Description:
Head of a woman with abstract features.
Label Text:
In 1928 Maria Lani, a young actress, arrived in Paris from Berlin and devised an elaborate scheme. A charismatic figure, she convinced fifty-nine eminent artists to make her portraits, which she claimed were to be featured in a movie. While the film was never produced, the portraits were exhibited in the United States and Europe. This bust by Chana Orloff, made as part of that campaign, exploits Lani’s ever-changing persona as noted by her contemporaries. A careful look reveals that she is wearing a hairnet, probably in preparation for a wig—a detail that alludes to Lani as a player of roles. Orloff, a member of the School of Paris, the vibrant artistic avant-garde that flourished at the Montparnasse district of Paris, rose to prominence as a portraitist of the Parisian elite in the 1920s.
-Pavithra Devarajan (Class of 2019), University of Massachussetts Amherst
A Very Long Engagement: Nineteenth-Century Sculpture and Its Afterlives (July 29, 2017 - May 27, 2018)
Tags:
Jewish; women; women artists; sculpture; faces; busts Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=MH+1956.3.M.OI |
