Informed by the analytical practices of the interdisciplinary 'material turn' and social historical studies of childhood, Childhood By Design: Toys and the Material Culture of Childhood offers new ...approaches to the material world of childhood and design culture for children. This volume situates toys and design culture for children within broader narratives on history, art, design and the decorative arts, where toy design has traditionally been viewed as an aberration from more serious pursuits. The essays included treat toys not merely as unproblematic reflections of socio-cultural constructions of childhood but consider how design culture actively shaped, commodified and materialized shifting discursive constellations surrounding childhood and children. Focusing on the new array of material objects designed in response to the modern 'invention' of childhood-what we might refer to as objects for a childhood by design - Childhood by Design explores dynamic tensions between theory and practice, discursive constructions and lived experience as embodied in the material culture of childhood. Contributions from and between a variety of disciplinary perspectives (including history, art history, material cultural studies, decorative arts, design history, and childhood studies) are represented – critically linking historical discourses of childhood with close study of material objects and design culture. Chronologically, the volume spans the 18th century, which witnessed the invention of the toy as an educational plaything and a proliferation of new material artifacts designed expressly for children's use; through the 19th- century expansion of factory-based methods of toy production facilitating accuracy in miniaturization and a new vocabulary of design objects coinciding with the recognition of childhood innocence and physical separation within the household; towards the intersection of early 20th-century child-centered pedagogy and modernist approaches to nursery and furniture design; through the changing consumption and sales practices of the postwar period marketing directly to children through television, film and other digital media; and into the present, where the line between the material culture of childhood and adulthood is increasingly blurred.
Decorative handcrafts are commonly associated with traditional femininity and unthreatening docility. However, the artists connected with interwar Vienna’s “female Secession” ...created craft-based artworks that may be understood as sites of feminist resistance. In this book, historian Megan Brandow-Faller tells the story of how these artists disrupted long-established boundaries by working to dislodge fixed oppositions between “art” and “craft,” “decorative” and “profound,” and “masculine” and “feminine” in art.
Tracing the history of the women’s art movement in Secessionist Vienna—from its origins in 1897, at the Women’s Academy, to the Association of Austrian Women Artists and its radical offshoot, the Wiener Frauenkunst—Brandow-Faller tells the compelling story of a movement that reclaimed the stereotypes attached to the idea of Frauenkunst , or women’s art. She shows how generational struggles and diverging artistic philosophies of art, craft, and design drove the conservative and radical wings of Austria’s women’s art movement apart and explores the ways female artists and craftswomen reinterpreted and extended the Klimt Group’s ideas in the interwar years. Brandow-Faller draws a direct connection to the themes that impelled the better-known explosion of feminist art in 1970s America. In this provocative story of a Viennese modernism that never disavowed its ornamental, decorative roots, she gives careful attention to key primary sources, including photographs and reviews of early twentieth-century exhibitions and archival records of school curricula and personnel.
Engagingly written and featuring more than eighty representative illustrations, The Female Secession recaptures the radical potential of what Fanny Harlfinger-Zakucka referred to as “works from women’s hands.” It will appeal to art historians working in the decorative arts and modernism as well as historians of Secession-era Vienna and gender history.
Decorative handcrafts are commonly associated with traditional
femininity and unthreatening docility. However, the artists
connected with interwar Vienna's "female Secession" created
craft-based ...artworks that may be understood as sites of feminist
resistance. In this book, historian Megan Brandow-Faller tells the
story of how these artists disrupted long-established boundaries by
working to dislodge fixed oppositions between "art" and "craft,"
"decorative" and "profound," and "masculine" and "feminine" in
art.
Tracing the history of the women's art movement in Secessionist
Vienna-from its origins in 1897, at the Women's Academy, to the
Association of Austrian Women Artists and its radical offshoot, the
Wiener Frauenkunst-Brandow-Faller tells the compelling story of a
movement that reclaimed the stereotypes attached to the idea of
Frauenkunst , or women's art. She shows how generational
struggles and diverging artistic philosophies of art, craft, and
design drove the conservative and radical wings of Austria's
women's art movement apart and explores the ways female artists and
craftswomen reinterpreted and extended the Klimt Group's ideas in
the interwar years. Brandow-Faller draws a direct connection to the
themes that impelled the better-known explosion of feminist art in
1970s America. In this provocative story of a Viennese modernism
that never disavowed its ornamental, decorative roots, she gives
careful attention to key primary sources, including photographs and
reviews of early twentieth-century exhibitions and archival records
of school curricula and personnel.
Engagingly written and featuring more than eighty representative
illustrations, The Female Secession recaptures the radical
potential of what Fanny Harlfinger-Zakucka referred to as "works
from women's hands." It will appeal to art historians working in
the decorative arts and modernism as well as historians of
Secession-era Vienna and gender history.
The capstone of official festivities commemorating Emperor Franz Josef's sixtieth jubilee, the 1908 Kaiserhuldigungsfestzug was a costumed historical spectacle informed by ‘living museum’ ...ethnographic displays. The parade dramatized the Dual Monarchy's present by juxtaposing historical dynastic events with the apparently unchanging customs and costumes of its contemporary peasantry represented in the Nationalitätenfestzug. Of critical importance to artists and art historians, a rising tide of interest in ‘primitive’ folk art witnessed its peak around the time of the jubilee. Examining the cultural politics of the Volkskunstdebatte, this article analyses how modernist artists created a new dynastic image that connected the Habsburgs' golden past to its more uncertain present.
In the late 1920s, ceramicist and designer Vally Wieselthier relocated from Vienna, Austria, to New York. She made a name for herself as an independent ceramic sculptor free of the Wiener Werkstätte. ...Her work was received as representing the feminine aesthetics of Viennese Expressionism. Her sculptural designs are discussed and compared to those of her contemporaries.
This article analyzes the nexus of women, children, and primitivism at the landmark Vienna Kunstschau exhibition of 1908 staged by the Klimt Group. Because of women's "natural" connection to child ...rearing, female art students in Secessionist Vienna were perceived as ideal designers of toys, books, and furniture inspired by the primitivism of the untutored art of the child and by traditional folk-art toys. Critical reactions to the Art for the Child section of the Kunstschau revealed the discursive similarity of women's and children's art in the eyes of conservative and progressive critics alike; whether this affinity was praised or condemned revealed critics' broader attitudes toward the Secessionist Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art) and the limits of women's inclusion in this project. The Klimt Group's serious investment in child art suggests that artistic toys were far from child's play; rather, the toys were integral to their greater philosophies on the beautification of utility and the interpenetration of art and everyday life.
Women designers, many of them Jewish, played a decisive role in the development of Viennese modernity during the interwar period. This book presents new research on designers, photographers, ...journalists, and patrons who engaged with the prejudices of the time and created new visual languages in order to make careers for themselves. At the same time, they contributed to critical discourse about the emancipation of women.
