Lecturer Pamela Campbell-Johnston, who was involved in the Lempicka exhibition at the Royal Academy in 2004-5 (which I think I saw) challenged us to consider which side of the divide we fell on: was she a genius who pioneered female artistry with a unique style, or (as Waldemar Januszczak claimed) a maker of 'creepy daubs'? 'Daubs' I couldn't agree with - that's a deeply unfair description for Lempicka's amazing technical proficiency, and her sketches show even better than the paintings what a brilliant draughtsman she was - but 'creepy' and 'genius' both seem equally just as epithets. Ms Campbell-Johnston illustrated the latter with images of the queasily erotic paintings of the artist's daughter Kizette, but it's there throughout the whole project: the transformation of humans into aloof, godlike beings composed of razor-sharp angles and metallic curls of hair falling like swarf off a lathe. Given the right-wing, aristocratic circles Lempicka moved in, this is art born of the 1920s lust for liberty which edges uneasily towards fascism. The glamour is often the glamour of cruelty.
What strikes me most is that Lempicka's most dramatic and memorable work was done in such a short period. By about 1927 she'd hit on a style which enabled her to make money, and work quickly with tremendous productivity, but it clearly excited her as well. Whether the pictures are gentle or whether they're cruel, there's a passion in them which energises and powers them. After about 1933 when she married Baron Kuffner and no longer had to work for a living, the steam goes out of the art, and all her ultramodern accoutrements of skyscrapers and telephones no longer seem as radical. For the next forty-odd years, she paints as someone who doesn't have to but thinks they should. The moment had passed.
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