Editing Marcel Moore

{{Short description|French illustrator, designer, and photographer (1892–1972)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=May 2020}}
{{Infobox artist
| honorific_prefix = 
| name             = Marcel Moore
| honorific_suffix = 
| image            = Suzanne Malherbe.jpg
| image_size       = 
| alt              = 
| caption          = Moore by [[Claude Cahun]]
| native_name      = 
| native_name_lang = 
| birth_name       = Suzanne Alberte Malherbe
| birth_date       = {{Birth date|1892|07|19|df=y}}
| birth_place      = [[Nantes]], France
| death_date       = {{Death date and age|1972|02|19|1892|07|19|df=y}}
| death_place      = [[Jersey]]
| resting_place    = [[St Brelade's Church]]
| resting_place_coordinates = {{Coord|49.1841|-2.2029|type:landmark|display=inline}}
| education        = 
| alma_mater       = 
| known_for        = Illustrator, designer, and photographer
| notable_works    = 
| style            = 
| movement         = [[Surrealism]]
| spouse           = 
| awards           = <!-- {{Awd|award|year|title|role|name}} (optional) -->
| elected          = 
| patrons          = 
| memorials        = 
| website          = <!-- {{URL|Example.com}} -->
| module           =
}}

'''Marcel Moore''' (born '''Suzanne Alberte Malherbe''', 19 July 1892 – 19 February 1972) was a French illustrator, designer, and photographer. She, along with her romantic and creative [[domestic partner|partner]] [[Claude Cahun]], was a [[surrealist]] writer and photographer.<ref>{{cite journal
  | last = Cottingham
  | first = Laura
  | author-link = Laura Cottingham
  | title = Notes on 'lesbian.' – historical narrative of lesbianism – We're Here: Gay and Lesbian Presence in Art and Art History
  | newspaper = Art Journal
  | year = 1996
  | url = http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0425/is_n4_v55/ai_19101787/pg_2
  | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20080610031049/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0425/is_n4_v55/ai_19101787/pg_2
  | url-status = dead
  | archive-date = 2008-06-10
  | access-date = 2007-09-07
  }}</ref>

==Early life==
Moore was born Suzanne Alberte Malherbe in [[Nantes]], France on 19 July 1892,<ref name="Heritage">{{cite journal|last=Downie|first=Louise|year=2005|title=Sans Nom: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore|url=https://www.jerseyheritage.org/media/PDF-Heritage-Mag/Sans%20Nom%20Claude%20Cahun%20%20Marcel%20Moore.pdf|journal=Heritage Magazine|volume=2005|pages=8–9|access-date=7 March 2015}}</ref> and studied at the Fine Arts Academy in Nantes.  In 1909, at age seventeen, Malherbe met fifteen-year-old Lucy Schwob and began a lifelong artistic collaboration.<ref name="Acting">{{cite web|last=Latimer|first=Tirza True|title=Acting Out: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore|url=http://www.queerculturalcenter.org/Pages/Tirza/TirzaEssay1.html|website=QueerCulturalCenter.org|publisher=Queer Cultural Center|access-date=7 March 2015|archive-date=2 April 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402094517/http://www.queerculturalcenter.org/Pages/Tirza/TirzaEssay1.html|url-status=dead}}</ref>  Malherbe's widowed mother married Schwob's divorced father in 1917.  Curator Tirza True Latimer has theorized that this step-sister relationship not only encouraged the young women's creative collaborations but also facilitated their romantic relationship.<ref name="Acting" />  Between 1920 and 1937, they lived in Paris, where they became involved with the [[surrealism]] movement and contributed to avant-garde theater activities.<ref name="Daily">{{cite web|editor-last=Villareal|editor-first=Jose|title=Acting Out: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore|url=http://artdaily.com/news/15056/Acting-Out--Claude-Cahun-and-Marcel-Moore#.VPtJaMYhw-8|website=ArtDaily.com|access-date=7 March 2015}}</ref>  They took male [[pseudonym]]s: Malherbe became Marcel Moore, and Schwob became [[Claude Cahun]].<ref name="Odysseys">{{cite book|last=Solomon-Godeau|first=Abigail|editor1-last=Rice|editor1-first=Shelley|title=Inverted Odysseys: Claude Cahun, Maya Deren, Cindy Sherman|year=1999|publisher=Massachusetts Institute of Technology|isbn=0262681064|pages=116|chapter=The Equivocal "I": Claude Cahun as Lesbian Subject}}</ref> They remained together until Cahun's death in 1954.<ref name="Odysseys" />

==Career==
In her early twenties Moore worked as a graphic designer, producing ornate illustrations influenced by the [[japonism]] trend and the Paris fashion scene of the 1910s.<ref name="Heritage" /> Her modern fashion designs were published in the newspaper ''Phare de la Loire'', owned by the Schwob family.<ref name="Women" />  She also collaborated with the poet [[Marc-Adolphe Guégan]], producing illustrations for two of his books: ''L'Invitation à la fête primitive'' (1921) and ''Oya-Insula ou l'Enfant à la conque'' (1923).<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.connectotel.com/cahun/guegan-moore.html|title=Illustration by Marcel Moore for Oya-Insula ou l'Enfant à la Conque by Marc-Adolphe Guégan|website=www.connectotel.com}}</ref>

Moore is best known as Claude Cahun's collaborator. Cahun's photographic oeuvre, all but forgotten for a few decades, was rediscovered in the 1980s and interpreted as a predecessor of [[Cindy Sherman]]'s theatrical self-portraits.<ref name="Mirror">{{cite book|last=Chadwick|first=Whitney|title=Mirror Images: Women, Surrealism, and Self-Representation|year=1998|publisher=Massachusetts Institute of Technology|isbn=0262531577|pages=67}}</ref>  However, recent scholarship suggests that Moore was not only a muse but also had an active hand in the creation of some of Cahun's best-known works.  In an essay for the 2005–2006 exhibition ''Acting Out: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore'' at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, curator Tirza True Latimer argues that Cahun's photographs are not so much "self-portraits" as collaborations with Moore.<ref name="Acting" />  At times, they photographed each other posing alternately in the same tableau.<ref name="Acting" />  Moore's shadow is visible in some photographs of Cahun, making visible her own role behind the camera.<ref name="Acting" />

Moore illustrated Cahun's creative writing on several occasions.  For Cahun's 1919 poetry volume ''Vues et visions'', Moore created pen-and-ink illustrations similar to the decorative style of Aubrey Beardsley.<ref name="Women">{{cite book|last=Latimer|first=Tirza True|title=Women Together/Women Apart: Portraits of Lesbian Paris|year=2005|publisher=Rutgers University Press|location=New Brunswick, NJ|isbn=0-8135-3594-8|pages=[https://archive.org/details/womentogetherwom00tirz/page/76 76–80, 137–140]|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/womentogetherwom00tirz/page/76}}</ref>  Moore was the subject of Cahun's dedication, "I dedicate this puerile prose to you, so that the entire book will belong to you and in this way your designs may redeem my text in our eyes."<ref name="Women" /> In 1930 Cahun and Moore published a second book of verses and illustrations called ''Aveux non avenus'' (translated as "disavowed confessions").  Moore's illustrations for this work consist of collaged images assembled from her many photographs of Cahun, dealing with many of the same themes of identity that can be read in Cahun's own photography and poetry.<ref name="Women" />

==Activism==
In 1937 Moore and Cahun moved from Paris to [[Jersey]], possibly to escape the increasing [[anti-Semitism]] and political upheavals leading up to World War II. They remained on the island of Jersey when German troops invaded in 1940. For several years, the two risked their lives by distributing anti-Nazi propaganda to the German soldiers.<ref name="Nazi">{{cite web|last=Smith|first=Katherine|title=Claude Cahun as Anti-Nazi Resistance Fighter|url=http://www.nyu.edu/greyart/exhibits/odysseys/Nazi/body_nazi.html|website=NYU.edu|access-date=20 March 2015}}</ref> Moore was fluent in German, and was able to translate the secret notes and messages that she and Cahun composed into German, in hopes of fooling the occupation troops into believing that there was a conspiracy on the island.  She was often the one to take the most significant risks, slipping her notes into pockets of German soldiers or leaving them in German staff cars.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Jackson|first=Jeffrey|title=Paper Bullets: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis|publisher=Algonquin Books|year=2020|isbn=978-1616209162|location=New York|pages=160}}</ref> As historian Jeffrey H. Jackson writes in his definitive study of their wartime resistance ''Paper Bullets,'' for Cahun and Moore, "fighting the German occupation of Jersey was the culmination of lifelong patterns of resistance, which had always borne a political edge in the cause of freedom as they carved out their own rebellious way of living in the world together.  For them, the political was always deeply personal."<ref>{{Cite book|last=Jackson|first=Jeffrey|title=Paper Bullets: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis|publisher=Algonquin Books|year=2020|isbn=978-1616209162|location=New York|pages=267–68}}</ref> Despite having reverted to their original names and introducing themselves as sisters in Jersey, their resistance activities were discovered in 1944, and they were sentenced to death and imprisoned.  They were saved by the Liberation of Jersey in 1945, but their home and property had been confiscated and much of their art destroyed by the Germans.

==Later life==
Claude Cahun's health suffered during her wartime imprisonment; Cahun died in 1954, after which Moore relocated to a smaller home.<ref name="Heritage" /> Moore died by suicide in 1972.<ref name="Heritage" /> She was buried alongside her partner Cahun in [[St Brelade's Church]].

==Legacy==
In 2018, a street of Paris, close to the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs where Marcel and Claude lived, took the name of "[[Allée Claude-Cahun-Marcel-Moore|allée Claude Cahun–Marcel Moore]]"<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://a06.apps.paris.fr/a06/jsp/site/plugins/solr/modules/ods/DoDownload.jsp?id_document=144541&items_per_page=20&sort_name=&sort_order=&terms=cahun&query=cahun|title=Conseil de Paris}}</ref> in the 6th district of the French capital.

[[Rupert Thomson]]'s 2018 novel, Never Anyone But You, was based on the lives of Moore and Cahun in Paris and Jersey.

[[File:Claude Cahun Marcel Moore Paris.jpg|thumb|Street sign '[[Allée Claude Cahun–Marcel Moore|allée Claude Cahun-Marcel Moore]]' [[6th arrondissement of Paris]]]]

== Bibliography (English) ==

* Jeffrey H. Jackson, ''Paper Bullets:  Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis''.  New York:  Algonquin Books, 2020. {{ISBN|978-1-61620-916-2}}

==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}

==External links==
* {{Commons category-inline}}    
* [http://www.connectotel.com/cahun/guegan-moore.html Illustration by Marcel Moore for ''Oya-Insula ou l'Enfant à la Conque''] by [[Marc-Adolphe Guégan]]

{{Authority control (arts)}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Moore, Marcel}}
[[Category:1892 births]]
[[Category:Lesbian photographers]]
[[Category:French lesbian artists]]
[[Category:French women photographers]]
[[Category:French LGBTQ photographers]]
[[Category:Artists from Nantes]]
[[Category:French surrealist artists]]
[[Category:French women surrealist artists]]
[[Category:20th-century French women artists]]
[[Category:French women in World War II]]
[[Category:French Resistance members]]
[[Category:20th-century French LGBTQ people]]
[[Category:1972 suicides]]
[[Category:1972 deaths]]
[[Category:Suicides in Jersey]]