American and British
Women Artists, 1900-1950
Forging Self, Forging
Form
Art Movements: Late 19th through
Mid 20th Century
- Impressionism
(France, 1867-1886: Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cassatt, Pissaro, Monet)
- Post-Impressionism
(France, 1880-1920: Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gaugin, Seurat)
- Modernism
(1890-1940 "Father=Cezanne" UK Bloomsbury, US Stieglitz group
- Bloomsbury
(1904- : Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant)
- Fauvism
(Paris 1905-08: Matisse, Dufy, Derain)
- Expressionism
(Germany, 1905-1925: Chagall, Munch, Marc, Kokoshka)
- Cubism
(Paris, 1908-1914: Picasso, Gris, Mondrian, Braque)
- Constructivism
(Russia, 1915-1940s: Kandinsky, Malevich)
- Dada
(Zurich, 1916-1920s: Duchamp, Ernst, Arp, Schwitters)
- Surrealism
(Paris 1920 - 1930s: Duchamp, Ernst, Magritte, Miro, Dali, Man Ray, M. C.
Escher)
- Abstract
Expressionism (NYC 1940-1960s: Pollack, de Kooning, Rothko, Motherwell)
American
Artists
Georgia O'Keeffe
1887-1986 (Modernism). Born in Wisconsin.
- Biography
from O'Keeffe Museum.
- City
Night
- Black
Cross, New Mexico
- Georgia
O'Keeffe Online Gallery
- Georgia
O'Keeffe bio and images from Ellen's Place
- "At first the men
didn't want me around. They couldn't take a woman artist seriously. I would
listen to them talk and I thought, my, they are dreamy. I felt much more prosaic,
but I knew I could paint as well as some of them who were sitting around talking."
Borzello, p.186-7
- I grew up pretty much
as everybody else grows up and one day seven years ago found myself saying
to myself--I can't live where I want to--I can't do what I want to--I can't
even say what I want to. School and things that painters have taught me even
keep me from painting as I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not
to at least paint as I wanted to and say what I wanted to when I painted as
that seemed to be the only thing I could do that didn't concern anybody but
myself--that was nobody's business but my own. So these paintings and drawings
happened and many others that are not here. I found that I could say things
with color and shapes that I couldn't say in any other way--things that I
had no words for. Some of the wise men say it is not painting, some of them
say it is. Art or not Art--they disagree. Some of them do not care. Some of
the first drawings done to please myself I sent to a girl friend requesting
her not to show them to anyone. She took them to "291" and showed
them to Alfred Stieglitz and he insisted on showing them to others. He is
responsible for the present exhibition.
I say that I do
not want to have this exhibition because, among other reasons, there so many
exhibitions that it seems ridiculous for me to add to the mess, but I guess
I'm lying. I probably want to see my things hang on a wall as things I have
seen done. And I presume, if I must be honest, that I am also interested in
what anybody else has to say about them and also in what they don't say because
that means something to me, too." Witzling, p.218-19. From exhibition
catalogue, Anderson Galleries, 1925
- "A flower is relatively
small. Everyone has many associaitons with a flower--the idea of flowers.
You put out your hand to touch the flower--lean forward to smell it--maybe
touch it with your lips almost without thinking--or give it to someone to
please them. Still--in a way--nobody sees a flower--really--it is so small--we
haven't time--and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time. If
I could paint the flower exactly as I see it no one would see what I see because
I would paint it small like the flower is small.
So I said to myself--I'll paint what I see--what the flower is to me but I'll
paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it--I
will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.
Well--I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to
really notice my flower you hung all your own associations with flowers on
my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think
and see of the flower--and I don't." Witzling, p. 219. From exhibition
catalogue, "An American Place," 1939.
Alice Neel
1900-1984 (unaffiliated with any isms). Born in Philadelphia.
- Biography,
More
from Walker Exhibition
- Paintings
- "I always needed
women's lib. I had it inside of me, but outside, these people ran all over
me, even though I was a much better painter." Borzello, p.183
- "I was in the exhibition
of the New York Group in 1938 at the ACA gallery--seven men and I. They were
so embarrassed because I was a woman, but I didn't feel any different from
them. They didn't understand." Borzello, p.186
Kay Sage
1898-1963 Born in Albany, NY, to wealthy parents. An American in Paris, fled
before WWII (Surrealism)
- Unusual
Thursday
- Tomorrow,
for Example
- Danger,
Construction Ahead
- The
Instant and The Morning Myth
- The
Fourteen Daggers
- In
the Third Sleep
- "I can't tell you
what it would mean to most people...but I do know what it means to me. It's
a sort of showing what's inside--things half mechanical, half alive. The mountain
itself can represent almost anything--a human being, life, the world, any
fundamental thing." Suther, p.134
- "Not only did I
dislike women in general... but by then I liked men very very much."
Suther, p.238.
- Breton referred to her
work as "cold, unfeminine." Suther, p.148
- Married to fellow Surrealist
Yves Tanguy, who liked to tell her, "I made it on my own. Let's see you
do it." Sounds reasonable, but he "maintained that he had earned
his reputation on the merits of his work, with no one's help, whereas any
recognition that came to Sage was either a fluke or a favor from some high-placed
ally." Suther, p.131
- "[Tanguy and I]
are really concealed from each other in our work. He doesn't know what picture
I am painting--although I take more interest in his than he does in mine--naturally."
Chadwick, p.98
- She was independently
wealthy, supported Tanguy and made it financially possible for several Surrealists,
including Breton, to flee to the U.S. from France before WWII. The wife of
the then-director of MOMA said that for the Surrealists, "she was a matter
of convenience." Suther, p.74
Romaine Brooks
1874-1970 Born in Rome to wealthy American parents. Lived in Europe most of
her life.
Marguerite Zorach
1887-1968 (Modernism). Born in California.
- Bio
and Paintings
- Autumn
Woods
- The
Swamp
- Man
Among the Redwoods
- From Early American Modernist
Paintings 1910-1935 by Abraham A. Davidson (c1981): "Paintings derived
from her Provincetown experience ...have lost [her husband's] magical quality.
...But her paintings have another strength, a decorative strength."
Isabel Bishop
1902-1988 Realism. Born in Cincinnati.
- Images
- Laughing
Head
- "I couldn't consciously
make them feminine but I think they are. I hate feminine-looking work--the
word feminine is derogatory in this context, but I think it would be reasonable
for critics to look upon the art scene and ask themselves, 'what are women
thinking about the world'" Then the critics could look at women's work
from the point of view of finding content different from men's there, whether
the women have consciously put it there or not. It seems the work should have
it if it's genuine." Borzello, p.210
British
Artists
Vanessa Bell
1879-1961 Bloomsbury
Leonora Carrington
1917 - (still living and painting in Mexico?) Surrealism. Fled Paris prior to
WWII, moved to Mexico.
Barbara Hepworth (Dame)
1903-1973 British Modernism.
- At the Tate
- BBC
Interview (4 minutes)
- quotations
- "I do not want to
make a stone horse that is trying to and cannot smell the air. How lovely
is the horse's sensitive nose, the dog's moving ears and deep eyes; but to
me these are not stone forms and the love of them and the emotion can only
be expressed in more abstract terms. I do not want to make a machine that
cannot fulfill its esential purpose; but to make exactly the right relation
of masses, a living thing in stone, to express my awareness and thought of
these things." Witzling, p.278.
- "My left hand is
my thinking hand. The right is only a motor hand. This holds the hammer. The
left hand, the thinking hand, must be relaxed, sensitive. The rhythms of thought
pass through the fingers and grip of this hand into the stone. It is also
a listening hand. It listens for basic weaknesses of flaws in the stone; for
the possibility or imminence of fractures." Witzling, p.286.
- Married to artist Ben
Nicholson
Gwen John
1876-1939 Born in Wales, brother also an artist. Moved to France 1904.
Eileen
Agar 1904-1991 Born to wealthy British parents in Argentina, moved to
England within a few years. Surrealism.
- At the Tate.
- At Redfern
Gallery
- Photos,
including Ceremonial Hat for Eating Bouillabaisse.
- "The Surrealists
themselves were a proud, elegant and unforgettable group. They all seemed
to be very handsome... . The Surrealist women, whether painters or not, were
equally good-looking. they were elegant and dressed with panache, caring about
clothers and their surroundings, hoever strange the interiors. Our concern
with appearance was not a result of pandering to masculine demands, but rather
a common attitude to life and style. This was in striking contrast to the
other professional women painters of the time, those who were not Surrealists,
who if seen at all, tended to flaunt their art like a badge, appearing in
deliberataly paint-spotted clothing. the juxtaposition by us of a Schiaparelli
dress with outrageous behaviour or conversation was simply carrying the beliefs
of Surrealism into public existence." Agar, p.120
Related
Links
Modernists
Journals Project
Sources
Agar, Eileen. A Look
at My Life. Methuen London, 1988. (not in CLICnet)
Borzello, Frances. A
World of Our Own: Women as Artists since the Renaissance. Watson-Guptill,
2000.
Caws, Mary Ann, Rudolf Kuenzli,
and Gwen Raaberg, editors. Surrealism and Women. MIT, 1990
Chadwick, Whitney. Women
Artists and the Surrealist Movement. Thames and Hudson, 1985.
Davidson, Abraham A. Early
American Modernist Painting, 1910-1935. Da Capo, c1981.
Dictionary of Art.
Grove, 1996. 34 volumes
Shone, Richard. The Art
of Bloomsbury. Princeton University Press, 1999.
Suther, Judith D. A House
of Her Own: Kay Sage, Solitary Surrealist. University of Nebraska Press,
1997.
Witzling, Mara D. Voicing
Our Visions: Writings by Women Artists. Universe, 1991.
