Why Visual Art?

The beginning of the twentieth century saw the rise of the vanguard (or avant-garde) art movement.  The new art movement marked a shift away from viewing art as a practice of rendering a “window onto the world” and toward artistic innovation and freedom.  With the avant-garde movement, the artists became the subject of the art.  As with many art movements, the vanguard movement was very sexist – with a clear man versus woman dichotomy wherein women and nature were synonymous while men rose above and created culture.     

"Man/culture tends to be one term in a dichotomy of which woman/nature is the other."
                                                 -Carol Duncan

The interwar period, taking place a decade after the beginning of the vanguard movement, echoed this dichotomy of man/culture versus woman/nature.  All over Western Europe women were being praise for being good mothers and wives.  Politically, France rewarded mothers with medals for having children while Demark, among many other countries, began reforming abortion laws - increasingly tying women to nature. Culturally, the propaganda images of working women were being replaced by images of domesticity.  There were whole art movements, such as the "Return to Order" movement, dedicated to returning women to the home.

While the artists covered in this exhibit come from different background and are generally hard to compare, they all created are within the unique interwar time frames. With the ideals of the avant-garde movement still lingering, this time period is the perfect moment in history where art is simultaneously prescriptive and descriptive – allowing for the interpretation of art as a reflection of lived experience regardless of the art movement the artists and art pieces belong to.