Amanda Catharine

Art Attack! Read A F*cking Book: ‘The Last Nude’

Art Attack Month:

0. 1/28/2012 – Art Attack Call for Submissions, by Riese
1. 2/1/2012 – Art Attack Gallery: 100 Queer Woman Artists In Your Face, by The Team
2. 2/3/2012 – Judy Chicago, by Lindsay
3. 2/7/2012 – Gran Fury, by Rachel
4. 2/7/2012 – Diane Arbus, by MJ
5. 2/8/2012 – Laurel Nakadate, by Lemon
6. 2/9/2012 – 10 Websites For Looking At Pictures All Day, by Riese
7. 2/10/2012 – LTTR, by Jessica G.
8. 2/13/2012 – Hide/Seek, by Danielle
9. 2/15/2012 – Spotlight: Simone Meltesen, by Laneia
10. 2/15/2012 – Ivana, by Crystal
11. 2/15/2012 – Gluck, by Jennifer Thompson
12. 2/16/2012 – Jean-Michel Basquiat, by Gabrielle
13. 2/20/2012 – Yoko Ono, by Carmen
14. 2/20/2012 – Zanele Muholi, by Jamie
15. 2/20/2012 – The Malaya Project, by Whitney
16. 2/21/2012 – Feminist Fan Tees, by Ani Iti
17. 2/22/2012 – 12 Great Movies About Art, by Riese
18. 2/22/2012 – Kara Walker, by Liz
19. 2/22/2012 – Dese’Rae L. Stage, by Laneia
20. 2/22/2012 – Maya Deren, by Celia David
21. 2/22/2012 – Spotlight: Bex Freund, by Rachel
22. 2/24/2012 – All the Cunning Stunts, by Krista Burton
23. 2/26/2012 – An Introductory Guide to Comics for Ladygays, by Ash
24. 2/27/2012 – Jenny Holzer, by Kolleen
25. 2/27/2012 – Tamara de Lempicka by Amanda Catharine
25. 2/27/2012 – 10 Contemporary Lesbian Photographers You Should Know About, by Lemon/Carrie/Riese
26. 2/27/2012 – Read a F*cking Book: ‘The Last Nude,’ by Amanda Catharine

How do you write a novel about a real person? How do you decide what to keep or dismiss, embellish or invent? The challenge is compounded when there are still people alive to remember the subject — when those who were there, or whose parents were there, are in a position to maintain the official story or offer their own inevitable fictions? After all, unlike the biographer, the novelist doesn’t need to parse the legend created by her subject. In fact, she’s at liberty to pick and choose the most interesting, titillating, or salacious aspects and expand on them at will, all under the safe umbrella of fiction. Ellis Avery approaches such a legend in her book The Last Nude, which centers on the painter Tamara de Lempicka, perhaps best known for iconic, frequently reproduced paintings: “Auto Portrait” and “La Belle Rafaela.” (Read Art Attack!: Tamara de Lempicka Didn’t Care Who Knew)

I’m always hesitant to read historical fiction about real people because, while I love the genre, I can’t help but wonder if what I’m reading is true. I’m distracted by the intersection of fact and fiction and, if I’m perfectly honest, I usually wind up reading a biography after the novel. Avery elegantly avoids this problem – for I suspect there are a lot of would-be detectives like me! – by structuring her narrative in two parts. The first, comprising the bulk of the book, recounts the events of just under a year in the life of Rafaela, the model for de Lempicka’s famous painting. In giving Rafaela a surname, Fano, and a voice, Avery brings to life the woman who has so long be known only by a face on a canvas that has enthralled, seduced; been studied and psychoanalyzed. Rafaela’s narration is vibrant and believable as a seventeen-year-old American making her way in Paris without, of course, the permission of her parents. Avery strikes the right balance between youthful naïveté and hardened woman of the world, which surviving in Paris has made her. Rafaela entertains dreams of becoming a designer in between entertaining the men whose money and gifts pay for her apartment until her association with de Lempicka affords her a paycheck and independence.

Throughout Rafaela’s portion we meet several of the Parisian literati of the time, including Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier, who cameo as Rafaela’s helpful lesbian godmothers. The minor characters flit around Rafaela and Tamara in varying degrees of complexity, and some prior knowledge of the characters – Romaine Brooks, Natalie Barney, etc. – is helpful, but not necessary. They stand alone as characters, but those interested in early 20th century LGBT culture will appreciate seeing them brought to life.

Rafaela’s idea of romance, tarnished by a string of boyfriends who certainly weren’t there for love, is rekindled when she meets a beautifully appointed woman perched on a car at the Bois de Boulogne. The woman is Tamara de Lempicka, and for this first part of the book, we see Tamara through Rafaela’s eyes, colored as they are by admiration, seduction, and a tragic inability to see Tamara’s betrayal until it blindsides her. Tamara is at first an apparition of elegance and aristocratic manner, but as the story progresses, the reader readily perceives cracks in the façade: where Rafaela falls in love with Tamara, it’s apparent from the first page that Tamara is more in love with the idea of Rafaela than she could ever be with the girl herself. Nevertheless, Tamara takes Rafaela home to her apartment to model, and ultimately to her bed. Their love affair is masterfully woven with the story of Tamara’s painting, the sweetness and passion of it all rendered with a literary echo of the sensual brushstrokes and vibrant color that characterizes the real “Belle Rafaela.”

There’s likely a temptation to fictionalize real people into characters who bear but a passing resemblance to their models so as to tell a better story, to make them more saintly or more horrific according to the plot. Tamara de Lempicka, to be sure, led a life that didn’t require much embellishment to seduce and enthrall the reader. If anything, Avery needed to humanize her, to dissociate her however minutely from the wealth, the jet-setting, the marriages, the fabulous parties and scandalous affairs, to turn her into a person worth caring about – which is not the same thing as caring about or respecting her artwork. Rafaela – who is wholly fictional, since not much is known about the model – is drawn to Tamara first by her accoutrements, before she knows anything about her: by her fancy car, her exclusive address, exotic profession, even the crispness of her gloves.

The last sixty pages are narrated in Tamara’s voice as an old woman. The device makes for a poetic but rushed ending as Avery must use Tamara to make up the time between the end of Rafaela’s story and Tamara’s old age. Avery is a writer of great subtlety, and it is particularly evident in the last few pages as Tamara considers the Rafaela she first painted and the ones she has worked on since, using artwork, appropriately, as a lens to examine aging. But it’s a one-sided and ultimately unsatisfying ending that is full of lovely phrases but unfulfilling in terms of the plot.

The Last Nude, like Avery’s first novel, The Teahouse Fire, is a deliciously ambiguous novel in its assessment of the characters, appropriate for a book that deals with real people who can’t be neatly pigeonholed for an ending. Rafaela may be the one betrayed, but she’s far from an innocent angel, and while Tamara is ruthless in her pursuit of art, money, and patronage, she’s ultimately not an unconscionable manipulator. It’s a story about the confluence of love and art, of sensual romance and pure eroticism, but also about the realities of life, particularly one lived at a time when one’s opportunities were limited by gender, money, and language – not so different, then, from our own.

And in the end, it’s a measured consideration of what kind of people might have provided the context in which to create art: the interpersonal relationships that foster the creativity behind it, the city that grounds it, the exchange of money and services that facilitate it, and what the people involved in its creation are obligated to sacrifice for its sake. The Last Nude provides a compellingly written backstory for a woman whose arresting, penetrating stare has captivated art aficionados for years. Ultimately, it’s still fiction peppered with appearances from well-known figures – but I rather like thinking of Rafaela as more than a footnote to the title of a painting.

Art Attack!: Tamara de Lempicka Didn’t Care Who Knew

Art Attack Month:

Some art below could be NSFW, so scroll with caution.

“Have you heard of Tamara de Lempicka? She was Art Deco, but didn’t do posters. Or maybe she did like, one. Have you heard of her?” E asked. E sat next to me in my first art history course, and she was obsessed with the 1920s. I hadn’t heard of Tamara de Lempicka, as it happened, but by the end of class I’d spent more time googling images with E than I had listening to the professor’s introduction. E was passionate about de Lempicka because she was an artist herself, and loved de Lempicka’s use of color. I would come to appreciate de Lempicka’s work as well, but would also wind up fascinated by her life. After all, how could you not be intrigued by a woman who proudly proclaimed, “I live life in the margins of society, and the rules of normal society don’t apply to those who live on the fringe”?

Tamara de Lempicka is something of a controversial figure in the art world. One of the paintings below, “Rafaela sur fond vert,” was featured in a fairly recent New York Times article about its sale, saying that the painting was “done in the artist’s best — some would say worst — hyper-realist style…” I would argue that she’s frequently overlooked in general historical surveys of Art Deco, even though her work continues to be well-known and well-liked. Biographies abound, because she lived a glittering life, and retrospectives are always accompanied by lavishly illustrated books with insightful critical essays, but in my experience, she’s not really taught in art history courses. She’s basically a footnote, if she’s mentioned at all, in the major textbooks. Her work is featured in permanent collections of museums and galleries worldwide, and in several of Madonna’s music videos, yet art historians don’t pay her much attention.

Perhaps that popularity is part of the problem. Tamara de Lempicka was a trained artist who created compelling, original, arresting works that are virtually immediately recognizable. She proves difficult to classify: traditionally called an Art Deco artist, she learned much from Cubism and challenged the limitations imposed on the life and art of a woman. She escaped war-torn Russia penniless, moved to France and rebuilt her fortune with her brush, raised a daughter, slept with her models and didn’t care who knew, threw fabulous parties, married into an enormous fortune and a title, and escaped World War II Paris for sunny California, before moving to Mexico where she lived out her final years. In a word, Tamara de Lempicka was pretty brassy, particularly for a lady who was born in 1898.

As a daughter of the aristocracy, de Lempicka had a taste for the high life, and painting was her way of making money. Did she compromise herself artistically in order to earn more francs? Perhaps. Might we have had the works that we do find so compelling today if she hadn’t managed to secure lucrative patronages? Maybe. Art historians are complicit in perpetuating the idea of the tortured artist, starving in an attic in Paris, getting by on the generosity of friends to buy materials to create Art. It’s a seductive image, and there’s more than a little truth to it, but it’s ultimately a misleading paradigm if it is the only valid lifestyle for producing art: there are lots of artists who make interesting things, and are also willing – eager, even – to work for money as well as aesthetic satisfaction. Commissions pay the bills so artists can create Art. Even Leonardo painted portraits of his patrons’ wives. But I think it would be fair to say that there is less latitude and acceptance of an artist who sought out wealthy supporters when the artist in question is a) not Leonardo and b) a woman who goes on to marry one of her wealthiest patrons.

autoportrait (1925)

I love her work. Too often, I think she’s reduced to biography when she does merit sincere critique. I really like her manipulation of space within the work, particularly in works like this one, “Autoportrait,” created as a cover illustration for the German magazine Die Dame in 1925.

Forcing the subject so far into the foreground allows de Lempicka to emphasize the power of her Bugatti, to make the car (the “auto” of her play-on-words title; in French, “autoportrait” means “self-portrait”) just as important a figure as her self-portrait. The work is also significant for its rendering of a woman, by a woman, as a contemporary, independent figure who’s not only challenging the male gaze, but asserting herself and pushing forward. Only her eyes look out at the viewer; her face itself is oriented straight ahead. This is a woman unafraid to blaze her own trail.

“Unafraid” is certainly a good word to describe Tamara de Lempicka, who was a thoroughly modern woman eager to manage her own affairs. Her love affairs were plentiful, and she counted wealthy, titled patrons (one of whom, Baron Raoul Kuffner, would become her second husband), models, and friends among her lovers. Her romances were frequently public, given that they were often carried on with the well-known figures, male and female, who also frequently sat for her paintings.

la belle rafaela (1927)

Rafaela sur fond vert (1927)

The model Rafaela, who sat for “La Belle Rafaela” (1927), has been rumored to have been one of those models-turned-lovers. De Lempicka revisited Rafaela in varying poses in several works, although little is known about Rafaela herself. “Rafaela sur fond vert” (1927) shares some similarities with the famous odalisque in “La Belle Rafaela” that are hallmarks of de Lempicka, like her attention to modeling, strong lines, and a fantastic sense of shadow and light, all rendered with an eye toward a modernizing, Cubist-inspired distortion that lifts her work out of realistic depictions and into a readily recognizable, stylized form.

What I love about looking at these two works side-by-side is being able to see two such different sides of Rafaela. In “Rafaela sur fond vert” Rafaela covers her breasts almost demurely, yet meets the eye of the viewer with a steady, heavy-lidded gaze. “La Belle Rafaela” is more overtly sexual, and yet here she is more vulnerable, displaying her body and hiding her face. It’s tempting to view them both as de Lempicka’s effort to capture her lover in two such intimate poses, but impossible to verify for certain. It’s precisely this tension, however — the tension between subject and painter, subject and viewer, between Rafaela’s powerful figures and the canvases that barely constrain her — that I find so fascinating about de Lempicka. I love that her poses recall classical tropes but reinvent them in a sleek, modern composition.

For further reading about Tamara de Lempicka, look for Laura Claridge’s 2000 biography, Tamara de Lempicka: A Life of Deco and Decadence. De Lempicka’s daughter Kizette de Lempicka-Foxhall wrote about her mother as well, in Passion by Design: The Art and Times of Tamara de Lempicka.

Feature image: Dormeuse (1932)