Women and Arts Patronage in Postwar Lucy Curzon Submitted In
Women and Arts Patronage in Postwar Britain, 1945-198 1
Lucy Curzon
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts
Dalhousie University Halifax, Nova Scotia December, 1997
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Abstract
Acknowledgement
1 Introduction
2 Cultural PoIicy: CEMA and the Arts Council of Great Britain
3 The Problernatics of Cultural Identity: Women and Arts Patronage
4 The Women's Art Movement: The Hayward Annual
5 Conclusion: Feminism, Visual Art, and Art History
Endnotes
Appendices
Bibl iography Abstract
This thesis examines the relationship of British women artists to arts patronage, and in particular, to the AN Council of Great Bntain. from 1945 to 1981. In this period "culture" as a phenornenon of social welfare evolved in British society and politics, and therefore provides both a territory in which to examine the often systemic sexism of art production, as well as an entry into wider studies of cultural organisation, national identity, feminist scholarship, and the ideological biases of contemporary society. In the first two chapten, a general overview of postwar femioism and cultural policy - and their interaction with art history and art production - are offered as a context for the remainder of the work, which details the associated concepts of
"femininity", "modemism", and "Britishness", The third chapter investigates the development of modemist aesthetics and suggests their correlation with ideas of British cultural identity and patronage of the visual arts, and in this way explains the exclusion of women from the category of "artist" and, in turn, from sponsorship by official patrons. In the final chapters. the Women's Art Movement, the Hayward Annual of
1978. and concepts of feminist art history are used to illustnte the structural and discursive prejudices of the Arts Council and its modernist agenda, as well as to analyse the often controversial nature of "wornen's art'' and ferninist cultural studies. Acknowledeements
The author wishes to thank the Killarn Trust for its support through a graduate scholarship, as well as the Research Development and Peter Fraser Funds of Daihousie University for grants which assisted with research. Generous thanks is aiso extended to Bruce Barber, Doctor Leonard Diepeveen. and Doctor Cynthia Neville who examined this thesis and offered invaluable comments on the text; and to Peter Curzon, Jean Curzon, Amy Black, Deborah Osmond, Peter Mackenzie, Ernily Nelson, and Susan Taylor for quelling the computer, academic. and more general dilemmas which occurred over the writing of this work. Thanks most of all, however, to Doctor Stephen Brooke, who taught the foundations of this thesis and supervised it through compIetion, and who amply fits both the above categones of friends and advisors. CHAPTER ONE
Ovemding al1 of this is the fact that "culture" is no longer considered as the prerogative of the few. There is a growing disinclination to define culture in elitist ternis: a new recognition of the diversity of cultural values, artefacts and forms, even within the sarne country. This may be seen as part of the trend of the twentieth century to define rnankind as including al1 men, each with the right both to create and to participate, to give as well as to receive.'
The 1978 Hayward Gallery Annual Exhibition ostensibly marked a rupture of this historic correlation of masculinity and culture. Representing a formal intersection between arts patronage and ideas of "femininity", this retrospective of British art was the first both to be funded by the Arts Council of Great Britain and organised entirely by women, as well as show primarily the work of female artists. An outcome of second wave ferninist activism and the British Women's Art Movement, the Hayward Annual was staged as an overtly political event designed to prove the calibre and diversity of women's talent. A desire to demonstrate, for exarnple, the asexual nature of artistic "genius" and to manifest the overall impact of feminism's presence in Britain led sixteen women, including sculptor Elisabeth Frink and photographer Alexis Hunter, to present their work for public view. The unprecedented nature of the exhibit was not, however, founded simply upon its unorthodox content and organisation -- its explicitly partisan character challenged received definitions of "art", arts patronage, and art production in Britain. Modemist ideas of the solitary or independently creative artist producing persona1 rather than political works, as well as the historically impartial stance of the Arts Council, were undermined not only by the collectivity of feminist participation in the exhibition, but also by its mantra: "the personal is political." This rejection of a previously accepted dichotomy between private experience and public life, solidarity among wornen artists, and feminism's disbelief of social or cultural neutrality contradicted the underlying philosophy of both the Council and established credos of aesthetics and art production. Yet although critical reception of the show did, in part, recognise this challenge, its feminist content, avant-gmdim, and often sexual explicitness more fkequently categorised the Hayward Annual as a curiosity than a genuine artistic revolt. Described by commentators as "Ladies' night at the Wayward Gallery" or "More argument than art", the exhibit was reduced to a circus-like spectacle of oddity or nonsense. Altemating between proposais of "weakness" and "beleaguerment" to "a sense of funN2and whimsey, one critic tellingly concluded: "Last year the gimrnick to draw the crowds was farne and particularly pavid] Hockney. This year it is wornen."'
1 The Hayward Annual served to demonstrate the persistence of "culture" as a notion associated with civilisation, enlightenment, and, in particular, rnas~ulinit~.~ The characterisation of women artists and their work as "gimmick" or, implicitly, as exterior to "real art" and "talent" is an established convention of modem art history. Discussed comprehensively in the works of feminist art historians such as Griselda Pollock, Lisa Tickner, Lucy Lippard, or Linda Nochlin, the disregard or trivialisation of women artists is most ofien the result of a conflation between ideas of "women" and notions of creative deficit, dearth of originality, or want of aptitude.' As Germaine Greer has argued: "Any work by a woman, however trifling, is as astonishing as a pearl in the head of a toad. It is not part of the natural order.'" This delineation of women's faculties as inferior - or "umatural" - corresponds to an historical positioning of fernale talent in opposition to that of men. Owing to an entrenched perception of "genius" as an inherently masculine quality, women's production of art has been traditionally shadowed or belittled by male talent. "The supernatuml powers of the artist as imitator, his control of strong, possibly dangerous powers," suggests Linda Nochlin, "have functioned historically to set him off from othen as a godlike creator, who creates Being out of nothin g..."7 Exemplified by the virile ethos of vorticism, funirism, or abstract expressionism, activities associated with active cultural output or edification have customarily assumed parity between intelligence or efficacy and notions of manl lin es^."^ Masculinity has subsequently been positioned as a dominant force or space of contention in studies of twentieth-century visual culture. Discussed primarily in relation to the representation of gender, analyses of modem painting, photography, and sculpture have exposed a textual language of masculine ability and feminine vacuousness. In particular, the spectacle of women's bodies reproduced by modemist art forms indicate an historical perception of womm as the bearer rather than producer of culture. To be viewed or posed, but rarely to initiate artistic designs, the history of modem art production has placed women more fkequently as aesthetic ciphers than actual artists. This gendered ideology of artistry corresponds to a general cultural trend initiated at the fin-de-siècle. The rise of modemisrn as both a philosophy and an aesthetic paradigrn during the second-half of the nineteenth century instituted an irreparable breach between high and low culture, and similarly, between masculinity and femininity. As Andreas Huyssen argues in "Mass Culture as Woman: Modemism's Other" (1986), the rise of male modernist literary figures - such as Flaubert, Stendhal, or Baudelaire - cultivated a sexual divide between the élitisrn of artistic culture and the activities of the "feminine" populace:
[When] the 19th and early 20th centuries conjured up the threat of the masses "ratîling at the gate," to quote [Stuart] Hall, and larnented the concomitant decline of culture and civilization (which mass culture was invariably accused of causing), there was yet another hidden subject. In the age of nascent socialism and the first major women's movement in Europe, the masses knocking at the gate were also women, knocking at the gate of a male- dominated culture? The ideas of "women" and "masses" were thereby conflated, and popuiar culture became a feminised entity. Characterised as "womanly", the lower arts were described as "weak or
"mediocre", whiie women themselves were relegated to an inferior realm of civilisation, or were completely exiled. Modemisrn, conversely, was voiced as a distinctly élite, masculine phenornenon. Disconnected fiom wider society, modernist rhetoric generated the image of an independent male artist-flâneur: cosmopolitan but separate from everyday life, whose
work was self-referential, rigorously experimental, and the product of a purely individual consciousness. The masculine biases of these attributes are more evident, however, when
placed in historical context. Social constraints of the period, particularly the inability of women to participate as individuals in metropolitan culture or - as unenfranchised beings - to adopt the paradigrnatic outlook of the autonomous modemist, indicate the uniquely male character of the late nineteenth-century cosmopolitan setting.10 The works of art produced in
these conditions follow sirnilar masculine inclinations. As described by Charles Baudelaire
in his essay "The Painter of Modem Life" (1863), woman was the target of an inevitably sexualised male glance: "the source of the liveliest and even ...of the most king deligfits; the being towards whom, on behalf of whom [men's] efforts are directed; that being as terrible and incommunicable as the Deity ...but above all, through whom, artists and poets create their most exquisite jewels."" For painters such as Edgar Degas, Constantin Guys, Edouard Manet or Paul Gauguin, wornan became both the object and the inspiration for "art".
This understanding of modemism as a masculine phenomenon is in part the result of its association with ideas of authority. Although understood in relation to aesthetic content, modem art or literary fonns cm equally be perceived as an "historical force whose discursive formation [requires] the active repudiation of other discourses threatening its bid for cultural hegemony."12 Modemist initiative, argues Victor Li, is a form of entrepreneurial
"opportunism" or a means to impose order in an othenvise disordered world:
Ffodemism's] claim to authority is promoted precisely by its ability to convince us of the pervasiveness of modem urban degradation, a degradation that is in rnodemism's own interest to foreground and make visible. Looked at in this way, the modemist response can be seen as an investment in crisis, a strategy which highlights the city's problems the better to stimulate and invite vigilance, intervention and reparation. For if the city is shown to be a moral, cultural and spiritual wasteland, then the modemist writer and the modernist work can come into their own as authoritative agents that can restore order and redeem meaning.I3
The understanding of rnodemism as not merely a style or artistic philosophy, but also as a response to the conditions of modernity - to urban life, and its ovemhelming clutter, confusion, and obloquy - allows its application to the study of postwar British society and culture. The end of the Second World War, the Iiteral destruction of British cities, and the re-invention of the nation as a welfare state left Britain a country characterised by despair and relief, novelty and confusion after 1945. Modemism, however, offered an alternative.
As a vantage fiom which to assert individual identity in the increasingly homogenised world of welfksm and, equally, from which to highlight, understand, and consequently impose order upon postwar change, rnodemist perspectives achieved validity: "~odemism's] promotion of aesthetic autonomy...[g ained] what one can cal1 its judgment seat, an extemal position hm which a critique of modem society [could] be ~aunched."'~ Yet the sovereignty of this viewpoint inevitably characterised modem perceptions as "masculine". Historically positioned as the "active" sex, the maleflâneur offered little exception.
Through the 1950s and 1960s, rnodernist figures in Britain manifested themselves predominantly as male prophets of postwar despair. Masculine heroism and a corresponding degradation of femininity characterised rnuch of literary life in this period. Exemplified by
Colin Wilson's The O (1956) and John Osborne's Look Back in A- (1958)- the male protagonists of these works set a precedent through their attempts to project a specific type of character upon 1950s society. The postwar "hero" of British culture was "rude, crude and clurnsy, Doastedl his political apathy, his suspicion of a11 causes, and he [was] out to do nobody any good but hirnself. "15 His heroism likewise characterised by a self-serving attitude and a resolutely critical approach to al1 he saw as "phoney, pretentious or conformist," the fifties male rejected al1 that was weak or un man^^."'^ Femininity -- and irnplicitly women - were therefore positioned as the antagonists of rnodemist bravado. As
Janet Wolff has argued: "[The] rebellions of the 1950s were not hospitable to wornen. The cultures of rebellion (youth cultures, the Beats, the 'white negro') were male, sexist and most ofkn sexually reactionary."" Equally prevalent in other cultural circles, a similar notion of
"manliness" prevailed within the realm of fine art. In her survey of women and art, Whitney Chadwick suggests: "The gendered language that opposed an art of heroic individual struggle to the weakened (Le. 'ferninized') culture of postwar Europe positioned women outside an emerging mode1 of subjectivity understood in ternis of male agency articulated through the figure of the male indi~idual."~~The Independent Group (IG) -- a forerunner of British "pop" - was similarly described by critic-member Lawrence Alloway. He asserted that "the IG possessed a male chauvinist streak more to be tolerated in the 1950s in Great Britain than elsewhere: the women in the group were without exception wives and girl fnet~ds."'~The Kitchen Sink School of social realist paintcrs - including John Bratby, Jack Smith, and Demck Greaves - fit a comparable paradigrn through their description by critics as the "angry young men" of visual art. In his commentary on Bratby's work, John Berger implied the aggressively independent temperament of the male modemist:
His personality is a desperate one and you are held by his glittering eye. 1 don't mean that his works are morbid or hysterical. On the contrary they abound with full-blooded affirmation, celebrating the quick as against the dead, pleasure and pain as against oblivion. Their desperation is only implied by their intensity: an intensity that disregards al1 conventions of self- consciousness or dignity. Bratby paints as though he sensed that he had only one more day to li~e.~'
Not inclusive of a "passive" femininity, high modemist notions largely ignored women's art and women artists2' This exclusionary stance has been obviously problematic for wornen and feminism.
Owing to its political origins, the association of women's art with popular culture and "craft", or a prevailing belief of female creative deficit, women artists and their work have faced an unsupportive and prejudicial society in the postwar period. With much of their activity founded upon ideas derived fiom persona1 experience - such as housework or childcare - and more based upon postmodern theones of juxtaposition, the agglomeration of high and low aesthetic forms, or mixed media, contemporary women's art is very often classified as "non-art" or "applied art" rather than conventional "modem art". Although responding to this exclusion in various ways, the rnost articulate and visible of these endeavours was the
Women's Art Movement of the 1970s. Marked by the formation of women's art groups or study and studio collectives, this offshoot of Women's Liberation atternpted to redress the imbalances of British artistic culture. The formation of the Women's Workshop of the
Artists' Union in 1972, for instance, and its subsequent dedaration of the want for a space "where [wornen] could pool knowledge, materiais, tools and experience", provided evidence of the need for both the formal organisation of female artists and, equally, their individual de~elo~ment." The creation of the tint specifically women's art centre in 1975 by two women artists in ChaIk Fann, London marked the realisation of both. This demand for space, attention, and collaboration was also a reflection of women's problematic relation to arts patronage and, in particular, to the Arts Council of Great Britain.
A 1975 demonstration outside the Council's main London venue, the Hayward Gallery, attempted to boycott a British retrospective of sculpture which included only four women among forty exhibitors and, more generally, to articulate wornen artists' grave dissatisfaction with their constant ovenight by officia1 patrons. The protest illustrated the degree of antipathy felt by fernale artists towards a larger history of discrimination in the sphere of publicly funded exhibitions. A tradition of rejection, perceived lack of worth, or dearth of popular appeal has allowed women's art to remain unshown and unpatronised in Britain through much of the twentieth centuryu It can be argued that the Arts Council - an official body formed in 1945 to disseminate and sponsor "culture" throughout Britain - did very little to challenge these perceptions, or, more fundamentally, to usurp the masculine tradition of the visual arts. From its inception, a distinctly "male" ethos pervaded Council rhetoric. In an initial release outlining the policy and objectives of the organisation, the Council's first Chairman, John Maynard Keynes, projected a "masculine" vision of art production through his description of the "artist":
The artist walks where the breath of the spirit blows him. He cannot be told his direction, he does not know it himself. But he ieads the rest of us into ksh pastures and teaches us to love and to enjoy what we often begin by rejecting, enlarging our sensibility and purifying our instincts. The task of an onicial body is not to teach or to censor, but to give courage, confidence and ~~~omuiity?~ Autonomy, purified consciousness, avant-gardism, and the plainly sexed character which
identified the modem flaneur at the mm of the twentieth century sirnilady distinguished the perceptions of the Arts Council after 1945. In consequence, the idea of the "artist-as-rnale" and art as a specifically masculine pursuit were secured in postwar Britain by cultural policy. Not only through discursive or ideological means but also by a formal framework, arts patronage stabilised the image of men as cultural producers. Thus it can be argued that Keynes' above use of "hemnot "she" -- atthough representative of then contemporary usage, employing "he" as a symbol for both men and women -- points not rnerely to the partance of the day, but suggests an actual privileging by the Arts Council of men as both artists and icons. Through its conspicuous support of men in the visual arts, for example, or the primarily male membership of its decision making-bodies, the Arts Council continued the masculine modernist tradition. In the first forty years of its history, the bulk of the Council's monies were rendered to support the art of men; while the only British wornen to achieve substantial standing through funding and exhibiting were painters such as Bndget Riley, a declared modemist and non-feminist; Prunella Clough, who often chose generic industrial scenes as her subject-matter; or sculptor Barbara Hepworth, whose work was perceived as genuine due to its presumed patterning upon that of Henry ~oore? Since 1946, moreover, the Council itself has been composed primarily of male ~ficers.*~In particular, the Visual Arts Panel has been staffed by eminent men, including artists such as Duncan Grant, Henry Moore, Richard Hamilton, and David Hockney; and cntics John Rothenstein, Raymond Williams, Quentin Bell, Edward Lucie-Smith, Kenneth Clark and Samuel Courtauld. The convictions of the Arts Council have equally sustained masculinist notions of the artist or art patron. The idea of thepneur, for exarnple, went unchallenged in the postwar penod due to cold war fean over the potential formation of a Ministry of Culture. Symbolic of communism, state-defined art or official cultural ministries were anatherna to Iiberal British views and thus artistic independence or freedom of creativity becarne paramount within the Council. Debates over the relevance of obscenity laws demonstrated this concern for the sovereignty of the artist. A 1969 report commissioned by Arts Council Chairman.
Lord Goodman, challenged the ability of any jury to determine absolutely the nature of indecent material and thus demanded the repeal of the 1959 and 1964 Obscenity Acts. Not only because it was impossible "to overcome the basic fact that no two people [could] be counted upon to agree what is or is not obs~ene,"~'but because this type of indecision would lead to the creation of an hold-ail which coutd effectively silence the artistic voice, it was subsequently declared: "We dont want to fetch up in a situation where it is a crime to shock or even disgust. We dont want to curtail the rights of fiee speech. We don't want repression for the sake of repression. We don't want to arraign bad taste or bad mannen, for these are mannea for social reprobation, not for penal la^."^' Such beliefs, however, seemingly permitted the biases of modemism to continue into the postwar period. Without cultural intervention, the notion of "manliness" as a beacon of civilisation and learning was maintained, and in consequence reinforced the sexual divisions of contemporary British society. Feminist art history and its methods of analysis have attempted to undermine this perceived inferiority of women artists. Through the uncovering of neglected female painten or sculptors, the use of gender as an analytic category, and the employment of postrnodem theory in the study of imagery and form feminist scholarship has opened rifts in modem perceptions of wornanh~od.~~By demonstrating the fallibility of sex as a qualifier of merit, and, equally, by allowing fernale artists to take an active place in history as both the subjects
and creators of culture, these methods have endeavoured to demonstrate the value and purpose of women's art. For instance, through their discussion of the work of Vanessa Bell,
Mary Cassatt, Laura Knight, Dora Carrington, Lee Krasner, Meret Oppenheirn or Barbara Hepworth, recent art histories have recognised these artists as "ferninist" or have shown their art to be ideologically counteractive to the gender-coded language of rn~dernisrn.'~ Oppenheim's surrealism or Hepworth's abstract sculpture were particularly effective in usurping the male stronghold of non-referential art, and of impressing a view of women as
cerebral beings capable of abstruse negotiation. At the very least, the documentation of wornen as artists in history and their role in the formation of visual culture have irnpinged
upon traditional views of art by making visible a female arts cornmunity and, possibly, a feminist aesthetic. Extensive or critical engagement between feminisrn and cultural policy, however, has been minimal. Revolving prirnarily around issues conceming high politics or welfarisrn,
rather than gender, studies of the Arts Council have principally investigated the influence of state control upon the arts, the relationship of capitalism to culture, or the beneficial aspects of arts appreciation upon the wider population. Yet the problematic relationship between culture and femininity rernains largely undiscussed. In the next section of this chapter, the
historiography of the Arts Council and cultural policy in Britain will be exarnined with regard to this deficit. The neglect of these works to analyse a fundarnentally significant facet of twentieth-century arts patronage opens an unexplored territory for inquiry. In the third section, an overview of second wave feminisrn in Britain and the general condition of women in postwar society is offered as a context for the origin of the Wornen's Art Movement. Feminist art history and its interaction with cultural politics are then explored as an outcome of conflict with male-dominated society and discrimination within the fine arts, and are also positioned as an introduction to the main body of this work.
IL
Formally established by Royal Charter in 1946, the Arts Council was instituted to facilitate the diffusion of "culture" in Great Britain. As the offspring of the Cornmittee for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA) - a morale-raising organisation which sought to maintain aspects of civilised life, including opera and theatre, during the Second World War - the Arts Council continued a sirnilar programme through the postwar period?' With the objective of developing "a greater knowledge, understanding and practice of the fine arts excIusively, and in particular to increase the accessibility of the fine arts to the public ...to improve the standard of execution of the fine arts and to advise and cosperate with govemment departments, local authorities and other bodies on mattea concemed directly or indirectly with these abjects", the Council fostered the growth of culture through the promotion of music, visual art, and other means after 1945.~~In these endeavours, however, exclusive attention to the "fine arts" and an over-dedication to the maintenance of
"standards" becarne problematic to the development of culture as an entity open to all. Its establishment after a period of mass destruction encouraged the Arts Council to foster high art over amateur production in order to demonstrate, despite human and material losses, the enduring nature of British "civilisation". John Maynard Keynes affirmed that "[it] was standards that mattered, and the preservation of serious professional enterprise, not obscure concerts in village halls."33 This element of tension between élitism and popular pastime is reflected in the historiography of the Arts Council -- historians have viewed official arts encouragement in the postwar period as a phenornenon revolving largely around issues of social hierarchy or class. As a palliative for the disadvantaged, an agent to eradicate educational or cultural distinctions, divisions of society through its differentiation of high from popular culture, patronage is positioned as a cultuxally divisive or adhesive agent. Thus whether perceived in a benign or deleterious context, the history of the Arts Council has been addressed primarily as a social question.
In their 1949 work on the arts in England, Mary Glasgow and Ifor Evans outlined the objectives of cultural subsidy in ri tain." They emphasised the importance of a common appreciation of music, drama, or visual art to the formation of a national culture and posited that the work of the Arîs Council, if maintained, couId serve the necessary function of uniting Bntons in the very different post-1945 world. Using a rhetoric of collectivism and equal oppomuiity, the authors affirmed:
We are only at the beginning of a great renascence of taste. It will differ from such movements in the past for it will not be confined to the privileged few but will enter into the fives of men and women everywhere .... The most encouraging conclusion that can be reached fiom the extended distribution of the arts in the war years is that there exists in the majority of men and women a sound and rich capacity for artistic enjoyment. Its presence in the past has not been detected for their have been few opportunities for its exercise. With opportunity, its streng$h will grow until it becomes part of a new national life. For, if the arts can be distributed widely enough, their adherents will grow dissatisfied with ugliness wherever it might appear.35
The opportunity to participate in and to enjoy the arts in England was to be maintained "in such a way that none [was] omitted and the result [would] be ksh vigour and self- confidence in the people as a wh01e."~~Oficial encouragement of the arts, they concluded, would result in "the emergence of the common man into the audience of art.'"' This democratising feature of culture - the right of everyone to actively enjoy artistic activities - echoed the overall "levelling" ethos of the nascent welfare state. Sirnilar to health care, education, or unemployment benefit, Glasgow and Evans suggested that the appreciation of painting, music, or drarna be open to al1 equally. The authors thus implied the ability of the arts to temper the class/cultural distinctions of pre- and interwar England. . . In The Nati-on of Culm (1977), Janet Minihan surveys the history of subsidisation to the arts in Britain from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Tracing vacillating philosophies for and against state provisions, Minihan suggests that the gradua1 growth of state intervention in private and public life allowed culture to become a legitimate temtory of govermnent by 1945: "Over the decades, as the state extended its supervision into areas once sacred to private initiative, managing industries and providing public service, national subsidies for the arts also grew in quantity and sc~~e."~~In 1946,
afier the success of CEMA and in the wake of the Beveridge Report, the state's responsibility to foster culture was no longer a matter of dispute; the recognition of complex social problems - including increased leisure tirne, the detrimental effects of industrialisation, and the rise of mass culture - fomented an official realisation of the need for popular refinement and cultural activity. Although The Nationwon. * of Culture is a survey, it does pay extensive attention to the actions of the Labour Party and its attempt to
collectivise the arts in the postwar period.39 To make culture accessible to each Briton,
welfare advocates endeavoured to embrace the dissemination of artistic activity a facet of . . social services. Minihan cites the 1942 publication, Reconstruction In War and Peace, in which the party declared: "Labour... believesdhat there are public arnenities both of culture and of recreation, which must be consciousIy undertaken by the community on behalf of its citizens, instead of remaining, as so largely now, the accident of private generosity.""O To amend class differences in education, upbringing, and opportunity, the party sought to open the previously high arts to all; the opera or Shakespeare were to become events which were not only accessible but also attractive to everyone. Despite this attention, however, Minihan
is not optimistic that culture itself is a national phenornenon. The tension between those who support the subsidisation of high culture over mass culture and the distinction made between those who are part of the "mass" and those of the "élite", the failure to attract immigrants and the poor to state-funded arts programmes, and the neglect of local authorities adequately to cultivate the arts in regions outside of London have hindered any real atîempt to collectivise artistic pursuits. Minihan suggests: "With its abiding concern for the best standards in artistic performance, it has not proved sufficiently innovative in its approach to groups whose social and educational backgrounds have not prepared them to appreciate the finest products of Britain's cultural tradition^."^' Yet, she concludes that the rnere acknowledgment of the necessis. for nationalised arts programmes is worthy of praise in itself. Because "the British Govemment has come to recognise that the services of the welfare state are incomplete without promotion of the arts". the attempt to socialise access and enjoyment of cultural activities has not been a complete failure."'
The emphasis upon class as a paradigm of analysis in the history of arts subsidisation . . is more prevalent in the work of Robert Hutchinson. The Politics of the Arts Council(1982) descnbes its subject-matter as an aristocratie oligarchy created to foster the culture of the wealthy. Hutchinson uses the opera, an historically upper-class pastime, to explore the impartial relationship between offkial patronage and the élite arts. The overwhelming financial support which the Arts Council bestows upon operatic productions, as well as the evidence that four Chaimen of the Council since its inception have been tnistees or directors of the Royal Opera d ou se," and many lesser mernbers of each organisation have been connected through public school and Oxbridge networks, or were lords and peers, indicate an incestuous connection between national patrons and the arts of the privileged.M In turn,
Hutchinson posits that such a class-driven structure resulted in the neglect of local arts centres and arts groups -- created to difise culture and educate the public on a wide scale - in the 1950s and 1960s, and, in particular, fostered the rise of independent comrnunity art projects in the 1970s. This belief of social and artistic prejudice, and élitism in granting schemes and the body of the organisation itself, is fimly cemented as the author concludes:
"the Arts Council is the product of a class and has the loyalties of that cla~s.''~' An analysis by Raymond Williams, a member of the Arts Council frorn 1975 to 1978, provides a primary account of how this organisation functions. In his discussion of the Council as a quasi-autonomous non-govemmental organization (quango), Williams explores the paradoxical degree of freedom or unaccountability which its rnembers are granted in their decision-making processes:
Under its existing constitution, the Arts Council is wholly appointed by govemment ministen and its budget is annually determined, on no fixed public principles, by the same ministers. Within these fundarnental consbaints it is given a kind of independence; it is even, to a fault, protected fiom detailed parliarnentary questioning. It then requires an effort of will to describe such a body as intermediate in any genuine sense. It is in the pocket of Ministea and a Department of State, and its marginal independence has as many disadvantages as advantagesP6 As a vimüil tool of governent and therefore complicit with its values, Williams suggests that the Council is fundamental to the propagation of those ideologies which sustain
Britain's élite. In his view, arts subsidy and its administration are conholied by wealth and power: "[The Arts Council] is politically and administratively appointed, and its memben are not drawn from arts practice and administration but from that vaguer category of 'persons of experience and goodwill' which is the State's euphemism for its informal ruling cla~s.''~~Williams enhances this image of élitism through his description of the processes of the Arts Council as perernptory or "consensus by CO-option": no member of the body is elected (but rather selected by govemrnent or the Chair of the Council); the lengths of term on the Council are indeteminate for each member, thus never allowing a total changeover of membership and preventing a complete diffusion of new ideas; memben more often switch positions at the "end" of their ternis rather than leaving the Council altogether; and "agreement" rather than "voting" is the primary form of garnering opinion. This system gives the illusion of new blood, original ideas, and debate in the structure of the organisation, but, in reality, the same prejudices and allegiances are rnaintained through the
CO-optionof al1 forms of novelty into the existing system. Williams thus characterises the processes of the Arts Council as both class-aligned and an "endlessly displaced and deflected mode of public representation, ... [a] virtually unargued and untraceable translation of a general occasional vote into apparent authority to decide highly specific issues... 148
In &t. Culture ad bterp- (1990), Justin Lewis argues that present foms of cultural policy are the outcome of élitist values which prevent the acceptance of popular culture as a valid art fom. Lewis suggests that public money is spent according to the aesthetic judgements of mal1 groups of people, and that, equally, these judgernents are developed as the result of class-specific abilities. Using the idea of "cultural capital" initially developed by Pierre Bourdieu, the author posits that the knowledge required to understand
"art" is acquired by privilege rather than inherent intelligence. In order to cornprehend a work of art, specific cornpetences are required which are not innate but can only be gained through inculcation by family, experience of artistic objects and practices, and education. The amount of cultural capital which an individual attains is thus dependent upon where and how the peaon is raised, or their class background. Differences in understanding, in tut-, reinforce class divisions and allow the cultural élite to dismiss as "philistine" those without the required knowledge. Nicholas M. Pearson argues that state control of the arts and the hegemonic presence of the professional classes in patronage organisations have reduced culture in Britain to an arbitrary and selective phenornenon. Since which arts to sponsor, what is classified as "art", and which standards to impose upon art production are decided by an exclusive group of critics, artists, and administrative officiais within the Arts Council, Pearson suggests that the definition of culture which they propound is a sectional rather than a national one. "The involvement of State power in the support of the professionalization of art and of the authority of the art professional", he argues, "has rnarginalized the role of the public in aesthetic matters, and in the active development of a public art culture."49 Particularly in the realm of visual arts, the exclusionary nature of expert knowledge has allowed official patronage to reinforce, reproduce, and amplie the sioiw quo between élite and popular preferences:
The visual arts have tnîditionally and histoncally reflected the interests and tastes of small and powemil sections of society. These classes have tended to unive~lizeiheir tastes, experiences and culture as being the culture of rhe nation. State policy thus far (over the past two hundred years) has tended to reinforce and support such universalizations of the interests and experiences of particular gmups and classes, adding, to the category of the powerfbl and intiuential, the newer professional c~asses.~
Pearson therefore concludes that the values imposed upon the public are symptomatic of the closed culture which the Arts Council represents: "[Standards] effect closure on a process that needs to be open; they demand consensus in a culture and society which is varied and diverse. They appeal to unargued implicit assumptions about the nature of culture and the nature of art."" "Art" is thus a concept which is class-bound and class-initiated, and consequently, restricted in its appreciation.
The reduction of the arts to a Puppet of economic and bureaucratic systems is . . addressed by John Pick in The Arts in a State: A Studv of Govemment Arts Policies From lent Cireece to the Prem (1988). Pick argues that the gradua1 appropriation of the notion "arts" by the state has resulted in its transformation from a popular to an economic and élitist concept. Until the nineteenth century, "arts" in the English language referred to al1 things which gave benefit or pleasure, whether conducted by professionals or amateurs, in public or in private, dealing with or without remuneration. This universal aspect of culture, however, waned as bureaucratic influences grew. By the nineteenth century "art" was no longer used as a descriptive tenn, inclusive of al1 creative activities which in total formed the national culture. It becarne what Pick perceives as a judgemental designation, "putting a particular value upon one special part of the entirety of the culture."52 "Art" was thus characterised by its exclusiveness. In the postwar world of official arts policy, however, artistic activity was fiirther transformed through its definition as a phenornenon determined by economics rather than individuals. In the attempt to outline a concept of "culture" for the purpose of developing cultural statutes, bureaucrats employed late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century modemist tenninology not only to declare "art" an esoteric product to be enjoyed by the educated, but also an entity which could be ascribed financial worth.
Endeavouring to develop subsidisation regulations, al1 art forms were appraised and ascribed monetary value and thus codified in the language of economic policy. The arts therefore became both an econornic and élitist concept, which served to rernove them from their initial purpose of popular entertainment and enlightenment:
Not surprisingly, people's real cultural needs often tum out to be for the activities the bureaucrats have designated as art. But in a modem state this has nothing to do with cultural traditions, with what the majority of people want, or with what gives benefit and pleasure to the majority. Nor is it any longer much to do with what the state's own artists do, or with what critics say. It is a strange bureaucratie constmct, an economic unit that has a general international currency - not the comrnon pleasures, nor the indigenous artists and art, nor the links between them. This is a pervasive new concept , as new as "arts policies", which invites us to think of "art" as sornehow separate, an entity spart." In the postwar period, the arts have continued as an exclusive political and econornic concept, and as Pick concludes, are determined by élites and for élites.
In his autobiography, Hugh Jenkins (Minister for the Arts, 1974-76) criticises the British govemment in general, and the Labour Party in particular, for their failure to bring about cultural democracy. As a member of the Labour left, Jenkins deplored the "culture gap" which developed in Britain between the classes as the result of capitalism. The creation of an "anti-culture" -- in which those facets of culture which were easily manufactured and purchased became associated with the mass population -- cultivated a wide breach between the high and popular arts. As commercial society took root, the cultural chasm grew, eventually preventing closure between the classes. Jenkins cornrnents: "The culture gap has grown into an abyss, accepted, unremarked and unbridged. Indeed, the very progenitos of culture divide the population into recognisable market categories based on income, education, age, and sex."" It was Jenkinsf goal as Minister for the Arts to offset the effects of capitalisrn and to heal this fracture through the promotion of cultural unity. His efforts,
however, were rewarded with dismissal fiom his post in 1976. His over-aggressive attempts to undemine social differences led to his unpopularity, and eventually demands for his re~i~nation.'~ Studies of cultural policy and policy-making revolve primarily around issues of class. The divide between élite and working-class arts, the pararnountcy of subsidisation to middle- class forms, or the marginalisation of "popular" arts indicate the importance of social hierarchy in discussions of culture. Most analyses, however, do not examine other paradigms of cultural division. Although some authors investigate questions of race:' questions of gender or the patronage of male artists over women artists -- rather than middle to upper-class over working-class -- do not readily figure in debates conceming the Arts Council. Feminist and political historians, however, have argued that race, class and gender are intertwined categones and must be studied interdependently. Joan Scoti, Anna Clark, Jon Lawrence, Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Nicky Hart, and Sally Alexander have explained the importance of studying class and class attitudes in relation to the gender of electon and their political ideo~o~ies.~'Jenny Sharpe and Anne McClintock have sirnilarl y emphasised the relevance of studying ideas of race as components of sexuality and social background." Despite the pertinence of such analytical frameworks, however, studies of patronage and cultural policy have not adopted these cornpanion paradigms. Yet ignorïng the pertinence of sex as a factor in the distribution of subsidy or other forms of suppon historians of the Arîs Council potentially neglect a fundamental determinant in the production of modem art and culture. Women have been lying low for so long most of us cannot imagine how to get up. We have apparently acquiesced always in the imperial garne and are so perfectly colonised that we are unable to consult ourselves. Because the assumption does not occur to us, it does not occur to anyone else either.... We are the assistants, the receivers, the collaborators, dumb, lacking in presumption, not acting consciously upon the extemal world, much given to rnasochism. We becorne sly - never trust a wornan - we seek revenge, slighted we are temble; we are trained for subtemige, we are natural creanues of the undergound." Sheila Rowbotham's 1970 comment on the nature of women's place in society and the origins of the Women's Liberation Movement might serve as an illustration of women's treatrnent by historians of cultural policy; however, it also emphatically underlines the degree and ethos of feminia discontent in contemporary Britain. Beleaguered by subordination and discrimination, women emerged as a collective force in the second half of the mentieth century under the auspices of organised feminism. Continuing pre- and interwar carnpaigns for the dissolution of sexual barriers, wornen articulated demands for equal pay, equal opportunity, reproductive rights, and cornmensurate educational opportunities from the rnid-
1940s onward. Gaining momentum through the 1960s, and with the support of other change- oriented organisations, feminism pronounced itself through vanous means in both civic and private life. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND),organised socialism, ferninist literature, women artists, and female workers brought to public view issues regarding abortion and birth control, the contentious nature of housework and motherhood, or women's relation to pacificism in the late 1960s. Abortion legislation in 1967, the Sexual Discrimination Act of 1975, or the Equal Pay Acts of 1970 and 1975 charted this advance in high politics, while the Ruskin College Conference of 1970 crystalised the wider objectives of the movement. In total, the democratising force of feminist initiatives marked a challenge to conventional understandings of wornen and femininity in the postwar period through the legal, political, and cultural questions which they posed to British society. As Pat Thane argues in her article "Towards Equal Oppominities? Women in Britain
Since 1945" (1991), the campaign for equal pay highlights the level of material inequality between men and women after the Second World War. Although a 1946 Royal Commission could not explain in rational economic terms the differential between male and female wages (Le. that men's productivity was higher, and therefore deserved greater remuneration), Thane posits that the information offered by this report is representative of general social assumptions conceming women in the postwar period. Essentialist arguments which viewed women as inherently disinclined to work outside the home due to their natural status as wives and mothers (which included the maintenance of "marriage bars" in certain employrnents); physiological debates over the maladies of the female body and its
"unfitness" for labour; and trade union fears that equal pay would undennine the hard won "farnily wage" and the standing of the male-breadwinner were detailed in the report and, equally, were indicative of the nature of sexism in Britain. The above instances were largely the result of biological determinism; yet the oppression of women also proliferated through public and private life as the result of wornen's own beliefs. While supporters of an equal wage persevered, female worken did voluntarily leave the labour market in 1945 after their mass influx during the war, many with the ambition to enter marriage and have families.
Moreover, govemment and social surveys in 1943 indicated that 58 per cent of women themselves believed that wives and mothers should not go out to work? Those women who did remain in work, however, customarily occupied lower status, poorly paid white-collar, service and industrial occupations. The number of female professionals rose only slowly. By 1961 there were still only 8430 female medical practitioners (15.9 per cent of the profession), 1030 women in the entire legal profession (3.5 per cent), and 1580 were surveyors and architects (2.3 per cent). Following their "mothering" role, however, females made up 47.5 per cent of "social welfare and related ~orkers."~'At the same time, women's educational opportunities were increasing only marginally. Thane argues that the "inadequacies of female education and training were a strikingly prominent theme of post- war sur~e~s."~~The 1968 report of the Donovan Commission on Trade Unions and
Ernployers' Associations provided a di~ctconfirmation of sexual discrimination in the instruction and employment of women worken in British industry and management The report illustrated that female access to apprenticeships was "extraordinarily limited".
Although young women perfonned as well as their male peen in O-level examinations, only seven per cent entered apprenticeships (most in hairdressing) compared with 43 per cent of young men. While 49 per cent of male workers in industry were classified as skilled, only 29 per cent of women were placed in this category. In 1966, 538,000 men were granted day release for further employment training, but this opportunity was extended to just 87,000 women. Moreover, as Thane pessimistically concludes in her article: "There has been little sign in the past 25 years that the comments of. ..the Donovan Commission fell on any but deaf ear~."~~ The problematic of women's position in the 1950s and 1960s was in part the result of feminist activity during the period. As the Birmingham Feminist Histoty Group argues, feminism in the fifties appeared to be more concemed with the integration of an idea of "womanhood" into society and culture, rather than with egalitarian measures: "If in the
Women's Liberation Movement today we see feminism as transforming femininity in a fundamental way, feminism of the fifiies seemed to be more concemed with the integration and foregrounding of fernininity in a masculine ~orld."~ In essence, feminists of the period introduced a language of women's issues, and different ideas of and questions about
"wornen" and "womanhood" into wider society using the framework of "femininity" rather than "liberation". Feminism itself was therefore bound by perceptions which post- 1968 feminists would not easily recognise as feminist. The 1950s were largely characterised by debates surrounding ideas of the family. With the development of the welfare state and wartime changes in the role of women, domestic life became a topic of wide discussion. The need for oficial studies of the private sphere, as well as chartings of public opinion on the nature of rnarriage or work attest a changed awareness of the depth and complexity of male and female roles, as well as the welfare of children. The Beveridge Report of 1942, the investigation of juvenile delinquency and broken homes by the Curtis Committee in 1946, the Royal Commission on Population in 1949, and the Morton Commission on Divorce in 1951, as well as woments wartime work and the increase in mam'ed women's employment after the war were indicative that understandings of family Iife and the structure of the fmily itself were changing. In particular, the enhy of the state into the private sphere as a result of welfare legislation was especially transfomative. As Gabriella Tumaturi indicates in her article on women and consumption in the 1950~~the roles of housewives were inexorably altered as they became buffers between the public and the private worlds, and sentries against the infringements of capitalism and offi~ialdorn.~~The world of comrnodities, consurnption, and women's roles as consumers for the family additionally changed understandings of "femininity" in the political realm. The importance of the female consumer, for exarnple, was exploited in 195 1 by the Conservative Party when it appealed to women electors as the "victirns" of those impositions which austerity placed upon their regular shopping The increased number of marriages, the younger age of rnarried couples, the drarnatic drop of the birth rate, and easier access to divorce also contributed to changed understandings of familial life. Most important, however, the increased availability of contraception weakened (theoretically) biologically detemined ideas of woman by allowing female sexuality to be increasingly understood in the context of pleasure rather than procreation.67
It was this framework of "home" and "domesticity" which characterised feminist writing and thinking on women in the 1950s.6~Accepting the primacy of woman's role as a wife and mother, and believing that other aspects of women's lives must be fitted into these categories, feminism positioned maternity and rnarriage as integral facets of femininity. Vera Bittain, for instance, insisted upon the centrality of training for motherhood in girls' education, while Judith Hubback argued in Wives who went to Colf- (1957) that childbearing could fulfil wornen's emotional and biological needs. This perspective was in part influenced by a postwar sentiment of democracy. AAer 1945, feminists were encouraged not to seek more egalitarian reforms due to the belief that social antagonisms (between the sexes, classes, etc.) had come to an end with the general close of hostilities and that a new "equal but different" status for women had been achieved. The placement of women as naturally inclined to childbearing or wifery, however, was also partly influenced by the cold war climate of the tiflies: feminists were reluctant to align themselves with radical groups or more aggressive behaviour for fear of being placed under constant suspicion or in association with communism. Yet even if more assertive measures had been taken, the fragrnented nature of the feminist movement in the immediate postwar period would have likely prevented women's actions from culminating into a comprehensive campaign. Cracks in this perception of women, however, gradually appeared. Heirs of the suffrage movernent remained active and eventually articulated joint objectives. By the mid-
1960s, the Six Point Group and the Fawcett Society, the National Council for Civil Liberties, and the National Council of Mamed Women aimed to coordinate constitutionai pressure for equal opportunities, equal pay, and better treatrnent for unrnarried rnothee. They encouraged women to join trade unions and supported women's strikes to end discrimination in the mid- and later 1960s. Simultaneously, women belonging to mixed-sex organisations, such as the Trade Union Congress (TUC) and the Labour Party, became increasingly active on questions of gender inequality. By 1955, the government ceded to demands for equal pay and announced its introduction to the civil service, local govemment, and teaching over a period of six years. In 1967, the Labour Party set up a cornmittee to investigate discrimination against women, which responded in 1969 and 1972. The Abortion Act of 1967 theoretically gave women legal control over their bodies, yet terminations could only be perfonned with the ofien arbitrary voice of doctor consent. Further legislation on the equal pay issue followed in 1970 after pressure from a broad range of women's groups and the work of Barbara Castle, Minister for Labour. Although not made obligatory until 1975, employen were forced by this act to consider the necessity of women's equal wages and the equality of their ~ork.~~Discontent over women's place in society was further kept animate by various cultural means. The publication of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex in
English in 1953 and the feminism of Doris Lessing's Golden Noteboh (1962) or Betty
Friedan's Feminine. . MvstiqlLe; (1963) made feminist thought available on a wider scale and in a different medium. Feminism, although largely constrained by its association with femininity, was thus not entirely absorbed by ideas of women in conventional domestic roles. AAer 1968, a more radical strain of feminist activity developed. In tandem with other change-oriented groups such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, and vanous aspects of student and civil rights politics arose the Women's Liberation Movement. Sparked initially by a revived feminism in the United
States, British Women's Liberation was also born of a contest with the left. Specifically, the atternpts of women to achieve equality through socialisrn, but the inability of socialist groups to speak for women as wumen fostered opposition within the established rhetoric of class politics. Rather than implementing unity through class solidarity, women's sexually specific requests to the left threatened its homogenous social foundations and were thcrefore unwelcome. Most visibly, the 1968 strike at the Ford plant in Dagenharn by women machinists demanding equal training and pay crystalised these differences. This dispute brought about the formation of the National Joint Action Cornmittee for Women's Equal Rights, a wornen's trade union organisation which demanded workplace parity for its female memben and thus ernphatically marked the sexual divisions of worker politics. By 1969, this type of organisation and others formed seventy local women's Iiberation groups in London alone. Yet in contrast to their precursoa, these bodies were more self-consciously
radical, more concentnited on issues of sexuality, reproduction, gay rights, and violence against women, more critical of orthodox political groupings and institutions, and more sceptical of the possibilities of legislation as a vehicle of change. They were, however, privately and publicly articulate in their demands for the re-positioning of women's place in British society.
In Febnrary 1970, the women's movement forrnulated its objectives at Ruskin College, Oxford. As Sheila Rowbotham argues: "It was really from the Oxford conference,..that a movement could be said to exist. The earliest activities had been propagandist and educational, speaking at schools, leafleting the ldeal Home Exhibition, demonstrating outside the Miss World Cornpetition in 1969."~' At this assembly, four demands were articulated: equal pay, equal education and opportunity, twenty-four hour nurseries, and free contraception and abortion on demand." These mandates applied similarly to the persona1 realm as they did to the public world, especially in relation to work within the home. Embracing the mantra "the private is political", the exploitation of women through unfair wages in outside employment but also by the domestic sexual division of
labour led to an abundance of cnticism against housework. In particular, the problernatic cultivation from childhood of femininity as an idea synonymous with "farnily" was articulated as a vehement attack against daily toil:
We each had a moodinstead of a childhood and are only now beginning to be conscious of what that means in terms of what we are now. Now we feel we are martyrs. Martyrdom that has, over the years of being housewives and mothers, become almost enjoyable. The family exists on martyrdom. This is generally getting less but only since we have glimpsed how we live from outside. We have found it extremely difficult to look at ourselves - as through a window - and most of al1 it ha. been a sheer impossibility to imagine ourselves being involved in change of any sort. Our window on the world is looked through with our hands in the sink and we've begun to ha- - so bggms our conscioiasness.72 Women's enslavement to household chores, the double day, or childrearing were closely connected to issues of equal pay, equal education, and equal opportunity. The lack of recognition and help which mothea and wives received for their efforts, yet their inability to escape this situation due to financial (and often emotional) dependency, led to feminist demand for the bettement of wornenfs social and economic condition. For those working within the home, two basic strategies evolved for equal remmeration. The first aimed to give housewives a power equivalent to workers outside the domestic realm through the payment of money by the state or wages for housework. The second involved a change in the division of labour between men and women. Yet because this solution relied upon not only a transformation of consciousness among men in their individual relationships with women, but also a cultural and social shifi in the status of the monolithic male breadwinner, it was an almost impossible proposition. As historians have argued, the image of men as the primary workers and wage eamers of society is deeply engrained in both officia1 and private . . life. Aptly illustrated by Susan Pedenen in Wependence. and the Orwof the
Welfare (1 993), family policy, the bargaining tactics of the TUC, or the outcome of the Beveridge Report have continually categorised women as dependent entities thus entrenching the sexual division of labour within private and public life. The movement also demanded twenty-four hour childcare to free women for work and, equally, to assist in the child-raising process. Nurseries were needed not only to aid working mothers -- most of whom could not afford extensive child-care services, or could not rely upon spouses to aid them -- but also to release housewives from their daily duties, to allow time for "living", and to force the state to show more direct responsibility for the care of children by the provision of govemment-sponsored facilities. Yet the movement demanded more than minding; it wanted a specific type of care and consideration for both children and women: "We need somewhere for the kids, but we have to choose as to whether the kids will be kept out of the way or given their own space, and whether, freed fiom children, we just manage to survive through working or make the time to discover who stops us frorn living."73 This necessity of self-determination was also basic to the movement's mandate for free contraception and abortion on dernand. The overwhelming influence of biological determinism upon the representation of femininity in the postwar period, and the degree to which this belief decided the treatment of women in public and private life, were significantly undemined by technology allowing females to control their reproductive systems. The choice to have children or no& the understanding of sexuality as pleasure rather than procreation, and the ability to control family size significantly altered women's auth0nt.y over their lives and their identities. Not ail women or feminists, however, supported these efforts. Clashing over the ethics of abortion, many supporters of the movement divided over whether women shoutd be able to determine not only their own lives but also those of their offspring. The prochoice National Abortion Campaign (NAC) faced much opposition fiorn both inside and outside British feminism over issues of morality, and, ironically, their politicisation of an exceptionally personal matter. Similarly affecting the liberties of women were unequal educational opportunities. The expansion of schooling and state-funded education schernes in the poçtwar period allowed many wornen of working-class background to reach higher social and professional positions than did their mothers. In 1944, local authorities were required to provide free secondary education for al1 pupils up to a minimum age of fifieen, and by 1945 fees in state- maintained secondary schools were abolished. Intellectual bettement likewise continued as a fundamental aspect of British society after 1945:
Like aspects of the Welfare State, the immediate post-war education policies had a basis inspired by a deep-rooted philanthropy. It was education for the working class, not conceived of as a continuity with the traditions of self- organisation and self-education for socialism, but as an avenue to individual self-improvement, a share in what had hitheno belonged only to the fe~.~~
Girlst education, however, was nonetheless directed towards the creation of "girlhood" which would eventually fonn the foundations of motherhood. Classes in home economics and domestic science characte~sedthe schedules of female secondary school students as they were taught childcare, nutrition, and other aspects of family welfare. Moreover, despite a proliferation of univenities and polytechnics afier the war, and the development of generous scholarship programmes, a 1966 postal survey conducted by the Higher Education Research Unit at the University of Sheffield determined that traditional patterns of women's schooling and views of women in education were persistent. The survey concluded that "the diversity in the postgraduate experiences of the men and women involved owed less to intellectual performance than to the immutable blessings of birth, namely social origin and sex? Lack of female students in sciencesriented disciplines, women earning more second- than first- class degrees, and the return of most to the home or entry into marriage after completion of higher education indicated the unchanged postwar perception of women as domestic creatures and without aptitude.
By the mid- 1970s, however, women's carnpaigns resulted in several legislative changes which introduced statutes intended to create greater equality at work and, equally, which recognised women's situation in the home. The Equal Pay Act evolved fiom its voluntary status to obligatory law in 1975. Also in that year, the Sex Discrimination Act (1975) and the Equal Opportunities Commission were put in place to improve working conditions, trade union activity, and the training or employment possibilities of women; while the Social Security (Pensions) Act was passed to make provisions for those not engaged in full-time waged work because of home responsibilities, and the Employment Protection Act gave women a statutory right to paid maternity Ieave, p-otection from unfair dismissal during pregnancy, and the right to return to their jobs up to twenty-nine weeks afier the birth of a child. Generally, however, the women's movement of the 1970s in Britain was quite fragmented in its aims and actions, and hindered by the political system and society which it attempted to change. An highly traditional social structure, stagnant economy, and bureaucratically dominated system of government created a political setting in which feminists were isolated fiom the formal rnechanisms of govemment and, equally, fiorn other feminists. Alienation due to ideological divisions - rooted in class, racial, and other conflicts - inhibited the formation of coalitions or CO-ordinated networks dedicated to providing for women's needs. Moreover, the difficulties of access by grass-roots lobbyists to the extremely centralised political system of Bntain further prevented the success of feminisrn's initiatives. Because most British administrative processes operate in London and emphasise neutrality with regard to promotional groups, women's organisations were hindered fiom attaining the necessary political support for their views. Female roles within party structures also prevented their advance. In principle, women comprised almost half of both the Labour and Conservative Parties, yet they were organised into separate advisory groups with lesser powers and limited ability to gain acceptance for the resolutions which they proposed. In addition, they were ofien limited to statutory or set-aside seats on decision-making bodies, especially those of trade unions." Yet although feminism faced entrenched sexism and structural obstacles - which prevented its completely successfu1 advance - it succeeded in demonstrating the diverse roles which women could occupy. From the 1930s to the 1970s, feminist debates highlighted wornen as independent or dependent, radical or conservative, innovative or traditional, and thus offered - whether beneficial or otherwise -- numerous types and potential of "woman" to British culture and society. In this way, women were literally and figuratively offered more "choice" in the positions which they could maintain and therefore, ironically, a questionable ability to determine themselves.
IV The refonnative spirit of the postwar era equally influenced the academy. The rise of the New Lefi and the New Criticism, for example, registered a change in academic thinking and an ebbing of established patterns of belief. Similarly absorbing the social issues of the period in a critical examination and re-evaluation of its subject matter, the "New Art History" evolved as a critique of traditional art historical methods. This change of philosophy was marked by an extension of research parameters beyond "art" itself:
When an article analyzes the images of women in paintings rather than the qualities of the brushwork, or when a gallery lecturer ignores the sheen of the Virgin Mary's robe for the Church's use of religious art in the Counter- Refonnation, the new art history is casting its shadow. Rather than a tidy description of one trend, the new art history is a capacious and convenient title that sums up the impact of feminist, marxist, stnicturalist, psychoanalytic, and social-political ideas on a discipline notorious for its conservative taste in art and its orthodoxy in research?
Traditional approaches to art history concentrate upon style, attributions, dating, or authenticity, the rediscovery of forgotten artists, and the meanings of pictures as created by
fom, colour, or perspective. The New Art History, however, investigates the social production of art. This change in art historical method was initiated by T.J. Clark, who, in a seminal 1974 article, called for a revolution in the historical understanding of cultural production. As the founder of the Social History of Art programme at the University of Leeds, Clark demanded the need to disinter Hegelian legacies of critical analysis in r~rderto
invigorate the study of art: "We have to discover ways of putting the questions in a different fom.... That is what the social history of art has to offer: it is the place where the questions have to be asked, and where they cannot be asked in the old ~a~."'~Art historians, Clark believed, had to escape from the old pattern of perceiving artists and their art as sacred entities. He demanded the need for facts: "about patronage, about art dealing, about the status of the artist, the structure of artistic production .... We need to import a new set of concepts, and keep them in being - build them into the rnethod of ~ork."'~In essence, art historians had to understand events and ideas extenor to the artist in order to comprehend both art itself and its production. In his essay, "Should Art Historians Know Their Place?" (1985), John Tagg asks the type of question which Clark inferred. Using the framework of traditional art history as a starting point, Tagg answers "yes" and "no" to the query of whether art historians should heed or ignore the boundaries conventionally set for them. He anwers "no" if:
it means being deferential, keeping within the bounds of an aesthetic deconun whose organisation and effects certainly need to be studied, but which so much art history serves only to perpetuate; if it means being polite, accepting the definitions of good manners built into the imposin sacramental institutions which house art history's supposed objects of mdy... fi
He answen "yes", however, if it means understanding how art is created, the social context in which it is shaped, how culture works, and how cultural hierarchies are fonned. "Yes" if it means "not closure, solutions, positions, careers, but engagement; and if this engagement runs to asking when, where and by whom art history is allowed to be done, under what conditions, and to what ends, and how the answers to these questions have been decisively altered by changing conditions of intellectual production."s' "Yes" if it allows that "the relations of institutions, practices, discourse and agents, in art history as in any other dornain, are highly complex - that there is no neat division of text and context; that institutions and agents are already te~tualised."~~And finally, "yes" if it permits "engagement with the ways visual representations, as part of the production and circulation of meanings, are themselves a modality of pleasure and power, subject to but also generating multiple reactions of domination and subordination.""
The development of feminist art history and cultural theory is the result of "disregarding one's place" or challenging the boundaries of conventional method and practice. The analysis of art using paradigms of gender and sexuality to understand how human forms and expressions are represented - or how men and women represent their vision of the exterior world -- developed through the 1970s at the height of the Women's Liberation Movement. Since 197 1, when the American historian Linda Nochlin's article "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" was published in Art News, feminist art history has endeavoured to identiQ women artists omitted fiorn standard histories of art and to develop a feminist aesthetic theory. In Britain, the initiative to promote this area of study came hma group within the women's movement - the Women's Art History Collective - formed in 1972 by Rozsika Parker, Griselda Pollock, Alene Straussberg, Pat Kahn, Lisa Tickner, Tina Keane, Denise Cale, and Anne de Winter. Artists and art historians in their
own rights, the Collective undertook research on fargotten women artists, and travelled to colleges and univenities to speak on women's neglect in art history, and the sexist prejudices extant in contemporary criticism and art education. In 1974-75, they taught collectively an evening class at the Holloway Institute for the Inner London Educational Authorky entitled
"From Patchwork to Painting", and together created a space for the discussion of feminism. art, and society. Feminist art history in Britain, however, has never won so high a profile as in the United States. It took, for example, fourteen years after the foundation of the
Women's Art History Collective for a feminist event to be organised at the Association of
Art Historians annual conference. Nor, despite its prevalence at such institutions as Leeds and Middlesex Univenities, ha. feminist art history become an accepted academic subject.
The belief that its philosophies are non-objective or overly polemical have prevented its general approval.
Yet accusations of partisanship stem not only fiom its association with political feminism, but also from feminist art history's critical methods. Feminist theory scrutinises a traditionally paramount aspect of art production: the notion of the pure, independent artistic voice. Rather than positioning the artist as an autonomous being whose work embodies a personal expression or experience (as conventional art history does), feminism frequently employs postmodern theory and the New Art History to situate works of art as complex orders of inter-connected and socially produced meanings. As a system of signification, painting or sculpture operates within culturally and historically produced codes and conventions, and therefore depicts not merely the independent or intimate feelings of the artist, but also those of the society of which he or she is a part. Thus by positioning the creator as a conduit of particular value systems in a specific group or community, feminist art history does not perceive artists as entirely the agents of their own work? Such theories,
however, have not only undermined haditional art history, they have also created conflict
within the feminist movement. Ideological clashes between feminism's belief in the value of individual women's lived experiences and postmodem hypotheses threaten to undermine feminist art initiatives. Although posmiodernism has proliferated in British studies of women's painting or sculpture, the belief that this position menaces the idea of wornen's cultural activity as a fom of liberating selfexpression or a means to gain access to the opportunities enjoyed by men has introduced contention between artists and, equally, within the overall feminist movement itself?
The çtudy of ferninist art and aesthetics, however, is not completely undermined by its controversies. As part of the Women's Liberation Movement, feminist art history has made contributions to the culture of its time. As Griselda Pollock infers, whether divided or not, the awareness of an history of women's art and the recognition that this history is more
"than a chronological list of past events, [but]..a shaping tradition to be understood in ternis of the forces which formed it, the issues which it has generated, and the reasons for the debates and their intensity" has, regardless, raised consciousness of wornen's active (and diverse) participation in the formation of culture.86 For Pollock this history is not merely a process of identification but an investigation of the "contradictions of women's position and their radical potential with regard to political change, and of assessing the political implications of the diverse strategies which have emerged."87 Fem inist historical writing and teaching throughout the 1970s consistently drew attention to these facts through its study and analysis of women's art, women's writing, and other facets of culture. Attention to feminism's interaction with cultural policy, however, has been limited."
From within the Women's Art Movement itself, voices were raised against the Arts Council and its practices; however, fiom the wider Women's Liberation Movement or mainstrearn academic studies, the predicament of women's relationship to arts patronage has yet to be fùlly examined. How systems of subsidisation propagate ideas of "women", the ways in which these representations have restricted women's access to a preconceived British
"culture", and the means by which such definitions can be undermined require further investigation.
-v The folkwing chapters incorporate a discussion of the structural biases of arts policy with an exarnination of modem aesthetic ideology to demonstrate how British culture and politics sewed to exclude women from the production and understanding of "art" in the postwar period. An investigation of sexual prejudice within contemporary society and discursive ideas of "woman" associated with modernism form the hmework of this essay, and are in turn used to illustrate the character of wornen artists' proscription fiorn arts policies and the consequent problematic nature of cultural identity in Britain after 1945. Yet although this work engages with modemist philosophy and the history of twentieth-century
British art, it does not purport to be a comprehensive exarnination of either; it is instead an investigation of how both generally correlate with cultural politics, and likewise how each was incorporated into the viewpoint of the Arts Council of Great Britain.
In Chapter Two, the combined history of CEMA and the Arts Council is discussed in overview. The third section, in tum, illustrates the stmctural biases and gendered policies of the Council in the postwar period. Through an investigation of its publications and party papen on arts funding, the intricate relationship of modemism and modem art practice is used to demonstrate how the proliferation of prejudicial ideas of masculinity and fernininity allowed the over-valuation of the former and disregard of the latter in national policies on the arts. The fourth chapter outlines women's responses to such politics. The Women's Art
Movernent and the Hayward Annual Exhibition of British Art are examined not only as a feminist rejoinder to the one-sidedness of the Arts Council, but also as manifestations which represented - thmugh the cultural Fnction which they caused - a popular unwillingness to accept the participation of women in a~ In the final section, the outcome of the Hayward
Annual is summarised in relation to the overall state of contemporary British policy on culture. CHAFTER TWO
Culniral Policy: CEMA and the Arts Council of Great Britain
Although an ideological association with communism stalled early British attempts
to nationalise arts activity, the austerity of Second World War civilian life forced widespread reconsideration of the need to promote culture through an official framework.' The necessity of maintaining morale and a sense of national identity, and to provide work for musicians, actors, and artists idle due to war restrictions fostered an eamest endeavour through the 1940s to establish forma1 policies regarding the arts. Private efforts to bring music, drarna or visual art to the public were initiated in the decade prior by various philanthropical organisations; however, the formation of the Cornmittee for the Establishment of Music and the Arts in 1940 marked the fint official effort to implement policy on a national scale. Spmsored in part by a grant from the Board of Education. CEMA was formed "to show publicly and unmistakeably that the govemment [cared] about the cultural life of the c~untry."~The preservation of artistic activity was believed vital afier the wartime closure of public galleries, destruction of theatres, and a general fez of populated spaces created a cultural wasteland in metropolitan Britain, and subsequently, a territory ripe for popular de~~ondenc~.~Ln tandem with war hstschemes, the morale-raising enterprises of the British Broadcasting Corporation, the cinematic efforts of the Ministry of Information and the Foreign Office, and the work of the Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA), CEMA worked to invigorate a beleaguered homefiont through acculturation activities. Lunchtirne concerts in the National Gallery, air-raid shelter performances, or touring art exhibits not only encouraged popular belief, despite wartirne, of a "civilised" and stalwan Britain, but also provided a necessary reminder that edification could continue amid destruction. To maintain an aggressive stance against social apathy, to promote "Britain" as of the arts marked a forma1 awareness of "culture" as a political and social necessity. In this chapter, the twentieth-century history of arts paonage in Britain is discussed with regard to the development of CEMA and the Arts Council.
1
The finances required to found CEMA came initially fiom the work of Dr. Thomas Jones, secretary of the Pilgrim Tma. An organisation founded upon a bequea of two million pounds from the anglophile Amencan railway financier Stephen Harkness. the Trust's objective was to sustain and preserve (through financial means) the heritage and social culture of Great Britain. Sponsoring various artistic endeavoun during the 1930s, including
"Art for the People" - a programme which cosrdinated mobile art exhibits in the provinces - the Trust welcomed a proposa1 from the Board of Education to extend the scope of its work during World War Two. To maintain morale and prevent artistic blackout, Jones assented to a request of f25,000 to found a cornmittee which would work to sustain educational and artistic programmes. Matched by a further £25,000 fiom the Board of
Education. and endorsed by Lord Macmillan (then Minister of Information), CEMA was established in January 1940. The Committee included Macmillan as Chairman. as well as Kenneth Clark, William Emrys Williams, and Mary ~las~ow?Aligning their goals with a general wartirne rhetoric extolling the defense of civilisation and democracy - and "if these things [meant] anything they [meant] a way of life where people have liberty and opportunity to pursue things of peace"5 -- the mandate of CEMA was declared as:
... the preservation in wartirne of the highest standards in the arts of music, drama and painting; ...the widespread provision of opportunities for hearing good music and the enjoyment of the arts generally for people, who, on account of wartime conditions, have been cut off fiom these things; ...the encouragement of music-making and play-acting by the people themselves;... through the above activities, the rendering of indirect assistance to professional singers and players who may be suffering from a wartime lack of demand for their workO6 Within three months of CEMArsformation, the Treasury announced its willingness to match private grants up to a maximum of £50,000. With this support, the Cornmittee financed a wide amy of entertainment and educational programmes. Its early work included the fùnding of an eight-week session of opera, drarna, and ballet in northem England, the employment of professional musicians in London's centres for the homeless and bomb shelters, and musical productions in such venues as the crypt of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, the basements of department stores, and Underground stations.' Tounng art shows similarly continued during the wu. By the summer of 1941, nine collections were criss-crossing the nation, including an exhibition of war artists shown in the National Gallery. Lithographs and reproductions by modem British painten were also supplied to various clubs, canteens, and subsidised restaurants. Public interest was keen. At least haIf a million people viewed exhibitions CO-sponsoredby CEMA and the British Institute of Adult Education (BIAE) in
1942 alone, while an increased appreciation of art was registered by the marked expansion of sales at the Royal Academy Summer show of 1943.*
Adopting the slogan "the Best for the Moa", CEMA's activities aîtempted to sponsor quality arts and to make them available to the widea popular spectrum. Notions of "the best" and of those eligible for participation, however, remained ill-defined. As the director of the National Gallery, Kenneth Clark fostered promotion of the fine arts, professional artists, and high standards of art production; while his colleague, W.E. Williams, head of the BIAE, placed emphasis upon advancing amateur involvement. Yet because CEMA never produced a detaited constitution, the question of whether the organisation was created prirnarily to support professional activity or to nurture dilettante participation remained an issue of debate. The involvement of John Maynard Keynes, however, determined CEMAfs eventual approach and that of its offshoot - the Arts Council. An avid collector of modern painting and buyer for the Contemporary Arts Society, trustee of the National Gallery, and treasurer of the Camargo Ballet Society, Keynes replaced Macmillan as Chairman of CEMA in 1941. A reflection of his class-origins and past association with the Bloomsbury Group, Keynes' proposais were largely é~itist.~Although he wanted CEMA to provide ediQing activity for the greatest number of people, he nonetheless did not wish the Cornmittee to disintegrate into a welfare agency which would indiçcriminately promote al1 types of music and ad0 CEMA henceforth became less populia and more concentrated upon notions of
"quality" and the expert arts, "lest the welfare was to be developed at the expense of the artistic side and of standards generally."l' By 1943, the number of professional groups receiving subsidies had increased substantiaily: CEMA ovemw the guarantee scheme for several national symphony orchestras and chamber groups, re-established the Ballet Rarnbert under its auspices, and retrieved the Ballets Joos - stranded leaderless in America at the start of the war - for wartime work. The restoration of Bristol's celebrated Theatre Royal, in particular, demonsjted the increased importance of professional enterprises. Previously unaffiliated with housing the arts, the Cornmittee engineered an highly publicised takesver of management in order to revive this landmark scheduled for dernolition.'* AAer its opening, Keynes confidently announced:
AII Our companies must perform their quota of such national service for the enlargement of public content in the of war. But we also seek, and increasingly, to aid al1 those who punue the highest standards of original composition and executive performance in all branches of the arts to carry their work throughout the country, and to accustom the great new audiences which are springing up to expect and to approve the best. The leading symphony orchestras and string orchestras, mosr of the painters, and a large majori +of the opera, ballet, and drama companies in the country pursuing a serious artistic purpose are working in occasional or continuous association with us.I3
In this way, CEMA's support of the expert arts became a noticeably large facet of its consideration, while its recognition of such programmes as "Art for the People" subsided. Although CEMA began as an experiment and had no assurance of continued government support at the close of the war, its popularity demonstrated a level of public receptivity to the arts beyond ail expectation. Keynes adrnitted: "At the start our airn was to replace what war had taken away; but we soon found that we were providing what had never existed in peace time."14 With his active involvemeni, it was decided to prolong the experirnent permanently through the creation of an arts council. To this end, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in June 1945:
[CEMA] was set up to maintain the standard and the national tradition of the arts under war conditions. The experience thus gained seemed to us to show that there will be a lasting need afier the war for a body of this kind to encourage knowledge, understanding and practice of the arts in the broad sense of that term. It was accordingly decided to incorporate the Council with this object and with the narne of the Arts Council of Great ri tain.'^ The Arts Council which emerged after the war bore al1 the hallmarks of Keynes' conception of public patronage: "Unabashedly élitist, he disdained those, mainly on the political le& who extolled the me& of popular culture, or sought to revive participatory folk traditions; hostile to state interference, he [also] regarded a Ministry of Culture as inimical to genuine
~reativit~."'~The order which he imposed represented a compromise between private initiative and -te control: although financially dependent upon the Treasury, the Arts Council would detemine the distribution of its grants free from the intervention of Whitehall. In a BBC broadcast, Keynes declared: "Henceforward we are to be a permanent body, independent in constitution, free from red tape, but financed by the Treasury and ultimately responsible to Parliament, which will have to be satisfied with what we are doing when hmtime to tirne it votes us money."17 He was adamant, however, that the Arts
Council not become a socialised organisation: "Whatever views may be held by the lately warring parties... about socialising industry, everyone, 1 fancy recognises that the work of the artist in al1 its aspects is, of its nature, individual and free, undisciplined, unregimented. and ~ncontrolled."'~Keynes not only manifested his biases through a dedication to "quality" and
"independence", but also by his attraction to London high culture. His cosmopolitan partialities were demonstrated by his desire to maintain the Council in Britain's largest metropolis and, equally, to dedicate the fist of the Arts Council's efforts to the re-opening of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Complete with an inaugural gala designed to "be a landmark in the restoration of English cultural life," Keynes declared this festival "the return of England's capital to its rightfùl place in a world of peace."'g A reflection of the framework which he created, the Arts Council has been located in London since its inception and the bulk of its expenditwe made within the conurbation."
The 1946 Charter of Incorporation declared the Arts Council to be a body founded for the purpose of developing "a grpater knowledge of the fine arts exclusivefy....", but was othewise ambiguous in its intents2' The document outlined the structure of the Council - its offices and oficers, and their functions - however did not list how funding should be distributed nor to whom it should go. This indeterminacy was the mainstay of Keynes' tenure. Using the vagary of the Council's objectives as a medium, he implemented his personal vision of "culture":
Keynes' priorities in the fine arts exclusively, especially in the opera and ballet to the exclusion of prose literature and film and the community arts, would bias the practice of state giving until a revision of the charter nineteen years later. The deadhead of Bloomsbury values ruled the awards to living artists, and some of those original priorities would remain as part of the policy of the Arts Council for ail the first fi@ years of its existence: while it was tme that some of the performing arts needed subsidy more than other arts, because they cost more to put on, their preferences were expressed. If the Council owed its founding to Keynes, it also felt compelled to execute his legacy.= His decision-making, however, was both long-king and cornprehensive. To present day,
"the profoundest source of the Arts Council's power lies in its oficial capacity to conceptualise and to identify the arts and the arti~tic."~As one of the most powerful arbiters of aesthetic taste, the Council's actions, definitions, and inactions influence how approval is meted to artists, which artists earn success, and more generally, legitimate and encourage sorne kinds of creativity but ignore others. As Nicholas Pearson tellingly contends: "State intervention has not simply supported art, in the sense of lending credence and succour to a pre-given and value-fiee set of practices. It has radically affected what art is, how it is understood, and how it is pa~ticed."~~CEMA and Keynes instituted a rhetoric of "culture" which defined "art" as an entity of a specific quality and taste: urban in origin, independent in initiative, and "high", "fine", or implicitly rniddle-class. The acceptance of those not meeting the criteria of this frarnework has therefore been problematic, Iimited, or altogether
nonexistent, as they have been confined by or excluded from patronage schemes, national recognition, and endorsement due to a lack of "fit" with policy matter.
11 The first thirty years of its existence marked a gradua1 increase in the Arts Council's
power and wealth. Its grant-in-aid rising exponentially from 1945 (Appendix 1, Figure I), the Council became the most conspicuous channel of government arts support in postwar ~ritain.~'Although organisations such as the Pilgrim Trust, the Carnegie United Kingdorn Trust, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the TUC, local authorities, and the British government itself have maintained their stahis as patrons of the arts, the Arts Council has been the moa eminent and cogent organisation to fund opera, theatre, and arts education and exhibition in the twentieth ~entury*~At first responsible to the Treasury, the Council was re-incorporated in 1967 under the auspices of the Department of Education and Science
(DES). In the same year, the office of Minister for the Arts luas created to provide an administrative voice for cultural affain;" The Arts Council, however, had no political association; as a quango, it was (and is) neutral in the context of party politics."
From its inception, decision-making processes regarding patronage were heavily guided by finances: the size of its annual grant fkom Parliament and the number of applicants to the Council determined the arnount of financiai support various arts received.
In its 1969 Enquiry, Grants for the Am, the Estirnates Committee of the DES resolved:
Now there are many way [sic] of choosing what organisations to support, from the rigidity of a national blueprint for the arts, to a passive meeting of al1 demands, provided the funds are available and the artistic standards not unreasonable. As Your Committee understand the evidence, the Arts Council's operations faIl somewhere between these extremes and their exact position at any time may be determined by the amount of money available.lg Through the 1970s, moreover, most of the parliamentary grant went not toward supporting
individual artists, but rather to large groups or arts management? Housing the arts, payment
to national opera or theatre companies, and the support of educational groups or publications
rather than the single painter or sculptor was Council From the beginning, it was believed that direct involvement with individuals threatened creative fieedom. In 1947. Glasgow and Evans argued: "If the state as such begins to encourage one dramatist rather than another, or this writer rather than that, then it is inevitable that political factors will ultimately intrude to contaminate artistic judgments. What began as a gift will end as a bribe and the artist will be in danger of having his independence and integrity affe~ted."~~Larger projects were equally favoured by state subsidisation due to the attention which they received both nationally and intemationally, while those enterprises which showed less risk in investment or were guaranteed revenue also received greater support?' As demonstrated by the title of 1976/77 Annual Re~org"Value for Money", remuneration played a fundamental role in the subsidisation process."
The Arts Council was equally directed toward funding the classical perCorming arts as opposed to living creative artists." Although in part the result of its dedication to organisations, this facet of patronage was also the outcome of the Council's mandate and history. Because it was not only devoted to the promotion of education and artistic quality, but also to preserving the cultural heritage of Britain, contemporary painters or writers were ofien shunned by the Arts Council's granting practices. Whereas the Royal Opera House, Sadler's Wells Ballet, or the National Theatre provided a diet of conventional productions, modem artists were frequently viewed as ingenues who had not yet proved their worth to the cultural foundations of the country. Popular opinion of modem art or poetry, moreover, was often quite low and therefore response to its support by public monies was frequently negative. Secretary-General Roy Shaw articulated this problem of sustaining new work in his Report of 1978179: "...the arts vary enormously, especially in contemporary arts which are breaking new ground, where one man's excellence may be another man's r~bbish."'~ Artists Now, an organisation formed in the 1970s which spoke for young artists, investigated
Council practices in order to reveal biases against contemporary or untraditional art. Citing "history" as an impediment to original work, it reported:
It's fairly clear what has happened. The Arts Council was set up in 1946 to Save the arts, and the bodies most in need of help at that time were the opera houses, the theatres and the orchestras, who had either to lower their standards or crack. So the money began to power towards them, and gradually what had started as an arts council turned into a huge financial empire for the pecforming arts, where everyone, whether administrator, performer, scene-shifier, publicity man or call-boy was benefrting. 37
Claiming inertia as a rationale for the Council's attachment to the traditionai arts, Artists Now reproached the practice of giving piecemeal grants to independent artists "instead of using it bravely and dangerously to build something large that would help hundreds of artists simultaneously in the marketing or exhibiting field."38 Arts patronage in Britain, it was concluded, placed most of its support in essentially commercial enterprises - including national thea~esand orchestras - but neglected to build or encourage schemes "that would enable the unknown creative anist to present his work with dignity to the public -- and has even failed to encourage those artists who have tried to build such schemes thernsel~es.'~~ Using statistical information from 1966/67, Artists Now demonstrated the dearth of Council funds received by the creative arts. In this twelve month period, al1 grants to composers, dramatists, painters, sculptors, and authon amounted to £76,297. In the same year, however, the National Theatre publicity and wardrobe departments spent £81,524 between them, Covent Garden catering staff received f 37,324 in wages, and the Arts Council staff wages and salaries equalled £164,539.~' This disproportionate spending was further affected by grant reductions, inflation, and a larger number of applicants through the late 1960s and 1970s. In 1966/67, for example, twenty-three visual artists were granted £2,150 in total (the smallest individual grant was £250, while the largest was £700)- By 1972/73, however, 119 painters and sculptoa were sharing £20,270 -- which averaged f 170 per artist? Lack of support for creative artists made it almost impossible for those involved in such professions to Iive off of their work. The Congress for Cultural Freedom's Short Survey (1960) estimated that of the 40,000 painters living in Britain, approximately thirty could live by their painting. In 1968, Maurice Bradshaw, Secretacy of the Federation of British Artists,
hrther approximated that there were over 100,000 trained artists in Britain, 46,000 arts
students in art school, and thousands of would-be professionals, of whom only fifty were acîually ernployed full-time in painting and sculpting." Artists Now, the Congress for Cultural Freedom, and the Federation of British
Artists articuIated two ttndarnental issues: the division between those who accepted received definitions of "the arts" - who demanded that they be subsidised on an appropriate scale and made accessible to interested audiences - and others who argued that al1
humankind was creative by nature, and therefore insisted upon a much wider scope (Le., one which included jazz, pop music, performance art, or television plays). Related to this issue,
and based partly upon the former argument, was a concem for arts audiences. Implicitly invoking CEMA's mantra of "the Best for the Most", subsidisation disputes were founded upon whether the "best" in performances (those which were expensive to mount, and therefore costly to attend) should be sponsored in the knowledge that they would serve only an élite; or should a much wider audience. participating in a broader range of activities.
enjoy "lower" or less expensive arts. During the late 1960s and 1970s, this division could
not be bridged. The Arts Council lacked a cornprehensive guide-line or intemal policy
(other than its Charter of Incorporation) which could direct its decision-making processes, and therefore resolve these and other contentious issues. This legacy of Keynes -- who once admitted his thankfulness that CEMA had "an undefined independence, an anomalous constitution and no fixed rules, and [was], therefore, able to do by inadventure or indiscretion what obviously no one in his official senses would do on purpose" - is the most problernatic aspect of British arts patronage.43 Through the 1970s, the Arts Council never defined its practices beyond a three-phrase purpose statement found in both charters. Although broadened in its scope by the removal of the term "fine arts" fiom the 1967 document, the fear of imposing a form of "state art" - which would hinder originality or the individual creative process - allowed for the creation of an official body with an unspecific framework. It was the objective of the Arts Council "to develop and improve the knowledge, understanding and practice of the arts"; "to increase the accessibility of the arts to the public throughout Great Britain"; and "to advise and CO-operatewith the Departments of Fational] Govermnent, local authorities and other bodies on any matters concerned whether directly or indirectly with the foregoing abjects.'" Despite their obscurity, the legitimate context of these aims allowed the erratic or undefined nature of the Council's decision-making processes to persist. The vagary involved in patronage practices was similarly the result of a British tradition of adherence to the power of market-forces. The laissez-faire pattern which the Council followed - including its custom of responding to "demand" for financial support rather than active solicitation - allowed the indefinite nature of economics to shield its often imprecise value detenninations. The 1966167 Annual Report revealed:
[The] Council endeavours to find a constructive policy in which the first, rather modest, ingredient is financial cornmon sense, or good housekeeping. Being charged with the duty of laying out some of the products of taxation, we are obliged to consider what value we get for the money. There is no prima fucie case for subsidising work which the public is ready to support to such an extent as to give a reasonable retum to the artists and promoters concemed." This tolerant pragmatism, in turn, allowed the frequently unrigomus structure of British politics to proliferate in cultural matten. Allocative decisions custornarily shaped cultural policy rather than vice versa, and rnuch decision-making occurred outside the formal corridors of power. As it was not required to publicise how designations were made nor to perform any conventional voting procedure, many informa1 contacts were maintained between the Council and governrnent. F.F. Ridley has argued: "Private discussions take the place of defined powen, formal procedures, and recorded decision.''& The notion that "agreements" were more beneficial than democratic or open election procedures was an engrained facet of arts management:
There is litîle belief that the relations between government and other bodies are improved by fomalizing their interaction or that organizations work better if their intemal procedures are regulated. This makes it hard to trace the influence of Ministem, civil servants, Council members, staff, and other notables in the arts world. It is doubly dificult because of the network of personal relations between the people concemed. The Chairman of the Arts Council, for example, invariably has contacts in high places. The Chaimen of the great national theatre and opera companies are memben of the sarne network.... Ties of class (including old school ties of Eton), family and business connections, overlapping cornmittee relationship, shared experience around Whitehall, and the circuit of London social life link rnany of the decision- makes in the arts."
In total, the Arts Council lacked an objective position fiom which both to make its judgments and to explain them. This conclusion is part of a larger point: until the 1980s, the govemment undertook very little long range planning of any kind, nor studied the rnethods of other countries. As Michael Green and Michael Wilding state in CMESCO's 1970 report on cultural policy in Great Britain: "Statistics in the whole field covered by this report are hard to corne by, hard to compare, and hard to rely on. A series of lengthy particular studies is needed, besides a more vigorous public discussion of relative pnorities."" In short, vagueness and lack of t-igidity have allowed "culture" to remain a notion which is both ambiguous and ephemeral.
u Successive Labour governments have attempted, however, to reform and dernocratise official patronage practices in Britain. A belief that the sustenance of a responsible socialist popuiace was dependent upon the cultivation of a general aesthetic sense and leamedness propelled many Labour ministers through the 1950s, 60s, and 70s to contemplate the issue of "culture". Disdaining traditional foms of working-class entertainment, they sought to institute an "improving agenda" which would promote popular edification: Such figures had thought their political objectives imperiled by values promoted by the people's favoured pursuits and looked to education and "enlightenment" to improve individuals as a precondition to their becorning socialists. This entailed the abandonment of popular institutions such as the public house. This perspective had not much changed by the rniddle decades of the twentieth century. Politically progressive critics of popular leisure believed that it prevented the development of hlly rounded members of society, of socialism - or of any other more limited form of political advance." Fun fairs, football pools, chain cinemas, and holiday camps were regarded as pastimes which encouraged baser instincts and therefore required counteraction through the encouragement of "finer feelingsN." From the perspective of Labour's leisure critics, such sentiments could be fostered only by the advance of socialism. Because capitalism had denied workers not merely social status and welfare, but also - through its creation of a leisure class - the best of "high culture", the democratising force of a socialist govemment was fundamental to popular enlightenment. A tradition of cultural advancement thereby evolved through the 1950s and 1960s, encouraged by such figures as C.A.R Crosland, Jennie Lee, and Roy ~enkins."
Polic~for the AG, the Labour govemment's White Paper of 1965, categorically stated that more generous help was needed in al1 artistic domains, and in particular, support for contemporary or the living arts was urgently required. Its conclusion asserts: "Today's artists need more financial help, particularly in the early years before they have becorne established. 'I'heir ability to develop and sustain a high level of artistic achievement lies at the centre of any national policy for the arts."s2 Organised by Lee, who became Minister for the Arts in 1967, the annual grant-in-aid to the Arts Council doubled between 1964 and 1966, and continued to rise through the late 1960s. Labour was sirnilady responsible for transferring the Council's gant source from the Treasury to the Departrnent of Education and Science, and in this way allowed support for the arts to extend into schools and univenities. This broadened scope reflected not only the party's attachrnent to the value of education as a social leveller but also to the preservation of culture: If children at an early age become accustomed to the idea of the arts as a part of everyday life, they are more likely in maturity first to accept and then to demand them- The links are not limited to the primary and secondary schools: they extend to the arts schools, the colleges of fùrther education, the colleges of education for teachen, the univeaities and the classes for adults. The place that the arts occupy in the life of the nation is largely a reflection of the time and effort devoted to them in schools and col~e~es.~
ent fore Labour Movement (1975) fürther expressed the
importance of culture within society. Prepared by an NEC audy group, the pamphlet asserted that the arts were "an important channe! of communication and actled] to heighten people's awareness of their lives and surroundings.... In an age which has greater leisure time for enjoying the arts, opportunities for their enjoyment should be the right of all."" The
policy proposals outlined therefore included the "positive encouragement of cultural
experience relevant to the interests. values and experiences of rnany more people"; the support of new arts centres, new art forms, and new artists, while at the same time maintaining Briîain's cultural heritage and cultural standards; the improvement of wages, conditions of employment, and security of those professionally involved in the living arts; and the creation of a more dernocratic system of arts finance and administration, and a separate Ministry for Arts, Communication and ~ntertainment."
The Arts and the Peo~le: Labour's Policv towards the Arts (1977) re-accented the govemment's preliminary findings. The policies set forth in the discussion paper were here simplified and emphasised:
Al1 such refoms...p resuppose that the arts are a vital part of this country's life - - a valuation which is not universally held and which thus requires justification. We rnaintain that the arts are not a rarefied world -- approachable only with a univenity degree, or relevant only to a small, highbrow, elite. Rather, the greatest works of art in any medium appeal equally to the emotions and the mind of any penon prepared to open himself to them. 56 The need for democratic procedures within the Arts Council, the democratic spread of the arts in Britain, and their placement "finly in the centre of pritish] society" through the active involvement of the state formed the framework of this argument supporting public patronage." Yet although Labour's reforms expanded the scope of arts practice and patronage, their endeavours could not withstand the monetarist closures of Thatcherism: "No quasi-autonornous national govemment institution in receipt of funding [was]... able to claim immunity, not even the Arts Council which previous govements had used to keep the state and the arts 'at ami's ~en~th'."'~A shrunken gant, decreased role for the Council, and the promotion of private patronage marked the history of cultural poiicy in the 1980s.'~
N The Arts Council's involvernent in the visual arts has been primarily through arts education, grants to galleries and museums, and exhibition ftnding. The Hayward Gallery at the South Bank Centre, London, is fully supported and rnanaged by the Council, while it also offen partial funding to (but does not manage) the Institute of Conternporary Art, and the
Whitechapel and Serpentine Galleries (both in London), the Museum of Modem Art in Oxford, the Amolfini Gallery in Bristol, and the Ikon Gallery in ~irmin~harn.~Grants and guarantees have also been made intermittently available to various other independent galleries in order to offset management cos& and the staging of exhibitions. Financial suppon to the visual arts is likewise provided through award schemes, including those for art book publishing and architectural design, and arts research (to be used in educational programmes, etc.). Through its "Housing the Arts" programme, a fundamental component of the Council since its inception, new galleries and community arts centres have been built on a regular basis since the 1950s.6' The Council also operates the National Touring Exhibition Service out of the South Bank Centre and undenvrites an artist-in-residence programme, both of which provide education and edification for areas and institutions outside of London.
From 1945 to 1981, however, the Arts Council of Great Britain and its subsidisation programmes reflected the haphazard structure upon which they were founded. in essence, this body remained true to Keynes' original perception of its origins: "Suange patronage of the arts has crept in. It has happened in a very English, informal, unostentatious way -- half- baked if you like."" Fear of imposing a system of state control (and hence statedetermined creativity) prevented the formulation of a detailed constitution, thus allowing the Arts Council to remain aloof from standard definitions of procedure, accountability, and in many cases, responsibility. Dependent upon a faltering economic system and unwritten ideas of "standards", contemporary arts patronage evolved in an highly pragmatic fashion. As a consequence of this instrumentalism, however, the definition of "the arts" offered to postwar society was malleable in accordance with the views of officialdom rather than those of the wider public. As the next chapter explores, the vigorous re-birth of cultural activity afier the
Second World War projected an idea of "culture" whose character and understanding were largely determined by the Arts Council itself. CHAPTER THREE
The Problematics of Cultural Iden tity: Women and Arts Patronage
A capitalist society requires a culture based on images. It needs to hiniish vast amounts of entertainment in order to stimulate buying and to anaesthetise the injuries of class, race and sex.' Of the various roles which the arts have played in twentieth-century Britain, their function as a palliative to social disparity was central to the formulation of cultural policy after 1945. As a facet of this process, the Arts Council was founded largely upon the belief that a common appreciation of painting, theatre, or music could establish a "communal civilised life". and thereby assuage the hardships of austerity and, in particular, the tensions of class ciifference.'
The work of the Council was intended, in part, to arnend social inequalities and improve overall public welfare through its widespread dissemination of those cultural forms previously accessible to only an élite. Yet in this endeavour to bring culture to the majority, the Arts Council simultaneously addressed the historical association of the arts with ideas of "civilisation" and national identity. Exemplified by its role in the 1951 Festival of Bntain - for which an exhibition of paintings was organised to illustrate the achievements of British art - the Council encouraged popu1a.r recognition of not only "the best" of culture. but also the belief that such feats were the products of an highly refined society. The work of British artists became, in this context, a symbol of wider national taste and intelligence. As both an aspect of social welfare and identity it can therefore be argued that the arts were used to invest the public imagination with a notion of Britons as both enlightened and disceming, and - especially - a cornmunity united by these qualities. The cultivation of mutual ideas of "refinement", "art", and "nation", in turn, is suggestive of an attempt to instil the belief of cultural cohesion in a state otherwise divided by sectional interests, including those of class, race and gender. The seeming reluctance, for example, of the Arts Council to support those aesthetics engaged with or depicting the often 53 umlenting nature of British society implies an aversion to comprehend the postwar tensions which the country faced as non-indigenous populations grew, class divisions remained, and,
in particular, feminisrn gained strength. With regard to the participation of women in art production, the scarcity of support which the Arts Council rnanifested for feminist artists or art inspired by ideas of women's experience indicates an ostensible unwillingness to explore the reality of a hgmented society and, in turn, the Council's inability to include particular ideas of "woman" in British culture. In this chapter, patterns of patronage and ideas of nation are explored in relation to feminism and women's art.
1 The sublimation or control of gender differences for the sake of national unity played a fundamental role in the popular culture of World War Two. As Antonia Lant, Gillian
Swanson, and Christine Gledhill argue in their histories of wartime film, the maintenance of morale on the homefront often required the cultivation of ideas of "men" and "women" which could uphold the notion of Britain as an unified nation. In Rlackout: Reinvenu
omen for Wart nem (1991), Lant argues: "[The] axis of sexual difference, that foundational structure of visual and narrative categories by which screen men and women are kept distinct yet coupled, became attenuated, less visible, in British wartime cinema .... ''3 Feature films on the theme of war, for example, frequently depicted male and female roles which veiled gender contrasts through their dramatisation of men and wornen as partners in national defence rather than as sexual adversaries. Movies such as Love S'tory
(1944)- the tale of a newly-wed couple, accented not the hardships of mamage between a young soldier and his wife, or individual desires, but promoted an acceptance of "emotional loss, separation, and uncertainty about the future while still demanding ...[ a] commitrnent to 'living througW" Although not contributing directly to the war effort, costume melodrarnas of the 1940s equally attempted to obfuscate sexual tension. For example, Gainsborough Studios' The WicRed Lady (1 946) absorbed notions of difference through its denial of an essential masculinity or femininity in the representation of a female "highwayman". As Lant argues: "A wornan acquires masculine talents. and consequently loosens her ties to femininity under cover of darkness, which in the contempocary cultural vocabulary has corne to stand for the conditions of war in which reaI women do indeed carry out tasks traditionally pexformed by men.lv5 Yet emphasis upon traditional gcnder paradigms likewise charactensed wartime cinema. Accenting "pmper" or subordhate roles for women, movies similar to Ealing Studios' Went the Dqy WeZI? (1942) - whose female characters "al1 display initiative and the propensity for self-sacrifice" but, equally, are al1 women "of a certain age" which made them sexually undesirable and thus "safe" - suggested non-threatening ferninine stereotypes and, in this way, symbolically rnaintained "peace" between men and ~ornen.~ Also important, however, was the creation of a cinema which appealed to an universal audience. The thematic issues embraced by films produced for wartime consumption addressed national topics in order to attract the widest spectrum of viewers and, sirnilarly, to disseminate a general propaganda which could relate to the situation of al1
Britons: "The war caused every fiction, no matter how apparently remote from the crisis, to be understood in its ternis."' Yet this encouragement of ideas familiar to national audiences
- regardless of age, class, or sex - was equally intended to foster concepts of unity. As Basil Wright commented in the Summer 1941 issue of Wt and Sound, the presence of a documentary style within feature tilmmaking was particularly influential in the cultivation of notions of "community":
Clearly the documentary approach, being based on the observance of reality and on many years' experience of the handling of ordinary people is in a position to give an impression of actuality to the public; and, more irnportantly, to make the public feel that the subject dealt with is really a part of their own lives and responsibilities, and not a fictional episode divorced fiom their own e~~erience.~ Although realistic, but not a conventional documentary, films such as Millions Like Us (1943) - a story of wartime factory production - encouraged a notion of shed situation not only through its title, but also by an articulation of subjects which al1 audiences could associate with their individual Iives. Ideas of "home", "loss", "death", and "work" had the ability to evoke meaning within the general population and thus ostensibly inspire both co- operation and perseverance on the homefiont. It can be argued that this attenuation of "differences" exemplified by wartime cinema
was maintained through the postwar period by state policies toward culture. The difficulties of reconstruction, the onset of austerity, British loss of world position. and financial dependence upon the United States - coupled with the changes effected by welfare politics, an increased presence of the working classes, and the nationalisation of major industries and institutions - not only caused social upheaval but also altered historical perceptions of
national identity? Formerly inspired by a wealth of imperial history, the govemment faced,
in 1945, the challenges of a nation largely overcome by weariness and political apathy, and
disillusioned by the dubious rewards of its vict~r~.'~"Culture", in this context, assumed a substantive role. The reconstruction of national faith required a dilution of social ills and the cultivation of an unified image of Britain and Britons; in essence, a revaluation and assertion
of the cultural identity of "Britishness". In periods of crisis, Antonia Lant argues that
national character indeed becomes malleable: "Dt is] not a natural, timeless essence, but an intermittent, combinatory historical product ... oI1 The Festival of Britain, in this context, can
be viewed as one of many oficial attempts to engender new confidence. Billed as a centenary celebration of the 1851 Great Exhibition, the Festival advertised one-hundred years of British cultural, industrial, and technological achievement, and, equally, prophesied a bright fûture for the postwar world. Gerald Barry, editor of the News Chronicle, announced that the show was intended to demonstrate the British contribution to civilisation, through its articulation of "what the Land has made of the People, and what the People have made of themselves.... We envisage this as the people's show... not organized arbitrarily for them to enjoy, but put on largely by them, by us all, as an expression of a way of life in which we believe."12 Regardless of social or cultural origins, Bntons were intended to be united by their commonalities of the past, present, and future.
The Arts Council positioned "culturett in a similar context. Although the policy objectives of its mandate were vague,13 it was nonetheless understood that a common interea in painting, theatre, or music could restore an harmonious national life. Continuing the traditions of wartime CEMA, John Maynard Keynes asserted in a 1945 BBC broadcast:
The re-building of our community and of our common life must proceed in due proportion between one thing and another. We must not limit our provision too exclusively to shelter and comfort to cover us when we are asleep and allow us no convenient place of congregation and enjoyment when we are awake .... And let such buildings be widely spread throughout the country. We of the Arts Council are greatly concemed to decentral ise and disperse the dramatic and musical and artistic life of the country, to build up provincial centres and to prornote corporate life in these matiers in every town and country .... We look fonvard to the time when the theatre and the concert-hall and the gallery will be a living element in everyonets upbringing.14
This diffusion of resources and support for the institutionalkation of culture in British life suggest a desire to establish a national community of and for the arts. As Keynes asserted: 'The purpose of the Arts Council of Great Britain is to create an environment, to breed a spirit, to cultivate an opinion, to offer a stimulus to such purpose that the artist and the public can each sustain and live on the other in that nation which has occasionally existed at the great ages of communal civilised life."" Yet this hoped for reciprocity between audience and artist was not only intended to establish social afinity; it was designed as a peculiarly British phenornenon. Keynes' declaration of "Death to Hollywood" and his hope that "every part of Meny England be merry" in its own cultural endeavours, suggests an association between culture and national consciousness.'6 An aspect of "being British", it was implied, involved the recognition of not only high calibre arts (rather than those mass produced in the United States) but also those which were situated in a specific geographic or sentimental context. This affirmation of collective edification or common cultural interest implies an attempt not merely to formulate a mutual idea of "Britain" or "Britishness", but equally to evoke shared notions of intelligence, civility, and anti-philistinism. Both CEMA and the
Council attempted to play a fundamental role in the development of national and human character through their dedication to the provision of exemplary arts. In his Romanes Lecture of June 1958, Edward Ettingdene (Lord) Bridges argued: "Pt] is the duty of the state to provide something of the best in each of the arts as an example or inspiration to the whole country...[ That] the state has also a duty to see that those who cm derive satisfaction fiom the arts have the opportunity to do so, and that the start of this must be to give everyone a chance of seeing and hearing good things."17 These values were encouraged through efforts to disseminate "culture". Beginning in 1940, for example, the implementation of changes in schedule, performance, and venue of cultural activities indicated an increased awareness of the importance of audiences for music, theatre, or visual art. This shifi is detailed in
Humphrey Jennings' 1942 documentary, Listen to Britain. Portions of the film address wartirne entertainment, and in particular a concert featuring the pianist, Myra Hess. Heid in the National Gallery, Hess plays against a backdrop of scenes from factory work, daily life in London, and of her audience - an amalgam of working- and middle-class men and women, soldiers, Keynes, the Queen, and others. These episodes seemingly illustrate not only the classlessness of cultural activity, but also the place of the arts in British life. Culture is shown as an entity which is universal in both access and availability, and which could comfortably occupy a place in quotidian existence. It is also, however, depicted as a specifically British phenornenon. The Queen, the National Gallery, tea and sandwiches, as well as glimpses of Trafalgar Square and Nelson's Column enframe the film as a spectacle of "Britishness". Yet the idea of Britain evoked is not merely associated with the arts - it is dependent upon them. Each scene of war or wartime production is linked one to another or . . show concurrently with music, while the opening titles of men to Rmare supenmposed upon the images of a violin and a gun. The success of war and the maintenance of British liberty are thus symbolically held together by "culture". The arts. in this way, are demonsîrated as essential to the security of national identity.
The maintenance of a cultural idea of Britain or cultural cohesion was further articulated by postwar efforts to promote the arts. In the immediate afiermath of 1945, the work of the Arts Council was directed towards increasing access to fine art, music, and, especially ,to theatre:
For instance, in the drama, the London theatre now usually opens at 7 o'clock in the evening instead of 8.30. The audience, with few exceptions, is not in evening dress. It is ofien an audience that has corne to the theatre directly frorn work and is going to make a journey to a distant suburb once the play is over. The narrow circle upon which the "West-End" theatres relied under pre-war conditions has been replaced by an audience sartorially less prepossessing but more varied on the whole younger, and more generally intelligent. The audiences at the post-war Covent Garden Opera House mark the change in the most impressive way. Gone is the great circle of boxes and gone are the tiaras. Evening dress is "optional" and the men and wornen who assemble, even on a first-night, are obviously drawn fiom al1 sections of society.'*
Dissemination of the arts continued to be the primary objective of cultural politics through the 1960s and 1970s. A 1965 Joint Circular fiom the Department of Education and Science and the Ministry of Housing and Local Govemrnent asserted that a more involved partnership between the DES and the local authorities would allow for the "the encouragement of vigorous artistic consciousness in al1 parts of the country, and towards the abolition of the drabness and uniformity which [were] still too prevalent a feature of urban surroundings in Great ri tain."'^ In his preface to a 1974 "Report on the Arts", Hugh
Jenkins furthered these sentiments when he articulated the need to continue the promotion of cultural activity and to spread "the knowledge that the man and woman who can see painting and hear music; or who spend time on the magic of words; that such people are the yeast of our society and are second only to the creatoa and interpreters who can make life a joy to live.""
Yet the Labour Government's 1965 White Paper, A Policv for the Am, was perhaps the most explicit statement on the role of the arts in British society. Claiming the need for a new "social as well as artistic c~irnate,'~'this document most clearly articulated the objectives of cultural activity in national life:
In any civilised community the arts and associated amenities, serious or comic, light or demanding, must occupy a central place. Their enjoyment should not be regarded as something remote hm everyday life. The promotion and appreciation of high standards in architecture, in industrial design, in tom planning and the preservation of the beauty of the countryside are al1 part of it. Beginning in the schools, and reaching out in every corner of the nation's life, in city and village, at home, at work, at play, there is an immense amount that could be done to improve the quality of contemporary life? Emphasising the duty of govemment to serve the needs of the population, A Policy for the Bds compared cultural provision to other welfare services, and implied that participation in and enjoyment of artistic life was essential to social well-being and, fundarnentally, to healthy living: "Only yesterday it was a fight for a fiee health service. The day before it was the stniggle to win education for al1 ....Today a searching reappraisal of the whole situation in relation to cultural standards and opportunities is in progress."u Equally, the diffusion of the arts was intended to bridge the culture gap. Attempting to assuage the divide between "what have corne to be called the 'higher' forms of entertainment and the traditional sources - the brass band, the amateur concert Party, the entertainer, the music hall and pop group", A cv for the Arts both illuminated and challenged cultural hierarchies." In total, the document emphasised the need to thoroughly democratise the arts, and thereby eradicate the injustices of class society and consequently the social "drabness" and "joylessness" bequeathed by the Industrial ~evolution? LL Through the 1970s, the Arts Council attempted to instil the arts with an ethos of universal access and, equally, to suggest a British cultural identity founded upon ideas of cultivation, acumen, and taste. As Stuart Hall argues, however, identity takes many forms and is thus "not as transparent or unproblematic as we think."26 Hall suggests that there are at least two different ways of conceiving this phenomenon: 'The first position defines 'cultural identity' in terms of the idea of one, shared culture, a sort of collective 'one true self, hiding inside the many other, more superficial or artificially imposed 'selves', which people with a shared history and ancestry hold in c~rnrnon."~~In this context, cultural identities reflect common historical experiences and offer the idea of "one people" as a
stable frame of meaning "beneath the shifiing divisions and vicissitudes of our actual
history."" Yet there is a second rneaning of "cultural identity" which qualifies the fint.
This other position acknowledges that, despite sirnilarities, there are also critical points of difference which constitute particular notions of "being". In his discussion of identities in Caribbean cinema, Hall argues that this second definition underlies the first:
We canot speak for long, with any exactness, about "one experience, one identity", without acknowiedging its other side - the differences and discontinuities which constitute, precisely, the Caribbean's uniqueness. Cultural identity, in this second sense, is a matter of "becoming" as well as of "being". It belongs to the future as much as to the past. It is not something which already exists, transcending place, tirne, history, and culture. Cultural identities corne frorn somewhere, have histories. But, like everything which is historical, they undergo constant transformation. Far frorn being eternally fixed in some essentialized past, they are subject to the continuous "play" of history, culture, and power. Far from being grounded in a mere "recovery" of the past, which is waiting to be found, and which, when found, will secure our sense of ourselves into etemity, identities are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives of the
Cultural identity, in this context is not a stable essence or phenomenon which exists outside of history. It is not, as Hall asserts, "a fixed origin to which we can make something final and absolute ~eturn."~'Nonetheless, it is sornething: "Cultural identities are the points of identification, the unstable points of identification or suture, which are made within the discourses of history and culture. Not an essence but a positioning. Hence, there is always a politics of position, which has no absolute guarantee in an unproblernatic, hanscendental 'law of history'."" This second form of "being" is therefore a shifting presence within the spaces of historical narrative. These two components of identity - sarneness and difference - exist alongside one another. Hall argues that while the people of a particular community might be joined by general similarities -- such as heritage, sex, or skin colour - they are equally divided by the specificity of individual backgrounds or experience, hence dissimilarity exists always in tandem with similarity. Jacques Demda's idea of d~rérenceis usefül in this explanation.
Demda's meaning hovers between two notions: "to differt' and "to defer" (postpone). This second sense of "difference" not only undermines the binary relationships which customarily stabilise the first, but also -- in this context - unsettles prescribed notions of cultural identity. "Identities" are concepts which are never finished or fixed, but which keep "on moving to encompass other, additional or supplementary rneanings ... '$32 They are composed from the infinite postponement or arbitrary "breaks" and "stops" in the language or discourse that form them. National or cultural identity is thus understood as a position extant within the spaces between similarity and contrast. In short, who or what people are is defined by a stable, ovemding history and, equally, an undercurrent of "difference". As Frantz Fanon suggests in Black Skin. White MW(19521, "a national culture is not folk-lore, nor an abstract populism that believes it can discover a people's true nature. A national culture is the whole body of efforts made by a people in the sphere of thought to describe, justify and praise the action through which that people keeps itself in existence."" Cultural definitions therefore tangential and evanescent. m Using Stuart Hall's model, it can be suggested that two dynamics exist within the
culture of arts patronage in twentieth-cenniry Britain. From the 1940s. fragrnentary and
cohesive forces operated in tandem as the Arts Council attempted to instil a concept of British cultural identity. The cultivation of "community" through the inculcation of certain
ideas of "the arts" suggests a perceived necessity to sustain a particular meaning of "Brïtain",
and equally, a need to counteract contrary opinion. in this context, it can be argued that the endeavoun of the Council to pmrnote national cultural activity were demonstrative of an attempt to nourîsh social congruity, but also to offset those forces which threatened to
dissolve the fiagile consensus of the early postwar period. The need to maintain a notion of unity becarne critical as pre- and interwar social tensions threatened to impose more steadfast divisions in British society afier 1945. For example, although equal sacrifice during war, insurance schemes, improved urban planning, and public enthusiasm for welfarism superfkially assuaged the psychological and physical confines of class, sectional interests nonetheless prevailed: "[Social welfare was] superimposed upon a divided society with a tender concern for private provision, savings, and home ownership, and a fear of bureaucracy."" Sexual boundaries also threatened upheaval. Despite wartime work which promoted women's freedom in the public sphere, the return of most female worken to the domestic realm occurred after 1945. Yet new ways of comprehending "woman" challenged this restoration of traditional patterns. Women's war work. the partial maintenance of women in employments conventionally reserved for men, or postwar dernands for equal pay questioned established understandings of femininity as a "passive" phenornenon and, equally, the role of women in society." Attempts to comprehend and control such differences were evident in the work of the Arts Council. Beginning in 1945, a system of professional advisors, volunteers, trustees, and experts was created to administer (or police) the production and understanding of culture in Britain. The formulation of definitions for "art" and "artiaic activity" were facets of this process:
Within this vocabulary a fine art tradition is understood as an inherited collection of practices and meanings to be nurtured apart fiom the mainstream of British social and political life, "tradition" is being set against ideas of "regional", "parochial", and "amateur".... 36 In the 1940s and 1950s, the Arts Council positioned itself as an agency of response - that it should answer the initiatives of othen rather than solicit a clientele - which offered support for culture, as opposed to the definition of is parameten. This formula was generally followed by a11 departments, with the exception of visual art. For music, opera, or theatre, a very high proportion of expenditure was used in the fom of grants and parantees to other "independent" organisations. In the Art Department, however, approximately half of al1 available monies were spent on activities directly controlled or organised by the department itself. '' This immediate involvement suggests the ability of Council "experts" to determine which forms of visual art received acclaim and, in consequence, entered the canon of British aesthetics. As an example of this control, the Arts Council was responsible for the administration of the National Tounng Exhibition Service. Because few provincial galleries and museums in Britain had experience of contemporary art or the necessary financial resources to fund shows of painting or sculpture, the Council offered assistance to towns and cities throughout the country by its mobilisation of travelling art shows. Between 1946 and
1956, over 500 exhibitions were launched from London and shown in over 500 different cities, towns, and villages, resulting in over 4,000 showings of national and international modem art? Although this service proved useful for public edification, it also vested the
Art Department with the authority to delineate the nature of "art" through its controlled distribution: "In the main these [shows] compressed established works from the European and American modemist canon. There were a few historic, ethnic and crafl exhibitions, but on the whole the programme reflected a clearly delineated western fine art aesthetic...."" Expert judgement, therefore, determined the types of art which were viewed and, through such direction, necessarily ordained the ways in which art was understood.
It can be argued that this aspect of "dominion" within the Arts Council allowed the cultivation of ideas peculiar to a specific aesthetic: modemism. Notions of modernity and its corresponding ideas of social or cultural progress played a significant role in the delineation of postwar British identity" As James Vernon has suggested, the twentieîh- century history of Britain can be characterised by its halting acceptance of modem change.41
When fomerly sound social marken, such as class structure. were upset by the effects of austerity, affluence, or the foundation of the welfare state after 1945, the necessity of safeguarding previously fixed limits became essential to the fabric of British society. Within the realm of art and art production (as Victor Li has discussed), the aesthetics of modemity can be undemood as an effort to impose order upon the disorder of modem urban life." For example, in a seeming effort to exact control. many artists of the 1940s and 50s employed forms associated with twentieth-century technological progress which confronted (and thereby monopolised) culture with its own images. Painten such as Prunella Clough created modernist irnagery through their use of industrial iconography, while Ben Nicholson ostensibly conveyed the homogenous nature of 1940s Britain through his use of geornetric abstraction. Yet the resulting foms not only utilised the language of posmar society to convey pictorially notions of the mentieth-century, but also to guard against the infkingement of "otherness".
At the core of modemist theory was the reduction of painting or sculpture to an essence or fundamental framework that would serve to safeguard élite art fiom the commonplace kirsch of mass culture. The upsurge of "low" or popular forms after the war confionted "high" art with the possibility of fragmentation or "pollution" by lesser media. Hal Foster implies that latehigh modemist art and criticism can indeed be characterised as types of policing, in which critical analysis and art production were a form of "highly ethical, rigorously logical enterprise that set out to expunge irnpurity and c~ntradiction.'"~ Clement Greenberg similarly argued: "(The] avant-garde pet or artia sought to maintain
the high level of his art by both narrowing and raising it to the expression of an absolute in
which al1 relativities and contradictions would be either resolved or beside the point.'" This
emphasis upon purity in visual culture, in tum, allowed the content of modem art to become
"dissolved so completely into form that the work ... [could not] be reduced in whole or in part to anything not itse~f.''~~This promotion of "art for art's sake" - or the creation of art as an exercise of formal qualities - permitted the properties of colour, line or form to eclipse representations of persona1 experience or absolute reality. However, it can also be argued that high modemism endeavoured to convey a notion of harmony. The reduction of art to its basic or purest form implies an effort to represent an unified whole. Without (emotional or othenvise) "impurities", works such as those by Piet Mondrian or Jackson Pollock communicate an ostensible degree of "totality" through their aesthetic simplicity. The seemingly paradoxical notion of wholeness through rninimalisrn thus becarne an apt apogee of high modem art.
In his 1945 BBC broadcast on the origins and objectives of the Arts Council, John Maynard Keynes intimated ideas similar to those posited by modemist criticisrn - the purity or unchanging essence of artistic forms. Keynes' belief in the absolute autonomy of the artist and the role of the Arts Council as an agency whose purpose was to cultivate an audience -- but not to censor opinion - demonstrates an affinity to the idea of painting or sculpture as a discrete concept unaffected by social dynarnics. His characterisation, for exarnple, of the artist as an unfettered visionary - "one who walks where the breath of the spirit blows him" - and belief that works of art were "of [their] nature, individual and free, undisciplined, unregimented, uncontrolled" suggest this modemist conviction of the painter's or sculpter's independence from extemal reality? These notions, however, similarly imply a type of unity or unified perspective. Creativity as a "pure" phenornenon, unaected by outside influences, assumes an harmonious vision of not only of the act of art production, but also of art itself. In this context, painting or sculpture or photography - and the appreciation of these foms - becarne an unhgmented and unadulterated activity, or one which occupied a "realm of pure feeling outside of social context and ideological
These beliefs, however, did not accord with the reality of postwar culture in Britain.
Modemist notions of the artist as an asocial being and works of art produced as distinct from social occurrences, were confionted by the culture of congestion, of urban sprawl, and, in particular, of mas entertainment. In his review of Francis Bacon's Three Figures at the
Base of a Crucr@ion (1944). Cyril Connolly - editor of Jiokmagazine - articulated this changed ethos of British cultural life:
One can perceive the imer trend of the Forties as maintaining this desperate struggle of the modem movement, between man, betrayed by science, bereft of religion, deserted by the pleasant imaginings of humanism against the blind fate of which he is now so expertly conscious.... This is the message of the Forties from which alas, there is no escape, for it is closing time in the gardens of the West and from now on an artist will be judged by the resonance of his solitude or the quality of his desPaka
This loss of faith in the autonorny of art and its consequent collusion with social turmoil was in part the result of its post-1945 context. The effects of total war produced a society whose values were in flux and whose cultural products -- such as Osborne's Look Back in Am and Bacon's Three Figures -- seemingly foreshadowed an unprornising future. Through the late 1940s and 50s Britain indeed suffered the effects of instability. Amencan loans were required to recover from the devastations of war; the remnants of Empire crumbled as India, Burma, Ceylon and Pakistan gained independence from British rule; Britain withdrew fiom Palestine in 1948, and entered the Korean conflict in 1950; shortages, controls, and rationing were kept in place until 1954; and although new opportunities in education and the rewards of affluence had improved the welfare of rnany, in 1951 one-third of the houses in England and Wales had no bath and over a million houses had no toilet." In cultural spheres, mass entertainment and popular arts threatened modemist formalism, while visual art itself rnoved away from painterly excellence and aesthetic detachment to critical investigations of everyday life. The work of such artists as John
Bratby, Jack Smith, and other members of the social realist Kitchen Sink School, for exarnple, chose to engage with the politics of common living rather than the distanced perspective of late modemism. This positivistic exam ination of dornestic ity, provincial and working-class scenarios, or the general hardships of postwar existence placed their work in a context outside prevailing paradigms of high art. Similar to the film or dmatised venions of Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Hona (1958), Alan Sillitoe's Samay Nutand Sundav
MO- (1959) and J.onebess of the Loqg Diwce Runm (1962), and John Braine's
Room at the Top (1 959), the Kitcheri Sink articulated the "real life" of Britain in the 1950s. It can be argued that the cultural establishment responded to this threat of "pollution" through an imposition of aesthetic boundaries. In its effort to maintain an ethos of unity, the
Arts Council advertised its support of ostensibly neutral or asocial art forms. Perhaps most conspicuous in this endeavour was its promotion of abstract expressionism. The product of 1930s and 1940s Arnerica, abstract expressionist art evolved as anti-communist persecutions forced many painters away from the lefi-influenced aesthetics of social realisrn into the more detached realm of abstraction. Clement Greenberg aptly declared in 1946: "Sorne day it will have to be told how anti-Stalinism which started out more or less as Trotskyism turned into art for arts sake, thereby clearing the way, heroically, for what was to c~rne."~The rise of pure fonnalism - the investigation of line, colour, and form over content - in the works of artists such as Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning replaced the political or social representations of William Gropper or Aaron Bohrad, and thus reduced the content of art fiom visual "reality" to "essence". Throughout the 1950s and
1960s, both the Amencan govemment and art institutions in Arnerica invested substantial resources into the promotion of this new avant-garde. As Colin Crigg argues, "[this] was seen in wider political ternis as a moral crusade to establish cultural standards that superseded those of a 'bankrupt Europe' and assisted in the ideological cold-war battle for men's rnind~."~'In 1956, the Arts Council joined with the Museum of Modem Art, New
York, to organise a "Modem Art in the United States" exhibition at the Tate Gallery. This was the first large-scale showing of abstract expressionism in Britain, and it had a significant impact upon the British art scene. Patrick Heron, the painter, revealed: "1 was instantly elated by the size, energy, originality and inventive daring of many of the paintings."R This attempt to cernent British aesthetics within a conventional modemist paradigrn was maintained through the 1950s. Ptior to the Amencan exhibition, the Council organised
"Sixty Paintings for '51" as part of the Festival of Britain. Highlighting British talent for national and world perusal, the show amounted to a roll-cal1 for great British modemists including Heron, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Robert Colquhoun, Peter Lanyon, Roy de Maistre, John Piper, W i lliarn Roberts, Rodrigo Moynihan, Ben Nicholson, Pninella Clough,
Ivon Hitchens, Matthew Smith, and Ceri Richards. In 1954/55, the Arts Council arranged exhibitions of cubist and surrealist paintings, as well as Stanley Spencer, Paul Klee, Edouard Manet, and Victor Pasmore. Vincent Van Gogh, Alberto Giacometti, and Spencer Gore were highlighted in 1955/56; while in 195667 a number of equally important shows were held: the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris lent an exhibition entitled "Autour du Cubisrn", and retrospectives of Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, as well as the Nabis and the
Fauves were staged." In 1 957/58 Robert Delauney, Henri Gaudier-Baeska, Wassily Kandinsky, and Lynn Chadwick were meted significant attention."
IY This affinity to rnodemisrn despite the rise of socially inspired or popular foms - such as those of the nascent Independent Group - is suggestive of contravening activity. As an aesthetic which emphasised "completeness", modem art can be understood as the symbolic product of an undivided culture or, equally, of a culture attempting to obfuscate its
differences. It can thus be suggested that the allure of modemist painting or sculpture to the
Arts Council was its ability to establish a consonant ethos of "Britaint'. As Colin Crigg
argues cohesion was indeed fundamental to arts patronage: "The Arts Council structure, patterns of discrimination and foms of action, demonstrate the...imperative to maintain a continuum of values against the threat of infinite fragmentation, arbiûminess and perpetuaI revolution."" This imposition of aesthetic boundaries, however, had criticai gender implications. Through the 1950s, 60s, and 70s art which implied or illustrated the hgmented nature of British society received littie ostensible support? Feminist art portraying women's social and political experience - or that which depicted a culture of difference - consequently existed as a marginal or unrecognised entity. Yet women in general faced an unsympathetic patron state. The few number of female Council members, women who received artist's bursaries, or were participants in exhibitions sponsored by the
Arts Council was demonstrative of an aesthetic and stnictural discrimination within British cultural institutions. In this context, the attention paid by feminism to sexual divisions represented a challenge to established parameten of art and art production. An heretofore male and autonornous culture, it can be argued that the arts were threatened by "difference" and therefore reluctant to comprehend particuIar notions of fernininity.
Despite the presence of two women on its founding cornmittee, the Arts Council's
1946 Charter of Incorporation projected an ethos of masculinity. Although Barbara Ayrton
Gould and Thelma Cazalet Keir were included as two of its fint members?' the language of Council statutes was largely masculine in tone:
The Members of the Council shall, from tirne to time be respectively appointed by Our Chanceilor of the Exchequer after consultation with Our Minister of Education ...A mernber of the Council shall ipso fuc&~ cease to be a member thereof (a) if his membership be terminated by Our Chancellor of the Exchequer, or (b) if he accept or hold the office of Auditor of the Council, or (c) if he becomes of unsound mind or banhpt or compounds with his creditors, or (d) if he sends in a written resignation." Ayrton Gould and Cadet Keir were joined in 1947 by Lady Keynes and the Countess of
Rosebury. Yet at the height of the Women's Liberation Movement - and representative of the Council's entire history - there were not more than five women (of up to twenty mernbers) on the Council at any one time." On the Visual Arts Panel (and including its subcommittees when applicable), the highest proportion of fernale mernbers was sixteen per cent in 1980/8 1, when women made up four of twenty-one individuals on the cornmittee
(Appendix II, Figure 1). On the administrative staff of the Arts Council, Mary Glasgow was appointed fim Secretary-General and maintained that pst fiom 1946 to 195 1. Mary Allen, the next female to occupy this position, was appointed in 1994. The first woman Deputy
Secretary-General, Margaret Hyde, was narned in 1991. Joanna Drew became the first female Visual Arts Director in 1975." These structural designations were equally reinforced by discursive ones. A Poliçy for the Ar&, the 1965 White Paper of the Labour Govemment, articulated a language of exclusivity through its delineation of the artist as a specifically masculine character: "At present the young artist, having finished his schooling, has still to gain experience and has difficulty in obtaining employment .... Painters, pets, sculptoa, writers, and musicians are sometimes Iost for lack of a comparatively srna11 sum of money which woutd support their start in life ....By far the rnost valuable help that can be given to the living artist is to provide him with a larger and more appreciative "Art" and arts administration were thus ostensibly detined as masculine pursuits.
It is not, perhaps, surprising that the language of the Arts Council and arts patronage dealt with "heu not "she" or spoke of "men" not "women" - in its then contemporary use, "he" was a signifier for both sexes. Yet such language also betrayed an implicit affirmation of the "the arts" and the "artist" as "male" domains; in other words, that the exclusive language of arts policy was not simply the pariance of the day, but also reflected a specific gender ideology. Not merely utilising "he" as a generic designation, it can be argued that the decision-making of the Arts Council reflected a theoretically informed notion of the male artiçt. For example, in his discussion of "ethical" funding practices, Lord Goodman
(Chaiman of the Arts Council, 1965-72) implied ideas of masculine superionty traditionally assumed by western art paradigms through his declaration that the reward of "men" was a national duty: "If you have a pet, he may be the most obscure poet and he may attract only a few hundred people to his readenhip, but he may be a man who is well worthy of support, and it would be wrong for a civilized country not to support him."" Aspects of creativity, individuality, and the creative process - historically defined male phenornena - were equally suggested as "masculine" by the Arts Council: The artist's inspiration is something individual to himself. ...The impatience or intolerance which an artist sometimes shows on the views of othen, sprïngs from the fact that so often he feels that his critics do not understand what he is trying to do, and base their judgernents of his work on a point of view quite alien to his own th~u~ht.'~~~Yet it was not sirnply autonomy and individuality which arts patronage defined in the context of masculinity. When Goodman delineated the parameten of Council support, he did so using the language of the male breadwinner: " What we can do is to ensure that the artist lives in tolerable conditions and is reasonably free from the threat and the sting of poverty, frorn the fear that, through following an artistic vocation, he will have to go without food and will be unable to educate his chi~dren."~The artin was therefore described as not rnerely a non-gendered or universal "he", but an expressly male genius, worker, and provider.
This idea of the artist propounded by the Arts Council coincides with historical concepts of masculinity, such as those embodied by notions of the male craftsman or male citizen? For example, in his article on manliness and working-class artisans in the Victorian era, Keith McClelland suggests that particular notions of autonomy and esteem - akin to those described by the Council - were inherently "masculine". McCIelland argues that the class, familial, and professional respectability of male workers was dependent upon concepts of "freedom" and "self-suficiency" which in tum defined ideas of manliness. The "worthy" artisan was described as an individual who was "free to sel1 his labour-power; that... could maintain himself without recourse to charity; that... would have some degree of fieedom in the regulation of the trade.... In these aspects a man's independence was vital to the defence of his 'property in his labour'."66 Most important to this definition of masculinity, however, was the artisan's duty to his farnily. As McClelland asserts: "It was not so much the ability to maintain himself as to be able to maintain himseif and his dependants, something which entailed a collective as we ll as individual moral responsibility to do this on behalf of al1 membea of the t~ade."~'This echo of Goodman's "breadwi~er" or "ethical" rhetoric of Council patronage suggests that the mid-twentieth-century notion of "artist" was founded upon an established tradition of male craftsmanship, responsibility, and, in particular, exclusivity. These concepts are equally apparent in ideas of the "citizen". Determined by notions of morality, acumen, and autonomy, the idea of citizenship in the Victonan era was innately masculine. In her article on radical working-class movements of the nineteenth century, Sally Alexander posits that particular understandings of the enfranchised individual could only be male. The Chartist notion of "citizen", for exarnple, was founded upon ideas of property holding and the integrity of labour - both of which represented activities or concepts associated with the public sphere, the traditional domain of men -- and, in tum, the argument that these aspects of civil life required safeguarding by the vote. Yet as Alexander suggests, the franchise was equally crucial to the protection of workers' homes, children, and wives from the insecurities of non-domestic life. In essence, the drive for enfranchisement was propelled by notions of male duty and masculine activity:
Whatever their intentions, the Chartists by deleting women, the factory reformers by subrnitting to the principle of the protection of women and every working class custom, insofar as it refused an equal status to women within the class, placed women in a different relationship to the state than men. Women fell under the protection of their fathers, husbands or men and were denied independent political s~bjectivit~." It can therefore be suggested that the idea of subjecthood offered by the Arts Council was similar to that presented by radical politics or the notion of artisanship. In other words, the contemporary idea of "artist" - as one in possession of "labour" and autonomy, a symbol of civilisation, and a familial provider - was coincident with notions of the craftsman or citizen which have been historically positioned as "male". The seemingly generic use of "man" in
Council documents is therefore expressive of not merely an unconscious masculinism, but of a deliberately sexed rhetoric.
Moreover, as Toril Moi argues in her critique of feminist writing and literary criticism, the notion of "completeness" or "wholeness" - as articulated by the Council's affinity to modemist ideology - has been philosophically delineated a masculine characteristic. 'Totality ", she suggests, is a phal 1ic construct: "Pai~iarchal] thought models its criteria for what counts as 'positive' values on the central assumption of the Phallus and the Logos as transcendental signifiea of Western culture."69 Ideas of unity or hamony are consequently associated with the phallus, and in tum are positioned as "good", "me" or "beautiful"; however, those entities which are opposite or not pattemed on phallic reasoning are perceived as "chaotic", "fragmented", "negative", or "non-existent". Since the phallus - a metaphorical penis -- custornarily defines the subjectivity of men, "wholeness" is thus designated a male quality. Conversely, fernininity or "woman" is positioned as anti-phallic and thus "incomplete". As Moi concludes, the phallus is conceived of as "a whole, unitary and simple forrn, as opposed to the terriQing chaos of the female genita1s."70 The Arts Council, through its promotion of national unity, implicitly embraced this argument. In the context of arts patronage, Moi's reasoning suggests that cultural policy can be translated as a forrn of encouragement (and privileging) to masculinity and men.
This male emphasis has likely determined the representation of women in the arts.
Upon the retirement of Jennie Lee in 1970, for example, the then Chairman of the Council eulogised her departure with a rhetoric Iargely infomed by gender stereotypes. Lord Goodman initially declared: "In a short appreciation it is not possible to dwell in detail with the major activities of the Lee era. Mistakes there were; uncertainties there were, but they did not derive from vacillation of policy or feebleness of purpose ....But the one view - unalterably held by the Arts Council - is that we have had a Minister of rare quality."71 AAer this enthusiastic introduction, however, Goodman questioned Lee's intelligence:
"[She] is not a great intellectual and she claimed no profound knowledge of the arts."* Lee was nonetheless described as a "fiend" to cultural endeavours and an individual who did everything to promote their irnprovement. Goodman concluded:
She was tireless in visiting artistic activities large and small throughout the country. Her handsome face and winning accents became known everywhere, but her shopping lia - as she called her unfulfilled programme - was endless except in the sight of eternityn This description of Lee implies woman's traditional place in society. ''No great intellectual" but a caring selfless person who adopted a missionary zeal in the practice of her work, Lee is described in conventional "ferninine" terms. In this context, she is ascribed "rnotherly" characteristics -- munificence, dedication, and philanthropical instinct - while her work is simplifieci to a "shopping list". Her efforts as Minister for the Arts, moreover, are seemingly more regarded for Lee's "winning accents" and "handsome face" than the cultural progress which they effected. Thus despite Lee's founding of the Open University and her responsibility for the creation of A Policy for the Am, it was nonetheless implied that she was not the active, responsible, or breadwinner figure suggested by Council rhetoric.
Essentially, Goodman's statements imply that her role was in part that of a figurehead and thus incidental to cultural development. This categorisation of wornen as tangential to culture was likewise apparent in the activities of the Arts Council through the 1970s. From 1945, relatively few women were granted exhibitions of their work or supported through bunaries and grants. Between 1963/64and 1980/8 1, for example, fifieen female artists were featured in shows bearing their name. (Appendix II, Figure 2) Approximately two hundred men earned the same distinction. Although women might have played a substantial mle in group exhibitions during this period, the prestige that accornpanied an individual showing suggests that women were not considered an influential presence in the British art world. Moreover, the comparative lack of women artists who received financial support from the Arts Council is similarly indicative of women's glancing status in British cultural institutions. Between 1966167 and 198018 1, the percentage of bursaries awarded women artists ranged from zero ?O thirty-three, while the average was approxirnately sixteen. (Appendix 11, Figure 2) Although it is not known how many female applicants were initially judged, the almoa equal number of male and female students in British art schools through the 1970s indicates the potential level of discrimination."
The definition of "artist" offered by the Arts Council, however, was not entirely prohibitive. Although relatively few women received the honour of exhibition or official support by patronage, they nonetheless achieved acclairn. From the 1950s through the
19705 painters, sculpton, and photopphers such as Gwen John, Bridget Riley, Prunella Clough, Agnes Martin, Barbara Hepworth, Lee Krasner, Vanessa Bell, Kathe Kollwitz, Lucie Rie, and Sonia Delaunay were exhibited in Council-organised events, while many unestablished women artists were offered support through financial means. Yet this type of patronage was arnbiguous. The women who earned recognition through exhibition generally did not challenge the established culture of art production. In many cases, the female artists who won popularity with the Council were unthreatening to male-defined aesthetic values. Riley, for instance, was commended for the "masculinity" of her forms. In her 1971
Hayward Gallery exhibition she was described in the language of the active and energetic male flaneur:
Like the way in which a man may be released, through analysis, after being inhibited from a being fully himself or sure to his inherent personality by the interference of an enforced rule, thrust on him by the suppositions of society, so Riley is intent upon laying bare with absolute accuracy the fundamental energies to be found in the convergence or divergence of lines, or opposed masses; the expansion or contraction of parallel bands of colour and their parallel or diagonal subdivision.... Al1 these preoccupations are ked hm outside, extraneous demands of a descriptive or emblematic kind? Her abstract figures betrayed little pictorial association with an idea of "woman", while her androgynous appearance and often Taylorkt approach to art production equally situated her as a male figure. Yet this encroachment upon the temtory of manliness was not regarded as a challenge. In 1968, Riley represented Britain at the Venice Biennale and won the International Prize. It cari be argued that this acceptance was the result of conformity with the aesthetic establishment. Because Riley's modemism did not affront Bntish culture with an overt idea of gender difference or fragmentation, but rather was congnious with the implicitly masculine foundations upon which the culture of arts patronage was modelled, she did not present a threat to established opinion. She seemingly affirmed this perception with her own beliefs that the polarities of sexuality were inconsequential to the creation of art: "1 have never been conscious of my own femininity, as such, while in the studio. Nor do 1 believe that male artists are aware of an exclusive masculinity while they are at work .... 1176
The artist was, as Riley perceived, an hermaphroditic entity which possessed both male and female qualities, and who produced art as the result of an ostensibly sexual relationship with his or her work-medium. She therefore concluded that Women's Liberation, when applied to artists, was a "naive" and "hysterical" concept which women needed "like they need[ed] a hole in the head? Clough was similarly positioned. In his description of her industrial landscapes, John
Berger of the New States- and Nation asserted: "One feels that her sketches must be blueprints, that she controls her pigments, bmshes and canvases with as workmanlike a finesse as one would need to drive the tools and trade-tackle that supply her subject~."'~This "masculine" fonnalist quality of her work granted Clough "modem" status in the British art world - she was characterised as afloneur through her visionary capacities: "Her interest in machines is fully human because she never defies them and is intelligent about their function. She Ends in them, even when deserted, evidence of human ingenuity - as, in a different way, a Romantic poet might infer drama fiom a plucked rose."79 The male qualities applied to Clough were equally utilised - to different degrees - in the historical positioning of artists such as John, Bell, Krasner, Hepworth, and Delaunay. The work of Gwen John
was often authenticated by the artist's status as the sister of Augustus John and her association with the predominantly male impressionist movement; Sonia Delaunay and
Vanessa Bell were placed in similar contexts through their relationships with partners Robert Delaunay and Duncan Grant or Clive Bell, and their association with male-defined postimpressionism; mamed to Jackson Pollock and her work often confused for his, Lenore Krasner became the more masculine "Lee" or simply "L.K.";while Barbara Hepworth's marriage to Ben NichoIson and her apprenticeship with Henry Moore made her work
genuine to conventional opinion." Each of these women, in essence, was endorsed by a
relationship to masculinity or men. From the perspective of the Arts Council, therefore, they
represented the "establishment". Not presenting an alternative or dissenting paradigm to challenge the desired unity of "Britishness", they maintained a stable aspect of cultural identity .
Equally, figures such as Lucie Rie could be perceived as unthreatening; yet not because of their complicity with masculine values, but due to their conventionally
"ferninine" status. Rie, a potter, was inscrïbed with the traits of domesticity. Her work customarily associated with the lower form of "crafY1 rather than "art", she was ofien
positioned as a master of home design as opposed to an "artist". A 1967 review of her work dec lared:
She is individual in porcelain of delicate linear pattern and clear-cut shape and stoneware treated with great resource of glue. Her work has a refinement of style which ...is without "nostalgie undertones of folk art", not rustic but metropolitan, and in an idiom well calculated to assort harmoniously to a modem interior!
A second exhibition of her work in 198 1continued this pattern of criticisrn. Victor Margrie,
Director of the Crafts Council, posited: "1 cannot recall thinking of Lucie Rie as an artist, rather as a designer of considerable sensitivity and taste who made fine pots."g2 Janet Leach, a potter, went Merin her characterisation of Rie as a non-artist by her description of Rie's workplace: "The masculine concept of digging clay, [and] chopping wood ...as essential parts of the making process has been answered by her .JOme, Ne] is a 'no-shovel' potter. 1 have observed, many tirnes, that the studio workshop requirements of the craftswornan are ofien different hmthose of the craftsrnan ....The male potter usually likes the feeling of 'going to work', whereas Lucie has integrated her studio and her home in a ferninine mamer."" Rie's art was thus implicitly labelled domestic labour rather than "work" both because it was not performed by a man and, equally, occumd within her house. In this way, her pottery did not challenge established ideas since she was neither an "artist" nor a "worker". To arts patronage, therefore. she had little connection to the idea of "art" and thus posed no threat to aesthetic definitions, modes of art production, or the culture of which they were a part.
The women supported by the Arts Council through grants or bursaries were greater in number than those represented through exhibitions. Many feminist artists - including Mary Kelly, Su Braden, and Gillian Wise Ciobotaru -- were in fact awarded monies through the 1970s in order to continue their artistic projects. Despite this presence, however, the funds which the Council offered were negiigible. In cornparison to the professional arts - such as opera - the arnounts which painters, sculptors, or media artists received were trivial. In his 1974 study of visual artists' incomes and expenditures, Robert Hutchinson ascertained that the average arnount of bursaries received scarcely covered the costs of studio and exhibition space, supplies, or daily subsistence. Those who participated in Hutchinson's survey vacillated between the opinion that "any money [was] an incentive and the more people who [were] given an incentive the better" and the belief that small awards were "meaningless".84
Both answers, however, revealed the general paucity of such grants. It was unlikely, therefore, that the support which they offered to women artists could sustain a substantial intervention in the British art world.
-v The gender boundaries imposed by the Arts Council allowed thse artists who conformed to established paradigrns of aesthetics and art production, or those who were far rernoved fiom entrenched notions of art, to become the beneficiaries of British patronage. Figures such as Bell, Hepworth, and John or Rie posed linle challenge to defined artistic parameters through their complicity with them, or the status of their art as "craft" and "domestic work" -- essentially "non-artw- and therefore their position as "exiles" with little influence upon notions of British civilisation. The idea of the artist-as-male and a coherent concept of cultural identity were thus theoretically maintained through the Council's support of a particular ideology of art creation. Driven by notions of exclusivity, the idea of Britain as a congruous entity was upheld through the promotion of a specifically gendered notion of artistry and the consequent inability of arts patronage to comprehend particular definitions of "woman". Witnessed by Bridget Riley's implied need to distance herseIf from a certain idea of "fernininity" - that associated with feminist aesthetics - specific images of gender were positioned as incompatible with the Arts Council. Thus although intended to act as a palliative to social division or disparity, postwar "culture" could not - ironically - embrace the cleavages of sexuality. The Hayward Annual of 1978, detailed in the following chapter, crystalised this condition. CHAPTER FOUR e vWomgn's Art Move-:
Ten years after the start of Women's Liberation in Britain, the 1978 Hayward Gallery
Annual Exhibition was organised in the expectation of establishing a feminist and aesthetic watershed.' A cumulative effort by fernale artists and the Arts Council, the show was intended not only to rectiQ the neglect of women's art by official culture, but also to highlight its achievernents within a formal sening. Staged at the Hayward Gallery, the Arts
Council's main London venue, the Annual had the appearance of a concerted attack against a citadel of established opinion. Its organisen perceived the show as an event that would not only allow female artists an entry into high modemism, but also, more generally, would provide an opening for wornen within British traditions of art production and exhibition.
The objectives of the Hayward cornmittee, however, were only superficially accomplished. Although a selection of critical reviews praised its various qualities, the majority framed the Annual (both implicitly and explicitly) as a forum of "weakness", "non-art", and feminist partisanship. Whether articulated by a conspicuous surprise that wornen could becorne
"quality" artists, or, conversely, through a degradation of the art displayed due to the sex of its creators, the exhibition did little to change the reception of wornen's art in Britain. Although fundamental to the exposure of those prejudices extant within official arts patronage and the overall nature of feminist activity in British cultural Iife, the Hayward Annual did not effectively alter established perceptions of "femininity" or female creativity.
In this chapter, receptivity to feminism in art is examined with regard to the Women's Art
Movement and, in particular, this 1978 manifestation of its efforts. 1 Investigating not only the condition of women workers, wives, and mothers, British
feminism of the 1970s also extended to the study of literature and art. Enquiries into the interactivity of politics and culture were a legacy of the New LeA Movements of the late
1950s and early 1960s, which evolved as the result of a need for a more complex understanding and analysis of modem forms of social control. "The question of the ways in which, in a more affluent society, consent is secured for the maintenance of an unequal and exploitative society led to a massessrnent of the effects of advertising, film, television. joumalism, as well as literature, fine art and the education system - in short the whole spectrum of whose social practices which, producing meaning and images of the world for
us, shape our xnse of reality and even our sense of our own identities.lV2 The Women's Movement similarly entered politics at the level of culture and cultural practice. The need to
challenge not only sexist representations of women in art but also the male hegemony which
characterised artistic production drew ferninia into debates concerning the definition and consurnption of "art", art education, and theories of art practice. Although never crystalising its objectives through the creation of a formal manifesto or participation in events similar to those held at Ruskin College in 1970, women artists in Britain nonetheless formed a
"movement" to confiont the problematics of femininity and the creation of women's art. Beginning in the early 1970s, women artists were drawn into the general organisation of Women's Liberation to service emerging issues through various activities, including the creation of visual propaganda. Many, however, participated directly to end discrimination in the British art world.' In 1970, Swedish expatriate artist Monica Sjoo fomed one of the earliest wornen's art groups in Bristol after her paintings were removed from the Guildhall,
London, and bamed fkom exhibition on public property. Her works, including God Giving Birth (1968) - which depicted God in the form of a woman giving birth to a child - were considered blasphemous and obscene to the general public. Sjoo consequently placed an - open lener in Socidst. Wow(Nottingham) inviting women to organise against aesthetic prejudice. In March 1971, the first "Women's Liberation Art Group" Exhibition took place at the Woodstock Gallery, London, in order to coincide with National Wornen's Day and the first large Wornen's Liberation dernonstration, and included works by Sjoo, Valerie Charlton, Ann Colsell, Saily Frazer, Alison Fell, Margaret Harrison, Liz Moore, Sheila Oliver, and Rosalyn Smythe. In an opening statement, Moore articulated the benefits of collective exhibitions and, implicitly, the objectives of the movement:
Women artists are making contact with each other, coming out of their isolation. We are begiming to acknowledge the validity of our own and of each other's work; to learn to do without male approval, to be proud to show in Company with each other. We are learning to provide each other with the confidence to explore and develop our own vision of a new consciousness: and we believe that the existing rnalesriented art world, distorted as it is into a sort of international stock market, needs the transfiision of this new vision and new consciousness in order to sur~ive.~ Despite this initial organisation, Margaret Harrison's subsequent exhibition at the Motif
Editions Gallery, London, was closed by police twenty-four hours after its opening in May of the same year. In particular, a drawing of Hugh Heffner as a bunny girl with a bunny-shaped penis was believed obscene and the show was cancelled in accordance with anti-pornography regulation. In 1972, more comprehensive organisations were fomed, including a Women's Workshop of the Artists' nio on.^ In a revised constitution, the union formally recognised that "women in art have at the present time problems which while they inevitably relate to problems of our civilisation as a whole, nevertheless need resolution and clarification through a special dialectic. The Women's Workshop has emerged in recognition of this problem."6 The need for such a body was made particularly evident when a major 1972 exhibition - "The New Art" - at the Hayward Gallery showed the works of fourteen men and no women. Members of the Workshop subsequently voted to confront discrimination against women in the arts (and in wider society) through co-operation in various trade union activities - including participation in art projects related to the Women Night Cleanen Campaign - and by general enquines into the status of women artists. In particular, evidence of a high number of female art students who had not continued their work after graduation due to familial obligations led the Workshop to take an active role in removing those barriers which allowed wornen's artistic isolation. To this end, they attempted to raise consciousness on the need for creche facilities in the art community and for wornen's art centres, the construction of which would foster an increase of female participation in art production. Concemed that the structure of art schools discriminated against female instructoa, the Workshop also demonstrated in June 1973 at the National Conference on Art Education. Questioning the nature of the relationship between a high percentage of female art students and yet the large nurnber of college and polytechnic departments of Fine Art in which there existed no women full-tirne members, they demanded that hencefonh women compose fi@ percent of staff at such institutions. The Workshop equally endeavoured to educate its own rnembership. Through research into women artists in history; familiarisation with contemporary feminist works in Britain, Europe and the United States; and the organisation of seminars at universities and colleges, they attempted to establish a tradition and general understanding of wornen's art. Similarly, the collective held regular forums in which members discussed their work and their position as women artists. The success of the Women's Workshop, however, was not representative of the overall movement. The response to a 1973 exhibition entitled "Womanpower" was largely characteristic of the popular challenge which the British Women's Art Movernent confionted. Held at the Swiss Cottage Library, London, a group of feminist artists presented works which depicted their impressions of "womanhood", including pictonal investigations of matemity and matriaschal rnythology. The exhibit inciuded Sjoo's God Giving Birth, as wetl as works by four other women artists. Popular reaction was hostile - involving accusations of blasphemy and obscenity - and the exhibition ended with a public meeting at which the five exhibitors attempted to justim their art. The criticisms levelled at the show were typical of a general feeling of anger and confusion. Comments included: "When you have finished buming your bras why not burn your paintings too" and "These are obviously five confirmed lesbians and very unattractive women who cannot get any men and this is
why they do these ugly and aggressive paintings."7 With regard to God Giving Birth, Sjoo understood this type of hostility in the context of irony. Despite centuries of men painting nude women, portraits of women by women were abnomal and offensive to established
gender and race noms:
I would say that because "God" is seen as a nonwhite woman of great dignity, looking straight ahead unsmilingly, with a child coming out of her womb, between her legs.... it is disturbing. What 1 mean is that if it had been painted in bright colours, the "God" had had long blonde hair and been pleasantly smiling that would have probably been okay because she would have at least been seductive to men. Also the image attacks the absurd myth that the creative force is male and phallic.8 Not al1 reactions, however, were negative. One woman admitted: "This show has given me
a lot of courage, 1 no longer feel 1 have to apologise for doing women's painting, now 1 can go right ahead."9
The 1973 founding of the Women's Free Arts Alliance, London, and its status as a registered charity by 1974, were equally indicative of the problematic social and cultural
positioning of female artists. Formed specifically as a women's art centre, it provided not only art workshops and exhibition spaces for wornen, but also a food CO-opfor local mothers and activities engineered to encourage creativity, self-awareness, and female initiative --
including creative writing, theatre, and dance. This dedication to artistic encouragement was similarly evident in exhibitions staged at the centre. In 1975, a show entitled "Sweet
Sixteen and Never Been Shown" was organised to bring women artists who had never been actively involved in feminism or professional work together with artists who had already participated in feminist exhibitions. With a similar aim, the "Feministo" art project was launched in the sarne year. Although not associated with the Women's Free Arts Alliance, this undertaking was driven by the sarne objective: to co-ordinate women artists and to encourage their productivity. Begun as a simple postal exchange, in which wo artist- mothers traded their work through the mail, "Feministo" evolved into an intricate network involving over one hundred women by 1977. For its participants, art functioned as a medium through which to overcome the isolation created by obligations to housework and childcare:
OAen we leam to understand ourselves by making visible in some form aspects of our lives - our process of selection often leads to self-discovery. Each person replies to the art-work she has received by making either an irnage/object that reflects something of her perspective on life, or that responds directly to the image she has received. Of course work has to be small to be posted, but srnall scale has an added dimension. Women's lifestyles tend to contain mal1 time-scales, brief moments - we need flexibility to deal with the tiny important moments that children, fiiends, loven, present. This is often reflected in the work. And we are so busy with children, for art-work has to be slotted in between tea and ironing or whatever.I0
"Feministo" served as a critique of conventional notions of art, art production, and art cnticism. To this end, much of the participants' work depicted or incorporated household goods as ü comment against domesticity, but equally to promote the development of "a visual language that [was] accessible to al1 women in that it correspond[ed] to their own experience."ll Moreover, this use of domestic rhetoric and homemade items -- rather than the traditional matenals of "fine art" - served to subven the conventional categorisation of art as a rarefied entity, and ostensibly validated women's work in the home as work by chalIenging the historic dichotomy between "home" and "labour". The collective nature of the project Iikewise undermined traditional practices through its negation of those ideas associated with modemism's solitary artist-genius. The women involved in "Feministo" not only provided replies for one another, but also broke down the anonymity of accepted forms of art criticism through their constant interaction. Above all, the mail project was a critique of 1970s art commerce: creative work in the home was done for immediate use and purpose, not for the culture market nor for want of money. As the number of women involved in "Feministo" increased, their works were
collected and eventually displayed as a touring exhibit. In 1976, the participants' art was
shown at the Birmingham Aris Lab, Liverpool Academy Gallery, Coventry Women's Aid Centre, and in galleries in Edinburgh and Manchester. By June 1977, the project was
transformed into an exhibition entitled "Portrait of the Artist as a Housewife" at the Institute
of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in ond don." Deliberately transforming the impersonal and empty spaces of the ICA into a more "domestic" environment, the participants bridged the
dichotomy of "private" and "public" through their introduction to the public sphere works made in (and inspired by) the private realm. Most important, however, the exhibit forced the recognition of not only those contradictions which women faced in being mothers, housewives, and artists, but that despite these conditions, that women could be each simultaneously. The 1975 exhibition, "Women and Work", also employed the themes of women and
labour. Initiated by Mary Kelly, Kay Hunt and Margaret Hamison of the Women's Workshop of the Artists' Union, the show was staged to bring to public attention the impact of equal pay legislation on female workea in a Metal Box Company factory in Southwark. London. Using film, photography, sound and other foms of documentation, the exhibit sought to illustrate the problems which women faced as British industry implemented equal wages for male and female workers between 1970 and 1975. Preceded by Kelly's work with
the Berwick Street Film Collective and its production of The Nightcleaners (1 970-72) -- a documentary detailing the unionisation campaign of women workers in contract office cleaning - "Women and Work" investigated the sexual division of labour:
nie exhibition...grap hically revealed not a steady progress towards equality, but a calculated restructunng of the workforce and redefinition of skills whose efFect was to segregate women more rigidly into low-paid, low-ski11 categories. Still and moving photography were skilfully juxtaposed to make visible these structural differences. Women's jobs could be adequately represented statically by showing nothing more than hands at work at a machine while men's jobs typically involved movement within a cornplex and changing spatial en~ironment.'~ The exhibit effectively detailed how women were removed by management fkom higher-paid jobs in order to counteract the decrease of profits which industry incurred upon raising wages
for female workers, and, in turn, the hardships which these women faced. "Women and Work" was, indeed, so telling that women artists were permanently banned from entry to the
Southwark factory. By 1977 the study of women in art and art history had made institutional and popular
inroads. Classes at Middlesex Polytechnic (Lisa Tickner), the Carnberwell School of Art (Mary Kelly), and Goldsmith's College were offered in women's art studies, while Maidstone
College of Art and Kingston College of Art had created slide libraries containing the work of women artists. The upsurge of feminist publishen and periodicals in the 1970s further . . brought the subject of women and art into view. From the United States, Feminist An ,Journal and Womanart appeared in the early 1970s, and were followed by the Wom ews in 1975. Heresies and Chryawere formed as quarterlies published in New
York and Los Angeles respectively. In 1976, the Australian journal Lip was produced. In
Britain, &are Rib began publishing articles on women's art in 1972, while "special women's
issues" of magazines such as Art and Artim, &di0 Inte-, and the Oxford An JJwere published through the late 1970s. The first attempt to launch a separate British women's art magazine in January 1977 resulted in the formation of MaMa - Women Artis~ m.A short-lived publication, it was followed by the more successful Feminist Art News (FAN) in the same year. The support of women's art by officia1 culture in the 1970s, however, was negligible. An exhibit entitled "British Painting '74" -- held at the Hayward Gallery - showed the works of 106 men and only 16 women. On 2 July of the same year, representatives of the Artists' Union met with the then Minister for the Arts, Hugh Jenkins, to put forward Union policy -- including parity for women in exhibitions and on al1 committees of the Arts Council. Their requests, however, initiated no action. In May 1975, a Hayward show entitled "The Condition of Sculpture" was opened with the work of forty men and one woman. In response, a protest intended to highlight discrimination against women in the sphere of publicly funded and promoted exhibitions was organised by artists Su Braden, Rose Finn- Kelcey, Margaret Harrison, and Liz Moore. Supported by the Artists' Union, the Women's
Free Arts Alliance, and the Art History Collective, leaflets were disûibuted to the public and the Arts Council offices were inundated with stickers and batloons bearing the slogan: "Combat Male Autocracy." A petition demanding fie-percent representation for women in al1 funire state-financed shows, fifty-percent representation for women on selectors8panels, and parity for women in artists' bursaries, awards, and grants was also submitted. As a response, Tess Jaray - an artist and lecturer at the Slade School of Art - was invited to sit on the Visual Arts Panel. Yet this action was subsequently counteracted by the Council's award scheme of 1976: only three of eighteen bursaries were granted to women applicants by the Arts Council Special Awards Sub-Cornmittee. In the sarne year, Suzanne Santorofs book,
Towards a New E-ion (1974), was removed from an Arts Council exhibition of "Artists' Books" at the ICA. Because it contained vaginal imagecy, Santoro's work was excluded (afier appearing in the catalogue) on the grounds that it might be considered "obscene". The Director of the Institute for Contemporary Arts revealed: "We are willing to defend obscenity on the grounds of artistic excellence but considered that in this case the avowed intention of the book was primarily a plea for sexual self-expression."'4
LI Although not directly an outcome of the "Condition of Sculpture" demonstrations, the Arts Council resolved that five women would compose the selection cornmittee of the Second Hayward Annual. Artists Tess Jaray, Liliane Lijn, Kim Lim, Rita Donagh and Gillian Wise Ciobotaru were appointed in 1976 to select which works would compose the 1978 show. This action, however, was not articulated as an amendment for past discrimination but rather was the result of Lijn's unsuccessful bid to the Arts Council for a grant to dehy the cost of organising a survey exhibition of British women's art." When initially turned dom, Lijn joined with Jaray, Lim, and Wise Ciobotani to submit an alternate proposal for an exhibition of fifieen contemporary women artists - five selecton each choosing themselves and two other artists. Their proposal, per se, was not accepted. The
Council suggested, however, that Lijn, Jaray, Lim and Wise Ciobotani organise the Hayward
Annual. Rita Donagh was then invited to join them. Although negotiations for the 1978 exhibition occurred only a year prior, the 1977 Annuai nonetheless showed thirty-two men and only one woman. The sculpture of Kim Lim was shown alongside the works of Frank Auerbach, Anthony Caro, David Hockney, Allen Jones, R.B. Kitaj, Eduardo Paoloni, and twenty-six othen. The idea for an annual review of British art was conceived in the mid-1970s afier the success of earlier survey exhibitions such as "The New Art" in 1972 and "British Painting '74"; yet the organisational framework which was developed to sustain it necessarily allowed (and encouraged) prejudic ial selection . .. procedures. The 1977 b-ward AmbitionCa- noted:
[The] ground rules for the Hayward Annuals are extremely simple. They will be chosen by a different group of individuals each year and will show recent work by a lirnited number of artists, a limitation which results frorn the decision to show each artist fu~l~.'~
Despite its classification as a "survey" (encompassing different artists and arts) exhibition, the sole regulation enforced was that the works chosen be "recent". Aware of the subjective nature of their task, the selection committee of 1977 - artists Michael Compton, Howard Hodgkin, and William Tumbull -- declared that their choices were based upon one essential presumption: that this was only the first in a series of annual exhibitions of British art, al1 of which would be of the sarne type and scale and al1 chosen by different groups of selecton. The selections which this particular committee made could therefore be purely private ones. In his introduction, Compton discussed their methods: We have made no attempt to illustrate or propagandise a theme or development in art... on the other hand we have not sought to make a representative sample of styles, demographic groups, media or subject matter not to take into account other people's views .... Indeed the selection is flagrantly partial. Equally no artist has been omitted just because he or she is well known and no artia has been included because he or she is little known and needs to be encouraged.... The nurnber chosen is lirnited not only by the level of common assent but by the idea that each one should have room to establish his own character as an artin" The initial characterisation of "artist" as "hemor "she", but the final generalisation of "his", was indicative of the general perceptions of the British art world and, equally, of the need for an exhibition of the type which becarne known as "HA II".
Opened on 23 August 1978, the Second Hayward Annuai was intended to "bnng to the attention of the public the quality of the work of women artists in Britain in the context of a mixed show."18 Given the compromise which was offered them by the Arts Council, the selectors decided to make the 1978 Hayward an exhibition of not only female artists but of "'undenhown and undenated artists' of al1 ages and stylistic persuasions, but giving special attention to women."" Because Lijn, Saray, Wise Ciobotaru, and Lim had asked for a specifically women's show but had received an "annuai" of British art, their selection pmcess was not guided by notions of an exclusively female event, but merely by the conviction that "aesthetic quality had suffered fiom the previously 'exclusive' bias towards male artists."" They therefore adjusted the historical prejudice of exhibitions by selecting more women than men as participants. Through this type of selection, moreover, the organisers prevented wornen's marginalisation in the "separate sphere" of a single-sex exhibition. Yet, the approach of Lim, Lijn, Donagh, Wise-Ciobotaru, and Jaray also served as a critique of
"Hayward 77". An annual review of art, by definition, mua incorporate a diveaity of artistry and artists - not rnerely men. As the introduction to the 1978 catalogue affirrns: "A national group show - if it is indeed a survey of the art being made rather than a summary of the art being shown - should include artists of varied age, political and aesthetic persuasion, geographical location and - yes -- sex and race."21 Above all, however, the selecton of HA II wanted to ensure that "never again would a mked or group show contain no women artists.'" To this end, they narned sixteen wornen and seven men as participants.u The artists ranged in age fiom their twenties to their fifties. Five worked outside of London, anda fourteen of the twenty-three had no gallery affiliation." Those selected were a mixture of men and women already known by the selectors, whom they had been told about, or who had applied to them by letter? Each selector made hvo undisputed choices of her own, and the remaining nine participants were agreed upon by the entire ~omrnittee.~~
Although the Hayward Annual of 1978 very publicly marked an entry of women into officia1 culture, feminist art cntics nonetheless expressed concem at both the selections of the cornmittee and the intentions of the Arts Council. In her article "Feminism, Femininity and the Hayward Annual Exhibition 1978" (1979), Griselda Pollock discusses a fear of tokenism. She suggests that women were invited to organise HA 11 not out of the Council's desire to deal with feminist issues in a comprehensive manner, but rather to cope with the immediate pressure of Lijn, Jaray, Lirn and Wise Ciobotaru "in [the Council's] hope to wipe their consciences clean with a one-off token gesture."27 Until this point, the British Women's
Art Movement had never mounted so public a carnpaign against the entrenched sexism of the art establishment. Attitudes to women's art were therefore sceptical or mocking. Yet because the scope of their action was such a novelty, a simultaneous fear of ferninist intervention equally underlay the response of those involved. Pollock thus asserts that this paradoxical situation resulted in the creation of an exhibition intended to be a temporary rneasure, and which was dnven by fear rather than a definite cornmitment to end discrimination in state patronage. She contends: "In the context of the British art scene HA
II has to be understood as a defensive manoeuvre on the part of the Arts Council. However, it was also a useful occasion for women to get at least some public airing of important issues conceming their position in the an ~orld."~~More telling, however, were the cornrnents of Edward Lucie-Smith in the Eveni~Su shortly before the exhibition opened. HA II, he argued, was bom of a "mating of panic and compromise."2g
Yet Pollock suggests the mixed-motives of the Arts CounciI were not the only factors which jeopardised the political intents of the Hayward AMU~.The actions of the selectors, she argues, were sirnilady misplaced. The main point of departure for the organisen was to contend prejudice in exhibition practices: to amend the biases of the art establishment through a show of little known or unknown women artists instead of famous men. Yet of the sixteen women included, eight held one-wornan shows in major galleries in the four years leading up to HA II, eight had received grants or bursaries, and ten taught in London art schools. Thus the majority of the women were already (relatively) "established" artists. As
Pollock suggests: "One is tempted to ask whether the Hayward Show was a real step towards the rectification of wrongs, or a strategy to enable some women to get more firmly lodged in the establishment, to use Lucy Lippardls phrase -- to get a larger slice of a rotteri pie."M The show, however, was further convoluted by the variety of "feminisms" which it enveloped. Pollock describes three types of feminist art, al1 of which were included in HA II. The first was characterised by a commitrnent to alternative aesthetic practices and the rejection of establishment institutions (i.e., galleries and art dealers). Called "cultural feminism", iü practices related specifically to female experience (both psychological and physical) and customarily involved such forms as body art, and social or political art. The second group consisted of female artists or artists who merely happened to be women.
Although they were concemed with the relationship of women to the (male-dominated) art establishment, they were nonetheless members of that establishment and concurred with its methods of art production: "Their position reflects a difference of experience fiom the fint group, since moa of these women are not part of the women's movement and have not therefore been formed politically by the existence of the rn~vernent."~'Their work as artists was of greatest importance to them, and, conversely, their sex was of marginal significance to their art; yet they recognised that opportunities might be denied them because of their biology. Such artists, therefore, believed it dangerous to identiQ thernselves first and foremost as wornen. The third position was occupied by feminists who argued that it was both fundamental to acknowiedge the significance of their sex and, equally, to engage with the established institutions of contemporary art practice. The organisen of the Annual came from the second gyoup," while artists such as Mary Kelly, Alexis Hunter, and Susan Hiller represented the third, and the performance and community art portions of HA 11 were a facet of the fim. Yet due to the many issues which each attempted to promote, these varied opinions served to obscure the general objective of the exhibition: "In such a context the range of intellectual and political references in the feminists' work is either refused or not recognized precisely because they demand so different a response fkom the viewer ... 1133
Pollock therefore concludes that because its organisers did not perceive the manifold levels at which women could intervene in art production, the conflicts present within the hework of the 1978 Hayward Annual greatly jeopardised the intent of the show.
u Response to HA II reflected this confusion. Although the majority of critics' reviews were favourable, some were overtly hostile to wornen's art and others expressed relief that the exhibition was not the anti-establishment "attack" which they had assumed. The employment of "feminine" stereotypes, however, was overwhelrningly present. The categorisation of women artists according to biological and gender paradigrns - or the discussion of women's work as a reflection of their "fernininity" - appeared in the rnajority of reviews. Aesthetic descriptions which irnplied wornen's relation to crafi or the "domestic" arts, thus infemng their traditional roles as mothers and housernakers, or accounts which described the "unambitious", "tedious" or "dull" nature of women's work -- and thereby alluded to stereotypes which categorised women as passive, vapid, without intellect, or unoriginal - were present in commentaries on the Second Hayward Annual. Some cntics, however, expressed surprise when participants' work did not fit these patterns. Occasional reviews classified the Hayward as untypically feminine due to its over-aggressive or entirely cerebral nature. Yet whether an articulation of astonishment or mediocrity, the majority of cntics asserted the belief that HA II did not accord with estabtished standards or expectations of visual art and art exhibition. Positioned as an anomaly within the context of prior Council-sponsored or supported events, the Second Hayward Annual was opposite to the prescribed confomity of high modernism or the supposed neutrality of the Arts Council. In essence, feminism and the representation of women's experience fell outside conventional boudaries of understanding "art" in twentieth-century Britain. Despite the political controversy of HA II, much of its commentary characterised the exhibition as without excitement. in Arts*, Judy Marle asserted that "a clutch of radical intentions fiap around a collection of work that is, on the spot, cool, and soon becomes, in memory, mute" thus creating a very "tepid show.^'^ Marle believed that if the work of (established) artists Prunella Clough or Iennifer Durrant had been seiected, the exhibition would have offered more stimulation; she applauded, however, the selecton' decision to include men." The work by the male quota stood out "for its theatricality, and so reliev[ed] the general timidity" of the show.36 For example, Michael Sandle's A Twentieth Century Wor Mernoriai (1971-78) - a Mickey Mouse head positioned on a human rib cage, backed by sandbags, fronted by a machine gun, and flanked by small disconnected rnouse heads al1 on a polished tum table - invoked the imagery of war, violence, and death, and thereby, as Marle believed, provided a necessary element of excitement. The rest of the show, however, demonstrated a remarkable absence of "gut qualities." Although she held that there was very little in the exhibition which was entirely without ment, there was nonetheless "a lack of pressure, of intensity, of compulsion, of drive."" In short, the Second Hayward Annual was beleaguered by its mediocrity: Instead of work that succeeds brilliantly or fails horribly, there is a lot that is delicately and thoughtfully presented. But the basic conceptions are ofien so tiny, so timited in ambition, that one wonders if al1 the spit and polish is worth it. The pervasive pallor is like a symptom of diminished ambition.... Everything is so damped-down to the same hush and whisper, al1 beige and white and "natunil" colour. It's like being in a very serious organic food store in which paint pigment is banned as being somehow synthetic.... When colour does appear it is curbed and pinned tightly within the parameters of what the artin already knows. There is little work here in which you sense that possibilities have been allowed to flow during the making. There is instead a continuous whittling down, eliminating the unexpected, a defensive stand against the idea of disorder as a creative principle.... 38 The historical perception of women as passionless or indifferent beings was here present. Employed to position females as rnerely childbearers or rnothers, "femininity" has been characterised as a condition of diminished energy, vapidness, or passivity used to justiQ woments maintenance in the domestic realm. Conversely, masculinity has been
distinguished as active, energetic, and creative. Michael Sandle therefore received
commendations fiom Marle, while Mary Kelly was cited as a contributor to the tediurn of the
exhibition. Her Post-Parm Document (1974-79), a work which employed psychoanalytic
theory and a catalogue of physical evidence (diapen, children's drawings, etc.) to explore the experience of rnotherhood, was believed too distanced from the viewer due to its over-
formulait approach. Marle lamented that Kelly's work did not provide "enough to attract, hold or involve a viewer." In the end, HA II was "a depressing exhibition -- decent, sensible,
well-argued, and depressing. "39 Bryan Robertson of -ers and Oueen adopted an ostensibly feminist perspective in his review. He bernoaned the contemporary situation of women artists and suggested that, as
a collective group, they had never been offered a "fair deal". His view, however, was nonetheless patronising: "women" were termed as "girls" who required sympathy for their
poor position in the British art world, which, as Robertson later indicated, was not the result of sexism or unjust prejudice, but reflected rather the poor quality of their art. Although sixteen women were involved in the Hayward Annual, Robertson detailed that there were relatively few artists of distinction in Europe, let alone Britain: On the negative side, if there are proportionately fewer female artists than male artists, the number of really brilliant women is proportionately even smaller... Dt's] hard to think of a woman artist of stature, apart from the late Germain Richler and Sonia Delaunay. In England, not too many names spring to mind afier Hepworth, Clough and Riley though 1 personally value highly the work of Mary Potter, Gillian Ayres, Jennifer Durrant, Thelma Hulbert, Elisabeth Vellacott and a large handiùl of othea."
Yet none of the women involved in the Second Hayward Annual was of the above calibre: "I've a gloomy feeling that in this year of special grace and fivour, the girls have in fact blown it...'*41 Robertson's compassion for the situation of female artists was thus revealed as a fom of charity for those whose work fell short of established standards. His notion of
"standards", however, was founded upon paradigrns of femininity: the show failed not because of its participants' unconformity, but because they complied with their prescribed gender roles. Similar to Marle, who implied a stereotype of female mediocrity, Robertson argued that the art of HA 11 was "cool" and therefore presented "a number of artists of extremely didactic intent but whose very objectivity preclud[ed] anything beyond the faintest token of sensuousness."42 Yet this classification of women's art as du11 was contrasted by Robertson's references to its intelligence. He asserted that the Hayward offered "a fair amount for the mind, but not much feast for the eye."" Customarily categorised as vapid, women were here positioned as cerebral beings and therefore placed in a paradoxical space.
Criticised for fitting their conventional role and, equally, for diverging from it, the women of HA 11 becarne problernatic entities. As a potential consequence of this perspective, Michael
Sandle was declared the predominant artist of the show. Nonetheless, Sarah Kent's ski11 in the creation and design of the exhibition catalogue was clearly praised -- as if she had conformed to her predetermined place - through the use of a more overt gender paradigrn: "[She] manages to extract the essence of an artist's thinking and present it with utmost clarity and stringency, rather as a perfect secretary will set out the exactly worded account of a meeting." Christopher Andreae of the Christian Science Monitor provided a superfcially cornmendatory review under the title: "British Women Wrap the Arts in Unexpected Knots".
His commentary exclaimed that he himself would never have guessed that the art on display was created by female artists. With the exception of Mary Kelly and Alexis Hunter, whose arts were centrally concerned with ideas of womanhood, the rest of the show did not have explicit gender overtones. Nor was the exhibition mired by its "feminine" aspects. Kelly's
Post-Part~~mDocument, Andreae believed, utilised "ingenious methods" and was an highly original piece of art: "FI]otherhood isn't new to art as 'subject', but even Mary Cassatt, fnend of the impressionists, for al1 her feminine understanding and tender closeness, still wasn't presenting an inside story. Mary Kelly is." Similar to Robertson's review, however,
Andreae contradicted himself by also positioning Kelly's art as stereotypically "unferninine".
He suggested that Post-Partum Document dernonstrated a non-matemal or objectified intimacy: "Its array of carefully compiled and detailed momentos betrays meticulous relish, rather than obvious affection. Her work might be said to fa11 oddly somewhere between Leonardo's compulsive investigations and Joseph Comell's gentle encasing of rnern~ries."~~
Conversely, the province of dornesticity - usually the sphere of women - was overtly embraced by Marc Chaimowicz in his work Here and There (1978). His own living space became art through photographs, installations, and video fragments which provided enigmatic glimpses of his home. Yet in total, Andreae descnbed the Hayward Annual as "remarkably fresh" and concluded: "Vague inîuitions are not thick on the ground in this show: instead art that is thorough, painstaking, methodical, and brimmingly intelligent. This show is one of the most stimulating exhibitions of a coliective kind seen in Britain for some time. '14' Despite these blandishments, however, the initial surprise and conclusions expressed by Andreae positioned HA II as a phenornenon removed from conventional ideas of art and art exhibition. Andreae's disbelief that the works displayed could be produced by female artists or his overt reversal of gender categories in the discussion of Kelly and Chaimowicz suggested his complicity with an established aesthetic of sexism. His analysis irnplied that men and women "fit" particular paradigins of art production - or that there were "essential" male and female characteristics of art - and, equally, that the participants of the Second Hayward Annual did not comply with such expectations. The exhibition was thus demonstrated as inapposite in the context of instituted notions of art and its assumed creators. Tim Hilton of the Times entitled his review "More Argument than ~rt".~He perceived the weakest aspect of the Hayward Annual to be its overtly feminist component and therefore accused the Arts Council of both allowing "militant ferninism to aiumph over artistic taste" and of giving inferior art undue recognition.49 Hilton categorised much of HA II as "non-art" - since its objective was to convey ideology rather than to provide mere visual expenence - and thus implicitly exiled its producers from the realms of British aesthetic culture. Of the participants, Hilton commented that only seven were men (implying that men should be the majority of any exhibition) and that of the entire twenty-three, the selection had been made with "rnuch kindness". He suggested that the
"extremely poor work" which characterised the show was the result of the selectors' charitable intentions. If they had included women whose art was of "high quality" and "who belong[ed] by nature and aspiration to the fine art tradition" -- such as the sculptor Katherine Gili or painter Jennifer Dunant - the exhibition "would not only have shamed every other contributor... it would also have destroyed the unspoken rationale, that second-rate art deserves as much showing as first-rate.ltS0 Hilton thus insinuated that there was a fine art tradition to which women could belong; however, he asserted that those involved in HA II were not part of this custom. He therefore accused Mary Kelly of raising trash to the level of art, descnbed Alexis Hunter as not a photographer but a failed painter," and classified Susan
Hiller as an anthropologist rather than an artist. Hilton concluded that HA II was an "aesthetically vague" event and thereby irnplied the aberrant nature of the exhibition in relation to establishment culture?
"Beleaguered" was the title of John McEwents review in the Spectata. His commentary opened with the idea of a "Salon des Refusées": afier the "undeniable and controvesial success" of Hayward '77, he categorised HA II as an event belonging to those artists "who had not been selected [for the first annual] and knew, of course, that they should have been? Despite the feminist intents of the exhibition, moreover, McEwen believed that it was the male participants whose work made the Second Hayward Annual worthwhile:
'The show, ironically, is nscued by men, particularly by a stunning bronze sculpture of
Michael Sandle's entitled A Twentieth Cenw~ernorid."" Sandle's work represented the ambitious quality which McEwen believed was missing from the rest of HA II:
It is uncompromisingly a public sculpture, a war mernorial to the futility of war rather than its glorification.... Sandle is the only British artist to give such an unabashed and litetal interpretation of the effect war has had on the sub- conscious of every generation since 1914.... This severity of cornmitment, a very different thing to long hours and patient work, is visible elsewhere only in the work of Stephen Cox. His work is on a bold scale ...But with regard to the show that is about the sum of it.55 In his discussion of the female participants, McEwen commended Elisabeth Frink for her ability to avoid "the needle-threading eye and taste for detail that is so peculiarly, and here so evidently, the bugbear of women artists when left to their own devices: a preoccupation that invariably favours presentation at the expense of ~ontent."'~Mary KeHyly'swork however, fell into the latter category owing to its exhaustive documentation of her relationship with her child. This categorisation of Kelly's art appealed to a conventional gender stereotype - which explained women's attraction to methodical activity as natural because of its resemblance to the mundane tasks of housework - thereby securing McEwen's alignrnent with cuxxntional opinion. Yet he sirnilady asserted: "What a pity that this first exhibition of women's art could not have included ... the likes of Pmnella Clough, Bridget Riley, Mas, Potter, Gertrude Hermes or Stephanie ~er~man.""He thus alluded that "good" women's art did exist; however, he then suggested that if it had been included in the exhibition, the reputations of these artists - such as Clough or Riley - would have been sullied by association. McEwen however concluded that at least the feminist component in the show provided the "gimrnickry" required to make the Hayward Annual more palatable to public tastes. The Times review (entitled "Ladies' Night at the Hayward Gallery") expressed surprise at the actual quality of the exhibition, but equally impiied that HA 11 itself was a gesture in favour of women rather than a right of women as artists. John Russell Taylor opened his criticism: "This year the Hayward Annual has been taken over by the women.
Or rather, one should Say, has been honded over to the women and, perhaps coincidentally,
16 of the 23 artists selected are women, as against seven token men.'lS8 Thus Lijn, Donagh, Wise Ciobotaru, Lim and Jaray did not "win" or "earn" their place to select the show, but rather it was bestowed upon them by a benevolent Arts Council. Unlike Hilton, however, Russell Taylor believed an high quality of art was dispiayed, "with no sign of lame ducks who [had] got in only because it [was] ladies' night." (And, equally, that he would de@ anyone "to work out fiom interna1 evidence aIone the gender of any of the artists concerned."? This classification of HA II as a female event, however, created an opposition between "art" and "women", despite Russell Taylor's ostensible cornmendations. His expectation of poor quality work and his blatant gendering of the exhibition suggest a dichotomy between more traditional understandings of art shows and a specifically female one which placed emphasis upon women artists. Emblematic of this marginalisation, Russell
Taylor's use of "ladies1' to categorise the event overtly marked it as one which was not within the dominant paradigrns of cultural production. Thus despite the presence of seven male exhibitors, HA 11 was positioned not as an annual review of British art, but a specifically women's occasion which was seemingly removed fiom the more general world of art exhibition. Kenneth Robinson's "Wayward Gallery" review in Pun& opened with an overtly negative statement: "1 didn't like the idea of al1 those liberated women artists at London's Hayward Gallery. So I went first to the Victorian exhibition at the Royal ~cadem~.""His first direct criticisms of HA II, however, concemed the grammatical style of the catalogue:
"What irnpressed me nght away was the uninhibited illiteracy of the exhibition notes .... We're accustorned to pseudishness in Arts Council catalogues but it makes a nice change to have it nearly al1 on the theme of liberated womanh~od.'"~Characterising Sarah Kent's usage as pseudo-English and her method of interview as superficial, he afixed to the exhibition an ethos of poseur. Robinson cemented this anti-feminist stance with a glib apology: "But I must not seem flippant, because these ladies really me doing their very best." He thus described Alexis Hunter as a "poor soul" who initially feared to show her art to the public, but now showed "dare 1 tell you? - pictures of a high-heeled shoe being burned, as a symbol of fieedom from fernale bondage." In tum, he challenged Kent's description of Mary Kelly's art as "courageous" with the opinion that Post-Partum Document was the work of a "tedious wornan" who had merely covered several walls with framed statements by and about her child. "Still", he asserted, "1 don't want to knock something that could brighten the waiting roorns at Queen Charlotte's, or the foyers of Mothercare, 1 just didn't expect to find it at the
Hayward." Robinson equally criticised the work of HA II's male participants. He described the art of Leopaldo Maler as "a tank full of plastic heads, looking like Debenhams after the flood"; but nonetheless qualified his statements with a sexist reproach. He suggested that the work of men had one advantage: "There is nothing to suggest that it is a Iiberated and womanly thing to do." Men's art was therefore of higher quality simply because it was not by women. Robinson pointedly concluded his review of the exhibition with this summation:
"But to be fair, 1 think the Iiberated nonsense rat the Hayward] is al1 words on paper. Most of the art on view has the virtue of making the gallery look lived in. When you really look at a lot of this women's art you realise it is quite decorative. It belongs, with the women, in the
The above reviews of the Hayward Annual of 1978 illustrate how the "ferninine" category in art criticism operates to construct categones of difference. Femininity or particular ideas of "woman" are used to create stereotypes which position women artists as
"other" and thus outside the temtory of "real" art. Women's painting or sculpture, therefore, often fails to enter established forums of cultural production and, equally, cannot attack entrenched notions of aesthetics fiom its position as a marginalised entity. Yet the minority of female artists who do enter the canons of twentieth-centuiy art offen do not serve to alter traditional perceptions, but rather are appropriated by them. Non-feminist artists cited in the reviews of the 1978 Hayward Annual, such as Bridget Riley, are ofien treated as genderless or as honorary men. Similar to the commentaries of Tim Hilton or John McEwen -- which suggested a paradigm of women's art, but did not offer a description -- these artists are understood as "women" but are otherwise assimilated within masculine traditions. Their art does not overtly confront the established order, and is thus accepted within the dominant conventions of art production. As Griselda Pollock argues:
Women's place in art is not natural, but historical; subjected to a categorization in order to contain their subversiveness of male categories and orders. The sociological and institutional arguments of American ferninists fail to take this structural and ideological determinism into account Neglect or discrimination against women is not a central issue. A liberal policy of equal rights may slowly under pressure allow more women into the establishment, if their work does not constitute a woman's discourse, and therefore no disruption. In so far as it does, the structuring category will be reformed and reasserted to contain that threat, to contain and silence not artists who happen to be women, but women engaged in a politically radical art practice and interventionF3
Of the works in the Hayward Annual, Mary Kelly's Post-Parfum Document was especially effective in its confrontation with traditional understandings of "art". It forced viewers to labour - to constmct meaning through themselves - and to read as well as look, thereby resisting passive association with the entrenched values of British visual culture. Kelly's art, however, was particularly capable in its negotiation of artistic patriarchy. Through its questioning of women's Iives as mothers, her work ik!lenged the ideology used to dismiss women's work hmthe canons of art production and practice. The belief that women could oniy occupy matemal roles was undemined not only by Kelly's position as both an artist and a mother, but also through her engagement with the private and public spheres (e.g. her participation in the Hayward Annual with an overtly personal work) and her attempted redefinition of "art". (Appendix III, Figure I ) It thus becomes obvious why critics such as Robertson and Hilton took great effort to criticise Kelly's art in an overtly negative fashion. As a threat to established aesthetic mores, her endeavours were categorised as "other" (or non-art) in order to maintain the sanctity of
(male) cultural production. This facet of HA 11 was representative of a central issue: the feminist presence in the show was a danger not simply because it involved women, but women-as-artists whose work disrupted carefully conçtnicted paradigms of art and sexuality.
The reason for women's historical exclusion from the British art world, therefore, does not lie in their failure as artists, but rather the challenge which their work poses. The creation of art which represents ideas of gender at variance with conventional opinions of women's role suspends "normal" ideas of "woman" and therefore disturbs not only social and cultural hierarchies, but also traditional understandings of fernininityu
As institutions which maintained these orders, the Hayward Gallery and the Arts
Council were theoretically placed under attack by the organisers of HA II and thus defensive action was raised from an establishment of art critics. Particularly indicative of this effort were reviewers' attempts to sustain the paramount status of the artist-as-male. For example, through the maintenance of gender paradigms which positioned women as domestic entities - - especially those oflered by Kenneth Robinson - the idea of the breadwinner artist and public idol were upheld. Yet although a discouraging condition, it is nonetheless in this arena, as Griselda Pollock argues, that interventions mua occur: "By remaining outside public institutions and therefore invisible to them and their critical discourses, women
endoae their place in the separate sphere historically created for their work thereby
colluding in their own marginalization-1t65
Yl Response to the Second Hayward Annual revealed a critical degree of attachment to notions of "unity" within British culture. The predominant reaction to HA II - as an anomaly or interloper - implied this afinity and equally illustrated how the exhibition represented a fundamental challenge to the Arts Council. The formation of the Council fiom an ethos of consensus in 1945, as well as the over-influence of high modemism through the
1940s and SOS, led to the imposition of "conformity" in the understanding of art in Britain. This attempt to promote social cohesion through a cornmon appreciation of culture endeavoured to advance not only a mutual idea of "civilisation", but also, through the standards which it implemented, a specific type of cultural knowledge. The reviews of the Second Hayward Annual indicate that this form of knowledge was one which advanced notions of unity to accord with the basic principles of the Council itself -- the idea of painting or sculpture as a "complete" entity or one which embodied absolute meaning. Thus the description of women's talent as ungenuine, inferior to that of men, or, in short, generally outside the conventions of modemist practice implied its positioning as problematic to this prescribed "who1eness" and, consequently, dominant understandings of "art". In other words, painting or sculpture founded upon particular experiences, which propounded political ideology, or which did not maintain the autonomous forms of high modemism was understood as a phenornenon incongruous to the assumed cohesive qualities of British culture. The often fragmented or divided vision of society offered by women thus abraded with the enforced sense of unity projected by the Arts Council. Women's art consequently became an anomaly in the structure of arts patronage. CWERFIVE
.Concbion; . erninism.. . Visual Art, and Femuust Art Hrstorv
In 198018 1, no women painters or sculpton were granted financial support from the Arts Council of Great Britain. Although three awards were offered to female photographen, the historically male temtory of "fine art" maintained its homogenous character. A potential retort by official culture after the Hayward Annual, this situation was also symbolic of the position of women artists and the place of feminist cultural analysis at the time. Despite a shared endeavour to expose discrimination in arts patronage and the general culture of art- making, confusion over practical strategies and theoretical approaches largely divided proponents of the Wornen's Art Movement by 1980. Separated by a diversity of opinion -- including the purpose of art and the overall role of ferninism in British cultural politics - the outlook of women artists was openly fiactured a decade after its initial alignment.
As demonstrated by the Hayward show, the multiplicity of practices embraced by feminism proved problematic. HA II made visible the tensions which women's art had attempted to negotiate through the 1970s. Debates over recourse to tradition or novelty, philosophical or material activism, figurative or non-representational forms - and a variety of other issues which argued the methodoIogical and political approaches appropriate to secure wornen's culhua1 equality - consistently underlay the feminist art project, yet became gradually more overt as the movement matured. By 1980, theoretical disagreement had diverted attention from the general politics of practical feminism and the public role of feminists; the philosophical issues of art production seemingly eclipsed the material aspects of political activity. In this final chapter, the ideological frictions of the Women's Art Movernent and aesthetic theory are discussed in association with the outcorne of the
Hayward Annual and the overall nanire of contemporary cultural policy. I
On 15 and 16 November, 1980 a conference entitled "Questions on Women's Art" was held in tandem with several feminist exhibitions at the [CA and Acme Galleries in London. The clash of convictions revealed in discussion exposed "how difficult were the issues which feminists faced about how to make art, what to make about it, how to relate to conventional or radical practices."' Debates over the relationship of feminisrn to professional and amateur arts, the relevance of theoretical and practical approaches, or ideas of a feminist "cause" informed the two days of conference. At its close, critic Monica Petzal
With diversity the potential strength but divisiveness and self-promotion the actual downfall of the conference, a pretty complex factionalism was evident ....Figurative painting, sculpture, female imagery, the female imagination and sensibility, subjectivity and expressiveness (al1 concems widely reflected in the other shows and in previous US shows) were now regarded as inappropriate to the ideological cause and then years out of date ... the majority (of the conference) were left thinking that ... though the most vociferous, were neither innovative nor particularly radical, and were merely part of the intended diversity2 The divided nature of feminist art theory and practice lay largely in the attempt of women artists to distance themselves from the patriarchal foundations of conventional art production. Through the 1970s, traditional aesthetics were shunned due to their association with canonical (male) forms, while film, video, performance, and collage art gained importance as "uncolonised" territories for women: "their means of production and distribution ... allowed women to construct and develop a set of resources, and active community of viewers outside of both the dominant nexus of institutional arrangements and the containments of an official art history that was beyond rec~amation."~For many artists of this period, feminist practices entailed a complete moratorium on inherited forms. Painter
Monica Sjoo, for example, argued that figurative painting was the singularly appropriate feminist style. As a tactical opposition to the hegemony of abstraction in the early 1970s, she asserted: "We regret the abçtract researches, playful gimmicks characteristic of contented and successful male artists. Although aware that these are not entirely without purpose and interest, we feel that it is not possible as members of an oppressed group - half of the human race - and with a powerful means of communication in Our hands to sit around playing games with surface reality." Yet this position was not without complication. Equally burdened with an history of meanings, figurative painting was an already temtorialised discourse:
For example, painting a figure of a naked woman to celebrate women's power and fertility or sexuality, cm easily be misrepresented and recuperated for the voyeuristic representation of the female nude .... It is a matter of calculating what effect any particular procedure or medium will produce in relation to a given audience, a particuiar context and the actual historical moment This has become a decisive feature of feminist art practice which radically breaks with movement-, style- or content-defined categories of art making. 5 This type of controversy fostered critical debate over the possible nature of an artistic practice which could be appropriate to both the women's movement and the wider realm of British aesthetics. The numerous positions articulated in these arguments serve to illustrate the complex nature of women's art, feminist art criticisrn, and the general problematics of feminist cultural interventions. As a facet of these exchanges, notions of the "personal" and "political" were reconsidered. Art production - a largely individual experience - could not easily be translated into coIlective action against patriarchy. Nor could ideas of the "artist". Griselda Pollock argues: "The feminist principle is refrafted by the romantic cult of artistic individualism and the related ideology of art as the direct, personal expression of universally valid meanings by a transcendent hurnan s~bject."~The notion of identity as a socially rnanufactured phenomenon did not accord with established concepts of the painter or sculptor as an autonomous and intrïnsic entity, thus the boundary between ideas of the secularly influenced but individually motivated feminist artist and the modem-artist-as- sovereign-being was blurred as feminism attempted to intemene in modem rhetorics of art production. This context of (mis)understanding consequently allowed women's art and the ideas which it expressed to be collapsed into modemist ideologies of individual expressivity as opposed to collective political assertions. Yet the concept of absolute self-definition prescnbed by modemism equaily collided with the idea of gender as a socio-cultural creation. As Pollock suggests: "'Individualism' denies that the individual is socially produced and forrned, and proposes art as the privileged sphere of the non-social, self- creating fiction - the individual."' Feminist attempts to promote sexuality and sexual identity as the products of language or social interaction rather than natural dispositions were illegitimated by this concept of selthood as organic. Yet some Feminists argued that such definitions of autonomy were a beneficial facet of women's arts activity. The tradition of art practice as a form of self-expression which could allow women to gain access to the "full subjecthood apparently enjoyed by men" was equally supported by feminism as a political avenue to equality8 The right of women artists to claim as their own the language and status of rnodemist art production appeared, from this perspective, a matenal and philosophical necessity .
Feminists were likewise beleaguered by notions of "women's art". The question of a
"feminine aesthetic" coloured discussion on the nature and output of art by women through the 1970s. A celebration of women's identities, lives, and experiences through appeals to a specifically "female" form were perceived as fundamental to the project of feminism - in recognition of a territory liberated hm masculinity -- but also detrimental to it. An expressly "feminine" art was suggestive of essentialism, which positioned the characteristics of womanhood as organic and thereby justified patriarchai concepts of "woman". For example, the recognition of an essential female nature allowed the invigoration of stereotypes depicting women's natural predilection to motherhood and care-giving activities, or assumed inbom feminine traits such as passivity or mediocrity (as opposed to understanding these concepts as social constnicts or rnanufactured understandings). Linda Nochlin, however, argues: Yet to discard obviously mystificatory, essentialist theories about women's 'naturalf directions in art is by no means to afim that the fact of being a woman is completely irrelevant to artistic creation. That would be tantamount to declaring that art exists in a vacuum instead of in the complex social, historical, psychologicai, and political rnatrix within which it is acnüilly produced. The fact that a given artist happeris to be a woman rather than a man counts for something: it is a more or less significant variable in the creation of a work of art, like being an American, being poor, or being bom in 1900. Like any other variable, Iittle can be predicted on its basis in isolation from the specific context in which it exi~ts.~
Nochlin therefore suggests that the artist's sense of creative self as "woman" plays a greater or lesser role in the work of female artists, "depending on the circumstances."'O Women artists have historically employed "female" imagery. Gwen John, for example, deliberately restricted herself to a narrow range of traditionally feminine subjects while Frida Kahlo used her experiences as a woman to inform an overtly feminist art. At other times, "feminine"
elements of form or content were ambiguous or latent, as in the case of Georgia O'Keeffets
flower paintings. Nochlin thus concludes: "In the face of the enormous range and variety of paintings by 20th-century women, it would indeed be futile, if not impossible. to talk of a 'women's style' or a 'feminine ~ensibilit~'."~'
Yet Janet Wolff asks whether a notion of "women's art" can even be conceived "in a
patriarchal culture, in which institution, language, and regimes of representation collud[e] in
the marginalization of women's experience and in the silencing of women's voice [?]"12 Because the concept of a specifically female art depends upon absolute segregation from the dominant (male) culture and its established patterns of understanding, Wolff questions both the viability and probability of an autonomous women's practice:
In the face of this relentless exclusion of women fiom culture, feminists raise the question of what a dzrerent culture would be like. What is the possibility for women to write (or paint) from their own experience, no longer mediated by the culture and point of view of men? And where, if anywhere, are the spaces of the dominant culture which allows for this expression?" Wolff argues that the creation of new "feminine" languages, successor arts, or a peinture féminine is misguided. Because women's social position has always been constructed in relation to that of men, feminist intervention must also be made within this structure of understanding. Wolff therefore denies the possibility of a female art separate from mainstream aesthetics: "there is no way in which those who are marginalized by the dominant culture can develop alternative cultural foms other than fiom their basis in that culture, for this is where they learn to speak, where they are socialized, and where they enter as gendered subjects with the ability to comm~nicate."'~Within this male-dominated realm. however, she asserts that a space for female voices can be carved through deconstruction. A total reorganisation of the (masculine) field of knowledge through postmodem strategy is required over mere corrective exercises, such as recovering women writen or women artists in history, or speculation on ferninine sensibiiities. Although Wolff acknowledges the possibility of a female art within established discourses, Griselda Pollock argues that "ferninist art" cannot exist: "There is no such entity; no homogenous movement defined by characteristic style, favoured media or typical subject- rnatter."lS Pollock asserts that there are instead "feminist artistic practices" which are separate from modem art history:
This somewhat clumsy phrase "feminist artistic practices" is employed to shifi our attention from the conventional ways we consume works of art as objects and stress the conditions of production of art as a matter of texts, events, repnsentations whose effects and meanings depend upon their conditions or reception -- where, by whom, against the background of what inherited conventions and expectations.16 Feminist cultural criticism and art history are thus an investigation of the tactical activities and strategic practices which attempt to present to the world a dyerent (or altered) order of knowledge. Pollock, however, also argues that the terni "woman artist" is problematic. Positioning oneself as a woman and an artist, she suggests, is likely a detrimental political strategy: "To define oneself as an artist without the qualifier 'woman' is to repress the important and desirable fact of being a woman. To be labelled a woman artist is to be placed in a separate sphere where only gender matters, where gender is assumed biologically to determine the kind of art that is made. There remains an unsolved contradiction for women
who nonetheless justifiably daim ihat women should be recognised as producers of culture, as artists."" These controversies were played out through the 1970s on the terrain of art practice and criticism. By the end of the decade, ideas of individuality, the subject, feminist theory,
and politics fiequently encountered each other in a "massive confli~t."'~A fundamental
feminist belief in the value of the individual woman and her experience, the right to a separate but equal sphere, anti-essentialist argument. postmodem and modem perspectives clashed as feminism attempted to critique ideologies of art production but equally endeavoured to create a space for women within them. The intensity of these debates was
hirther augmented by the reality of their subject-maiter: "for while the issues matter
vitally ... the identities and feelings of women who are living out these issues have also to be handled with the respect and supportiveness which is the fundamental bedrock of the Women's ~overnent."'~Differing objectives, emotionable issues, and theoretical argument thus resulted in fragmentation. The ICNAcrne conferences off~ciallymarked this divide.
The degree of separation imparted within the movement was recorded by one commentator as "painfully reminiscent of Labour's recent debacle at Blackpool, the pluralist umbreila of feminism, full of holes with the rain pouring through Another simply stated that there
"was a feeling of cliques doing things, but ordinary women artists attending the conference had no way of becoming inv~lved."~'In general, there was a sentiment of exclusion arnong different groups, and a sense of factionalism and self-promotion.
IL In part, divisions within the Women's Art Movement were the result of divergent views on modemism and postmodemism. The desire to avoid essentialism but also to liberate women from male discourses illustnited the benefit of either philosophy, and consequently divided feminist aesthetics between an afinity to unstable categories or the material possi bilities of a modemist perspective. Yet, modernist and postmodemist arguments equally positioned feminism against itself. lhrough the erasure by modem art of women's active voice and, more important, postrnodem effacement of concrete notions of "difference", both conceptual heworks denied a firm foundation for feminist identity and politics. In particular, the postmodemist collapse of hierarchies and eradication of the category "women" rejected the collectivity upon which feminism was dependent and also the notion of patrïarchy against which it acted? Various facets of modem and postmodem strategy therefore problematised the trajectory of feminist aesthetic politics.
Modem art theory and criticism project an ontology of fon. As Craig Owens argues: "In the modem period the authority of the work of art, its claim to represent some authentic vision of the world, did not reside in its uniqueness or singularity... rather that authority was based on the universality modem aesthetics attributed to the forms utilized for the representation of vision, over and above differences in content due to the production of works in concrete historical circ~rnstances."~Its dernand for purification. evidence of artistic gesture (through brush strokes, etching, etc.), and an ethos of "temperarnent" - yet without social connection or implied meaning - define modem art as "preeminently 'expressive' and pnmdy given at the level of the 'picture'."24 The history of modem painting therefore follows a rejection of narrative and literary content or illusion, and emphasises the properties of work-medium and the painted surface. Artist and critic Mary Kelly criticises the narrowness of this philosophy and rnethodology in her commentary,
"Reviewing Modemist Criticism" (1981). She asseris that art practices, "particularly those anonyrnous productions which do not in some sense conform to the unity, the homogeneity of the [modem] pictorial paradigm, and express the essential creativity of the artistic subject, are not merely marginal; they are not art!"25 More broadly defined, however, modernism is also a system of interpretation which has analysed aesthetic methods and materials since the late nineteenth century: Modernism refers... to the criticism and art history which classifies paintings, sculpture and other art forms according to stylistic innovations and reactions (Cubism, Abstract Expressionism, etc.) embodied in the masterpieces of great individual geniuses (for instance Picasso, Matisse, Pollock, Johns). Taking both these conceptions of Modernism as symptoms of a larger phenomenon, social historians of art treat Modemism as much more than style or a critical theory. Modemini cm be understood as an institution, composed of and realised in a series of practices - painting, sculpting, writing art criticism, curating exhibitions, marketing pictures and careers, lecturing on art history courses, col1ecting and so forth. These practices circufate an ideology for the making, consuming and ratification of art? Yet wornenls place in the history of cultural modemity is problematic. Early modemism offered wornen the possibility of ostensibly uninhibited participation in art production. Through its breakdown of traditional attitudes toward art and artists by an affinity to juxtaposition, bricolage, and disruption, and, in the context of vorticism or futurisrn, a vehement denunciation of "the past", modemism opened a space for women's voice.
Griselda Pollock comrnents: "In contrast to the highly gendered modes of the nineteenth- century bourgeois culture, the emergent modemist community appeared to embody the liberal ideal of humanity blissfully indiffennt to gender."27 Female artists of the fin-de- siècle, such as Suzanne Valadon, Berthe Morisot, and Mary Cassatt, consequently aligned themselves with the modernist project. Yet this seeming indifference or sexlessness granted to women was not a liberating one. Pollock suggests:
What it offered to women and the white bourgeoisie's colonial others was participation in modemism, on condition that they effaced their gender/cultural particularity. Well known in the study of racism, the discourse of tolerance has also functioned within the modem politics of gender. Women had to choose between being human and being a woman. As artists this was a paradoxical experience... 28 Being human, in tum, implied being male. As Janet Wolff argues, modernism was developed as an aesthetic of the public sphere. The modem artist -- the flâneur -- was engendered as a specifically masculine character due to the categorisation of the urban
Iandscape (the subject-matter of modem art) as a specifically male territory As creatures of the domestic sphere, wornen were conventionally outcast fiom metropolitan life and thus it was only those who could adopt a masculine perspective - which allowed the circumvention of gender boundaries - that participated in the culture of i~todernit~.~~At the begiming of the twentieth century, therefore, the ability of women artists to claim a place in modem art production rested upon their capacity to relinquish "king a woman".
By the 1970s, however, postmodem theory appeared to offer ferninism an escape from this idea of the "artist". It claimed to undermine the privilege of the male eye through a dissolution of aesthetic categories: "Postmodernism is seen as progressive because it operates outside the dominant, and monbund, academies of high modernism .... Further, it blurs the boundaries between high art and popular culture, and enthusiastically takes advantage of the most upto-date developments in technology, thus producing an anti-elitist and potentially democratic and accessible cultural f~rm.'~Postrnodern thought equally provided women a genuine escape fiom "femininity". The end of faith in explicative metanarratives or generalisations of knowledge entailed the (theoretical) end of archetypal paradigms used to descnbe the nature or character of men and women. Gender definitions were demonstrated as both historically and individually specific, and therefore inappropriate as "universal" or absolute rneanings. In "Am 1 that Name.3". . Feminism. . and the Cat
"Women" in &tory (1 988), Denise Riley argues:
This "women" is not only an inert and sensible collective; the dominion of fictions has a wider sway than that. The extent of its reign can be partly revealed by looking at the crystallisations of "women" as a category. To put it schematically: "women" is historically, discursively constnicted, and always relatively to other categories which themselves change; "women" is a volatile collectivity in which fernale persons can be very differently positioned, so that the apparent continuity of the subject "wornen" isn't to be relied on .... 3 1 This dissolution of typical ideas of sexuality pointed to a larger postmodem argument: the end of hierarchical relationships. Without the generalisations "men" and "women", or even "man" and "woman", postmodemism made impossible those understandings which posited the inferiority of the latter or superiority of the former. With no logical or natural evidence for sexual discrimination, sexism was thus rendered theoretically (and optimistically) obsolescent. Yet although postmodemism interrogated gender representations through its reduction of categories, it nonetheless refused women an authentic voice. Modemism hypothesised only a male subjectivity and thus forced female artists to "speak" as men. Postmodemist objectives, however, offered liale alternative. Often dependent upon concepts associated with Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, such arguments forced women to speak not as themselves, but in the language of "others". Because the enabling feature of postmodern activitylagency depends upon the distribution of a metaphorical penis or phallus - "the privileged signifier of privilege" -- masculinity customarily eams the status of subjecthood? In consequence, men "speak" and represent "mankind"; women are the embodiment of the "unrepresentable", the "invisible", or simply "not man". Female artists were therefore obliged to adopt a male perspective within dominant discourse: "In order to speak, to represent heself, a woman assumes a masculine position; perhaps this is why femininity is frequently associated with masquerade, with false represenüition, with simulation and seduction."" Thus although postmodemism eradicated the category of "women", it ironicall y created alternative designations which failed to address the problematics of sexual difference. The effectivity of postmodem and modemist strategies in art historical analysis have been an issue of debate amongst historians of women's art. In her article "Resisting
Amnesia: Feminism, Painting and Postrnodernism" (1987), Rosa Lee suggests that postmodem pluralism is problematic: "if al1 is indeed possible, then where is one to begin? Does it al1 just boil down to a question of making stylistic choices that we can pick up at will from the art historical jamboree bag?"" This multip!icity of styles is equally dehimental to ferninism. The danger that feminist art practices could simply be considered another stylistic variation within this mass of aesthetics suggests that postrnodernism serves to lose women within its many dialogues. Lee argues, moreover, that the actual crippling of established
theory through postmodemism is unproved:
...the case against deconstruction.As that it has corne rnerely to reinterpret representations of the dominant power positions.... In providing an illusion of power (through the process of visual appropriation in the act of recognition) these actually reproduce male power positions... which involve representations of the male and/or female body. To deny the viewer the mental mechanism of identification is to deny them a position of power over the object repesented." In essence, "[deconstniction] provides no more than a reinterpretation of the structures and forms of recognition, producing what amounts only to the odd stylistic difference in any
particular art practice."36 Lee therefore asserts the necessity of a radical reconstruction of exisring altistic language - to directly confiont hierarchical sexual differences - rather than novel creations through postmodemism. In particular, Lee argues that the aesthetic politics of feminism must question modemism and appropriate uncolonised modemist forms through what she tems "non-representational" or "non-figurative" suategies. Since pictonal representation "relies on pre-given meanings and codes which have been ideologically determined", she advocates the sabotage of dominant structures through the shifting features of non-figuration and, consequently, the destruction of those power relations which pictorialism or realism embodies." Lee cites the work of British painter Thérèse Oulton as exemplary in its negotiation of entrenched practices. Oulton's paintings are a material (as opposed to postrnodem) investigation of traditional aesthetics:
[Her work] is an acknowledgement of the powerful possibilities of painting to rnake links between (possibly disparate) practices and posit seemingly impossible or contradictory relations; of painting within the parameten of, as Stuart Morgan puts it, "neither this nor that", rnaking paintings "which hang suspended between negative paradoxes" but which at the same tirne are fully engaged within the arguments and paradoxes which this strategy takes on board. Rather than being a refusal to "take sides", it strongly questions any simplistic reading of the issues involved in the making of paintings and the way such works are viewed? Engagement with the material language of modemism - such as oil paint and the modemist gesniral mark - is central to the subversive facet of such resistance: the use of traditional methods without the representational content which might be expected positions such work as revisionist and potentially revolutionary. In this way, a radical reconstruction of artistic language is effected through the employment of established means, and therefore stands to reform or change establishment opinion- John Roberts also debates the problematics of postrnodemism. Although aesthetic hierarchies are broken by pluralistic practices, postmodemist intervention does not allow women to speak es women: "In short the question of painting for women today is how do wornen represent sexual difference across the spaces of the social without essentialking difference, without turning the pursuit of a female 'visual economy' into the language of the
~ther?"" He asks how and what art might be for women, without women artists falling irto inhented (masculine) forms? Although many women artists have engaged in non- conventionaI arts - such as video or film art, performance, or collage - in search of
"unrnasculinised" territory, he suggests that a non-complicit forrn of painting is the most effective type of intervention. "Insofar as painting is historically that place where masculine pleasures have been on voyeuristic display", it represents the site at which women have had particular dificulty, but equally, is an operative space in which intervention is requiredSa Roberts, however, posits that the pursuit of apeinture féminine is misguided. Attempting, as
Rosa Lee suggests, to adopt a non-figurative "female" or specifically "women's art" tradition results in a fomi of self-marginalisation which confirms patriarchal opinions of women as outside the paradigrns of western fine art. Equally, however, a peinture féminine is complicit with the discourse of modemism fiom which feminist theory initially attempted to extract itself:
[In] what sense does Thérèse Ouiton's refusai of "fixture" in represenbtion offer a practical resistance to women's "negative entry" into culture? On the contrary it would seem that the place of entry is reduced to the silent and absent, that very realm of "non-mastery" as truth from which both the stereotypes of femininity and the critical distanciation of Modernisrn has been constructed ....[Dl efence of Oulton in terms of the radicality of non- representation recodes high-Modemism under the auspices of radical feminismP1 The de-coding of language through non-figuration simply becomes a "reverse syrnbolic order" in which a specifically female aesthetic, as a form of "unfixing" (from masculine discourse), actually serves as a type of tmnscendental signifier similar to that imposed by modemism. In consequence, women's art and the idea of "woman" - removed fiom their social and historical contexts - are separated from dominant discourses or systems of meaning. Far fiom being an act of resistance, therefore, the refusal of women artists to participate in goveming circuits of exchange simply leaves in place those representations which silence them. Roberts argues: "In separating 'self-expression' fiom any extemal cognitive and political constraints, both divorce the representation of the body from its social figuration, from those deteminants of class, race, nationality and sexual identity which give it communicable meaning."" To negotiate difference, therefore, interventions must remain time-bounded, sociologically informed and in particular, must have an historical context. As Roberts tellingly concludes: "There is only one space of struggle: history itself.'" Griselda Pollock also argues that feminist cultural interventions must refuse to abandon a sense of social and political effect. To contest the representation of woman as subordinate, resistance must originate not only from the Ievel of the textual and subjective, but equally, must have a material context. Fundamental to this endeavour, Pollock asserts, are the phiiosophies of German realist, Bertold Brecht: "Through the example of Brecht many political artists found an archimedian point outside proliferating postmodemist pilferings of other moments of art's history by providing access to a modemism erased frorn history by the selective tradition peddled by the Museum of Modem Art, New York, and modemist art hi~tor~."~~Brechtian theory offes a useful bridge between poststructuralism and realism/positivism. "Distanciation" or "defamiliarization", which is connected to a larger set of processes termed "disidentificatory practices", was theorised by Brecht in an attempt to liberate the viewer fiom entrapment by those aesthetic ephemera which encourage a sub-conscious or passive identification with fictional malms. Instead, the viewer becornes an active (and cognisant) participant in the production of meanings, and Iikewise recognises hem not only as "representation" but also as phenornena which shape understandings of contemporary society. This form of critical Iooking, in tum, entails an active erosion of dominant structures of visual consumption, and consequentiy, of fetishism:
Fetishism describes as we have seen, a structure of representation and exchange and the ceaseless confirmation of the subject in that perspective ... which is that of the spectator in a theatre - or a movie-theatre - in an art of representation. It is this fixed position of separation-representation- speculation (the specularity of reflection and its system of exchange) that Brecht's distanciation seeks to undermine ....In Brecht's own words, it is a question of 'creating new contact between stage and auditorium and thus giving a new basis to artiaic pleasure." As Pollock has argued in other essays, this signifier of modemist masculinity - woman fetishised as beautifül "other", as evident in Edouard Manet's seminal work, Olympia (1 863) - delineates "looking" as a singularly male activity4 Brechtian theory, however, undermines this concept. The viewer is not lulled into identification with an imaginary world in which the knowledge of castration is allayed by beautifid images, but rather cntically analyses the image in vie^.^' In this context - outside the territory of fetish - both men and women cm enter the modernist realm as spectators. Equally, the realist aspect of this type of spectatoahip is complementary to feminism's objectives. Since political and social change can only be effected amid material circurnstances, feminist activism must remain committed, epistemologically, to realism. Because the active involvement of both the artist and spectator in the creation of rneaning allows Brechtian "Iooking" to impose a degree of actuality through its engagement with human consciousness or awareness, the realist criteria of feminism is fùlfilled. 11l Given the difficulties outlined above, the Hayward Annuai can be set in a more consequential framework. Although it received linle critical or popular support, the
exhibition was significant not only as a ferninist intervention, but as a comparatively cogent
one which represented a last concerted effort by the Women's Art Movement. Although
differing perspectives on women artists, women's art, modemism, postrnodemism, and
feminism were apparent at the exhibition, they were neither as marked nor as unmanageable
as those illustrated at meetings two yeaa later. By 1980, rifts over method, approach, and in particular, between those who supported the democratic and empowering activities which encouraged women to create art as women, and those purporting specialised, philosophical interventions were too well established. "The ICA Conference", Caryn Faure Walker argues, "rather than foning an alliance between women, split them into two groups: theory led and practice led."" Yet through its negotiation of a multiplicity of theories and approaches to women's art, HA II melded debates between practical strategies and strategic practices in a (comparatively) organised encounter with the Arts Council. Its ability to combine numerous aesthetics and artists, and equally, to earn an high degree of recognition
(in newspapen, weekly magazines. and art joumais) inscribed the level of competence required by its organisen to compound the material and philosophical aspects of cultural feminism. This efficacy was made particularly evident in the defensive tone articulated by its cntics. The generally acrïmonious or demeaning ethos of comrnentary on the Second Hayward Annual attested to the level of discornfort which feminism forced upon the modemist establishment. Such resistant language demonstrated the potential of feminist cultural practices to disrupt (if only temporarily) the discourses which delineate the nature of "art". Equally indicative of its accomplishment, the exhibition proved the necessity of working inside existing structures -- as articulated by Lee, Roberts, and Pollock -- through iîs engagement with (rather than exiling itself fiom) modem art and its institutions, in particular the Arts Council and the Hayward Gallery. Although this facet of the exhibition was not acknowledged by reviewen, it was, in the context of feminist aesthetic politics, a significant victory. in her article, "The Politics of Theory: Generations and Geographies Feminist Theory und the Histories of Art Histories" (1993), Pollock infen this importance through her attempt to define the exact meaning of "feminist theory":
But what is it? Does it mean that there is a cogent perspective on al1 areas unified under the rubric feminism? We cannot really Say that we now have feminist art history, feminist soc io logy ,feminist legal studies. ferninisr cultural studies, as cohabitants of the main disciplinary formations. Isn't feminism more a matter of interventions which change each discipline and theoretical terrain because feminism introduces the suppressed question of sexlgender? Raising the suppressed question of sedgender catapults us fiom the neatly ordered universehniversity of intellectual knowledge with these clear disciplinary divisions into a field of practice." Pollock concludes with the assertion that feminism signifies "a set of positions, not an essence; a critical practice, not a doxa; a dynamic and self-critical response and intervention, not a platform."sO In this context, where intervention is cornmensurate with effect, the
Hayward Annual was ultimately a success. Despite its failure to alter perceptions of women's art or women artists, the mere evidence of its organisation in the Hayward Gallery. its support by the Arts Council, and its (albeit negative) recognition by the British art world is indicative of its import. The site and negotiation of art exhibitions, therefore, must be considered a fundamental aspect of feminist activism and resistance. HA 11 demonstrated the complexity of cultural feminism. Replicating what Griselda
Pollock has referred to as "feminist bricolage", the show was an examination of not only the modemia establishment but of aesthetic practices. Its mixture of painting, sculpture, and photography, modem- and postrnodem-inspired work, as well as different types of "woman artist", explored various "feminisms", "modemisms", and "postmodernisms" in the saine physical and discursive space. In the context of a mpturing Women's Art Movement, HA 11 thus represented a zenith: its design and duration embodied the type of structural collectivity advocated by the overall women's movement Although the Hayward Annual was disclaimed with the charge of "non-art" and its participants criticised for their contribution to a cultural debacle, the exhibition remains one of cultural significance as a moment of intervention in the patriarchal establishments of British high culture.
IV In 1983, the first feminist gallery to be established with financial support from the
Arts Council was opened. The Leeds Women's Photography Project founded "The Pavillion", a gallery and darkroom, in a once-derelict refreshment centre. Run as a collective by and for women to stage and discuss exhibitions, films, and other cultural events, the Pavillion marked a fundamental breakthrough in arts patronage. Yet its early history - as a receiver of public money - was marked by efforts to counter the suspicion of its funding body. "The argument that because women are a disadvantaged minority in terms of cultural resources and opportunities, they deserve some of the financial aid for arts activities", Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock argue, "is hardly won before anxieties generated by women working on their own behalf lead to financial c~tbacks."~~Efforts to reform such prejudice within the structure of British cultural policy were finally launched in the early
1990s. In 1994, the Arts Council founded a "Women in the Arts Monitoring Committee" and published its Women in Arts Action plan? This document outlined the Council's proposed measures to eliminate unjust patronage practices caused by sexual discrimination.
In its thirty-two points, the scheme articulated the need for "immediate and practical action, which [would] advance the position of wornen in the arts, overcoming the attitudinal and structural bamers which e~ist[ed].'"'~ Suggesting primarily organisational change, the
Women in Arts Action Plan delineated those measures required to bnng about, in particular, equality for female artists. Yet the advances which this design proposed to accomplish refiected a specifically skeletal approach to reform. The Council's engagement with sexual discrimination occurred primarily at the level of formation and allotment - through events and activities - but did little to examine underlying discounes of gender. Without consideration of ideology - for example, of modemist production and the idea of the "artist" - intervention could not fully expose the biased history of cultural policy. As this chapter
has already argued, the necessity of foray as a dimension of theory as well as practice was fbdamental to feminist refonn; in other words, the revisionism of cultural feminism relies on bofh conceptual and material redress. The structural changes afforded by the Arts Council, therefore, presented only one half the required solution.
The National Arts aad Media Stnitegy Unit of the Arts Council contributed to understandings of cultural discrimination from its incepiion in the early 1990s. Its 1991
discussion document on the Council's "Arts Access Unit" articulated the goals of arts patronage in cornmunity arts and the promotion of cultural diveaity, the Ethnic Monitoring Unit, and women in the arts. Yet, as its introduction asserted: "the Access Unit does not
define its work solely in ternis of those three specific areas. Its essential function is to point
out and potentially facilitate al1 groups of people that, for various hinorical and
philosophical reasons, have failed to be accorded reflection in arts policy and practice."" Notions of quality, the fiction between amateur and professional, and assumptions of what
precisely conaituted "the arts" motivated the Unit's endeavours against establishment
opinion. It opposed thcse beliefs which assumed various art and aesthetic hierarchies,
inc luding:
that only those professionally trained could produce something worth hearing or seeing; that amateur non-profit-making arts are somehow inferior; that the arts are a product of single individuals; that there is a distinction between "social" or therapeutic arts and "proper" arts....The result of theae is a system of funding that concentrates its resources and favours on a band of arts that the Access Unit believes to be non-representational, culturally selective, socially divisive and potentially arid."
In essence, the Unit was formed to contravene the belief that culture "produced by white univenity-educated men form[ed] the bulk of artistic product and [wereJ.de expression of the whole so~iet~.'~~~tnstead it worked to prornote "accessible" forms, which had a different fiuiction than the so-called professional arts: they were not spectator attractions, but rather dealt with the lived experience of gender, ethnicity, aging, or youth. As its mandate declared: "They are passionate weapons in the fight for self-definition, ofien against great odds, in a society that offers them either a destructive image of themselves or invisibility.
They are a means of finding a language to explore existence; to mirror one's experience back
to oneself, one's peen and anyone else who cares to ~isten.''~'The National Arts and Media Strategy Unit's furilier engagement with gender issues - a separate document entitled "Women in the Arts" - called for a reorganisation of the Arts Council's resources rather than
an attempt io place women directly in unreformed structures. Its authors declared: "This paper must not be a'lowed to 'ghettoise' women, nor to remove fiom the authors of other
papen a responsibility to consider the position of women. It should be read as an interdisciplinary paper."" It discussed legal issues, access to arts education, censorship, fùnding, and recommended unity and networking between women artists. Its main project,
however, was equality:
Al1 future work must be underpinned by a commitment to ensure effective implernentation of a policy of equitable oppominity for women. Equality of oppominity will only corne about through strategic planning and restnicturing, including the development of an infiastructure of networks, space and buildings, and the developrnent of women's leadership through training initiatives and advocacy of certain changes in higher edu~ation.'~
The paper equally suggested that women's problems of access be discussed in tandem with other disenfranchised communities: "Sexism, racism, disaphobia, homophobia, classism and ageism must be dealt with in a cohesive manner, not in isolation. These issues, like the people the affect, do not lend themselves to c~rn~artmentalisation.'~~In this context, cultural strategy entailed not mereiy facilitation but a profound rethinking of aesthetic definitions and art relationships, and equally the encouragement to acquire new, varied, and challenging ways of "looking". Similar to the objectives of the National Arts and Media Strategy, the Birmingham symposium of 1993 declared its intention to move fonvard an action plan of policy recommendations for adoption by the Arts Council. When convened, its participants expressed the hope that their suggested course could "lead to the cornmitment of resources which ...[ would] change the pattern of Arts Council funding and the advancement of women's arts, women artists and art organisations and women as consumer^."^^ A reflection of the 1970 Oxford demands, its proposals were extensive. They included equal opportunities; reform of decision-making structures (including payment of committee members and that committees be composed of no less than fow percent of both women and men); facilities for child care within the Council structure and, equally, patronage schemes which provided for artists with children as dependents; the promotion of programmes or cultural activities which supported women's right to participate (for example, those which provided entry concessions for children, a system which identified venues welcoming parents with c hildren, major events which ran concurrent arts programmes for women and children, and more free quality events); encouragement of health awareness (the Council would facilitate the distribution of practical and accessible information on health issues which were particularly relevant for women working in the arts, including changes in legislation and new research findings); the training, education, and development of women arts administrators and women artists (in recognition of the economic disadvantage expenenced by women); Council facilitation of women artists' networks, and support for women's studios, CO-operativesand art joumals; and greater or facilitated access to arts funding and legal standards of pay in arts organisations. Such proposals demanded that the arts regard women as equal, but as wornen. The Birmingham symposium called for an understanding that the conditions of and for women artists were diflerent than those of men.
The Arts Council's Women in Arts Action Plan (1994) was the outcome of various feminist and feminist-inspired endeavours, but primady those of the Birmingham group.
This document generally reflected the recommendations of the symposium. Its objective was stated as a cornmitment to the development of equality of opportunity within al1 aspects of Council hding and employment practice, and the establishment of mechanisms to monitor the implementation of equal opportunity structures within its own work and that of its clients. Its intentions, however, were more tentative than those expressed by both the Access Unit and the Women in Arts committees. Objectives were phrased in a language of cautiousness and irresoluteness:
The Arts Council wiIZ seek to ensure that by 1995 al1 committees, advisory panels and boards of the arts funding system will have no less than 40% representation of either sex.... The Arts Council wiii ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage to consider the issue of gender balance in making fùture appointrnents to the Council ....Departments within the Arts Council (including the proposed Lottery Unit) wiii be invited, within the framework of the corporate planning process, to outline future action and identify departmental expenditure, which is intended to further the Women in Arts Action Plan and advance the position of women in the arts.... In order to ensure that the Arts Council's fiinding criteria do not unintentionally discriminate directly or indirectly against women, issues relating to gender, wiiI be considered by the Council in the formulation and review of al1 Arts Council funding criteria."
The rhetoric employed to convey the goals of the Arts Council articulates not a determined attack against sexism, but rather a circumspect approach to problem solving. An "invitation" to reform and the inference of "will ask" or "consider" suggest a conditional tone ostensibly indicating a reluctance to address aggressively the problematics of arts patronage. The Council, however, also argued that it would achieve positive change and both increase and diversi@ the representation of women in al1 sectors of arts practice and employment in accordance with the Sex Discrimination Act 1986, the Equal Opportunities
Commission's Code of Practice (section 42), and affirmative action policy. In addition, the
Training Unit of the Arts Council would give consideration to training, development, and work experience opportunities for women in the arts so that they might return to, take up, or further develop their skills in those areas of arts practice and employment in which wornen remained unrepresented. Women in Arts Action Plm also articulated its dedication to working in partnership with arts organisations, and to the promotion of practical action which could remove the physical and attitudinal barriers which had heretofore prevented women (particularly those with cziïfig responsibilities) fiom full participation in the arts.
Finally, in order to assist the Arts Council in the effective implementation of the Women in Action Plan and to advise on hiture policy-making decisions, it was agreed to found a Women in Arts Monitoring Committee - chaired by a member of the Council, with rnembership of the committee drawn mainly fiom existing panels and boards. Yet these recommendations were purely organisational ones. Reflecting the often conditional tone of its proposed interventions, the Arts Council failed to investigate the aesthetic and philosophical aspects of art production and consumption. Modemist understandings of the "artist" or notions of "wholeness" went unexamined due to a systematic neglect to re-read the context in which the foundations of contemporary British arts patronage were forged. High modemism. postwar fragmentation, and rnulti-layered discourses of cultural identity had positioned the creation of art as a specifically male and masculine activity. The modifications of the Arts Council in the 1990s, however, overlooked this facet of art history. Its partiality to structural improvement regarded only the superficial manifestations of more latent causes; the modernist roots of discrimination remained hidden.
-v
The reluctance of the Arts Council both to impose determined resolutions and, equally, to intervene within the history of art production are symbolic of a wider problematic in arts patronage. The above chapters have argued that the representation of women by twentieth-century British cultural policy has been shaped not only by historical definitions of "femininity" but also by ideas of "woman" associated with modemism. Through its formation duhg a period of cultural instability and aiso at the zenith of high modemist aesthetics, the Arts Council absorbed the prejudices extant within these circuits of exchange and meaning. In particular, the idea of unity or congruency suggested by modem art offered the British cultural establishment a social and cultural "adhesive" for the postwar world. Yet
it equally provided a subordinate or non-existent image of women. The language of modemism literally and figuratively painted "woman" as the object of a masculine eye, but denied an authentic female subjecthood and consequently a voice of "woman as woman". Thus without a means of representation, female artists were silenced or excluded from modemist realms. Only through the appropriation of a masculine position could women
"speak" or become creators of "art". The understanding of modemism as an aesthetic of "wholeness" likewise defined this aspect of cultural ideology as "male". Uniformity at the Ievel of the painting and the asocial,
organic nature of artistry did not elide with the ofien socially specific character of women's art and the public collectivity of the women's movement. Work by female artists - fkquently depicting the sexual divisions of modem society - and the solidarity expressed by "the personal is political" could not, in essence, accord with rnodernist ideas of individualisrn or autonomy. The "artist" was therefore defined as a male persona. Contemporary British culture sirnilarly appropriated this image of the painter or sculptor as an inherently
masculine entity. The Arts Council, in particular, placed the artist as a figure commensurate with the male breadwinner or provider, thus indicating the specifically gendered nature of art production. Masculinity - as a stable, central dynarnic -- thereby reaped the reward of arts patronage from the mid-twentieth century.
This positioning of men as signifiefi of "culture" was fundamental to the formation
of the British Women's Art Movement. Embodying the objectives of this retinue, the
Second Hayward Annual launched an intervention into established discourses of art consumption and patronage. An apex of feminist cultural politics, HA II represented a significant endeavour to alter the course of aesthetic understanding and the depiction of
women artists. Through its coaction with the Hayward Gallery and the Arts Council, the exhibition posed, in particular, a feminist interrogation of modernist ideologies at the site of their production. As a facet of the Women's Liberation Movement, this engagement with identity issues was equally emblematic of the larger feminist initiative to re-define the place of women in conternporary society. Despite its poor reception within rnainstrearn or established culture, moreover, the show was of import given its interjection - however successfùl - into patriarchal discoune. The mere evidence of its attempt was valuable in the context of an incursion against the foundations of sexual inequality in Britain. The preceding chapters have situated this exhibition as a consequential episode in the history of postwar feminism. An active negotiation of cultural meaning and modernist ideology, HA II demonstrated the complexity of ferninist endeavour to alter not only the circumstances of women in society, but also the discursive construction "woman". Yet although HA II marked a crucial foray into cultural politics, it has received glancing -tus in snidies of arts poiicy, and equally, within more general examinations of the Women's
Liberation Movement. Art and visual culture have not established themselves as hndamental components of ferninist activism, or of its political and social heritage. Thus despite the work of Griselda Pollock, Rozsika Parker, or Mary Kelly, the examination of women's intervention in fine art and art exhibition as a facet of wider historical and societal import - of which this study represents a part - has not yet occurred to a level cornmensurate with their actual history. Equally, although feminist film and Iiterary analyses have contnbuted to an understanding of feminism's cultural activity, their co- mingling with materiai politics has been minimal. As a means to document the operation of discursive and structural discrimination against women, however, arts policy and ideas of women's art have been above demonstrated as critical areas of departure. Nonetheless cultural analysis must first more fully embrace gender as a paradigm of understanding. The minimal historical presence of the 1978 Hayward Annual is a testament to this deficit. Endnotes Chapter One
1Working paper prepared by the Secretariat, Cultural Riehts as Hurnan Ri~hts(Paris: UNESCO, 1970), p. 10 %mes Literary Supplement, 25 August, 1978: The Soectator, 9 September, 1978; and Times, 24 August, 1978. 'The Swctator, 9 September, 1978. %ore specifically. "white" middle-class masculinity. '~ee.for instance, Griselda Pollock, Vision and Difference: Fernininim. Feminism and the Histories of Art, (London: Routledge, 1988); Griselda Pollock and RosPka Parker, Old Mistresses: Women. Art and Ideoloey,- (London: Routiedge and Kegan Paul, 198 1); Linda Nochlin, Women. Art and Power and Other Essays, (New York: Harper and Row, 1988); and Lisa Tickner, "Men's Work? Masculinity and Modemism" in Norman Bryson, Michael Ann Holly, and Keith Moxey (eds.) Visual Culture (London: University Ress of New England, 1992). kennaine Greer, The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painten and Their Work, (New York: Farrar Straus Greer, 1979)- p.4. 7Nochlin, Women. Art. and Power and Other Essays, p. 155. 'se,for instance, Tickner. "Men's Work? ..." in Bryson, Holly, and Moxey (eds.) Visual Culture. 9 Andreas Huyssen, Afier the Great Divide (Bloomington and Indianapolis: University of Indiana Press, 1986), p.47. 10 See, for instance, Janet Wolff, "The InvisibIe Flâneuse: Wornen and the Literature of Modernity" and "Feminism and Modemism" in Ferninine Sentences: Essavs on Women and Culture, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 5 1-66. harles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modem Life and Other Essays, trans. Jonathan Mayne. (London: Phaidon Press, 1964), pp.29-30. My emphasis. 12 Victor Li, "Policing the City: Modemism, Autonomy and Authority", Cnticism 34(2), 1992, p.26 1. I3~i,"Policing the City...". pp.262-63. 14Li, "Policing the City...", p.264. 15~ynneSegal, "Look Back in Anger: Men in the Fifties" in Rowena Chapman and Jonathon Rutherford (eds.) Male Order: Unwraming Masculinity, (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1988), p.68. 16 Segal, "Look Back in Anger 2,p.68. 17 Janet Wolff, "Angry Young Men and Minor (Fernale) Characters: The Idea of 'Arnerica' in 1950s Popular Culture" in Resident Alien (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). p. 142. '%mey Chadwick, Wornen. Art, and Society (Revised Edition), (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996), p.320. I bwrence Alloway. "The Independent Group: Postwar Bntain and the Aesthetics of Plenty" in David Robbins (ed), The Indeoendent Group: Postwar Bntain and the Aesthetics of pl en^ (Cambridge, MassfLondon: The ha Ress, 1990), p.50. t 32 %e New Statesman and Nation: The Week-end Review, 25 September, 1954. "~omenwho participated in abstract expressionism - a particularly aggressive aesthetic personified by Jackson Pollock - were seemingly compelled to hide their sex. Lee Krasner, for example, whose full name was Lenore, went by the masculine-sounding "Lee" or simply L.K. to conceaI her identity. %ited in Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock, "Fifteen Years of Feminist Action" in GriseIda Pollock and Rozsika Parker (eds.), Framing Feminism: Art and the Wornen's Movement 1970-1985, (London: Pandora, 1987)- p. 17. %etween 1910 and 1986, the Tate Gallery held 2 14 one-person shows: only eight were the work of women artists. By the late 1980s. the National Gallery possessed only twelve works by women artists in its collection of 2010 paintings. The Hayward GalIery itself had never presented a major retrospective of a woman artist, either dive or dead, national or international, until September 1992 when a show of Bridget Riley's work was held. Women Artists Slide Librarv Journal, 20 (DecembedJanuary 1988), p.9. 24~ohnMaynard Keynes. "The Arts Council: Its Poücy and Hopes", The Listener, 12 Jul y, 1945, pp. 3 1-2. %ee Arts Council of Great Britain, Annual Report and Accounts, "Awards to Artists", 1945/46- %ee Arts Council of Great Britain, Annual Reoort and Accounts, "Council, Cornmittees and Panels", 194946- "~heObscenitv Laws: A Report bv the Working Party set u~ bv a Conference convened bv the Chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain, (London: Andre Deutsch, 1969), p. 14. %e Obscenitv Laws, p.27. "~ee,for instance, Nicole Cooley, "Ideology and the Portrait: Recovenng the 'Silent Image of Woman' in the Work of Julia Margaret Cameron", Women's Studies 24 (1995), pp. 369- 84; Anne McClintock, Imperia1 Leather: Race. Gender and Sexuaiitv in the Colonial Conauest, (London: Routledge, 1995); and Carol Maver, Pleasures Taken: Performances of Sexudiv and Loss in Victorian Photomphs, (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995) ''~ee, for instance, Frances Spalding, Vanessa Bell (London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983); Griselda Pollock "Modernity and the Spaces of Fernininity" in Vision and Different: Ferninism. Femininity and the Histories of Art (London: Routledge, 1988), pp. 50-90; Griselda Pollock and Roszika Parker, Old Mistresses: Women. Art and Ideology (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981): Brigitte Libmann, "British Women Surrealists: Deviants from Deviance?" in Sybil OldfieId (ed) This Working Dav Wortd: Women's Lives and Culture(s1 in Britain 19 14- 1945 (London: Taylor and Francis Ltd., 1994); Whitney Chadwick Women. Art and Society (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996) and Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement undon.: Thames and Hudson, 1985); M. A. Caws, R. Kuenzli and G. Raaburg (eds.) Surrealism and Women (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 199 1); Anne Wagner, "Lee Krasner as L.K.," Re~resentations25(1989), pp.42-57; Janet M.C. Burns "Looking as Women: The Paintings of Suzanne Valadon, Paula Modersohn-Becker, and Frida Kahlo", AtIantis 18 (1992), pp.25-46; and Teresa Grimes, Judith Collins and Oriana Baddeley, Five Women Painters (Oxford: Lennard Publishing, 1989) 31~eynesstated that the purpose of CEMA was "to carry music, drama, and pictures to places which otherwise would be cut off from al1 contact with the masterpieces of happier days and times: to air-raid shelters, to war-time hostels, to factories. to mining villages." "The Arts Council: Its Policy and Hopes", The Listener, 3 1. 32Charter of Incorporation (1946) cited in Mary Glasgow and Benjamin Kor Evans, The Arts In Enaland, (London: The Falcon Press, 1949), p.54. 33Mary Glasgow, "The Concept of the Arts Council" in Milo Keynes (ed.), Essavs on John Mavnard Kevnes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p.262. 34Glasgow - was the first Secretary-GeneraI of the Arts Council. Evans was its Vice-Chairman for successive years in the late 1940s. 35~lasgo~and Evans, The Arts in England, p. 19. 36Glasgow and Evans, The Arts in Endand, p.20, 37~lasgowand Evans, The Arts in England, p.20. "lanet Minihan, The Nationalization of Culture: The Deveio~rnentof State Subsidies to the Arts in Great Britain, (London: Warnish Hamilton, 1977), p.x. '%nihan States: "Much of the discussion in the immediate postwar years had implications of social control, aithough less overt than in the nineteenth century when education and art were valued chiefly as means of inculcating middletlass attitudes in the working-class mind. But while some observers still nervously pondered the social implications of long leisure hours, others, including Keynes, had no sympathy for theu anxieties. He might well have had a hand in writing the pamphlet which accompained the Arts Council's mode1 plan for community art centres in 1945. We must rid ourselves of the false idea,' the Council urged, 'that art is a palliative for social evils or a branch of welfare work.' Whether one regarded art as palliative or pure pleasure, an agency to promote cultural recreation undeniably had a purpose to serve in postwar Britain." Minihan further suggests that ideas of national glory were dso at work Wartirne chauvinism had inspired pride in British values; the struggle against fascism accentuated or re-invigorated a sense of national culture and pride in unique cultural achievements: "If the glonous days of empire and of naval hegemony were gone forever, and if the war had reduced Great Britain to financial dependence on the United States, there was still cause enough for pride in British cultural strength. Even after the wartime sense of cultural unity had faded in the crises of postwar reconstruction. Britain's cultural tradition remained an object of esteem." The Nationalization of Culture, p. 229 and p.230 40~itedin Minihan, The Nationalization of Culture, p.235. 4 1Minihan, The Nationalization of Culture, p.247. 42Minihan, The Nationalization of Culture, p.248. 43John Maynard Keynes, Kenneth Clark, Goodman and Gibson. 44 Between 1945 and 1982, thirteen of the forty-six male members of the Royal Opera House Board were graduates of Eton. In tum, rnost went to Cambridge or Oxford, and were members of one or more of three London clubs: the Athenaeum, Brooks and the Garrick. Robert Hutchinson, The Politics of the Arts Council, (London: Sinclair Browne, 1982), p.30. utch ch in son, The Politics of the Arts Council, p. 152. 4kaymond Williams, "The AN Council," The Political Ouarterlv 50 (2) 1979, p. 159. 47 Williams, "The Arts Council", p. 166. 4%illiam. "The Arts Council", p. 167. 4g~icholasM. Pearson, The State and the Visual Arts, (Milton Keynes: The Open University Press, l982), p.44. 5oPearson, The State and the Visual Arts, p. 109. Author's itaiics. 51~earson,The State and the Visuai Arts, p. 103. 52~ohnPick with Razak Ajala and Malcolm Hey Anderton, The Arts in a State: A Studv of Govemment Arts Policies fiom Ancient Greece to the Present, (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1988), p.5. %ck, The Arts in a State, p.7. 54Hugh Jenkins, The Culture G~D,(London: Marion Boyers, 1979), p.20. "~heLabour Party had an extensive tradition of involvement in the arts (and in popular leisure), of which Hugh Jenkins represented one of the most critical. See, for instance, Steven Fielding, Peter Thompson, and Nick Tiratsoo "England Arise" The Labour Partv and Po~ularPolitics in 1940s Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993, Chapter Six; Roger Fieldhouse "Adults Learning - For Leisure, Recreation and Democracy" and Nigel Glendinning "Art and Architecture for the People?" in Jim Fryth (ed.) Labour's Promised Land: Culture and Societv in Labour Britain. 1945-5 1, (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1995); and Chapter Three (below). "~ee,for instance, Harold Baldry, The Case for the Arts (London: Secker and Warburg. 1981); Hutchinson, The Politics of the Arts Council; and Naseem Khan, The Arts Britain Imores: Arts of Ethnic Minorities in Britain, (London: Cornmunity Relations Commission, 1976) "~ee,for instance, Joan W. Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); Anna Clark. The Stmeele for the Breeches: Gender and the Makine of the British Workin- Class, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Jon Lawrence, "Class and Gender in the Making of Urban Toryism, 1880- 19 14", English Historical Review, July (108) 1993. pp.629-652; 1. Zweiniger-Bargeilowska, "Explaining the Gender Gap: The Conservative Party and the Women's Vote, 19454964" in Martin Francis and 1. Zweiniger-Bargeilowska (eds.) The Conservatives and British Societv. 1880- l990, (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996), pp. 194-223; Nicky Hart, "Gender and the Rise and Fall of Class PoIiticsW,New Left Review 175 (May-June 1989), pp. 19-47; and Sally Alexander, "Women, CIass and Sexuai Differences in the 1830s and 1840s: Some Reflections on the Wnting of a Feminist History", Historv Worksho~Journal, 17(1984), .123-49. %ee, for instance, Jenny Sharpe, "The Unspeakable Lirnits of Rape" in Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (eds.) Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), pp.22 1-56; and Anne McClintock, Irn~erialLeather, (1 995). "sheila Rowbotham, "Women's Liberation and the New Politics" in Micheline Wandor (ed.), The Body Politic, (London: Stage 1, 1972), pp.5-6. 60Pat Thane, "Towards Equai Opportunities? Women in Britain Since 1945" in Terry Gourvish and Alan O'Day (eds.) Britain Since 1945 (London: Macmillan, 199 1), p. 196. "Thane, "Towards Equai Opportunities?", p. 196. 6%ane, "Towards Equal Oppominities?", p.202. 63Thane, "Towards Equd Opportunities?" ,p.204. %irmingham Feminist History Group, "Ferninism as Femininity in the Nineteen-Fifties?", Feminist Review, 3 (1979)- p. 48. 65~abriellaTournaturi, "Between public and private: the birth of the professional housewife and the female consumer" in Anne S. Sassoon (ed-), Women and the State, (London: Unwin Hynes, l987), pp.255-278. 66~ee.for instance, Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, "Rationing, Austerity and the Conservative Party Recovery after 1945", The Historical Journal, 37 (1) 1994, pp. 173- 197 and "Explaining the Gender Gap: The Conservative Party and the Women's Vote, 1945-1964" in Francis and Zweiniger-Bargielowska (eds.) The Conservatives and British Societv. 67 The commericialisation of sex experienced a tremendous increase at this time: the growth of Soho and its prostitutiodpom market, James Bond, paperback novels, and trial over Lady Chatterlev's Lover in 1960 are demonstrative of this occurence. "~irrnin~harnFeminist History Group, "Feminism as Fernininty", pp.6 1-63. 6gThis legislation made equal pay voluntary until 1975 and then obligatory after this date. Yet studies showed that neither the Confederation of British Industires (CBI) nor other employen organisations changed their views on the statu of women as the result of such reforrn. Their belief of the inferiority of female to male labour were unchanged, and most still argued that to train women was not economicalIy worthwhile due to their short stay in the labour market. 70 Sheila Rowbotham, "The Beginnings of the Women's Liberation in Britain" in Wandor (ed.), The Body Politic, p.97. 71~reecontraception and abortion were considered one demand. 72Jan Williams, Hazel Twort and Ann Bachelli, "Women and the Farnily" in Wandor (ed.), The Body Politic, p.3 1. 7311The Four Demands" in Wandor (ed.), The Bodv Politic, p.2. 74Liz Heron, "Introduction", Truth. Dare. or Promise: Girls Growine UD in the Fifties, in Liz Heron (ed.) (London: Virago, 1985), p.7. "~nnePoole, "Graduate Wornen - A Force for Change" in Nadine K. Carnmish (ed.) Education of Women, (Hull: The University of Hull, 1977), p.60. 76~oyceGelb, "Feminism in Britain: politics without power?" in Drude Dahlerup (ed.) New Wornen's Movement: Feminism and Political Power in Europe and the USA, (London: Sage Publications, 1986), p. 105. n~rancesBorzello and AL. Rees, "Introduction" in Frances Borzello and A.L. Rees (eds.) The New Art Historv, (Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press International Inc.. 1988), p. 2. 78~.~.Clark, "The Conditions of Artistic Creation", Times Literarv Suodement. 24 May, 1974, p.562. 79 Clark, "The Conditions of Artistic Creation", p.562. goJohnTagg, Grounds of Disoute: Art Historv. Cultural Politics and the Discursive Field, (London: Macmillan, 1992). p.43. "~a~~,Grounds of Dispute, p.53. '?agg, Grounds of Dispute, p.55. '+T'agg, Grounds of Disoute, p.5 1. "A distinction between Amencan and British feminist art history must be made. British studies are primariIy theory (postmodern, semiotic, etc.) based, while American historians employ experiential models. See Griselda Pollock, "The Politics of Theory: Generations and Geographies Feminist Theory and the Histories of Art Histories", Genders, 17 ( 1993), .97-120. '4ee. for instance, Rosa Lee, "Resisting Amnesia: Feminism, Painting and Postmodernisrn", Ferninist Review, 26(JuIy 1987)- pp. 5-28. 86~nseldaPollock, "Feminism and Modemism" in Parker and Pollock (eds.), Framing Feminism, p.47. 87 Pollock, "Feminism and Modemism", p.47. 88 See Griselda Pollock, "Feminism, Femininity and the Hayward Annuai Exhibition 1978" in Framine Feminism, pp. 165-180; and Hutchinson, The Politics of the Arts Council, Chapter 2. Chapter Two
'~lthou~hmany govemrnents had previously supported the arts (as patrons to particular artists, or sponsors to festivals), culture as an aspect of social welfare was a predominantly postwar phenornenon. W ith the dramatic increase in rates of taxation after 19 19, private patronage almost disappeared as the magnitude of personal wealth declined. Coupled with the effects of the Industrial Revolution (desensitisation increased leisure time, etc.) and the rise of consumer society, the need for "culture" increased; however its support was costly. The state was therefore forced to take a more active role. Co-incidental with these events was the growing tendency of government to believe that it had a role in the persona1 welfare of citizens.
2"~emorandumfor Informal Conference", 18 December 1939. Cited in F.R. Levanthal, "'The Best for the Most':. . CEMA and State Sponsonhip of the Arts in Wartime, 1939- 1945"', we- Cenm R- 1(3), 1990, p.293. 'AS a wartime precaution, the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum sent their treasures to a quarry near Bath, and the National Gallery hid its coIlection in a cavem in North Wales. 4 Kenneth Clark was, at the time, the Director of both the National Gallery and the Film Division of the Ministry of Information, and was also involved with the Carnegie Trust. W.E. Williams was director of the British Institute of Adult Education. Mary Glasgow was fiom the Department of Education. '~itedin Leventhal, "'The Bea for the Most"...', p.293. kited in Andrew Sinclair, Arts and Cultures: The History of the Fi- Yean of the Am Council of Great Rritain, (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1999, p.30. 'CEMA also trod on the temtory of ENSA through its provision of over 4500 factory concerts for workers between. . 1942 and 1943. '~inihan,The Natiowation of Culture, p.224. %ero V. Mini states that the members of Bloomsbury "stood quite simply for changing the cultural values of the nation away from utilitarianism and towards Moorean ultimates. They were the anti-Benthamite tradition of those writers who viewed themselves as having a mission to teach higher values to the masses and especially to prevent their being swallowed up by the crasness of a commercial civilisation." -es. Bloomsbuiy and "The General BeoryI1,(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991), p.84.. .. . %eynes was much influenced by Clive Bell's Civ,lisation (1928) which propounded the need for a "leisure class" - having the time and ski11 to create art for universal edification -- and a mass population whose labour woutd support it. These components together would form a "civilisation". Inequality was thus fiandamental to the cultivation of society. 11Keynes cited in D.E. Moggridge, -rd Keynes: An Eco~~~iist-1s Rio-- (LondonMew York: Routledge, 1992), p.698. '%e theatre was originally scheduled for dernolition in order to rnake room for a warehouse; however, the citizens of Bristol created an appeal fùnd and appointed trustees to Save it. Their actions were not sufficient. CEMA therefore overtook the costs of equipment and the daily tasks of management, eventually to hand the enterprise back to Bristol's local administration. 13~.~.Keynes, . ."The AN in Wartime" (1 1 May, 1943) in D. E. Moggridge (ed.),-. The Collected W- of John MaMeynes: VokeXX VIII. Soc& Polit~caland . * , (London: Macmillan. . Press, 1982), pp 3606 1. 14cited in Minihan, The Natiouon. . of Cmp.225. 15cited in Minihan, The NationaLlZpt~onof Culture, p.227. 'Yeventhal, "The Best for the Mostf'..', p.3 17. 17 Keynes, ''The Arts Council: its Policy and Hopes", p.3 1. "~e~nes,"The Arts Council: its Policy and Hopes", p.3 1. 1keynes cited in Moggridge, M-S, p.705. "~eeArts Council of Great Britain, Annual Re~ortand Accoum, 1945/46- "charter of Incorporation (1 946). My italics. %inclair, Arts and Cultures. p.5 1. =~earson, Ar&, p. 7. 24 Pearson, The State a the Viaal Am, p.7. 2S~epartmentof Education and Science, Grants for the Ar& (London: HMSO, 1968), parw-aph 5- '?le Arts Council relied heavily upon the support of local authorities. Under the Local Govemment Act of 1948 (Section 132) provisions were made such that regional administrations could spend annually as much as the product of a 6d. (2%~)rate for an extensive array of entertainment services, including the provision of facilities for drarnatic performances, concerts, art exhibitions, and dancing. This statute, however, was not made compulsory. Through the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, local authorities did little to comply with the cultural needs of their constituents. For instance, wtsfor the Ar& (1 968) reported that coercion radier than CO-operationwas frequently the tone of relations between the Council and regional bodies. BeArts: A Discussion for thabour Movement (1 975) reports that local authorities spent on average only one-sixth of the 6d rate in 1 972/73. neAm le: l,&our's Pol cv towards the Ar& (1 977), further suggests stringency at the regional level: 1976177 marked a £42,000 expenditure, or the equivalent of a 0.46~rate. "~heMinister for the Arts, however, was not a rnember of Cabinet. Rather, she/he reported to the Secretary of State for Education. The office of Minister for the Arts was re-named and re-organised as the Secretary of State for National Heritage in 1992. In total, however, the Arts Council was (and is) composed of a chair, vice-chair, luminaries of the arts world, and various heads of panels making up a body of not more than twenty individuals. Through the 1970s, its memben and its chair were appointed by the Secretary of State for Education and Science, in consultation with the Minster for the Arts and the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Wales (The Arts Council of Wales and the Scottish Arts Council operated as sub-cornmittees within the Arts Council of Great Britain until 1995. After 1995, the Welsh and Scottish Boards -- and the newly created Arts Council of England - were made independent.) Appointments involved no election process - members were cbosen for their artistic knowledge or standing in society - and no (supposedly) political association. Beyond the immediate twenty-member Council, but under its jurisdiction, were advisory panels -- those for visual art, drama, music, art films, photography, and literature. Each offered advice on matten conceming applications for support - including the artistic ability of the applicant, their originality and intelligence - and responded to the Chair of the panel, who, in tum, reported to the Council. "~owever,this is not to say that the Arts Council was not affected by politics: "As an institution the Arts Council is autonomous. Its income, however, is an annual gant fbm central governrnent, approved by Parliament...[ and] administered by the Minister for the Arts. The Arts Council is totally dependent upon this grant-in-aid and that fact confirms its real status as a quango .... To be dependent upon central government is to be subject to central government policies." Antony Beck, "The Impact of Thatcherism on the Arts Council", Parliamenw 42 (3) 1989, p.362. 29wfor the Am, paragraph 13. %y 1989,80% of the Arts Council's grant went to the perfoming arts. "~heArts Council offered both "grants" and "guarantees". A grant was classified as an outright payment similar to a bursary, while a guarantee was more conditional. For instance, opera or theatre companies were offered guarantees as a safeguard against financial straits. In these cases, the Council and the guaranteed organisation agreed upon a minimum level of income or a maximum level of debt which the sponsored party had to reach before the Arts Council would offer funding. Most of these contracts came into effect when the guaranteed confionted unmanageable debt. 32~lasgowand Evans, The Arts in ,p.22. 13~ecausethe promotion of tourism=key aspect of Council policy, the support of those organisations which were guaranteed to attract notice fiom abroad - or to project a favourable image of British culture to a wide audience -- was more likely than those with smaller scope. See WB,paragraph 14. 34 See Chapter Three. 3S~heArts Council termed authors, poets, playwrights, visual artists, etc. as "creative artists". 36Roy Shaw cited in Arts Council of Great Britain, mual mort and Accouots. 1978179, (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1979) p.6. 37Artists Now, Patr~na~eof the Creative &, (London: 1973), p.6. 38ArtistsNOW, eêtLPllp~e of the Creative Art&, p. 13. In 1973, Artists Now calculated that between 40% and 50% of the Arts Council's total budget was spent on a few large bodies and schemes which were so enomous that, hypothetically, if Covent Garden were to close for one year and its gant were redirected to living artists, the amount reaped could sponsor fifty new symphonies, a hundred new plays, the year's work of about fifty painten, three or four full-scale new operas, ten large scale poetry anthologies, and fifty new novels. 39Anists Now, Patroqgge of the Creative Arti~,p.58. 40ArtistsNOW, Patrowe of the Creative A&, p.6. 41~rtistsNOW, Patron= of the Creative A& p. 13. 42~ichaelGreen and Michael Wilding in consultation with Richard Hoggart, Culturiil Pob rn Great Bri&, (Paris: UNESCO, 1970), p.25. 43 Cited in Moggridge, Mavmp.700. %harter of Incorporation (1967). "~rtsCouncil of Great Britain, mual Report and Accounts 1966/67, p. 14. 46~.~.Ridley, 'Tradition, Change, and Crisis in Great Britain", in M.C. Cummings and R.S. Katz, eds. The Patron State: Ciovement the Arts in Europe. North America. adJm, (New YorWOxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 236. 47Ridley, "Tradition, Change, and Crisis...", p.236. -. . . "~reenand Wilding, Pokv in Greu Rn- ,p.62. 4g~tevenFielding, .. Peter . Thompson,. . and Nick Tiratsoo, MdArise!": The Labour Pw and J'olitlcs in 1940s ~n~~~ (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999, p. 136. 9ielding, Thompson, and Tiratsoo, Arise!", p. 136. 5 1See, for instance, C.A.R. Crosland, ne Fu- . . (1956), in which the author laments the slow progress of cultural development. He argues: ''[The] enemies to be overcorne are attitudes of rnind; if they can be conquered, the detailed policies will follow. These enernies are first parsimony, secondly indifference, and thirdly anarchistic selfishness. The parsimony cm be overcome by a recognition that the total sums involved are a minute hction of total consurners', or even total Budgetary, expenditure.... The indifference can be countered only by a display of savagery on the part of the minority who care for these matten ....The selfishness, often dressed up in the plausible language of complaints against bureaucracy or compulsory purchase or inadequate compensation, and fortified by a vulgar philistinism amongst those who articulate it in Parliament and the Press, will never be eradicated by argument or debate. We have here a simple, but deep, dividing line at once of principle and temperament; a clash of values. - to be resolved, not by verbal compromise, but sirnply by stmggle." Future of Socih,(London: Jonathan Cape, 1956), pp.526-27. %mnd. 260 1, "A Policy for the Arts: The First Steps", (London: 196S), paragraph 76. "~mnd.2601, "A Policy for the Arts: The First Steps", paragraph 58. "~abourParty, The Arts: A diScussion document for the Labour Movement, (London: The Labour Party, 1979, p.7. "~abourParty, The Arts: A discussion document for the Labour Movement, pp.7-8. The pamphlet further declared, with regard to finance. that the party's objectives were: "To provide fiinds to enable more, but as good or better, art to reach more people; to enable existing buildings and artists to be fully employed; to keep prices at a level people can afford; to encourage a wider sponsorship of the arts; to zero-rate VAT for a11 the arts; to introduce a minimum mandatory rate which local authonties will be obliged to spend on the arts." (p.25) 56~abourParty, Arts People: l,&~ur'sPolicy Towards Am, (London: The Labour Party, 1977), p.7. n~abourParty, A-ande: Labour's Policv Towarb the Am, p.7. ''~nton~Beck, "The Impact of Thatcherism on the Arts Council", p.364. 5gPrimaryaspects of Thatcherite policy towards the Arts Council were: a reduction of the rate of increase of its gant until the rate was below that of officia1 figures for inflation; pressure to encourage the Council's performing arts clients to increase their income fiom earnings, sponsorship and other non-public financial sources; pressure to make the Council and the arts institutions it supports more generally commercially minded in outlook and practice; pressure to improve the accessibility and the popularity of the arts supported by the Council; and direct govemment initiatives to support the arts, around, rather than through, the Arts Council. %e Tate Gallery, the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, etc. are funded directly by the govemrnent rather than the Arts Council. '%ousing the Arts" began in 1945 as a programme of reconstruction. Because so many theatres and concert halls were destroyed during the war, one of the Arts Council's major objectives was to spreadfre-institute culture through rebuilding what had been lost. It - - eventually developed, however, into a fund for the creation of arts facilities in areas previously without them. See for instance the Arts Council's Plans- (London: Lund Humphries, 1945) - which details architecturally and geographically how and where regional arts centres should be built - and John Lane and Robert Atkins, 862 Centres: Every Town Should Have One, (LondodSaIem N.H.: P. Elek, 1978). 62 Keynes, "The Arts Council: its Policy and Hopes", p.3 1 . Chapter Three
'susan Sontag-, (New York: Fanar, Straus and Giroux, 1977), pp. 178-79. 'ICeynes, "The Arts Council: It's Policy and Hopes", p.32. . . 3~ntoniaLanf f3Iackout: Reinvent@ Wornen for Wartime Rnmh Cinema, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991 ), pp. 6-7. 'Lanf BIackoa p.39. '~ant,Blackout. p. 140. 6Sue Harper, "The Years of Total War: Propaganda and Entertainment" in Christine Gledhill S. .-. . . and Gillian Swanson (eds.), NatiQmhg Fewity: Culture. Sexuality and British Cinema in the Second World Wt, (Manchesterhiew York: Manchester University Press, 1996), p.202. 'Lant, Blackout. p.35. 8~asilWright, "Realist Review", mdSad, 10 (38) Summer 194 1, p.2 1. *. 9See, for instance, Kenneth O. Morgan, The People's Peace: British Hido- 1945- 1989, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) 10See, for instance, Arthur Marwick, wein Bm ..Since . 1945, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991) and TTand(New York: St. Martins Press, 1988). 'l~ant,BIacU p.3 1. 12 Cited in Michael Frayn, "Festival" in Michael Sissons and Philip French (eds.), Ag& Aus&&, Hmondsworth: Penguin, l963), p.336. 13 See Chapter Two. 14Keynes, "The Arts Council: Its Policy and Hopes", p. 32. 1s Keynes, "The Arts Council: Its Policy and Hopes", p.32. 16Keynes, "The Arts Council: Its Policy and Hopes", p.32. "~dwardEttingdene (Lord) Bridges, The Stak and the Am, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1%8), p. 16. Bridges further articulated the diffîculty of choosing which bodies to support: "Here is an awkward set of problems. 1 propose for the moment to make use of the rather sharneful trick which al1 of us have practised in the examination schools: that is to turn aside gently from questions which we cannot answer satisfactorily to something which we find a little easier, thereby gaining for ounelves a short respite for reflection." (p. 17) 18~lasgowand Evans, Tsin,pp. 13- 14. 19Circular 8/65 (Department of Education and Science) Circular 53/65 (Ministry of Housing and Local Government), 1965, p.2. 2ok~~rton the Am. Office of the Minister for the Arts. London, 1974. The 1967 Chairman's Report equally revealed the amount of faith placed in die adhesive qualities of culture. He detailed: "1 believe that there is a crucial state in the country at the moment. I believe that young people lack values, lack certainties, lack guidance that they need something to turn to; and need it more desperately than they have needed it at any time in our history -- certainly, at any time which 1 can recollect. 1 do not Say that the Arts will hrnish a total solution, but 1 believe that the Arts will furnish some solution. 1 believe that once young people are captured for the Arts they are redeemed fiom many of the dangers which confront them at the moment and which have been occupying the attention of the Govemment in a completely. . and unprofitable and destructive fashion." (Chairman's Report, rts Council of Great Bntain Am 1 Report & Accounts, 1967, p.11) 21~mnd.2601, "A Policy for the Arts", paragraph 6. %nnd. 2601, "A Policy for the Arts", paragraph 14. "~mnd.2601, "A Policy for the Arts", paragraphs 98-99. %rnnd. 2601, "A Policy for the Arts", paragraph 7 1. %md. 260 1, "A Policy for the Arts", paragraph 100. %tuart Hall, "Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation". . in Houston A. Baker, Manthia Diawara and Ruth H. Lindeborg (eds.) mck RnmCultural Studies: A Reader, (London/Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1W6), p.2 10. 27 Hall, "Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation", p.211. =~all,"Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation", p.2 1 1. 29~all,"Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation", pp. 2 12-2 13. %ail, "Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation", p. 2 13. 3 1Hall, "Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation", p.2 13. "~ali,"Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation", p.2 15. "~rantzFanon cited in Hall, "Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation", p. 221. %organ, The Peo le's Peace, p. 18. "sec, for instance,kmatwi, "Between Public and Private: the Birth of the Professional Housewife and the Female Consumer"; and Zweiniger-Bargeilowska, "Rationing, Austerity and the Conservative Party Recovery After 1945". ?earson, the Visual Arts, pp.64-5. "~earson, The State and the Visual Arts, p.65. Jacolin Crigg, 'The Arts Council: A Question of Values" (Unpublished MA thesis in Arts Criticism, The City University, London, 1992), p.99. 39~rigg,The Arts Council: A Question of Values", p.99. 40~amesVernon argues in "The Mirage of Modemity" that much of the historiography of postwar Britain has remained trapped within the nineteenth-century perspective of modemity as indusnial and democratic progress, and therefore that its interpretive hmeworks have failed to engage with intellectual theories of the Iate twentieth century, such as post- sûucturalist, postrnodemist or post-colonial theories. 4 1James Vernon, "Th Mirage of Modemity': A Report on the 'Moments of Modemity? Reconstmcting Britain, 1945-64' Conference HeId at the University of Portsmouth, 9- 10 July 1996", Socialtop, 22 (2), 1987. 42~eeChapter One above. ab al Foster, R-: Att. Spectacle. Cm1Polim, (Port Townsend, Washington: Bay Press, 1985), p. 13. . . %ernent Greenberg, "Avant-Garde and Kitsch" in AA (Boston: Beacon Press, 196 1) p.5. 45 Greenberg, "Avant-Garde and Kitsch", p.6. 46Keynes, "The Arts Council: Its Policy and Hopes", p.3 1. 47 Crigg, "The Arts Council: A Question of Values", p.8 1. %ited in Crigg, "The Arts Council: A Question of Values", p.86. 49Arthur Marwick, The Ex~bsionof Bntish. . Society. 19 1 4- 1 97Q (London: Macmillan, 1971), p.149. %ited in Crigg, "The Arts Council: A Question of Values", p.95. ."crigg, "The Arts Council: A Question of Values", p.96. %ited in Crigg, The Arts Council: A Question of Values", p.96. "~ee-port and muntsof the Arts Co~ilof Great Bnrpin, 1950/51 - l959/6O. "1t is, of course, dificult to gauge who participated in group exhibitions. Many of the exhibition titles, however, are indicative of the type of art which they displayed. The period 1949/50, for example, included: "French Paintings of the Nineteenth Century", "Italian Influence on English Painting in the Eighteenth Century", "Folk Art of Poland" and "A Selection of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 1949". In particular, the latter was indicative of Council preferences: the Royal Academy was well-known as a showcase of apolitical, mediocre, and generally second-rate art. Off~cialarts patronage thus veered away fiom the divisive, the controversial, and the socially engaged. %igg, The Arts Council: A Question of Values", p. LOO. 'kg.solo or large exhibitions. See Arts Council of Great Britain, Annual Repaand Accow, "Exhibitions Held.,", 1945/46- 57 It is interesting to note that Barbara Ayrton Gould was actively involved in the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), a suffragette movement, fiom 19 12- 14. She was also Vice-Chair of the Labour Party in 1938. 'kharter of Incorporation, 1946. 59 1975- 1977. . . %ee-al Report md Accom of the Arts Coynçil of Great Bnlam , "CounciI", "Staff' and "Arts Panel" l945/46- 1980/81. %mnd 260 1, "A Policy for the Arts", paragraphs 83 and 88. Q~moid(Lord) Goodman, Not for the Record: Selected Speeches and Wnti~,*. (London: Andre Deutsch, 1972) p. 13 5. "~rid~es,The State and the Ar&, pp.3-4. %oodman, Not for the Record, p. 136. '%ce also Keith McClelland, "Rational and Respectable Men: Gender, the Working Class,and Citizenship in Britain, 1850-1867", pp. 280-293 and Anna Clark " Manhood, Womanhood, and the Politics of Class in Britain", pp.263-279 in Laura L. Frader and Sonya O. Rose (eds.), Gender and Chin Modem F-, (Ithaca: Corne11 University Press, 1996); and Anna Clark, "Gender, Class, and the Nation: .Franchise . Reform in England, 1 832- 1928" in James Vernon (ed.) Re-reuthe Con-, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp.230-253. "~eithMcClelland, "Masculinity and the 'Representative Artisan' in Britain, 1850-80" in John Tosh and Michael Roper (eds.) Manfuliom, (London: Routledge, 198 I), p. 82. 67~c~1elland,"Masculinity and the 'Representative Artisan'...", p.82. 68 Sally Alexander, "Women, Class and Sexual Differences in the 1830s and 1840s: Some Reflections on the Writing of a Feminist History", Histo- Workshop Journal, 17 (1 984), p. 146. 69~orilMoi, Sexualflextual. . Polit&, (London: Routledge, l988), pp.66-7. 7%oi, SexualiText~lPolitics , p.67. 71~oodman,Not for the Record, p. 140 n~oodrnan,Not for the,p. 140. "~oodman,Not for Record, p. 141. "~ee,for instance, Parker and Pollock, "Fifteen Years of Feminist Action" in Feminism, p.8. . - "~itedin metRiley : P-rawbs 195 1 -7 1, (London: The Arts Council of Great Britain, 197l), p.8. - 7"Bridget Riley, "The Hermaphrodite" in Thomas B. Hess and Elizabeth C. Baker, Art and -. 1 Sexual Politics: W-Jlrbedamen Artists. ando?, (New York: Collier Books, 1973), p-83. %ley, "The Hermaphrodite", p.83. 7 e New Statewand Nat on: The Week-end Review, 18 April, 1953. 7 ew Sta-d Nat on: The Weekepd Review, 18 Apnl, 1953. %iane Arbus was also show in exhibition by the Arts Council. Arbus, however, occupies a paradoxical space as an artist. Well known for her controversial subject matter - such as pictonal studies of fashion models and the insane - she was quite often conflated with the topics of her artistry and popularly referred to as a "fieak". The facts of her affluent childhood her marriages, and her sexuality equally gave her art import not for its aesthetic value, but for the fascination of the artist behind it. As Catherine Lord argues in her article "What Becomes a Legend Most: The Short, Sad Career of Diane Arbus" (1 989), Arbus' photography was not granted status or intrinsic worth apart from its creator. In the context set out by "Women and Arts Patronage in Postwar Britain", it can be argued that Arbus did not present a threat to established cultural discourse due to her position as an anomaly. In short, she was so far removed (and so far ridiculed) fiom conventional paradigrns of understanding that she did not pose a challenge to the figure of the "artist-as-male". 8 1J'he Ti- 3 1 July 1967. . * %ited in John Huston (ed.), JuieRie: A Survey of her J.ife and Wok,(London: Crafts Council, 198 I ), p.8. a3 Cited in Huston (ed), Lucie Rie: A Survey of wifeand Wo& p.30. 84~obertHutchinson, "Survey of Visual Artists - Their incornes and Expenditures and Attitudes to Arts Council Support", Arts Couil Research Rulieth (Number 4), (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1979, p.8. Chapter Four
1There were several exhibitions of British Women's painting derthe Second World War. In 1949, 1950, 195 1, and 1953, the Arts Council offered hancial assistance to a series of shows entitled "British Women Painters". These exhibitions, however, went unrecorded in newspapea and art journals. Moreover, they were not included in the yearly (written) surnrnaries which the Council itself provided in its AnnuW.At this time, they exia only as entries in Council financial records to account to the British public how money was spent in those years. The Hayward Annuai, therefore, remains the first largely publicised and political exhibition of women's art, and irnportantly, the fim to be entirely curated by women. 2~ollock,"Feminism and Modemism", p.79. 3~ecore of wornen artists and critics actively involved in the Women's Art Movement included: Catherine (Cate) Elwes, Gertrude Elias, Rose Finn-Kelcey, Rose Garrard, Margaret Harrison, Susan Hiller, Tina Keane, Mary Kelly, Sonia Knox, Jacqueline Morreau. Annabel Nicholson, Hannah O'Shea, Rozsika Parker, Griselda Pollock, SaIly Potter, Sarah Kent, and Lisa Tickner. 4Cited in Parker and Pollock, "Fifieen Years of Feminist Action", p. 4. 'The Artists' Union itself was fonned with the aim of seeking affiliation with the TUC. 6~itedin Parker and Pollock, "Fifteen Years of Ferninist Action", p.7. Mary Kelly was made chair of the organisation. Members included Su Madden, Alexis Hunter, Sonia Knox, Linda Price, Jane Low, Tina Keane, Kay Hunt and Margaret Harrison. During the mid-1970s, the Workshop in total was composed of about thirty-five active members out of the approximately seventy women involved. 7 Cited in Monica Sjoo, "Sorne thoughts about our .exhibition . of 'Womanpower: Women's Art' at the Swiss Cottage Library in -, p. 189. '~joo,"Some thoughts about Our exhibition of 'Womanpower ...."',p. 189. 9 Cited in Sjoo, "Some thoughts about our exhibition of 'Womanpower ..."', p. 189. . . 1?hi1 Goodall, "Feministo: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman" in Framine Feminism, p.206. 'kited in Rozsika Parker, "Feministo", Studio Intemtiod 193 (987), 1977, p. 182 12'T'he staging of this exhibition at the ICA was a significant event. Two years prior, Lucy Lippard curated a show entitled "CA. 7,500" - comprising the work of twenty-six American and European artists, which had previously been exhibited at galleries in the United States. It was denied, at the last minute, exhibition space in the Royal College of Art Gallery and was eventually staged at the Garage Gallery. "The Portrait of the Artist as a Housewife" at the ICA, a venue supported by a maintenance gant from the Arts Council (but not managed nor fully funded by the Council itself, unlike the Hayward Gallery), was thus a milestone. 13~ollock,Viu Difference, p. 168. 14cited in Harrison, 'Wotes on Feminist Art in Britain 1970-77", Studio Intemational, 193 (987), 1977, p.2 18. 15Lijn had first approached the Tate Gallery with the idea of an all-woman exhibition, but because it frequently exhibited shows of contemporary art which contained no women at al1 the project was deemed "infeasible". At the same tirne, however, the Arts Council was - contemplating patronage of an American tourhg exhibition entitled "Wornen Artists: 1550- 1950". Lijn suggested a complementary exhibit of British women's art; however, the American exhibition fell through, and Lijn's. -- plans were pre-empted. l6~orewardto J 977 byward -bition Ca- (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1977), p.3. 17Introduction to mon. .. Exhibition- pp.4-5 18~ucyLippard, "The Anatomy of an Annual" in mdMb (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1978), p. 1. Ig~ippard,"The Anatomy of an Annual", p.2. %ippard, 'The Anatomy of an Annual", p.2. The artists who organised the show adrnitted that, in the begiming, none of them were involved in the women's movement or had publicly declared themselves feminists, but that the experience of preparing the exhibition had changed their consciousness. 21 Lippard, "The Anatomy of an Annual", p.3. %ited in Lippard, "The Anatomy of an Annual", p.2. =~essJaray commented, tongue-in-cheek: "1 think we're fairer to the men than they were to US." 24 Hence emphasising the "undershown" aspect of HA II's selection credentials. The first Hayward Annual was actually criticised by the press for being "clannish" or an exhibition of well-known talent already seen rather than a review of new art. z~llnew narnes were followed up by slides and over sixty studio visits were made, mostly in the London area, though a few trips were made to the regions. 26~xhibitingartists were: Susan Beere, Sandm Blow, Parnela Burns, Marc Chaimowicz, Gillian Wise Ciobotam, Stephen Cox, Susan Derges, Rita Donagh, Julia Farrer, Elisabeth Frink, Steve Furlonger, Susan Hiller, Alexis Hunter, Edwina Leaprnann, Liliane Lijn, Mary Kelly, Leopalder Maler, Adrian Moms, Deanna Petherbridge, Terry Pope, Michael Sandle, Tess Jaray, and Wendy Taylor. risel el da Pollock, "Feminism, Femininity and the Hayward Annual Exhibition 1978". in -, p. 167. 28~ollo~k,"Feminism, Femininity and the Hayward Annual Exhibition 1W8", p. 167. 29J?veninPStandard, 8 August, 1978. ?olIock, "Feminism, Femininity and the Hayward Annual 1978", p. 167. 31~o110ck,"Feminism, Femininity and the Hayward Annual 1W8", p. 168. 32~ilianeLijn adrnitted in an interview: "We weren't part of a feminist group, but doing this has made us one." The,20 August, 1978. "~ollock, "Feminism, Femininity and the Hayward Annual 1W8", p. 170. Y~rt~~ribe,Number 14, 1978. 35~ercomment - "So perhaps the decision to include some men in the show was as much intended to cut the sarneness of the work as to be open-minded about gender." -- suggests that the selectors are aware of the shortcornings of women's work. 36,4rts~ribe,Number 14, 1978. 37~~ribe9 Number 14, 1978. 38~rtscribg9Number 14, 1978. 398ascribc, Number 14, 1978. -d Oue~,September 1978. "WSeptember 1978. 42mrsUueen, September 1978. 43wOueea September 1978. @-_~ueen, Septembcr 1978. crence Mo& 2 October, 1978. cience MonU. 2 October, 1978. cience Monito~2 October, 1978. Q~iltonwas a co-organiser of the Third Hayward Annual. 4kilton, admittedly, also criticised the male components of the Second Hayward Annual. He did not believe that Adrian Moms' paintings should be on the walfs of the gallery, while Michael Sandle's work was characterised as "non-sculpwd"' However, his anti-femin ist stance was secured by his overt comments. lement, 25 August, 1978. ad exhibited as a painter.
e Soectator, 9 September, 1978. "~he~DectatQL 9 September, 1978. *%e Spectatop 9 September, 1978. n~eSggcta~. 9 September, 1978. 58The Ti- 24 August, 1978. My italics. 5gT he Times, 24 August, 1978. "punch, 6 Septernber, 1978. 6 1Punch. 6 September, 1978. 62Punch, 6 September, 1978. 63Pollock, "Feminism, Femininity and the Hayward Annual Exhibition", p. 178. 64 See, for instance, Kenneth Clark, Nude: A StuBy in Ideal Fom. (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1956). 65~ollock,"Feminisrn, Femininity and the Hayward Annual Exhibition", p. 180. Chapter Five
'~arkerand Pollock, "Fifteen Years of Ferninia Action", p.44. '~itedin Parker and Pollock, "Fifieen Years of Feminist Action", p.44. 3~ohnRoberts, "Painting and Sexual Difference", Parachute 55 (1989), p.26. 4Cited in Parker and Pollock, "Fifieen Years of Feminist Action", p.5. '~arkerand Pollock, "Fifteen Years of Feminist Action", p.5. 6Parker and Pollock, "Fifieen Years of Feminist Action", p.45. 7Parker and Pollock, "Fifteen Years of Feminist Action", p.45. '~arkerand Pollock, "Fifteen Years of Feminist Action", p.45. %lochlin, "Women Artists in the 20th Century...", p. 165. 1(hochlin, "Women Artists in the 20th Century...", p.165. IINochlin, "Women Artists in the 20th Century ...", p. 165. Parker and Pollock equally argue: "A good indication of the pluralisrn of the women's art movement is that while some women were exploring the possibilities of the figurative tradition and imagery drawn fiom goddess cults and rnythology, othen were pursuing their feminism within the contemporary political struggles such as the Artists' Union." "Fifteen Years of Feminist Action", p.7 12 Janet Wolff, -e . . SentsdCuand, (Berkeleykos Angeles: University of. Califomia . Press, 1990), p.67. l3~olff, Fem iwe Sent- p.69. 14wolff, me. . Sentences , p.70. 15Pollock, "Feminism and Modernism", p. 80. '6Pollock, "Feminism and Modernism", p.80. 17 Pollock, "Feminisrn and Modernism", p.87. '"arker and Pollock, "Fifieen Years of Feminist Action", p.46. 19 Parker and Pollock, "Fifteen Years of Feminist Action", p.46. "~ited. . in Caryn Faure Walker, 6cstgy. Ec-y. Ecstasy. She said* Wuen's Art in ntain: a Partial View, (Manchester: Cornerhouse, 1994), p.22. This metaphor compares the Labour Party's intemal divisions in the early 1980s to the pluralistic strife experienced at the 1980 art conferences. Between 1979 and 1983, the Labour Party was deeply split between the Labour left and nght over political, institutional, and ideological differences. At the 1980 Party conference in Blackpool the issue of cornpulsory reselection - a mandate which declared no Labour MPs would have an automatic nght to remain as Labour representatives beyond the life of one parliament - was particularly divisive. "~itedin Faure Walker, F-~cstasv.&~ p.23. P~sAnna Clark has argued: "For those of us concemed with gender and class ...the problem remains of how to link the elegant postmodernist play with language to the grubby historical questions of power". ("Comment: Gender History/Womenis History: 1s Feminist Scholarship Losing its Critical Edge?" Joudof wn1.s H~story ,5(1) 1993, p.115. %aig Owens, "The Discourse of Othea: Feminists and Postmodernism" in Hal Foster (ed.) c: Essavs on Postmodem Cul- (Seattle: Bay Press, 1983), p.58. 24~aryKelly, "~e-viewingModemist Criticisrn" in Mary Kelly Imanine De (CambridgeLondon: MIT Press, 1W6), p.82. %elly, "Re-viewing Modernist Criticisrn", p.82. -- 26Pollock, "Feminism and Modernism", p. 102-03. risel el da Pollock, "Painting, Feminism, History" in Michèle Barrett and Anne Phillips S. . . . (eds.), Qesrabiliunp Theory : Coritemporary Fe- Debates, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), p. 16 1. B~ollock,"Painting, Feminism, History", p. 16 1-62. 29~thas been argued, however, that many women were able to present a "feminist" perspective despite their adoption of masculine forms. See, for instance, Gnselda Pollock, "Modernity and. . the Spaces of Femininity" in Pollock, Vision and Differencb pp.50-90. Wolff', meSentences, p.87. . - If* - 3'~eniseRiley, "Am 1 That Name.7". . Fermrusmgnd the Cataorv of "Women in History, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), pp. 1-2. "~wens,"The Discoune of Othea2, p.6 1. "~wens,"The Discourse of Othen-2, p.59. "~ee,"Resisting Amnesia...", p.6. 35~ee,"Resisting Amnesia...", p. 18. 'Tee, "Resisting Arnnesia ...", p. 19. n~ee,"Resisting Amnesia ...",p. 1 8- 19. '*Lee, "Resisting Amnesia...", p.25. "~oberts, "Painting and Sexual Difference...", p.26. %oberts, "Painting and Sexual Difference...", p.26.
41~oberts,"Painting and Sexual Difference ...If, p.29. 42 Roberts, "Painting and Sexual Difference-2, p.29. "~obe~ts,"Painting and Sexual Difference...", p.30. S.. . . 44 Griselda Pollock, Viwand Difference: F-itv. Feminism adthe Histories of Art, (London: Routledge, 1988), p. 163. 45~ollock,Vision and Difference p. 163. %ee, for instance, "Modemity and the Spaces of Femininity" in Pollock, Vision ad ifference, pp.50-90. 47 Pollock places Mary Kelly's Post-Pmtum Document in this context. A representation of issues conceming motherhood and childcare -- more specifically, the relation of a mother to her child - this work examines both how infants becorne subjects of and to their culture, and also, the identity of "woman" through her over-determined association with materna1 concepts. Although the major theoretical framework of this work is Lacanian, Pollock argues that its representational strategies are Brechtian. Scripto-visual devices, such as written reports, diaries and commentaries, photographs, as well as audio-effects create the six-part, 135-unit Post-Pmtwn Document. This montage was organised by Kelly as a site of engagement, reflection, and interrogation: the concepts of "mother" and "child" are intended to be reconstituted by the spectator. This process is effected through the inability of the viewer to associate his or her ideas of motherhood with concrete images of women or children. Kelly's work offers no human representations. Thus the understandings of "motherhood" and "childhood" which result are not the product of a passive consumption of images: "The rnother and child relation and its social and psychic interplay cannot be pictured for it is a process, like the drearn or fantasy of which we can have knowledge only through its traces, its coded signs." (p. 170) In this way, the physical presence of woman - as fetishised by modem western art -- is replaced by another order of "presences" or "traces" which require the spectator's active assembly. These phenomena represent an active intervention in feminist politics through their reversal of conventional roles: in Kelly's work the woman has the capacity to fetishise. The role of the child in Post-Pmtum Document is "fetish object". Customarily the temtory of men, Kelly offers women agency through the ability to scrutinise their loss/lack: the child. In this way, specifically ferninine fantasies and female desires gain currency in the active production of women's art. P ost-Pmmm Document thus confronts the underlying rnechanisms which produce sexual discourses or sexual difference. "Distanciated" from the passive consurnption of ideology or the voyeuristic exploitation of visual images of women, the viewer is asked to detemine (intellectually) a new understanding of motherhood and femininity. This realist approach - initiated through the active creation of meaning rather than unconscious consumption - attempts to displace the formulation of ideology by making strange or defamiliarizing the construction of subjectivity. The Brechtian mode1 proposes strategic artistic practices which do not operate fiom some imagined point outside dominant culture: it seeks to contes hegemony through intervention in the "real" temitories of production and consumption The struggle, therefore, is placed firmly on the ground of representation, and therefore becomes both critical and political. "~aureWalker, EE-., p.28. 49~nseldaPo 1lock, "Politics of nieory: Generations and Geognphies Feminist Theory and the Histories of Art Histories", Genders 17 (1993), p. 98. ~ollock"Politics of Theory...", p. 100. 5t Parker and Pollock, "Fifteen Years of Feminist Action", p.35. %is refes to the Arts Council of England. The Arts Council of Great Britain was dissolved in 1994, when its responsibiiities were transferred to three new bodies: the Arts Council of England, the Arts Council of Wales, and the Scottish Arts Council (the Arts Council of Northem Ireland was already established as a separate body). The Arts Council of England is responsible for continuing the work of the Arts Council of Great Britain, and is directly accountable to the Secretary of State for National Heritage. 53~rtsCouncil of England, Womn in Arts Action Ph,(London: Arts Council of England, 1994). %AN Access Unit (With Naseem Khan and Professor Chris Mullard), Arts Access Overview: National Arts and Media Strategy Discussion Document, (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 199l), p. 1 5sArts Access Unit, Arts Accw Overview, p. 2. 56 Arts Access Unit, Arts Access Overview, p.3. %ris Access Unit, Arts Access Overview, p. 2. S8"~ntroduction",Women in the Arts : Natior)al Arts and Media SmDiscussion Documm Hilary Robinson, Alex Ankrah, and Phyllida Shaw (eds.), (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 199l), p. 1. 5%' Introduction", Wcimin the Ar&, p. 1 1. mit Introductiontt, -, p. 12. 6lw n in the Arts: Not um Re~ort),(London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1993), p. 1. 62 on Ph. (my italics) APPENDICES
Appendix 1. Figure 1
Parliamentam Grant-in-Aid to the Arts Council of Great Britain. 1945-1981 Appendix II, Figure 1
Arts Council of Great Britain: Ratio of Males to Fernales on Council, Visuai Arts Panells) and Staff (Includinn Panel su b-committees where a~~iicabie)
Males on Females on Maies on Visna1 Females on Visual Males on Fernales on -Council -Council Arts PaneHs) Arts Panel(s1 Staff Staff Appendix II, Figure 2
Arts Council Awards To Visuai Artkts: 1966/67-I980181
Men Women Total 19 4 23 25 2 27 18 O 18 14 8 22 55 3 58 83 12 95 97 19 116 145 28 173 135 29 144 16 1 27 188 159 39 198 187 28 115 63 13 76 22 11 33 24 3 27 .Arts Council 1 Awards To Visual Artists: 1966167- i
1980/81 Men 1 I =Arts Council i Awards To Visual 1 Artists: 1966/67- i 1980/81 Women j
O Arts Çouncil O Awards To Visual I Artists: 1966167- i 1980/81 Total i Appendix 11. Figure 3
Arts CounciI: One-Person Exhibitions Between 1945146 and l98OBl (Paintinps, Drawings, and Sculpture: Photography)
Men Women 4 O 5 1 (Gwen John) II 1 (Gwen John, cont'd) 12 1 (Frances Hodgkins ) 12 O 8 1 (Berthe Morisot) Il O 12 3 (Frances Hodgkins, Ethel Walker. and Gwen John) 1O O 14 O Il O 8 O 1 O O 9 O 8 O 14 O 10 1 ~PrunetlaClouph) 1O O II 1 (Vanessa Bell) 10 3 (Vanessa Bell con't, Jane Drew, Joan Eardley ) 14 1 (Jane Drew con't) 14 1 (Lee Krasner) 1O 3 (Gwen John. Kathe Kollwitz. Lucie Rie) 14 1 (Gwen John con't) 9 1 (Barbara Hepworth) 12 1 (Barbara Hepworth con't) II 2 (Barbara Hepworth. Bridpet RiIey) 6 1 (Lady Hamilton) 8 2 (Bridget Riley, Diane Arbus) 16 I (Diane Arbus con't) 17 O 23 2 (Prunella Clough. Agnes Martin) 22 2 (Agnes Martin con't. Rita Donagh) 34 1 (Sonia Delaunay) 3 1 2 (Sonia Delaunay con't, Bridget Riley) 28 1 (Sonia Delaunay con't, Bridget Riley) Appendix III. Figure 1
Selections from Myy KellyesPosr-Parrum Document (1974-79)
Copyright: Mary Kelly. Pm-Partum Document (London: Rourledge and Kegan Paul. 1983)
From Introducrion From Documentation Ir: Analysed Utterances and Rekted Speech Evenrs From Documenratwn IV: Trunsiriunal Objects, Diary. and Diagrarn Party Papers
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Artscri be
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Hamers and Oueen
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The Times
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