Whitney Chadwick

This 5th edition of one of the best-selling "World of Art" titles features a completely new chapter that charts the evolution of feminist art history and pedagogy since the 1970s, revealing how artists have developed and subverted the strategies of feminism. It is brought up to date with discussion of some of the most significant international women artists to have emerged in recent years, including Wangechi Mutu, Pae White, Yael Bartana, Jenny Saville and Teresa Margolles.

The Militant Muse documents what it meant to be young, ambitious and female in the context of an avant-garde movement defined by celebrated men whose educational, philosophical and literary backgrounds were often quite different from those of their younger lovers and companions. Focusing on the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, Whitney Chadwick charts five intense, far-reaching female friendships among the Surrealists to show how Surrealism, female friendship and the experiences of war, loss and trauma shaped individual women’s transitions from beloved muses to mature artists. Her vivid account includes the fascinating story of Claude Cahun and Suzanne Malherbe’s subversive activities in occupied Jersey, as well as the experiences of Lee Miller and Valentine Penrose at the frontline. Chadwick draws on personal correspondence between women, including the extraordinary letters between Leonora Carrington and Leonor Fini during the months following the arrest and imprisonment of Carrington’s lover Max Ernst at the beginning of World War Two, and the letter Frida Kahlo shared with her friend and lover Jacqueline Lamba years after it was written in the late 1930s during a difficult stay in Paris, marred by her intense dislike of Breton. Thoroughly engrossing, this history brings a new perspective to the political context of Surrealism, as well as fresh insights on the vital importance of female friendship to its artistic and intellectual flowering. Table of Contents 1. The Alchemy of Desire: Valentine Penrose and Alice Rahon Paalen, India 1937 2. The Two Leonors: Leonora Carrington and Leonor Fini, Saint-Martin-d’Ardeche, 1938–41 3. ‘I Will Write to You with My Eyes’, Frida Kahlo and Jacqueline Lamba Breton, Mexico and Paris, 1938–45 • 4. Soldiers without Names, Claude Cahun, Suzanne Malherbe and Jacqueline Lamba, Jersey, 1938–45 • 5. Wars without End, Lee Miller and Valentine Penrose, 1940–78

The Militant Muse documents what it meant to be young, ambitious and female in the context of an avant-garde movement defined by celebrated men whose educational, philosophical and literary backgrounds were often quite different from those of their younger lovers and companions. Focusing on the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, Whitney Chadwick charts five intense, far-reaching female friendships among the Surrealists to show how Surrealism, female friendship and the experiences of war, loss and trauma shaped individual women's transitions from beloved muses to mature artists. Her vivid account includes the fascinating story of Claude Cahun and Suzanne Malherbe's subversive activities in occupied Jersey, as well as the experiences of Lee Miller and Valentine Penrose at the frontline. Chadwick draws on personal correspondence between women, including the extraordinary letters between Leonora Carrington and Leonor Fini during the months following the arrest and imprisonment of Carrington's lover Max Ernst at the beginning of World War Two, and the letter Frida Kahlo shared with her friend and lover Jacqueline Lamba years after it was written in the late 1930s during a difficult stay in Paris, marred by her intense dislike of Breton. Thoroughly engrossing, this history brings a new perspective to the political context of Surrealism, as well as fresh insights on the vital importance of female friendship to its artistic and intellectual flowering.

Whitney Chadwick's acclaimed study challenges the assumption that great women artists are exceptions to the rule, who 'transcended' their sex to produce major works of art. While acknowledging the many women whose contribution to visual culture since the Middle Ages have often been neglected, Chadwick's survey amounts to much more than an alternative canon of women artists: it re-examines the works themselves and the ways in which they have been perceived as marginal, often in direct reference to gender. In her disussion of feminism and its influence on such a reappraisal, the author also addresses the closely related issues of ethnicity, class and sexuality. With a new preface and epilogue from an exciting new authority on the history of women artists, this revised edition continues the project of charting the evolution of feminist art history and pedagogy in recent years, revealing how artists have responded to new strategies of feminism for the current moment.

This pioneering book stands as the most comprehensive treatment of the lives, ideas and art works of the remarkable group of women who were an essential part of the Surrealist movement. Frida Kahlo, Meret Oppenheim and Dorothea Tanning, among many others, became an embodiment of their age as they struggled towards artistic maturity and their own 'liberation of the spirit' in the context of the Surrealist revolution. Their stories and their achievements are presented here against the background of the turbulent decades of the 1920s, 30s and 40s, and the war that forced Surrealism into exile in New York and Mexico. With 145 illustrations in colour