Michelle Stuart

Vol. 1 No. 4 r f l/IIIC 4i# U i I Spring-Summer 1977 WHY HAVE THERE BEEN NO GREAT WOMEN ARCHITECTS? As demonstrated by the recent show ; 1 L l at the Brooklyn Museum, the plight of women in this field \ j m | may be worse than that of women in the other visual arts by Elena Borstein..........................................................................p ag e 4 •if p r » l MICHELLE STUART: Atavism, Geomythology and Zen I d t i t k i ' j Stuart’s own writings, plus other revelations ' r : about the artist and her work by Robert H obbs ................................................................ p a g e 6 WOMEN’S CAUCUS FOR ART Report from the President Women Architects by Judith Brodsky.................... .page 10 ON PAULA MODERSOHN-BECKER, GERMAN PAINTER Thoughts on her role as a woman versus her needs as an artist by Heidi Blocher.............................................................. .pa g e 13 NOTES ON GEORGIA O’KEEFFE’S IMAGERY Interpretation of her flower paintings need not remain solely in the realm of the sexual by Lawrence Al lo w a y ..............................................................p age 18 CALIFORNIA REVIEWS byPeterFrank ...........................................................................p a g e 23 GALLERY REVIEWS p ag e 24 REPORTS Queens College Library Program, Michelle Stuart Women's Art Symposium, Women Artists of the Northwest. .page34 Cover: Julia Morgan, San Simeon, San Luis Obispo, California, 1920-37. The Architectural League of New York. WOMANARTMAGAZINE is published quarterly by Womanart Enterprises, 161 Prospect Park West, Brooklyn, New York 11215. Editorial submissions and all inquiries should be sent to: P.O. Box 3358, Grand Central Station, New York, N.Y. 10017. Subscription rate: $5.00 fo r one year. Application to mail at second class postage rates pending in Brooklyn, N.Y. and additional mailing offices. All opinions expressed are those o f the authors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the editors. This publication is on file with the International Women's History Archive, Special Collections Library, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60201. Permission to reprint must be secured in writing from the publishers. Copyright © Paula Modersohn-Becker Womanart Enterprises, 1977. A ll rights reserved. In 1971 Linda Nochlin posed this ques The physical setting of the show, 99 The strictures of society and the internal tion about women artists. Her five-year panels set on rows and rows of drafting ization by women of its sexist values were search, (with Ann Sutherland Harris), tables took excellent advantage of the high, the greatest handicaps to women in archi spanning 400 years of art history and open exhibition space. The panels con tecture, as in all areas of creative endeavor. culminating in the Los Angeles County tained blow-ups of text and illustrations It is no wonder then that the predominant Museum show Women Artists: 1550-1950 from the book that was edited by Susana form of early work by women architects was proved the question misdirected. It wasn’t Torre and published in conjunction with in the domestic sphere. Catherine Beecher, that great women artists did not exist, it the exhibition.(1) Suspended above the architect/philosopher, in 1841 wrote of the was that the society which revered and center aisles were huge computer-printed moral superiority of women based on their preserved male-created art turned its back banners, and on one wall there was a series capacity for self-sacrifice, a polemic in on the achievements of women who man of beautifully rendered architectural pro which women’s domestic labors are both aged to overcome social barriers to become jects done by early graduates of M.I.T. morally sanctified and unending. She con artists. Reading through the entire exhibition centrated her designs upon the home over Women in American Architecture: A meant several hours on one’s feet and one which women would rule. This glorification Historic and Contemporary Perspective, wishes there had been more original visual of the domestication of the female is also an exhibition of 200 years of women’s material. However, to follow the exhibition reflected in architect Helen Campbell’s architecture, recently on display at the by relaxing comfortably with the book treatise Household Economics. “Cleaning Brooklyn Museum was organized by the proved to be an immensely interesting, can never pass from the woman’s hands... Architectural League of New York with though often infuriating experience. for to make the world clean this is the one architect Susana Torre as guest curator. Although Torre spent four years re great task for women.” Virginia Woolf This show poses a fascinating and frustrat searching the book and assembling the wrote that a person needed a “room of one’s ing question parallel to Linda Nochlin’s. show, she writes, “It is still too early to own” in order to create; Beecher and Torre presented the work of many little make wholesale comparisons between the Campbell claimed that the room for women known women architects and her show work of men and women architects.” should be the kitchen. Here is a chilling clearly illuminated the social restrictions, example of the effects of society’s dictated even more severe than those forced on 1. Susana Torre, ed. Women in American Architec role for women, a stereotype women are still women painters, that affected women ar ture: A Historic and Contemporary Perspective. 1977, battling. Whitney Library of Design, New York. All quotes and chitects. references pertain to this source. It was not until 1893, through the Catherine E. Beecher, undated. Women in Skidmore, Owings and Merrill/Natalie de Blois Mimi Lobell, Goddess Temple, 1975, section. American Architecture, The Brooklyn (member o f the design team), Pepsi-Cola Build Photo courtesy the artist. Museum. in g (now owned by Olivetti). New York, 1959. The Architectural League of New York. Sophia Hayden, Woman’s Building, Chicago, 1892. The Architectural E. Raymond. Solar House for Miss Amelia Peabody. Dover, Massachu League of New York. setts. 1948. The Architectural League o f New York. concerted efforts of early feminists includ California in 1894. Determined to pursue They have not received the full recognition ing Susan B. Anthony, that the first major architecture, she spent two years in Paris for their contributions in the field of archi public building designed by a woman was taking tests and entering competitions tecture. Torre and her colleagues bring built. The feminists’ demand for women’s before she became the first woman admit long overdue recognition to people such as participation in the Columbia Exposition ted to the Ecole des Beaux Arts. She these and the exhibition cut with the double resulted in a competition for the design of a became the most prolific of all women edge of showing just how much overt and Woman’s Pavilion, won by Sophia Hayden, architects, designing over 800 buildings in covert sexism still remains. who at 22 was one of the early graduates of an eclectic style, including the Hearst But the show went beyond these dramat M.I.T. This first public building featuring castle, San Simeon. ic examples of discrimination within the the achievements of women was controver As architecture became more technolog profession and began to criticize the social sial from the start. Though it was the work ically complex the problems women faced and esthetic motives of architecture, ex of a young and inexperienced architect it were compounded. While writer George ploring new ways of perceiving and using was compared to the more heavily budgeted Sand or painter Rosa Bonheur could create space. In architecture as in art, women in commissions done by the most prominent outside the bounds of societal values, greater numbers than ever before are male architects of the period. Although the women architects, bound by the need for making bold and personal statements. beginning of Sophia Hayden’s career more complex training and financial back Such projects as Mimi Lobell’s Goddess seemed auspicious it was her first and last ing, and depending on a client’s support, Temple, a symbolic representation of the commission. When she retired with “brain- were forced to work in more traditional physical body of the Great Mother Goddess fever” (nervous breakdown) the press directions. Many women found the only and celebration of the “Feminine Princi raised the question “Was architecture an way to commissions was through marriage ple;” the Ceramic Museum by Aleksandra unhealthy career for a woman?” to another architect, and many husband Kasuba, a stretch-fabric environment; the Given these attitudes toward women, it and wife partnerships were formed. reconstructed log house by Nancy Stout; is not surprising that they found it difficult, In the 1950s and ’60s most of the major the Solar House by Ann Hersh, etc., show as illustrated by the show, to get the public commissions went to the large new and varied concerns which are a far cry educational training they needed to prac corporations. Women pursuing this direc from “The Ideal Kitchen.” tice their profession, let alone achieve tion found a new set of stumbling blocks, Architecture, as critic Ada Louise Hux- greatness. In 1887 M .I.T. became the first more subtle in many ways but placed along table has noted, is the last profession to be American school to open its doors to the same old line. The show presented the liberated, and Women in American Archi women, but by 1900 this had become a poignant example of Natalie de Blois who, tecture is an historical document that mere token acceptance. In 1910 only in 1944, joined what was to become one of shows the contributions and efforts of one-half of the architecture schools admit the foremost architectural firms of the women architects to date.

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