DIMINISHED BY DENIAL

Few people recognize the inconvenient fact that shortly before she died the American expatriate artist Faun Roberts took communion at the small 13th century Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre church in Paris' 5th arrondissement. She had became rather close to the Catholic poet Paul Claudel, brother to the notorious Camille. One is tempted to speculate that Roberts' conversion was the result of a crosscurrent of Claudelian influence - Paul's conservatism and Camille's madness - but there is little evidence supporting this delicious speculation. It seems rather to have derived by a good old fashioned fear of death. 

The Penitent Magdalene, Sir Peter Lely, 1650

The late work of Faun Roberts is replete with exegetical references. The Gospel of Luke for example cites the women who traveled with Jesus from town to village who had been "cured of evil spirits and diseases." These alleged maladies have been understood as referring to the elevated female libido, something the ancients found particularly threatening. Roberts saw herself as a modern personification of the Penitent Magdalene and like Fra Bartolomeo, renounced her earlier work as sinful and sacrilegious. Fortunately for us, no Savonarola was present to preside over a bonfire of vanities (not to mention the fact that the bulk of Roberts' work was safely stored in the maid's closet of Gertrude and Leo Stein's Paris apartment). 

Penitent Magdalene, oil on canvas, Faun Roberts, 1938

It's hard to know for sure whether the relatively weak quality of Faun Roberts' final paintings was due to the typical decadence of Late Style or the result of the programmatic nature of her self-abnegating iconography. It is difficult to deny however that at the height of her wanton, promiscuous, fully expressed female-centric period, her work was an unrelenting firey witness of sensuality and bliss. 

It was man's art world then.

Is it still a man's art world now? 

RED IS THE HOTTEST COLOR

Like Yasser Arafat and Micah Carpentier, the circumstances surrounding the death of Faun Roberts are shrouded in mystery. 

The traces of mercuric chloride found in her bloodstream point to foul play. Could this pestilence be explained by the deep, lush vermilions that characterized her famous series of paintings The Hall of Decrepit Flames? Roberts reportedly would ground powdered cinnabar by hand in order to make her own paint. A precise level of pigmentation and viscosity was as important to her as were her subjects and her motifs.

She also had one or two ardent and unstable enemies.

The ancient Chinese figured out the toxic formula of heating this most gorgeous of minerals. Benvenuto Cellini was hated enough by his adversaries that they slipped him a mickey of this blighted toxin. Though it wasn't strong enough to kill him it did effectively cure him of the clap.

Faun Roberts may not have been so lucky.

Ginny Retarne

In 1934 at La Champmeslé on Rue de Chabanais Roberts met another American expatriate artist by the name of Ginny Retarne. Their affair was a wanton blaze of rapture and jealous recrimination. Diary entries from that period indicate that their turbulent liaison was not short on brutality and even outright violence. 

Ginny was a small girl, fifteen years younger than Roberts. She had a rough manner, a penchant for swearing and a small collection of Shun carving knives. Neighbors often complained to the préfecture of late night arguments bordering on hysteria. 

Though the evidence is circumstantial at best the Parisian press at the time was rife with odious speculation. In the course of writing my monograph on Roberts, my research assistant Patrice Nguma stumbled upon some incriminating (though far from conclusive) evidence.

Et Tu Ginnae, Oil on canvas, Faun Roberts 1934 (private collection)

 A recent cleaning of the seminal Et Tu Ginnae revealed that in the subject's (presumably Ginny Retarne) right hand what was once assumed to be a bright orange dildo is in fact a 32 centimeter Kiritsuke carving knife.

Was this prescience, homeopathic magic, wish fulfillment, anxiety displacement, prophecy or was it simply just another a stirring portrait of an idealized lover seen as Joan of Arc. 

Perhaps we'll never know but all the same the tragic premature demise of this dazzling early American modernist leaves all of us who truly care with the wistful question:

 What if ... ?