Re-imaging the Spaces of Femininity: Vanessa Bell and the Domestic Interior

This study charts British artist Vanessa Bell’s (1879-1961) manipulation of the feminine interior during the most experimental years in her practice, 1910 through 1915. Bell’s forays into decorative design and her experimentation in abstraction provided alternative depictions of the domestic interior, effectively re-imaging the predisposed spaces of femininity. Considered here are works such as Bell’s Model Nursery for the Omega (1913) and Frederick and Jessie Etchells Painting (1912), where modern abstract devices are used in an effort to present the feminine interior as a viable subject of artistic modernity. By placing her reinvention of the domestic interior at the forefront of my research, I hope to shift perception of Vanessa Bell beyond those of her relationships, as wife of Clive Bell, lover of Duncan Grant and Roger Fry, sister of Virginia Woolf and member of Bloomsbury. Instead, I will develop an analysis of Bell’s own artistic objectives during this period of her work. Bell’s rejection of Victorian standards, both aesthetically and socially, and her interest in abstraction were her greatest assets in developing “alternative models for negotiating modernity and the spaces of femininity.”1 Though Bell took on a more figurative style by 1916, it is important to study the influence this experimental period had not only on her later easel works such as Lady with a Book (1945) and her interior designs for her Charleston home (1917), but on the gendered spheres of modernity. Her manipulation of the feminine interior at this time, seen in her abstract and decorative designs, was used an outlet for expanding the conventional spaces of femininity and establishing her place within modernism. It may be argued that the domestic sphere of the feminine did not so much limit Bell’s creativity as an artist, as inspire it.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Art History (UMKC)

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Missouri--Kansas City

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• Hampton, Danielle

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Connelly, Frances S.

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10355/61369

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:mospace.umsystem.edu:10355/61369