for Lempicka, who, despite her outward glamor and successful career, was struggling in a failed marriage and raising children. while not carrying a heavy burden. With the threat of fascism looming in Europe, she was labeled a career-killing “mother.” In a 1928 painting, she dresses her daughter Kizet in a flowing white communion dress, a disguise meant to hide her Jewish heritage, suggesting that Lempica was well aware that given the political climate, there was It is necessary to conceal one’s origins. In 1929, she sailed for the United States, arriving, she recounted, just as the stock market crashed, losing much of her fortune in the process.

The duality of the times is reflected in her paintings, in the angular shadows, in the way the body becomes a machine, with conical breasts and curls that resemble sculpted metal. Even her most sensual works have polished, impenetrable surfaces, as beautiful rafaela (1927), has no body hair or belly button. The cold figures on Lempicka’s canvases seem to embody lines from a poem by her lover Ira Perrot: “White, black, gray are their kingdom of stone/Their rule is the rule of hard minerals/Their souls are colder than cold stone/ Staring coldly into their opal eyes, the next twentysomething’s words of survival are filled with darkness.