Ulster Museum 4/1/19

Two great small exhibitions at Ulster Museum.

Fashion & Feminism  A trip through history showing the impact of certain women:

Mary Wollstonecraft 1759-97, favoured clothing "simple, elegant and becoming" so the wearer felt natural and at east.

Rational Dress Society 1881, protested against "any fashion in dress that either deforms the figure, impeded movement of body or in any way tends to injure health". (There was also a Women's Rational Cycling Society that had trousers for its members to wear when cycling).

By Women for Women

1893.  Looser corsetry and leg of mutton sleeves gave an illusion of a smaller waits. Previous fashion was for tightly corseted waists and narrow shoulders.

Callot Soeurs.  Parisienne dressmakers - using the name 'sisters' was a bold move when female businesses were met with disapproval and denigration.  Trained and promoted Mme Vionnet.

Mme Vionnet ran 1200 dressmakers in 1920s fashion house.  Vionnet promoted Callot Soeurs design house and "a very feminist structure which promoted women and femininity".  Vionnet promoted bias cut - soft drape and folds.  Comfortable to wear.

Dior's New Look was an old idea - inspired by 100 year old corsetry.  Notably post WW2, the female population was very thin (rationing) and many women would have had the tiny waist required for Dior's New Look, and his designs included hip padding to falsely accentuate the tiny waist.

Jacques Fath 1950s.  Gorgeous/impractical fashion - exaggerated femininity - pink raw silk shirt suit, associated with return to home and traditional gender roles after WW2.

1980s Power Dressing.  Male designer Thierry Mugler puts masculine traits into womenswear.  Huge shoulders, dropped waists with a skirt.  Vivienne Westwood "I've never thought it power to be like a second-rate man". Bondage trousers and hobble straps.

Virginia Woolf: "Vain trifles as they seem, clothes have, they say, more important offices than merely to keep us warm.  They change our view of the world and the world's view of us."


Making Her Mark, Women Printmakers from the Ulster Museum Collection

Printmaking can be a reaction to the rising industrialisation of day-to-day life.

Therese Lessore. 1884-1945  Etched but look like linocut:  reduced lines and shapes.  Married to Walter Sickert:  known primarily for that relationship and not for her own work.

Lady Elizabeth Thompson Butler. 1846-1933 Was denied election to RA in 1870s.  Paints the most popular war image Rollcall, at the Royal Academy exhibition and Queen Victoria buys it - yet Queen Victoria does not vote for her election to RA! (Two votes short of election)  Women used art criticism to communicate wider views that would be dismissed in wider journalism (this is what I'm doing!).

Elizabeth Thompson Butler

Gertrude Hermes 1901-83 and Agnes Parker 1895-1980 Both were printmakers whose income was the primary funding in the household and both financially supported their husbands.

Margaret Clarke 1988-1961. Second women elected to Royal Hibernian Academy - any awards and exhibitions.  After death, known as wife of glass artist Harry Clarke, and assistant to William Orpen.  Now 5 posters for Empire Marketing Board being promoted.

Doris Blair. War artist.  Prints show women took on men's work in wartime but still do most of domestic work.  Women are always active in her images.

Doris Blair

Katherine Cameron. 1874-1965 Flower painter.  Often denigrated but actually a shrewd business move.  If women needed to work from home and have an income, flower paintings were possible in the home environment, popular, and genteel women would buy them from other genteel women.

Ann Bailey. 20th C Little known.  30% of professional artists were women, but historically excluded from academy and gallery systems.  Thus work is less often recorded and written about.  Thus women join groups and exhibit together for their work to be seen.