Tara Keny’s talk on Sapphic Symbols in Marie Laurencin’s Prints (2025)

Watch Tara Keny’s talk on Youtube:

Video (28:33): “The Parisian Amazon: Sapphic Symbolism in Marie Laurencin’s Prints”, an interactive talk by art historian and independent curator Tara Keny hosted by Emanuel von Baeyer Gallery at 18 Cecil Court, London WC2N 4HE, Saturday 17th May 2025.

[The copyright of the video above remains with the original holder and it is used here for the purpose of education, comparison and criticism only.]

Tara Keny, talking about Marie Laurencin’s print Iphigenie (1913/14), explains that the old Greek tale about why Agamemnon agrees to sacrificing his daughter to Athene and her saving Iphigenie and turning the girl into one of her maids, was reinterpreted by Marie Laurencin ‘as a kind of story of a woman saved by other women in a safe and peaceful place. She [Iphigenie] was also known for her beauty in the tale. So Laurencin is also kind of paying homage to her beauty, and again, she’s depicting Greek stories at a time where she’s going to parties at Natalie Barney’s house where they are re-enacting sapphic poems (…) in this whole world of idealizing that past. So it is not created within within a vacuum at all.’

Learn more:

Visit Emanuel von Baeyer Gallery online gallery with all the works from the exhibition Marie Laurencin: Printed Oeuvre 1906-1937, (2025)