topic:"Thesis" found 1 record - Research Collections - Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies

Abstract: When art critic Lucy Lippard named "the artist's wife" to be a socially-assigned identity for female artists in the early 1970s, she understood some of the significance of women's companionship status. This dissertation considers how "the artist's wife" was a diverse and hierarchical problem for six female artists during their efforts to access Canada's postwar exhibition market. Joyce Wieland of Toronto, Ontario, Marion Nicoll of Calgary, Alberta, Mary Pratt of St. John's, Newfoundland, and Kenojuak Ashevak of Cape Dorset, Nunavut all experienced this social phenomenon differently. Because the two studios of Wieland and Pratt were combined with domestic life they were also dubbed "kitchen artists." As Marion Nicoll learned, it took much conviction to pursue an art practice focused on abstract painting in traditional institutional and marital contexts. The category "Eskimo" added racial difference to Kenojuak's creative and marital identities. Frances Loring and Florence Wyle of Toronto were persistently called "the Girls," an identity that underscored their non-compliance with heterosexual marriage. Using feminist theories of sexual difference and representation, and intersecting the traditionally distinct fields of history and art history, this study illuminates that the female artist's companionship status mattered much more than has been historically understood. These artists' experiences provide opportunity to reflect on curatorial practice and subject representation and expose that the solo exhibition cannot be fully separated from the artist-couple exhibition when studying the female artist's exhibition history. Their experiences also make visible that gender and female artist identities, including the category "woman artist," are important when studying the female artist in postwar North American art and marriage histories if the social conditions of women's art production are to be fully understood.

Contents: Abstract; Acknowledgements; List of figures; List of abbreviations; Chapter One : introduction : beyond "the artist's wife"; Chapter Two : socializing women to marriage : the five artist-couple marraiges of Marion Nicholl, Joyce Wieland, Mary Pratt, Frances Loring, Florence Wyle and Kenojuak Ashevak; Chapter Three : two women's "one-man exhibitions" : the experience of abstract painting and the artist-couple marriages of Marion Nicholl and Joyce Wieland, 1959 - 1963; Chapter Four : two women's "one-man exhibitions" : Joyce Wieland, Mary Pratt and the identity "kitchen artist" 1963 - 1973; Chapter Five : two more women's "two-man" artist-couple exhibitions : the social emergence of Frances Loring and Florence Wyle as "the girls"; Chapter Six : one women's "two-man" exhibitions : Kenojuak Ashevak's artist-couple exhibitions with Johnniebo Ashevak, 1967 - 1970; Chapter Seven : conclusion; Bibliography; Appendix 1; Copyright permissions

ISBN: 978-0-494-89628-0

Accession Number: p2019-26

Call Number: 06.1 Ma37b

Collection: Archives Library

URL Notes: Available online through University of Alberta

Websites

https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/thesescanada/vol2/002/NR89628.PDF

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