DOI issue:
Nr. 3-4
DOI article:Behr, Shulamith: Differencing modernism: Swedish women artists in early twentieth-century avant-garde culture
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49349#0469
DlFFERENCING MoDERNISM: SwEDISH WoMEN ARTISTS IN AYANT-GARDE CULTURE
455
3. S. Derkert: Still Life with Teapot
1915, oil on canvas, Moderna Museet,
Stockholm
around 1910. Evidently, the regulation of women's bodies was closely linked to matters of
morality, class, race and nation.19 As will be seen, this ironie conjunction/disjunction
between relative emancipation and legislative surveillance appears to inforrn the ways in
which women artists configured and embodied the spaces of modernity in their works.20
Before considering specific examples, however, it is instructive to outline the equivocal
status and debates surrounding the so-called 'woman question' during the first two deca-
des of the 20th century.
Maternalist politics, inventing traditions of modernism and "kvinnokultur"
While Sweden remained neutral during the First World War, it did not follow Norway in
1913 or Denmark in 1915 in enfranchising women, but rather joined Austria, Luxembo-
urg, the British Isles and Germany in doing so in 1919.21 In 1921, the new reformed
constitution allowed men and women to vote in free elections for the first time. Although
the women's movement had been active since the mid 19th century, the articulation of
feminism in Swedish debates was highlighted by the novelist, dramatist and polemicist
19 Here the terminology employed; i.e. 'matter [of the body]', with its multiple implications as a material form and as a
topie of discourse, derives from J. BUTLER, Bodies that Matter: On the discursive limits of 'Sex', New York, London
1993.
20 G. POLLOCK developed this notion of positionality in relation to late 19th-century artists such as Berthe Morisot and
Mary Cassatt in her essay: Modernity and the spaces of femininity [in:] Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism
and the Histories of Art, London 1988.
21 See: B.S. ANDERSON, J.P. ZINSSER, A History of Their Own: Women in Europe from Prehistory to the Present,
vol. II, New York 1989, p. 200.
455
3. S. Derkert: Still Life with Teapot
1915, oil on canvas, Moderna Museet,
Stockholm
around 1910. Evidently, the regulation of women's bodies was closely linked to matters of
morality, class, race and nation.19 As will be seen, this ironie conjunction/disjunction
between relative emancipation and legislative surveillance appears to inforrn the ways in
which women artists configured and embodied the spaces of modernity in their works.20
Before considering specific examples, however, it is instructive to outline the equivocal
status and debates surrounding the so-called 'woman question' during the first two deca-
des of the 20th century.
Maternalist politics, inventing traditions of modernism and "kvinnokultur"
While Sweden remained neutral during the First World War, it did not follow Norway in
1913 or Denmark in 1915 in enfranchising women, but rather joined Austria, Luxembo-
urg, the British Isles and Germany in doing so in 1919.21 In 1921, the new reformed
constitution allowed men and women to vote in free elections for the first time. Although
the women's movement had been active since the mid 19th century, the articulation of
feminism in Swedish debates was highlighted by the novelist, dramatist and polemicist
19 Here the terminology employed; i.e. 'matter [of the body]', with its multiple implications as a material form and as a
topie of discourse, derives from J. BUTLER, Bodies that Matter: On the discursive limits of 'Sex', New York, London
1993.
20 G. POLLOCK developed this notion of positionality in relation to late 19th-century artists such as Berthe Morisot and
Mary Cassatt in her essay: Modernity and the spaces of femininity [in:] Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism
and the Histories of Art, London 1988.
21 See: B.S. ANDERSON, J.P. ZINSSER, A History of Their Own: Women in Europe from Prehistory to the Present,
vol. II, New York 1989, p. 200.