Full Description
Suffrage and the Arts re-establishes the central role that artistic women and men—from jewellers, portrait painters, embroiderers, through to retailers of 'artistic' products—played in the suffrage campaign in the British Isles. As political individuals, they were foot soldiers who helped sustain the momentum of the movement and as designers, makers and sellers they spread the message of the campaign to new local, national and international audiences, mediating how suffrage activism was understood by society at large. This edited collection offers a range of new perspectives and readings of the outpouring of creative responses to the campaign.
Contributors, who include historians, art historians, curators, museum professionals and suffrage experts, call upon the historiographical developments of the last thirty years, alongside new archival discoveries, to showcase the vibrancy of ongoing research in this area. Throughout, chapters investigate the wider socio-cultural backdrop to suffrage and the women's movement, the difficult choices that were made between professional, artistic aspirations and political commitment, and how institutional and informal networks influenced creative expression and participation in feminist politics. From shining light on the use of portraiture to bolster the cultural cachet of the militant Women's Social and Political Union, uncovering the links between Victorian interior design, enterprise and suffrage, through to questioning the supposed conservativism of women's art institutions during the campaign and in the inter-war era, Suffrage and the Arts is a timely and important collection which will contribute to a number of scholarly fields.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Foreword by Jane Beckett and Deborah Cherry
Introduction by Miranda Garrett and Zoë Thomas
Part One: Institutional politics
Chapter One: Zoë Thomas, 'I loathe the thought of suffrage sex wars being brought into it': Institutional conservatism in early twentieth-century women's art organizations
Chapter Two: Liz Arthur, The artistic, social and suffrage networks of Glasgow School of Art's women artists and designers
Chapter Three: Tara Morton, 'An Arts and Crafts society, working for the enfranchisement of women': Unpicking the political threads of the Suffrage Atelier, 1909-1914
Part Two: Enterprise and Marketing
Chapter Four: Miranda Garrett, Window smashing and window draping: Suffrage and interior design
Chapter Five: Elizabeth Crawford, 'Our readers are careful buyers': Creating goods for the suffrage market
Chapter Six: Kenneth Florey, English suffrage badges and the marketing of the campaign
Part Three: Paintings on display
Chapter Seven: Rosie Broadley, Painting suffragettes: Portraits and the militant movement
Chapter Eight: Krista Cowman, Suffrage attacks on art, 1913-1914
Part Four: Representing suffrage
Chapter Nine: Joseph McBrinn, The spectacle of masculinity: Men and the visual culture of the suffrage campaign
Chapter Ten: Janice Helland, An Irish harp and sleeping beauty: The politics of suffrage in the textile art of Una Taylor and Ann Macbeth
Chapter Eleven: Chloe Ward, Images of empathy: Representations of force feeding in Votes for Women
