BOWIE HOLDS A MIRROR AND CLAUDE CAHUN LOOKS AT HIMSELF IN IT

Fluid gender identity, masquerade and poetry in the works of Claude Cahun and David Bowie

Abstract

Claude Cahun’s self-portraits of costumed photographs with mirrors and masks, her visual self-reenactment, and her writings that move on the borders of symbolism and surrealism – and also use the above motifs (mask, mirror, Narcissus) – bring gender identity into play which sometimes moves back and forth and sometimes shows itself as intermediate. Cahun’s work is sometimes classified as Dada but in her case, it is not her affiliation with the movement and style of writing that is considered her guiding principle but her fundamental personal and artistic attitude and gestures. The afterlife of her art deserves attention: it is an interesting pop cultural development that Claude Cahunt was also discovered by David Bowie several decades later, who then organized an exhibition of her works. This, of course, is no coincidence as Cahun’s work „meets” Bowie’s at many points, and within this is the figure of Ziggy Stardust, his alter ego from the early 1970s, and the songs linked to this figure – and versions derived from it.