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| My Cathedral, Faun Roberts, Oil on panel, 1925 |
Faun Roberts braved the treacherous early twentieth century seas to redefine herself both as an artist and as a woman in a radically laicized France. 1902 Paris was still the Paris of La Belle Époque, a vibrant city where a 31 year old Marcel Proust was translating John Ruskin's The Bible of Amiens and Rainer Maria Rilke was under-employed as an amanuensis for Auguste Rodin. Roberts soon enrolled at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and studied with, among others Jacques-Émile Blanche and Walter Richard Sickert. (Among her fellow students were Hans Hoffmann and fellow American expatriate Dennis Strairchild).
An aspect of early 20th century modernism that has been unjustly neglected is the profound influence of what was known at the time as "littérature fessée" or "flagellation literature." Newly published books like George H. Stock's The Magnetism of the Rod and Jean de Villiot's La Femme et son Maître were widely read in artistic circles and young Faun Roberts was no exception in her avid (and dare I say puerile) interest.
Books like these, published in a stridently secularized Paris gave visual artists the "permission" and the legitimate opportunity to explore more explicitly a new vocabulary of erotic imagery. What is clear however is that long before her male counterparts expressed their libidinous ideas in paintings and prints, Faun Roberts did so in a manner that was both shockingly frank and brazenly autobiographical.
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| War Finds Peace at Last, Faun Roberts, Oil on canvas, 1924 |
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