A Very Long Engagement: Nineteenth-Century Sculpture and Its Afterlives

Chana Orloff's Maria Lani, Shepherdess

by Pavithra Devarajan

Poet-artist Jean Cocteau once stated, “Every time I look away she changes…what a hypnotic force the woman [is]!” (Maxwell 14). This woman Cocteau speaks of is none other than model-actress Maria Lani. Over the course of many years, numerous suspicions arose around Lani, regarding just whether or not she was a model or an actress, but one thing was for sure: regardless of who she was, she was mystifying. And it is this very mystification that makes Chana Orloff’s sculpture, Maria Lani, Shephredess so intriguing [Figure 1]. For as one moves around the sculpture, its complexity is exploited. Different angles create shadows and highlights, exposing and hiding numerous facial emotions and fictive spaces, ultimately concluding that Orloff might have been pursuing the communal idea surrounding Lani at the time through her sculpture: Maria Lani is ever-changing.

Maria Lani was a mythical woman, since only a few details about her are known for certain. Born June 24, 1895 in the Polish village of Kolno, Maria Jaleniewicz grew up in the city of Czestochowa. Maria’s father was a factory worker, who after dying young, left Maria and her mother with his factory pension to live off of. Maria and her mother lived in a middle-class neighborhood until 1918 when Maria’s mother passed. With both her parents gone, Maria adopted a new surname “Lani”, and immigrated (Roberts 28). In 1928, Lani stated she was in Berlin, where she presumably studied acting with, and acted for, Max Reinhardt, a movie director at the time. Reinhardt confirmed this in a later 1930 interview about her. Reinhardt spoke greatly of Lani, stating, “Lani has a certain charm and there in nobody in Paris or Berlin exactly like her” (Lackman 50). Lani claimed to be in Prague during the 10-year gap between 1918 and 1928, however no evidence has been found to support this (Roberts 28). It was during her time in Berlin, with no major breakthroughs and a fear that fame would escape her transient beauty, that Lani decided to inflate her resume and make “producers” out of her brother and husband. With this scheme and Lani’s charisma, the three of them claimed to be working on a film that required copious amounts of portraits. “They got 59 artists to portray her in a little over 12 months” (Lackman 50), showcasing the works across the world in exhibitions from America to all over Europe, and finally ending her career as an actress in a theater (Lackman 51). 

One of the many artists that depicted Lani during her twelve-month escapade across Europe was artist Chana Orlaff. Chana Orloff was born in 1888 in Kamenka, Ekaterinoslay province, known today as present day Ukraine. She was born eighth of nine children to a poor Jewish family (De). As a child, Chana studied Hebrew, and in 1905 immigrated to the Land of Israel with her parents. Here they all settled in Petah Tikya. A few years later however, the family moved to Neve Tzdek, and in 1910, Chana Orloff went to Paris to study art at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs. And it is here that she grew close to the Jewish artists of the Paris school, and other modernists at the time. In 1943 she moved to Switzerland where she continued to work and stay as an artist up until 1945. After the war, Orloff returned to France, but regularly visited and exhibited her work in Isreal. Chana passed away in 1968, and is remembered as a prolific sculptor during the first half of the twentieth century, creating and completing hundreds of portraits of her contemporaries during her lifetime. “Orloff was influenced by French modernist art of the early 20th century. Her early work shows subtle Cubist influence reflected in the geometric character of some of her sculptures. Her later work is freer and more expressive in style” (The Israel Museum). It is sometime between being in school in Paris, and moving to Switzerland in 1943, that Chana Orloff worked on her sculpture, Maria Lani, Shepherdess, producing it as a finished product in 1928.

Present-day, it is important to keep all this background information about Maria Lani and Chana Ofloff in mind when viewing the sculpture in order to better understand the sculpture as a whole. Furthermore, when viewing this sculpture, it is quintessential that one must view it from all angles, as its complexity then becomes exposed. For example, when viewing the sculpture from a frontal angle, [Figure 2] Lani’s neck is rather elongated. It appears her neck is almost as long as her face, making it seem disproportionate in relation to her face. The texture of the material is smooth and sultry, only adding to the elongated look of the neck. The shadows and highlights casted from the surrounding light make her neck seem rather slim, making it look longer in that aspect as well.
However, as you take a couple steps to the right [Figure 3], Lani’s image completely changes in front of your eyes. You are immediately blinded by a new Lani. Her neck suddenly seems as though it is in the process of shrinking, and the dark shadows casted towards the dwindling part of her neck in the back only add a more dramatic effecting, making the transition of her neck from long to short seem to happen in a flash. Finally, as you take a couple more steps to the right, you are facing the back of Lani’s head [Figure 4], and yet again discover a new side of her. From this view, directly behind Lani, you instantly notice the size of her neck is extremely small. The dark shadows that are cast from the enormity of her head also add to the neck’s already shortened length, making it seem as though her head is going to topple right off of her barely-there neck. Overall, from this simple example, it is evident that Orloff might have very well indeed taken notions that were known about Lani at the time, and infused them into her work.

Similarly, another example of Lani’s ever-changing persona coming forth in Orloff’s sculpture is how Lani’s head seems to alter from proportionate to unproportionate with every couple of steps taken around her. For example, viewing Lani’s head straight from the front [Figure 5] makes it seem ordinary. Everything seems equitable. However, when you take a couple steps to the right, the side view of Lani completely changes. Her head suddenly seems to stretch out and back in a rather exaggerated manner [Figure 6]. The back of her head seems extremely bulky and large, almost as if something is jutting out of her scalp. Finally, after taking a couple more steps to the right, you are directly behind Lani, only to find another astonishing new change. From this view, Lani’s head seems ginormous [Figure 7]. There is a clear bulge towards the right side of the back of her head, and the overall shape of her head seems rather off. It feels as though Lani’s head is about to tip back too far and fall right off. Through this example, it is again rather clear how with every step you take, Lani continuously changes, only proving that Orloff could have intended for this to happen. 

Yet another example of Lani’s many faces and sides being exposed in Orloff’s sculpture are seen when yoking together the subtle surface details provided with the nature of Maria Lani as a person. In other words, a shocking discovery can be made as you walk around Orloff’s sculpture. One that might be the biggest piece of evidence supporting the theory that Orloff was trying to capture Maria’s changeful qualities in her bust of her. Standing in front of Lani, the surface of her face seems extremely smooth like silk. The shadows and highlights produced making her facial features seem to rise and melt out of her face in one fluid motion, rather than being angular and bony. The only clearly defined mark on the sculpture that can be seen from the front is the definitive line towards the top of Lani’s scalp. As you take steps to the right, another facial feature can be analyzed for oddity, Lani’s ears. Orloff seems to have sculpted Lani’s ears right into the side of her head, instead of sticking out like a normal human’s face would. Lastly, when you take a couple more steps to face directly behind Maria, it is clear from the shadows and highlights that appear that the textures of the surface are very different from those in the front. The back of Lani’s head is rather lumpy towards the right but flat, presenting the idea of hair being bunched up to one side. As you look closer to her neck however, distinct lines appear, making it seem as though strangling pieces of hair somehow escaped the hold of her hair above. When putting together all these context clues it is noticeable that it seems to be that Lani is wearing a hairnet or hair-wrapping of some sort. This would explain the defined line hear Lani’s forehead as possibly being cloth, the varied smooth and detailed surfaces towards the upper back part of her scalp and upper part of her neck as strands of hair either tucked in or loose, and her ears being pressed back against her head as if they are under a wrap of some sort. These details then plunge the viewer’s imagination even further into the narrative that the sculpture, presenting the possibility that Lani was being portrayed as a “player of roles” in one sense, making it seem as though her hair was up and out of the way as if she were preparing the put on a wig and take on the role of someone else aside from herself. This idea, would once again only support the theory that Orloff may have purposely showed Lani in a light that she had casted for herself at the time.
 

Another famous artist who depicted Lani for her movie scheme at the time, was expressionist-artist Chaim Soutine, however his choice of medium was oil on canvas. Chaim Soutine was born in 1893 in Smilavichy near Minsk, (modern day) Belarus (then part of the Russian Empire).  From 1910 to 1913 he studied in Vilnius at the Vilna Academy of Fine Arts, and in 1913 ), he emigrated to Paris, where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts under Fernand Cormon (Damascus University 2). Chaim Soutine died in 1943 in Paris, France.

In 1929 Soutine painted, Portrait of Maria Lani [Figure 11], in order to contribute to her movie cause. By analyzing this painting, we can once again see how artists at the time incorporated Lani’s ever-changing persona into their works. For example, it is clear that Soutine used the same elongating and dramatizing technique when it came to Lani’s neck and forehead [Figure 12]. Here, it is evident that Lani’s neck is rather long, and almost the same length as her forehead in comparison. Lani’s face as a whole is also oddly shaped, and seems almost stretched out, almost as if it were a mask falling off, implying she is a person of many faces. Furthermore, the clearly forced brush stokes only add to this idea that Lani is hypnotic and constantly evolving, in the sense that it seems Soutine slapped the paint on to the canvas, having Lani appear out of the canvas like an act, rather than painting her on to the canvas [Figure 13]. 

Ergo, by taking a closer look at the subject of the work, Maria Lani, as well as the artist who created her sculpture, Chana Orloff, alongside other artists at the time who portrayed her, such as Chaim Soutine, one thing is clear: Maria Lani was not only a woman, but a mirage of faces that each artist tried to capture within their works of her. As art critic Waldemar George once stated, “She is the autumn, the winter, the springtime, and the summer, the past, the present and the future, the north, the south, the east and the west” (Maxwell 14). She is Maria Lani.

Scholarly Sources

De, Julio Maryann. "Chana Orloff." Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. 1 March 2009. Jewish Women's Archive. (Viewed on December 23, 2016) <https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/orloff-chana>.

"Information Center for Israeli Art | The Israel Museum, Jerusalem." Information Center for Israeli Art | The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, n.d. 23 Dec. 2016

Lackman, Jon. "Maria Lani's Mystery." Art in America June-July 2014: 49-52.

Maxwell, Clair, and Henry Truce. "Speaking of Pictures." LIFE 3 Dec. 1935: 14-15.

Mendelsohn, Willi Naomi. "Sculpting Identity: Chana Orlaff and Her Portraits." Thesis. University of Iowa, 2015. Chana Orloff. Iowa Research Online, 2015. 31 Oct. 2016.

Roberts, Paul G. Masters Of Photography. Vol. 51. Bondi, N.S.W.: Branding Establishment Group, 2011. The Muse.

The Arts Council 1963. Chaim Soutine, 1893-1943. London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1963. Damascus University. 

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