
At Home in the Studio
The Professionalization of Women Artists in America
Laura R. Prieto(Author)
Harvard University Press
Published on 28. December 2001
Book
Hardback
304 pages
978-0-674-00486-3 (ISBN)
Description
This engaging cultural history examines the emergence of a professional identity for American women artists. By focusing on individual sculptors, painters, and illustrators, Laura Prieto gives us a compelling picture of the prospects and constraints faced by women artists in the United States from the late eighteenth century through the 1930s.
Prieto tracks the transformation from female artisans and ladies with genteel "artistic accomplishments" to middle-class professional artists. Domestic spaces and familial metaphors helped legitimate the production of art by women. Expression of sexuality and representation of the nude body, on the other hand, posed problems for these artists. Women artists at first worked within their separate sphere, but by the end of the nineteenth century "New Women" grew increasingly uncomfortable with separatism, wanting ungendered recognition. With the twentieth century came striking attempts to reconcile domestic lives and careers with new expectations; these decades also ruptured the women's earlier sense of community with amateur women artists in favor of specifically professional allegiances. This study of a diverse group of women artists--diverse in critical reception, geographic location, race, and social background--reveals a forgotten aspect of art history and women's history.
Prieto tracks the transformation from female artisans and ladies with genteel "artistic accomplishments" to middle-class professional artists. Domestic spaces and familial metaphors helped legitimate the production of art by women. Expression of sexuality and representation of the nude body, on the other hand, posed problems for these artists. Women artists at first worked within their separate sphere, but by the end of the nineteenth century "New Women" grew increasingly uncomfortable with separatism, wanting ungendered recognition. With the twentieth century came striking attempts to reconcile domestic lives and careers with new expectations; these decades also ruptured the women's earlier sense of community with amateur women artists in favor of specifically professional allegiances. This study of a diverse group of women artists--diverse in critical reception, geographic location, race, and social background--reveals a forgotten aspect of art history and women's history.
Reviews / Votes
Prieto reconstructs a substantial chronology for women artists in the US...Two tendencies that wax and wane over a century are traced: the drive to be an artist and the desire to be a woman, both providing a basis for professionalization...[Prieto] demonstrates an ability to read works of art, interweaving their visual narratives into the context of women's artistic development. Highly recommended. -- E. K. Menon * Choice *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge, Mass
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
13 halftones
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 156 mm
Weight
626 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-674-00486-3 (9780674004863)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Laura R. Prieto is Assistant Professor of History and Women's Studies at Simmons College, Boston.
Content
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Peculiarly Fitted to Art 2. Domesticating Professional Art 3. Figures and Fig Leaves 4. Sculpting Butter: Gender Separatism and the Professional Ideal 5. Portrait of the Artist as a New Woman 6. Making the Modern Woman Artist Notes Bibliography Index