Why were these women artists making modernism?
Exhibitions of women artists are to be celebrated. I know that. But I am also finding it problematic. Why is it ok to group artists by gender? A few years ago, I co-curated an exhibition of artists from one country – I think even that is questionable. Art is not the World Cup. But we humans do like to compartmentalise.
Marianne Werefkin, Twins, 1909. Tempera on paper, 27.5 x 36.5 cm. Fondazione Marianne Werefkin, Museo Comunale d'Arte Moderna, Ascona
It happens not only in art. As a mother of a girl (do parents of boys do the same?), I indulged at one point in buying books such as Women in Science. But then I also bought books on science. They did not specify they were about men or women – they were about science, full stop. So, the message was that there are two tiers of science. One is for “great scientists”, very few of whom are women. The second tier is for scientists who are women. This is a massive under-correction, disguised as an overcorrection.
Has Royal Academy fallen in to the same trap? Its Making Modernism is about modernism, but mostly it’s about women artists living and working in Germany in the early 20th century. The title is good, if a little misleading. But then calling it ‘German women artists making modernism’ would not be quite as punchy. Modernism was made by men and women. Why not include both?
There’s been a distinct increase in the attention granted to women artists by Britain’s institutions over the past few years. Personal exhibitions in museums and works marketed by private galleries – although still only about a third of artworks sold are by women artists. Peggy Guggenheim - an outcast in the famous family - organised a show titled 31 Women in her gallery in New York in 1943 – nearly 80 years ago. There was no hiding behind big titles there – or was that the big title itself? The all-women show. Even then, Georgia O’Keeffe declined to participate, refusing to be seen as a ‘woman painter’.
Käthe Kollwitz, Woman with Dead Child, 1903. Etching on paper, 42.4 x 48.6 cm. © Käthe Kollwitz Museum Köln
The Guerrilla Girls – a feminist group devoted to exposing sexism in the art world – formed in 1985. Now, after 37 years of fighting, you can own their sarcastic ‘Benefits of Being a Woman Artist’ as a clutch bag from Tate. Capitalism succeeded in rendering protest impotent, by assimilating it within existing, safe structures. Always acting anonymously, Guerrilla Girls use women artists’ names as their alias – one of them has been Käthe Kollwitz.
Käthe Kollwitz (1867- 1945) is one of the heroines of Making Modernism. The three others are Paula Modersohn-Becker, Gabriele Münter and Marianne Werefkin. There are also a couple of works by Ottilie Reylaender, Erma Bossi and Jacoba van Heemskerck. If I was choosing a revolutionary alias – I think I would go with Kollwitz too. In this exhibition her works stand out for their powerful depiction of struggle and tragedy. Her prints and drawings mix the delicate and minute details with dramatic strokes and shading. She is the only one of the four not working in colour. The greyscale amplifies the sense of dread and enormity of each moment she chose to illustrate.
Kollwitz was celebrated in her own time. Coming from a family that supported her art education, she decided to concentrate on those less fortunate. In this show her works deal with love, loss, and death, especially a mother’s closeness to her children and resulting insurmountable grief if a child dies. She picked printmaking as her medium of choice for its accessibility. Addressing social injustices in her art, she saw herself as an advocate that gives a multitude of human sufferings a visual voice. Her own form of modernism took inspiration from artists of the past, such as Rembrandt and Michelangelo – mixing attitude, dramatic lighting and poses, and emphasis on physicality and touch. In the later part of her life, Kollowitz moved to sculpture, but the current exhibition focuses mostly on her graphic art.
Paula Modersohn-Becker, Girl with Child, 1902. Oil on cardboard, 45.3 x 50.5 cm. Kunstmuseum Den Haag, The Hague
Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907) looked even further back for inspiration. Her numerous self-portraits are reminiscent of ancient Roman and Egyptian art. In the exhibition we witness how a fascination of the young artist with Paris led to her creating early works in subtle pallets. She then developed a talent for unusual cut-off framing of her subjects – using primarily warm-red colours which suggest intimacy and closeness. Her paintings of young babies offer a slightly eerie happiness – overshadowed by our knowledge that the artist died following complications of childbirth.
The early twentieth century was a time of societal change. Class and gender struggles led to some progress, but, as the exhibition illustrates, for women it all depended very much on their families’ and husbands’ positions. With little access to formal artistic education, women artists relied on their families to pay for theirs’ privately. Their ability to work seems to have depended on finding a supportive husband.
The texts on male artists’ exhibitions rarely include information about their families, wives, and children, unless they are specifically depicted in the given work. In exhibitions of women’s art, it seems almost inescapable that there will be a discussion of all births, deaths, and marriages. This is due partly to the central role women play in holding familial structures together. But, in this case, it also reflects the society of the time – where Kinder, Küche, Kirche (children, kitchen, church) was regarded as a woman’s path in life. The struggle to escape this cycle then also becomes part of women artists’ work.
Gabriele Münter, Portrait of Anna Roslund, 1917. Oil on canvas, 94 x 68 cm. Leicester Museums & Galleries. © DACS 2022
Kollwitz’s husband was a doctor, giving her access to various working-class people he was looking after – and whom she could depict as her models. Modersohn-Becker met her husband at an artists’ colony of which he was a founder. Gabriele Münter’s (1877-1962) – was her tutor at art classes. At that time Vasily Kandinsky was a relatively unknown artist. Through him she met Marianne Werefkin (1860-1938) – the fourth star of the exhibition – whose husband was also an artist, Alexei Jawlensky. Their social circle was different from those of Kollwitz and Modersohn-Becker – it was more international and included authors, musicians, art dealers and artists.
Both Münter’s and Werefkin’s works are characterised by bold colours and sharp contrasts – more readily recognisable traits of early-twentieth century modernism in art. There are interior scenes in homes and cafes – people are seen engaging in conversation and debate. Werefkin’s works are noticeably flat – almost poster-like. Considering she was trained in a classic realist tradition, abandoned art for ten years and then came up with this new form of expression, we know that this flatness was particularly meaningful for her.
In one of such painfully cartooned work, we see two women dressed in funeral-black holding what the title describes as Twins, 1909. The jarring orange-red contrasts with the sickly green of the women’s and babies’ faces. Werefkin’s view of motherhood seems far removed from that of Kollwitz and Modersohn-Becker. Münter is not much more accommodating to children in general with her Portrait of a Boy (Willi Blab), 1908-09, where the haunting face of a boy with giant eyes stares at the viewer.
These women artists all lived in Germany, but some came from different countries and most travelled extensively abroad. They may all have had privileged backgrounds in one way or another but they chose to devote their work and attention to different social classes. They seem to have had opposing views on motherhood and children. They worked in very distinct artistic styles. In fact, there is very little that unites them – except living in Germany and being female. But the grouping seems to work in any case. Here we see four versions of Modernism, four artistic journeys that are now becoming more visible, but have not been for almost a century.
Magdalena Abakanowicz, (c) Estate of Marek Holzman, 1966
While I may still have an issue with all-women shows, I will admit that I wholly support monographic exhibitions of women artists. Tate has made a significant effort in this direction in the last couple of years. In the winter of 2022/23, you will find at Tate Britain: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings. At Tate Modern: Magdalena Abakanowicz, Maria Bartuszová, Yayoi Kusama, Cecilia Vicuña. At Tate St Ives: Barbara Hepworth, Burçak Bingöl. At Tate Liverpool: Candice Breitz.
Magdalena Abakanowicz (1930-2017) came from a generation of artists that had access to art academies. Born in 1930s Poland, her adolescence was overshadowed by World War II. She studied art in the 1950s, and despite (or thanks to) living in a communist state and being a woman – managed to cross the Iron Curtain more than any other artist. In 2020 the art academy where she taught was renamed the Magdalena Abakanovicz University of Arts.
Magdalena Abakanowicz_Press_2022_14. Install shots (c) Tate Photography, Madeline Buddo
The exhibition at Tate looks at her work involving textiles and threads. We witness the development of the artist’s work from painted textiles, to woven two-dimensional work, to enormous sculptural forms created using a variety of natural threads. These latter ones are called Abakans, from her last name. Some of them are over five meters tall and all hang from the gallery ceiling rather than on the wall. Some Abakans create forest-like environments for visitors to walk through, others look like enormous parts of the human body. All relate back to the natural world.
Abakanowicz started making woven sculptures in the late 1960s and continued into 1970s. They were seen as unusual back then, they are still impressive now. Tate gives space to these seemingly enchanted worlds and allows the viewers to walk in-between the sculptures. This provides the opportunity to inspect closely the details of each work, and divine the organic scents of the materials the artist used. The horsehair, sisal and hemp rope woven into these massive installations create the effect of being in a safe, natural cocoon.
Magdalena Abakanowicz_Press_2022_07. Install shots (c) Tate Photography, Madeline Buddo
The works in the second-to-last room of the exhibition are all about the human body. Some are obvious – like the stark black lungs. Others are a little more open to interpretation. There are large oval shapes of red and orange fabric centred around a fold. Abakanowicz is as interested in humans as she is in nature, and how the two are connected.
In the last room, we learn about her extraordinary life and the other works she created. Most of them on large scale. The list of materials she used expanded to include wood, stone, concrete, cast iron and bronze. Her public sculptures have traversed the globe – from her native Poland, across Europe and to the United States. There is a repeated theme of headless, bodyless groups of people-shells that march in various directions. These are almost reminiscent of textiles – as a form of woven covering, or mummy wrapping – that is left without its body. In an interview she explains how important for her are visitors’ impressions of her works, their experience of seeing them and walking among them. She finds that in this world of associations people can be brought closer than in the world of intellect.
Magdalena Abakanowicz_Press_2022_03. Install shots (c) Tate Photography, Madeline Buddo
This is the unifying thread of a lot of women artists’ work. Their awareness of the viewer and of the fact that looking at art, interacting with it, has the potential to change mindsets and open minds. There is an awareness of the link between the personal, the social and the environmental – that is possibly related to women’s constantly-contested current and historical position in society. Which is only stronger proof that the history of art without women (or men) is inevitably an incomplete one.
Making Modernism: Paula Modersohn-Becker, Käthe Kollwitz, Gabriele Münter, and Marianne Werefkin, Royal Academy of Arts , 12 November 2022 - 12 February 2023
Magdalena Abakanowicz: Every Tangle of Thread and Rope, Tate Modern, until 21 May 2023