<p> "Subtle Resistance: How Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Martha Jackson Resisted Post-World War II Gender Constructions" explores the careers of three women in postwar New York City&mdash;artists commonly referred to as "second generation" Abstract Expressionist painters, Grace Hartigan and Joan Mitchell, and gallerist Martha Jackson. Following the Second World War, the distinctions between men and women, and masculinity and femininity grew. It is in this polarized social field that Hartigan and Mitchell were able to carve out success, claim agency over the formation of their artistic identities, and overall resist the gender constructions that were so pervasive to postwar American culture. Martha Jackson, a Buffalo native who opened the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York City in 1953, played an important role in the careers of Hartigan and Mitchell and ensured continued progress in their careers during the tumultuous 1960s. </p><p> Chapter 1 examines the gendered construction of postwar American culture and the exemplary career of Martha Jackson, an independent woman who challenged traditional notions of a woman's role in society. Chapter 2 explores how Hartigan and Mitchell navigated the gendered tensions of the New York School. Chapter 3 studies how Hartigan and Mitchell's artistic styles reflect their construction of identity in relation to art historical tradition and the use of a controlled expressivity in their work. </p><p> Archival materials from the Martha Jackson Gallery Archives at the UB Anderson Gallery and the Grace Hartigan Papers at the Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University, as well as periodicals, oral history interviews and other primary sources provide a new perspective of the social history of the time. With this new perspective, the challenges Hartigan, Mitchell, and Jackson faced become clearer, as do their means of resistance.</p>

This thesis discusses the cultural contributions – artistic patronage, art theory, art satire - of four Ladies-in-Waiting employed at the early eighteenth-century century British court: Mary, Countess Cowper; Charlotte Clayton, Baroness Sundon; Henrietta Howard, Countess of Suffolk; and Mary Hervey, Baroness Hervey of Ickworth. Through a close reading of archival manuscripts, published correspondences and art historical treatises, I explore the cultural milieu, historical legacy and historiographic reception of these individuals. I argue that their writing reveals fresh insight on the switch from Baroque to Rococo modes of portraiture in Britain, as it does critical attitudes to sex, religion and politics among aristocratic women. Through the use of satire, these courtiers comment on extramarital affairs, rape, homosexuality and divorce among their peer group. They also show an interest in issues of feminist education, literature, political and religious patronage, and contemporary news events, which they reference through allusions to painting, architecture, sculpture, engravings, ceramics, textiles and book illustrations. Many of the artists patronized by the court in this period were foreign-born, peripatetic, and stylistically unusual. Partly due to the transnational nature of these artist’s careers, and partly due to the reluctance of later historians to admit the extent of foreign socio-cultural influence, biased judgements about the quality of these émigré painters’ work continue to predominate in art historical scholarship. While little-studied themselves, these Ladies-in-waiting were at the center of political, social and cultural life in Britain. Their letters therefore have much of value in reclaiming, not only their own contributions to the development of British cultural life, but those of the French or Francophile émigré artists patronized at court. By studying the work of these artists and the lives of their patrons, I examine the intersection between biography and artistic practice at the early eighteenth-century British court. / Thesis (Ph.D, Art History) -- Queen's University, 2013-04-29 03:14:47.731