I really should know better than to leave the house. I feel very much like the Aztecs when Cortés came. You know that they weren’t defeated militarily. It is just that the Europeans, who lived in a world of filth and virus, brought unknown disease to the new continent. It is kind of hard to fight a war when 90% of your troops die of smallpox. Anyway, I just don’t get out much. So when I leave the house, I am under constant threat — especially from children, who I think we all know are evil, even if it isn’t there intention. Bottom line: I’m quite sick and without any medicine or even alcohol to help me through it.

On this day in 1883, the great cubist painter Marie Laurencin was born. But she was more than that. The self-portrait at the beginning of this article is almost neoclassical — plus it is multimedia, primarily charcoal. She started her studies doing porcelain painting. It was only later that she became involved in avant-garde. And the work that I most admire of hers is not cubist. In fact, she seems to have only done cubist work for a short period. For example, Jeune Femmes (“Young Women”) is from 1910:

But by 1928, she was creating work that looked more like, Portrait of Mrs Aitato, which reminds me a bit of Modigliani:

It’s all lovely. I always think that people like Laurencin aren’t better known because they are women. Sexism in the art world seems to be especially bad. Or used to be. I don’t know anything about the art world today.

Happy birthday Marie Laurencin!