Existing comment:
"One day seven years ago I found myself saying to myself, "I can't live where I want to... I can't go where I want to go... I can't do what I want to... I can't even say what I want to..." I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to."
-- Georgia O'Keeffe, 1923
The first half of the twentieth century saw great technological, philosophical, and artistic changes. The airplane and the automobile, Marie Curie's discovery of radium, Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis, the Great Depression, and World War I altered the way people experienced the world around them. A modern notion of femininity emerged as well in the "New Woman," who was non-conformist in both appearance and attitude.
The art world experienced upheaval as the academy system declined and a wealth of new styles came to the fore. In both Europe and America, women still faced opposition from the art establishment. They circumvented conventional paths to success as founders of alternative art institutions, activists in political organizations, and participants in government-based art projects. Salons (private art gatherings) run by wealthy female patrons also provided a community that promoted women artists.
European and American women played an integral role in the development of the first modern art "isms" -- fauvism, expressionism, cubism, dadaism, and surrealism -- that emerged rapidly in the first four decades of the twentieth century. Women artists were excited by the expressive potential of those styles. Many incorporated ambiguous perspectives, intense colors, and flattened planes in their works, while others took the more radical step of creating entire abstract images. Women felt free to treat the subject of the nude figure (which was previously taboo for them) and develop their own approach to traditional subject matter such as landscapes, still life, and portraiture. |