Tamara de Lempicka(1898-1980) was born in Poland and was active as a painter in Paris. Her work mainly includes portraits in 1920-1930’s, and she became popular as a portraitist for high class society. Most of her work represented Art Deco, but her work did not get much attention as Art Deco was underestimated by many people in art history. On this note, I would like to shed a light on the image of women expressed by her work from, which mainly portrait Garconne. This so called group of women, Garconne, is deeply linked with social issues including masculinization of women’s clothing, increased social activities of women, birth encouragement policy of France.
In the beginning, Garconne was only refer to masculinized women by external appearance as short hair or wearing pants. However, after that, due to the immense popularity of Victor Margueritte’s novel “la Garconne”, the meaning of the term “Garconne” has developed its meaning from “changes in appearance” to “new type of woman” who emerged in the society. These women gave up homely and gentle feminine beauty with wearing full-flowing skirts and long hair, so they were seen as irreverent and fallen women, because they are against traditional virtue and style of women who are obedient to men and family.
The image of women which is expressed as Garconne in Lempicka’s work was contradictory to the virtue of women in traditional European society. Women expressed in Lempicka’s work clearly demonstrates the changing role of women as a member of society by their growing presents in the women force outside the role. After World War Ⅰ, the role of women changed from households to society members. Lempicka, in her work, which portrayed a mother who has an appearance of Garconne, depicts two images of women, who take care of home and who entered the workforce.
The images of women expressed in Lempicka’s nude painting shows active expression of their sexuality, which is contrary to the image of traditional women who is sexually passive. Two women portraits of Lempicka expose the identity of lesbian women. The eroticism between women sitters revealed raise a issue that the matter of the history of lesbian women, which has been forced to incorporate with feminism. Even though in art history heterosexual material itself has not been treated as major one until now, the subject of women heterosexual, which had been treated by feminism occasionally, referred only as a level of ‘gender,’ the political sex. However the eroticism between the women sitters of artworks of Lempicka play a role stimulating a reconsideration of the ‘sexuality’ of women heterosexual.