Post 3 - Modernism

Modernism is the intangible and fluid craft of artists who emerged as outliers in the post-Impressionist Era. Women were emerging as pioneers in the 20^th century because modernism gave them the tools and the inspiration to combat patriarchy and sexism. Prior to the development of the 19^th amendment and the Women’s Liberation Movement, women were confined and oppressed. The transformative properties of art introduced by women in the modern era went hand in hand with the transformative justice they were seeking. Abstractionism was an expression of uninhibited and unrestricted vivid and radical combinations of colors and subjects that were expressed through craft and decorative arts. Sonia Delaunay and her husband Robert both worked as popular abstractionist painters – sometimes mimicking each other’s framework. Sonia’s Prismes Isotiques (1914) was one of the first paintings to truly challenge the idea of colors making sense and fitting uniformly within each canvas. Her disarray of color within each Geometric stroke provides an interesting sense of uniformity despite the disorganization. She understood the importance of fashion in pop culture and its ability to convey modern patterns. Her piece, Sonia’s Designs for Clothes and Citren in 1925, was a captivating compilation of square patterns in a color scheme that matches both the dress and the car. (Depicted in the picture below) The two women in the picture are modeling both the car and the dress to show solidarity in the pattern that is contoured by the vehicle and the background of the photo.

The most exciting movement that emerged out of the Women’s Liberation Movement, Abstractionism, and Modernism was the Dada Movement. Dadaism emerged in Europe in the early 20^th Century, making its way to New York City by approximately 1915. Dadaism was a response to the status quo. The paintings and photographs wanted to suggest confusing, illegitimate and anti-establishment sentiments in their artwork that could hold many perceptions. Dadaism proved that art could be expressed without meanings readily understood at first glance.

Women began taking on masculine and prosperous occupations that were considered to belong to the public sphere of the family unit. Women rejected their confined roles as either prostitute (pleasure for males) or mother (nurturers for males). It was no longer taboo for women to take on roles as artists, writers, scientists, and doctors. The significance of Hannah Hoch’s work was the appropriation used in her collages that didn’t use text, but she made sure the title was critical to framing one’s understanding of the piece. Her piece, Marlene Dietrich (1930) was dedicated to the female actors inability to be taken seriously or found worth beyond the desirable features she presents: long legs, red lipstick, smile, etc. Marlene’s legs are displayed for the male viewers located at the bottom right of the collage. Cubism was able to distort and piece various symbols together to formulate information regarding the women’s movement and the constraints of the status quo. Dadaism was able to create chaos in a pivotal and instrumental fashion that would ultimately become influenced by the women’s liberation movement and other expressionists. Art no longer had a responsibility to be logical or understandable.

German expressionism was a dialect of the modern art emerging from Europe’s Post-WWI society. Women like Mary Wigman were using expressionist dance to channel a subjective and contemporary experience to her audience. Germany began using expressionism primarily in film and photography in order to convey dramatic scenes derived from emotional circumstances rather than the reality of one’s surroundings. Expressionism intersected with other modern movements of the early 20^th Century – including Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism, and Surrealism. All of the women involved in the transition of modern art were able to channel political and personal symbolism to convey subliminal messages in their pieces. Artists like Frida Kahlo defined surrealism shortly after the eclipse of Dadaism. She was severely crippled physically and emotionally following her motor vehicle accident. She was motionless in her bed when she decided that painting would allow her to escape the crippling effects of her accident and eventually, her marriage to Diego Rivera. Her emotions and her unwavering perseverance attributed to the continuous inspiration of her paintings. She placed herself in unconventional and vulnerable scenes to illustrate her marriage with Diego and her political opinions of the industrial revolution. She used graphic and gory imagery to maintain a sense of awe when trying to indulge in the deeper meaning of her reality. She argued that she was not a surrealist, but strictly a realist.

“Really I do not know whether my paintings are surrealist or not, but I do know that they are the frankest expression of myself,” Frida once wrote, “Since my subjects have always been my sensations, my states of mind and the profound reactions that life has been producing in me, I have frequently objectified all these figures of myself, which were the most sincere and real thing that I could do in order to express what I felt inside and outside of myself.” (Frida Kahlo, Frida the Surrealist – PBS article)

Frida Kahlo, The Broken Column, 1944

Sonia Delaunay, Prismes Isotiques, 1914

Sonia Delaunay, Sonia’s Designs for Clothes and Citren, 1925

Suzanne Valadon - The Blue Room, 1923

Smoking cigarettes was considered taboo for women during this time because tobacco marketing and culture was primarily centered around male consumers. 

"Valadon's female nudes fuse observation with a knowledge of the female body based on her experience as a model. Rejecting the static and timeless presentation of the monumental nude that dominates Western art, she emphasizes context, specific moment, and physical action." (Chadwick, Page 285) 

Suzanna Valadon, Grandmother and Young Girl Stepping Into Bath, 1908

She depicts reality within daily scenarios of "natural womanhood." 

"Although contemporary critics remain deeply divided about essentialism - the belief in a female essence residing somewhere within the body of the women - and many have instead chosen a practice that addresses the social construction of femininity and the psychoanalytic construction of sexual difference, the search for the sources and self-imaging of women's creative energy remains very much with us." (Chadwick, Page 282) 

Works Cited 

1. Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society, 4^th Ed. London: Thames & Hudson, 2007. Print.

2. The Guerilla Girls’ Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art, London: Penguin, 1998. Print.

Bianca Lopes 

Art and Women Spring 2017 

Rutgers - Newark