Women Artists in the Circles of the Vienna Secession

Julie M. Johnson. The Memory Factory: The Forgotten Women Artists of Vienna 1900. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2012. 368 pp. $35.00, paper, ISBN 978-1-55753-613-6. Reviewed by Megan Brandow-Faller Published on HABSBURG (November, 2012) Commissioned by Jonathan Kwan (University of Nottingham) In 1916, when surmising the perils of sepa‐ lump women artists into an aesthetic “room of rate women’s art institutions, an anonymous re‐ their own,” seeking explanations for women viewer for one of Austria’s leading feminist peri‐ artists’ canonical exclusion in “a new center ... odicals quipped that “the best success that one whose themes have not always ft into the domi‐ might wish of them [separate women’s art exhibi‐ nant narrative structures of art history” (p. 111). tions] is that they might no longer be neces‐ Such an approach, Johnson maintains, is not use‐ sary.”[1] Julie Johnson’s important and meticu‐ ful, for the art historical “mothers” that she spot‐ lously researched study of women artists in Vien‐ lights were leading practitioners of the dominant nese modernism lends support to the idea that strategies of modernism. Indeed, painters like corrective exhibitions, institutions, and mono‐ Funke and Koller often transmitted French graphs serve to ghettoize women artists from the postimpressionistic influences ahead of their art historical canon.[1] The Memory Factory fies male colleagues, in a more purely autonomous in the face of feminist art historical inquiries manner than Gustav Klimt and other allegorical stressing women’s difference and embeddedness painters, while exemplifying the Vienna mod‐ within separate institutions to argue that “women ernists’ interest in psychological interiority and artists were not part of a separate sphere, but in‐ nascent abstraction in the decorative. Johnson tegrated into the art exhibitionary complex of Vi‐ considers these artists’ erasure from the art his‐ enna” (pp. 4-5). Drawing case studies from fve torical record highly jarring given that their life highly successful women painters and sculptors and work embodied textbook examples of misun‐ closely connected to the Vienna Secession (Tina derstood modernist forerunners: i.e., stylistic in‐ Blau, Elena Luksch-Makowsky, Broncia Koller, He‐ novation, run-ins with conservative authorities, lene Funke, and Teresa Feodorowna Ries), John‐ as well as acclaim abroad in advance of recogni‐ son refutes the historiographical tendency to tion at home (for instance, the “skying” of Tina H-Net Reviews Blau’s masterful Spring in the Prater at the Austri‐ women’s pasts” or promoted false notions that an Artists’ Guild in 1882). Similarly, Johnson women could not exhibit publicly whatsoever, shows how artistic personalities like famboyant represents an important corrective, if only the tip Russian sculptor Teresa Ries created more than of the historiographical iceberg (p. 3). Carl one succès de scandale, for instance the well- Schorske’s classic Fin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics known anecdote of how her delightfully provoca‐ and Culture attributed an eforescence of modern tive life-size marble sculpture of a witch sharpen‐ art, culture, and literature to the disillusioned ing her toenails before the Sabbath attracted com‐ sons of liberalism who found meaning in an aes‐ ment from conservative emperor Franz Joseph. thetic Gefühlskultur.[2] For Schorske and his fol‐ Today, however, Ries’s works remains buried in lowers, the heroic trio of Klimt-Schiele-Kokoschka the basement of the Vienna City Museum Depot: a exemplified a generational struggle that exploded poignant comment on the necessity of active in Klimt’s famous “walk out” from the conserva‐ scholarly intervention to combat the invisibility of tive Austrian Artists Guild to found the Vienna Se‐ women artists’ works. Johnson rightly argues that cession (1897): an artists’ union dedicated to the Jewish women (including Ries) were strongly rep‐ philosophy of Ver Sacrum, the idea of art as a sa‐ resented in Viennese women’s art institutions and cred spring to rejuvenate modern life. Building on this book serves to remind the reader that fn-de- the pioneering studies of Sabine Plakolm-Forsthu‐ siècle Vienna is not a safe historical landscape di‐ ber, Johnson’s book is among the frst English-lan‐ vorced from the exigencies of two world wars and guage works on women artists in the circles of the the Anschluß. On the contrary, as the author’s f‐ Vienna Secession.[3] nal chapter on the post-1938 erasure of these Yet Johnson casts her net more broadly than artists’ lives and legacies, Vienna 1900 is much merely speaking to scholars interested in Vienna. more caught up in the “unfinished business” of The author rethinks the idea that women artists the Holocaust than scholars have previously as‐ were not active participants in shaping interna‐ sumed. tional Modernism as defined by Clement Green‐ Historiographically and theoretically, the berg: the famous genealogy of an increasingly ab‐ Memory Factory is ambitious and complex, as evi‐ stract and autonomous art beginning with dent in the book’s richly documented endnotes. Édouard Manet (one of the frst painters to privi‐ The author draws more from the arsenal of mem‐ lege the painted surface of the canvas over natu‐ ory and Vergangenheitsbewältigung studies than ralistic illusion) progressing through the postim‐ traditional feminist art historical inquiry. In so do‐ pressionists, down to Jackson Pollock and the he‐ ing, Johnson privileges not only formal visual roes of abstract impressionism. To begin with, as analysis, which indeed she does masterfully (on a Johnson duly notes, Greenberg’s Franco-centric par with the sort of analysis pioneered by Grisel‐ definition of Modernism does not ft the Central da Pollock, Linda Nochlin, and Norma Broude in European (particularly Viennese) context, which studying nineteenth-century French painting), but tended to retain narrative elements and the deco‐ she also offers contextualized readings of non-vis‐ rative: a form of “nascent abstraction [which] ual sources such as feuilletons, artist biographies, came to be seen as the opposite of Modernism” and humorous texts. precisely because of its frilly feminine connota‐ Making women artists visible in the post- tions (p. 11). Here, Viennese architect and cultural Schorske dialogue on Viennese modernism, a critic Adolf Loos’s famous dictum that “Wherever body of literature which has, according to the au‐ I abuse the everyday-use-object by ornamenting thor, “inadvertently reinforced the silencing of it, I shorten its life span…. Only the whim and am‐ bition of women can be responsible for the mur‐ 2 H-Net Reviews der of such material” comes to mind.[4] Johnson’s artists, an issue only compounded by the destruc‐ point is not only that Viennese modernism dif‐ tion of works and sources during the world wars. fered from the cookie-cutter variety, but that im‐ Structurally, the book is divided into three posing Franco-centric definitions of Modernism parts. The frst fve chapters spotlight successful on Vienna likewise marginalizes women’s partici‐ women artists, highlighting their public exhibi‐ pation in a distinct brand of modernism, never as tionary records and history of their posthumous autonomous or self-critical of its medium as erasure from the limelight, which Johnson frames Greenberg would have liked. In this regard, John‐ in terms of their exclusion from paternalistic son provides rich case studies of international mythologies of father-son plots. The shorter sec‐ Modernism’s cross-fertilization with the “home‐ ond section (chapters 5 and 6) offers a brief look grown” Viennese variety. For example, the still- at women’s art institutions, focusing on the criti‐ life represented a particular forte for expression‐ cal reception of Association of Austrian Women ist painter Helene Funke, paralleling the Fauves’ Artist’s 1910 “Art of the Woman,” a landmark his‐ and Cubists’ enthusiasm for this genre, whereas it torical retrospective of women artists’ works tended to be neglected by other Austro-German which dwarfed Nochlin and Ann Sutherland-Har‐ expressionists. Broncia Koller’s work, moreover, ris’s more famous 1977 retrospective. Finally, the shows the local penchant for combining fgural‐ last chapter, “1900-1938: Erasure,” takes strides to ism with stylized surface decoration, mediated retrieve Vienna 1900 from a historiographical no- through references to Fauvism and postimpres‐ man’s-land distant from the mid-century cata‐ sionism. clysms, to trace the stories of women artists in ex‐ A broader critique in Johnson’s work is how ile and under National Socialist persecution. the seemingly straightforward story of modern Chapters 1, 4, and 6, previously published in arti‐ art presented in the “white cube” space of muse‐ cle form, will be familiar to readers already ac‐ ums has only served to reify both the “band of quainted with Johnson’s work, as is the influence brothers” modernist myth and its omission of of her work on humor. Yet these chapters have women. As Johnson correctly insists, “[t]oo often, been significantly modified and read seamlessly the work is expected to rise to the surface on its within the context of the book. It should be em‐ own, but curators (and art dealers) who serve as phasized, however, that the de facto inclusion of the gatekeepers of art museums and gallery spa‐ women artists that the author stresses was entire‐ ces have rarely acknowledged that the space itself ly informal. Officially women remained barred can enhance or alter the work of art itself” (p. 13). from membership in the male artists’ leagues and In a scathing yet justified critique of an interview lacked rights to sit on jury or hanging commis‐ with curator Kirk Varnadoe, in which issues of sions; were disadvantaged in being able to com‐ quality and stylistic innovation were insinuated, pete for scholarships and state prizes (due to the Johnson pointed the fnger at MoMA’s complete timing of separate women’s exhibitions); and exclusion of women artists in its 1986 rendition of fought a long and bitter battle to gain admission the “Vienna 1900” show.

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