ABSTRACT
Claude Cahun, rediscovered posthumously after four decades of total obscurity, burst onto the contemporary scene as a prescient harbinger of postmodernism. In 1995, the Musée d’art Moderne de la Ville de Paris organized an exhibition showcasing hundreds of Cahun’s theatrical “self-portraits.” The contemporary relevance of these photographs stunned audiences in Europe and the U.S. An exhibition catalogue essay by the French critic Elisabeth Lebovici adroitly mobilized Judith Butler’s then newly published writings about the relationship between gender and drag to illuminate the photographs, which pictured Cahun posing in various guises.1 The images appeared to propose gender as a socially codified masquerade performance. So easily did this body of work align with the feminist, queer, and identity politics agendas of the 1990s that it attracted international attention.
