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 infuences 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 diference 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 exemplifed 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 “unfnished 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 defned 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‐ defnition 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 ofers 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 defnitions 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) ofers 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 infuence 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 signifcantly modifed 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. Ofcially 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 justifed 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. Sadly, suggesting that the to the Academy of Fine Arts (1920/21). The major “necessary evil” of corrective studies is still im‐ exception, as Johnson rightly highlights, was the perative, far too little has changed since 1986, as I Klimt Group’s progressive attitudes towards in‐ argued in reviewing the Neue Galerie’s 2011 “Vi‐ cluding the art of women--and even children (for enna 1900: Style and Identity” show. Clearly, the example, Franz Cizek’s infuential Jugendkun‐ issue is not quality but, as Johnson accurately sur‐ stkursen at the School of Applied Arts)--in its exhi‐ mises, a lack of active scholarly and institutional bitions. intervention in preserving the memory of women
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Johnson hits her stride in the formal visual Blau consciously avoided connecting her work to analysis in chapter 1 (“Writing, Erasing, Silencing: negative stereotypes (copying, impressionability, Tina Blau and the (Woman) Artist’s Biography”), fashionability) surrounding the feminine in art. chapter 3 (“Broncia Koller and Interiority in Pub‐ Johnson’s further chapters masterfully com‐ lic Art Exhibitions”), and chapter 5 (“Teresa Ries pare the output of once-prominent women artists in the Memory Factory”), which rank as the book’s to the works of their male colleagues, likewise strongest. Johnson uses the example of Austrian showing (as in the case of Blau) that women impressionist Tina Blau (1845-1916), well known artists often served as stylistic transmitters, dis‐ in German-language publications and exhibitions seminating the latest developments in French yet unfamiliar to English-language audiences, to postimpressionism among the Viennese mod‐ lay the foundations of her argument that the Vien‐ ernists. The chapters on Broncia Koller and ex‐ na Secession’s construction of identity was self- pressionist Helene Funke make excellent cases in serving and paternalistic. Blau possessed all the point, although a paucity of surviving biographi‐ qualities one might hope for in a modernist fore‐ cal sources on Funke makes her portrayal slightly bear: the stylistic innovation found in her brush‐ less meaty than the others. Johnson’s chapter on work capturing the transitory qualities of light Koller, a Jewish painter siding with the progres‐ and color; her confrontations with conservative sive Klimt Group after it seceded from the Vienna authorities; and her early success abroad. Blau’s Secession in 1905 and who was inaccurately most famous canvas, Spring at the Prater, now memorialized as a “painting housewife” due to hanging prominently at the Austrian Gallery her interest in interiority and active role as pa‐ Belvedere, proves her point well. Almost rejected tron, demonstrates the author’s analysis at its and then skyed at the 1882 Künstlerhaus exhibi‐ most original. In a manner reminiscent of femi‐ tion for its daring impressionism and profusion of nist interpretations of nineteenth-century French light, only the comments of the French minister of impressionism, in which feminist art historians fne arts salvaged the picture from oblivion, to be traced stylistic points of similarity and departure eventually purchased for the imperial collections. among male and female artists, Johnson inge‐ Overall, Johnson makes a convincing case that niously traces Koller’s infuence on younger Blau was selectively excluded from the Viennese artists, including Egon Schiele and Erwin Lang. modernist ancestor cult because male Secession‐ For instance, while Schiele’s Portrait of the ists could not swallow the idea of an “Old Mis‐ Painter Hans Massmann (1909) has typically been tress” as their artistic foremother, writing that read as nodding to Klimt’s Portrait of Frietza “the Secessionists … never fgured themselves as Riedler (1908), Johnson’s side-by-side comparison wrestling with or being heirs to mothers” (p. 29). posits a close connection to Koller’s My Mother Worse, Blau has often been mistakenly character‐ (1907), unveiled at the 1908 Kunstschau exhibi‐ ized as the student, rather than colleague, of Emil tion, in its staging and stylized background. Simi‐ Jakob Schindler, the landscape painter with lar arguments are made regarding Koller’s role in whom she shared studio space at the Prater. The transmitting Van Gogh-esque infuences to a fact that Blau was doubly Other in fn-de-siècle Vi‐ younger generation of modernists. Ironically, enna, that is, as Woman and Jew, further prob‐ Koller’s work was more “Modern” (according to lematized matters, particularly after the Austrian Greenberg’s defnition of painting as a self-critical institutions, including the Women’s Academy that autonomous medium) than that of her male col‐ she co-founded, were co-opted by National Social‐ leagues. Yet, unlike traditional feminist inquiry ists. Johnson argues that during her own lifetime, (for instance Linda Nochlin’s famous re-reading of as a successful public artist fetching high prices, images of leisure and work through the author‐
4 H-Net Reviews ship of Morisot’s brush), Johnson stresses that Woman” exhibition to Nochlin and Sutherland “fnding a new aesthetic or center is hardly neces‐ Harris’s better-known 1977 retrospective, the au‐ sary” for Koller because her work refected thor’s dismissal of the possibility of a feminine themes of psychological interiority, long acknowl‐ aesthetic obscures further parallels between the edged by the Schorske school as an important leit‐ early twentieth-century Austrian and 1970s Amer‐ motif of Viennese modernism (p. 112). Nonethe‐ ican feminist movements in the arts. Applied less, it is unclear which defnition of modernism/ artist and designer Fanny Harlfnger-Zakucka Modernism Johnson ultimately privileges here-- provocatively raised the notion of a separate femi‐ the more homegrown Viennese variety or the in‐ nine aesthetic in founding the Wiener Frauenkun‐ ternational variant. Ultimately, Johnson uses the st in 1926, a radical ofshoot from the Association example of Koller to show how women artists particularly emphasizing women’s connection to were integrated into mainstream male institu‐ the decorative, applied arts, and the importance tions, their works infuencing and infuenced by of Raumkunst, boldly declaring that “we are of their male colleagues; and, moreover, in Koller’s the opinion that works made by women’s hands case, serving as an organizational mediator after bear the stamp of their female origins in and of the postwar fssure of the Viennese institutional themselves.”[5] While it is clear that the “Art of landscape. Likewise playing a leading role in Vi‐ the Woman” garnered misogynistic critical reac‐ ennese Raumkunst (spatial or installation art) was tions which associated women’s art with copying, applied artist and sculptor Elena Luksch- superfciality, and mere ornamentation, what was Makowsky, a frequent exhibitor at the Vienna Se‐ ingenious about interwar Austria’s female Seces‐ cession and fellow participant in the 1908 Kun‐ sion’s reaction to such criticism was the way in stschau. which it reclaimed the discursive territory sur‐ In the second section (chapter 6, “Women as rounding Frauenkunst and women’s connection Public Artists in the Institutional Landscape,” and to the decorative--and hurled such stereotypes chapter 7, “The Ephemeral Museum of Women back in the face of their critics in a series of Artists”) Johnson unfortunately closes and opens provocative public exhibitions in the 1920s and the book on separate women’s art institutions all 1930s focused around Raumkunst. Moreover, giv‐ too quickly. She limits her discussion of Austrian en that the lady curators of the 1910 “Art of the women’s artist leagues to the prewar period, fo‐ Woman” show were notably silent on the subject cusing largely on feuiletonistic reactions to the As‐ of female subjectivity, it is somewhat unclear how sociation’s landmark 1910 “Art of the Woman” Johnson concludes that “the women did not want show, implying that the leagues ran out of cre‐ to create a separatist manifesto or credo” (p. 298). ative gas after World War I. However, it was only Overall, perhaps it would have been useful to po‐ in the interwar period that Austria’s women’s art sition the chapters on women’s art institutions at movement reached its institutional zenith, pro‐ the beginning of the work, for if women artists pelled by the institutional parity achieved by Vi‐ were as fully integrated into mainstream artistic enna’s Frauenakademie in 1919 and the founding life as Johnson’s case studies would have us be‐ of a “female Secession,” which mirrored earlier lieve, then this begs the question of why separate disagreements about the value of the applied and institutions were even necessary. Was the Min‐ fne arts (for example, the role of Raumkunst, or istry of Education’s support of such leagues a red installation art, which had provoked a rift be‐ herring, that is, a measure ultimately designed to tween the Klimt Group and rump-Secession at the cloister women at separate institutions, or did it end of its “heroic” period). Moreover, while John‐ fully support gender mainstreaming? Why, if the son cleverly compares the Association’s “Art of the misogynist criticism engendered by “Art of the
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Woman” was as vehement as Johnson demon‐ terwar years, the sort of inventive, avant-garde strates, does the author seem to imply that wom‐ Kunstgewerbeweiber satirized in Joseph Roth’s en’s collectives were less dynamic than the artistic Emperor’s Tomb achieved a certain expressivity boys’ clubs that excluded them? Clearly, while in the context of functional objects, undermining Johnson is correct in countering false notions that the notion that “to be ‘high’ and ‘fne’ both women women artists lacked the opportunity to exhibit and art should be beautiful, but not useful or their works publicly altogether, it is also true that functional” (as Patricia Mainardi argued in the women artists could not become regular mem‐ context of American quilts).[7] bers (with voting and jury rights) of the “Big All in all, The Memory Factory constitutes a Three” exhibition leagues until after World War tremendous breakthrough on women artists in Vi‐ II. Thus, underlining the importance of creative enna 1900, rethinking many of the dominant par‐ partnerships to Viennese modernism, most wom‐ adigms of feminist inquiry and reframing the ear‐ en who exhibited at the Secession could only do ly twentieth century as “hardly a monolithic cul‐ so, to use Sabine Plakolm-Forsthuber’s phrase, un‐ ture of repression” (p. 14). It is as rich in docu‐ der a sort of “male protectionism” (through a con‐ mentation as it is in theory and secondary litera‐ nection to male relatives who were members). ture, and raises many new questions not only rel‐ While cleverly borrowing Kutman Atalug’s theo‐ evant to studies of Viennese modernism, but ries on identity and race, Johnson maintains that scholars interested in women art’s institutions sociocultural constructions of gender can indeed more broadly. be described as a jacket, manufactured by others, Notes which one wears or not; some Austrian women artists put on this jacket more often than Johnson [1]. Throughout the review “Modernism” is comfortable admitting. Even “Old Mistress” refers to the version of international Modernism Tina Blau was not immune to perceptions that her as defned by Clement Greenberg, stressing the in‐ paintings of the Prater refected a certain female creasingly autonomous (i.e., abstract) nature of subjectivity (at least as her colleague Richard modern painting, whereas “modernism” refers to Kaufungen at the Women’s Academy interpreted the Viennese home-grown variant of these de‐ them). bates. Such issues raised by The Memory Factory [2]. “VII. Ausstellung der Vereinigung bilden‐ will surely stimulate lively scholarly dialogues. It der Künstlerinnen Österreichs,” Der Bund 12, no. is to be hoped that further studies like this will 2 (February 1917): 14. highlight women’s contributions to the feld of [3]. Since the publication of Schorske’s com‐ early-twentieth-century applied arts, as well as pelling essays, scholars have revised and expand‐ the educational backdrop underlying these devel‐ ed aspects of the his “failure of liberalism” para‐ opments. Johnson is dead-on when she calls the digm, pointing to Schorske’s neglect of imperial separation of the decorative from the abstract one patronage, the particularly Jewish character of Vi‐ of Modernism’s “biggest blind spots,” an observa‐ ennese modernism, and women’s contributions as tion equally relevant to female handicraft tradi‐ artists and muses. See James Shedel, Art and Soci‐ tion reclaimed by feminist activists (both in inter‐ ety: The New Art Movement in Vienna 1897-1914 war Vienna and the better-known American femi‐ (Palo Alto: Society for the Promotion of Science, nist art movement of the 1970s). Here, given 1981); Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin, Wittgen‐ stereotypes of female “craftiness” and domesticity stein's Vienna (New York: Simon and Schuster, Viennese critics viewed women as particularly “at 1973); Steven Beller, Vienna and the Jews: A Cul‐ home” in the applied arts. Indeed, during the in‐ tural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University
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Press, 1989); and Emil Brix and Lisa Fischer, Die Frauen der Wiener Moderne (Munich: Olden‐ bourg, 1997). [4]. The author of numerous book chapters and articles on women artists, Plakolm-Forsthu‐ ber is best known for Künstlerinnen in Österreich, 1897-1938 (Vienna: Picus, 1994). [5]. Adolf Loos, “Ornament und Erziehung,” in Trotzdem: Gesammelte Schriften (Vienna: Prachn‐ er, 1997), 177. [6]. Preface to the catalogue of the Verband bildender Künstlerinnen und Kunsthandwerk‐ erinnnen exhibit, Wiener Frauenkunst, in Wie Sieht die Frau? May 17-June 29 1930 (Wien: Jaho‐ da & Siegel), 7. [7]. Patricia Mainardi, “Quilts: The Great American Art,” Feminism and Art History , ed. Norma Broude and Mary Garrard (New York: Harper and Row, 1982), 344.
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Citation: Megan Brandow-Faller. Review of Johnson, Julie M. The Memory Factory: The Forgotten Women Artists of Vienna 1900. HABSBURG, H-Net Reviews. November, 2012.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=36900
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