Lili Elbe 1928

Gerda Wegener made this watercolor, titled Lili Elbe, at an unknown date. There’s a playful and light touch to Wegener’s application, the kind of mark-making that comes from letting the water do some of the work. It’s like she's composing with translucence itself. The texture is smooth, and the colors float together, creating a soft, dreamlike quality. Look at the way the blues and greens in the seltzer bottle bleed into the white of the gloves, almost as if everything is breathing together. The gloves—or perhaps the hand inside the gloves—make a gesture that’s hard to read, like an unfinished thought. Those arched windows in the background are not quite symmetrical, giving us a view that’s slightly off-kilter. Wegener's contemporary, Tamara de Lempicka, explored a similar aesthetic with an embrace of queer representation. But where Lempicka uses a bold, graphic style, Wegener offers something softer, more ambiguous. Both artists leave us with the sense that art isn’t about fixed answers, but about opening up possibilities.