The scene is Paris, 1912. Following an excursion to Amsterdam for a personal exhibition, artist Henri Le Fauconnier returns to his home galleries. He is among his fellow Salon Cubists again, the spearheaders and rulers of the burgeoning movement that has taken over the public Parisian salons—mainly due to their notoriety. The doors are shut and the lights are off as the hungry crowd awaits the grand opening of this year’s Salon des Indépendants, ready to indulge in the delicacies of fine art while tearing apart those they deem outrageous to the very practice of artistry. It is the annual gallery event held by the formal art society of Paris—a time to celebrate the best of the year—and the Cubists have made it their stage. Off to the right, a piece hangs shrouded in shadow, the colossus of paint and labor spanning the entire wall. When the guards finally receive the signal, they open the floodgates; eyes begin to scour the disembodied limbs and shapes warping across the canvas. At 2.5 x 3.5 meters, Le Fauconnier’s Les Montagnards attaqués par des ours (Mountaineers Attacked by Bears) is his largest painting to date. Soon, it becomes clear that his work is met with equally large outrage from the public, culminating in editorial backlash and mass protests. Echoing similar responses to the previous year’s similarly “outrageous” exhibit, he is at the top of the movement again. He is Le Fauconnier after all, the Falconer.
Now, sometime in the 21st century, a quick Google search of “Henri Le Fauconnier” lands on several images of Cubist artwork and articles about early movement leaders now overshadowed by Picasso’s dominance in modern memory. There is a single black-and-white photograph among them: a narrow-faced and severe-looking man with a receding hairline. This is not a portrait of the painter. Instead, the picture portrays French writer Henri Fauconnier, the 1930 Prix Goncourt winner for literature. On Le Fauconnier’s Wikipedia page, the first line reads: “This article is about the painter. For the writer, see Henri Fauconnier.”
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The scene is Chapel Hill, 2021. I sit at my desk, perusing Google Drive. Inside a folder entitled “Stories by Christina” are years upon years’ worth of documents—some are short stories from middle school creative writing ventures, others are the opening chapters of abandoned novels. My mind wanders as I consider this personal graveyard of typework, imagining a future where I finally feel rooted enough in an idea to call it my “debut novel.” It is a comforting thought: my name on the cover of a story to one day share with the world. What would that feel like? I decide to simulate the emotion, Googling my name to envision what could be. Instead, what appears are headlines, all featuring images of one particular book cover: Christina Li, Stanford senior, upcoming debut author. Christina Li, Stanford senior, upcoming debut author. Christina Li, Christina Li, Christina Li. I had been beaten to it.
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Henri Fauconnier was born in 1879 in Charente, France, a town by the southwestern coast. Henri Le Fauconnier was born in 1881 in Hesdin, France, a town by the northern coast.
Christina Li was born around 1999 in the Midwest before moving to the West Coast. Christina N. Li was born in 2006 in North Carolina and stayed there.
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Henri Le Fauconnier, named Henri Victor Gabriel Fauconnier at birth, initially moved to Paris to begin legal studies at Université Paris in 1901, but quickly left to pursue art full-time. He joined the studio of French Romanticist Jean-Paul Laurens, then moved to the private Académie Julian that same year. It is during this brief period that he added the “Le” to his name, becoming Le Fauconnier. Historically, there is little explanation for the name change, as very few direct quotes from him remain—whether purposefully or not. Perhaps he anticipated his fellow name-bearer, setting out to differentiate himself both by name and art as he soon began deviating from the dominant 19th-century trends of Fauvism and Impressionism, opting to test the boundaries with the Cubists.
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Today, Christina Li is a Stanford graduate and award-winning author based in New York City. She has four books published in the young adult and middle school genres, with a fifth book deal announced for summer 2026. She has thousands of followers on Instagram and TikTok cumulatively, often collaborating with a close circle of fellow YA authors. Her novels line the “L-O” sections of bookstores, and I begin contemplating my entire life—name included. I begin to brainstorm pen names, which is to say I begin to dismember myself. Chris? Tina? Christa? Nana? What if I just added my middle name, maybe the pinyin wouldn’t look too bad…Fuck it. I’ll just become a Seraphina Li.
For the Henris, at least one was a writer, the other a painter.
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While working on Les Montagnards attaqués par des ours, Le Fauconnier also completed another piece, Le Chasseur (The Huntsman), in 1912. Here, he maintains his signature Cubist blur of iconographies, roughly constructing imagery of a hunter firing at the mallard ducks scattered around him. Based on his initial pencil sketches, however, scholars consider this a rare instance where Le Fauconnier appears to intend a self-portrait—the hunter standing in for himself, the artist. Other than this, there are no photographs or realist portraits of the famous Cubist. Upon reflection, this well may have been his purpose all along: to have his art stand for itself, and for himself as well. He is Le Fauconnier, the Falconer. The wielder of his own art.
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Li means “plum” in Chinese. “The plum” is definitely not the flashiest, and “Christina The Li” just doesn’t flow as well (or at all, in fact). When I sit at my desk, I continuously return to my archive of unfinished drafts. Inside are previous worlds riddled with misplaced commas and workshopped character arcs; the older they are, the more painful they are to reread. They are, however, ultimately my own—and more than just the literal letters that compose my name.
