She wore soup-can bras, made an explicit film with Man Ray – and may have inspired Marcel Duchamp’s upturned urinal. We explore a thrilling show celebrating the pacy life of ‘The Baroness’
Towering over crowds at the Venice Biennale, a fortysomething woman poses in a wild homemade costume, that includes beribboned matador pants and a hat like an upturned saucepan. In another photo, smaller and taken around 1920, she crouches on one leg like a stork, sprouting feathers and dripping jewellery.
Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven was born Elsa Hildegard Plötz in the city of Świnoujście, now part of Poland, in 1874. Her title – acquired in New York in 1913 – was the souvenir of a short marriage. “The Baroness” became not just her name but her persona: an avant-garde creation defying bourgeois decency. In Venice this year, she was honoured as a dadaist pioneer who reimagined her everyday life as a performance.
