French Literature Reviews - 2026
Éric Fassin, Joana Masó, Art is Life: Else von Freytag-Loringhoven's Critique of Marcel Duchamp
Art and Visual Culture
Long forgotten, the artist and writer Else von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874–1927) was rediscovered in the 1980s. Dubbed "the Baroness" by the New York avant-garde, she was subsequently credited with Fountain, the famous 1917 urinal signed R. Mutt, although it is now established that she was not its author. In 1910s New York, this penniless German baroness was admired for the way she embodied Dada, both in her work as an artist's model and through her impromptu performances outside the studio. She also wrote poems—published by the avant-garde magazine The Little Review before being censored for obscenity (alongside Joyce's Ulysses, in whose defense she spoke out)—and an autobiographical account centered on her quest for orgasm and her demand for sex rights. What characterizes EvFL (her signature) is the idea that art is life.
Gathered around Marcel Duchamp in New York, the early 20th-century avant-garde did not constitute a movement or a school. This gave rise to an art without works or authors, emancipated from market rules. EvFL operated within this moment, responding with her found objects to Duchamp's "readymades," particularly the 1917 urinal event. By examining her trajectory, we can reread Duchamp's entire oeuvre, from the Boîte-en-valise to Étant donnés.
While feminist art history seeks to introduce difference into the canon, simply adding female artists to a pantheon of great men is not enough. The goal of this first French monograph dedicated to Else von Freytag-Loringhoven is not to secure a place for an unrecognized artist at the table of great men, but to redesign the table itself.
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Éric Fassin is a professor of sociology and gender studies in the Department of Political Science at Université Paris 8. An affiliated researcher at Sophiapol (Paris Nanterre / Paris 8), he is a senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France. In 2025, he published Les Études de genre (Que Sais-Je? PUF), La Savante et le Politique. Ce que le féminisme fait aux sciences sociales (co-authored with Caroline Ibos, PUF), and S’engager en sociologue. Entretiens avec Ilana Eloit et Manuela Salcedo (Textuel).
Joana Masó is a senior lecturer in French literature at the University of Barcelona and a researcher affiliated with the UNESCO Chair on Women, Development and Cultures. An exhibition curator and translator of several French works on art and cinema into Spanish, her recent publications in French include Tosquelles. Soigner les institutions (L’Arachnéen, 2021), La Déconniatrie. Art, exil et psychiatrie autour de François Tosquelles (Les Abattoirs – Musée FRAC Occitanie, 2022), and Nusch Éluard. Sous le surréalisme, les femmes (Seghers, 2024).
The early twentieth-century avant-garde in New York functioned as a loosely organized collective rather than a formal school, fostering an environment where art could exist independently of traditional authorship and commercial constraints. Within this intellectual climate, artists experimented with the readymade, a concept that challenged the status of the art object. This volume situates the work of Else von Freytag-Loringhoven within these developments, tracing her artistic trajectory and her engagement with the aesthetic shifts that defined the era.
Feminist art history interrogates the structures of the traditional canon, aiming to move beyond the mere inclusion of female figures in established hierarchies. By focusing on the intersection of life and art, this study explores how the Baroness’s performances and writings offer a lens through which to reconsider the legacy of Marcel Duchamp. Readers interested in the history of the avant-garde and the evolution of gendered perspectives in art criticism may find this monograph relevant.