“I am not a man. I am not a woman. I am I.”
To the Tate Modern exhibition of Expressionists. On the wall, I read, “The Blue Rider Collective included women artists and those exploring their gender identities”. I had not anticipated this. Who? Here is “Spanish Woman”, by Alexei Jawlensky, sometimes “von Jawlensky”.
The sitter is the dancer, Alexander Sakharoff.
Sakharoff is a dancer able to express their whole self, beyond masculine and feminine. They did not go through a binary transition: perhaps they could not imagine the possibility, perhaps there was no need. They could express their feminine self by performing in women’s or genderfluid clothing. Perhaps they felt afraid, of cancellation of their dancing career or violent homophobia. Their papers are at the Houghton Library, Harvard University.
They wrote, “the body must be an elaborate instrument capable of expressing the soul”, and I find my being through inspired movement.
Marianne Werefkin painted Sakharoff. I got a tote bag with this image. That could be a flower or an impaled insect.
Here is Werefkin’s self-portrait
(not in the exhibition). She inherited money, and was a patron of the arts. This was a man’s role in that society, and she was attacked as a “manwoman”, or Mannfrau, for it- an unnatural member of a third sex. But the “I am I” quote could just mean, Don’t stereotype me. Gabriele Münter, whose work is still in copyright, painted Werefkin, seeing her as “of grand appearance, self-confident, commanding”. This does not make her not a woman.
They moved through the world as best they could, as we all do.
Here is a Kandinsky from the exhibition.
Clare Flourish 
