Differencing Modernism: Swedish Women Artists in ayant-garde culture

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of the same year (ill. 2). As in the compositions of Josephson, the figure is turned towards
the flattened picture piane and the radiating spokes of artificial light spreading out from
the lamp are similar to those surrounding the apparitions in his paintings.9 Here too
Hjerten deploys the female body as the departure for modern picture making, appropria-
ting this discourse from male avant-garde practice. Yet, at the same time, the unexpected
disproportion and deformity of the body parody the tradition and raise issues of ambiva-
lent desire, eroticism and sexuality, which subvert the mastering and controlling gaze.10
While nowadays these transgressions of masculine normative practice are viewed as
constituting powerful contributions to early modernist painting, it is elear from Engstróm's
review above that he aligned Hjerten with the dilettante. She could only impersonate
('dumt kokett') Isaac Grunewald's sensitive creativity ('intelligent kokett'). While bearing
likeness, her work was also considered unlike her husband's - 'humbug'. The notion of
differance, as espoused by the cultural philosopher Jacques Derrida, well characterises the
movement of signification that welds together difference and deferral, 'presence-absence'
that typified women artists' relationship to modernism.11 Only isolated critics, such as
August Brunius,12 reviewed their contribution favourably, other male critics lacking the
experience and vocabulary to assess this phenomenon of the emergent 'new woman'.13
From its inception then and over the century, the critical discourse on modernism was
explicitly gendered, harbouring the paradigm of male artistic genius.14 Though absent
from and unacknowledged in this narrative, modernism's 'Other' was a volatile presence,
one that embraced the implications of modernity and the conflicting challenges of pre-
emancipation womanhood.
How did women artists negotiate this precarious existence within the structures of early
avant-garde culture? While the term 'avant-garde' implies the acceptance of a progressive,
modern cultural identity, its meanings have been inscribed primarily through the male arti-
stic canon. Indeed, the semantic definitions offered by the cultural historian Peter Burger in
his Theory ofthe Avant-Garde, whereby he differentiates chronologically between an aesthe-
ticist-orientated avant-garde and that which altered the praxis and institutions of art, exclude
consideration of gendered identity.15 Given women's lack of political voice and their tenu-
ous role, the feminist art historian Susan Suleiman regards the historical status of the female

9 See also: M. WERENSKIOLD, Sigrid Hjerten som ekspresjonist: En analyse av "Sjdlvportratt", 'Kunsthistorisk
Tidskrift', vol. LII, no. 1, pp. 31-43.

10 This painting is analysed further in S. BEHR, Sigrid Hjerten och kvinnokroppen, [in:] Sigrid Hjerten, exhib. cat.,
Liljevalchs Konsthall, 1995, pp. 163-8. The tropes of avant-garde practice - the male artist, the studio and the nude
model - have been the substance of immense critical scrutiny. The implied domination, or control, of the model as the
object of the male gaze has been central to understanding the historical role of the male artist within the hegemonie
structures of patriarchy. The debate was initiated by feminist art historians, as conveyed in the pivotal essay by C.
Duncan, Yirility and domination in early twentieth-century vanguard painting, 'Art Forum', Dec. 1973, pp. 177-99.

11 See: J. DERRIDA, La Differance [in:] Marges de la philosophie, Paris 1972, [transl. in:] ideb. A Derrida Reader:
Between the Blinds, P. Kamuf (ed.), New York, London 1991, pp. 59-79.

12 For August Brunius' favourable reception of Sigrid Hjerten, see: 'Svenska Dagbladet', 15 May 1918; of Vera Nilsson:
ibid., 31st October 1918.

13 Apart from Brunius, criticism of the Expressionistutstdllningen was unanimous in viewing Hjerten's work as secon-
dary to that of Grunewald's. For a comprehensive outline of press reviews, see: K. BORGH BERTORP, Sigrid Hjerten.
Kritiken och Liljevalchs, [in:] Sigrid Hjerten, exhib. cat., op. cit., pp. 11-21.

14 For a discussion of the genealogy of this concept, see: C. BATTERSBY, Gender and Genius: Towards Feminist
Aesthetics, London 1989.

15 P. BURGER, Theory of the Avant-Garde, Minneapolis 1984 (German original: 1974).