Constructor Univ. Bremen: Julia Secklehner & Isabel Wünsche (Web)
Time: 15.-16.05.2025
Venue: Constructor Univ. Bremen
Modernist movements in the twentieth century have widely been accepted as middle-class phenomena, driven by figures with the education, time, and financial resources to devote themselves to creative production. Yet, as the First World War shook up the social and economic stability of many, comfortable backgrounds no longer guaranteed support. Women, in particular, found themselves in a new situation, not only gaining new liberties in the post-imperial successor states but often also facing the need to make a living. How did this affect their creativity and access to artistic education and production?
From privately sold goods made in the home to administrative work and wage labour, women artists in the 1920s and 30s followed various professions to support themselves, their (artist) partners, and their dependents. While some of this work was to make ends meet, other activities, such as journalism and editorial work, craftwork, teaching and photography, also played an essential role in developing their artistic practice. Taking this as a point of departure, this workshop addresses the invisible (wage) labour of modernist women artists and how it affected their creative work in different fields. It seeks to examine the ambivalences of paid and creative work faced and negotiated by individuals and their impact on our understanding of modernist artistic production.
Panels: Making A Living: Commercial Ventures as Possibility and Hinderance | Social Ambitions and Care Work | Art at the Margins? Making a Living Elsewhere | Modernism, Class and Wage Labour
Programme
Thursday, May 15, 2025
14.00 Introductory remarks: Julia Secklehner & Isabel Wünsche
14.30 PANEL I: MAKING A LIVING: COMMERCIAL VENTURES AS POSSIBILITY AND HINDERANCE
Elizaveta Berezina (Leipzig Univ.): Not a central figure? Bringing Evgeniia Pribyl’skaia out of the shadows of her contemporaries and art institutions
Ieva Kalnina (Art Academy of Latvia): Tension between wage labour and creativity: The artistic lives of Latvian artists and sisters Zenta Logina and Elīze Atāre in the interwar period and beyond
16.00 PANEL II: SOCIAL AMBITIONS AND CARE WORK
Eve Filée (Univ. Libre de Bruxelles): Creating change: Céline Dangotte and Marie Teinitzerová at the intersection of art, labour and politics
Pragya Sharma (Univ. of Brighton): Widowhood and Hand-knitting in Early Twentieth Century India
Eszter Őze (Central European Research Institute for Art History) & Sára Bagdi (Eötvös Loránd Univ. and Kassák Museum): Gendered labour and cultural production in the Hungarian left-wing avant-garde: A comparative study of Alice Madzsar and Jolán Simon
Friday, May 16, 2025
10.30 PANEL III: ART AT THE MARGINS? MAKING A LIVING ELSEWHERE
Karolina Majewska-Güde (Univ. of Warsaw): Artistic labour in the factory: women workers in collaboration with professional artists
Colton Klein (Yale Univ.): Landscape/workscape: Minnie Evans at Pembroke Park
Emily Jane Fuggle (Queen Mary, Univ. of London and Ben Uri Gallery and Museum): The artist as gallery attendant: art practice and casual museum labour in exile
12.30 PANEL IV: MODERNISM, CLASS AND WAGE LABOUR
Eva Zak (Adelphi Univ.): The pursuit of labour: Esfir Shub’s unfinished revolution
Christy Wahl (independent scholar): Brotarbeit: Hannah Höch’s Schundromane and the role of Gebrauchsgraphik during the NS-regime
14.30 Roundtable discussion led by Julia Secklehner & Isabel Wünsche
15.00 Concluding remarks & next steps
15.30 Joint walk to train station and visit of Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, Böttcherstraße Bremen city centre
Contact Information: Julia Secklehner & Isabel Wünsche, Constructor Univ., Campus Ring, 128759 Bremen; jsecklehner@constructor.university