Women and Arts Patronage in Postwar Lucy Curzon Submitted In
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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 O Copyright by Lucy Curzon. 1997 National Library Bibliothèque nationale 1+1 ofCanada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographic Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395. rue Wellington OttawaON K1AW OttawaON K1A ON4 Canada Canada The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accorde une Licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant à la National Lïbrary of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or sel reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microfonn, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/nlm, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur consewe la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fkom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimes reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. Contents 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