Tamara de Lempicka's Strategic Conservatism

Tamara de Lempicka’s seemingly pious and traditionalist period of the late 1920s and 1930s, exemplified by paintings such as La Polonaise (1933) and The Communicant (1928), appears to be a sharp departure from the Polish émigré’s celebrated erotic nudes of the early 1920s. This thesis contextualizes this stylistic and thematic shift in de Lempicka’s oeuvre within the increasingly fraught, nationalistic, and politically conservative climate of interwar Paris. I argue that de Lempicka adapted her approach to painting to overcome the increased challenges this environment posed to foreign women artists. Her strategy, which relied upon visual ambiguity and a manipulation of conservative taste, secured her financial and professional artistic success. I situate de Lempicka’s transition to traditional subjects and a classical revivalist style as part of a larger cultural trend by discussing her work in relation to her artistic milieu and to the “return to order,” a widespread artistic catalyst of the period. By analyzing the similarities between de Lempicka’s works and those of her contemporaries, including her teacher Maurice Denis and an organization of women artists known as the FAM (Femmes Artistes Modernes), I consider the influences behind de Lempicka’s strategic conservatism. I discuss de Lempicka’s adaptation of the classicizing elements and conservative connotations of the “return to order.” Her inventive use of a “return to order” style allowed her to blur the lines between religious and erotic ecstasy in her work, thereby extending her commitment to transgressive subjects and themes while simultaneously appealing to conservative tastes.