The Exhibitions of the Femmes Artistes Modernes (FAM), Paris, 1931-38

Artl@s Bulletin Volume 8 Issue 1 Women Artists Shows.Salons.Societies (1870s-1970s) Article 10 The Exhibitions of the Femmes Artistes Modernes (FAM), Paris, 1931-38 Paula J. Birnbaum , Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/artlas Part of the Modern Art and Architecture Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Birnbaum, Paula J.. "The Exhibitions of the Femmes Artistes Modernes (FAM), Paris, 1931-38." Artl@s Bulletin 8, no. 1 (2019): Article 10. This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact for additional information. This is an Open Access journal. This means that it uses a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access. Readers may freely read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles. This journal is covered under the CC BY-NC-ND license. The Exhibitions of the Femmes Artistes Modernes (FAM), Paris, 1931-38 Cover Page Footnote I am grateful to Ruth E. Iskin, Jennifer L. Shaw and the anonymous peer reviewers of Arl@s Journal for their critical feedback on this essay. This article is available in Artl@s Bulletin: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/artlas/vol8/iss1/10 W.A.S. (1870s-1970s) The Exhibitions of the Femmes Artistes Modernes (FAM), Paris, 1931-38 Paula J. Birnbaum* University of San Francisco Abstract The Société des Femmes Artistes Modernes (FAM) opened up a productive space for women artists who were active in Paris during the 1930s through annual multigenerational exhibitions and international collaborations. I argue that FAM embodied a paradox: on the one hand, it supported artists wishing to question stereotypes of gender, race, class, and nation; on the other, its institutional structure and leadership did not challenge patriarchal assumptions about women’s subordinate role in society. The paper explores this tension by comparing the work and critical reception of several artists in the group who represented the theme of motherhood. Résumé La Société des femmes artistes modernes (FAM) a ouvert un espace permettant aux femmes artistes actives à Paris dans les années 1930 de développer leur pratique à travers des expositions annuelles intergénérationnelles et des collaborations internationales. La thèse soutenue ici est que FAM incarnait un paradoxe : d’une part, cette société soutenait les artistes souhaitant mettre en question les stéréotypes de genre, de race, de classe et de nation ; de l’autre, sa structure institutionnelle et sa direction n’ont pas contesté les présupposés patriarcaux concernant le rôle subordonné des femmes dans la société. L’article explore cette tension en comparant le travail et la réception critique de plusieurs artistes du groupe qui illustraient le thème de la maternité. * Paula J. Birnbaum is a professor at the University of San Francisco and author of Women Artists in Interwar France: Framing Femininities (Ashgate/Routledge, 2011). Her scholarship focuses on modern and contemporary art in relationship to gender and sexuality, as well as institutional and social politics. She is presently completing a biography of the sculptor, Chana Orloff, forthcoming with Brandeis University Press. 152 ARTL@S BULLETIN, Vol. 8, Issue 1 (Spring 2019) Birnbaum– Femmes Artistes Modernes Some FAM members were among the best known female artists of their day in Paris—including the painters Valadon, Marie Laurencin (1883-1956), Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980) and sculptor Chana Orloff (1888-1968). Introduction: Researching FAM I first learned about the Société des Femmes Artistes Modernes, known by its initials of FAM, as a graduate student at Bryn Mawr College in the 1990s.1 I came across FAM while researching the work of the French painter, Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938), as I wanted to learn more about the diversity of international women artists working in Paris in the first decades of the twentieth century. Only little information was available on the topic at the time. To my great surprise, the archival research I undertook proved that there were in fact hundreds of professional female artists of a variety of nationalities and backgrounds between 19101940, who were contemporaries of Valadon and active in commercial galleries and annual salons, including one called FAM. Although nothing had been published on the group, my archival research quickly showed that it was a significant part of the vibrant Parisian art world of the interwar years. FAM held exhibitions annually from 1931 through 1938 in prestigious venues—both commercial and non-commercial—including the Galerie BernheimJeune and the Exhibition Pavilion of the Esplanade des Invalides. In 1937, the group organized a collaborative exhibition with The Circle of Czech Women Artists at the historic Obecnídom in Prague. That same year, FAM played an important role in the organization of Les Femmes artistes d’Europe exposent au Jeu de Paume, the first international exhibition devoted to women artists. 2 This exhibit was held in Paris at the Musée du Jeu de Paume, at the time, the national museum dedicated to contemporary art by foreign artists. FAM published annual exhibition catalogs and its exhibitions were widely reviewed and photographed by the press. As an institution, it was supported by an all-male honorary committee, many of whom held prominent positions in government and culture. The group also regularly staged retrospective exhibitions of the work of deceased women artists. Through the sheer number of participants and the visibility of their collective exhibitions, FAM offered many international women artists of diverse backgrounds and generations more recognition than they would ever garner on their own. Founded in 1930 by the French painter, MarieAnne Camax-Zoegger (1881-1952), FAM aimed to organize annual exhibitions in Paris. It also collaborated with other feminist groups on two important international women’s art exhibitions in the 1930s. Over the course of eight years, FAM’s annual exhibits featured the work of more than 100 female artists from different generations, backgrounds and stylistic movements, many of whom were recent immigrants to Paris from countries as diverse as Argentina, Australia, Poland, Russia and Turkey. The works consisted primarily of paintings and sculptures and reflected women’s diverse approaches to artistic style. Their subject matter ranged from the nude to portraiture, still life, landscape, images of animals and more. Many of the leading artists produced figurative representations of the female body in its diverse sexualities and experiences that included motherhood, while appealing to the patriarchal values of the political establishment in France. The research that culminated in my doctoral dissertation on FAM, and the book, Women Artists in Interwar France: Framing Femininities (2011) posed a number of challenges. I interviewed the aging (...truncated)