In/visibility and Influence: The impact of women artists and their work

Day: Thursday 5 April

Convenors

Helen Draper (Institute of Historical Research, University of London)
Carol Jacobi (Tate)

Session Abstract

The assumption that ‘influence’ is something that can be traced backwards (or even forwards, as Baxandall argued in Patterns of Intention) is an issue for feminist art history. A feminist art history, that is, that seeks to avoid implicitly patriarchal genealogies and fully to acknowledge the effects of women artists and their work in artistic realms theoretically constituted in masculine terms and traditionally dominated by men. This session aims to review the age-old issue of ‘the anxiety of influence’ through the lens of feminism and the agency of women artists. Whitney Chadwick’s edited book Significant Others (1996), which focused on the relationships between artist-couples, and Lisa Tickner’s essay ‘Mediating Generation: The Mother–Daughter Plot’ (OAJ, 2002), which examined the way in which women artists ‘thought through’ their mothers, are important contributions to this revision. This session aims to expand the discussion through evidence-based papers relating to periods and cultures in which the experience of women was or is structurally different from that of men.

Speakers & Papers

(Paper) Julia Dabbs (University of Minnesota, Morris) Lessons from Life Stories: Early modern women artists as sources of inspiration

(Intervention) Thays Tonin (Università degli Studi della Basilicata) and Luan Luis Sevignani (Università degli Studi di Trento) Artemisia Gentileschi, Anna Banti and Italy’s Artistic Heritage

(Paper) Adelina Modesti (La Trobe University, Bundoora, Australia) Elisabetta Sirani of Bologna: Capomaestra of the Sirani Bottega, and her artistic legacy

(Intervention) Helen Draper (Institute of Historical Research, University of London) Angelica Kauffman R.A. v Joshua Reynolds R.A.

(Paper) Glenda Youde (University of York) Beyond Ophelia: Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal as Rossetti’s ‘significant’ other

(Intervention) Katy Norris (Tate & Bristol University) Exhibiting Ethel Walker’s ‘Nausicaa’: Lost meanings and artistic exchange at the Women’s International Art Club

(Paper) Dorothy Nott (University of York) L’Angleterre n’a qu’un peintre militaire. C’est-une femme

(Intervention) Patricia de Montfort (University of Glasgow) ‘Suggesting, Exhorting, Encouraging…’: Louise Jopling’s Art School for Women

(Intervention) Carol Jacobi (Tate) Missing Link: Isabel Rawsthorne – Jacob Epstein

(Paper) Samantha Niederman (University of York) Making the Invisible Visible: Frances Hodgkins and the men of romantic modernism and neo-romanticism

(Paper) Jo Applin (Courtauld Institute of Art) Note to Self: On the blurring of art and life in the work of Eva Hesse, Lee Lozano, and Anne Truitt

(Intervention) Tara R. Keny Beyond Homer and Sargent: The impact of Alice Schille on the American watercolour movement

(Paper) Sue Tate (Freelance art historian and Visiting Research Fellow, University of the West of England) Pauline Boty (British Pop Artist): Revealing contrapuntal genealogies, synergies and influence

(Film) Jon Law (Paul Mellon Centre) Film: Judy Chicago in conversation: A lineage of radical hospitality – from Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant’s ‘Famous Women’ dinner service to Chicago’s

(Intervention) Camilla Mørk Røstvik The Second Menarche: Female Artists and Menstruation since 1970

(Intervention) Valeriia Berest (Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia) Life beyond Politics: toward the notion of the art

(Intervention) Lila Yawn (John Cabot University, Rome) Miracle on the Tiber: Kristin Jones, the Tevereterno collective, and William Kentridge’s Triumphs and Laments (2016)

(Paper) Ana Gabriela Macedo, Adriana Varejão and Paula Rego: Patterns of an ‘embodied, explosive dialogue’