Autoportrait (Tamara in a Green Bugatti)

What does a woman dream about? Family, love, garden? Yes! But, how about driving a Bugatti? Tamara not just fancied a dream, but when commissioned by a German magazine Die Dame, she painted herself, riding a Bugatti. Perhaps she did justice for a fashion magazine with a leather helmet and gloves, and scarf. At a period of time, when women were considered godly, and elegance was personified while riding shotgun beside a man, and the metrics of her success was measured by her man's status, Tamara exuded cold, focused, independent, and inaccessible beauty.

We bet that it was a dream because Bugatti models then did not have a right-hand steering wheel. She was a rider, who commanded the blocks her way to move. This was her behind the wheel driving herself, through the inspiration she drew from neo-cubism, futurism, and all the avant-garde art and literature that created her — to building her own set of painting rules. Sharp eyes and a structured flow of the scarf, frozen mid-motion, as if speed itself had been built into the brushstroke.

A 31 year old woman, driving back to her apartment in her yellow Renault while simultaneously living an explosive lifestyle, and being aware of her capacity to have a meteoric rise to fame and wealth, used an opportunity to hit every doorstep with her image on a green luxurious sports car. The car was never the object. Absolute fame, creative power, and a permanent place in art history that fuelled her lifestyle is what the car symbolised. And she did certainly land on that.

She had her boundaries clearly. She drove the yellow Renault until it was famously stolen. She was assertive and grounded. Her eyes cold, and focused on her path, outlook aware of future, and heart that carried the gratitude of her past, and she working in the present. She was the dream. She is what women dream about.