On this journey through a fascinating period of social change, artist Carolyn Trant fills in some of the gaps in traditional art histories. Introducing the lives and works of a rich network of neglected women artists, her book sets these alongside such renowned presences as Barbara Hepworth, Laura Knight and Winifred Nicholson, Dora Carrington, Madge Gill, Edna Clark Hall, Gwen Raverat, Duffy Rothenstein, Enid Marx, Kathleen Hale or Sylvia Sleigh. In an era of radical activism and great social and political change, women forged new relationships with art and its institutions. Such change was not without its challenges, and with acerbic wit Trant delves into the gendered make-up of the 'avant-garde', and the tyranny of artistic 'isms' and chapters look at modernism and abstractions, surrealism and democracy, neo romanticism, women artists as teachers, political women, art of the world wars, topography and creative clusters, partnerships, careers and conflicts, visions of the muse, art and sexuality and more. One of the many pioneering photographers was Helen Muspratt who founded a studio in Swanage, Dorset, in 1929 and made striking portraits of Paul Nash and Eileen Agar, posing dramatically with her mass of sculpted hair. After an expedition to the Soviet Union with the Left Book Club in 1936, photographing farmers and peasants, she made images of unemployed Welsh miners and Basque child refugees. Virginia Woolf's first novel The Voyage Out (1915) has her female heroine strive towards a realization of her sense of self, asking what being a woman might mean. In the decades after women won the vote in Britain, the fortunes of women artists were shaped by war, domesticity, continued oppressions and spirited resistance. Weaving devastating individual stories with playful critique, Voyaging Out reveals this hidden history. 125 illus, many in colour. Thames & Hudson, 304 pages.
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