CYTHEREA OF THE CARREFOUR VAVIN

I must confess that despite my unqualified enthusiasm for the idea of Faun Roberts - the thoroughly delectable notion that as early as the nineteen twenties there was a strong, revolutionary female artist working confidently and courageously within the School of Paris - sometimes certain individual works are simply too outrageous, too provocative and downright too smutty, even for me. I have to constantly remind myself that Roberts was a woman who was not content to merely wallow under the shadow of Picasso and Matisse but stubbornly insisted on operating on a parallel and equal level with them.

This ineluctable fact may go a long way in explaining the highly charged and contentious series of small works with the intoxicating title, Onanisme Profonde.

Troisième Onanisme Profonde, Oil on canvas, Faun Roberts 1924

These are twelve paintings corresponding to the twelve apostles, each graphically depicting a method of self-gratification. The image above represents a more or less conventional approach toward the task while the other eleven are of increasing ingenuity and include, unsurprisingly, elements of still-life as well.

These pictures were meant to shock and they did.

Deuxième Onanisme Profonde, Oil on canvas, Faun Roberts 1924

I believe what Roberts meant to say with these works was that capturing the concupiscent in paint was not the exclusive bailiwick of her male contemporaries. The monopoly of the male gaze was as yet uncontested and an unspoken, painterly Droit du seigneur was suffered by even the most accomplished women of the day.

Faun Roberts was a pioneer, a brave baptizing broad who dared to bare her vagina dentata at the Montparnasse boys club and managed to produce some of the most disturbing modernist images of the early twentieth century.

We owe her a tremendous debt.