Visual Art in the Interwar Period

During World War I women were encouraged to join the war effort.  Across Western Europe women were tasked with domestic labor, producing textiles and munitions, and even aiding the military as nurses and doctors.  For the first time, women and men were working side by side.

"A woman is not female because she wields a cooking spoon and turns everything upside down while cleaning, but because she manifests characteristics that the man finds desirable, because she is kind, soft, understanding, appealing in her appearance, and so on"

     -Elsa Herrmann, "This is the New Woman"

Post World War I, men came back home seeking normality.  As these men were reintroduced to their homes, tensions arose between what women wanted to be and what was socially acceptable.  Elsa Herrmann championed the idea that women should no longer be confined to the home and doing house work while famous writer Radclyffe Hall of Laura Doan's "Woman's Place is the Home" detailed the importance of being a good wife and mother. 

Reflecting the social climate of World War I, the top poster features women working in the factory, at home, and in the field and is one of the many examples of propaganda aimed at women to encourage them to join the war effort. As the times change, so do the images of women.  The bottom image is a 1924 illustration from the lifestyle magazine, La Vie Parisienne, embodies the much more conservative ideal of traditional feminine role good wife and mother.  Although both images originate from France and were produced less than 10 years apart, one image depicts women laborers in very simple clothing while the other depicts a mother out shopping with her husband.

Research Questions:

A way to follow the narrative of women and their lived experiences through the interwar period would be to analyze how their experiences differed from the experiences of men.  To highlight the experiences of women in the interwar period, we will look at the art that they created as a reaction to thier experiences in contrast to the work their male contemporaries produced.  As we look through the artwork of the interwar period it is important to keep in mind the questions of how the different lived experiences of the male and female artists influenced their opinions and how those opinions shaped their works.