Why should I paint dead fish, onions and beer glasses? Girls are so much prettier.

The remark contrasts traditional still-life subjects—fish, onions, beer glasses—with Laurencin’s preferred motif: women and girls. It signals an aesthetic and ideological choice: to reject the canonical hierarchy of “serious” subjects (often associated with masculine studio practice) in favor of a deliberately feminine, lyrical world. The line also hints at modernism’s freedom to redefine what is worthy of depiction, treating beauty, intimacy, and the social presence of women as sufficient justification for art. Read alongside Laurencin’s career, it aligns with her consistent focus on female figures rendered in soft palettes and stylized forms, asserting a personal vision rather than academic convention.