These scholars have set out to establish a more dynamic conception of Deharme's reputation.
In her lifetime, Lise Deharme (1889–1980), gained "celebrity as a hostess".
Specifically, she was a prolific organizer of Surrealist salons.
Man Ray once described Deharme’s house, where she held her salons, as “a rambling affair, filled with strange objects and rococo furniture”.
Amidst these rambling salons, Deharme’s subversive publication, Le Phare de Neuilly, emerged in 1933.
Le Phare de Neuilly provided space for radical juxtapositions of works by contributors such as "Natalie Barney, James Joyce, D.H.
Lawrence, and Jacques Lacan" and was poignantly political and subversive.
As the curator of Le Phare, Deharme personally "[blended] ethical and aesthetic issues to address the socio-political troubles of the early 1930s".In the late 1930s, Deharme collaborated with Claude Cahun on the book Le Cœur de Pic.
After publishing Le Cœur de Pic in 1937 Deharme, alternatively, came to be known in the Surrealist circle as "la Dame de Pique" [the Queen of Spades].
[The choice of the malevolent symbol of the Queen of Spades suggests that we would be wrong to relegate her work to the "fragile charm" category of "feline and floral femininity".
Beware: the charm of Deharmian humor is more poisonous than we have been led to believe, even in the best reference books].