A través del retrato, las artistas plásticas Romaine Brooks y Tamara de Lempicka utilizaron la moda para construir una nueva narrativa de la mujer moderna, que subvertía el discurso heteronormativo de género de principios del siglo XX. Sus propuestas estéticas, en dónde combinaban diestramente signos masculinos y femeninos, fueron parteaguas en mostrar representaciones de la mujer que no la encasillaban, sino al contrario, demostraban una diversidad de expresión sexual y de género que era imposible de categorizar. Mediante un análisis de la performatividad, apoyado en la teoría de género, revelamos cómo las artistas utilizan la masculinidad y los elementos andróginos para la creación de una identidad femenina.
The case of Romaine Brooks (1874-1970) illustrates the loss of autonomy and self-definition that women may experience as a result of not having a claim to citizenship in their own right. Drawing on original research, the chapter recounts how Brooks unwillingly became a mother, but rejected that identity, and lost her American citizenship by marrying a British man. Like Vivien, Brooks lived transnationally: she was born in Rome to American parents, educated primarily in Europe, and lived most of her adult life in Italy and France, with occasional visits to the US. Like Vivien, she was independently wealthy, and this status afforded her some privilege, but it could not shield her entirely from being defined by others in important areas of her life.
Although a coeval of Romaine Brooks, Natalie Barney (1876-1972) managed to steer a happier middle course in which she openly embraced a lesbian identity while avoiding (for the most part) questions of national belonging. The celebrated hostess of an international salon in interwar Paris, Barney retained more autonomy by remaining unmarried and nationally unattached. She flirted with marriage proposals, others claimed she was married, and she indeed once signed a marriage contract with another woman (though a legally unenforcable one), but she remained unattached, a status reflected in her transnational situation as an American citizen living as a denizen of Paris.
Pour la douce France is the title of a painting by Romaine Brooks, an American artist who lived in France during World War I, who became a close friend of D’Annunzio at the times of La Capponcina. The newspaper Le Figaro published a picture of the painting in its May 5, 1915 issue together with several poetical texts of D’Annunzio. These materials were then included into an elegant folder, put on sale the same year in order to raise funding for the Red Cross. However, that volume remained a project: the publication was supposed to bring together his other texts and lectures on war to be subsequently edited and published by the librarian and bibliophile Édouard Champion. The project eventually produced only some drafts, which are now preserved in a private collection in Switzerland.
La performatividad de lo masculino en la construcción de una identidad femenina: Los retratos de Romaine Brooks y Tamara de Lempicka