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#0474
460
Shulamith Behr
7. S. Derkert: Fashion Design 1917-21,
watercolour, Private Collection
Sigrid Hjerten Griinewald seems to adore her husband. He appears on every other of her
paintings. At balls, at home and at the theatre.'36 In other words, it is not the fugitive glimpse
of the city and its furtive inhabitants that provided the departure for her works but the paral-
leling of the public venue with persona! social performance. In the back- and foreground of
the Studio Interior of 1917 (ill. 6), the figures of Isaac Griinewald and Nils Dardel are por-
trayed as narrow-waisted, suit-clad dandies, possessing the type of body culture associated
with decadence by conservative critics. By contemporary standards, moral judgement of
these fashionable people would deem them foreign and bewildering elements in society and
Hjerten exaggerates their difference.
This discourse of morality and fashion in modernism is nowhere better represented than
in Hjerten's oeuwre?1 Evidently, her initial training in the applied arts and fashion design
prepared her for contemporary debates on the relevance of 'primitive', folk and oriental
ornamentation to modern painting. Indeed, her porcelain ware exhibited at the Expressioni-
stutstdllningen in 1918 received a favourable review by the critic of the Socialdemokraten
and he commented:
'Mrs Hjerten would seem to be most interesting on account of her attempts to make use of
expressionist ideals for tabłeware.'38
36 'Nya Dagbladet', 13th May 1918.
37 For a recent interpretation of this phenomenon in relation to German Expressionism, see: S. SIMMONS, Expressio-
nism in the Discourse of Fashion, 'Fashion Theory', vol. 4, issue 1, 2000, pp. 49-88.
38 'Socialdemokraten', 4th May 1918.
Shulamith Behr
7. S. Derkert: Fashion Design 1917-21,
watercolour, Private Collection
Sigrid Hjerten Griinewald seems to adore her husband. He appears on every other of her
paintings. At balls, at home and at the theatre.'36 In other words, it is not the fugitive glimpse
of the city and its furtive inhabitants that provided the departure for her works but the paral-
leling of the public venue with persona! social performance. In the back- and foreground of
the Studio Interior of 1917 (ill. 6), the figures of Isaac Griinewald and Nils Dardel are por-
trayed as narrow-waisted, suit-clad dandies, possessing the type of body culture associated
with decadence by conservative critics. By contemporary standards, moral judgement of
these fashionable people would deem them foreign and bewildering elements in society and
Hjerten exaggerates their difference.
This discourse of morality and fashion in modernism is nowhere better represented than
in Hjerten's oeuwre?1 Evidently, her initial training in the applied arts and fashion design
prepared her for contemporary debates on the relevance of 'primitive', folk and oriental
ornamentation to modern painting. Indeed, her porcelain ware exhibited at the Expressioni-
stutstdllningen in 1918 received a favourable review by the critic of the Socialdemokraten
and he commented:
'Mrs Hjerten would seem to be most interesting on account of her attempts to make use of
expressionist ideals for tabłeware.'38
36 'Nya Dagbladet', 13th May 1918.
37 For a recent interpretation of this phenomenon in relation to German Expressionism, see: S. SIMMONS, Expressio-
nism in the Discourse of Fashion, 'Fashion Theory', vol. 4, issue 1, 2000, pp. 49-88.
38 'Socialdemokraten', 4th May 1918.