>Swan Queen/Drag King

>Ida Rubinstein was a Russian ballerina who messed around with lots of people but was more importantly a pretty good dancer. Very beautiful, costumes great, super smart. She had a long affair with Romaine Brooks, wonderful lady painter of dykes, ladies who dressed like men, drag kings, really fantastic stuff. Pictured here, though, is Romaine Brooks’s rendering of Ida Rubinstein as the feminine ideal, the Venus, nude. Rubinstein also famously commissioned Ravel’s Bolero and danced in its first production.

More of Romaine Brooks work, just gangbusters: