148 | HARPER’S BAZAAR | December 2019 http://www.harpersbazaar.com/ukora Maar’s surrealist photographs linger
in the memory long after the first look.
Ta ke Portrait of Ubu (1936), a melancholy
armadillo foetus with droopy ears and
drowsy eyes, or Untitled (Hand-Shell) (1934), where
elegant fingers replace the nubby body of a hermit crab,
scuttling along the sand. Maar also photographed 1930s
fashion, shot documentary street scenes and painted
abstract landscapes, as well as being Picasso’s muse –
a role to which she is too often relegated. This month,
Tate Modern presents the UK’s first retrospective of
this remarkable artist, lifting the lid on her multi-
faceted oeuvre.
Born Henriette Théodora Mar-
kovitch in 1907, Maar requested as
a child to be called Dora, and the
name stuck. Growing up, her time
was divided between Argentina and
Paris, with a Croatian father and a
French mother. She studied paint-
ing in the 1920s before turning her
attention to photography – a more
viable pursuit for a woman and one
that led to many professional opp-
or tunities in the interwar period,
thanks to the development of the
illustrated press.
In 1931, Maar launched a studio
with the set designer Pierre Kéfer,
whose family’s high social stand-
ing connected her with an elite
clientele: she took a portrait of the
artist-designer Christian Bérard
and shot the home of Daisy
Fellowes, the then Paris editor of
Bazaar. A year later, Maar received her first fashion commissions
from the French magazine Heim and, after establishing her own
studio in a Parisian neighbourhood where haute couture reigned
supreme, the commissions proliferated, with regular clients
including Jeanne Lanvin and Elsa Schiaparelli.From the fashion photographer
Harry Ossip Meerson, for whom
she had been an assistant, Maar learnt
what magazines wanted: images that
focused on clothes and accessories. In
her own work, however, she inserted
bouts of drama or humour by angling her camera and
including reflections or curious props. Untitled (Fashion
Photograph) (about 1935) shows a model with a cut-out gold
star for a head, wearing a glittery ball gown and drawing
back a pair of velvet curtains before stepping out onto a
stage. In Model in Swimsuit (1936), the figure’s high-waisted
bikini jostles for attention with watery light and shadows.
Like Man Ray, whose shots of 1930s Augusta Bernard
dresses for Bazaar were a showcase for his surrealist
themes, Maar ingeniously straddled the boundary between
fine art and commercial photography. From her ethereal
nudes for erotic magazines such as Séduction to her eerie
images of mannequins with tight curls for the haircare
brand Dolfar, she invested each of her commissions with
a dream-like quality. The Years Lie in Wait for You (about
1935), an advert for an anti-ageing cream, teeters on the line
between fantasy and reality: Maar superimposes a negative of
a spider’s web onto a staged portrait of a young woman, subtly
hinting at the artifice of the product the image is promoting.
Along with many of the artists and intellectuals around her, MaarD
FA R SIGH T E D
ART
Dora Maar’s eye for the unusual
continues to inspire in herTate Modern retrospective
By CHLOË ASHBY
Dora Maar
photographed by
Man Ray in 1936PHOTOGRAPHS: THE SIR ELTON JOHN PHOTOGRAPHY COLLECTION © MAN RAY TRUST/ADAGP, PARIS AND DACS, LONDON 2016, © RMN-GRAND PALAIS (MUSÉE NATIONAL PICASSO-PARIS)/THIERRY LE MAGE, © SUCCESSION PICASSO/DACS, LONDON 2019, COLLECTION THEROND AND THE J PAUL GETTY MUSEUM, LOS ANGELES/© ADAGP, PARIS AND DACS, LONDON 2019, DAVID DE LAS HERAS, GETTY IMAGESTop left: a 1937
Dora Maar
portrait by Picasso.
Left: ‘Liberty’
(1936) by Maar