Marie Laurencin: Avante-garde Painter of Paris

Laurencin is a difficult painter to study. In addition to her work not quite falling in line with the artists who were her contemporaries, her personal papers are difficult to access, are censored, and have strict limitations put on their use. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy Vie Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
We are just back from Paris. Indeed, I I'm sure
Holly did this too. Of course. I came back from

(00:22):
Paris with a list of ideas for future episodes of
the podcast. Oh yeah, the list is long. Yeah, I'm
planning to spread mine out, so it's not just like
all nineteenth century France all the time, even though that
is fun. This is more more twentieth century than nineteen.
So when we had our trip to Paris, I went
out just a little early for a little extra time,

(00:44):
a little jet lag recovery before the trip officially started.
And one of the places I went during that time
was the music to Laurenrie and I and my husband
had been drawn there by Moonai's water lilies. But later
on in our visit, I found myself just totally spellbound
by five paintings by Parisian artist Marie Laurence San. These

(01:07):
are in another part of the museum. All five of
them were of women and animals, with very simple and
willowy limes and this muted color palette of pink and
blue and green and gray, and they just seemed wistful
and ethereal, and I just loved them. The audio guide
had a little bit about what I was looking at
and who painted them, but I really wanted to know

(01:28):
more about this woman who had created these works, and
that proved to be a little trickier than I expected.
She produced a lot of work, and she was really
well known and internationally sought after in her time, but
that is less true today. It is especially less true
outside of France. Her personal papers are in a French library,

(01:49):
but they have been censored, like with words physically cut
out of them, either by her or by somebody connected
to her estate, and then they can also only be
accessed with the Estates authorization. In One of the conditions
of that authorization is that unpublished material from her work
cannot be directly quoted. So her biography has not gotten

(02:10):
nearly as much in depth attention as some of her
contemporaries and a lot of what's there is in French,
and she also hasn't gotten as much attention from art
historians because some of the nature of her work, which
we will be talking about as well. That didn't make
any of this impossible. It just meant that when my
husband was at the fancy library helping me out with

(02:31):
getting me a book, and he sent me a photo
of like, what would you like from this shelf, I
said everything in English, bring it all to me. It's
a little more challenging than normal, but not impossible. Still
laughing at that, uh So to begin. Marie Melanie lan
Sault was born in Paris on October three. I already

(02:54):
love her as a Halloween baby. Her mother, Pauline, may
have had some Creel ancestry, and her father was a
government official named Alfred Toule. Pauline and Alfred were not married.
Alfred was not particularly present in Marie's young life. She
actually didn't know he was her father until she was
in her twenties, and at that point he had died.
Although he didn't acknowledge Marie as his daughter, Alfred Touley

(03:18):
might have given the family some financial support. Pauline was
able to establish herself as a seamstress and an embroiderer
and provide herself and her daughter with a pretty middle
class lifestyle. They lived in an apartment at the foot
of Melmarcha, usually with at least one cat, which is
another reason to love her. Of course, Pauline was very strict.

(03:38):
Gertrude Stein described her and Marie as being like a
pair of nuns living in a convent. Pauline also wanted
Marie to be educated and cultured. In Their apartment was
filled with books, something that Marie would carry into her
adult life. She had a library of about five thousand
volumes by the time that she died. Marie and her
mother also took frequent trips to the loo and other museums.

(04:02):
Pauline loved to sing, and Marie loved to listen to her.
She would later say that without her mother's singing, she
probably never would have picked up a paintbrush. But otherwise
their life at home was very quiet and almost austere.
Pauline was really hoping that Marie would grow up to
be a teacher, but Marie dashed that hope very thoroughly
by coming in last in every subject at least a

(04:24):
la Martine that included art. Glass. Although Marie was interested
in art from a young age, by the turn of
the century she was particularly drawn to the Impressionists. The
post Impressionists and the Fovists, including Cesan Renoir, Mane to
lose L, Trek, and Matisse. She also wrote poems, some
of which were later published under the pseudonym Louise la Lane.

(04:45):
Without teaching as a possible way to support herself, Marie
turned to painting, specifically painting on porcelain through the sever
Porcelain factory, and this was a challenging path for her.
She was extremely nearsighted, and eyeglasses were not fashionable in
Paris in the early twentieth century. Lawrenson used a lorgnette,

(05:06):
or a pair of lenses on a handle to look
at her work. She didn't let her vision keep her
from doing anything, though. She enjoyed fencing, which she would
do with glasses in one hand and a foil in
the other. This delighted Paul Pire, previous podcast subject, so
much that he made her a special costume to do
it in and let her fence in his apartment. While

(05:26):
she was studying porcelain painting, Lawrencean was also attending regular
gatherings hosted by Natalie Barney, who had moved to Paris
from the United States. Barney was a writer, a poet,
and an heiress, and she hosted a salon in Paris's
Latin Quarter that was frequented by some of the city's
most prominent artists, writers, musicians, and patrons. Barney was also

(05:47):
unapologetically publicly lesbian, a time when homosexuality was really heavily stigmatized.
She was actually one of the inspirations for the character
of Valerie Seymour and Radcliffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness,
which was one of the first lesbian novels written in English.
Barney had been nicknamed the Amazon after being seen riding
a horse by sitting astride it instead of side saddle.

(06:09):
When she first started the salon, she called it the
Salon of the Amazon and admitted only women. She held
other women only events as well, including all women pagan circles,
and she later established a women's art academy since Lacademichon
says admitted only men, but eventually Barney made the Salon
of the Amazon open to anyone regardless of gender. Laurence

(06:30):
was a regular at the salon and at other gatherings
at Barney's home. Pierre Louis, who was the author of
Chanson Debilities, attended the salon as well. We talked about
Chansons Debilities recently in our Sappho episode, but just in
case you missed that one, this was a supposedly unearthed
set of erotic poems that were purportedly by one of
Sappho's students. They were really Pierre Louise's own creation, though.

(06:55):
One of Lauren Stan's first produced works of art was
an etching titled Chassons de bilitis, which she printed repeatedly
in nineteen o four and nineteen o five, really experimenting
with colors and techniques that she did it. This depicts
two women kissing with an oil lamp that looks a
little bit like a waterfowl of some sort in the corner.

(07:16):
By the time she was doing this print work, Laura
Soa had decided to branch out from porcelain painting. She
started studying at the Academy Umbert, which was one of
the many art academies in the Mammothla district of Paris.
She learned drawing and printmaking and started meeting members of
the Parisian avant garde, including George Brack, with whom she
developed a very close friendship. Along with Pablo Picasso, Brock

(07:39):
was one of the founders of Cubism. Brock introduced Lawrence
Son to Picasso, and Picasso introduced her to Guillaume E
Pollinire around nineteen o seven, telling him that she would
make him a good fiance. A Pollonaire was eight years
older than Lawrence Son. Born in Rome as Wilhelm A
Pollonaire de Kastrovitsky, he was raised in various arts of

(08:00):
southern France before finally settling down in Paris. He and
Lauren Son had a lot in common. They were both
raised by unmarried mothers, both connected to Paris's avant garde community,
and both passionately creative on their own. They started in
intense and sometimes volatile relationship, both of them seeming to
draw creative inspiration from each other and from the relationship itself.

(08:23):
Sometimes Laurence Sun is described as a Pollinaire's muse. That's
something that was possibly inspired and definitely reinforced by Enri
Russo portrait of them, which is titled the Muse Inspiring
the Poet. This is actually the picture that is used
for the artwork on our website for copyright reasons, meaning

(08:43):
it's the one we had access to because of copyright
so if you come to our website, that is what
you're seeing, not some of her own work. And it
is clear that a Polonaire's work was changed significantly while
they were together. His early writings were explicit erotica, but
in nineteen o nine he published his first volume of poetry.

(09:05):
He also became a literary and art critic, helping to
define the Cubist movement and supporting the work of writers
and painters all across the world of Parisian modern art.
A Pollinaire said Lawrence invented poetry for him, and he
described her as his feminine counterpart. But this was not
at all a one way street with Lawrence and just

(09:25):
sort of passively inspiring a Polonaire to greatness merely by existing,
which is sort of how people imagine muses work. They
were both really drawing from and challenging each other, and
she was developing as an artist in her own right
while they were together. These were really formative years for
Marine Lawrence. Her work through the nineteen teens was stylized

(09:46):
somewhat influenced by the Cubists. She was often working in
color palettes that were dominated by a lot of brown,
and she was also exploring her technique through creating self portraits.
She did at least thirty six self portraits during her lifetime,
those just being the ones that were titled as self portraits.
A third of those were before nineteen fourteen. Laura Sun

(10:06):
continued to live with her mother during her study of
art and her relationship with a Pollonaire. And we'll get
into how these years unfolded after we first take up
pause for a little sponsor break. The Parisian avant garde
community of the nineteen hundreds and nineteen teens was really

(10:28):
highly interconnected. Many painters also wrote poetry, and many poets
also painted or did some other visual or plastic art.
Artists and writers were gathering constantly in cafes and coffee
shops and galleries and people's homes. Laura Son was an
active and visible part of this scene, and although her
mother had her doubts about Marie's futurism artists, she hosted

(10:50):
groups of cubists at their Mommota apartment. Laura San was
also frequently at the Bateau Levoi, where Picasso and other
cubists had their studios, and she was a regular at
some of the most influential literary salons in the city.
She wasn't universally beloved by this community, though Polinaire praised
her work really effusively, to the point that people sometimes

(11:11):
thought that his feelings for her were coloring his judgment
about her work. But Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso's girlfriend
Fernand Olivier were both pretty dismissive and disparaging of her.
Both Stein and Olivier wrote derisive accounts of an incident
in which Lawrence Son was drunk at a party. Olivier
also called her affected and a bit silly, and claimed

(11:35):
that she was only successful because of her connection to
a Pollonaire. Stein implied that Lawrence Son didn't really fit
in with the rest of the community either, writing quote,
everybody called Gertrude Stein, Gertrude or at most Mademoiselle Gertrude.
Everybody called Picasso, Pablo and Fernand Fernand, and everybody called
Guillaume Apollinaire, Guillaume and Max Jacob Max. But everybody called

(11:58):
Marie Lawrence Son, Marie Lawrence. It's like the opposite of
the Madonna thing. She wants all the names. If you're
wondering why Gertrude Stein refers to herself in third person.
This is from the autobiography of Alice b Totalists, which
was written that way. In nineteen o seven, with a
Pollinaire's encouragement, Lawrence Son exhibited at the Salon. This was

(12:20):
an annual exhibition of independent artists that was established in
eighteen eighty four after the official Salon held by the
Academy Royal repeatedly rejected the work of the Impressionists. The
Academy Royal later became the Ecle de Bouzare, and this
was the first of many exhibitions for Lawrence Son. In
nineteen o eight, Lawrence An sold her first piece of art,

(12:41):
which was a painting called Group of Artists. It depicts
the artist herself with Pablo Picasso and Fernando Olivier arranged
around yelm Apollinaire. Also in the painting is Picasso's dog
freaka Lawrence sounds buyer for this was past podcast subject
Gertrude Stein, and eventually Lawrencen would also paint a portrait
of one of Stein's dogs, that dog being Basket the Second.

(13:04):
In nine, Lauren Son painted a larger version of a
similar scene known as Reunion. In the Country or Apollinaire
and his Friends. This larger piece featured Gertrude Stein, Fernandolivier,
and an unidentified third woman as the three graces. On
the left hand side of the frame. Gillam Pollinaire is
roughly in the center, and to his right are Pablo Picasso,

(13:27):
Margharite Gio, Maurice Clemnitz, and Marie Laurenson herself. There is
a dog in this painting as well, facing away from
the center of the frame, but with its head turned
back toward a Pollinaire. Lauren Son gave this one to
a Pollinaire as a gift, and it hung above his
bed until his death. These two paintings are some of
the most examined in Lauren Sound's work, and they both

(13:49):
shared the influence of Cubism in her early painting, especially
the earlier years of Cubism before it progressed to being
just really abstract a lot of the time. They're both
very flat, with primitive times and lots of brown, gray
and black, and both of them show Lauren Son is
part of this group that also included Pablo Picasso, but
while she was fascinated by the Cubists and was nicknamed

(14:11):
our Lady of Cubism. Lauren Son didn't really consider herself
to be a Cubist. She counted people like Picasso and
Matisse as contemporaries and credited them with teaching her what
she knew about art, but she also thought they would
be embarrassed by her association with them. On a side note,
uh Pollinaire was his own potential source of embarrassment. On

(14:33):
September seven, nineteen eleven, he was arrested for stealing the
Mona Lisa from the Loop, which he had not done. However,
he and Picasso had gotten someone else to steal a
couple of ancient Iberian busts for them, which Picasso used
as models for his painting Demoiselle's Damon. Pollinaire tried to
anonymously return these busts, and that led to him being

(14:54):
held for six days for the unrelated Mona Lisa theft.
He wasn't ultimately prosecut you did for the theft of
these busts, but this did put quite a bit of
strain on his and Lawrence Son's relationship. In nineteen twelve,
Laurence was the only woman to be part of La
Maison Cubist, or the Cubist House, which was an art
installation for the nineteen twelve Salon d'atum. Like the Salon

(15:16):
desde the Salon d'hotem had been established in response to
the conservatism of the Academy. The Cubist House was an
architectural installation with a facade full of angles and interior
rooms adorned with Cubist art. The response in the press
was incredibly critical. This combination of a structure meant to

(15:36):
look like a family home filled with avant garde art
really struck a nerve with the public. In the face
of all this criticism, Lawrence and a couple of other
women stood guard outside, armed with umbrellas. Laurence Son continued
to make connections and show her work. In the early
nineteen teens, she was part of the group of artists
known as the and she exhibited her work with them.

(16:00):
She had several pieces at the International Exhibition of Modern
Art in New York City in nineteen thirteen, which came
to be known as the Armory Show. This was just
a groundbreaking, an incredibly influential exhibition, and it was many
Americans first experience with modern art. Laurissa and a Pollinaire
ended their involvement in nineteen twelve or nineteen thirteen, after

(16:21):
about six years together. Although he had a reputation as
a philanderer, they stayed in touch and apparently a Pollinaire
thought they would get back together until nineteen fourteen. That's
when Lawrence sna married German artist Otto von Vettien. Lawrence
said Van Vettien reminded her of her mother, who had
died at about the same time that she broke up

(16:42):
with a Pollinaire. This was a difficult year or so
in her life, and this marriage wasn't particularly happy. World
War One started while the two of them were on
their honeymoon, and because von Vacken was German, they had
to leave France. They went to Spain, which was neutral
during the war. Laurenrencen soon made connections among Spain's modern artists,

(17:03):
particularly the dataists. She also had lots of letters from
France and visitors from time to time. One eagerly welcomed
visitor was fashion designer Nicole Grow, who was Paul Poiret's sister.
Laurence and gru had met in nineteen eleven and they
were extremely close for the rest of their lives, including
a love affair during at least some of that time.

(17:25):
Nicole's daughter Flora, was one of Marie Laurenson's first biographers,
and in eighteen Marie and Nichol's relationship was the subject
of a novel, Ja antel dezier or I have such
a desire. While she wasn't totally cut off from her
friends in France, Laurencen desperately missed Paris and felt isolated
and depressed. Parts of the avant garde community had also

(17:46):
really heavily criticized her for her split with the Pollinaire
and her marriage to a German. She eventually broke off
from the Cubists, but she continued to work, and she
started to really establish some of the visual style that
she became more known for, with lots of pinks and
blues and greens rather than the browns that had dominated
a lot of her earlier work, and depictions of women
and animals more often than her depictions of men. Many

(18:09):
of her wartime paintings also show how unhappy she was
during these years, with elements that suggest being trapped or imprisoned.
For example, the Prisoner shows a woman in blue looking
out from behind flowing pink curtains, with a black pattern
that resembles a chain link fence. While lauren Son was
away from France, Guillonne Apollinaire died. He was injured in

(18:30):
the war, and then he died of influenza. Van Vatkin
also started abusing alcohol and lauren Son filed for divorce
in nineteen nineteen. The split was apparently amicable, though they
stayed in touch until his death in nineteen two. Lauren
Son was finally able to return to France in nineteen
twenty one. A year later, she underwent surgery to treat

(18:50):
stomach cancer and she also had a hys directomy. Back
in France, Laurencen secured the representation of influential art dealer
Paul Rosenberg, who also represented people like Pablo Picasso and
Ari Maatisse. Rosenberg would continue to be her art dealer
until nineteen forty, when he had to flee France in
the face of the Nazi occupation. From her return to

(19:12):
France until about nineteen thirty seven, Laurencen was at the
height of her career. Her work was exhibited in London, Paris,
and New York, and she was financially successful through commissions
and the sale of her work. She continued to work
mainly in pinks, blues, grays, and greens, often depicting women
and girls in dreamy, slightly unreal settings. At one point

(19:34):
she said, quote why should I paint dead fish, onions
and beer glasses? Girls are so much prettier. In the
words of an art critic quoted in her obituary in
The New York Times, quote she can paint a girl
with eyes like a dough, and a dough with eyes
like a girl. Laurence then also started working as a
portrait artist, and she was successful enough to be selective

(19:54):
about who she painted, although her dealer repeatedly had to
discourage her from just giving her paintings way to people
that she liked. She reportedly charged men more than she
charged women, and because she found blonde women to be
the most inspiring, she charged brunette's more than blonde's. She
would also only paint children if she liked them. One
of her most famous paintings is a French fashion designer

(20:16):
Coco Chanelle, done early in lauren Son's career as a
portrait artist. This is one of the paintings in the
music de Lauringerie. Chanel is draped in blue and black
with a dog on her lap. She has her head
resting in her hand and she looks somewhere between wistful
and pensive. Another dog is in the background, along with
a gray dove. Lauren Son's portraits followed the same style

(20:39):
as the rest of her art that she was doing
around this time, so they were not really realistic likenesses
of her subjects and their clothing. So when she saw
this painting, Chanelle refused to pay for it because it
didn't look like her. Then lauren Son refused to do
it over and kept the original for herself. In spite
of this inauspicious start, Laura Sanna became famous and sought

(21:00):
after for these pastels simplified portraits. People would arrive to
be painted wearing couture ensalms, only for Laurensan to cover
them up with scarves and drapes that she had around
for that purpose. She also had romantic relationships with many
of her subjects, regardless of their gender, and she did
a lot besides paintings and portraits of the nineteen twenties

(21:21):
and thirties, I mean she did a lot of those,
but other work as well. In nineteen four she designed
the costumes and sets for the ballet Russ's Labiche or
the Does by Sergei Diaghilev. When this ballet was staged
in the United States, dancing in the principal role was
past podcast subject Maria's Hall Chief. Lauren San also designed

(21:41):
costumes and sets for the comedy Francaise, which is one
of France's state theaters. Laura San was a book illustrator
as well. Just as a few examples. In nineteen thirty
she drew a set of illustrations for an edition of
Alice in Wonderland. She also illustrated The Garden Party and
Other Stories by Catherine Mansfield and an American edition of

(22:01):
Camille by Alexander du Mafis. That last one drew some
criticism because all twelve of the illustrations she created were
of the book's main character, Marguerite Gautier. In nineteen thirty one,
she became a founder member of the French Society of
Women Modern Artists. She taught at Via Malakoff from nineteen
thirty two to nineteen thirty five, and she managed to

(22:22):
stay financially afloat even during the Great Depression. In nineteen
thirty seven, a retrospective of Laurens Soun's work was held
at the Great Exhibition of Independent Art Masters at the
Petit Palais in Paris. She also finally started wearing glasses
that year, and it's around this time that her career
started to slow. More about that. After another quick sponsor

(22:43):
break when World War Two started in Europe, Marie Lawrence
stayed in Paris. She published a semi autobiographical collection of
poetry and prose in nineteen forty two that was called
Lecarnet Denuet, and although she continued to work in visual art,

(23:04):
her output slowed down. As we said earlier, most critics
consider her work at this point to be a repeat
of the techniques and themes that she was developing earlier
in her career, rather than experimenting or breaking new ground.
She did start to use some darker, brighter colors rather
than the pastels that had become her hallmark in the
nineteen twenties and thirties, and this change and palette may

(23:26):
have been connected to the ongoing deterioration of her vision.
Although she was able to stay in Paris, Germans requisitioned
her apartment during the occupation and she stayed with friends
for the duration of the war. Some of her art
was branded degenerate or looted by Nazis. Her politics during
this time seemed to have been contradictory. She was part

(23:46):
of an intellectual scene that had lots of connections to
the Visi government, and in some ways Laurence was complicit
with them and with German authorities. At the same time,
she tried to personally intervene to save her friend Max Jacob,
who was a poet and a painter. Jacob was of
Jewish ancestry but had converted to Catholicism. He was ultimately

(24:07):
deported to a concentration camp, and he died in nineteen
forty four. When France was liberated at the end of
World War Two, Laurence Son was arrested as part of
the wave of arrests and purges known as the Operation
or Purification. She was briefly incarcerated at dancing and tournament camp,
but was ultimately exonerated and released. After the war, Laurence

(24:27):
Son was prone to cycles of depression and isolation. Her
closest companion became Susanne Moreau, who had originally been her maid.
It is not entirely clear if the two of them
were romantically involved, or if Laurencen was more like Moreau's
surrogate mother. But they were together for almost twenty years.
Laurensn legally adopted Moreau in nineteen fifty four, when she

(24:49):
was seventy and Moreau was forty nine. In nineteen fifty
Lawrence Son produced a series of twenty three etchings for
an illustrated collection of Sappho's poetry, which had been trans
lated by Edith de Beaumont in her earlier book. Illustrations
her were contended to resemble her paintings, with similarly flowing
lines and pastel palettes. These Sappho illustrations, though, are still

(25:11):
flowing in style, but with a much simpler black and
white design. Marie Laurenson died of a heart attack at
her home in Paris on June eight. She was seventy two.
She was buried in Paralysches Cemetery, and at her request,
she was dressed in white, with a rose in her
hand and her love letters from Guioma Pollinaire close to

(25:33):
her heart. I think one of my few regrets about
our trip to Paris is that I didn't realize until
after we were back all of these things about Marie Laurenson,
including her burial at parlashes because we were there, but
hers is not one of the graves that we went to.
There are so many things to look at in paralyses.
You cannot fault yourself for missing anything. Well, you could

(25:54):
be there really all days long. And I think at
that point, like because that was one of the things
that we sort of did on one of our free
days while we were in Paris, and at that point,
I think she was written in my list of ideas
for podcast episodes for after the show as something like
that painter from the Orange Ury, Like I didn't even

(26:14):
have her name clearly affixed in my mind yet. So anyway,
although she had been well known and sought after during
her lifetime, her reputation faded pretty quickly after her death.
She left instructions to Moreau not to sell her paintings
or to allow people to research her. So it wasn't
really until the nineties seventies, which I think was after
Moreau's death and when there was renewed interest in women's

(26:37):
and LGBT history, that people started researching her life and
seeking out more of her work, especially outside of France.
The nature of her work also may have acted as
a deterrent for biographers and art historians. There was a
decorative element to Lauren Sounds paintings. She didn't push boundaries
in the same way that many of her contemporaries did.
Many of the Cubists who were so important to Aurasn's

(27:00):
early development and artistic network were creating work that was
increasingly abstract, and Laura Sna, on the other hand, ultimately
broke away from the Cubists, and she painted in a
way that was pretty and appealing. She wanted to make
art that people would enjoy looking at. Added to that,
Laura Son and her work were explicitly intentionally feminine given

(27:21):
the gender standards of the day, Her pastel color palette
and willowy fluid lines impressed people as just intrinsically female,
and this made it really easy to write her off
as just girl stuff rather than as a serious work
of art that was full of nuance and symbolism and
subtlety and sometimes humor. She clearly had an affinity for

(27:43):
women in her work in her life as well, and
that was something that earlier art historians seemed really reluctant
to explore because of all the stigma surrounding lesbianism and bisexuality.
Because so much of the interest in two women's are
in the nineteen seventies was coming from the feminist movement,
Laura's has own preferences and opinions complicated things as well.

(28:04):
She really favored one type of model, one who was young, white, fair,
and slender, and she also believed that women and men
were fundamentally different, and that women's art was fundamentally different
from men's art. She said quote, if I feel so
far removed from painters, it is because they are men,
and in my view, men are difficult problems to solve.

(28:25):
But if the genius of men intimidates me, I feel
perfectly at ease with everything that is feminine. That made
her a less appealing subject of study in the context
of a movement for women's empowerment, autonomy, equality and independence.
As a counterpoint to that idea, though, Marie Laura Saw
was one of very few women artists to hold her

(28:45):
own in the male dominated world of French modernists. Although
she was connected to the Cubists and her early work
show some Cubist influence, she ultimately broke away from all
that and developed her own distinct unapologetically feminist, and that
was transgressive in its own way. There's been more interest
in Marie Laurenson's life and work in Europe and North

(29:07):
America over the past few decades, but she's been especially
beloved in Japan. Japanese collector Masahiro Takano developed an interest
in her work and acquired a huge amount of it,
founding the Marie Laurensa Museum in Nagano, Japan, which first
opened in nineteen eighty three to mark her one dredth birthday.
At the time, it was the only museum in the

(29:28):
world dedicated to the work of a woman artist. The
museum closed in twenty eleven for financial reasons. Pictures from
the museum were part of a temporary exhibition at the
muse Marmota Monet in Paris. After that, the Marie Laurensan
Museum reopened in Tokyo in July. Unfortunately, it closed again

(29:50):
on January fourteen. When I was looking at the website
for it, because sometimes I am calendar challenged. Somehow I
thought January four teenth, nineteen had not happened yet, and
I was like, I got to go to Japan right now,
And then I realized six months already too late, but yeah,
it uh. The wording suggests that that there maybe like

(30:16):
a future exhibition at some point in the in the future,
and it's also clear that the people who have all
this art of hers really love it and her caring
for it, so maybe it will be on public view
somewhere at some point in the future. Um. Anyway, I
love her. Yeah, she's great. I her art is very pretty.
It's not my jam, but I appreciate it and think

(30:38):
it's beautiful. Yeah, it's uh, I definitely. I kind of
came around a corner where all five of the paintings
that were on display all were and I was immediately like,
I am here for this. Yeah. That's the beautiful thing
about artists when you have that like visceral just unexplainable
emotional reaction to it. That is why I love art

(30:59):
so much. And there's also we'll have a link in
the show notes to the episode. Because we couldn't personally
put some of her artwork onto our website, we will
have a link to the museum's page on her that
has um all all five I think of the paintings
that you can look at there, I think they're really beautiful.
Do you have a little bit of listener mail? I do. First,

(31:19):
I want to thank everyone who has updated me on
where to find Krispy Kreme in New England. Uh. Some
of these Krispy Kreme locations have opened up since the
day that I looked and went ah Man, the closest
is in New York City. And then some of them
either um, either the store locator was lying to me
about where they were, or I was thinking, I'm never

(31:43):
in that part of Connecticut. I'll have to wait till
I'm in New York. But anyway, we've gotten a number
of letters from folks telling me about various places in
Connecticut and Maine to get Krispy Kreme donuts. Thank you. Uh.
And then I have this email from Carrie. Carrie's is
good morning, Trace and Holly. I just finished listening to
your Red Summer episode, and I'm appalled and embarrassed. This

(32:04):
will probably end up being a longer letter than I
intended to. The short version is thank you. I lived
Interer near Washington, d C. Until I was in my thirties.
I loved my history classes growing up. I'd never ever
heard anything about what happened in the summer of nineteen
when I was trying to figure out why, I think
I nailed it, and it highlights why podcasts like yours
are so important. I remember very clearly learning about Colonial America,

(32:27):
the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, reconstruction, and then there's
a gap. I learned a bit about the Great Depression,
a little bit about World War One, a fair bit
about World War Two, and key presidencies like Nixon and Kennedy.
I learned about the civil rights movement in the sixties,
but it honestly came across as a somewhat isolated set
of events. That gap, while as a kid was seemingly

(32:49):
insignificant at the time, is really telling. I went to
a mostly white, suburban high school in Virginia. My history
classes taught me that the Civil War wasn't really about slavery,
but about trade in Maryland. I learned that Maryland's lawmakers
were trying to be peacekeepers and that's why they didn't
succeed from the Union. I knew my history classes were
whitewashed and and true, but I'm truly disheartened and saddened

(33:10):
that I wasn't taught any of the material in this podcast.
I didn't know that it happened. It put things into
perspective for me when I'm embarrassed to say that I
didn't put these pieces together before. Now it's sort of
this gap in my head between historical America and modern
day America. That gap is exactly this post reconstruction, pre
World War One gap that's so so important to understanding

(33:31):
a lot of today's politics and the struggle of black
and other minority Americans. It's a whole generation of people
who were quite actively and horribly oppressed that I didn't
realize existed anyway. Thank you. I feel like I owe
the world on apology for my lack of understanding. And
then Carrie sent some pictures of cats. Always happy to
get cat pictures. Thank you so much, Carrie. I wanted
to read this email because I really feel like it

(33:55):
is the same experience that a whole lot of people
have had in history class. I know it's my experience
um in history class. I honestly don't recall whether my
history classes in North Carolina taught that the Civil War
wasn't really about slavery, but it was obvious to me
as a child that it was. So it's like I

(34:16):
don't know that I was just reading between the lines
of the textbook or if the textbook actually said that, um,
But otherwise, like, this is a d percent what my
American history class was like. And I talked to so
many other people who that's exactly what they're there. Their
American History classes were like, so don't don't feel apolit

(34:38):
and embarrassed. It's like so common, especially among folks that
are maybe a little older on the the spectrum of
when we were in middle and high school. UM. I
think a lot of classes are doing a better job
of this now. But I feel like whenever we are
doing live shows and somebody asks us, like, what's one

(35:01):
of the most important things that we've learned while working
on this show, one of my answers is usually that, like,
I learned slavery and the Civil rights movement as like
these two totally disconnected events without the progression of everything
that happened in between them, as like one long continuum.

(35:21):
So thank you so much. I really appreciated this letter.
And uh, I have a feeling that we have lots
of other folks in the audience who identify with it, um,
which is a huge disservice to all of our collective
understanding if you would like to write to us about
this or any other podcast or at history podcasts at
how stuff works dot com, and then we are all

(35:42):
over social media at missed in History. That is where
you will find our Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and Twitter. You
can come to our website, which is missing history dot com,
where you will find show notes for all the episodes
that Holly and I haven't worked on together with today's,
including a link to paintings by Marie Lauren Sont. You
will also find a searchable archive of every episode ever,

(36:03):
and you can subscribe to our show on Apple, podcast,
the I Heart Radio app, and wherever else you get
your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a
production of I Heart Radios How stuff Works. For more
podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows