The Modern Embroidery Movement 9781350123366, 9781350033337, 9781350033344

Table of contents :
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
List of Illustrations
Plates
Figures
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Introduction
“Needlepainting”: An argument for embroidery as art
Contributors to the modern embroidery movement
Modern embroidery and the craft tradition
Embroidery and feminism
Defining the modern as decorative
Recovering modern embroidery
Conclusion
Chapter 2: The Modern Embroidery Movement in Context
Embroidery in the late nineteenth century
Georgiana Brown Harbeson’s history of American embroidery
Modern artists and embroidery
Contemporary criticism of embroidery as art
Embroidery versus tapestry
Conclusion
Chapter 3: Marguerite Zorach: The Roots of the Modern Embroidery Movement
Background
Zorach and Kandinsky
Zorach’s choice
Zorach’s lived experience
Zorach, Greenwich Village, and primitivism
Zorach and feminism
Marguerite Zorach’s cubist embroidery
Conclusion
Chapter 4: Georgiana Brown Harbeson and Her Collaborators: Establishing the Modern Embroidery Movement
Georgiana Brown Harbeson (1894–1980)
Mary Ellen Crisp (b. 1896)
Marcia Stebbins (1907–1976)
Marian Stoll (1879–1960)
Conclusion
Chapter 5: Collaboration
Marguerite and William Zorach
Mary Ellen and Arthur Crisp
Georgiana Brown Harbeson: Collaboration with industry
Ilonka and Mariska Karasz
Marian Stoll: Designer and executor
Conclusion
Chapter 6: Visualizing Manhattan
A humanizing view of Manhattan: Zorach’s map of New York
Challenging the Primacy of the Skyscraper
From elite to popular culture: Two embroideries by Zorach
Manhattan in the 1930s
Conclusion
Chapter 7: Nature as Symbol
Zorach’s Vision of Nature
Zorach: Finding a home in nature
Harbeson: The four seasons
Zorach and Harbeson: Two perspectives on the sea
Mary Ellen Crisp and the American landscape tradition
Marian Stoll and the Surrealist landscape
Conclusion
Chapter 8: Embroidered Portraits
Reconsidering portraiture through a modernist lens
Zorach’s autobiographical embroideries
Zorach’s embroidered self-portrait
Harbeson’s representation of American Indian women
Conclusion
Chapter 9: Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Selected Bibliography
Archival material
Selected Newspapers and Magazines
References
Index

Citation preview

The Modern Embroidery Movement

The Modern Embroidery Movement Cynthia Fowler

BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published by Bloomsbury Academic 2018 This paperback edition published by Bloomsbury Visual Arts 2020 Copyright © Cynthia Fowler, 2018, 2020 Cynthia Fowler has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xvi constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design by Liron Gilenberg | http://www.ironicitalics.com Cover image: Marguerite Zorach, detail of Remembrance of Life in Fresno California and of My Childhood There Around the Year 1900 (1949), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. Gift from the Collection of Tessim Zorach All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3501-2336-6 PB: 978-1-3501-2914-6 ePDF: 978-1-3500-3334-4 eBook: 978-1-3500-3332-0 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

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Contents List of Illustrations vi Acknowledgmentsxvi

1 Introduction 1 2 The Modern Embroidery Movement in Context 15 3 Marguerite Zorach: The Roots of the Modern Embroidery Movement 33 4 Georgiana Brown Harbeson and Her Collaborators: Establishing the Modern Embroidery Movement 69 5 Collaboration93 6 Visualizing Manhattan 117 7 Nature as Symbol 139 8 Embroidered Portraits 159 9 Conclusion191 Notes197 Selected Bibliography 235 Index251

List of Illustrations Plates 1 Mary Ellen Crisp, Untitled (1930s)—Embroidery, 79⅝ in. high × 62⅜ in.—Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC—1960.11.1 Gift of the artist. 2 Marguerite Zorach, Remembrance of Life in Fresno California and of My Childhood There Around the Year 1900 (1949)—Wool on linen embroidery, 17 × 251/4 in.—Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC—1970.65.12 Gift from the Collection of Tessim Zorach. 3 Marguerite Zorach, The Circus, New York (1929)—Wool on linen embroidery, 20½ × 22½ in. Gift of Irwin Untermyer, 1964 (64.101.1404)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York—Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Image source: Art Resource, NY. 4 Marguerite Zorach, The Family Supper (1922)—Wool on linen embroidery, 26 × 42 in.—Zorach Collection, LLC— Digital image courtesy of Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME.  5 Georgiana Brown Harbeson, Nativity (before 1932)—Dimensions and whereabouts unknown—Front cover, Needlecraft (December 1932). 6 Marian Stoll, Untitled (1927)—Esther Fitzgerald Rare Textiles, London. 7 Marguerite and William Zorach, Maine Islands (1919)—Wool on linen embroidery, 181/4 × 501/4 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC—1968.154.173 Gift of Dahlov Ipcar and Tessim Zorach. 8 Mary Ellen Crisp, Untitled (Flowers in Vase) (1930s)—Cotton embroidered picture with wool, 21⅝ × 253/16 in.—Gift of Joy L. Cartier and Lucile E. Callahan, 1993-34-1.—Photo: Matt Flynn-Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, NY—Photo Credit: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum/Art Resource, NY.

List of Illustrations

  9 Georgiana Brown Harbeson, Summer (The Enchanted Isle) (1931)—Front cover of Needlecraft, July 1931. 10 Georgiana Brown Harbeson, Autumn (1931)—Front cover of Needlecraft, October 1931.  11 Mary Ellen Crisp, Untitled (Manhattan from Roosevelt Island) (1930–39)—Linen embroidered picture with wool, 175/16 × 221/2 in.— Gift of Joy L. Cartier and Lucile E. Callahan, 1993-34-2.— Photo: Matt Flynn. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, NY—Photo Credit: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum/Art Resource, NY. 12 Marcia Stebbins, Untitled (Washington Square Park) (1930s)— Wool embroidered picture with synthetic yarns in stem, running satin stitches, 191/2 × 161/4 in.—Bequest of Gertrude M. Oppenheimer, 1981-28-131. Photo: Matt Flynn—Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, NY—Photo Credit: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum/ Art Resource, NY. 13 Marguerite Zorach, The Sea (1917–18)—Wool on linen embroidery, 20 × 36 in.—Zorach Collection, LLC—Digital image courtesy of the Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME. 14 Marian Stoll, Jungle (1927)—Dimensions and whereabouts unknown—Reproduced in Waterhouse, “Recent Embroidery by Marian Stoll,” The Studio (September 1927), n.p. 15 Marian Stoll, Untitled (Structure in Barren Landscape) (1928–29)—Linen plain weave embroidered picture with wool— 23.5 × 20 in.—Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA—Gift of Gillian Creelman 2001.672. 16 Georgiana Brown Harbeson, Madame Amelita Galli-Curci (1924)—Embroidery on linen with wool. Simple outline, buttonhole, Rumanian, chain, running and darning stitches— Dimensions and whereabouts unknown—Reproduced in Harbeson, American Needlework (color plate), n.p.

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List of Illustrations

Figures 1.1 Stitches Most Universally Used by Modern Needlepainters— Reproduced in “The Four Moderns in America, Exponents of the Newer Embroidery.”—Bulletin of the Needle and Bobbin Club 19 (1935): plate xiii.

10

2.1 Henrietta and Fritz Winold Reiss, Untitled (Bird) (ca. 1915)—Designed by Fritz Winold Reiss, executed by Henrietta Reiss—Embroidery—Reproduced in “Tapestry Supplement,” Modern Art Collector (December 1915), n.p.—Dimensions and whereabouts unknown.

21

2.2 Lydia Bush-Brown, Earth (late 1920s/early 1930s)—Silk batik hanging, 5 ft. 7 in × 337/8 in.—Gift of the Estate of Lydia Bush-Brown Head, 1985-2-2—Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, NY, USA—Photo credit: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum/Art Resource, NY.

28

2.3 Marguerite Zorach, The Rockefeller Family at Seal Harbor (1929–32)—Wool on linen embroidery, 4 ft. 3 in. × 5 ft. 4 in.— Estate of Margaretta F. Rockefeller Collection—Digital image courtesy of Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME.

30

3.1 Marguerite Zorach in her studio—Peter A. Juley & Son Collection—J0029484—Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.

34

3.2 Marguerite Zorach, An Indian Wedding (ca. 1913)—Wool on linen embroidery, 15 × 20 in.—From the collection of Pamela C. and Elmer R. Grossman, MD—Digital image courtesy of Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME. 

37

3.3 Marguerite Zorach, The Dance (ca. 1913)—Wool on linen embroidery, 26 in. diameter—Zorach Collection.

38

3.4 Marguerite Zorach, Figures in Landscape (1913)—Gouache on silk, 111/4 × 18 in.—Zorach Collection, LLC— Image courtesy of Gerald Peters Gallery, New York.

39

List of Illustrations

ix

3.5 Marguerite Zorach, Provincetown, Sunset and Moonrise (1916)—Oil on canvas, 273/4 × 313/4 × 2⅜ in. (70.48 × 80.64 × 6.03 cm). Sheldon Museum of Art, Nebraska Art Association, Nelle Cochrane Woods Memorial, N-229.168, Photo ©Sheldon Museum of Art.

39

3.6 Marguerite Zorach, Death of a Miner (ca. 1930–34)—Oil on canvas, 28 × 36 in.—Zorach Collection, LLC Image courtesy of Gerald Peters Gallery, New York.

40

3.7 Marguerite Zorach, The Evening Star (ca. 1945)—Oil on canvas, 25 × 30 in.—Zorach Collection, LLC—Image courtesy of Gerald Peters Gallery, New York.

41

3.8 Marguerite Zorach, The Circus (ca. 1927)—Pencil and crayon on transfer drawing paper, 243/16 × 255/16 in.—Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC—1968.154.27 Gift of Dahlov Ipcar and Tessim Zorach.

45

3.9 Marguerite Zorach, Ella Madison and Dahlov (1918)—Oil on canvas, 44⅞ × 351/4 in.—Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA—Museum purchase, John B. Turner ’24 Memorial Fund and Karl E. Weston Memorial Fund (91.32).

48

3.10 Marguerite Zorach, Indian Elephant (1913)—Oil on canvas, 333/4 × 273/4 in.—Zorach Collection, LLC—Photograph by author.

57

3.11 Florine Stettheimer, Family Portrait #2 (1933)—Oil on canvas, 461/4 × 645/8 in.—Gift of Miss Ettie Stettheimer (8.1956) The Museum of Modern Art—Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY.

63

3.12 Florine Stettheimer, A Model (Nude Self-Portrait) (1915)— Oil on canvas, 481/4 × 681/4 in. Collection of Alan Solomon, MD—Image courtesy of Art Properties, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, Gift of the Estate of Ettie Stettheimer, 1967—(1967.23.29).

65

4.1 Photograph of Georgiana Brown Harbeson—Reproduced in Wilson, “Watch the Needles of the Younger Generation,” Needlecraft (April 1933), 16.

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List of Illustrations

4.2 Georgiana Brown Harbeson, Crucifixion (1930)—Embroidered altar panel hanging—Reproduced in Harbeson, American Needlework, 164b.—Dimensions and whereabouts unknown.

72

4.3 Photograph of Georgiana Brown Harbeson Making an Embroidery on the Spot, at the Hayden Galleries (1934)— Reproduced in Wilson, “Two New York Needlework Exhibits” Needlecraft (July 1934), 4. 

74

4.4 Georgiana Brown Harbeson (designer), Deep South (1936)—Fabricated by Minerva Yarn Industries Needlepoint fourfold screen, 64 × 72 in.—Reproduced in Harbeson, American Needlework, 194b.

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4.5a Mary Ellen Crisp, Untitled (South America) (ca. late 1930s, early 1940s)—Embroidery design sketch on paper, 18½ × 13½ in.—Collection of author—Photograph by Adam Pinheiro.

78

4.5b Mary Ellen Crisp, Untitled (South America) (ca. late 1930s, early 1940s)— Linen embroidery kit pattern, 28½ × 13½ in.—Collection of author—Photograph by Adam Pinheiro.

79

4.6 Mary Ellen Crisp (designer), Mayflower (1939–40)—Fabricated by Dolores Sayles—Embroidery on linen with wool, 24 × 30.5 in.— Cape Cod Pilgrim Memorial Association, Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum, Provincetown, MA.

80

4.7 Mary Ellen Crisp (designer), Untitled (Homesteading) (ca. late 1930s, early 1940s)—Fabricated by Cora Jane Fox (early 1940s)— Embroidery on linen with wool, 11 × 15 in.—Collection of Ruth Chalfant.81 4.8 Georgiana Brown Harbeson, Untitled (Monkeys in Trees) (before 1937)—Fabricated by Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., and possibly Marcia Stebbins—Reproduced in Harbeson, American Needlework, 192b.—Dimensions and whereabouts unknown.

85

4.9 Marcia Stebbins, Untitled Seascape (before 1935)—Embroidery on linen—Reproduced in Harbeson, “Four Moderns,” 21.— Dimensions and whereabouts unknown.

86

List of Illustrations

xi

4.10 Lady Ottoline Morrell, Portrait of Marian Buck Stoll (1923)—Vintage snapshot print, 23/4 in. × 21/8 in.—NPG Ax141969—National Portrait Gallery, London.

88

4.11 Marian Stoll, East of the Sun and West of the Moon— Reproduced in Ellis Waterhouse, “Recent Embroidery by Marian Stoll,” The Studio (September 1927)—Dimensions and whereabouts unknown.

90

5.1 Marguerite and William Zorach, Waterfall (1915–17)— Wool on linen embroidery—Dimensions and whereabouts unknown—Reproduced in Hoffman, Marguerite and William Zorach: The Cubist Years, 31.

95

5.2 Marguerite Zorach, Study for Maine Islands (ca. 1919)— Pencil on board, 111/16 × 141/16 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC—1970.65.68 Gift from the collection of Tessim Zorach.

96

5.3 Marguerite Zorach, Father and Daughter (1918)— Pencil on board, 111/16 × 141/16 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC—1970.65.9 Gift from the collection of Tessim Zorach.

97

5.4 Marguerite Zorach, A New England Family (1917–18)—Oil on canvas, 30 × 22 in.—Zorach Collection, LLC-Digital image courtesy of the Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME.

98

5.5 Marguerite Zorach, Pegasus (ca. 1918)—Wool embroidery purse, 9½ × 71/4 in.—Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC—1968.87.15 Gift from the collection of Tessim Zorach.

100

5.6 Photograph of Mary Ellen and Arthur Crisp in their Studio (n.d.)— Arthur Crisp Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries, Syracuse, NY.

102

5.7 Photograph of Arthur Crisp, Diana of the White Horse (before 1921)—Mural in Fine Arts Building, Architectural League, W. 57th St., NY (destroyed in a fire on January 20, 1920)—Arthur Crisp Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries, Syracuse, NY.

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List of Illustrations

5.8 Mary Ellen Crisp, Diana (before 1935)—Embroidery on linen— Reproduced in Harbeson, “The Four Moderns,” 22.—Dimensions and whereabouts unknown.

104

5.9 Georgiana Brown Harbeson, Still Life (1932)—Front cover of Needlecraft, October 1932.

106

5.10 Georgiana Brown Harbeson, Surrealist Falcon—Reproduced in Minerva Needlepoint Book (1937), 13. 

109

5.11 Georgiana Brown Harbeson, Bounding Deer—Front cover of Minerva Needlepoint Book (1937). 

110

5.12 Georgiana Brown Harbeson, Summer and Autumn—Reproduced in Minerva Needlepoint Book (1937), 27.

111

5.13 Georgiana Brown Harbeson, Deep South—Reproduced in Minerva Needlecraft Book (1937), 45.

112

6.1 John Marin, Lower Manhattan (1922)—Gouache and charcoal with paper cut-out attached with thread on paper, 215/8 × 267/8 in.— Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest—Museum of Modern Art, New York—Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY.

118

6.2 Marguerite Zorach, The City of New York in the Year Nineteen Hundred and Twenty (1920) Wool on linen embroidery, approx. 48 × 24 in.—Zorach Collection, LLC-Photograph by author. 

120

6.3 Marguerite Zorach, Sixth Avenue L (1924)—Watercolor and graphite on heavy wove paper 22⅜ × 155/8 in.—Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH—Gift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller.121 6.4 Georgia O’Keeffe, The Shelton with Sunspots, N.Y, (1926)—Oil on canvas, 48½ × 301/4 in Signed, titled, and dated on label on reverse. Gift of Leigh B. Block, 1985.206—The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA—Photo Credit: The Art Institute of Chicago/Art Resource, NY.

126

6.5 Marguerite Zorach, For Bill and Lucy L’Engle (1924)—Wool on linen embroidery, 28 × 21 in. Zorach collection, LLC— Photograph by author.

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List of Illustrations

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6.6 Marguerite Zorach, Nude Reclining (1922)—Oil on canvas, 29 × 301/4 in.—Courtesy of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC—Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay—Photograph by Lee Stalsworth.

130

6.7 M  arguerite Zorach, Blue Cinerarias (ca. 1932)—Oil on canvas, 46 × 38 in.—Zorach Collection, LLC—Image courtesy of Gerald Peters Gallery, New York.

131

6.8 Marguerite Zorach, The Circus (1924)—Oil on canvas, 54 × 44 in.—Private collection—Image courtesy of Kraushaar Galleries— Photo credit Geoffrey Clements, NY.

133

6.9 Elizabeth Roth, New York from Central Park (1934)—Reproduced in Harbeson, American Needlework, 186a.—Dimensions and whereabouts unknown.

137

7.1 Marguerite Zorach, The Family, White Mountains (1915–16)— Wool on linen embroidery, 19 × 17 in. Zorach Collection, LLC— Photograph by author.

141

7.2 Marguerite Zorach, The Family, White Mountains (1915)— Watercolor on paper, 111/4 × 16½ in. Zorach Collection, LLC—Photograph by author.

142

7.3 Marguerite Zorach, The Home (before 1923)—Wool on linen embroidery—Dimensions and whereabouts unknown— Reproduced on front page of brochure for Montross Gallery exhibition, Exhibition of Embroidered Tapestries by Marguerite Zorach (1923).

144

7.4 Georgiana Brown Harbeson, Summer (The Garden of Love) (1932)—Front cover of Needlecraft, June 1932.

146

7.5 Georgiana Brown Harbeson, Spring (1932)—Front cover of Needlecraft, April 1932.

147

7.6 Georgiana Brown Harbeson, Winter (1932)—Front cover of Needlecraft, February 1932.

148

7.7 Georgiana Brown Harbeson, Sea Fantasy (1934)—Front cover of Needlecraft, July 1934.

150

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List of Illustrations

7.8 Mary Ellen Crisp, Untitled Landscape (before 1938)—Embroidery, 7 × 10 ft.—Whereabouts unknown. Reproduced in Harbeson, American Embroidery, 186a. 

151

7.9 Marian Stoll, Untitled (Landscape with Building) (1928)—Esther Fitzgerald Rare Textiles, London.

152

7.10 Marian Stoll, Greek Temple (1927)—Esther Fitzgerald Rare Textiles, London.

153

7.11 Marian Stoll, Untitled (Village) (date illegible)—Esther Fitzgerald Rare Textiles, London.

154

7.12 Marian Stoll, The Storm (ca. 1933)—Dimensions and whereabouts unknown—Reproduced in Margaret Hogarth, Modern Embroidery, 23.

155

7.13 Marian Stoll, New England Village (before 1938)—Reproduced in Harbeson, American Needlework, 184b.

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8.1 Katherine Dreier, Abstract Portrait of Marcel Duchamp (1918)— Oil on canvas, 18 × 32 in.—Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund. The Museum of Modern Art, New York—Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/ Art Resource, NY. 

160

8.2 Marguerite Zorach, Bea Ault, 1925—oil on canvas, 44 × 30 in. (111.8 × 76.2 cm)—Courtesy of Kraushaar Galleries, New York.

162

8.3 Marguerite Zorach, The Jonas Family (1927)—Linen embroidery with wool using stem, chain, buttonhole, herringbone, satin and Romanian stitches on plain weave, 515/8 × 50⅜ in.—Gift of Richard H. Frost, 1996-112-1. Photo: Matt Flynn–Cooper Hewitt. Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, NY, USA—Photo Credit: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum/Art Resource, NY. 

166

8.4 Marguerite Zorach, Maine Sheriff (1930)—Oil on linen, 201/8 × 301/8 in.—Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase 31.386—Digital image © Whitney Museum, NY.

168

8.5 Marguerite Zorach, Robinhood Farm: Georgetown Island Maine in the Year 1937 (1937)—Wool on linen embroidery,

List of Illustrations

40 × 32 in.—Reproduced in Tarbell, William and Marguerite Zorach: The Maine Years (1979), 19—Whereabouts unknown.

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8.6 Marguerite Zorach, The Ipcar Family at Robinhood Farm (1944)—Wool on linen embroidery, 17½ × 23½ in.— Zorach Collection, LLC—Digital image courtesy of Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME.

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8.7 Marguerite Zorach, Peggy and Tessim Zorach Family (1944)— Wool on linen embroidery, 17½ × 24½ in.—Zorach Collection, LLC—Image courtesy of Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME.

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8.8 Marguerite Zorach, Memories of My California Childhood (1921)—Oil on canvas, 30 × 25 in.—Brooklyn Museum—Gift of Dr. Robert Leslie in memory of Dr. Sarah K. Greenberg, 72.99— Photograph by Sarah DeSantis, Brooklyn Museum— © Zorach Collection, LLC.

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8.9 Marguerite Zorach, Still Life (Remembrance of Things Past) (1930)—Oil on canvas, 34 × 28½ in.—Zorach Collection, LLC—Image courtesy of Gerald Peters Gallery, New York.

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8.10 Georgia Brown Harbeson, Sacajawea—Front cover of Needlecraft, July 1933.

186

8.11 Georgian Brown Harbeson, Pocahontas—Front cover of Needlecraft, April 1933.

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9.1 Marion Fuller, Cottage Garden (c 1935)—Fuller, “A Gay Garden with Tulips,” Needlecraft, May 1935.

194

Acknowledgments This book has been a long time coming. My interest in the topic began with my dissertation on the embroideries of Marguerite Zorach as a graduate student at the University of Delaware. Although the focus of my scholarship shifted away from Zorach’s embroideries after graduation, I remained committed to publishing a book on them. They are exquisite examples of the creative potential of the medium, and in my estimation, they represent Zorach’s finest work. Thus, in my research, I was excited to discover one of Zorach’s contemporaries, Georgiana Brown Harbeson, an artist who shared my enthusiasm for her embroideries. Harbeson was a prolific embroiderer herself and an outspoken advocate for the artistic potential of embroidery. She first identified the modern embroidery movement in America that is the subject of this book. I have come to admire both Harbeson and Zorach for their feminist perspectives and for their perseverance in advancing a medium so intrinsic to the lives of women. My gratitude extends to many individuals. First, I would like to acknowledge Dr. Roberta Tarbell. I am indebted to her groundbreaking scholarship on Zorach’s paintings, which have provided the foundation for my own work on Zorach’s embroideries. Tarbell served as a reader for my dissertation on these embroideries and I will always be grateful for her guidance during the years in which I researched this topic and for providing me with an important introduction to Zorach family members. Several of Zorach’s most important embroideries would not be illustrated in this book if it wasn’t for the generosity of the Farnsworth Art Museum’s Jane Bianco and Sheryl McMahon in providing me with the images. I was first acquainted with Jane several years ago when she reached out to me about an exhibition she was curating on Zorach, titled Marguerite Zorach: An ArtFilled Life. I thank Jane for including me in this project. The exhibition and accompanying catalog will most certainly make a significant contribution to furthering our understanding of Zorach’s work. Similarly, I want to thank Stephen Borkowski, chair of the Collections Committee of the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum. He made an astute purchase with The Mayflower embroidery designed by Mary Ellen Crisp that is now beautifully conserved and part of the museum’s collection. Stephen

Acknowledgments

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arranged for me to view the embroidery and could not have been more hospitable during my visit. He provided me with a beautiful image of the embroidery to meet the deadline for this book, which required much maneuvering on his part to do so. I am truly grateful for his efforts in ensuring I had the image, but even more, for sharing in my excitement about the discovery of this Crisp embroidery. I also want to thank Cathie Zusy for reaching out to me about a Crisp embroidery kit purchased by her family in the 1940s. The embroidery’s subject of a homesteading scene was beautifully executed by Zusy’s relative, Cora Jane Cox, and remains in the family as a testament to their homesteading heritage. The story of the Cox embroidery demonstrates the value of these embroideries for the families that cherish them. Unfortunately, the Cox embroidery is the only embroidery for which I have such specific detail on its history so it is particularly meaningful to have its story included in this book. Gillian Creelman of Vinalhaven, Maine, must also be recognized for the important role she has played in preserving several embroideries by Marian Stoll. An embroidery teacher affiliated with the Millbrook Needlework Guild, Creelman was approached by the Southmayd Home in Waterbury, Connecticut, where Stoll died in 1960, about disposing of Stoll’s embroideries. Creelman immediately realized the quality of the embroideries; she held on to them for over forty years until she was able to find homes for them in museums. Four of Stoll’s embroidered pictures, including one reproduced in this book, are now in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and two additional works are preserved in Stoll’s hometown of Waterbury at the Mattatuck Museum, thanks to Creelman’s efforts. Olga Hansen, another teacher at Millbrook, was also given two of Stoll’s embroideries to preserve. Without these women recognizing the significance and quality of Stoll’s work, these wonderful works of art might easily have been lost. Thanks to Kathy Woodside at the Jesup Memorial Library in Bar Harbor, Maine, for guiding me as I waded through files related to the art exhibitions held at the library in the early twentieth century. Kathy was generous with her time and connected me to the family of Marcia Stebbins, an invaluable connection in that the family provided me with important background information on Marcia for the book. While doing research at the Jesup, I met author Carl Little, who along with his brother David has published many books on Maine. Carl provided me with the contact information I needed to get permission to publish an image of the Zorach Rockefeller Family embroidery. My sincere thanks and deep appreciation go out to the Society for the Preservation of American Modernists (SPAM) for providing me with a

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Acknowledgments

publication grant to help offset the costs associated with gaining permissions for the reproduction of images. I am honored to be among the outstanding group of American modernists who have received funding from SPAM. My home institution of Emmanuel College has also provided financial support for image reproduction costs and my research overall. A special thanks to Emmanuel reference librarian Diane Zydlewski for always being there when I needed to track down even the most obscure sources. Thanks to art history major Adam Pinheiro (class of 2017) for his work as my research assistant and for helping me to ensure that the images for this book were of the highest quality possible. Adam has demonstrated outstanding potential as a scholar and I look forward to watching his career in art history develop. I am always grateful to the Zorach family for supporting my research over the years. I have fond memories of trips to Maine to visit Peggy Zorach, Marguerite’s daughter-in-law, and Dahlov Ipcar, her daughter. Both women warmly welcomed me into their homes and provided me with invaluable information on Marguerite’s life and work. Dahlov died in 2017 at age ninety-nine and after an illustrious career as a painter, illustrator, and writer. Thanks to Peter Zorach for providing me with the permissions to use the Zorach images. My family and friends have inspired me over the years to continue my work on this project. I appreciate their openness in always welcoming me back into their lives after I have emerged from the depths of my research.

1

Introduction

In the first half of the twentieth century, a group of American women artists dedicated themselves to embroidery as a form of artistic expression. The embroideries they made were consciously designed and executed to demonstrate their training as painters and more specifically their adherence to the principles of modern art. In the early 1930s, artist Georgiana Brown Harbeson declared that the embroideries created by these women constituted a “modern embroidery movement” in America. In a 1935 article, she identified the key contributors to this movement: Marguerite Zorach, Marcia Stebbins, Mary Ellen Crisp, and herself.1 In a book she published three years later, Harbeson added embroiderer Marian Stoll to the group.2 Harbeson’s efforts were recognized by her contemporary Frances Morris, an associate curator of textiles at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1922 until 1929 and a lifelong advocate of textiles, who described Harbeson as “the foremost American exponent of the modern movement in embroidery.”3 This book is an examination of the embroideries created by this dynamic group of women artists who turned to needlework as a preferred form of artistic expression. It considers the arguments put forth by Harbeson and her collaborators that embroidery should be evaluated with the same seriousness as any other art form. It also considers the reception of these arguments by critics and contemporary evaluations of the embroideries themselves when they were on exhibit. Most importantly, it provides a close examination of individual embroideries, which have received little serious analysis by art historians. Fundamentally, this book continues Harbeson’s project of documenting the history of modern embroidery in America. More broadly, it demonstrates that American artists in the first half of the twentieth century contributed to the advancement of modern craft and the decorative arts concurrently with their European counterparts whose contributions have already been recognized by scholars.

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The Modern Embroidery Movement

“Needlepainting”: An argument for embroidery as art The women artists who contributed to the modern embroidery movement in America were all quite articulate in their arguments for the potential of embroidery as a form of modern art. However, Harbeson became their most untiring spokesperson. In a 1933 interview for the Christian Science Monitor, she expressed her belief that embroidery was as legitimate a form of artistic expression as any other medium. She explained: I have always believed that an artist should express herself in many mediums. Each expression is enriched by all that has been learned from the other techniques. That which, spontaneously and inevitably, I put into my embroidery is the cumulative effect of having worked in water colors, of battling with the problems of mural decoration, of inventing dances and of experimenting with the complexities of design for stage sets and ballets—of which I have done a number for Broadway productions.4

Harbeson’s emphasis on the value of experimentation in a wide variety of media reflects a view shared by many American modernists at this time. Harbeson wrote two key texts on modern embroidery: her 1935 article, titled “The Four Moderns: Exponents of the Newer Embroidery,” and her book titled American Needlework: The History of Decorative Stitchery from the Late 16th to the 20th Century, published in 1938, which included several chapters dedicated to modern embroidery. In both her article and book, Harbeson described contemporary trends in embroidery in which modern artists were applying the principles of painting to needlework. She used the term “needlepainting” to describe this trend.5 As she explained in her book, “‘Needlepainting’, a term coined by the author to describe certain types of modern needlework, implies an approach to embroidery from a painter’s point of view. Needlework is handled the same as canvases, paint, and brushes would be used, and similar decorative angles are employed in composition.”6 For Harbeson, the needle was the equivalent of a paint brush, thread the equivalent of paint, and linen that of the painter’s canvas. She evaluated embroideries on the basis of how successfully they replicated the techniques and aesthetics of painting and gave specific instruction on how this could be accomplished using a needle and thread. Harbeson’s belief that embroidery should be informed by the painting tradition mandated that embroiderers be trained in the arts. In her article, she argued that “the seriousness and dignity to be realized in embroidery as a medium of pure art” required “serious training in art,” specifically in painting.7

Introduction

3

She considered originality of design to be essential, a position not surprising for an advocate of needlework as art, although she also recognized the artistic merit of embroideries made by following patterns. The four principal women whom Harbeson celebrated as contributors to the modern embroidery movement— Zorach, Stebbins, Crisp, and Stoll—had all been trained as painters and had already had at least one solo show in a New York art gallery when she wrote her article.8 More specifically, Harbeson advocated for embroidery that embodied the principles of modern art. For Harbeson, modern embroidery, and modern art in general, was not just defined by a specific style, but by an attitude toward subject matter. But even that attitude was not rigidly defined. The modern attitude that Harbeson described was characterized by an openness to experimentation whether in subject, style, or choice of medium, an openness that emerged when artists listened to their individual voices and followed their unique paths. Understanding of what constituted modern art shifted significantly as the decades of the twentieth century progressed, but Harbeson remained steadfast in her commitment to embroidery as an appropriate medium for modernists.

Contributors to the modern embroidery movement While Harbeson was the most widely published advocate for modern embroidery, American modern artist Marguerite Zorach set the stage for the modern embroidery movement that Harbeson later identified. She made embroideries at the start of her art career in 1910s New York and continued to make them throughout her life. Zorach’s choice to work in embroidery was first inspired by her desire to replicate the bright colors she had seen in Fauvist paintings during her travels in France. In a 1956 article for Art in America, she recalled, “In 1912, when I returned from Paris full of enthusiasm over the world of lively color the Fauves had discovered, paint seemed dull and inadequate to me. The wealth of beautiful and brilliant colors available in woolen yarns so fascinated me that I tried to paint my pictures in wool.”9 Zorach’s commitment to embroidery is demonstrated by the choice she made to exhibit her embroideries—and other textiles—alongside her paintings. A significant portion of this book is dedicated to Zorach as a major contributor to the modern embroidery movement. The most celebrated artist among the group, and already recognized by art historians for her contribution to the development of

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The Modern Embroidery Movement

American modern art, Zorach created large-scale embroideries throughout her career that engaged the same ideas and principles of her paintings. The other women who contributed to the modern embroidery movement are little recognized today, although all of them were active artists during their lifetimes and at times supported themselves and their families through their embroidery sales. This book reconstructs their artistic careers and evaluates their work within the context of American modernist concerns. Harbeson, Zorach, Crisp, Stebbins, and Stoll are the focus, but additional women embroiderers are also introduced. Fortunately, several key works by these artists have been preserved. The Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum holds embroideries by Stebbins and Crisp. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Esther Fitzgerald Rare Textiles in London hold embroideries by Stoll. An Untitled embroidery by Crisp (1930s) (plate 1), extraordinary as one of the most abstract embroideries among the extant works, is in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, as is one of Zorach’s most accomplished embroideries, Remembrance of Life in Fresno California and of My Childhood There Around the Year 1900 (1949) (plate 2). Harbeson’s embroidery designs are documented through color reproductions of them found on the covers of Needlecraft, a magazine dedicated to the “home arts.” Her published writing on the subject of modern embroidery also provides invaluable illustrations of the embroideries created by these women. Reviews of exhibitions in which these embroideries were displayed are another important source of information. Together, this documentation, limited as it is, provides the foundation for the reconstruction of the history of the American modern embroidery movement.

Modern embroidery and the craft tradition Harbeson’s advocacy for the artistic potential of embroidery coincided with a major craft revival in America. During the 1930s, craft programs were supported throughout the United States by New Deal policies designed to provide economic relief from the impact of the Depression. Support for craft extended into the private sector as well. Craft programs were established in a wide range of institutions, including schools, museums, and community art centers.10 As curator Hildreth York has summarized, these programs “provided income, selfhelp, and rehabilitation for the unemployed, countering the ills of the Depression as well as the more long-term effects of industrialization and mechanization that had wiped out many artisans, workshops, and craft industries in this country.”11

Introduction

5

The success of 1930s craft programs culminated with a major craft exhibition held in the American Art Today building at the 1939–40 New York World’s Fair. The exhibition was strongly influenced by WPA/FAP director Holgar Cahill.12 In addition to the craft on display, the exhibition included a WPA/FAP Community Art Center with handicraft demonstrations, which reflected Cahill’s interest in offering craft activities for “the average person” as an alternative to “the passive appreciation of the work of a few exceptionally brilliant individuals.”13 Cahill’s perspective on craft reflects the continuum that defined craft, which ran from craft as an amateur pursuit to a form of artistic expression that required professional training. Harbeson’s approach to embroidery was one that challenged this binary. Taking a progressive view on the artistic potential of all individuals, she believed that “amateur” embroiderers, if they followed well-designed patterns, had the potential to create “museum quality” work. Furthermore, in an interview with Harbeson the year before she died, the interviewer explained, “She believed that only widespread practice and enthusiasm would generate the experience and experimentation that would allow needlework to develop as a fine art.”14 The 1930s craft revival in the United States had important historical roots. The 1920s were also characterized by efforts to “preserve and broaden production and marketing bases of the crafts.”15 Craft historian Janet Kardon’s Revivals! Diverse Traditions, 1920-1945 provides evidence of the flourishing of the crafts in the 1920s.16 The Arts and Crafts movement set the strongest historical precedent for American craft. Although it took hold in the nineteenth century, it continued to influence the American craft tradition into the twentieth century. Art historian Wendy Kaplan has summarized that the American Arts and Crafts movement had “by World War I, made a major impact on American art and American life.” She observes, “In altering attitudes toward the fabrication and use of objects, it changed fundamental perceptions regarding design, the home, and work.”17 In this regard, Gustav Stickley’s furniture designs and his monthly periodical The Craftsman, published from 1901 to 1916, warrant specific recognition. Most pertinent to this book, The Craftsman did not exclude textiles in its efforts to bolster American craftsmanship. Providing a precedent to Harbeson’s needlework patterns published in Needlecraft, The Craftsman published needlework patterns for amateurs as early as 1903.18 Throughout the history of American craft, artists played a significant role in invigorating the craft tradition through their experiments in craft media. In their survey of the history of studio craft, craft historians Janet Koplos and Bruce Metcalf identify a large number of professionally trained artists who worked in craft. Metcalf and Koplos focus on studio craft, which they define as “handwork

6

The Modern Embroidery Movement

with aesthetic intent, largely or wholly created by individuals (usually art school or university trained) to their own designs.”19 The embroideries under consideration in this book fall within this definition in that the embroiderers who made them insisted upon the necessity of professional art training. Historically marginalized within the craft tradition as women’s handicraft, embroidery made by professional artists challenged this marginalization. In their book, Metcalf and Koplos recognize Zorach and other modern embroiderers for their individual contributions, but they do not connect their individual efforts to a larger movement. It is the argument of this book that artists working in the crafts were more than individual actors. Their choices reflected a shared appreciation among American modern artists for the value of the craft tradition in expanding artistic practices as a whole. Zorach, Harbeson, and their collaborators shared a belief in embroidery as a meaningful form of artistic expression and demonstrated this belief publicly and consistently throughout their careers. They often exhibited their work together and they publicly acknowledged each other’s work. In these ways, they formed a cohesive, albeit loosely connected, movement. Easily aligned with studio craft practices in their emphasis on professional art training, the modern embroiderers considered in this book often operated outside of studio craft practices in their willingness at times to design embroideries that were executed by others. This separation between designer and fabricator aligns modern embroidery with the newly emerging field of design, in which this separation was necessary to fulfill the design goal of producing objects in multiples. While Zorach and Stoll remained most true to the studio craft ideal of the artist as both designer and fabricator of a unique work, Harbeson and Crisp designed patterns for embroideries that were sold by magazines and department stores. Harbeson also worked with industry to produce designs for clothing accessories and a wide variety of objects for home decoration. Even Zorach designed textiles for industry in the early years of her career; and in 1937 and 1942 she submitted rug designs to the Museum of Modern Art for rug exhibitions in which her rug designs were fabricated by the Crawford Shops and V’Soske, Inc. respectively.20 Following the tradition of the decorative arts, Harbeson, Crisp, and Stoll also made unique functional embroidered objects for sale to individuals and to organizations such as churches. Furthermore, rather than denigrating the embroideries made by embroiderers not trained in the arts, modern embroiderers often expressed appreciation for embroideries by so-called hobbyists and amateurs, many of whom had much more experience in making embroideries than their professionally trained associates. By its inclusiveness, the modern embroidery movement often transcended the more highly regulated

Introduction

7

boundaries that have come to define the fine arts tradition. Instead, they reflect the actuality that in the first half of the twentieth century, these boundaries were far more fluid than they came to be defined by midcentury.

Embroidery and feminism From the Colonial period on, embroidery and other forms of needlework were positioned as a form of women’s handicraft in ways that reinforced traditional notions of gender.21 However, during the 1920s and 1930s, perceptions of needlework were changing along with changing perspectives on the roles of women. Evidence of a more progressive view of needlework comes from needlework magazines. As historian Rachel Maines concludes from her research on these magazines, “Some of the needlework press . . . were noticeably prowoman in their outlook.”22 Maines specifically identifies Needlecraft magazine, the magazine to which Harbeson contributed designs, as “outspoken in their views on women’s issues.”23 In a profile on Harbeson published in Needlecraft, Florence Yoder Wilson, a regular contributor to the magazine, expressed this view. Celebrating Harbeson for her modern approach to embroidery design, Wilson recalled an editorial she had previously written on the status of needlework. She wrote, “I said that since women now had the freedom they had struggled for so long, there was no more need for them to disavow the symbols of their bondage of the past, and that all of the home arts were to come to the front again, refreshed by their temporary eclipse, to enjoy an era of renewed activity inspired by deeper and broader feeling.”24 For Wilson and others, needlework was a vehicle for women to celebrate their identities as liberated women. Needlework functioned not just as a symbol of women’s new freedom. More importantly, it often provided women with at least some financial independence. Maines observes that “having one’s own money to spend as an alternative to the ‘bread of dependence’ was also the subject of Needlecraft editorials.”25 It should be noted that needlework was not always created under ideal working conditions; some women needleworkers suffered under working conditions equivalent to those of factory work.26 The women discussed in this book held more privileged positions. When they worked with industry, they were hired as pattern designers rather than as laborers. They sold functional objects, like chair covers and purses that were commissioned by individuals and organizations, particularly churches, but even these were created as unique objects. Selling many of their embroideries as art, they earned significant income by creating

8

The Modern Embroidery Movement

individual embroideries recognized for their unique qualities that distinguished them from mass produced ones. Harbeson supported herself and her children exclusively through her embroidery, while for most women, embroidery supplemented family income. In The Invention of Craft, craft historian Glenn Adamson observes that “across the panoply of women’s experience, craft [and embroidery as such] emerges as a complex and contradictory form of self-reliance.”27 Adamson’s observation reflects the experiences of the women embroiderers discussed in this book; they gained financial benefits from making embroideries, and in some instances, entrance into the art world through their embroidery, but at the same time suffered from the marginalization of their work as craft rather than art.

Defining the modern as decorative A review of the embroideries discussed in this book reveals a wide array of artistic styles. Almost all of the embroideries are pictorial works that experiment with differing degrees of abstraction. Modern embroidery styles were not stagnant but shifted in accordance with other trends in modern art so that 1920s embroideries are distinctively different from those of the 1930s. For example, Zorach’s work from the 1920s is clearly influenced by cubism and expressionist coloration, while her work from the 1930s reflects the American Regionalist interest in realism. Since the 1990s, art historical scholarship has successfully demonstrated that, as art historian Christopher Reed has summarized, the history of modern art must be constructed with a broad enough lens to include the “wide range of people and practices that once had claim to be considered ‘modern’.”28 Reed’s observation supports the argument presented in this book that the modern embroidery movement should be included in any comprehensive history of modern art. Many of the modern embroideries examined in this book can be described as decorative in that descriptive detail and ornamentation are integrated into their designs. This raises the complex question of the role of the decorative in the development of modern art. Several scholars have contributed to a new understanding of how the decorative influenced the development of modern art. In The Nabis and Intimate Modernism, art historian Katherine Kuenzli reconsiders the Nabis by rejecting the decorative and domestic as “terms of derision as they have been understood in canonical formulations of modernism.”29 As Kuenzli explains, her book “seeks to recover the intellectual seriousness and

Introduction

9

artistic ambition underlying the Nabis’ practice of decoration, and argues for its crucial importance to painterly modernism.”30 In her assessment of embroidery collaborations between two modernist couples—Wassily Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter, and Sophie Taeuber and Hans Arp—art historian Bibiana Obler has observed that “the discourse of the decorative . . . was heavily overdetermined by gender connotations”31 Noting that recent scholarship on the decorative has focused on male artists, Obler argues that “women, too, were integrally involved in the melding of art and life through the decorative.”32 Challenging derogatory art historical constructions of the decorative, Christopher Reed fundamentally rejects the equation of the “cozy and the decorative” with the “superficial and the unimportant.”33 He calls for the recognition of a “less heroic” domestic modernism as an alternative to mainstream modernism’s “heroic odyssey on the high seas of consciousness, with no time to spare for the mundane details of home life and housekeeping.”34 Finally, to the extent that the extensive use of detail in embroidery was tied to traditional art practices—and in opposition to modernist interests in abstraction—art historian Alastair Wright’s scholarship on Henri Matisse is instructive. In his consideration of the ways that Matisse engaged both modernist abstraction and traditional painting techniques, Wright argues that “Matisse’s work occupies an unsettling zone between modernism and tradition, offering not a synthesis but an unmasking of each of these terms.”35 All of this scholarship has implications for an understanding of modern embroidery. These expanded constructions of the history of modern art make it far more difficult to dismiss modern embroidery as falling outside of the parameters of the modernist project. While the scholars mentioned above have tackled the relationship between art and decoration, Adamson has taken on the equally challenging task of defining the relationship between the decorative and craft. In his book thinking through craft, he warns, “Often there is an accidental conflation of the two terms, as if craft could be reduced to its role in creating the decorative. . . . Decorated objects may or may not be crafted, and objects that are crafted may or may not be decorative. We might hazard that this is a distinction between means and ends: whereas craft is a supplemental kind of making, decoration is a supplemental kind of form. Though the decorative has no isometric relationship to craft, it is nonetheless true that the two are often found together and have strikingly parallel positions in art theory.”36 Adamson’s position on craft—and the decorative—as “supplemental” reflects a fundamental aspect of his view on “the history of modern craft to be a mirror image of the history of modern art: a supplement to its narrative of progress and conceptual discovery.”37 As

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The Modern Embroidery Movement

both craft objects and, more often than not, decorative in design, the modern embroideries discussed in this book can be categorized as “supplemental” and thus operate as an important historical challenge to the limited narrative of the history of art described by Adamson. Adamson also argues that idea of craft as supplemental can be applied to its materiality in that “material specificity is oppositional to the ambition of modern art to achieve a purely visual effect” [Adamson’s emphasis].38 The medium of embroidery has a specific relationship to materiality. Its haptic quality, particularly in some of the most heavily stitched

Figure 1.1  Stitches Most Universally Used by Modern Needlepainters—Reproduced in “The Four Moderns in America, Exponents of the Newer Embroidery.”—Bulletin of the Needle and Bobbin Club 19 (1935): plate xiii.

Introduction

11

decorative works, insists upon the embroiderer’s embodied experience through the labor-intensive act of stitching, an experience shared by those who viewed them and responded to their “craftsmanship.” When modern embroiderers were working in the early twentieth century, the “Greenberg effect” described by art historian Caroline Jones—based on the argument that the best art was art that created a purely visual experience—had not yet gained the totalizing currency that it held at midcentury.39 Returning to the embroideries created before Greenberg’s theorizing on the primacy of the visual over the material provides historical evidence of the earlier value placed on materiality that both contemporary artists and scholars are now working to recover. The decorative effect that characterizes many of the embroideries discussed in this book is created through the use of a variety of stitches. In her writing, Harbeson identified six of the most common stitches used by modern embroiderers (Figure 1.1): cretan (stitch and filling), feather, buttonhole, chain, fly, and satin. But Harbeson’s writing very rarely focused on specific types of stitches used in the embroideries she was evaluating; she opted instead to focus on the overall effect that the combination of stitches created. This book takes a similar approach in that there is very little discussion of stitchery; the focus instead is on subject matter and the overall style as well. For scholars and practitioners of embroidery, the absence of any substantive discussion on stitching techniques is sure to be disappointing. In some cases, it is the result of having access only to reproductions of the works. It is hoped that future researchers will take on the task of identifying and evaluating the stitching techniques used by modern embroiderers.

Recovering modern embroidery This book provides detailed information and analysis of embroideries produced by modern artists in the first half of the twentieth century. Previous scholarship on textile production has largely come in the form of surveys that provide important overviews of textile history. Virginia Gardner Troy’s The Modernist Textile: Europe and America, 1890-1940 serves as one example.40 The essay “Emerging Identity: American Textile Artists in Early Twentieth Century America,” by textile scholar Nicola Shilliam, provides a brief but important analysis of American modern textiles in that it argues for an art historical framework related to modernist concerns in evaluating them.41 Shilliam’s essay also offers one of the first scholarly efforts to evaluate Zorach’s embroideries.

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The Modern Embroidery Movement

In 1995, the same year that Shilliam published her essay, design historian Hazel Clark published the first essay to focus exclusively on Zorach’s embroideries.42 Building on the scholarship of Shilliam and Clark, my own dissertation, “Early American Modernism and Craft Production: The Embroideries of Marguerite Zorach,” begun just a few years after these two publications and completed in 2002, examines Zorach embroideries not considered in these essays and expands upon the interpretations previously offered by Shilliam and Clark.43 The extended length of my dissertation allowed me to go into greater detail in evaluating individual works than was allowed in their brief essays. This current book comes full circle in that it broadens out away from an exclusive focus on Zorach to include the embroidered works of her peers in an effort to historicize all of these embroideries as contributing to the establishment and development of the modern embroidery movement. Overall, this book is a recovery project of many forgotten works by an important group of women artists whose embroidery practices broaden our understanding of the development of modern art. It makes every effort to document not just the embroideries themselves but the lives of the women who made them. Indeed, modern embroidery practices brought women embroiderers economic freedom and provided them a space to explore ideas they may have hesitated to investigate when working in painting and sculpture, media largely dominated by men. That being said, any recovery project of lost artists and objects is incomplete if it does not include a critical analysis of the forces at play that have marginalized these artists and objects. Throughout this book, these forces remain central in evaluating the reception and historical positioning of the modern embroidery movement. The arrangement of the chapters is based on theme rather than chronological. This arrangement was decided upon after much consideration and attempts at more narratively driven ones that devoted a single chapter to each artist. I believe that the chapters as they are arranged here are the most effective way of connecting each artist to modernist concerns as a whole. Chapter 2 provides an overview of the embroidery movement from its roots in the nineteenth century to its flourishing in the 1920s and 1930s. It includes a comparison of the American embroidery movement to the modern embroidery movement in Europe that reveals transatlantic parallels. Chapter 3 is dedicated to Marguerite  Zorach’s art philosophy in relation to her choice to work in embroidery. It also includes a close analysis of one her key works. This focus on Zorach is based on the greater availability of material on her life and her embroideries than is available on her collaborators and on her already recognized position by scholars as a

Introduction

13

contributor to American modern art. Chapter 4 provides information on the lives and art philosophies of Harbeson, Stebbins, Crisp, and Stoll to reveal their shared commitment to embroidery as an expression of modern art principles. It includes a close analysis of a key embroidery by each woman. Chapter 5 considers the various ways in which collaboration—between artists and with industry—defined the modern embroidery movement. The next three chapters focus on shared subject interests chosen by modern embroiderers: the urban experience in Chapter 6; nature imagery in Chapter 7; and modern portraiture in Chapter 8.

Conclusion Precursor to the craft revolution that began in the 1950s, the modern embroidery movement warrants serious scholarly consideration. Comprising a successful, prolific, and gifted group of collaborators, the movement reveals the rich history of women’s artistic production within the specific contexts of textile and craft history as well as to the history of modern art. Contesting the marginalization of needlework in early-twentieth-century America as women’s handicraft, the modern embroidery movement presented an important feminist challenge to the gendering of modern art. Overall, this book documents the history of the American modern embroidery movement as a significant part of the history of American art and craft. The last two decades have witnessed a surge in critical thinking about craft’s relationship to art that has developed alongside a concurrent surge in craft as a creative practice.44 But as art historian Julia Bryan-Wilson has observed in her consideration of craft since the 1970s, it is imperative that scholars closely consider “differences between how craft was incorporated into art.”45 As BryanWilson concludes, “The real value of craft at this moment has nothing to do with a stable ideology but rather craft’s strange, pressured, and contested position within the schematic of consumption.”46 Her observations on contemporary craft are instructive in a historical consideration of craft practices. This book attempts to clearly define the different ways in which the art/craft divide was negotiated by the embroiderers who contributed to the modern embroidery movement by focusing closely of their specific strategies. Even within the practices of the group itself, and within the individual practices of each embroiderer, differences exist in the ways they engaged craft with art. In their insistence that their embroideries be viewed as art, these early-twentieth-century embroiderers constructed a political critique of the hierarchy of art that marginalized their work. At the same

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The Modern Embroidery Movement

time, their efforts to sell embroidery patterns to popular magazines or to create embroidery kits for sale engaged them in the marketplace in ways that are absent of political critique, although as will become evident through an examination of their works, these interventions in the marketplace sometimes carried subversive messages. As craft scholars have so often observed, it is precisely these differences that ultimately disrupt the art/craft divide. This historical analysis of the modern embroidery movement provides documentation of another art/craft disruption.

2

The Modern Embroidery Movement in Context

The modern embroidery movement has roots in the nineteenth-century craft tradition and early-twentieth-century craft revivals. However, it spearheaded embroidery’s transition away from its Arts and Crafts roots to a new alignment with the principles of modern art. Georgiana Brown Harbeson was untiring in her insistence that embroidery be recognized for its potential as a modernist practice. Significantly, her argument for embroidery as modern art shares interesting parallels with European trends. This chapter provides the cultural and historical context for the emergence of the American modern embroidery movement and its connections to these trends. In exploring the relationship between the modern embroidery movement and modern art, it is useful to consider an observation by Glenn Adamson in The Invention of Craft on the relationship between craft and modernism. Adamson contends that craft is a “modern invention” of the eighteenth  and nineteenth centuries that has been incorrectly viewed as “antithetical to the processes of modernization.”1 Although firmly positioned by the late nineteenth century as a signifier of a “premodern past,” he argues that craft has contributed much more to the development of modernism than simply providing an antidote to it.2 Adamson suggests a strategy of “framing craft as a powerful driver of progressive change in its own right.”3 In this regard, the modern embroidery movement affirms Adamson’s observation, providing an important example of the role of craft in advancing progressive change. As will be revealed in this chapter, the arguments presented by Harbeson and her collaborators are based on a fundamental rejection of craft’s association with a “premodern past” and, alternately, maintain embroidery’s potential as an expression of the modern age.

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The Modern Embroidery Movement

Embroidery in the late nineteenth century In the late nineteenth century, the Arts and Crafts movement argued for the elevation of craft and the decorative arts to the level of fine art.4 Textile production in a variety of forms, including embroidery, was among the craft practices that defined the Arts and Crafts movement.5 William Morris’s firm, Morris & Co., had an embroidery section under the direction of his daughter May.6 In America, the embroidery display at the Centennial Exhibition organized by London’s Royal School of Art Needlework sparked widespread interest in needlework as an art form. Textile curator Dilys Blum has observed that the Centennial Exhibition “excited a new enthusiasm for embroidery in the United States, elevating it from the status of Victorian ‘fancy work,’ a popular female pastime, to an art form.”7 The establishment of needlework departments in art schools and museums after the Centennial Exhibition exemplifies this status change for embroidery. In Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Museum of Art established the Art Needlework Department in its School of Industrial Art in 1878, and by 1879 a School of Art Needlework was in place at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Also inspired by the Centennial Exhibition, the Society of Decorative Art was formed as early as 1877 in New York City to teach “art needlework” and to “establish rooms for the exhibition and sale of . . . decorative work of any description, done by women, and of sufficient excellence to meet the recently stimulated demand for such work.”8 Candace Wheeler, cofounder of the Society of Decorative Art, played a pivotal role in the reassessment of embroidery as an art form in America. Throughout her career, Wheeler repeatedly argued for “a brotherhood and sisterhood of art” in which “all methods and all materials are open to it.”9 According to decorative arts curator Amelia Peck, “Wheeler saw the art needlework movement as a way to empower women” based on its potential to provide women trained in needlework the opportunity to earn independent incomes.10 Wheeler wrote extensively on the artistic potential of needlework and textiles in general. In her later years, she was especially prolific as a writer.11 At the age of ninety-four she wrote The Development of Embroidery in America, the first book to be published on the history of needlework in the United States. In it, Wheeler acknowledged the contribution of twentieth-century embroiderers who were pushing the medium in new directions. She wrote, “The women of today, 1920, have been called to work that is widely different from that of the ages when embroidery was a natural recourse and almost universal practice, but it is an art which has



The Modern Embroidery Movement in Context

17

done too much for the progress of the world, in all its different phases, to die, or to cease to progress.”12 Wheeler’s book provides important documentation of “progressive needlework art in America,”13 in which embroiderers influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement executed their embroideries in the same way that “a painter uses colors upon his [sic] palette.”14 For Wheeler, needlework was no less of an art form than painting. Indeed, her commitment to this medium is exemplified by the embroideries that both she and her daughter Dora designed and had executed by her firm, The Associated Artists. Wheeler called these works “needle-woven tapestries,” just as Zorach would later do.

Georgiana Brown Harbeson’s history of American embroidery Harbeson’s book, American Needlework, is an invaluable resource for the study of American embroidery. It is filled with otherwise undocumented information about the women who made embroideries and provides illustrations of embroideries that are no longer extant and would be lost if not included in Harbeson’s book. Harbeson constructs a history of American needlework that extends from the late sixteenth to the twentieth century. Approaching the embroideries examined in her book as art, she described both their subject and style with the specific intent of connecting them to art movements. In constructing her history of needlework, Harbeson emphasized the role played by needlework societies in the advancement of needlework as art. Like Wheeler, she recognized the Society of Decorative Arts; she also credits the Needlework and Textile Guild of the Art Institute of Chicago for nineteenthcentury advancements. These groups played an important role in promoting an interest in needlework as a form of creative expression. The twentieth century brought the formation of additional needlework organizations. After the First World War, the Needle and Bobbin Guild was founded in New York. It had two major goals: highlighting the collections of its members and holding exhibitions of textiles from around the world.15 Gertrude Whiting, a founder and active member of the guild, published A Lace Guide for Makers and Collector, which reflects the guild’s interest in both making and collecting.16 The Needle and Bobbin Guild was largely dedicated to the collection and preservation of historic textiles, but its publication, the Bulletin of the Needle and Bobbin Club, included several important articles on modern textiles as well.17 Harbeson wrote three

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articles for the Bulletin in 1935. She was also the subject of an article published in the journal that celebrated her contribution to the advancement of modern embroidery, written by Frances Morris, who was president of the Needle and Bobbin Club in 1935 after her tenure as curator of textiles at the Metropolitan Museum had ended.18 Harbeson herself founded the American Needle Arts Society.19 In American Needlework, Harbeson connected the development of needlework to other trends. Most significantly, she recognized the European influence on the advancement of American needlework that resulted from Americans traveling abroad. As she described, American women who had studied needlework in Europe played a major role in “the promotion of needlework groups as a means of encouraging better design.”20 She also considered the impact of the sewing machine on the advancement of needlework. Popularized in the midnineteenth century, the sewing machine reduced the demand for hand sewing, which had economic consequences for women. Harbeson explained that women who depended on sewing as a source of income found themselves unemployed because “sewing could now be accomplished with such speed that one woman could do the work of several and countless sewing women.”21 But, she argued, machine manufacture conversely resulted in an “increasing demand” for handmade “needlework art as a means of enhancing the beauty of their homes.”22 Although Harbeson does not provide a detailed explanation, she does indicate that this new focus on the machine resulted in a nostalgia for the handmade. The onset of the First World War led to a shift away from decorative works as members of needlework guilds devoted their time to making functional textiles that supported the war effort. After the war, interest in needlework reemerged. As described by Harbeson, this postwar flourishing of interest in needlework continued long after the First World War. Harbeson gave specific advice in her writing on how embroidery might best engage the painting tradition. Wanting to advance modern experimentation specifically, she encouraged embroiderers to do crewel work, which she described as “free style” embroidery that allowed for unrestrained artistic expression. With crewel work, embroidery stitches are freely worked and not counted; the embroiderer may follow a general design outlined on the linen or cotton foundation but overall determines the types and number of stitches and their overall arrangement as she works.23 As Harbeson explained, crewel work “permits greater flow and rhythm in the variety of stitches” and results in “individuality in design.”24 She explained that movement could be suggested by the arrangement of different colored yarns, just as painters used color to create



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this effect.25 Identifying simplification of form as an important characteristic of modern art, she encouraged modern embroiderers to create their embroideries with this in mind, observing that “the elimination of non-essentials is always good in art.”26 By the mid-1930s, when Harbeson was writing, the “machine aesthetic” of geometric simplicity, repetition of form, and mathematical precision conceived to simulate machine production had gained prominence in American art and design.27 Harbeson recognized this and encouraged the production of streamlined designs for embroideries in an attempt to keep embroidery designs aligned with the most contemporary stylistic trends. Again, she recommended crewel work because, as she explained, “In this age of streamline endeavor it seems appropriate to choose the swift effects and spirit obtainable through this medium.” 28 Harbeson’s efforts to promote embroidery as art have transatlantic parallels. In London, for example, Harbeson compares easily to Mary Hogarth, author and advocate for modern embroidery in the UK.29 Hogarth organized a major exhibition of modern embroidery for the British Institute of Industrial Art that was held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1932 and resulted in her own book on the subject. In the introduction to her book, titled Modern Embroidery, Hogarth wrote, “Modern embroidery should be the invention of to-day in design, and should express this age.”30 More conservative than Harbeson, she supported the maintaining of connections between modern embroidery and past embroidery traditions. Indeed, Hogarth observed, “We find that they [contemporary embroiderers] have not discarded tradition, that they show the new tendency that I have spoken of in design, together with the traditional accomplished needlecraft that we have become accustomed to see.”31

Modern artists and embroidery While Harbeson and other members of various needlework societies worked to promote embroidery as art, some of the most celebrated modern artists also developed an interest in embroidery as a form of artistic experimentation. Scholars have recognized significant European examples. Birthplace of Jungendstil, Munich was an art center in which the decorative and applied arts were highly valued and indeed flourished at this time. As early as 1896, an exhibition of embroideries by Hermann Obrist, the artist responsible for introducing Jugendstil to Munich, “caused a sensation” in Munich, anticipating the later appropriation of embroidery as a form of fine art by modern artists.32

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Wassily Kandinsky made embroidered wall hangings in addition to designing dresses, handbags, jewelry, and furniture.33 In the early years of their careers, Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter produced embroideries together. Swiss born Sophie Taeuber spent time in Munich and other parts of Germany during the 1910s. When she met Hans Arp, the couple also began to make embroideries together. In France, Sonia Delaunay created embroideries throughout her career.34 In America, Zorach and her husband William collaborated on embroideries for a short time, then Marguerite continued making embroideries on her own. Other American modern artists known to have experimented with embroidery include George Biddle and Hunt Diederich.35 It is hoped that more research on this subject will reveal additional embroidery experiments in America. Most significant to the development of modern embroidery in America were the contributions of modern designers whom had emigrated from Europe to America in the early decades of the twentieth century. Fritz Winold Reiss and Ilonka Karasz are key players in this regard. Both émigrés, from Germany and Hungary respectively, with training in the applied arts from their home countries, Reiss and Karasz initiated the periodical Modern Art Collector in an effort to promote a stronger relationship between the arts and the newly emerging American design industry.36 The periodical was consistent in its support of embroidery as a legitimate medium for the exploration of modern art principles. The “Tapestry Supplement” to its December 1915 issue was one of the earliest publications on modern embroidery in America.37 An article in the supplement, titled “Modern Embroidery,” advised readers on how to create modern embroideries. Embroiderers were instructed to use wool instead of silk because “wool does not reflect” or “show small depressions,” which allowed artists to create “flat surfaces, so typical of modern decorative art.”38 They were also encouraged to use simplified forms and bright colors and to emphasize two-dimensionality in order to replicate the characteristics of modern art. The frontispiece to the “Tapestry Supplement” was a color illustration of a bird embroidery designed by Reiss and executed by his wife Henrietta (Figure 2.1). The bird’s bright pink colors and the simplified lines used to define it connect this embroidery to the stylistic principles of modern art laid out in the Modern Art Collector. Henrietta Reiss was an artist in her own right and would establish a career as a textile designer and teacher. She advocated for “rhythmic design” in modern art that was inspired by the “pulse of life” to create a transcendent experience in the viewer.39 While contemporary criticism and periodicals like the Modern Art Collector shed light on the practice of embroidery, Rozsika Parker’s seminal book, The



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Figure 2.1  Henrietta and Fritz Winold Reiss, Untitled (Bird) (ca. 1915)—Designed by Fritz Winold Reiss, executed by Henrietta Reiss—Embroidery—Reproduced in “Tapestry Supplement,” Modern Art Collector (December 1915), n.p.—Dimensions and whereabouts unknown.

Subversive Stitch, was the first to provide a comprehensive evaluation of embroidery in relation to its gendered history. Throughout her book, Parker documents the ways in which needlework fueled artistic experimentation. For example, she argues that Taeuber’s background in the applied arts led her to experiment with abstraction, and Parker credits Taeuber with introducing Arp to embroidery.40 Other scholars have also recognized the role played by embroidery and other decorative arts in advancing modernist experimentation. Citing the research of Kandinsky scholar Peg Weiss, Norma Broude has argued that the decorative arts played a “crucial role . . . in the formation and emergence

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of some of the major modernist styles of the early twentieth century.”41 Indeed, Weiss provides ample evidence that in his early years as an artist, Kandinsky was actively involved in Munich’s flourishing applied arts and arts and crafts communities. She concludes that “the decorative movement and problems of ornament were to exert a very crucial influence on Kandinsky’s development toward abstraction.”42 Among the European modernists, Sonia Delaunay provides a compelling example of the ways in which embroidery informed modernist experimentation. Parker argues that Delaunay’s 1909 tapestry and embroidery designs “suggest that textile art prompted her move away from conventional use of colour and perspective, towards the development of . . . Orphism.”43 Art historian Sherry Buckberrough concurs with Parker’s assessment that it was through her experiments in embroidery that Delaunay was freed from “the final restrictions of her academic training.”44 Like Zorach, Delaunay was drawn to embroidery because she believed it provided greater potential for experimentation in color than could be accomplished with painting. She was a great admirer of Henri Rousseau and said that her embroideries were “an attempt to emulate the color tonality of Rousseau.”45 She was also drawn to the expressive colors of Fauvism. Indeed, her husband, Robert Delaunay, observed that Sonia’s embroideries provided her the vehicle to “bring into view the prospect of liberation” of color from its descriptive function.46 Delaunay may also have been motivated by financial incentives, as her mother was already making and selling embroideries at the time that she made the switch from painting to embroidery.47 She was probably trained in embroidery as a young girl so came to the medium as an artist with reasonable skill in the craft.48 Zorach serves as an interesting transatlantic counterpart to Delaunay, as will become evident from the material on Zorach presented in the next chapter. Recent scholarship has begun to recognize the limitations to feminist critiques of embroidery that began with Parker’s seminal book. Most importantly, Parker’s failure to consider the sewing practices of poor and working-class women and women of color has been noted by artist and scholar Lisa Vinebaum.49 With Vinebaum’s critique in mind, the fact that the women artists discussed in this book are exclusively white must be acknowledged, and thus this book is limited in scope. (Their class status varies, which will be discussed later in the book). The contributors to the American modern embroidery movement represent a small circle of women with ties to the art world that were established and reinforced by their class status and provided them access to art education and other benefits associated with white privilege. The lack of diversity among this



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circle of women embroiderers reflects the institutionalized discrimination faced by women of color in the art world at large. But in advocating for embroidery as art, these women artists advanced a cause that had the potential to benefit all women by challenging perceptions of embroidery as a domestic activity only engaged in for personal pleasure. Vinebaum calls for “a substantial shift away from more traditional understandings of sewing as a gendered, individual and domestic activity, to sewing as a group and public undertaking.” In this regard, these women provide an important model in their insistence that they be viewed as professional artists and participants in the public domain of art. In sync with their European counterparts, these American modern artists established an important dialogue between embroidery and modern art.

Contemporary criticism of embroidery as art For embroidery to be taken seriously as an art form required thoughtful analysis of the embroideries being made. Not surprisingly, Harbeson tried to direct criticism on embroidery away from prevailing gender stereotypes to more serious critique. Her evaluation of embroidery as a significant art form contrasts with some of the gendered writing by other critics. Frances Morris and art critic Henry McBride also advanced modern embroidery through serious analysis of the medium in their writing. Morris celebrated Harbeson for her ability to apply painting techniques to her needlework. She explained that Harbeson “naturally experienced no difficulty in substituting the needle for the brush, although in this new medium her mastership of the latter is clearly indicated in the brushlike quality of her stitchery.”50 McBride’s views are first revealed in a 1916 review of William and Marguerite Zorach’s embroideries, in which he credits the couple with facilitating popular acceptance of the modern aesthetic. He wrote, “Both [William and Marguerite] paint in oils and water color, and besides that both work in several media of the allied arts, such as embroidery and rug making. It happens that many who reject cubist art in painting accept it readily enough in decorative productions, and so more unanimous praise is heard for the Zorach rugs and embroideries than the pictures.”51 Almost twenty years later, McBride provided a similarly positive evaluation of Marguerite’s embroideries. In a review of her embroidery in an exhibition at the Brummer Gallery in 1935, McBride wrote, “The work is free, but far from being careless, and all the items are placed together in harmony, and those near the outer edges of the panel emphasized enough to hold the thing together without letting the outside public

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into the secret that they have been held together by artistic procedures. . . . Mrs. Zorach has had long experience in picture-making, and knows the rules.”52 That being said, McBride also fell into the gender trap of assigning value to Zorach’s embroidery based on her identity as a woman. He explained: Now why, after painting pictures for a quarter of a century, should this artist’s embroideries be better than her paintings? I think, if you have dipped at all into psychology, that you already know the reason. In the embroideries the lady got a “release.” Although willing to be revolutionary with paints, always in the purlieus of her mind lingered an awareness of what the other painters were doing that could not be dismissed. With the colored silks it was different. Having been idly enough taken up at first, no doubt, the painting habits insinuated themselves into the performance unconsciously, leading Mrs. Zorach into paths where embroiderers seldom go, and to get out of the labyrinthine difficulties she simply had to invent. Once she had started to invent it was no trouble to keep on inventing, and invention, if not exactly the mother of style, has at least a great deal to do with the cradling of it. Mrs. Zorach, as an embroiderer, has style.53

There is something to be said here for McBride’s recognition that women artists could be stymied by painting, but he fails to acknowledge gender discrimination as the cause. He does, however, if inadvertently, recognize that embroidery provided women a space for creativity that was not overdetermined by men. As will become evident in the analyses of embroideries in the following chapters, this creative space for women, a space not dominated by men, in some cases resulted in imagery that challenged traditional gender constructions. Zorach’s embroideries were on view at the Brummer Gallery at the same time that there was a show of ancient Peruvian textiles at the Pierre Matisse Gallery. Both galleries were located in Manhattan, and the concurrence of the two shows led several critics to draw comparisons between them. In a review for the New York Times, Edward Alden Jewell wrote of an inherent commonality between the works of Zorach and those of the ancient Peruvians, although he never actually specified the nature of this bond. Using an ahistorical model as the foundation for his analysis, he concluded, “Centuries, to be sure, separate them in point of time; but in a fundamental sense this work is, so to speak, all of one piece.”54 In his review, Jewell failed to make a distinction between the very different practices of weaving and embroidery and he ignored the centuries and different cultures that separated the works in each show. In addition, Jewell found fault with Zorach precisely for demonstrating her artistic training in her embroideries. Observing that she was trying to “duplicate in needlework design effects naturally associated with painting,” he argued that she was “at



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her excellent best in the medium when she keeps furthest away from even a suggestion of palette and brush.”55 Jewell’s attack on Zorach for approaching embroidery like painting ran counter to one of the fundamental principles of the modern embroidery movement. But Jewell was not the only critic to find fault with Zorach for this perceived transgression. In an article published in the American Magazine of Art, another comparison was made between Zorach’s work and the Peruvian textiles on display: The anonymous Peruvian women who are said to have made the textile fragments . . . were not troubled by the problems which occasionally upset Mrs. Zorach’s applecart. In the first place they were not trying to be “original” or produce what we call “works of art,” but simply to fulfill a communal need, utilitarian and ritualistic, to the best of their humble ability. This they did unproblematically and with so sure an instinct for the requirements of their craft that one wonders whether their handiwork has ever been surpassed.56

Reducing the inner drives of Peruvian women to expressions of “humble ability” and “instinct,” this critic’s primitivist views were applied to Zorach’s work and were used to ridicule her for what he perceived as her arrogant attempts to be “original” and, even more, her perceived audacity to equate her embroidery with art. What Jewell and this unidentified critic shared in their negative assessment of Zorach’s embroideries was a belief that embroidery and painting simply did not mix. Their critiques strove to maintain a clear boundary between the fine arts and the craft tradition. Naysayers of embroidery as art tried to ensure that a medium traditionally associated with women would remain outside the fine arts tradition by strategically dismissing the most significant challenges to this division. Arguing that embroidery was not to be confused with painting, they insisted upon a distinct and rigid boundary between embroidery and the fine arts that served to marginalize the artistic production of women “needlepainters.” At the same time that these critics were chiding efforts to equate embroidery with painting, Harbeson and other modern embroiderers were responding with equal vehemence in defense of embroidery as art. Art critic Walter Rendell Storey was the most consistent among his peers in reviewing embroidery exhibitions, the result of his interest in the decorative arts. From 1926 to 1949, he was the decorative arts critic for the New York Times, and he was a lecturer on the decorative arts at New York University from 1935 to 1943. In many of his articles, Story focused on modern trends in the decorative

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arts and this extended to his embroidery reviews. Most notable was his review of one of the largest exhibitions of embroidery ever organized, held in 1941 at the Lotos Club, ironically, a male-only club up until 1977. With somewhere around seventy-five embroideries on display, the exhibit demonstrated the diversity of contemporary embroidery as a medium. In his review, Storey described “the best of these” as those that demonstrated “the broad treatment and clear colors seen in modern painting.” In this regard, he recognized some “charming” small works by Harbeson as “delightfully free in technique” and with “playful figures and color” that made them “perfect for a child’s room.”57 Based on Storey’s descriptions of individual works in his article, other embroideries in the exhibition were more traditional. Crisp was mentioned for a large-scale embroidery of Paul Bunyan and his ox Babe, not modern in subject by any standard. Similarly, First Lady Edith Roosevelt, the second wife of President Teddy Roosevelt, contributed an embroidery Storey described as “closer to the techniques of the past.”58 However, Marginel Wright Barney, a graphic designer, children’s book illustrator, and the younger sister of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, was applauded for her “display of artistry in color and composition.”59 What the exhibition demonstrated overall was the eclectic array of embroideries being produced at this time and the willingness of modern embroiderers to show their embroideries with traditional ones. This willingness may simply have been the result of the limited venues interested in holding embroidery exhibitions. But it also indicates a solidarity among embroiderers of all types in their commitment to celebrating the artistic potential of this medium as it was explored by all of its practitioners.

Embroidery versus tapestry During the 1920s, efforts were made to revitalize tapestry as a form of home decoration and to align it more closely to modern art. In France, Jean Lurçat played a pivotal role in this renaissance; he emphasized the mural function of tapestry and its relationship to architecture.60 As early as 1916, Lurçat began experimenting with embroidery, but by 1919 decided instead to produce largescale tapestries. Unlike American embroiderers who connected needlework to painting on canvas, Lurçat did just the opposite for his tapestries. Art historian Courtney Ann Shaw observed that, “Lurçat’s tenets required the abandonment of painterly effects, stressing instead tapestry’s unique emphasis on monumentality, architectural placement, and textural effects.”61 Lurçat ultimately influenced Le



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Corbusier, who, like Lurçat, connected tapestries to murals. According to Le Corbusier, tapestries were “the ‘mural’ of our times” because their portability supported the transient nature of modern living, in which families frequently moved to new homes.62 Le Corbusier explained, “We cannot have a mural painted on the walls of our apartment. However, a woolen wall of tapestry can at any time be taken down, carried away and put in place elsewhere. This is why I have called my tapestries ‘mural nomads.’”63 Le Corbusier believed that because of their monumentality, tapestries were the perfect complement to the interiors of International Style buildings. Although the tapestries he hung in his homes were designed by artists, they were always executed by weavers. Following the tapestry tradition, these wall hangings maintained the separation between designer and fabricator. During the first four decades of the twentieth century, a thriving tapestry industry existed in New York.64 Its origins can be found in the late nineteenth century, when William Baumgarten, head of a New York decorating firm, established a tapestry workshop in New York City staffed by French weavers hired to produce French-inspired tapestries for American consumers.65 However, at the turn of the century, a taste was developing for tapestries with American designs. By 1911, Albert Herter’s tapestry business was satisfying this taste with tapestries made from original designs produced in his studio.66 Artists soon jumped on the bandwagon to create designs for modern tapestries. In the 1920s, the painter Arthur B. Davies, a prolific tapestry designer, had thirty-six of his designs woven by G. G. Labouré at the Gobelins and by the workshop of Germaine Montereau in Paris and Beaugency, France. At first using his paintings as inspiration for his tapestries, Davies later created designs exclusively for them.67 Although Davies chose to export his designs to France for fabrication, he might also have selected the tapestry manufacturers located in the United States. The modernist interest in large-scale wall hangings was supported not only by the tapestry industry, but by the prosperous silk industry as well. The First International Silk Exposition, held in 1921, marked a clear attempt by the silk industry to demonstrate the importance of silk as a versatile material for artists.68 The silk manufacturer Robert Schwartzenbach played a pivotal role in fostering a relationship between the silk industry and American artists and designers, including Marguerite and William Zorach, both of whom received commissions from Schwarzenback for his projects.69 Within this climate, artists began to make large-scale wall hangings with silk. New York artist and designer Lydia BushBrown, for example, was well known for her silk wall hangings. Earth (late 1920s/

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Figure 2.2  Lydia Bush-Brown, Earth (late 1920s/early 1930s)—Silk batik hanging, 5 ft. 7 in. × 337/8 in.—Gift of the Estate of Lydia Bush-Brown Head, 1985-2-2—Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, NY, USA—Photo credit: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum/Art Resource, NY.

early 1930s) (Figure 2.2) serves as one example: a batik on silk of animals meandering in nature with a monumental mountain behind them.70 In a 1924 House Beautiful article devoted to Bush-Brown’s silk murals, writer Elizabeth Russell drew connections between silk murals and architecture: “In many cases, even in the smaller homes, the decorator or owner would be glad to introduce a wall hanging, as the soft quality of textile has a very definite value in a decorative



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scheme. To justify its existence a hanging must be a part of the architectural setting, structural in design and feeling, with details which are clearly visible, and which hold their own in an interesting way.”71 Praising Bush-Brown’s wall hangings specifically, Russell wrote, “Her colorful murals . . . demonstrate that their designer understands the vital principle that wall hangings must not only be interesting in themselves, but blend harmoniously with the interiors of modern homes.”72 Russell emphasized Bush-Brown’s mastery in unifying her wall hangings with their architectural settings, aligning them with the principles of modern tapestry design originally put forth by Lurçat and Le Corbusier. Owing to their large size, modern embroideries were at times called tapestries. Zorach herself called her embroideries “embroidered tapestries” to align them with the tapestry tradition, which historically had a far more distinguished position in the arts than needlework. As she explained, “I called them tapestries—certainly they could not be called embroidery—and if the beautiful embroidered Bayeux tapestries can be called that, mine should also be called tapestries. But actually tapestry implies weaving—so I compromised on ‘embroidered tapestries.’”73 By associating her needlework with tapestries, Zorach hoped that her serious intent as an artist might be recognized by those who viewed them, in spite of embroidery’s inferior status when compared to art. Zorach’s embroideries were compared to modern tapestry by the critic who reviewed her 1935 Brummer Gallery exhibition. However, they did not fare well in this critic’s eyes when weighed against the tapestry tradition. Several of her embroideries are indeed quite large; The Rockefeller Family at Seal Harbor (1929–32) (Figure 2.3), for example, is over four by five feet in size. Nonetheless, the critic observed, “What Mrs. Zorach has done is not tapestry and is not meant to function architecturally as a tapestry mural. It is a sort of easel painting embroidered on a linen base in dyed wool. If, therefore, the bulk of her things have no large mural feeling, it is because they were never meant to convey that feeling.”74 Correctly distinguishing Zorach’s work from the tapestry tradition, the critic ultimately dismissed it as “a rather unhappy marriage based on an inherent incompatibility between the requirements of working in oil and those of working in a non-luminous material such as wool.”75 Again we see a critic’s effort to trivialize embroidery, in this case for its failure to achieve the standards set for architectural decoration in modern interiors. The Brummer Gallery review is significant because it raises the question of the relationship between modern embroidery and the tapestry tradition. Like the Bayeux Tapestries to which Zorach compared her own work, Zorach’s embroideries move beyond traditional embroidery because of their comparatively large size as

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Figure 2.3  Marguerite Zorach, The Rockefeller Family at Seal Harbor (1929–32)— Wool on linen embroidery, 4 ft. 3 in. × 5 ft. 4 in.— Estate of Margaretta F. Rockefeller Collection—Digital image courtesy of Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME.

do the large-scale embroideries by other embroiderers in the modern embroidery movement. Nonetheless, they clearly differ from the tapestry tradition for a number of important reasons beyond the fundamental difference of not being woven. First, even as large as some of them are, they are smaller in scale than most tapestries, which were designed to cover large wall spaces. Second, while tapestries were placed directly on wall surfaces, modern embroideries were generally hung in frames like paintings. Finally, the tapestry industry was characterized by the division of labor between designer and fabricator, which was not always the case with embroidery.

Conclusion Rozsika Parker describes the conundrum faced by women embroiderers who tried to define themselves as professional artists and at the same time redefine



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the feminized medium of embroidery. She explains, “Embroidery has provided a source of pleasure and power for women, while being indissolubly linked to their powerlessness. . . . Because of its history and associations embroidery evokes and inculcates femininity in the embroiderer. But it can also lead women to an awareness of the extraordinary constraints of femininity, providing at times a means of negotiating them, and at other times provoking the desire to escape the constraints.”76 In this passage, Parker highlights the contradictory forces at play when women embroiderers attempted to subvert embroidery as a medium. Bibiana Obler describes the same conundrum faced by European modernists who experimented in the decorative and applied arts. She observes, “Sometimes the decorative served as a way to unite the sexes; sometimes it produced fissures. Initially, the notion that the applied arts could be on par with the fine arts seemed to open up new frontiers of equality between men and women. But the new arena brought with it new minefields, including the risk that men would co-opt traditionally feminine domains, thus gaining mastery over even more turf instead of sharing their power.”77 Women of the modern embroidery movement continuously negotiated this divide between embroidery’s potential for liberation from the restrictions inherent to the gender-regulated “fine” arts tradition and the reinforcement of gender limitations that were inherent to embroidery itself. Art historian Yve-Alain Bois provides a compelling framework for considering the practice of embroidery by the women of the modern embroidery movement. In his assessment of Taeuber and Arp, he suggests we consider their engagement with the “minor arts” as “an act of defiance against the patriarchal concept of greatness and heroism, concerned instead with the expression of concepts such as subtlety.”78 Arp himself succinctly expressed this philosophical position when he stated, “I don’t want to be great—there are too many forces throughout the world today that are great.”79 The women of the modern embroidery movement were aware of the limitations that would be imposed upon them in their choice to work in embroidery. But they made the choice to work as embroiderers in spite of those limitations and therefore, if only inadvertently, rejected the heroics of painting and sculpture for the “subtlety” embedded in the medium of embroidery.

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3

Marguerite Zorach: The Roots of the Modern Embroidery Movement

Painters are condescending to design furniture and rugs, sculptors make radiator caps, draughtsmen concern themselves with the lines of automobiles. This is well and good. But it remained for an American woman, Marguerite Thompson Zorach . . . to effect [sic] the complete and inseparable fusion of art and craft.1 Marya Mannes, International Studio (1930) Marguerite and William Zorach were among a now well-recognized group of modern artists working in New York during the first quarter of the twentieth century.2 Although not affiliated with the circles of Alfred Stieglitz, Walter and Louise Arensberg, or Mabel Dodge, the Zorachs were active participants in avantgarde activities. Beginning in 1913, they lived in Greenwich Village, showed their work in galleries that supported modern art, regularly attended social events sponsored by artists’ organizations, and developed important friendships with other like-minded artists in New York. In his autobiography Art Is My Life, William documents the Zorachs’ art-related activities and the friendships they established in the late 1910s and early 1920s with other American modernists, including Gaston Lachaise, Max Weber, Abraham Walkowitz, and Marsden Hartley.3 Indeed, their Greenwich Village studio became a meeting place for their artist friends. During the summer months, the Zorachs left the city to spend time in the country. Their summer home at Robinhood Cove in Maine would become another gathering place for artists. Marguerite Zorach (Figure 3.1) is consistently placed among the artists mentioned in scholarship dedicated to American modern art created during the first half of the twentieth century.4 Art historian Roberta Tarbell was one of the first scholars to acknowledge Zorach’s contribution to American modernism.5 She argued that Zorach’s formal innovations in her paintings justified the

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Figure 3.1 Marguerite Zorach in her studio—Peter A. Juley & Son Collection— J0029484—Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.

artist’s inclusion in the modernist canon.6 However, Zorach’s position as an American modernist has largely been established without consideration of her embroideries. Nicola Shilliam was the first to define Zorach’s textiles as “modern,” positioning Zorach among a group of American textile artists in the first decades of the twentieth century who were aligned with “the modern movement in the search for an authentic artistic identity.”7 In her essay, Shilliam provides an overview of Zorach as a textile artist and provides a focused discussion of an embroidered bedcover (1925–28) in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Following Shilliam’s lead, Hazel Clark argues, “Proper consideration of Marguerite Zorach’s significance as a Modernist must give full attention to her textiles as well” [as her paintings].8 Clark substantiates her argument through a stylistic analysis of Zorach’s embroideries that connects them to cubism, and more broadly, by positioning Zorach within New York avant-garde circles in the 1910s and 1920s. My dissertation on Zorach’s embroideries offers the detailed analysis of these works that Clark calls for in her essay and reasserts Clark’s argument that Zorach’s position as a modernist is most firmly established through her embroideries.9 Zorach herself fully embraced all of the media in which she worked as an expression of her identity as a modern artist. In her early years, she designed textiles, wallpaper, ironwork, and rugs,



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and entered several textile design competitions.10 Indeed, throughout her career, her artistic production included embroideries, batiks, bedspreads, and hooked rugs.11 For Zorach, these textile works held equal standing to her paintings; she demonstrated this belief by exhibiting them alongside her paintings in art galleries. Inspired by her physical surroundings, Zorach sought to transform them in ways that align her work with modernist explorations of the spiritual. She utilized cubist form and fauvist color to symbolize this transformation. As Zorach explained, “An art intent on expressing the inner spirit of persons and things will inevitably stray from the outer conventions of form and color.”12 This chapter examines Zorach’s art philosophy and its impact on her art.

Background Zorach, born Marguerite Thompson, grew up in Fresno, California. Her father was a successful lawyer whose income supported her family’s middle-class life.13 A life changing event for the artist occurred in her early twenties when she traveled through Europe and Asia, where she was exposed to new forms of art and diverse cultures. She traveled with her aunt, Adelaide Harris, who was a friend of the American art collector and poet Gertrude Stein. Harris brought Zorach to Stein’s salon, where Zorach was introduced to the works of Picasso and other prominent Parisian artists.14 Immediately upon her arrival in Paris in 1908, she became entranced by the modernist experiments in art to which she was exposed, and the influences of fauvism, cubism, and expressionism are evident in her work thereafter.15 She resided in Paris until 1911, and one of the first exhibitions of her art happened there.16 William recalled that Zorach was painting “a pink and yellow nude with a bold blue outline” when they first met as art students in 1911 at La Palette in Paris.17 Spatial distortions, two-dimensional space, fragmented objects, simplified forms, and especially bright, primary colors characterize Zorach’s paintings from her early years and throughout most of her life. Informing these stylistic experiments was Kandinsky’s writing on the transcendent power of art. Kandinsky was active in Munich when Zorach traveled there in 1910. After returning to the United States for a brief visit with her family in California, Zorach moved to New York in 1912, where she and William married and began their life together. Beginning in 1913, the Zorachs lived and worked at a studio on Tenth Street in Greenwich Village. They remained there for almost

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twenty-five years. Especially in the early years, the Zorach studio served not only as an important place for the Zorachs to make and show their work, but also as a meeting place for other artists and bohemians. Poets and writers such as Alfred Kreymborg, Marianne Moore, and Egmont Arens visited the studio, which is not surprising since both William and Marguerite wrote poetry. Historian Arthur Wertheim describes the studio as “an important center for heated conversations and parties.”18 Reflecting on the couple’s early years there, William described, “In those days, we knew lots of young poets, and they spent much of their time with us.”19 From her arrival in New York, Zorach was an active artist among the New York avant-garde. She consistently exhibited her work, and it was included in several significant avant-garde exhibitions. Works by both Marguerite and William were included in the Armory Show of 1913. Marguerite was the only woman included in the 1916 Forum Exhibition of Modern American Painters.20 For many years, she was an active member of the Society of Independent Artists, holding the position of vice president in 1922 and serving as a director from 1922 to 1924. Her work was also included in exhibitions organized by the Montross Gallery, the Anderson Galleries, the Brummer Galleries, and Edith Halpert’s Downtown Gallery. Zorach taught at the Modern Art School in Provincetown, Massachusetts, the New School for Social Research in New York, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine.21 At the same time that she exhibited her paintings, Zorach exhibited her embroideries and other textiles at art galleries. In 1915, she showed her paintings with two of her embroideries, An Indian Wedding (ca. 1913) (Figure 3.2) and The Dance (ca. 1913) (Figure 3.3), at the Daniel Gallery, which was an important venue for modern artists struggling for recognition in the early part of the century.22 The embroideries were mislabeled in the exhibition catalogue as “Embroideries by William Zorach.”23 In 1916, Zorach exhibited an embroidery at the Provincetown Art Association, and at the first exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, in 1917, she showed her hooked rug Eden (ca. 1920) along with one of her paintings. Two exhibitions are significant for their focus on her textiles. The 1923 Montross Gallery’s Exhibition of Embroidered Tapestries by Marguerite Zorach, which traveled to the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts, displayed nine embroideries, two hooked rugs, two embroidered bedspreads, and three batik panels.24 The 1935 Brummer Galleries exhibition was another one-woman show of her textiles; it included fourteen embroideries, three  bedspreads, and two hooked rugs. Two additional exhibitions in which



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Figure 3.2 Marguerite Zorach, An Indian Wedding (ca. 1913)—Wool on linen embroidery, 15 × 20 in.—From the collection of Pamela C. and Elmer R. Grossman, MD—Digital image courtesy of Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME.

Zorach’s embroideries were included stand out for their significance in defining American modern art. Katherine Dreier, who along with Marcel Duchamp founded the Société Anonyme in 1920 and was untiring in her efforts to promote modern art to the American public, selected two Zorach’s embroideries, The Family Supper (plate 4) and The City of New York (Figure 6.2), for what is considered the Société Anonyme’s most important exhibition, the 1926 International Exhibition of Modern Art held at the Brooklyn Museum.25 The 1942 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) exhibition 20th Century Portraits, noteworthy as one of the first comprehensive attempts by scholars to examine the genre of portraiture as it had been redefined by avant-garde artists in the first half of the twentieth century, included Zorach’s commissioned embroidery The Rockefeller Family at Seal Harbor (Figure 2.3), which MoMA curator Monroe Wheeler selected to exemplify experimental portraiture. The Family Supper is discussed in detail later in this chapter; Zorach’s other embroideries are examined in the chapters that follow.

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Figure 3.3  Marguerite Zorach, The Dance (ca. 1913)—Wool on linen embroidery, 26 in. diameter—Zorach Collection, LLC—Photograph by author.

As early as the 1910s, Zorach articulated her views on what constituted modern art, and these views remained consistent throughout her life. For Zorach, modern art was fundamentally a matter of personal expression. She opposed schools of painting that rigidly defined a specific style. Her early experiments in fauvism and cubism provided her the tools to reinterpret the world as she creatively envisioned it. Figures in a Landscape (1913) (Figure 3.4) demonstrates her interest in fauvist colors; it is also significant in that Zorach chose silk as the foundation. During the 1910s, cubist influence is also evident in her paintings, demonstrated by the strict geometry that defines the forms in Provincetown, Sunset and Moonrise (Figure 3.5). Surprisingly, when Social Realism took hold in the 1930s, Zorach responded to it positively. She explained that her own turn to realism occurred because the once liberating devices of cubism and fauvism had become too formulaic and were limiting her ability to be imaginative.26 This realist influence is seen in  paintings



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Figure 3.4  Marguerite Zorach, Figures in Landscape (1913)—Gouache on silk, 111/4 × 18 in.—Zorach Collection, LLC—Image courtesy of Gerald Peters Gallery, New York.

Image not available in this edition

Figure 3.5 Marguerite Zorach, Provincetown, Sunset and Moonrise (1916)—Oil on canvas, 273/4 × 313/4 × 2⅜ in. (70.48 × 80.64 × 6.03 cm). Sheldon Museum of Art, Nebraska Art Association, Nelle Cochrane Woods Memorial, N-229.168, Photo ©Sheldon Museum of Art.

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Figure 3.6  Marguerite Zorach, Death of a Miner (ca. 1930–34)—Oil on canvas, 28 × 36 in.—Zorach Collection, LLC-Image courtesy of Gerald Peters Gallery, New York.

like  Death of a Miner (ca. 1930–34) (Figure  3.6), although it is more realist in subject matter than style; traces of Zorach’s abstract style remain in these realist works. By the 1940s, abstract and fauvist-inspired influences return to Zorach’s painting, seen, for example, in The Evening Star (ca. 1945) (Figure 3.7). Overall, Zorach’s personal style is best described as a consistent reconfiguration of these stylistic devices which continued into her final years in the 1960s.27 This stylistic experimentation reflects the modernist philosophy that personal expression and the use of one’s imagination were paramount in the creation of a work of art. In At Home in the Studio, historian Laura Prieto argues that women artists particularly benefited by the modernist granting of “ultimate authority to one’s own self and one’s own feelings—a measure that, being entirely interior and individual, cannot be learned at an institution.”28 She describes the “heady mix of individualism, authenticity, and a simultaneous evasion of social and cultural fetters, including those based on gender” as “probably the most striking advantage that modernist culture offered” to women.29



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Figure 3.7  Marguerite Zorach, The Evening Star (ca. 1945)—Oil on canvas, 25 × 30 in.—Zorach Collection, LLC—Image courtesy of Gerald Peters Gallery, New York.

Zorach and Kandinsky By 1912, the art philosophy of Wassily Kandinsky held a strong influence on New York’s avant-garde.30 Kandinsky received public recognition in America at the Armory Show; his work was advanced by Stieglitz, who purchased one of his paintings from the exhibition and published excerpts from Concerning the Spiritual in Art in Camera Work. Zorach’s interest in Kandinsky, however, can be traced even earlier to her time spent traveling in Europe. She attended the Salon d’Automne for three consecutive years beginning in 1908, and during the summer of 1910, she traveled to Munich. As Tarbell has noted, this trip, in conjunction with her exposure to Blaue Reiter artists exhibited at the Salon d’Automne, led to “parallels between her landscapes of 1910 through 1913 and the early landscapes by the Blaue Reiter artists, especially Wassily Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter, and Alexey von Jawlensky.”31 Her painting Village in India (1910) (Zorach Collection) reflects the primitivist interests of the Blaue Reiter

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artists in its focus on rural villagers and in the expressive use of color. At the time of Zorach’s trip to Munich, Kandinsky had been living there for two years and had already organized the Neue Künstler-Vereinigung. Its first exhibition was held in 1909, by which time Kandinsky had established himself in Munich.32 In all likelihood, Zorach developed her appreciation for Blaue Reiter philosophy while there. Within the cultural climate of Parisian and Munich art circles, avant-garde preoccupations with Kandinsky’s emphasis on the spiritual in art did not go unnoticed by Zorach. Entries written from 1908 to 1912 in Zorach’s travel journal reveal Blaue Reiter influences. Several passages reflect upon the role of art in making spiritual principles visible. In a passage written toward the end of her trip through Asia (produced no later than April 1912), Zorach uses language reflective of Kandinsky’s philosophy. She writes: [Artists must paint] the expression of the inner powers at work in one’s own ages [sic] & day—the bigness, the force & vitality the spirit of today perhaps of all time but in the garb of today. This expression of God of those things which are eternal. One’s conception of the world & of God & of life and because painting is less definite less bound than words so should it give one greater freedom & power of expression—just as music gives one the greatest power of expressing the feelings & appealing to them & writing to the intellect so should painting appeal to the soul of mankind.33

Zorach’s belief in art as an expression of the “eternal” and as a means to convey Zeitgeist—“the force and vitality the spirit of today”—indicates a knowledge and understanding of Kandinsky’s philosophy that she shared with many likeminded artists connected to modern circles in Europe.34 Equally, her belief in music as the purest form of art can also be linked to Kandinsky’s influence. When Zorach returned to America, she continued to espouse her belief in the spiritual purpose of art.35 Zorach’s allegiance to Kandinsky’s art philosophy was recognized by Katherine Dreier. Dreier herself was an avid supporter of Kandinsky whom she embraced wholeheartedly based on their shared interest in theosophy. A professional relationship between Zorach and Dreier is documented by correspondence between the two women, such as a 1926 letter in which Zorach personally invited Dreier to support the newly formed New York Society of American Women Artists (NYSWA).36 In turn, Dreier included Zorach’s two embroideries and one of her oil paintings in the Société Anonyme’s Brooklyn Museum exhibition. Dreier selected works for all of her exhibitions based on



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her perception of their success at expressing “the new cosmic forces” in art; she believed Kandinsky was among the most successful artists in visualizing these forces. By including Zorach’s works in this exhibition, she positioned Zorach with other “enlightened” artists of the newly emerging “universal modern art.”37 In spite of her belief that art should express universal principles, Zorach never experimented with nonobjective art, consistently turning to the world around her as the foundation for her work. In an interview from 1912, she explained that it was the role of an artist to transform the physical world into something beyond its limitations, to push art into the realm of the universal.38 More than thirty years later, she still held this view, writing, “Art deals most truly with the material of life and is significant in the degree of its involvement in the surrounding life. . . .”39 Zorach’s perceived challenge as a modern artist was to imbue her surroundings with universal significance. Her lifestyle choice to spend her summers in the country ensured that nature would always be close at hand as her inspiration. In this regard, her work aligns with that of other American modern artists, most closely with Georgia O’Keeffe and Arthur Dove, for whom nature also remained their point of departure.40

Zorach’s choice Zorach constructed a variety of personal narratives to justify her decision to work in the medium of embroidery. She initially ascribed her interest in embroidery to her attraction to the rich, vibrant colors that she found in yarn, and throughout her career, she repeatedly emphasized the significant role that color played in her decision to make embroideries. On the day that she arrived in Paris, she was immediately exposed to the fauves when she attended the Salon d’Automne exhibition.41 Hoping to apply the fauvists’ use of rich, vibrant hues to her own work, she turned to yarn because she believed there was a greater availability of colors in yarn than could be found in oils. At a visit to the Gobelins workshop in 1909, Zorach made the connection between thread and color. In an article for the Fresno Morning Republican, she described her visit, “In the work rooms a surprise awaits you. Never before did you realize the possibilities of tapestry, the beautiful, clear tones, the endless variety in the thousands of many colored bobbins.”42 In her later years, Zorach would emphasize her desire to replicate fauvist colors as one of the main reasons for her choice to make embroideries. For example, in a 1956 article for Art in America, she wrote, “In

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1912, when I returned from Paris full of enthusiasm over the world of lively color the Fauves had discovered, paint seemed dull and inadequate to me. The wealth of beautiful and brilliant colors available in woolen yarns so fascinated me that I tried to paint my pictures in wool.”43 Zorach described her turn to yarn as “accidental,” the result of her general enthusiasm for the vibrant colors she discovered in embroidery yarns.44 However, much more than accidental, her decision was based on her astute recognition of the possibilities of textiles as a form of artistic expression. Zorach’s interest in color was further developed through her extensive travels. While traveling in Europe and Asia, she repeatedly wrote in her journals of the bright colors she observed in both the art and the everyday objects of the places she visited. She was especially taken by the vibrant hues of the clothing, accessories, and household objects of India. From Jaipur, she wrote in her journal: Color. The most gorgeous brilliant dazzling color I ever saw in the crowd & streets. As if all manner of sparkling jewels were dropped in the grey dust and moved back and forth, in and out, dazzling. It is a gorgeous rival of colors. One is thrilled and delighted. The brilliant orange shawls, the sparkling emerald green, the clear fresh blues, the dazzling yellows, rich purples & pale pinks, scarlet, crimson through a thousand tones of flowered coats & embroidered slippers. . . .45

Zorach’s appreciation for these colorful embroidered garments accounts for her purchase of a souvenir from India described by an American newspaper reporter as “a large and handsomely embroidered natural colored linen cloth, in various colored embroidery.”46 Inspired by fauvist paintings, the Gobelins tapestries, and Indian embroideries, Zorach was well prepared to create her own richly colored textiles. In an alternate version of her decision to make embroideries, Zorach explained that painting demanded uninterrupted concentration, while embroidery did not. She wrote that embroidery “is work that can be picked up and put down because the creative image and pattern exists in the artist’s brain and must be built up little by little, in actual work. It is not dependent upon consecutive time. . . .”47 Zorach’s perception that embroidery production could withstand interruptions is based in part on the technique that she employed. Before beginning an embroidery, she sketched out full-scale preliminary cartoons that she transferred to her linen base. The Smithsonian Institution holds several cartoons, including those produced for The Jonas Family, The



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Circus: New York, and Robinhood Farm. Zorach’s initial conception for each embroidery included the central figures and her overall plan but not the specific details of her finished work. She explained, “I would do a drawing first. Just for placing things. Because when you work on linen it twists and slithers around. So I would make a drawing on the linen of where things were, and then develop them as I went along.”48 This is evident in The Circus: New York embroidery (plate 3); all of the performers appear in the transfer drawing (Figure 3.8), but less central elements, such as the audience and the circus train, are absent. Zorach’s “create as you go” approach reflects the standard practice of crewel work, which Harbeson advised embroiderers to use based on the creative freedom it afforded them. It sustained Zorach’s interest in the time-consuming task of filling her embroideries with details, a task that could often take years to

Figure 3.8  Marguerite Zorach, The Circus (ca. 1927)—Pencil and crayon on transfer drawing paper, 243/16 × 255/16 in.—Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC—1968.154.27 Gift of Dahlov Ipcar and Tessim Zorach.

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complete. As she explained in an article she wrote for Craft Horizons in 1945, after decades of experience with embroidery: People say “What patience!” I have no patience, I don’t need any. I am not filling dull spaces with work. I am filling them with all sorts of interesting things and relating a complicated and involved whole. The more complicated the embroidery, the more fascinating the problems. It is no more difficult to spend three years on a single tapestry than to spend three years on a dozen paintings.49

Zorach found embroidery as creative as painting because her technique allowed her to use her imagination throughout the extended period it took her to complete a single work. Applying traditional gender expectations to her decision, Zorach also argued that embroidery was better suited than painting for women due to their domestic responsibilities because of the differences in concentration required of the two media. According to Zorach, weaving and needlework were traditionally done by women because: from the days when men hunted and fought and women kept the home, needlework and weaving was [sic] done by women. It is work that can be picked up and put down because the creative image and pattern exists in the artist’s brain and must be built up little by little, in actual work. It is not dependent upon consecutive time which is always more of a problem for women than for men.50

In a 1935 interview for the New York Herald Tribune, she also mentioned the problem of constant interruptions built into the lives of women with children. She explained that her embroideries were “very good things to do for an artist who has children to take care of . . . .”51 According to Zorach, needlework provided women with a way for creative expression that could be integrated easily into their societal obligations as mothers. In making her arguments for embroidery as art, Zorach, in a curious twist, downplayed the technical skill required to make them. In her Craft Horizons article, she observed that a person interested in needlework could “in an hour arrive at all the stitches that have ever been used by needle workers.”52 She made this assertion in spite of the technical skill that is clearly evident in her work. Why would Zorach belittle her embroideries in this way? Particularly in a craft magazine in which the techniques of craft were celebrated? Zorach may have minimized the technical skill required of embroidery as a corrective to the excessive focus on skill by art critics. As her embroideries received greater public recognition over the years, Zorach believed that critics had overemphasized



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their craftsmanship at the expense of their artistic merit. In Craft Horizons, she expressed her frustration with the limited ways in which her embroideries had been viewed over time: To me, my paintings have the same qualities on a simpler and larger scale that are in my tapestries. But people will never agree with me. They are fascinated by a craftsmanship they can see, and whose accomplishment is obvious. I’m always a bit indignant, but I do realize these works are rare and unusual as well as beautiful, and if I were the general public I would feel the same way.53

Zorach valued craftsmanship, but artistic expression was also important to her. She wished that critics would take the aesthetic value of her embroideries more seriously and evaluate them with the same weight as her paintings. The failure of critics to evaluate textile production as a legitimate art form was succinctly expressed by textile artist Anni Albers, who lamented, “I discovered when I did something on paper it’s considered art; when it’s thread, it’s craft.”54 Zorach experienced similar frustration. In 1957 Zorach explained the relationship between her paintings and embroideries: “First I did pictures, which I didn’t consider satisfactory. If the picture seemed complete and you were satisfied with it in paint you didn’t do it over again in something else, but when you had something that you wanted to do and you didn’t feel you had succeeded, you would try it out again with the needlework. . . .”55 Zorach’s perspective here is fascinating in that it sets embroidery as an expression of painting’s limitations, a relationship between the two that runs counter to the privileging of painting as the superior medium. Adamson’s writing on craft again comes to mind in this regard. In thinking through craft, he writes, “If craft is a frontier at which the aesthetic construct of modern art has often stopped short, then in that very stopping, art confronts presumptions about itself.”56 Adamson encourages that we “dispense with the simplistic formulation that the crafts can (or should be) art.”57 In Zorach’s reflection on the connection between her embroidery and her painting, she recognizes a difference between the two media without trying to resolve it.

Zorach’s lived experience Zorach’s gendered argument that embroidery was well suited for women raising children is surprising when considering the realities of her life. Even in

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the early days of their careers when they had very limited financial resources, William and Marguerite employed domestic help, allowing Zorach at least some uninterrupted time to focus on her art. Hired by the Zorachs to do housework and look after their children, Ella Madison worked for the family off and on for a period of fifteen years.58 Zorach documented Madison’s role as childcare provider in her painting, Ella Madison and Dahlov (1918) (Figure 3.9), in which Madison sits in a rocking chair holding the Zorachs’ second child, Dahlov, who had

Image not available in this edition

Figure 3.9 Marguerite Zorach, Ella Madison and Dahlov (1918)—Oil on canvas, 44⅞  ×  351/4 in.—Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA—Museum purchase, John B. Turner ’24 Memorial Fund and Karl E. Weston Memorial Fund (91.32).



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been born in November 1917. An open curtain behind them reveals buildings in the background that place Madison and Dahlov in the Zorachs’ Greenwich Village apartment, a likely location since Madison did not travel with the family when they left the city each summer for their trips to the country. Through the assistance of Madison and others, Zorach enjoyed greater opportunities to focus on her art than women artists without domestic help. In 1980, Dahlov wrote of the important role that Madison had played in freeing her mother from some of the responsibilities of raising her children: My mother never let raising children interfere with her art. She told me how bored she was, how frustrated at having to sit in the park with a baby in a carriage and a toddler “getting fresh air.” She soon put us in nursery school, both at age three, and even when they were very poor she hired a baby sitter, nursemaid, Ella Madison to take care of us. M.Z. was not very warm with young children. I think she related better to adolescents and young people.59

In a letter written in 1922 to her friend, the English Vorticist painter Jessie Dismorr,60 Zorach stated emphatically that her children did not draw her attention away from her art: “But at least it is not so difficult to find time to work. I think I am very good with children, I never neglect them in any way yet I can leave them very much alone and never allow them to interfere with what I am doing. Also I can put them out of my mind.”61 Zorach’s words suggest that she was not overly distracted from her art because of childrearing obligations, at least during the part of the year that she resided in New York and was assisted by Madison. Her argument that embroidery was compatible with childrearing serves as a reminder of a common problem for women artists with children in finding time to work on their art without the interruptions of children. To the extent that Zorach’s words to Dismorr represent the realities of her life, she had less challenges than other women artists in this regard. Less constricted by childrearing than other women of her generation, Zorach, nonetheless, expressed views on embroidery production that reflected the realities for many women of her time. During the summer months when the Zorachs lived in the country, Zorach had more responsibilities related to running a household and this affected her ability to work. After the Zorachs purchased their home at Robinhood Cove in 1923, summers became increasingly hectic, particularly as a result of frequent visits from students who came to study sculpture with William. Although they eventually hired domestic help at their summer home, Zorach was primarily responsible for running their busy household. According to Dahlov, these duties

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made it difficult for her mother to paint while in Maine, although she was still able to make embroideries. As Dahlov explained: Summers in Maine were too hectic for creative work, although she accomplished a great deal of things that weren’t “easel paintings.” She worked on embroideries, on hooked rugs, she designed and made all her own clothes as well as mine. She stenciled the kitchen walls, and devoted one summer to doing murals in the dining room, covering the entire walls with figures, animals, and foliage.62

At Robinhood Cove, Zorach was responsible not only for running a home with a husband and children, but also a thriving informal art school regularly frequented by William’s students and others interested in the arts. From a pragmatic perspective, the most compelling reason for Zorach to make embroideries was clearly the income that she earned when they were sold. The bulk of her embroidery sales were made in the 1920s before William had established himself as an artist. Zorach’s income was thus essential to supporting their family. Although Zorach never mentioned financial motives for making embroideries, strong economic incentives existed. From the start of her career, she earned money by both selling her embroideries and teaching embroidery techniques.63 In 1916, she had embroideries on display for sale at the Sunwise Turn bookstore.64 While in Provincetown during the summer of 1916, when she taught embroidery at the Modern Art School, she exhibited an embroidery at the Provincetown Art Association. An article in the Provincetown Advocate from this time described embroidery as the “new craze” in Provincetown, with some embroideries selling for as much as $200 or $300 each. By the 1920s, Zorach had established herself so successfully as a modern embroiderer that art collector Abby Rockefeller would commission her to create an embroidered family portrait. In his autobiography, William acknowledged the important role that the sale of Zorach’s embroideries and hooked rugs played in providing income: “When you ask me how we existed, I think it was probably through those hooked rugs and embroideries. They would sell but we couldn’t sell our paintings or my sculpture.”65 Some of Zorach’s embroideries were commissioned, but noncommissioned embroideries sold almost immediately upon completion. The embroideries exhibited at the Montross Gallery and the Brummer Galleries sold quickly. As was the case with other women embroiderers, through the traditional women’s medium of embroidery, Zorach took on the nontraditional role of financial provider during the early years of her marriage.



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Zorach’s significant success in selling her embroideries as art warrants consideration because she is unique among most other women embroiderers in achieving this accomplishment. This success can be attributed in part to the fact that Zorach was so well connected in the New York art world. She established herself widely enough as an artist in New York to get exhibitions of her paintings and her strategic choice to include her embroideries in these exhibitions singled her out as unique from her male peers. Once thus noticed by art patrons, the artistic merit of her embroideries could not be denied. But even still, for Zorach’s embroideries to sell, it took an art patron open enough to the idea that embroidery should be valued as art. This appreciation was facilitated by artist and teacher Hamilton Easter Field and his circle. Field was a strong advocate of American folk art and craft and had an impressive collection that he displayed in his studio. He encouraged an appreciation for these works among his students, which included the Zorachs and other influential modern artists such as Marsden Hartley, Charles Sheeler, and Yasuo Kuniyoshi.66 Zorach’s embroidery work is not surprising based on her early positive exposure to American craft by Field. More broadly, the appreciation for craft that Field instilled in his students helped to create a climate of openness to craft among modern artists that extended to art patrons when Zorach began to show her embroideries. Other collectors of modern art who extended their collecting to folk art and craft, such as Edith Halpert, added to this climate of openness.67 Fortunately for Zorach, the likes of Abby Rockefeller shared her appreciation for embroidery and other craft production as art. Having very little competition from men also helped to advance her sales.

Zorach, Greenwich Village, and primitivism Greenwich Village was home to the Zorachs, and in the 1910s and 1920s, it was a place that actively celebrated liberation for both men and women. As historian Kirsten Swinth describes it, the “radical atmosphere” of Greenwich Village was one in which “avant-garde artists of both sexes participated in the simultaneous loosening of academic standards and the unfettered talk, social liberation and political activism that characterized Village mores.”68 Along with other artists in the Greenwich Village avant-garde community of the 1910s, Zorach desired to live a life that was unrestricted by traditional societal norms. Her personal distaste for bourgeois conventionalism is conveyed as early as 1908 in an article

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she wrote in Paris for the Fresno Morning Republican. Applauding the French capital for the freedom it offered to those who lived there, she wrote: I can easily understand what the charm about this city is. . . . It is the atmosphere of absolute unconventionality and freedom. You feel it in the very air you breathe. . . . Here one is free, as nearly as it is possible for a person to be free, to wear what you like, go where you like, and do what you like. No one judges you, no one condemns you. One of the greatest reasons that so many Americans come here is that they wish to get away from the social life in a small town, from the round of parties and teas, from the feeling that they mustn’t do this or must do that because of what their neighbors will say.69

Zorach appreciated that same freedom when she found it in Greenwich Village. The primitivist interests of modern artists in the so-called other have been well established by scholars, but the Greenwich Village art community is worth specific consideration as a particularly strong breeding ground for them. Historian Leslie Fishbein explains, “What Village rebels were looking for in others—particularly in blacks, exotic white ethnics, prostitutes, and criminals— was a new paganism that would undermine the puritanism of traditional American culture. Villagers sought help in exorcising the puritan demon from vastly different sources.”70 Cultural studies scholar Lisa Rado argues that this desire for freedom sought through primitivist explorations was particularly poignant for “many female modernists, especially white female modernists, [who] engaged in their own brand of primitivism to authorize their political, social, and cultural endeavors.”71 Rado identifies what she labels “primitive matriarchy,” by which she means the feminist interest by modernist women in a “powerful female ancestress.”72 Zorach’s embroideries do not demonstrate this particular interest but Rado’s argument is instructive nonetheless in its recognition that primitivism provided women in particular with the language to “critique the once unassailable patriarchal institutions of marriage, motherhood, and even Christianity.”73 These observations are particularly pertinent when considering Zorach’s embroidery The Dance. Like many “other” artists of the 1910s, Zorach was intrigued by “primitive” cultures, and she incorporated objects and ideas from Asian and African cultures into her work.74 This interest was evident before her arrival in Greenwich Village. As a young artist studying in Paris, Zorach was aware of the influence of so-called “primitive” art on artists at this time. At Gertrude Stein’s salon, she saw paintings by Picasso and others who were influenced by African sculpture, and her continued attendance at modern art exhibitions while in Europe established



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her own primitivist interests. When she returned to the United States, she would have been among a number of New York artists who turned to African art as an inspiration, and it was widely available for them to study. In 1914, Stieglitz mounted a show of African sculpture at his Gallery 291, the first of many exhibitions on African art to be arranged at this time. At his Modern Art Gallery, Marius de Zayas organized four exhibitions of African sculpture between 1915 and 1918, followed by two exhibitions at the De Zayas Gallery between 1919 and 1921.75 Art museums also exhibited African art; the Brooklyn Museum’s 1923 Congo Art exhibition is but one example. After settling in Manhattan in 1912, and as active members of the New York art community, the Zorachs in all likelihood would have been aware of these exhibitions and attended at least some of them. Their interest in African art compelled them to purchase a limited edition copy of Charles Sheeler’s African Negro Sculpture, a book produced in collaboration with Marius de Zayas that included original photographs by Sheeler of African sculpture in de Zayas’s collection.76 Designed as a tondo, The Dance is composed of eleven white couples dancing in a circle around a central group of six black musicians. The black figures are created by white outlines filled with black stitches; in contrast, the white figures are simple, black outlines in which the linen base defines their bodies. A band of unstitched linen creates a circle around the musicians and separates them from the white dancers. Stylistically, The Dance is quite different from Zorach’s other embroideries in the large amount of exposed, unstitched linen; it lacks the detail that characterizes her later needlework. Highly reminiscent of early works by Matisse, such as Bonheur de Vivre (1905/The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia), in its subject, simplified design, bright colors, and joie de vivre ambiance, The Dance illustrates his direct influence on Zorach’s work. In a description of The Dance written while it was on display in 1923, a critic for the magazine Town and Country identified the subject as “inspired by one of the first real artist’s [sic] balls given by the Penguins in the Village.”77 In all likelihood, the critic was referring to the Penguin Club, one of several artists clubs that sponsored these types of dances.78 During the first quarter of the twentieth century, artists’ balls were very popular in Greenwich Village both for their important function as fundraisers for the organizations that sponsored them and as an opportunity for participants to engage in revelry and act outside of bourgeois constraints. Artists’ balls often involved dressing in “exotic” costumes, drinking alcohol in excess, and dancing until the early hours of the morning. As historian Steven Watson has pointed out, “[Artists balls] became so familiar that by 1917 a Village magazine published the how-to formula for

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running a Village dance: pick an exotic theme and an unusual Oriental name like Taj Mahal, hire a band, rent Webster Hall, and sell cheap liquor.”79 In his autobiography, William confirms the accuracy of Watson’s description of the “how-to formula” for the artists’ balls that William and Marguerite attended. As William observed, “We went to the Liberal Club dances and the Kit Kat balls and the Webster Hall balls, often getting home just as the children were waking up in the morning. [Marguerite] Zorach made exotic imaginative costumes for these balls.”80 Both descriptions illustrate the association of the “exotic” with the unbridled revelry that characterized artists’ balls, in which costumed participants were liberated from the rigid constraints of bourgeois society through a process of identification with cultures they perceived as “other.” Although the Zorachs may not have attended Penguin Club balls specifically, The Dance characterizes the general revelry of artists balls from this time period.81 Zorach’s inclusion of black musicians in her embroidery exemplifies the primitivist appropriation of black culture by white modern artists. Conflating African Americans and Africans, Zorach adorns her black figures with headdresses to index Africa, while the musicians play a variety of instruments— trumpet, clarinet, and violin—that align them with the European and African American music tradition. The nudity of the black musicians reinforces their “primitiveness,” while the nude white figures suggest that they too might become primitive at least for an evening. During the first three decades of the twentieth century, music by African Americans was the rage across America, reflected in the widespread popularity of ragtime and, later, jazz.82 American artists John Marin, Joseph Stella, Arthur Dove, and Aaron Douglas, to name just a few, were directly influenced by jazz, although in very different ways.83 The Dance illustrates the “exhilarating and liberating” effect of African American music on white bohemian artists, as white dancers, absorbed in their state of revelry, dance with their partners among flowers and other nature imagery, entranced by the sounds played by the musicians in the center of the embroidery.84 If primitivism, as Rado suggests, created “a wide open conceptual territory” for women modernists “to reimagine, explore, and reclaim,” Zorach’s own reimagining becomes all the more complicated when carried out in a medium associated with women’s artistic production.85 A medium that had traditionally constrained women becomes the foundation for liberation but at the expense of stereotyping African Americans. Zorach realizes this liberation more fully, and without the problematic stereotyping in The Dance, in her embroideries of men and women in nature that are discussed in the next chapter.



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Zorach’s primitivism is also evident in her works related to her experiences in Asia. She was unique among her contemporaries in that she traveled to the East. But in spite of her firsthand experience, her cultural biases framed her perception of Asian people and their cultures. Evidence of her views can be found in the journals she kept while traveling abroad. One passage illustrates Zorach’s romantic perspective of Asian cultures in which she envisions them as an inspiration for her subjects. She wrote, “If one wishes to paint scenery one could find nothing more wonderful than our own country but if one wishes to make that scenery human one must come to the East to find people and houses. . . .”86 In describing the Japanese, Zorach expressed the primitivist perspective that “primitive” people acted more directly from their unconscious drives than Westerners: “Even the peasant [in Japan] has an inate [sic] sense of the artistic which our educated cannot acquire, for it is from within not without—where art influences all their action . . . and is an unconsious [sic] part of their life—simplicity, health—What have we to offer greater or better than there?”87 Zorach’s belief that Asian cultures embodied a purity lacking in the Western world is clearly documented here. Zorach had a particular passion for Indian culture, which was fostered by her travels to India and by the New York art community when she returned. The Sunwise Turn bookshop held regular exhibitions of Indian-style batiks and sponsored lectures by Ceylonese philosopher and art historian Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, whose scholarship played a pioneering role in educating the Western world on Indian art.88 Several of Coomaraswamy’s books, such as his popular Dance of Shiva, were published and sold by the Sunwise Turn. Furthermore, Zorach knew Coomaraswamy personally.89 In this climate of enthusiasm for Indian culture, a culture she had experienced firsthand through her travels in India, Zorach, not surprisingly, selected Indian-inspired subjects for her paintings and embroideries in the early part of her career. Zorach’s arrival in India in late 1911 corresponded with the occasion of a durbar held by the Indian government in honor of the accession of George V. Due to the large number of people who had come for the celebration, India was teeming with visitors when Zorach arrived, so she and her travel companions had difficulty finding lodgings when they reached Bombay. Compounded by the frustration she experienced in trying to find lodging, Zorach’s initial impressions of Indians were quite negative. She was disturbed by the begging she witnessed while walking around the streets of the city. In an article she wrote for the Fresno Morning Republican about her experiences, she described “a horrible old hag with mad eyes and a skin of brown leather stretched tightly over her

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sharp bones” begging for money. As Zorach explained, “We shrank away from her in horror but she followed and clung to us and persisted in opening her dress to show us how her empty stomach clung to her spine. The awful horror of her haunted us after we were in a carriage and beyond her reach.”90 Zorach was outraged by the cruelty that she witnessed toward Indians at the hands of British colonials, but within limits, which she also described in her article: My first impression of India was the shock of seeing one race living on and supported by another and all the things that go with such a condition of society. It was revolting and disgusting to me to see big white Englishmen kicking coolies and servants about—literally kicking them—and the natives scurrying out of the way of their boots and fists. . . . I can’t say that I wasted any sympathy for the natives who were kicked: they were used to it; it was the man who did the kicking that I thought of. There was something so brutal and degrading in the whole thing I was disgusted.91

Identifying with the colonizers, Zorach was appalled that a fellow Westerner would treat anyone so inhumanely. But the artist’s inability to empathize with the Indians being abused is striking as is her perception that the Indian people had developed a tolerance for this cruelty. As a Western tourist in a country colonized by the British, Zorach constructed an identity for Indians that speaks to her privileged position as a white American. After she left Bombay, Zorach shifted her perspective on India. She spent time in Ahmadabad, Jaipur, Delhi, and Calcutta, and it was in these places that she became entranced by Indian life. In Delhi, she wrote in her journal, “There is nothing elsewhere to equal the real splendor of this country.”92 She was especially taken by the colorful embroidered fabrics that she found in Jaipur, a city known for its handicrafts, including textiles and embroidery. She described Jaipur as “a gorgeous rival [sic] of colors,”93 and in a letter to William from there, she lamented, “If only I had the dyes they use on their shawls here in Jaipur!”94 Zorach’s embroideries and paintings of India incorporate her romantic view of the country. The subjects of poverty and cruelty that she personally witnessed while in Bombay are absent from her art, replaced instead with depictions of idyllic communities and colorful rituals. In An Indian Wedding, Zorach highlights the joyful nature of this occasion: a small group of men, women, and children, all dressed in colorful, decorative clothes, dance around an elephant that presumably carries the newly married couple. Ornamental details on the blanket supporting the howdah add to the allure of the scene. The architecture in the background also emphasizes the subject of the embroidery as distinctively Indian. Zorach



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Figure 3.10 Marguerite Zorach, Indian Elephant (1913)—Oil on canvas, 333/4 × 273/4  in.—Zorach Collection, LLC—Photograph by author.

presents a romanticized view of Indian culture in which traces of hardship and colonial oppression have been erased. At the bottom of the embroidery is stitched “An Indian Wedding—William and Marguerite Zorach,” indicating the collaboration between the couple in making embroideries, a subject discussed in detail in Chapter 5. In this case, the composition of the embroidery almost exactly replicates Marguerite’s painting Indian Elephant (Figure 3.10), and the subject of a wedding in India was something only experienced by Marguerite, since William did not travel there. Perhaps William contributed to stitching the embroidery, which would have been an interesting role reversal, since women were often relegated to stitching embroidery designs by men when the design and fabrication of an embroidery was separated.

Zorach and feminism The atmosphere of liberation that characterized Greenwich Village, of course, did not translate to full equality for women modernists. Modern art galleries

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continued to exclude women and there was continued resistance to women artists by their male colleagues. Just as she rejected bourgeois restrictions in general, Zorach challenged restrictions that applied specifically to women by embracing feminism. Her feminist perspective is documented most poignantly in a 1925 interview conducted by feminist activist Rebecca Hourwich Reyher for the newspaper Equal Rights. The two women had a relationship that extended back at least two years, as indicated by a portrait of Hourwich by Zorach now in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.95 In the interview, Zorach spoke out forcefully against the discriminatory practices of art dealers toward women artists: As far as art dealers are concerned, only a dead artist is any good, but as for women, they don’t think them good, even dead. If a woman approaches a dealer for an exhibit he almost invariable refuses, although often a young attractive woman calls on him and wins him over against his prejudice purely on the strength of her personality. . . . Dealers take men artists under their wing and promote them, push them as a good business proposition, but they refuse to take women artists seriously.96

In her seminal essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” Linda Nochlin examines the social position of women to explain their invisibility in the Western art tradition.97 More than sixty years earlier, Zorach had already grappled with the same question in her interview for Equal Rights, and like Nochlin she found explanations for this absence in “the general position of women” in society. She stated: The most significant handicap women artists have is that they have never done any serious work that compares with the work produced by men throughout the ages. They have not the background that men have but this is largely due to the general position of women. Women are new in art, as they are in every extrahome activity, and the number of women who have been steadfastly diligently applying themselves to their work is still a scant minority. For centuries women have put their creative energy and their practical strength in man’s work. It was not his alone. It is only recently that there has been a separation, and women have commenced to strike out for themselves. It may be difficult, but the struggle makes for development and benefits the work. It is a needless, wasteful struggle that we wish to eliminate.98

Here, Zorach suggests that societal constraints explain the limited participation of women in the arts.



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As with other women artists married to male artists, Zorach’s art career was complicated by her marriage to William. After her parents had died, the couple’s daughter Dahlov observed: I have sometimes thought that my mother deliberately took a back seat and let my father be the success, but that may not be true. It was a time when women artists were ignored, and you had to be a fighter to keep in the public eye. My mother was not agressive [sic] in that way, she was strong-minded but almost passive in her career; she was not a self-promoter. My father always said she was the better artist, the one with ideas. He had great admiration and respect for everything she did, although he was destructive to her self-esteem in other ways. I’m sure he tried to promote her as well as himself. He was very agressive [sic], very driven to succeed. But it wasn’t easy for him to promote his wife.99

In this very poignant reflection on her parents’ relationship, Dahlov describes a complicated range of thoughts and feelings regarding her father’s support of her mother as an artist. Indeed, art by married women artists was routinely overshadowed by that of their artist husbands.100 Zorach, however, at least in the early years of her career, believed that her marriage to William provided her more opportunities to exhibit her work than might otherwise have been the case. She explained to Hourwich, “I am certain that had I not had an artist husband, and had I tried to exhibit on my own, I would have had all the difficulties I have told you about which I have fortunately been spared.”101 Indeed, she and William had several exhibitions together that she might not have had without him, although in some cases her work was attributed to him. In the Equal Rights interview, Zorach also addressed the misconception that women abandon their art careers more frequently than do men. She stated: Another challenge we have to meet, both from the dealers and the public, is that women lack continuity of interest, that they have only a short periodic interest in their art that does not last after love or marriage. . . . But in art there is a constant weeding out, and the temptation to try a less exacting and more profitable profession often affects men on the eve of marriage, or during the mated effort for subsistence. Very few of the men who study art for a livelihood remain artists after a short span of years. If the figures were available, the proportion of men who try and fail would probably be about equal to that of women who make the same attempt.102

Art historian Erika Doss reminds us that once married women artists had children, they were taken even less seriously as artists.103 Zorach’s commitment to feminist solidarity is evident not only in her writing but also from her professional role as president and founding member of the

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New York Society of Women Artists (NYSWA). Founded in 1925, the NYSWA was dedicated to providing exhibition space for art by women. In 1926, Zorach explained its mission in an interview for the Christian Science Monitor: “Our sole purpose is to secure through united effort adequate exhibits for our members. That is often a difficult or almost impossible goal for the individual woman artist.”104 Formed by twenty-six women artists, NYSWA members included Anne Goldthwaite, Blanche Lazzell, Lucy L’Engle, Henrietta Shore, Mary Tannahill, and Agnes Weinrich, to name a few.105 Their styles differed widely, ranging from Post-Impressionism to pure abstraction, but they were connected by their opposition to gender discrimination. The organization was especially committed to providing exhibition space for women modernists because their work was being ignored by other women’s art organizations already in existence.106 In a review of the NYSWA’s first exhibition, a critic for the New York Times took note of its difference from existing women’s art groups in “the progressive character of the work and the intention of including contemporary art.”107 Indeed, the NYSWA remained a powerful force in providing exhibition space for women modernists throughout the 1920s and 1930s.108

Marguerite Zorach’s cubist embroidery Zorach’s feminist perspective is evident in her most experimental embroidery, The Family Supper (1922) (plate 4). The title of the embroidery combined with the subject of figures seated at a long table sharing a meal together are clear references to Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper (ca. 1495-8/Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan). Autobiographical in subject matter, The Family Supper locates the Zorach family at a cottage in New Hampshire, where the Zorachs summered in 1917 and 1918. The cottage was provided for them through the generosity of art patron Clara Potter Davidge Taylor so that the couple might concentrate on their art away from the distractions of the city.109 A longtime resident of the Washington Square area, Taylor, whose second husband was artist Henry Fitch Taylor, was known in her own right as “the hostess there [in Washington Square] to the most distinguished painters of the day.”110 Zorach identified the embroidery as her favorite one and described the scene as “the Zorach family and a friend at supper in the big kitchen of the house in Cornish, New Hampshire where we spent two wonderful summers.”111 With curtains framing the composition on both sides, The Family Supper is designed like a stage set. William and Marguerite are seated at either end of the



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table, their son Tessim sits close to his father, and Dahlov, the newest addition to their family, plays on the floor with the family pet. Another female figure seated at the center of the table presides over the event, her hands folded in a gesture of prayer, while the Zorachs eat their dinner.112 This central female figure plays an important role in a symbolic reading of the embroidery, as her commanding presence is impossible to ignore. A handwritten notation on the matboard backing of the embroidery states that one of the adult women is named Nettie May, although the notation does not specify to which of the two figures it refers and it is not in Zorach’s handwriting.113 When the Zorachs summered in New Hampshire in 1918, they entertained a variety of houseguests, including a young artist named Nettie May, who died soon after her stay with them. Undoubtedly, the loss of their friend would have affected both William and Marguerite, so it would not be surprising to find the deceased memorialized in the embroidery. Her position as the central figure, yet somewhat isolated from the activities of the rest of the group, supports an interpretation of her as Nettie May. With her straight posture, she is in contrast to Marguerite and William, whose curved bodies bow respectfully in her direction. What is most remarkable about Zorach’s reinterpretation of Leonardo’s Last Supper is that Nettie May has replaced the figure of Christ at the center of the table, her premature death symbolically aligned with that of Christ’s, while her distinct and separate position from the rest of the family members suggests the afterlife from which the living Zorachs are not a part. In The Family Supper, Zorach reinterprets The Last Supper to ascribe power, authority, and spirituality to a woman. It was not until the feminist movement of the 1970s and the creation of works such as Mary Beth Edelson’s offset poster, Some Living American Women Artists/Last Supper (1972/MoMA, New York), and Judy Chicago’s mixed media, The Dinner Party (1974–1979/ Brooklyn Museum, NY), that a feminist reinterpretation of The Last Supper would be more fully expressed.114 In The Family Supper, Zorach constructs a hybrid space that combines the domestic interior of their cottage with the outdoors. The collapsed space of the embroidery is created by cubist-inspired interlocking planes in which foreground, middle ground and background converge. As the artist herself described the embroidery, “The use and relationship of form and color [in The Family Supper] is, to me, more highly developed than in most of the others. I like the abstract use of form in the figures and the interplay of almost cubist patterns.”115 Indeed, The Family Supper is Zorach’s most cubist-inspired embroidery. But rather than collapsing space within the home, Zorach eliminates the back wall of the cottage. In the absence of walls and windows, the kitchen opens up directly

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onto a mountainous landscape in the background, while the cubist intersecting planes result in the convergence of interior and exterior spaces. This hybrid indoor/outdoor space invites a feminist reading in that Zorach dismantles the boundary between what Griselda Pollock has identified as one of the spaces of femininity—the interior of the home—and the outside world.116 Although recent scholarship, including Kuenzli’s work on the Nabis, has challenged this totalizing view of domestic space as feminine, nonetheless, modernist women like Zorach often felt constricted by the gender roles associated with domestic space and sought ways to liberate themselves from these constraints.117 The figures in Zorach’s embroidery occupy a hybrid space—supported by rugs and other floor coverings below them—that allows for this liberation. Indeed, the kitchen is so detached from the rest of the cottage’s interior that the figures are more solidly connected to the natural world outside. A thick chain of stitchery is used to define the mountain top, creating an earthly protection over the buildings nestled below. Synthesized so completely into the mountainside, the buildings appear to be part of the earth rather than resting upon it. In The Family Supper, nature is paramount, absorbing the interior space and the architectural constructions. Eliminating the walls of the home, Zorach creates a space for living associated with the freedom she connected to the outdoors that holds radical implications in the way that it liberates women from domestic confinement. Zorach’s personal view of domestic life was ambivalent at best and is discussed in detail in chapters 7 and 8. Based on her personal perception of the home as a restrictive place, it is not surprising to see her exploration of new spaces of freedom for women. Zorach was not the only woman artist to construct this type of hybrid space in her work. In her painting, Family Portrait #2 (1933) (Figure 3.11), Florine Stettheimer places herself, her two sisters, Carrie and Ettie, and her mother, Rosetta, on a decorative carpet that floats in an ambiguous space without structural elements to support it. The water and skyscrapers in the background locate the space as the family’s home in Manhattan. The outside world is emphasized in Stettheimer’s work not only by water and skyscrapers, but by the expansive blue sky above them. Three huge flowers in the center of the painting also remind us of nature, as well as of still life flower painting, a painting tradition long associated with women. Stettheimer creates an environment for her family members that shares Zorach’s interest in reconstructing domestic space to extend beyond traditional constructions of the home. Stettheimer was compelled to connect the interior of her home to the outside world, just as Zorach connected her summer cottage to the countryside.118



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Figure 3.11  Florine Stettheimer, Family Portrait #2 (1933)—Oil on canvas, 461/4 × 645/8 in.—Gift of Miss Ettie Stettheimer (8.1956) The Museum of Modern Art—Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY.

Zorach and Stettheimer were friends and were developing their careers as women artists in New York at the same time, so it is not surprising that they would share similar concerns in their work. It is significant as well that, in their lived experiences, both artists successfully transformed their homes in ways that resisted traditional gender roles. Stettheimer’s home became a center for intellectual activity and for the exhibition of modern art, including her own. Indeed, she so strongly identified her home with artistic practice that at her 1916 exhibition at the Knoedler Gallery, she exhibited her paintings in a gallery specifically designed to look like a domestic interior.119 Zorach’s home was also often a gathering place for artists and, Zorach, too, transformed her family home with her rugs, wallpaper, and mural paintings of her own design so that her home reflected her artistic choices as much as her role as wife and mother. Art historian Linda Aleci points out that family life “stimulated” both William and Marguerite “to produce a stylistically rich and engaging range of works depicting their son and daughter, beloved pets, and the routine of household life, transformed into symbols of timeless human bonds.”120 But Zorach’s home, like

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that of Stettheimer, was not simply a space of domesticity in which Zorach was inspired by familial relationships. Indeed, gender expectations associated with domesticity collide with the position both women held as professional artists, and that collision resulted in imagery of the home expanding outward into the world beyond, whether it be the skyscrapers of Manhattan or the New England countryside. For The Family Supper, Zorach made a curious choice to represent her family and her friend in the nude. Curator Martin Hammer observes that the nude portrait “remains an odd and surprising idea.” He explains, “portraits have tended to depict their sitters’ public selves. They reflect the ways people project themselves, in work, or family and social rituals. They exploit the ways that dress or costume can characterize, flatter and signify social identify. Yet nakedness seems intrinsically private. Most people would be horrified at the thought of strangers contemplating pictures of them in a state of undress.”121 Similarly, art historian Frances Borzello identifies the contradiction of the nude portrait in that the tradition of painting the nude was one grounded in ideal representation that was “freed of the need for resemblance.”122 Borzello reflects on Edvard Munch’s Self-Portrait in Hell (1903/Munch Museum, Oslo) as an early-twentieth-century example, in which the artist stands nude in front of the raging fires of hell, but only partially revealing his body to just above his genitalia.123 One is left to wonder if Zorach might have seen Munch’s painting in her travels to Germany. Through use of the nude for portraiture, modern artists pushed portraiture in new directions that aligned with the modernist rejection of bourgeois constraints, replaced with freedom from inhibitions. Stettheimer also created a nude self-portrait, titled Model (Nude Self-Portrait) (Figure 3.12), around 1915. A nod to Manet’s Olympia, the artist playfully presents herself in the pose of the reclining female nude and holding a bouquet of flowers in reference to the bouquet of flowers handed to Olympia by her maid in Manet’s painting. Art historian David Tatham argues that “by taking the bouquet into her own hands, Stettheimer made herself (compared with Olympia) an emblem of self-sufficiency.”124 Tatham concludes of the painting, “Offering a refined artist’s reverie for a courtesan’s wearied salaciousness, Stettheimer’s painting is at once amusing, poignant, and brave.”125 Zorach’s choice to create nude family portraits is equally brave in her effort to redefine the family as liberated by nudity. In representing her family in the nude, Zorach ran the risk of being criticized for impropriety. Indeed, decades later, photographer Sally Mann would be attacked for the nude photographs she took of her children. Perhaps



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Figure 3.12  Florine Stettheimer, A Model (Nude Self-Portrait) (1915)—Oil on canvas, 481/4 × 681/4 in. Collection of Alan Solomon, MD—Image courtesy of Art Properties, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, Gift of the Estate of Ettie Stettheimer, 1967—(1967.23.29).

it was her choice of medium that protected Zorach from this criticism, as the figures are distorted enough by the stitch work so as not to be explicit in their nudity. In considering nude family portraits from the late twentieth century to the present, Hammer observes that “artists, mostly female, when they have engaged with family imagery, have sought to subvert clichés.”126 Zorach anticipates this subversion with her nude family portraits in which gender roles are reconfigured. In her consideration of women modernists connected to Alfred Stieglitz, art historian Kathleen Pyne observes, “To be a modernist and a woman meant to imagine oneself outside the conventions of domesticity. . . .”127 Pyne is specific in describing how the women of the Stieglitz circle imaged themselves in this way. She writes, “this modernist identity required the artist to disclose both the spiritual and erotic energies hidden in the depths of the artist’s unconscious. To be a modernist in Greenwich Village and in the Stieglitz circle meant not simply to be in touch with this erotic life of the unconscious but also to ‘bare’ one’s essential self willingly to the world, displaying the signs of this life force in the visual energies of the work of art.”128 Zorach belongs among these women

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modernists in the way she rejects domesticity in her work. However, her strategy for doing so differed from that of the women of the Stieglitz circle. Even in her use of the nude, she resisted the erotic and her embrace of the spiritual led her to liberating spaces for women in nature rather than a reification of essentialist constructions of gender.

Conclusion A review of the events leading up to the creation of Zorach’s first embroideries suggests that her choice was not an arbitrary one. Although Zorach was drawn to embroidery based on her love of vibrant colors, the sale of her embroideries provided significant income to her family, which certainly would have motivated the artist to make them, although she never acknowledged this publicly. Stating that embroidery was well suited for women with children, Zorach presented an argument that would have resonated for many women struggling to balance their careers as artists with family life, even if this argument did not fully apply to Zorach’s own familial obligations. The personal narratives that Zorach formulated to explain her work as an embroiderer point to societal pressures for all women to conform to traditional gender roles, which were difficult to transcend for even feminist women like Zorach. Zorach’s exploration of the so-called primitive connects her early embroideries to one of the predominant interests of modernists in the first half of the twentieth century. These embroideries demonstrate direct connections between Zorach’s paintings and embroideries when it came to subject matter. It was not until The Family Supper that Zorach began to utilize embroidery in ways that pushed her subjects in new directions that provided alternative perspectives regarding gender roles. Additional embroideries by Zorach in which she continues this exploration of gender will be examined in the following chapters. In Three Artists (Three Women), Anne Wagner describes the social identity of woman to be one of “disjunction and recognition . . . in which the self apprehends and claims its difference from and similitude with other selves” in the various roles assigned to and taken on by women.129 Within a complex web of interrelationships, Zorach attempted to negotiate her social identity as woman with that of modern artist, mother, wife, and financial provider. In her writings on embroidery, she overstated the impact of childrearing obligations on



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her art than might actually have been the case, while at the same time she used embroidery as a means to provide for her family financially. This disjuncture between Zorach’s constructed narratives, her views as a feminist, and her reallife experiences illustrates the difficulties experienced by women artists as they negotiated a variety of gender roles with all of their inherent contradictions.

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Georgiana Brown Harbeson and Her Collaborators: Establishing the Modern Embroidery Movement

Her needle competes with the artist’s brush . . . .1 American Artist, 1944 While Zorach’s life and art are well documented, very little has been written about Harbeson and the other women embroiderers that Harbeson discussed in her writing. In this chapter, the careers and art practices of Harbeson, Crisp, Stebbins, and Stoll are reconstructed, and a focused analysis of a single embroidery by each woman is offered as a general introduction to her work. Although their individual paths to embroidery as their preferred medium were unique, all shared a commitment to advancing embroidery as art. Their collective efforts culminated in what Harbeson described as the “modern embroidery movement.”

Georgiana Brown Harbeson (1894–1980) Georgiana Brown Harbeson (Figure 4.1) was born in New Haven, Connecticut. In her profile on Harbeson in the Bulletin of the Needle and Bobbin Club, Frances Morris notes that Harbeson was “blessed” with the heritage of being the great niece of Lucy Ann Packard of Quincy, Massachusetts, “who was the first woman to be granted the privilege of making needlework copies of portraits in the Vatican.”2 Her mother worked as a journalist for a newspaper in New York. At the age of seven, Harbeson attended summer classes at the Villa Maria convent in Quebec, where she first learned to embroider.3 When Harbeson became homesick, her mother removed her from the school and brought her back

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Figure 4.1 Photograph of Georgiana Brown Harbeson – Reproduced in Wilson, “Watch the Needles of the Younger Generation,” Needlecraft (April 1933), 16.

home to New York.4 As an adult, Harbeson’s education can only be described as eclectic. Trained as a mural painter under Violet Oakley, she graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1917. She also studied in Philadelphia at the Philadelphia College of Art and Moore College of Art and Design. In addition to studying the fine arts, Harbeson was also trained in design. In Philadelphia, she studied at the Philadelphia School of Design under Hugh Breckenridge and Daniel Garber; and in New York, with German graphic designer Lucian Bernhardt, who had opened the design school Contempora Studio with Rockwell Kent, Paul Poiret, Bruno Paul, and Erich Mendelsohn in 1928. Specifically drawn to textiles, she attended the New York School of Textile Design for Women. Harbeson’s early interests extended into dance and theater as well. In addition to her membership in embroidery organizations, Harbeson was also a member of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. Even more, Harbeson was trained as a dancer, and choreographed ballets that were produced by the Junior League.5 She designed costumes and scenery for thirteen ballets and several plays in New York and Philadelphia, and she staged a production of Dostoevsky’s Idiot for the Provincetown Players.6 Most interestingly, in many of her productions, needlework was the theme. For example, a production titled Sampler was inspired by an early American



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embroidery in which the characters and stage set were inspired by the flora and fauna from the sampler. In another production by Harbeson, titled Venetian Lace, the storyline followed two star-crossed lovers made of thread who are separated by lace and appeal to a lacemaker to reweave the lace pattern in the hopes of being reunited.7 These productions by Harbeson are fascinating examples of her vision of the great potential for embroidery and other needlecrafts to inform creative production. In her adult years, Harbeson found embroidery to be an important source of income.8 She had married architect John F. Harbeson and the couple had two sons. They were divorced by 1935, because, as Harbeson described, “He was very conservative . . . and didn’t believe I was capable of being an artist. He said that I could not successfully compete with men and that I was wasting my time.”9 In 1935, tragedy struck with the death of their son John from pneumonia.10 Financial problems, in all likelihood the consequence of her divorce, resulted in Harbeson being the “purveyor” for the family.11 She earned money by selling her embroidered works. She also earned income by designing embroidery patterns that were sold by Needlecraft magazine and the Minerva Yarn Industries. Harbeson was introduced to needlework hobbyists by Needlecraft through a profile of her published in the May 1931 issue of the magazine. Titled “Watch the Needles of the Younger Generation: They Are Full of New Tricks,” the article encouraged appreciation for the new directions in which modern embroiderers like Harbeson were taking embroidery. When Harbeson made the transition from painting to embroidery, she received criticism from her colleagues. As described in an article on Harbeson in the Christian Science Monitor, “Some people rebuked her for abandoning her painting for what they considered only a craft, but she determined to demonstrate to the critics the potentialities of her new vocation.”12 Indeed, this criticism did nothing to deter Harbeson from acting as an outspoken advocate for embroidery as art. She identified as “a staunch feminist,” which most certainly fueled her dedication to elevating an important form of women’s creative expression.13 As described in an interview with the artist just a year before she died, “She was undaunted by the established art world’s inability to see needlework as an art form, and she continued to explore the medium without the benefit of colleagues.”14 Throughout her career, Harbeson received commissions from Christian churches for her embroideries.15 She produced religious needlework for the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, St. Paul’s Church in Rochester, New York, and Bishop’s Chapel of St. Paul’s Cathedral in Cincinnati. Church commissions played a significant role in providing income to Harbeson and

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other women needle workers. Thus, it is not surprising that Harbeson would devote a chapter of her American Needlework book to “Religious Needlework.” Her religious embroideries include Nativity (plate 5), and The Crucifixion (Figure 4.2), which was described as “her masterpiece”16 and exhibited at the 1937 Paris Exposition.17 As an advocate for modern embroidery, Harbeson was challenged by the more conservative tastes of her religious patrons. She wrote in her book, “The general tendency [of religious needlework] has been to remain close to traditional set patterns.”18 She hoped that the “use of abstract forms” in traditional religious works might open Christians up to an appreciation for modern styles.19 She wrote, “There is great opportunity in this present age to create [religious] embroideries that will be even more abstract in quality[than previously seen]. . . .”20 Even in her religious commissions, Harbeson remained committed to the modern aesthetic.

Figure 4.2  Georgiana Brown Harbeson, Crucifixion (1930)—Embroidered altar panel hanging—Reproduced in Harbeson, American Needlework, 164b.—Dimensions and whereabouts unknown.



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The earliest evidence of Harbeson’s exhibition record is from 1928 at the Milch Gallery in New York. She participated in an exhibition sponsored by the American Federation of the Arts in 1929. In 1935, the Art Institute of Chicago held the exhibition, “Needlework and Textile Guild: Needlework Pictures by Mrs. Georgiana Brown Harbeson.” By this time, Harbeson’s embroideries had also been shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Art Alliance, the Detroit Fine Arts Association, and the Art Institute of Chicago.21 In 1937, they were included in “Contemporary Needlework” held at the Arden Gallery; the exhibition also featured embroideries by First Lady Edith Roosevelt (listed as Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.), Marian Stoll, and Dorothy Hyde Park (listed as Mrs. Darragh Park).22 But Harbeson did not rely solely on art institutions for the exhibition of her work. In 1932, she was included in a group show of textile arts at the American Women’s Association in New York, where she taught needlework and design.23 In 1941, her embroideries were included in the Lotos Club group exhibition mentioned previously. The same year, an exhibition of her work was sponsored by New York’s Women’s Educational and Industrial Union. In conjunction with the exhibition, Harbeson gave a talk on needlework design.24 Indeed, throughout her lifetime, Harbeson gave lectures and demonstrations aimed at advancing modern embroidery. In one interesting example, visitors to a 1934 exhibition of historical embroideries held at the Hayden Galleries in New  York watched Harbeson create an embroidery on the spot (Figure 4.3) that was inspired by an embroidered cap worn by the French philosopher Voltaire. As Harbeson explained, “I wanted to show in a practical fashion just how old works could be incorporated in modern design.”25 Never missing an opportunity to advocate for modern embroidery, Harbeson continued, “The time for copying is past, however. We are entering into a new era of both technique and design.”26 Harbeson’s embroidery Deep South (1936) (Figure 4.4) is her largest and most accomplished known work. Measuring at over five by six feet, the embroidery was created as a folding screen designed to form one large composition when fully opened. It was fabricated by workers at the Minerva Yarn Industries, owned by John Lees & Sons. Harbeson described the embroidery as having an “atmosphere of . . . thick, lush growth in jungle or swamp lands” and “a feeling of denseness and impenetrability. . . .”27 Amid the thick vegetation of drooping vines and flowering plants, herons, swallows, and butterflies can be found. Harbeson’s choice of a deep boxwood green for the background adds to the illusion of impenetrability; the dark color contrasts with the bright blues, reds and greens that define the foliage in the foreground.28 The embroidery is

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Figure 4.3  Photograph of Georgiana Brown Harbeson Making an Embroidery on the Spot, at the Hayden Galleries (1934)—Reproduced in Wilson, “Two New York Needlework Exhibits” Needlecraft (July 1934), 4.

characterized by dense organic growth that creates a decorative design, which became Harbeson’s signature style. She created several additional embroideries with nature as the focus, and these are discussed in Chapter 6. Deep South is unique from these  other works in the absence of people. Indeed, nature is presented here as a pristine force teeming with the energy of plant and animal life and untouched by any human presence. After marrying the comic strip artist Frank Godwin, Harbeson moved with her second husband to New Hope, Pennsylvania, in 1937. She was active in the art community there until she died. From her home in Pennsylvania, she continued to connect with diverse embroidery communities in a variety of ways. During the Second World War, she organized “darning depots,” set up throughout the country to darn the socks of service men.29 She was a founding member and board member of the Embroiderers Guild of America, established in 1958 in New York as a branch of the Embroiderers Guild of London. One of the group’s first activities was a visit to the needlework collection of Judge Irwin Untermyer,



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Figure 4.4  Georgiana Brown Harbeson (designer), Deep South (1936)—Fabricated by Minerva Yarn Industries Needlepoint fourfold screen, 64 × 72 in.—Reproduced in Harbeson, American Needlework, 194b.

the owner of Harbeson’s embroidered portrait of opera singer Galli-Curci Amelita, discussed in detail in Chapter 8. In 1970, the American Embroiderers Guild  separated from its parent guild, and Harbeson won the competition to design  its new logo.30 In addition to her book American Needlework and her articles in the Bulletin of the Needle and Bobbin Club, Harbeson also wrote articles on embroidery for Vogue, Women’s Home Journal Companion, Ladies Home Journal, Harper’s Bazaar, McCall’s, and House and Garden. As late as 1970, she was still giving lectures on needlework.31 Also in 1970, she spearheaded an exhibition titled Stitched in Time: American Needlework, Past and Present that was on view in Kansas City and St. Louis department stores.32 In April 1971, she was among the invited guests of the Metropolitan Museum’s 101st anniversary celebration; she spent a day at the museum demonstrating embroidery to visitors. The same month, an exhibition of her embroidery was held in the hotel gallery of the Lambertville House in New Hope.33 When Godwin died, Harbeson created an embroidery dedicated to his memory which she donated it to St. Philips Chapel in New Hope.34 As a testament to her innovative spirit even up to

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her final years, she began to experiment with plastics and synthetics combined with ancient techniques for her work. One of these works, titled Ecology (date and whereabouts unknown) was included in the exhibition American Painters in Paris, and at age eighty-two, Harbeson flew to Paris to attend the opening.35 The Bucks County Council on the Arts celebrated Harbeson and twenty-six other women artists active in the region before 1940 in a 1979 exhibition at the Rodman House in Doylestown.36 In her final years, she moved to Philadelphia, where she died in 1980. Perhaps the last public exhibition of her work, Buck County Council on the Arts included four of her embroideries—Minnehaha, Oberlin College, Friends in Council and The Nativity—in a 1980 exhibition of Bucks County Illustrators.

Mary Ellen Crisp (b. 1896) Mary Ellen Crisp was born Grace Ackerman in Nutley, New Jersey. She attended the Art Students League and the Grand Central School of Art.37 She probably met her husband, Canadian born painter and designer Arthur Crisp (1881–1974), while at the Art Students League. Arthur had studied there from 1900 to 1903 and maintained an affiliation with the school after he completed the program. The Blue Jacket (ca. 1916/whereabouts unknown), a portrait of Mary Ellen painted by Arthur, gives evidence of the early years of their relationship.38 Mary Ellen later attended the Grand Central School of Art, which opened in 1924 and included both fine and applied art in its curriculum; costume designer Helen Dryden was among its faculty.39 The school’s applied art curriculum would have suited Crisp well as she would go on to establish herself as a dress designer. According to Arthur, she developed a “very lucrative business” as a dressmaker for wealthy clients in New York, Tennessee, and California.40 Arthur described a window display of Crisp’s dress designs that she arranged for “a big store on Fifth Avenue,” in which Mary Ellen’s modern versions of “old tunics” from the Natural History Museum were displayed alongside the older versions that inspired them.41 This window display would have provided Crisp with visibility and in all likelihood advanced her reputation as a dress designer. Crisp began making embroideries in the 1920s, when the couple moved to a house they purchased on East 51st Street. Arthur describes, “As I became more affluent she gave up her dress business and devoted most of her time to embroidery.”42 Arthur’s financial success began with several large commissions, including six large panels for the Commons Reading Room in Ottawa’s House of



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Parliament and murals for the Grand Central Palace in New York.43 He invested his earnings in the stock market and made a great deal of money this way. During the 1920s, he also began investing in real estate. He valued his assets in the 1920s at over two million dollars.44 From the 1920s on, the Crisps lived in New York for a large part of the year with summer months spent time at their house outside of the city.45 They had a wide circle of friends from the worlds of both art and finance whom they entertained regularly, including Arthur B. Davies, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, and Jo Davidson to name a few.46 With the stock market crash, they lost a lot of money. Although they struggled financially through the Depression years, they ultimately landed on their feet. During the Depression, Crisp’s embroideries were an important source of income. As Arthur recalled, “She sold the handsome embroideries she had made for a few hundred dollars as we were badly in need of cash.”47 An extant embroidery of the battle during the War of 1812 between the USS Constitution and the HMS Guerriere, signed by Crisp, appears to have been sold for $85.48 Crisp also started a business selling embroidery kits. Each kit was comprised of written instructions, an embroidery pattern stamped on linen, a color sketch of the design, and the necessary yarns for making it. An extant kit (Figure 4.5a and 4.5b) for an embroidery of South America provides an example of the embroidery kits produced by Crisp.49 Crisp successfully marketed these kits; they were sold at department stores across the United States.50 A price tag glued to the South America design sketch documents that this kit was purchased at The Lion Store, a department store in Toledo, Ohio (closed in 1998). In New York, the kits were sold in the showroom of Crisp’s agent, Mary Ryan, located at 225 Fifth Avenue. As late as 1946, her embroidery kits were still being advertised for sale in department stores, as indicated by a Wanamaker’s department store advertisement for “Art Needlework” in the New York Times that year.51 Extant embroideries created from embroidery kits provide further information on pattern designs by Crisp. In 2016, the Provincetown Museum in Provincetown, Massachusetts purchased an embroidery of The Mayflower (1939–40) (Figure 4.6) created from a Crisp pattern. The name of the embroiderer, Dolores M. Sayles, is prominently stitched in the top right of the embroidery. That the embroiderer chose to sign her completed work indicates the pride that she took in her accomplishment, a pride that Crisp herself would have applauded in that she recognized the skill required to successfully complete one of her designs. Even more, Crisp considered the completion of her designs a creative act in its own right. Nothing is known of Sayles, but in

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Figure 4.5a Mary Ellen Crisp, Untitled (South America) (ca. late 1930s, early 1940s)—Embroidery design sketch on paper, 18½ × 13½ in.—Collection of author— Photograph by Adam Pinheiro.

the case of another Crisp embroidery kit, information is available. The subject is a homesteading scene (Figure 4.7) in which settlers lead covered wagons across a hilly landscape. The scene is overall an idyllic one in that no specific difficulties are represented; only two men carrying guns hint at potential threats to their safety. Two brown bears in the bottom right of the embroidery appear



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Figure 4.5b  Mary Ellen Crisp, Untitled (South America) (ca. late 1930s, early 1940s)— Linen embroidery kit pattern, 28½ × 13½ in.—Collection of author—Photograph by Adam Pinheiro.

more playful than threatening and a group of tipis nestled in the hills suggest a harmonious relationship between indigenous peoples and the settlers moving across their land. Indeed, in the top center of the embroidery, the sun’s bright yellow rays emerge from behind the mountains to symbolize the promise of the future for the settlers. In spite of the traditional subject, the embroidery displays markers of the modern style, specifically the bright, vibrant colors and the large sections of unstitched embroidery that produce an overall simplified design. The kit was purchased in the 1940s from “the finest” department store in Lincoln,

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Figure 4.6  Mary Ellen Crisp (designer), Mayflower (1939–40)—Fabricated by Dolores Sayles—Embroidery on linen with wool, 24 × 30.5 in.— Cape Cod Pilgrim Memorial Association, Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum, Provincetown, MA.

Nebraska, and sent as a gift to a young girl of eleven or twelve named Ruth Lloyd (Chalfont).52 After an awkward start by Ruth, her grandmother, Cora Jane Tyler Cox, stepped in to complete the embroidery “out of a love of needlework.”53 In addition to her skill at embroidery, Cox is remembered by her family as “a fine quilter, crocheter, knitter and needleworker.”54 This observation reminds us that women who followed embroidery patterns were often gifted, creative makers. Originally from Illinois, Cora Jane and her husband, Joshua Cox, moved to Nebraska as homesteaders in the late nineteenth century, so it is not surprising that Cora Jane would be drawn to this particular pattern as an expression of her own life experiences. Married at age seventeen and the mother of six children, Cora Jane was described by family members as a hardworking pioneer woman.55 When the couple first arrived in Nebraska, they lived humbly in a sod house, but soon thereafter, in 1881, established a business shipping cattle from Nebraska to Liverpool, England. Along with Joshua’s brother Jim, they founded the town of Hampton, Nebraska.56 Joshua went on to become a Nebraska state legislator and president of the American State Bank in York. Ruth still holds the embroidery



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Figure 4.7  Mary Ellen Crisp (designer), Untitled (Homesteading) (ca. late 1930s, early 1940s)—Fabricated by Cora Jane Fox (early 1940s)—Embroidery on linen with wool, 11 × 15 in.—Collection of Ruth Chalfant—Photograph courtesy of the Fox family.

created by her grandmother, framed and well preserved in her home in Boise, Idaho. The subject of the embroidery serves as a marker of the family’s pioneer history. Indeed, as such, a second version of the same embroidery pattern was made in the 1950s at the request of Ruth’s sister.57 In an expression of creative license, this second embroidery includes crayon infill, which in all likelihood was not in Crisp’s kit instructions. Crayon tinting was a popular technique among quilters and may have inspired the crayon infill in the embroidery.58 In addition to the sale of her embroidery patterns, Crisp also earned income from church commissions, just as Harbeson did. She made several large altar curtains and other objects for Catholic churches. She was commissioned through the Rambusch Company to create eighteen forty by nine-foot wall hangings for the Coast Guard Academy Chapel at New London, Connecticut.59 Established in 1898, Rambusch sold ecclesiastical art.60 Based on available evidence, Crisp’s exhibition record is strongest during the 1930s and 1940s. Her embroideries were included in an exhibition of “leisure-time pursuits” held at Macy’s in 1934. An article in the New York Times described, “The exhibition is designed to show visitors some of the things that may be done with the much-discussed leisure time resulting from the

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shorter-hour provisions of the NRA [National Recovery Administration], or from enforced unemployment.”61 By this time a professional embroiderer, Crisp, however, was not creating her embroideries as a pastime. Other exhibitions in which her work was included reflect her seriousness as a professional artist. In 1938, her embroideries were described as “embroidered murals” when they were on display at the Women’s City Club. 62 Similarly, in 1940, her embroideries exhibited at the Architectural League Galleries were described as “embroidered wall decorations.”63 They were also among those on display at the 1941 Lotos Club exhibition. In 1942, they could be seen at America House, with subjects ranging from “peasant figures” to an old clipper ship. Crisp was recognized for contributing embroideries with “original designs and modern techniques” to the show.64 New York Times art critic Walter Rendell Storey reviewed the exhibition and observed that an embroidery by Crisp of a parrot perched on a basket of flowers “takes on heightened modernity because it is done on dark maroon velvet.” Similarly, he recognized a floral embroidery by Crisp for its modern style. He wrote, “Mrs. Crisp finds that the trend in needlework is toward fewer colors; she believes that three shades of any hue will give all the gradations needed by a worker. Simple techniques, in her opinion, involving comparatively few variations of stitches rather than many different kinds, are often most successful.”65 But while her stitches may have lacked variation, like Harbeson, Crisp worked in a wide range of styles. This approach satisfied the requirements of working in the commercial realm, which necessitated appealing to a broad range of tastes. Crisp’s most experimental embroidery (ca. 1937) is a large wall hanging she donated to the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in 1960. In his autobiography, Arthur mentions that it was on exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art before it was donated to the Smithsonian.66 It is Crisp’s most abstract work. The embroidery is large, with dimensions of approximately seven by five feet. What is most striking about the work is its highly abstract style. Indeed, it stands out as the most abstract embroidery of all of the embroideries under consideration in this book. The composition is defined by a series of rectangles connected to form vertical elements spanning the length of the embroidery. In some instances, the rectangles break apart at their base to create hanging threads of color. These rectangular forms are juxtaposed by curved, fluid lines that define other portions of the embroidery. Crisp’s color choices of browns and ochers create a very subtle effect. The embroidery comes closest to modern tapestry as it was defined by Lurçat and Le Corbusier in that Crisp abandons painterly effect for architectural shapes. With connections to the



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Architectural League through her husband, she would have been aware of the parameters set for wall hangings by architects and she may have designed this embroidery with these parameters in mind.

Marcia Stebbins (1907–1976) Marcia Stebbins was born to an upper-class family in New York City. Her father, George Ledyard Stebbins, was a successful financier. In the early years of Marcia’s life, the Stebbins family lived in New York, but summered at Seal Harbor, on Mt. Desert Island, Maine, a preferred summer destination for many wealthy families, including the Rockefellers. George had been visiting Seal Harbor since 1892; he played an important role in establishing Acadia National Park.67 Because they were part of New York’s high society, the family visits to Seal Harbor were consistently documented on the society pages of the New York Times as well as the Bar Harbor Times, the local newspaper on Mt. Desert Island. Marcia’s activities begin to appear in these newspapers in the early 1920s.68 Although Marcia benefited by her family’s wealth and status, there were limitations imposed upon her as the only daughter. Due to her mother Edith’s health issues, her parents began to travel to Santa Barbara, California, during the winter months, and Marcia was expected to travel with them. She did so until 1952, when both of her parents had died, although prior to their deaths, she returned from California during the summer to visit family and friends on Mt. Desert Island. As described by her niece, Marcia was not allowed a full life because she was expected to care for her parents as the only daughter among George and Edith’s three children. As her niece recalls, she would be whisked off to Europe by her parents to thwart amorous relationships with men that had the potential to shift her obligations away from them.69 One of those trips was in 1932, when she traveled to Paris. Stebbins was also establishing herself as an artist at this time.70 She was trained at the Art Students League as a painter in the early 1930s, studying under Walt Kuhn. Because her father was not convinced of her seriousness about being an artist, he awarded her a meager allowance for this pursuit. When she started at the Art Students League, she lived in an inexpensive apartment at 113 East 55th Street under less than ideal circumstances in spite of her family’s wealth. Once she “proved herself ” to her parents, however, they were much more generous in providing her money to live and work more comfortably in New York. The year after her parents died, she spent the winter months with

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her brother Henry’s family in Marblehead, Massachusetts, although by this time she had bought a house of her own in Head Tide, Maine.71 Like Zorach, Stebbins experimented in a wide variety of media. In addition to painting, she worked in woodcarving and sculpture. Her textile production also reflects Zorach’s interests. She made hooked rugs and embroideries and designed and sewed clothing for her nieces, including Halloween costumes and outfits for holidays. Stebbins also had a professional career as a designer. She arranged window displays for Bergdorf Goodman and her design clients included large corporations like American Airlines. Even as she gained notoriety for her embroideries, Stebbins continued to paint. In 1947, she exhibited her paintings at the Jordan Pond House in Acadia National Park.72 Jordan Pond House was a favorite destination for the wealthy summer residents of Bar Harbor throughout the first half of the twentieth century, including John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who purchased it in 1923, then gave the house as a donation to Acadia National Park in 1940.73 As Stebbins’s niece recalls, the 1947 exhibition  at the Jordan Pond House brought her enough money to buy her own home in Head Tide. In her 1935 article, Harbeson described Stebbins as a “newcomer in the field” of embroidery. But by this time Stebbins had already had an embroidery exhibition at the Ferargil Galleries. A mention of the show in the New York Times described her embroideries as “amusing needlework fantasies.”74 The description of one work in the show, a “picture of monkeys, one of which hangs breezily from its long tail,” resembles that of a threefold needlepoint screen presumably designed by Harbeson, as it is reproduced in American Needlework (Figure 4.8).75 Harbeson credits First Lady Edith Roosevelt with creating three screens with this design; perhaps Stebbins too used Harbeson’s pattern for her work.76 The year 1938 brought Stebbins a second embroidery exhibition at the Ferargil Galleries that included embroideries of both landscapes and figures.77 She and the Ferargil had a profitable relationship in that she sold several of her embroideries through them, including one sold to Abby Rockefeller.78 In 1954, her embroideries were exhibited at the Bar Harbor Jesup Memorial Library, which had been organizing exhibitions of Maine artists since the early 1950s under the direction of painter Harriet Ogden.79 According to the Bar Harbor Times, the show included both embroideries and drawings, with styles of these works described as “Abstract and Realism.”80 Like other women embroiderers, Stebbins also exhibited her embroideries at women’s organizations. In 1938, they were on display in a “hobby booth” at the Women’s National Exposition of Arts and Industries.81 When showing in these venues, professional artists like



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Figure 4.8  Georgiana Brown Harbeson, Untitled (Monkeys in Trees) (before 1937)— Fabricated by Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., and possibly Marcia Stebbins—Reproduced in Harbeson, American Needlework, 192b.—Dimensions and whereabouts unknown.

Stebbins often tried to position their embroideries as art, and in this regard, Stebbins described her embroideries as “panels.” The Bar Harbor Times, in all likelihood on the direction of Stebbins, explained “they may best be described as paintings in wool and silk.”82 Sale of her embroideries brought the artist a significant amount of income over the years. Her Jesup Memorial Library exhibition earned the library $78.03, presumably a percentage of the total sales to which Stebbins would have received a share.83

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Figure 4.9  Marcia Stebbins, Untitled Seascape (before 1935)—Embroidery on linen— Reproduced in Harbeson, “Four Moderns,” 21.—Dimensions and whereabouts unknown.

Harbeson reproduced Stebbins’s Untitled Seascape (before 1935) (Figure 4.9) in her essay on the four modern embroiderers.84 The embroidery is most certainly inspired by Stebbins’s family visits to Seal Harbor. Sailboats dominate the scene, which accurately represents Seal Harbor, as it had an active yacht club and sailing was a popular form of leisure there. Stebbins creates a relaxing scene of leisure in which wind-filled sails and the gentle waves of the water propel the sailboats effortlessly forward. In the foreground, fish jump from the water while gulls eye them as possible catch. Behind this leisure scene is an island with a lighthouse at one end and a few tiny cottages along the shore. There are several islands off the coast of Seal Harbor that Stebbins might be referencing here, including Bear Island, known for its lighthouse, and Sutton Island, which is shaped like the island represented in the embroidery and housed a small number of summer cottages.85 The island is most likely an idealized compilation of the various islands along the area’s seacoast. A recent discovery of another embroidery by Stebbins, which she titled Sailing, is quite similar in composition, but subtle differences suggest that Stebbins’ goal was not to replicate the exact landscape.86



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The focus on leisure connects Stebbins’s embroidery to Impressionism, which by this time was a very dated movement even in America. For Harbeson, however, Stebbins’s embroidery was modern based on its attitude and style. She explains this in American Needlework: “Her main interest in her needlepainting, like that of her contemporaries, is the establishment of spirit, movement, idea and atmosphere.”87 Harbeson found this modern spirit in Stebbins’s choice to leave large portions of her foundation unstitched and to use “the simplest of stitches to convey forms.”88 She derided the use of “stitch pyrotechnics,” by which she meant the use of too many different types of stitches, arguing that they deterred from an appreciation of the subject matter.89 Although Stebbins’s embroidery may appear conservative in subject when compared to modern art from this time period, she pushed embroidery forward by selecting a contemporary scene and adopting a modern approach to it through the simplification of form. Stebbins remained active in the Maine art community until her premature death in 1976. As late as 1972, she served on a committee that organized an exhibition of paintings by artist Charles Glueck of Newcastle. Sadly, she died at age sixty-nine from a tragic car accident while traveling in Québec.90 Her extended family continues to reside in the Seal Harbor area.

Marian Stoll (1879–1960) Marian Stoll was born in Waterbury, Connecticut to Roswell and Minnie Buck. While studying art at Drexel University, she met her husband H. Leon Stoll, whom she later divorced. Stoll traveled extensively in Europe. She studied applied and industrial art in Munich and Vienna. She lived in Oxford, England, during the 1920s. While in England, she developed friendships with noted British intellectuals and artists.91 For example, she had a close friendship with Lady Ottoline Morrell, an English socialite with an impressive circle of writer and artist friends connected to the Bloomsbury Group. A 1923 photograph of Stoll (Figure 4.10) by Lady Ottoline in the National Portrait Gallery documents their friendship. Through the acquaintances she made as part of Lady Ottoline’s circle, Stoll received commissions for embroidered pillows, screens, and other objects that provided her a steady income. Letters to Lady Ottoline document the names of her clients, which included such prominent figures as Lady Gwendoline Churchill (Winston Churchill’s sister-in-law), Siegfried Sassoon, and Aldous Huxley.92 In 1928, Stoll moved to Paris where she continued to make embroideries. In the early 1930s, she moved to Greece, then back to the United States in 1935, where she settled in her home state of Connecticut. Stoll

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Image not available in this edition

Figure 4.10 Lady Ottoline Morrell, Portrait of Marian Buck Stoll (1923)—Vintage snapshot print, 23/4 in. × 21/8 in.—NPG Ax141969—National Portrait Gallery, London—© National Portrait Gallery, London.

was living in Europe when Harbeson wrote her essay on the “Four Moderns,” but had returned to the United States in time for Harbeson to recognize her in American Needlework. Since Stoll was an expatriate up until 1935, her direct contribution to the American modern embroidery movement until that time would have been limited to exhibitions of her work in the United States and critical responses to them. Harbeson may have been aware of Stoll’s work based on her notoriety in Europe and from reviews of her American exhibitions published in newspapers like the New York Times. Indeed, the possibility of a transatlantic connection between the two is quite intriguing. Almost immediately upon Stoll’s return to America, Harbeson recognized her as a contributor to the modern embroidery movement. In addition to fulfilling embroidery commissions, Stoll also made embroi­ deries with the specific purpose of being exhibited as art. She was intentional in distinguishing between the two. In American Needlework, she reflected upon how she came to the realization that embroidery could be a form of artistic expression equal to painting as an art form. She observes, “After having done a



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good deal of professional embroidery in Vienna and England, I came to think it might be possible to paint in wools. So I set out to test that hypothesis. For a long time now, I’ve felt that a needle with wool was just as respectable and legitimate a medium for serious painting as any other, and so I have deliberately gone out after painters’ objectives. . . . Of course, as any painter feels, the further I go on, the more there is yet to learn; but at least it isn’t the medium that limits me, for wool as a painter’s medium really has infinite possibilities.”93 A financially independent woman, Stoll depended upon her commissioned embroideries for income. She was fortunate in having consistent work in this regard. Indeed, in her 1928 letter to Lady Ottoline, she complained to her friend that she was so busy with commissions that they were preventing her from keeping up with requests to show her embroideries at art exhibitions. In spite of these expressed frustrations, Stoll maintained a consistent exhibition record. Her work was on exhibit in Paris in 1928 and around this time she was anticipating exhibitions in Brussels and Chicago.94 In the United States, she exhibited at the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo in 1928, and along with Harbeson, at the Arden Galleries in New York in 1938. In a review of the Arden Galleries exhibition, Walter Rendell Storey applauded Stoll for “adapting needlework to sophisticated types of pictorial art” and for “going far beyond the limitations of the traditional needlework picture.”95 Her embroidery was included in the New York World’s Fair American Art Today exhibition. In London, it was shown at the Walker Gallery in 1923, and in 1932, at the Exhibition of Modern British Embroidery organized by the British Institute of Industrial Art and held at the Victoria and Albert Museum. An exhibition catalogue for the Victoria and Albert Museum show, titled Modern Embroidery, highlighted Stoll’s embroidery.96 The catalogue was compiled by the British embroidery expert Mary Hogarth. Stoll would have been pleased to be included in Hogarth’s book. In a letter to Lady Ottoline, she described Hogarth: “She is modern in her ideas as anyone could wish, and she is doing her best to bring a draught of modern fresh air among the stuffy fossils that infect the [Embroidery] guild.”97 Upon her return to the United States, Stoll wrote for Life magazine and Vogue. In Modern Embroidery, Hogarth recognized Stoll for her “purely imaginative” subjects.98 This imaginative approach to subject matter is evidenced by the titles Stoll assigned to her embroideries. For example, the title East of the Sun and West of the Moon (Figure 4.11) comes from a Norwegian folk tale. Dominated by a cubist-inspired castle, the embroidery creates the imagined setting of the folk tale for the union of a prince with the woman he loves, after a series of thwarted efforts resulting from the antics of a family of trolls. What is most striking about

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Figure 4.11  Marian Stoll, East of the Sun and West of the Moon—Reproduced in Ellis Waterhouse, “Recent Embroidery by Marian Stoll,” The Studio (September 1927)— Dimensions and whereabouts unknown.

Stoll’s rendition of the story is the complete absence of any signs of life around the castle; the absence of doors and windows in the castle reinforces a feeling of this space as an empty void. The impenetrable castle becomes a symbol of imprisonment; it exudes an ominous and eerie feeling. While the influence of cubism is evident in this and other Stoll embroideries, still others reflect a completely different expressionist style. What connects Stoll’s embroideries is not their style but their disconcerting subjects, some of which could be described as sharing the Surrealist interest in the uncanny. Surrealist works like Max Ernst’s Two Children are Threatened by a Nightingale (1924/Museum of Modern Art, NY) come to mind when considering an Untitled embroidery (plate 6) completed by Stoll in 1927. In this work, a lone figure, huddled over and almost clinging to the building beside him, walks along a sidewalk of an otherwise empty town. A large shadow of the man is cast on the façade of the building, but the source of light that creates the shadow is unclear. A dizzying feeling is created by the way Stoll depicts the road that leads into the town like a river forcefully rushing toward the viewer. The ambiguous narrative and eerie quality of the embroidery are Surrealist in their strangeness. It was only a year later that Stoll would move to Paris, but she was most certainly aware of Surrealism before she moved. Stoll’s process for making her embroideries is documented by Hogarth in her book. She began with a rough watercolor sketch, then drew the main outlines of the watercolor in free-hand onto her linen base.99 Stoll explained that the watercolor sketch was meant to be “more suggestive than a guide.”100 Her approach to embroidery is similar to that of Zorach, who also began her embroideries



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by outlining key elements onto her foundation and then allowed the specifics of the composition to emerge as she was embroidering. For both artists, this approach fostered the active engagement of their imaginations throughout the embroidering process. Stoll was also like Zorach in the way that she underplayed the importance of stitching technique in making her embroideries. An article dedicated to Stoll’s embroideries explained, “As a matter of fact stitchery is accorded a quite subordinate place in Mrs. Stoll’s estimation, being considered by her as a means to an end and not in any sense whatever as an end in itself. She has no hesitation, indeed, in confessing to an absolute dislike of the idea of stitchery, per se, as productive of little more than mechanical effects; holding that one of the prime causes of decay in the art of embroidery is a whole-hearted devotion to the technique of stitchery at the expense of colour, artistic perception, and all that is of real value in the composition of a picture.”101 Indeed, the author of the article, Mrs. Rivers Turnbull, who was an expert in needlework technique, noted that Stoll employed only “three elementary stitches”: ordinary satin stitch, Florentine stitch, and split stitch. For Stoll, her embroideries were best recognized for their imaginative quality. As Turnbull described them, they were “mind pictures” created when Stoll would “dream her dream and then give it form, shape, and colour... .”102 Like other modern artists, Stoll was committed to the philosophy that the imagination took precedence over mastery of technique.

Conclusion In arguing for a modern embroidery movement, Harbeson defined “modern” in a very expansive way. She was not alone in using a very broad brush to define modern art. Scholarship continues to be produced that substantiates the view that in the 1920s and 1930s, artists, curators, and critics alike cast a very wide net in categorizing modern art to include a surprisingly diverse array of styles. Art historian Kristina Wilson observes that this stylistic diversity is precisely what defined the modern art collection of the Société Anonyme on display at the Brooklyn Museum’s 1926 International Exhibition of Modern Art, a diversity, that she notes, “may seem cacophonous to twenty-first century viewers, who think of early-twentieth-century modernism as a series of discreet ‘isms.’ ”103 Even more, Wilson argues that the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), when it opened in 1929, “shared with the Société Anonyme an interest in representing the broad

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swath of practices that constituted modern art,” although this was not reflected in its exhibition programs.104 Art historian Robert Storr has previously argued Wilson’s point regarding MoMA’s collecting decisions in Modern Art Despite Modernism. Reflecting upon the diverse styles of art collected by MoMA under the classification of “modern” art, he observes, “Seemingly bound together by a common enterprise, the actual diversity of projects undertaken by modernists fractures any but the most theoretical sense of coherence among them.”105 MoMA’s exhibition choices are now catching up with its collecting practices, evident in their 2016 exhibition, Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round So Our Thoughts Can Change Direction, a consideration of the wildly divergent styles explored by the French artist.106 An installation in the Picabia exhibition “pays homage” to “the dizzying array of styles” employed by Picabia that were represented by the works selected for the 1922 Exposition Francis Picabia at the Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona, “which made evident that he considered abstraction but one style among many rather than an enduring avant-garde goal.”107 Indeed, “modern” was commonly understood to mean a wide range of styles for many modern artists, which allowed them artistic freedom to experiment with what might be viewed as contradictory styles by today’s standards. Harbeson and her collaborators in the modern embroidery movement shared an appreciation for this openness to stylistic variation, as well as an openness to subject choice, and most assuredly, to choice of medium, all of which were driven by a search for individual artistic expression. The women embroiderers discussed in this book moved effortlessly between contrasting styles as their artistic visions developed over time and as they deemed appropriate for specific embroidery projects.

5

Collaboration

In both the United States and Europe, modern embroideries were often the result of artistic collaboration between a designer and fabricator. Significant scholarship has already been written on collaborative efforts in embroidery by European modernists. Art historian Bibiana Obler stands out for her examination of embroideries made collaboratively by Sophie Taeuber with Hans Arp, and by Wassily Kandinsky with Gabriele Münter. American embroidery collaborations have received less scholarly attention, although there is ample evidence that a collaborative approach was also often taken. This chapter considers embroideries made through artistic collaboration and as a result of collaborations between American embroiderers and industry. Obler makes clear that embroidery collaboration must be considered on a case by case basis, since it can take on dramatically different forms even among groups of artists with shared perspectives on art. In the case of Taeuber and Arp, the couple ventured into what Obler describes as “self-transcending collaborations.”1 She explains, Arp “was interested in embroidery and tapestry as a means of challenging the Western tradition of painting and of reconnecting with a universal essence.”2 In contrast, Taeuber was “intent on reforming textile production, not on deploying its techniques for other ends.”3 Summarizing the difference between the two artists, even as they worked on embroideries together, she writes, “Whereas Arp manipulated elements associated with the applied arts to make subversive avant-garde statements with his gallery bound embroideries, Taeuber . . . looked to contemporary trends in the fine arts for inspiration [for her embroideries].”4 Kandinsky and Münter, on the other hand, were less experimental and followed traditional gender roles when they worked together. A clear division was made between each artist’s contribution to a collaborative work: Kandinsky created the designs and Münter executed them.5 As will become evident in this chapter, collaboration among American modern artists took on equally diverse forms and was informed by different philosophies regarding artistic practice.

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Marguerite and William Zorach In 2001, the Portland Museum of Art in Maine organized Marguerite and William Zorach: Harmonies and Contrasts to evaluate the collaboration between the two artists. In the exhibition catalog, curator Jessica Nicoll describes a “lifelong creative partnership” between the Zorachs that was informed by “a shared ideology of what life and art should be.”6 As Nicoll explains, the artists “looked at the same art, moved in the same avant-garde circles, and shared a close collaborative working process.”7 Their work was often exhibited together, which encouraged comparison between the two. Furthermore, Nicoll argues that the couple’s “forays into new media were fully collaborative, with both artists exploring new ideas side by side and occasionally working together on a piece.”8 However, an examination of the embroideries made together by William and Marguerite gives evidence of a less balanced collaboration between the two artists than described by Nicoll in her essay. The earliest Zorach embroideries were indeed a collaborative effort between Marguerite and William. The first embroidered object they made together was a pillow decorated with dancers, completed around 1915. As art critic Jean Paul Slusser recounted about ten years later, “The legend is that the Zorachs at an earlier time found they needed an embroidered pillow to complete a scheme of studio decoration. So, in a way that the Zorachs have, they sat down and made an embroidered pillow, following their artists’ intuitions and inventing a technique where they did not have one to follow.”9 Neither William nor Marguerite had any formal training in embroidery. William learned to stitch as a child by watching his sister embroider a sweatshirt for him.10 Marguerite also learned through observation—watching “old folks” make silk quilts. She explained, “I used to look at these silk quilts, and I suppose I just sort of got acquainted with all these stitches. Then later on I remembered that there was this kind of a stitch or that kind of a stitch you could use for a certain purpose.”11 One of the first significant embroidery collaborations by the two Zorachs is Waterfall (1915–17) (Figure 5.1).12 The embroidery suggests a harmonious relationship between humans and nature, in which the human figures seamlessly blend into their surroundings. In the center, a standing woman is highlighted by a waterfall cascading around her. The joy of her experience is suggested by the energy of her dance-like pose as she reaches upward. The waterfall does not overwhelm the figure, but rather energizes her in her upward reach even as the current flows downward to the rocks at her feet. The ovoid shapes repeated in both the waterfall and the figure’s limbs establish a further connection between

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Figure 5.1 Marguerite and William Zorach, Waterfall (1915–17)—Wool on linen embroidery—Dimensions and whereabouts unknown—Reproduced in Hoffman, Marguerite and William Zorach: The Cubist Years, 31.

the two. Three nudes with curved bodies relax on the land at the bottom of the waterfall; the poses of these figures also mirror shapes in the natural surroundings. Both Marguerite and William shared a vision of nature as a place of freedom from societal restraints, although Marguerite’s perspective was different in ways that are discussed in detail in Chapter 7.13 But in this collaborative work, the Zorachs create a vision of humans at one with nature. Marguerite and William worked so closely together in the early years of their careers that it is impossible to determine with certainty from where and from whom their images originate. But Marguerite played a principal role. Tarbell documents that Marguerite created drawings used by William for his sculptures.14 Similarly, the Zorachs’ daughter Dahlov has observed that William

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was “dependent” on Marguerite for “designs and ideas.”15 In addition, William himself publicly recognized Marguerite for creating the preliminary designs for his sculptures.16 Indeed, art historian Erika Doss asserts that Marguerite’s role in the development of William’s art “remains downplayed in art historical accounts of his career.”17 When considering their collaborative embroideries, Marguerite was most certainly a driving force in the creation of imagery.18 Maine Islands (1919) (plate 7), another collaboration between the Zorachs, provides further evidence of the couple’s shared use of imagery.19 Its subject is similar to that of Waterfall in its vision of humans communing with nature. On the left, a nude male and child are seated together on an island; on the island to the right are two nude female figures, one embracing a black bull.20 Bright gold thread that runs across the embroidery links the islands—and the figures on them—together. Determining the sex of the figure embracing the bull creates some difficulty in that the body of the figure is less anatomically developed than that of her female counterpart. But a preliminary drawing for this figural group (Figure 5.2), created by Marguerite, reveals her original conception to be two adult

Figure 5.2  Marguerite Zorach, Study for Maine Islands (ca. 1919)—Pencil on board, 111/16 × 141/16 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC—1970.65.68 Gift from the collection of Tessim Zorach.

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females: a clothed female juxtaposed with the nude female embracing the bull. In the embroidery, this juxtaposition of nude and clothed figures is abandoned for two nudes, but it would reappear later in Marguerite’s embroidered portraits. By placing these two females on a distinct and separate island from the man with the child, Zorach constructs separate spheres of gender. Maine Islands contrasts with Waterfall in its inclusion of a male figure, but even more, is the choice to place the child with the male rather than the two females. Because the embroidery was a collaborative effort, again it is impossible to determine with complete certainty which of the Zorachs was responsible for the father-child image. But a 1918 drawing (Figure 5.3) by Marguerite indicates that it was probably her idea. Executed at the same time as the embroidery, this drawing of father and child replicates the same figures in Maine Islands.21 William is also known for his use of parent-child imagery, but his most important sculptures emphasize the mother-child, not father-child, bond.22 To complicate attribution of the father-child imagery, in 1916, William painted Sunrise at Provincetown (private collection), a depiction of a squatting male figure holding a small child’s hands, which anticipates the imagery Marguerite sketched in her drawing. However, a painting by Marguerite created around the same time,

Figure 5.3 Marguerite Zorach, Father and Daughter (1918)—Pencil on board, 11 111/16  × 141/16 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC—1970.65.9 Gift from the collection of Tessim Zorach.

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Figure 5.4  Marguerite Zorach, A New England Family (1917–18)—Oil on canvas, 30 × 22 in.—Zorach Collection, LLC-Digital image courtesy of the Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME.

titled A New England Family (1917–18) (Figure 5.4), depicts a similar subject of a male figure taking on the primary parental role. In this painting, a larger than life man cradles a small child in his right arm while also holding the hand of a small girl beside him. To the left is a group of two women and a small girl. Tarbell argues that the “frightening size and power” of the father figure obscures

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the identity of the “wife/mother” in the painting.23 However, I would suggest an interpretation reflecting less oppressive gender dynamics: the strong bond among the three female figures could be read to symbolize a solidarity among women made possible by the male figure taking on the role of caretaker. In this reading of the painting, traditional gender expectations of women—as primary caretakers of children and as devoted to men at the expense of their relationships with women—are disrupted. This alternative reading of the painting aligns more closely with Zorach’s body of work as a whole. The black bull that holds such a prominent position in the Maine Islands embroidery provides further clues in determining the origins of this fatherchild image. Bull imagery recurs in both ancient Greek and Indian art. With a strong interest in Indian culture that continued long after her travels in India, Marguerite would have been more than aware of the prevalence of bull imagery in Indian art, which appears as early as 3000 BCE. Shiva mounted on the bull Nandi is prominent Hindu imagery from India. In Greek mythology, bulls were regularly sacrificed to Poseidon, and Ovid’s story of the rape of Europa, in which Zeus appears to Europa in the form of a white bull, is widely represented in painting. However, in contrast to the black bull in Maine Islands, both Nandi and Zeus’s bull are white. Nonetheless, bull imagery from both cultures may have served as a springboard for the bull in the embroidery. Marguerite incorporated iconography from Greek mythology in another embroidered work that adds to the evidence that she was not only the originator of the bull image in Maine Islands but interested in reimagining gender roles. A small purse titled Pegasus (Figure 5.5) made about the same time that the Zorachs were working on Maine Islands depicts a nude female mounted on Pegasus, the winged horse ridden by the ancient Greek hero Bellerophon on his mission to kill the chimera.24 Here, Zorach made a significant change to Classical iconography to construct a narrative that empowers women. In a similar gender reversal, Maine Islands imagines the role of men in child care, thus liberating women from that traditionally held role. It is worth emphasizing that this is a radical departure from the usual emphasis on the mother-child bond that pervades Western art. This nontraditional arrangement reflects general trends among Greenwich Village artists in the 1910s, in which alternatives to traditional, middle-class lifestyles were being actively explored in the visual and literary arts and through experimental interpersonal relationships between Village residents.25 As discussed in Chapter 3, William and Marguerite shared an interest in this experimentation. But while William’s work demonstrates no sustained interest in this reimagining of women’s roles, Marguerite’s work does. Regardless of

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Figure 5.5  Marguerite Zorach, Pegasus (ca. 1918)—Wool embroidery purse, 9½ × 71/4 in.—Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC—1968.87.15 Gift from the collection of Tessim Zorach.

which Zorach originated this father-child motif, it was one that Marguerite continued to explore in her later works. When it came to embroidery, collaboration between William and Marguerite ended in the early years of their careers. After only a few years of embroidering, William abandoned the medium to dedicate himself to sculpture. Reflecting on Marguerite’s choice to continue on with embroidery, he observed, “She’s [Marguerite’s] a natural needlewoman. Needle work comes handy to her, so when I saw the great facility she had in doing these things, I quit.”26 Although William’s comment is gendered in the way that he describes needlework as coming “naturally” to Marguerite as a woman, nonetheless, he also recognized the artistic merit of Marguerite’s embroideries. He gave high praise to one of her most accomplished embroideries, The Rockefeller Family: “[It is] one of the most beautiful things in the world, you know—that tapestry. There’s nothing like it ever been done in the history of art. That’s a fact. The color—the design—the whole conception of the thing. Marguerite has developed a form of embroidered tapestry like nothing in the world, and these things historically will be absolutely invaluable, because there’s nothing like

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them.”27 Indeed, William recognized something extraordinary in Marguerite’s embroideries.

Mary Ellen and Arthur Crisp Mary Ellen Crisp and her husband Arthur both shared an interest in the decorative arts. As a mural artist, Arthur Crisp often collaborated with architects and decorative artists in completing decorations for architectural projects. He became a member of the Architectural League of New York in 1911 and the organization’s vice president a few years after that. The Architectural League recognized the critical role of sculpture, painting, craft, and landscape design in realizing its vision of architecture as art. In his autobiography, Arthur described the importance that the League held for him personally: “This organization had great influence on my career for their objective was to encourage and publicize the Decorative Arts.”28 Mary Ellen and Arthur also shared an interest in craft. Arthur was first introduced to knitting, crocheting, and other forms of craft as a child.29 A fall down the stairs as an infant resulted in his need for several surgeries that extended into his adulthood and left him bedridden for prolonged periods. As a result of his fall, he was required to walk with crutches during his immediate recovery, then a cane for the rest of his life. Arthur’s periods of immobility fostered an interest in craft. As he describes, “During my various sojourns in bed my mother taught me to do all kinds of fancy work, things that required the use of only my hands, which may have been partially responsible for my creative urge later in life.”30 Although there is no known documentation of Mary Ellen’s early years, she was already a successful seamstress when she met Arthur. When they first met, Arthur was making silk batik wall hangings that interested Mary Ellen greatly. He taught her the batik technique, which she incorporated into her dressmaking.31 Arthur largely abandoned batik wall hangings when he established his career as a mural painter.32 Mary Ellen went on to master embroidery. Mary Ellen and Arthur worked collaboratively on many of Arthur’s commissioned mural projects. Arthur acknowledged this in his autobiography, and a photograph from the Crisp archives confirms that collaboration (Figure 5.6).33 Similarities between Arthur’s murals and Mary Ellen’s embroideries are perhaps the result of these collaborations. As one example, both artists explored the subject of the goddess Diana, but in their preferred medium. Arthur’s mural

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Image not available in this edition

Figure 5.6  Photograph of Mary Ellen and Arthur Crisp in their Studio (n.d.)—Arthur Crisp Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries, Syracuse, NY.

Diana of the White Horse (Figure 5.7), installed in the Fine Arts Building for the Architectural League, depicts Diana on a rearing horse and about to wield her spear against one of three deer prancing ahead of her. The classical influence is evident not only in Arthur’s choice of subject, but also by the muscular male figures posed like Greek statues behind Diana. In Mary Ellen’s embroidery Diana (Figure 5.8), the goddess is also represented nude and mounted on her horse, but she is not actively hunting. In contrast, she is represented far less aggressively, as she and her horse saunter through the woods along with her two hunting dogs. Indeed, Mary Ellen’s Diana looks inquisitively out at the viewer as if interrupted by the viewer’s gaze. Stylistically, her embroidery is also different from her husband’s mural in her extensive use of decoration. This is most evident in the top portion of the composition. In Arthur’s work, almost all decoration has been removed to create a flattened-out space. In contrast, Mary Ellen fills this space with tree branches represented as swirling arabesques that compare to the arabesques used by Matisse. Modernist influence is evident in both works, through Arthur’s flattening of form and Mary Ellen’s Matisse-like exploration of decoration. When Harbeson discussed Mary Ellen’s Diana in her essay “The Four Moderns,” she emphasized the influence of Arthur on his wife: “Mrs.

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Image not available in this edition

Figure 5.7  Photograph of Arthur Crisp, Diana of the White Horse (before 1921)— Mural in Fine Arts Building, Architectural League, W. 57th St., NY (destroyed in a fire on January 20, 1920)—Arthur Crisp Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries, Syracuse, NY.

Arthur Crisp brings to her work more classicalism in design. Being the wife of an architectural mural painter no doubt influences her feeling and appreciation of the formalized rendering.”34 Harbeson reiterated this traditional gender construction of the male artist/husband influencing the female artist/wife in her book American Needlework. Again, she observes of Mary Ellen, “perhaps she is inspired . . . by the great murals painted by her husband.”35 But as illustrated by the Diana compositions, there are striking differences between the two artists, particularly regarding the use of decoration, even if Mary Ellen may possibly have chosen the subject of Diana in response to her husband’s work. On the other hand, she may have considered this subject simply one more experiment in what would become a diverse array of subjects and styles that characterize her work. In any case, Harbeson is most certainly off the mark in reducing Mary Ellen’s work to being derivative of her husband’s murals. An Untitled embroidery of flowers (1930s) (plate 8) by Crisp in the collection of the Cooper Hewitt Museum is characterized by bold colors and a far more

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Figure 5.8 Mary Ellen Crisp, Diana (before 1935)—Embroidery on linen— Reproduced in Harbeson, “The Four Moderns,” 22.—Dimensions and whereabouts unknown.

simplified design than that of her Diana. In this embroidery, nature becomes the subject and is represented in three ways: through the delicate floral pattern on the curtain, the large vase of flowers that dominates the embroidery, and the evergreen trees outside of the window seen behind the vase and extending to the right of the embroidery. The embroidery is reminiscent of Vincent Van Gogh’s still-life paintings of sunflowers, such as Still Life (Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers) (1888/ National Gallery, London), particularly in the way that the large poppies, like Van

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Gogh’s sunflowers, hold a commanding presence through their color and size.36 Van Gogh’s Starry Night (1889/Museum of Modern Art, NY) also comes to mind based on the window view of a small town with a steepled church, the evergreens, and a crescent moon in the sky. However, it is the embroidery’s connection to Matisse that brings it into dialogue with twentieth-century modernism. The curtain’s floral pattern reflects the artist’s interest in the decorative, but it contrasts with the large, boldly colored poppies in the vase and the simplified background created by Crisp’s choice to leave a large portion of the embroidery unstitched. Crisp’s combination of the decorative and the abstract within a single work recalls Matisse. Her painting is less radical than paintings like Matisse’s Harmony in Red (1908/Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg) in that she keeps the decorative and the abstract in separate spheres, but nonetheless, it raises questions about the relationship between decoration and abstraction. Crisp’s still life of flowers might also be compared with a Still Life of fruit by Harbeson (1932) (Figure 5.9) in that both artists chose to leave a large part of the embroidery’s foundation unstitched. In Harbeson’s embroidery, the absence of a specific setting serves to decontextualize the subject; six diagonal lines of stitching below the bowl of fruit add an animated quality to the work and disrupt perspective even as they suggest perspectival lines. The prominence of the artist’s signature at the bottom of the embroidery encourages a reading of the still-life subject as a work of art. Stilllife painting, of course, has a long association with women’s artistic production and this association is even more compelling in the medium of embroidery. Harbeson’s embroidery celebrates the still life as an important form of women’s creative expression. In contrast, Crisp imbues her embroidery with symbolic content that references the most celebrated male artists. The artistic collaboration between the Crisps must have been tempered by Arthur’s confused perspective on the status of women. In a particularly astonishing act based on today’s standards, when he first met his future wife, Arthur began to call her Mary Ellen even though her name was Grace because he “could never stand the name of Grace.”37 Mary Ellen accepted this name change and signed her works Mary Ellen Crisp throughout her professional career. Furthermore, Arthur supported the exclusion of women from the maleonly Architectural League and helped to successfully block a change in policy when a vote was taken on the matter.38 In another chauvinistic act, he became a member of the male-only Lotos Club in 1935,39 perhaps in response to the Architectural League’s decision to admit women the previous year. In spite of his less than progressive perspective on women, Arthur acknowledged Mary Ellen’s skill as a dressmaker and an embroiderer in his autobiography. In that the couple

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Figure 5.9  Georgiana Brown Harbeson, Still Life (1932)—Front cover of Needlecraft, October 1932.

collaborated on his mural projects, he also valued her artistic expertise. They worked side by side in a shared studio throughout their careers and exhibited their work together in at least two instances. Arthur recalled a joint exhibition with Mary Ellen at the Grand Central Galleries, which was probably held some time in the 1920s.40 At the end of their careers, in 1963, they were recognized

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together in a joint exhibition at the Art Gallery of Hamilton in Ontario. A homecoming for Arthur, who was born and raised in Hamilton and had studied at the Hamilton Art School, the exhibition largely focused on Arthur’s work, but it also included seven embroideries designed and executed by Mary Ellen. Two embroideries designed by Arthur but executed by his mother were also part of the exhibition. That Arthur had turned to his mother to fabricate his embroideries suggests that Mary Ellen may not have been interested in executing her husband’s designs. In 1941, Mary Ellen’s embroideries were also on display, along with works by her husband, in one of the largest embroidery exhibitions ever held in New York, ironically at the male-only Lotos Club.41 Arthur almost certainly played a role in organizing the exhibition, since he was not only a member of the Lotus Club, but he also designed murals for the interior of their original building. This convergence of male privilege with the recognition of professional women artists as embroiderers reflects the complex ways in which gender was at play in this important exhibition.

Georgiana Brown Harbeson: Collaboration with industry There is no known evidence that Harbeson collaborated with other artists, but she had two professional collaborations with industry. Beginning in 1931, she worked with Needlecraft in designing embroidery patterns that were sold by the magazine. Her relationship continued with the magazine almost until it folded in 1935. When Needlecraft published its article profiling Harbeson as an embroiderer, it also announced her forthcoming contribution to the magazine as one of their embroidery pattern designers. The article recognized Harbeson for her modern approach to embroidery and readers were encouraged to try their own hands at Harbeson’s designs.42 When her first embroidery, titled Summer (plate 9), appeared on the June cover, Needlecraft announced: “Without question, no more artistic or beautiful magazine-cover has ever been seen.”43 Harbeson would ultimately create a series on the four seasons, each one placed on the front cover of Needlecraft and accompanied by a short article that pointed out interesting things about the design and tips on how to most creatively complete it. Harbeson’s second collaboration with industry illustrates the efforts made by manufacturing firms to align handmade practices with mass production.44 In the late 1930s, Harbeson worked with James Lees & Sons, a company that manufactured knitting and needlepoint packets for hobbyists. She developed the company’s Minerva Line of embroidery patterns. A 1937 catalogue of the

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Minerva Line documents her work. A brief introduction printed in the catalogue is written in language that can only be that of Harbeson. The making of the embroideries—even from the patterns that the company provided—is described as “painting” and potential embroiderers are encouraged that “modestly sitting on these pages actually are museum pieces of the future.”45 The introduction also states that each of the patterns was “made under the supervision of one of the world’s greatest needlepoint artists who has created the designs.”46 Presumably, this was Harbeson. An obituary on Harbeson from 1980 credits her with developing the entire Minerva Line.47 Advertisements for the Minerva Line published in a variety of newspapers around the time that the catalogue was produced also credit Harbeson with the full line of designs, which is astounding considering the diversity of styles.48 The Minerva catalogue provides a wealth of examples of Harbeson’s designs. Patterns for a wide variety of objects—ranging from wall hangings to functional objects like rugs, chair seats, and belts—are among the catalogue’s offerings. The designs in the catalogue ranged from those suitable for a Colonial revival home to “ultra modern” designs for the most modern interior, in an obvious marketing effort to appeal to all tastes. Even a Surrealist pattern (Figure 5.10) could be found, described in the catalogue as a “surrealist falcon” amid “modern conventionalized flowers” that was “design[ed] for a room of the new age.”49 Advertisements for the Minerva Line placed in newspapers across the country also document the range of style choices. One advertisement placed an embroidery of an old sailing ship side by side with one of Minerva’s modern designs without any concern for the considerable stylistic differences.50 Several designs in the Minerva catalog are representative of work previously done by Harbeson. For example, Bounding Deer (Figure 5.11), described in the catalogue as “modern” in style, is similar in composition to Autumn (plate  10). Designs described as “ultra modern,” also named Summer and Autumn (Figure  5.12), are far more abstract than Harbeson’s known works from Needlecraft. She may have been restricted by Needlecraft from producing such experimental embroideries due to its customer base; her greater control in developing the Minerva Line may have afforded her more freedom to push some of her designs further into abstraction. In the Minerva catalogue, Harbeson demonstrated her versatility as a designer by creating all types of embroidery patterns. Through the catalogue, she was able to introduce new designs to hobbyists that might prompt them to experiment with the modern aesthetic. The Minerva Line catalogue was meant to sell embroidery patterns, so prototypes of the embroideries were made by James Lees & Sons to further

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Figure 5.10  Georgiana Brown Harbeson, Surrealist Falcon—Reproduced in Minerva Needlepoint Book (1937), 13.

the marketing effort. Harbeson herself trained the women working in the Lees factory to produce the embroideries because “very few American women in the factories knew how to do this stitchery.”51 In American Needlework, Harbeson credits the Minerva Yarn Industries of Lees & Sons with fabricating Deep South, the large fourfold screen that she designed around 1936.52 She notes that it was one of sixty “models” of her designs that the company made.53 The Minerva catalogue included a pattern for Deep South, along with a photograph of the completed embroidery displayed in a modern interior (Figure 5.13), described as “one of the many ideal settings” for the “tapestry.” The photograph of Deep South in situ would have inspired potential consumer to purchase the pattern. Working with Minerva Yarn Industries, Harbeson also created “a complete new line of yarns to accompany new designs.”54 Improvements to the yarns included

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Figure 5.11  Georgiana Brown Harbeson, Bounding Deer—Front cover of Minerva Needlepoint Book (1937).

a wider array of colors and a four-strand yarn that could be separated for more intricate crewel work. Overall, through her work with industry, Harbeson supported larger efforts to integrate the handmade with machine manufacture. Harbeson also worked in the non-profit sector, creating embroideries for church groups. For example, the needlework designs for a Bishop’s chair, kneelers, and

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Figure 5.12 Georgiana Brown Harbeson, Summer and Autumn—Reproduced in Minerva Needlepoint Book (1937), 27.

other objects for the Episcopal Cathedral in Trenton, New Jersey. The fabrication of her designs was carried out by the women of the Altar Guild.55 Other religious works made by Harbeson were not commissioned, but they were often fabricated by others. In the 1935 Needlework of Today exhibition at the Vernay Galleries, for which Harbeson was the juror, first place for “picture” embroideries went to Miss

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Figure 5.13 Georgiana Brown Harbeson, Deep South—Reproduced in Minerva Needlecraft Book (1937), 45.

S.B. MacDonald for her execution of Harbeson’s design of The Nativity. Another version of this embroidery, worked by a Lydia Mary Barwood, was illustrated in Harbeson’s book. In spite of her insistence that embroidery be viewed as art, Harbeson was not only comfortable with others executing her designs, but she valued the embroideries made by others quite highly. In this way, her view may be compared with the appreciation held for tapestries which have been not only celebrated for their designs but also valued for the great skill required in weaving them. Harbeson, too, valued embroideries made by hobbyists and amateurs— regardless of the originality of design—for their mastery of the craft of embroidery that was demonstrated by their skill in executing existing patterns.

Ilonka and Mariska Karasz Although not among the women celebrated by Harbeson, the sisters Ilonka and Mariska Karasz deserve mention in this consideration of embroidery and collaboration. As industry promoted collaboration with artists, many artists

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heeded their call. Ilonka Karanz was one of the earliest and most important European born contributors to the development of American design.56 When she arrived in the United States in 1913, she had already received formal art training at Budapest’s Royal School of Arts and Crafts.57 Living in Greenwich Village, she taught textile courses at the Modern Art School during the mid to late 1910s. Art historian Ashley Callahan has recognized the contribution of Karasz and other European born artists to the advancement of American modern design.58 Ilonka collaborated on a number of projects with her sister Mariska. When Mariska immigrated to New York a year after Ilonka, she studied fashion design at Cooper Union. She went on to have a successful career as a clothing designer in the 1920s and 1930s; her signature style was the application of Hungarian folk-inspired embroidery onto modern clothing designs.59 As Callahan describes it, “Mariska and Ilonka enjoyed a particularly close relationship, and during Mariska’s work with fashion their careers repeatedly intersected.”60 Together the two sisters explored the potential of embroidery for modern design. For the 1931 exhibition of the American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen held at the Brooklyn Museum, Mariska and Ilonka collaborated on two embroidered works: a table cover and a wall hanging.61 Both works were designed by Ilonka and fabricated by Mariska. Mariska’s decision to fabricate her sister’s designs may have been a concession made on her part because of their familial relationship. Callahan notes that she rejected an opportunity to work with Frank Lloyd Wright on a line of neckties because she feared he would only want her to fabricate his designs rather than create her own.62 In the late 1940s, Mariska’s career took a major turn when she began to devote herself to embroidered wall hangings. As Callahan has pointed out, these embroidered works are a fascinating intersection of Abstract Expressionism and the Studio Craft Movement.63 Early wall hangings such as Gage Hill (1947/private collection) ultimately developed into nonobjective works like Ropes on Red (ca. 1952/private collection), reflecting new trends in the 1950s New York art scene.64 The careers of Mariska and Harbeson intersected in 1948 when embroideries by both artists were on view at an embroidery exhibition held at the Pen and Brush Club, an organization founded in 1894 to support women artists and writers.65 Mariska’s wall hangings fall outside of the time period of this book in that they are aligned with mid-century experiments in abstraction. Virginia Gardner Troy’s essay “Weaving Diplomacy: Textiles and Hand-Weaving at Home and Abroad at Midcentury” provides an historical context for understanding these mid-century works.66 Mariska’s embroideries and other textile work from the 1940s provide a bridge between the modern embroidery movement of the

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1920s and 1930s and the fiber art movement that would establish itself in 1960s and 1970s. They warrant further research by scholars.

Marian Stoll: Designer and executor Marian Stoll is the only artist among the modern embroiderers under discussion in this book for whom there is no evidence of collaboration either with individuals or industry. Stoll was emphatic in her position that there should be no separation between the design and fabrication of a work so collaboration with industry was out of the question for her. In a discussion of Stoll’s work published in The Studio magazine, the author wrote: “Such a division of labor leads to an inevitable loss of spontaneity, and Marian Stoll is perhaps unique in this country [England at the time] in that she designs as well as carries out every picture which she produces. Only so can the temperamental reactions of the artist and the subjective way of considering her themes, which she admittedly tries to convey to the spectator, have any hope of reaching his consciousness.”67

Thus Stoll stayed most closely aligned with the fine arts tradition in which the artist both conceives and fabricates her work. In this way, her work closely parallels that of Zorach whom remained committed to both designing and fabricating her works except in the early years of her career with her husband and on a few occasions with industry.

Conclusion Embroidery collaboration among American modern artists took a variety of forms. Stoll rejected any division between design and fabrication, but other artists experimented in different forms of collaboration, both with other artists or with industry. Interest in embroidery was generally a short-term interest among male collaborators, carried out largely in the formative period of their careers, then abandoned as their careers progressed. Kandinsky no longer made embroideries after the ones he created in his early years. William Zorach abandoned embroidery after a few collaborative efforts with Marguerite. In contrast, women artists were more persistent in their commitment to embroidery throughout their careers.68 Those women who continued to work in embroidery

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found freedom in their choice of medium. Obler concludes that by dedicating herself to embroidery and the applied arts, Taeuber “effectively had a niche in which she could enjoy a degree of independence from comparisons with her partner that were inevitably marred by an imbalance informed by conceptions of gender difference.”69 Art historian Sherry Buckberrough observes that Sonia Delaunay may have switched to embroidery so that she did not have to compete as a painter with her husband Robert, who “did not enjoy competition and became very nervous when anyone worked close to him.”70 This same freedom would have been experienced by American women embroiderers as well. Embroidery provided a medium for the exploration of creativity outside of the more rigidly gendered media of painting and sculpture, which were largely dominated by men. As the next chapters will reveal, this freedom at times resulted in subjects that challenged gender constructions.

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6

Visualizing Manhattan

During the 1920s, modern artists living in Manhattan were particularly drawn to the subject of New York as a symbol of modernity. In New York Modern: The Arts and the City, historians William Scott and Peter Rutkoff describe 1920s Manhattan from the perspective of artists living there: “New York symbolized the modern. The city’s newly constructed art deco skyscrapers, its up-to-date subway system, its diverse population, and its unprecedented prosperity offered unlimited possibilities. . . . More than anything else, . . . the 1920s marked the triumph of city values.”1 Encouraged by European modernists like Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia, both of whom believed that American cities like New York held the last vestiges of hope for the arts,2 many American modernists celebrated the skyscraper in their works during the 1920s. As a result, the skyscraper has a pervasive presence in depictions of Manhattan from this time that have been the focus of art historians.3 With pulsating skyscrapers defining the composition, John Marin’s Lower Manhattan (Derived from the Top of the Woolworth Building) (1922) (Figure 6.1) serves as one example. While the importance of skyscrapers in the development of the city is undeniable, scholars have begun to grapple with the limitations to this singular focus. Art historian Wanda Corn has observed that the skyscraper became such a legitimate and indeed compulsory subject in these celebratory paintings of city life that it was painted at the expense of alternate perspectives on American cities. She writes that modernist “artists hardened and denatured the city,” so that New York City was “rendered as a totality of sights and visceral sensations.”4 Gendering this critique, art historian Anna Chave maintains that the “urban” gaze—defined by totalizing views of New York as predominantly skyscrapers— was constructed around the discourse of masculinity in the early twentieth century. She writes, “New York was regarded as a man’s subject, no doubt, because of the skyscrapers’ priapic form, because rendering the city meant taking the kind of commanding perspective that men alone were ordinarily socialized

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Figure 6.1  John Marin, Lower Manhattan (1922)—Gouache and charcoal with paper cut-out attached with thread on paper, 215/8 × 267/8 in.—Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest—Museum of Modern Art, New York—Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY.

to assume, and because men controlled the civic space.”5 Finally, architectural historian William Curtis has recognized that the civic space identified by Chave was actually being eroded at this time by the detrimental effects of skyscrapers. He observes, “The forces which brought tall buildings into being ignored the character of civic space and tended to destroy not only the street as a social realm, but the complex grain of pre-existing historical and social relations as well.”6 It is within the context of these new considerations of the city that the embroideries discussed in this chapter become most relevant. Marguerite Zorach’s 1920s embroideries of New York provide a humanizing perspective on the city that challenges the limited constructions of city life defined by the skyscraper and its associations with modernity. By the 1930s, the Great Depression resulted in a shift away from the city as subject to that of the American heartland. But rather than abandon the city as subject, some embroiderers living in New York and its surrounding areas continued to focus on the city in their works, encouraging a



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consideration of urban life at a time of economic decline. This chapter examines alternative perspectives on the city represented in modern embroideries created during the 1920s and 1930s.

A humanizing view of Manhattan: Zorach’s map of New York In 1920, Zorach created the embroidery The City of New York in the Year Nineteen Hundred and Twenty (1920) (Figure 6.2), an illustrated “map” of Manhattan that provides a panoramic view of the island extending from the Bronx to New York Bay. The subject is unique among Zorach’s works in that she was not known for her paintings of city life. One of her few existing paintings of the city is Sixth Avenue L (1924) (Figure 6.3). The composition of this watercolor is telling in that although tall buildings are pervasive, the bottom section focuses on people engaged in the hustle and bustle of moving about in the city. The words “open air” can be seen on one of the train cars, an ironic reminder of its absence in a congested city. Zorach’s embroidery of Manhattan shares the watercolor’s interest in imagining a city in terms of the experiences of its residents. During the 1920s, modern artists often depicted Manhattan by its wellknown attractions. For example, Corn describes Joseph Stella’s The Voice of the City of New York Interpreted (1920–22/Newark Museum, NJ) as “a topographical mapping of five modern sites:” the harbor and the Battery, Times Square, skyscrapers, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the New York subway.7 Zorach’s embroidery compares to Stella’s as a map, but it includes much more than these celebrated attractions. It is arranged to represent different districts of the city rather than individual attractions. Indeed, Zorach captures the unique spirit of each district, combining familiar symbols with intimate vignettes of people engaged in community activities. Like all mapmakers, Zorach made choices about which among the multitude of sights in Manhattan she would include or eliminate in her guide. In her selection process, she formulated a view of New York as an inviting, hospitable, and indeed a quite livable city for anyone willing to venture within its borders. In the City of New York, Zorach does not eliminate all references to skyscraper but she relegates them to a specific section. At the bottom left, which roughly equates to lower Manhattan’s financial district, skyscrapers are represented as a series of neatly arranged buildings that extend to the Hudson River. By 1920, numerous skyscrapers had already been erected in Manhattan,

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Figure 6.2  Marguerite Zorach, The City of New York in the Year Nineteen Hundred and Twenty (1920) Wool on linen embroidery, approx. 48 × 24 in.—Zorach Collection, LLC-Photograph by author.

including the Flatiron Building (1901–03), the Singer Tower (1906–08), the Woolworth Building (1910–13), and the Equitable Building (1913–15). Skyscrapers had come to dominate the architectural landscape of the financial district by this time, so it is not surprising that Zorach devoted this section of her embroidery to them. One skyscraper is probably the Bankers Trust



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Image not available in this edition

Figure 6.3 Marguerite Zorach, Sixth Avenue L (1924)—Watercolor and graphite on heavy wove paper 22⅜ × 155/8 in.—Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH—Gift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller.

Company Building (1910–12), distinguished by its pyramidal top and the two-story columns just below it. Located on the corner of Wall and Nassau Streets, it was one of the tallest buildings in Manhattan until the Woolworth Building was completed in 1913. Positioned in the general area of Wall Street, the center of American finance, Zorach’s skyscrapers symbolize commerce

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and industry. Significantly, this section of the embroidery is devoid of any human presence. In other sections of the embroidery, the skyscraper-dominated financial district of Manhattan contrasts with more livable neighborhoods. In the lower right and center, Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side are represented by their characteristic small buildings, townhouses, and tenements, and details such as fire escapes and curtained windows accent individual buildings. However, even more significant is that these areas are defined by the people who inhabit them. Washington Square Park, recognizable by a light-filled, open space, was close to where the Zorachs resided for twenty-five years. Under the Washington Square arch, a seated female nude symbolizes the fine arts tradition, an appropriate symbol for Greenwich Village as the home to many artists. Two clothed figures are seated to the left of the nude, positioned as if they are sitting on top of the tree below them. To the right, directly below a tramcar and framed by a window, another seated female figure looks down in concentration toward a textile draped over her lap, a possible reference to embroidery, perhaps even a self-portrait of Zorach. Scott and Rutoff describe Zorach as embodying “the popular image of the ‘new’ Greenwich Village woman with her bobbed hair, round wire-rimmed glasses and indifference to current fashion.”8 Thus, it is not surprising that a person with such deep-rooted connections to the Village would devote a significant part of her embroidery to the part of Manhattan that not only was her home, but supported the lifestyle that she embraced. Additional figures are also scattered throughout this section of the embroidery. Several people can be seen under another arch-like space. On the left, a man and woman stand close together, while a young girl pushes a baby carriage in front of them; a woman sits in a separate space next to them; and to the right, another couple walks forward toward the viewer. Faces looking out of curtained windows can also be seen, as can tramcars filled with people destined for other parts of the city. This section of the embroidery is the most heavily populated, marking Greenwich Village as the most livable part of Manhattan. In contrast to the hubbub of activity associated with city life, however, Zorach creates a mood of stillness by her cubist-inspired style in which individual figures appear in separate physical planes that create spaces of privacy and tranquility in a city celebrated for neither. The inclusion of so many people engaged in such a variety of activities connects Manhattan to the daily lives of its residents. Greenwich Village life is interrupted by a wide street pointing north that is probably Fifth Avenue. Small embroidered stitches denote people and cars that fill the avenue in an excited mix and represent New York as the bustling



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metropolis for which it is known. Transportation plays a central role, here and throughout the embroidery, as tramcars, automobiles, and boats suggest easy travel within and around the boundaries of Manhattan. A large automobile prominently displayed at the top left of the avenue emphasizes the availability of cars for those who could afford them or the luxury of a taxi. The bottom of the embroidery is dominated by New York Bay and several large ships heading toward the Bowery, signifying the city’s importance as a major seaport. In the lower left, the Statue of Liberty serves as a reminder that New York is home to many immigrants; Zorach emphasized the significance of the Statue by forming a mandorla-like halo around it created by a boat’s wake. On the right, interlocking blue, pink, and black lines mark the site of the Brooklyn Bridge, one of America’s greatest technological achievements, but equally important in providing easy access to and from Manhattan and Brooklyn. Although surrounded by water, New York is presented as accessible by boat and by bridge, while the Statue of Liberty stands as a welcome sign to all. Reducing Fifth Avenue to a small segment of her embroidery, Zorach relegates the consumerism associated with this area to a less than central position in New York City life. Instead, Fifth Avenue functions as a pointer, guiding the viewer’s eye to the center of cultural activity in the middle section of the embroidery which roughly corresponds with Midtown and the Theater District. Zorach herself had a strong interest in the theater. While she was working on the embroidery, she was also designing sets and costumes for the Provincetown Players.9 By the 1920s, many cultural activities had shifted to midtown, and theater, particularly, was flourishing in this area.10 The embroidery anticipates these changes to the cultural landscape of Manhattan in the close attention it pays to this district. Two large figures appear to be strolling through the middle section of the embroidery, like Baudelaire’s flâneur and flâneuse, observing the activities around them. More conservatively dressed than was typical of 1920s style, the couple’s connection to tradition is reinforced by the classically-inspired buildings on either side of them. To their left is the New York Public Library, one of the most significant Beaux-Arts buildings in New York, easily identified by the two lion sculptures that adorn the outdoor staircase of the building. Sharing similar architectural elements with the library, a theater stands out as the most prominent building in this section, stitched in stark white to simulate marble and defined by two monumental Ionic columns that support a pediment. The Classical inspiration for both buildings connects them to ancient Greece as the foundation for Western culture. Their presence lays claim to New York as a major cultural center devoted to the arts. Surrounding these stately buildings,

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vignettes of individual performances can be seen. The strolling couple may be watching a woman performing on center stage, while further to the right, below an extended arch, two dancers perform to a full house, the audience members indicated by individual heads filling the seats of the theater. In the top section of the embroidery, Zorach depicts upper Manhattan and the Bronx. Central Park is represented by an open, grassy area where visitors can be seen enjoying outdoor leisure activities such as boating and horseback riding. Just outside of the park, another person leisurely walks a dog. The single Beaux-Arts building overlooking Central Park is most likely the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At the top of the embroidery are two of the most popular attractions from the Bronx: the Bronx Zoo, represented by caged animals in the top right, and a baseball stadium on the left, which is probably the playing field for the New York Yankees.11 Buildings reminiscent of the Beaux-Arts tradition, a popular architectural style at the turn of the century for the homes of the wealthy, can be seen on either side of Central Park. In contrast to the hospitable environment of Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side, this area is devoid of people, providing a subtle commentary on the lives of New York’s elite as less accessible to the population at large.

Challenging the Primacy of the Skyscraper Zorach’s decision to minimize the role of skyscrapers in her embroidery can be explained by her strong personal aversion to them. The artist expressed strong animosity toward skyscrapers in a poem titled The City: All day the great buildings were dead. I stood on the roof and called to them – They were dead. But they were the prisons of living things; For now when their flat dull walls are black shells in the night I see the fierce fires that burn within them, The red hell of fire behind the blackened shells; I see the white heat of fires seething high in towers of great buildings, I see the sharp points of fire that would seem to burst the thick barrier of glass that holds them within the walls of buildings, And the sky glows and burns with the fierce heat of them.12



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Likened to the fires of hell, the American skyscraper symbolized confinement and torment for Zorach. She was not alone among artists in her antipathy for the towering buildings of Manhattan. In describing his painting New York, Lower Manhattan (1921/The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC) to a friend, Stefan Hirsch said he hoped that by depicting his skyscrapers as gray, lifeless blocks without windows he would convey his personal reaction of “recoil from the monstrosity that industrial life had become in ‘megapolitania.’”13 Unlike Hirsch, who represented skyscrapers as rigid, oppressive buildings, Zorach adopted an alternate strategy by minimizing their impact on the city through a shift in focus to the lives of the people of New York. Georgia O’Keeffe must also be included in consideration of alternative perspectives on the skyscraper. Chave identifies her as one of the few artists who successfully transcended the skyscraper’s masculinist associations. She explains, “It was Georgia O’Keeffe who would paint New York, depicting its towering buildings in a legible, lyrical way that reciprocated the democratized aspect of the city while evincing the limitless aspirations embodied in its newfound image: the skyscraper.”14 For example, The Shelton with Sunspots (1926) (Figure 6.4) asserts the centrality of the skyscraper at the same time that the hotel, O’Keeffe’s residence, appears to dematerialize from the light of the sun. According to Chave, “O’Keeffe’s vision of the Shelton stressed its natural aspect.”15 Indeed, it is the relationship established between nature and the skyscraper that creates the “lyrical” effect described by Chave in her essay. Zorach should also be recognized for constructing an alternative perspective on New York that negates the masculinist primacy of the skyscraper. By providing a view of Manhattan that included neighborhood life in Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side, cultural activities in midtown and the theater district, and the natural beauty of Central Park enjoyed by all who visited, Zorach did not overstate the importance of the skyscraper in her embroidery. When she made the embroidery, skyscrapers had come to dominate lower Manhattan, but they had not yet overtaken other sections of Manhattan.16 In this regard, her embroidery is an accurate portrayal of their presence. In addition, skyscrapers are only one of many styles of architecture that define Manhattan, and Zorach represents those other styles, particularly the Beaux-Arts buildings that are boldly represented through their larger size, central location, and white color. In The City of New York, skyscrapers are of no greater significance than any of the other buildings included in the embroidery and are contained within the boundaries of a very specific location. The embroidery defines the city as a group of distinct neighborhoods. In this way, Zorach asserts the neighborhood as the most important social realm and represents the city as a place of complex social relations.

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Figure 6.4  Georgia O’Keeffe, The Shelton with Sunspots, N.Y, (1926)—Oil on canvas, 48½ × 301/4 in Signed, titled, and dated on label on reverse. Gift of Leigh B. Block, 1985.206—The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA—Photo Credit: The Art Institute of Chicago/Art Resource, NY.



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When The City of New York was exhibited at the Montross Gallery in 1923, a headline from a New York Times review of the show read, “Zorach Tapestries Depict New York: Scenic Places by Woman Artist on View . . . Some Fail of Accuracy.”17 Evaluating Zorach’s embroidery as an actual map, the critic determined the extent to which each “scenic spot” was accurately located in the embroidery rather than considering the work’s symbolic content. Selectively highlighting specific aspects of New York City life while underplaying others, Zorach presents a vision of the city as a place rich in cultural events, healthy outdoor activities, and livable neighborhoods. She adds subtle social commentary by depicting upper Manhattan neighborhoods as less friendly than bohemian ones, containing skyscrapers to Wall Street, and integrating the less than inviting areas into an otherwise welcoming urban landscape. Owing to the selection process Zorach employed in creating her “map” of Manhattan, her embroidery functions on two levels: as an invitation to experience New York beyond its skyscrapers, including its diverse cultural activities and its friendly neighborhoods; and as a protest against the modern city dominated by skyscrapers. In The City of New York, Zorach maps out a view of Manhattan in which the privileged status of the skyscraper is destabilized and the viewer is welcomed to participate in those aspects of New York life that she herself valued as one of its residents. Since the 1980s, there has been a surge in the use of mapmaking among contemporary artists, and countless exhibitions have been organized around this trend.18 In her essay, “Mapping and Contemporary Art,” Ruth Watson, a contemporary artist working in cartography herself, discusses this trend and highlights works by “mapmaking” artists.19 She describes a “shift away from the image of the map towards the map as evidence of other investigations.”20 This description most certainly applies to Zorach’s map in that it is not meant to be a precise geographical guide to Manhattan but, instead, provides “evidence” of the quality of life for those who live there. Once again, Zorach’s work serves as a precursor to a later trend in twentieth-century art just as she anticipated 1970s feminist art.

From elite to popular culture: Two embroideries by Zorach Zorach created two additional embroideries that add to this investigation of the ways in which she represented city life. Both embroideries were completed in the 1920s. For Bill and Lucy L’Engle (1924) (Figure 6.5) takes the viewer to one of the upscale Manhattan townhouses depicted in The City of New York, while

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Figure 6.5 Marguerite Zorach, For Bill and Lucy L’Engle (1924)—Wool on linen embroidery, 28 × 21 in. Zorach collection, LLC—Photograph by author.

The Circus: New York (1929) (plate 3) focuses on a popular form of entertainment enjoyed by many New Yorkers in the 1920s. Historian Matthew Wittmann draws parallels between the development of the circus and the city. He observes, “The emergence of the modern city was mirrored in the transformation of the circus, as the large railroad shows featured cutting edge performances and embraced



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new technologies, and the annual season at Madison Square Garden was the place where the circus and the city intersected.”21 In this regard, The Circus: New York might be viewed as a pendant to Zorach’s City of New York. For Bill and Lucy L’Engle is dedicated to William and Marguerite’s art patrons. The Zorachs met the couple in Provincetown when they summered there for the first time in 1916, and the L’Engles immediately began to support their art. When Zorach exhibited five of her embroideries at the Daniel Gallery, the L’Engles purchased all but one. Thus, it is not surprising that Zorach would create an embroidery for them, which may have been a commission but could just as easily have been an expression of appreciation for their patronage.22 In the embroidery, the L’Engle family’s Park Avenue address is indicated by the three-story townhouse and fashionable automobile parked in front of it, both of which can be seen from the view outside the window. The sleek, straight lines of New York City’s skyscrapers in the background also confirm that this is a view of Manhattan. At the same time, the presence of a person walking a dog tells us that Manhattan is a livable city even in this upscale neighborhood. Bill and Lucy stand on the second-floor balcony of their townhouse, and perhaps it is their two daughters represented at play on the sidewalk below.23 The dominating figure of the L’Engle embroidery is a young woman, in all likelihood a model rather than a member of the family.24 Although seated rather than reclining, her pose and the composition of the embroidery resemble that of a painting by Zorach completed two years earlier, titled Nude Reclining (1922) (Figure 6.6).25 In the painting, a nude female with bulbous breasts and long, flowing hair reclines on a couch located in front of a window. In the embroidery, a woman with similar features sits in a chair in front of a window, gazing out at the viewer. A large flowering plant is prominently displayed in both works, in each case positioned under the woman’s raised right arm. With such strong compositional similarities to Zorach’s Nude Reclining, For Bill and Lucy L’Engle begs a comparison between them. Based on the centrality of the reclining nude in the painting, one would expect the seated figure in the embroidery to be nude as well, but the extent of her nudity is hard to determine due to the density of the stitches. At the very least, she is semi-nude; she appears to be wearing a short skirt or to have a covering draped over her lap. Considering that the L’Engles were patrons of the arts, it would not be surprising for Zorach to create an embroidery for them that references her own contribution to representations of the female nude. As was generally the case, Zorach distinguishes her embroidery from her painting by the amount of detail included in each work. There is little detail to distract the eye from the central reclining figure in Nude Reclining, but the

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Image not available in this edition

Figure 6.6  Marguerite Zorach, Nude Reclining (1922)—Oil on canvas, 29 × 301/4 in.— Courtesy of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC—Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay—Photograph by Lee Stalsworth.

embroidery is just the opposite in that decorative patterns define the woman’s body, the chair upholstery, the rug, and the curtains. Interestingly, several portraits painted by Zorach after she created this embroidery demonstrate the impact of her embroidery style on her paintings. For example, the checkerboard designs of both the figure’s socks and the chair seat in Blue Cinerarias (ca. 1932) (Figure 6.7), a painting similar in composition to For Bill and Lucy L’Engle, reflect Zorach’s interest in decorative details more characteristic of her embroideries. For her embroidery The Circus: New York, Zorach turned her attention to popular culture. During the 1920s and 1930s, the circus was a very popular form of entertainment in America. In 1919, when the Ringling Brothers (RB) circus company merged with its competitor Barnum and Bailey (BB) to form the largest American circus, the new organization proclaimed itself “The Greatest Show on



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Figure 6.7 Marguerite Zorach, Blue Cinerarias (ca. 1932)—Oil on canvas, 46 × 38 in.—Zorach Collection, LLC—Image courtesy of Gerald Peters Gallery, New York.

Earth” and for the next two decades orchestrated spectacular shows performed to sold-out audiences across the country. Zorach and her family would have had plenty of opportunities to attend circus performances on a regular basis.26 The combined Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey (RBBB) Circus debuted at Madison Square Garden in 1919, and held annual shows in Manhattan and various locations in Brooklyn in the years that followed.27 Zorach’s interest in the circus was something she shared with many other artists from this time period.

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By the end of the 1920s, so many artists had represented the circus that in 1929 the Whitney Studio Galleries held an exhibition on the subject, The Circus in Paint, which included the works of thirty-one American artists. Designed to replicate the circus experience, the gallery space itself was decorated with balloons and featured sawdust-covered floors and canvas ceilings that simulated circus tents, while large containers of peanuts were placed in every room.28 Critic William McCormick described the exhibition as “the artistic tour de force of the season.”29 Henry McBride, who also reviewed the show, mused “that spectator is an idiot who does not start in immediately to collecting circus pictures.”30 Living in New York, Zorach would have been reminded of the circus by posters regularly plastered around the city as advertisements. Circus posters emphasized the frenzied atmosphere created when multiple acts were performed simultaneously. With titles like “The Greatest Acts from Every Country in the World,” these posters depicted a dazzling array of circus performers, both men and women, carrying out acts requiring skill, strength, and agility. In many circus posters from this period, no single act was spotlighted. Instead, the circus as a whole was portrayed as a spectacular array of acts performed simultaneously to create a stimulating, if not overwhelming, experience for its viewers. Zorach’s circus embroidery shows an affinity with circus posters in that it too represents the circus as a spectacle of competing acts. It was based on a painting Zorach created five years earlier, more generally titled The Circus (Figure 6.8). In both the painting and embroidery, a tiger trainer in the center ring is surrounded by three additional acts: a female dog trainer with two hounds gracefully jumping through the hoops she holds; a male acrobat performing a somersault; and three female trapeze artists flying through the air above other members of the troupe. The embroidery further dramatizes the circus atmosphere by the addition of an equestrienne, a snake charmer, clowns, and additional animals, including a seal, monkeys, and an elephant. Zorach also added a crowd of audience members to the embroidery; they are depicted by small white stitches in the foreground and background. With this added imagery, the embroidery gets even closer to the circus experience as an all-consuming spectacle. In a 1924 article written for Vanity Fair, Marsden Hartley, a devotee of the circus and vaudeville acts, commented on the exhaustion experienced by the “unaccustomed spectator” of the circus, who often complained that the circus was “too fatiguing to try to take everything in.”31 Zorach’s embroidery depicts a potentially exhausting number of acts, but presents them with excitement and delight. Gender plays an important role in Zorach’s choice of acts to represent.32 An examination of the circus acts of the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey



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Figure 6.8  Marguerite Zorach, The Circus (1924)—Oil on canvas, 54 × 44 in.— Private collection—Image courtesy of Kraushaar Galleries—Photo credit Geoffrey Clements, NY.

Circus in the first part of the twentieth century reveals the prominent position of women circus performers. In their roles as equestriennes, wild animal trainers, and trapeze artists, women exhibited skill as athletes and courage in the face of danger.33 In Zorach’s circus works, a male animal trainer takes center stage; with his gun and whip, he commands a tiger to balance on a ball. In reality, it was a woman animal trainer who dominated the circus world of 1920s America. Making her debut with RBBB in 1922 at Madison Square Garden, Mabel Stark

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(1889–1968), known as “The Tiger Lady,” was famous for her act with a black panther and up to twelve tigers in the same ring together.34 Highlights of her act included wrestling with tigers and placing her head in their mouths, but she was particularly well known for putting her tigers through their routine without the standard aids of defense, such as a gun, chair, or whip.35 Her career with RBBB was short-lived, lasting only until 1925 when wild animal acts were eliminated from their show due to complaints of cruelty to circus animals, the terror that animal acts instilled in audiences, especially children, and delays to circus routines while animals were being transferred into the arena.36 Wild animal acts were replaced with acts by less ferocious animals, such as dogs, horses, and elephants.37 Stark was in the spotlight with RBBB at the time that Zorach created her painting. But instead of representing a woman as wild animal trainer, Zorach assigns a female the role of dog trainer, seen in the foreground directing two harmless dogs ornamented with pretty bows to jump gracefully through hoops. Indeed, Zorach conflates the performing dogs with the trainer herself, whose right leg lifted in the pose of a dancer suggests a performance equivalent to that of her dogs. Although Zorach failed to recognize a woman tiger trainer, she does recognize women circus performers in other acts. During the 1920s, Lillian Leitzel, dubbed “The World’s Most Daring Aerial Star,” dominated the circus world.38 In both Zorach’s painting and embroidery, three women trapeze artists in the midst of their act occupy the top section of each work as a nod to women trapeze artists like Leitzel. Of all circus acts, the one most consistently associated with women performers was that of equestrian bareback riders. During the 1920s, the star equestrienne for RBBB was Mary Wirth, considered “The Greatest Bareback Rider of All Time,” and the first woman to perform the backward somersault on horseback.39 Making her American debut at Madison Square Garden in 1912 at the early age of sixteen, Wirth was one of the central attractions for RBBB from 1916 to 1929.40 In a modification to her painting, Zorach added a bareback rider to her embroidery. Located in the background directly above the wild animal trainer, this equestrienne is positioned to straddle two horses, a common equestrian feat. Through this addition to her embroidery, Zorach once again gives another nod to women as circus performers Harbeson’s assessment of The Circus, New York focused on Zorach’s style rather than her subject choice. In “The Four Moderns,” she took note of the embroidery’s “all over modern technique.”41 As explained by Harbeson, Zorach created this effect through the predominant use of a single stitch type—the open Cretan stitch—only occasionally interrupted by chain and back stitches.  The organic lines sewn throughout the embroidery also help to create this all-over



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effect. For example, the white ribbon supporting the tiger’s ball extends across the embroidery; the arched back of the tiger is repeated in the acrobat to its right; and the white ladder hanging from the ceiling directs the viewer’s eye back to the center. Repetition of color also works to move the eye around the embroidery. The yellow in the costume of the central aerialist is repeated in the costume of the snake charmer and in the decorative elements of the wild animal trainer’s jacket. Similarly, red is used throughout the embroidery, but stands out particularly in the costumes of the acrobat and the two other aerialists, and in the cages at the bottom of the embroidery. For Harbeson, the all-over effect created through stitchery and color was precisely what made this embroidery modern.

Manhattan in the 1930s With the stock market crash and the Depression, New York lost its power as a symbol of modernity and unlimited possibility. Skyscraper construction significantly slowed down. A few projects, the Chrysler Building (1930), the Empire State Building (1931), and the Rockefeller Center (1931–40), were completed in the 1930s, but these were exceptions to the failing construction industry.42 Properties that had been built suffered from foreclosure as tenants could no longer afford to pay rent. Mary Ellen and Arthur Crisp would have been more than aware of this problem. One of the Crisps’ largest investment projects in the 1920s was Seven Gracie Square, a sixteen-story building on East Fifty-Sixth Street in the Upper East Side. The building was designed by the architectural firm of George Post and Sons; Arthur contributed to the design of the building’s interior. After renting out most of the property, the Crisps moved into the Gracie Square penthouse in September 1929. With the stock market crash, the tenants to whom they rented could not afford their rent. They evicted some of them, but with the economy the way it was, there were no new tenants to take an evicted tenant’s place. Ultimately, they stopped eviction proceedings and allowed existing tenants to live in their property rent free.43 But without rental income, they defaulted on their mortgage and their bank foreclosed on the property in 1935.44 In spite of these financial difficulties, the couple managed to hold on to property they owned outside of Manhattan. Arthur had bought a farm in Dover Plains, New York with the intention of establishing an artist colony for both painting and the crafts. These plans never materialized so they sold the property.45 They later purchased summer residences in Maine and retired in Maine in their later years.

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The Crisp property holdings and the couple’s economic status provide an interesting context for considering Mary Ellen’s embroidery, Untitled (Manhattan from Roosevelt Island) (1930s) (plate 11), created during the Depression years. The buildings in the embroidery do not match up exactly with the skyline of Manhattan, but the design comes close to a view of Gracie Square and its surroundings from the vantage point of Roosevelt Island. A decorative tree dominates the foreground of the embroidery and overshadows the skyscrapers behind it. If this is a view of Gracie Square, the East River defines the middleground and separates the viewer from Manhattan. With the Crisps’ own move out of the city at this time, it is not surprising that Mary Ellen would consider Manhattan from this distanced perspective. But regardless of the couple’s personal circumstances, the embroidery asserts the beauty of nature over the city located behind it. Nature takes precedence over these buildings, many of which were suffering from decline at this time. An embroidery titled New York from Central Park (1934) (Figure 6.9) by Elizabeth Roth makes for an interesting comparison to Crisp’s. Little is known about Roth, but she lived in Connecticut and was the needlework editor of The Woman’s Home Companion.46 Six years after creating her embroidery, Roth was selected as one of the judges for a handiwork competition for the 1940 New York World’s Fair, indicating she was recognized as an expert on embroidery at the time.47 In contrast to Crisp, Roth plants the viewer back in Manhattan rather than at a distance. Tall buildings are a predominant feature of the composition, but they are balanced by the tree that frames the right foreground and the pond in the center of Central Park, which serves as a reflecting pool for the buildings. Living in Connecticut, Roth might have had a more idealized view of Manhattan than people like the Crisps who lived in the city and were watching its economic decline from the very personal perspective of their own homes. Roth’s connection to the New York World’s Fair is also worth consideration. Decorative arts curator Elizabeth McGoey has documented “the interwar roots of the modern era’s designer-craftsman” through her research on the New York World’s Fair’s 1939 Town of Tomorrow and 1940 America at Home exhibitions.48 She observes, “The various craftspeople, designers, and invested administrators participating in the [America at Home] exhibition attempted to bridge the gap between hand and machine, thus presaging the full integration of art, craft and design that arose in the post-World War II years.”49 As one of the judges at the Fair, Roth would have contributed in at least some way to discussions about these efforts at integration. Marcia Stebbins also created an embroidery of New York during the Depression years. Her embroidered picture of Washington Square Park (1930s)



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Figure 6.9 Elizabeth Roth, New York from Central Park (1934)—Reproduced in Harbeson, American Needlework, 186a.—Dimensions and whereabouts unknown.

(plate 12) provides a surprisingly cheerful perspective on New York considering the impact of the Depression on the city. Like Zorach, Stebbins focuses on neighborhood life. An assortment of people can be seen relaxing on park benches: a man reads a newspaper; a woman with a baby in a carriage watches two children playing; and another group of children play along with a small dog. In a nod to women’s craft, one also made by Zorach in her embroidery of New York, Harbeson depicts a woman knitting, while at the same time engaged in a conversation with a friend. The only hint at possible trouble is that three men sit idly together on a bench when in better economic times they might have been at work. Stebbins’s embroidery suggests that daily life—and more specifically life’s pleasures—continued in spite of the Depression. Coming from a wealthy family, Stebbins would have been more insulated from the economic crisis than those with fewer economic resources. Her embroidery reflects that insulation. However, it might also be connected to efforts to create images of hope, like those by the US government seen in Works Progress Administration projects.50 These

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hopeful portrayals of American life were also emphasized in American world’s fairs in the 1930s.51 Overall, Stebbins’s embroidery is a reminder that daily life, even pleasurable life, continued even under the dire economic circumstances of the Depression.52

Conclusion In The Great American Thing, Wanda Corn observes that “unlike postwar European advocates for a new machine age art . . . Americans of similar disposition often equivocated” on their views of a modernist New York because “they had only to walk the streets of lower Manhattan to see that reality in the most advanced industrial power in the world was less wondrous than the futurist visions of machine age enthusiasts abroad.”53 Zorach was one of those equivocators; she rejected those “futurist visions” by shifting her lens away from industry to neighborhood life in 1920s Manhattan. The embroideries created in the 1930s must be considered within the historical context of the Great Depression. Stebbins continued to celebrate Manhattan as a city with livable neighborhoods in spite of economic hardships that defined American life. Roth and Crisp created embroideries in which nature provides the framework for understanding Manhattan in this time of crisis. In their commitment to the city as a subject for their embroideries, these artists imagined the city as a viable space for living even under the harshest economic conditions. Overall, these embroideries provide an alternative to masculinist constructions of the city in their more inclusive perspective on urban life.

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Nature as Symbol

Modern embroiderers shared with other American modern artists a strong interest in the exploration of nature-inspired imagery in their work. Art historian Charles Eldredge has examined how nature imagery was used by these artists; he writes of “a generation of American modernists, steeped in the tradition of landscape yet seeking to transcend it.”1 Regarding Georgia O’Keeffe and Arthur Dove specifically, he observes, “Through their abstractions they sought to capture the vital essences of nature, a unity of micro and macro, of man and universal spirit.”2 Views on the spiritual power of nature were often grounded in anti-modern sentiments prevalent in American culture at the turn of the century in which escapes to nature were seen as an antidote to the exhaustion associated with modern city life.3 Indeed, many American modernists spent a great deal of time away from the city, whether on the Maine seacoast or in the deserts of the Southwest, immersed in nature as a place of transcendence and relief from their otherwise demanding lives. For Zorach, the peace and quiet of rural areas in New Hampshire and Maine provided escape from the commotion of New York.4 Harbeson took a more playful approach to nature, although she too viewed nature as a source of escape. Crisp looked back to the majesty of nature seen in nineteenth-century landscape painting. In contrast, Stoll explored the landscape through a Surrealist lens as a space of the imagination. While each embroiderer may be tied to the modernist interest in nature in a general sense, a close examination of their imagery reveals nuanced, individual perspectives.

Zorach’s Vision of Nature Of all of the modern embroiderers, Zorach aligns most closely with O’Keeffe and Dove in her views on nature.5 Believing that escapes to nature were a necessary restorative from the exhaustion she associated with city life, she thought it

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imperative for her well-being to spend as much time as possible in the country. From the first years of their marriage, the Zorachs summered in rural New York and then New England; in 1923, they purchased a home at Robinhood Cove on Georgetown Island, Maine, dividing their time between New York and Maine. Thus, it is not surprising that nature imagery is pervasive in all of Zorach’s creative work, whether it be her paintings, poetry or embroideries. As a young woman, Zorach was inspired by the writing of John Muir (1838– 1914), the founder of the American conservation movement who played an important role in the establishment of Yosemite National Park.6 In her early years, Zorach created several paintings of Yosemite, the Redwood Forest, and other nature preserves in California. Man Among the Redwoods (1912/private collection) is typical of Zorach’s nature paintings in that the human presence is insignificant compared to the monumental scale of nature. Camp in the Woods, Yosemite (1920/private collection) reflects the artist’s interest in juxtaposing nude and clothed figures in her nature compositions, a device that would become a prominent theme in her nature embroideries. A quotation by Muir prominently displayed on the wall of Zorach’s Paris studio gives evidence of her early interest in Muir. It read: “Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares drop off like autumn leaves.”7 Muir’s writing stressed the rejuvenating power of nature, which he considered a necessary balm for urban dwellers “denatured” by city life.8 Finding city life depressing at times, Zorach shared Muir’s view that escapes to nature would revitalize those required to spend extended amounts of time in the city. She articulated this view in one of her poems: I came from out of the depths of the cold city where I had lived for many years. I found myself along a road with the wildness of the woods around me – But it was all grey and dead and The hills were dull and the fields were bare And I wondered have I been living so long in the city that all nature is blank to me? But I stayed and watched the green change of early spring to fall And I was thrilled every hour I walked among the fields with new beauty At every breath a new wonder flower, the soul of the air came to me. They spoke to me with the voices of lovely children. Whenever I would turn and look I would find new beauty.9

Zorach’s poem describes a reawakening to nature’s beauty for a city dweller. Just as Muir described, the poem assures us that those who immersed themselves in



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nature would be rewarded with a more balanced state of being. This perspective on nature is evident in Zorach’s embroideries.

Zorach: Finding a home in nature In 1915, Zorach created her first autobiographical embroidery The Family, White Mountains (1915–16) (Figure 7.1), a family portrait of Marguerite, William and their newborn first child, Tessim, relaxing outside of their summer cottage. Zorach also produced a watercolor of the same subject (Figure 7.2). The basic composition of the watercolor is followed in the embroidery, as was sometimes the case with the artist’s other embroideries based on her paintings. In the embroidery, Tessim can be seen curled up on a blanket in front of his father. Highlighting the autobiographical component of the embroidery, Zorach stitched around the border: William and Zorach and [undecipherable] Tessim. Cornish NH 1915. The White Mountains serve as a backdrop for the cottage, trees, flowers, and animals in the embroidery. However, the cottage is dwarfed less by the mountains than by the larger than life-size William and

Figure 7.1  Marguerite Zorach, The Family, White Mountains (1915–16)—Wool on linen embroidery, 19 × 17 in. Zorach Collection, LLC—Photograph by author.

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Figure 7.2  Marguerite Zorach, The Family, White Mountains (1915)—Watercolor on paper, 111/4 × 16½ in. Zorach Collection, LLC—Photograph by author.

Marguerite, both of whom would be unable to fit inside the cottage because of their monumental size in relation to it. This distortion of scale reduces the importance of the cottage in relation to the outdoors, a symbolic representation of how much Zorach appreciated being out in nature. William and Tessim are nude, while Marguerite is semi-nude, the lower half of her body being modestly covered by a blanket on her lap. The nudity of the figures, unconventional for a family portrait, suggests their ability to connect to their “essential nature” when outdoors and invites a symbolic reading of the embroidery as an embodiment of the “universal family” in harmony with nature. Zorach’s choice to modesty cover the female figure warrants consideration. Her portrayal brings together what art historian Rosemary Betterton has described as the “two poles of femininity which are traditionally held apart, the representation of the female body as erotic and sexually available and as reproductive and private” that have led to “two separate genres of visual representation, the figure of the mother and the figure of the nude.”10 This polarity can be seen in works by other women artists. For example, Paula ModersohnBecker depicts herself modestly covered in her Self-Portrait (1906/Gallery St. Etienne, NY).11 The difference here is that Modersohn-Becker chose to imagine herself pregnant, while Zorach does not emphasize her material role. In spite



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of  Zorach’s adherence to a conventional formula of modesty for her female figure, nonetheless, elements call for a feminist interpretation. The diminutive size of the house in relation to the figures downplays domesticity, while the bond between father and son is subtly emphasized by the placement of Tessim closest to his father. Zorach’s choice to title one of her embroideries The Home (Figure 7.3) (before 1923) reflects her deeply held view of nature as a place of comfort that is generally associated with the domestic realm.12 The main figure, located at the bottom left, is a nude female stepping into a stream. Curved lines that highlight the mountainous terrain are repeated from foreground to background and divide the embroidery into separate sections. Directly behind the main figure lies an unattended infant. Other sections include a farming scene of three figures with scythes working the land, and three animals grazing in a pasture behind the farmers. The sun, sky, and mountain peaks crown the embroidery. As seen in other works by Zorach, such as Maine Islands, stitchery that encases individuals suggests nature’s embrace. In The Home, the female figure is engrossed in her actions as she steps into the stream, the downward focus of her head indicating studied movement. She is unconcerned with the infant behind her, and, indeed, her independence from her child is the embroidery’s most striking feature. Lying in an enclosed space bordered by flowers, the child is safely protected by nature, freeing the female figure to engage in her own activity. It could be argued that Zorach symbolically represents women as the givers of life by emphasizing the main figure’s breast—the source of nourishment that sustains young life; her left arm forms a curved line that leads directly to her right breast, which appears large in comparison to the rest of her body. However, this emphasis does not negate the autonomy between mother and child that characterizes the embroidery as a whole.

Harbeson: The four seasons While designing embroidery patterns for Needlecraft magazine, Harbeson created a series of nature-inspired embroideries. The first one, titled Summer (The Enchanted Isle) (July 1931) (plate 9), is most fascinating in the way that Harbeson, like Zorach, constructs a vision of nature as a space that frees women from gendered associations.13 In Harbeson’s work, a woman sits reading a book on a small island, comfortably relaxed against a tree. The island, suitable in size for just one, creates an idyllic space of solitude.

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Figure 7.3  Marguerite Zorach, The Home (before 1923)—Wool on linen embroidery— Dimensions and whereabouts unknown—Reproduced on front page of brochure for Montross Gallery exhibition, Exhibition of Embroidered Tapestries by Marguerite Zorach (1923).



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Protected by the shade of the trees and perhaps soothed by the quiet sound of the calm waters rippling around her, this woman appears to be in paradise. A sailboat glides across the water behind her to further suggest leisure and relaxation, while an assortment of flowers, creating a border around three sides, emphasizes the beauty of this paradise for one. Harbeson imagines nature as a space that allows this woman solitude with her book. She is defined specifically by the act of reading rather than by any familial bonds. With its emphasis on defining a space free of distractions for this woman, the embroidery can easily be related to the ideas explored in Virginia Woolf ’s book, A Room of One’s Own, which was first published in 1929, just a few years before Harbeson created her embroidery. When compared with Zorach’s envisioning of nature, Harbeson imagines nature as an “enchanted” space that fosters the reader’s imagination while Zorach emphasizes a more primal experience with nature. But in both cases, women’s experiences are not determined by family relationships. After creating Summer (The Enchanted Isle), Harbeson was invited by Needlecraft to design an embroidery for each of the four seasons. Each design was highlighted on the cover of the magazine, and inside the magazine, an embroidery kit for the design was advertised for sale. For the June 1932 issue, she returned to the subject of summer with Summer (The Garden of Love) (June 1932) (Figure 7.4). This second version of summer is much more traditional than her earlier one. Harbeson herself described the embroidery: “The June cover shows a bride and groom cultivating their hearts, flowering in the garden of love. With devotion and care, they remove the weeds of discontent, distrust and impatience. Around the roots they plant kind words, tender thoughts and unselfish actions, making love grow and bloom with fragrance and everlasting beauty. The bluebirds understand, and burst into song.”14 As sentimental as Harbeson’s words are, there is a suggestion of intimacy and caring between both husband and wife that affirms love, not gender roles, as the defining characteristic of their marital relationship. Back to back, the couple works together: the groom tills the soil while the bride waters the garden with a watering can, husband and wife engaging in different but equally valuable tasks in nurturing the garden. That they are turned away from each other suggests an independence between the two as well. Two months earlier, Needlecraft’s April issue introduced Spring (April 1932) (Figure 7.5), a depiction of the couple’s courtship prior to their marriage represented in Summer. Even more traditional in subject, the embroidery represents a male figure engrossed in playing a flute as an act of courtship intended for a woman standing under a gazebo behind him. As if to

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Figure 7.4  Georgiana Brown Harbeson, Summer (The Garden of Love) (1932)—Front cover of Needlecraft, June 1932.

symbolize where this courtship will ultimately lead, a bird on the left flies toward a nest with its babies. Harbeson’s third embroidery in the series, Winter (February 1932) (Figure 7.6), shifts in focus from the bonds of love between individuals to the social bonds of a village. Groups of individuals can be seen engaged in a variety of winter activities, including skating, skiing, coasting, and taking sleigh rides. The village in the distance connects these groups to their small community. In  contrast,



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Figure 7.5  Georgiana Brown Harbeson, Spring (1932)—Front cover of Needlecraft, April 1932.

Autumn (plate 10) depicts a lone figure riding an antlered deer through the woods. Autumn gets closest to the human/nature connection explored by Zorach. That the figure rides a deer suggests s/he is at one with untamed nature. The gender of the rider is ambiguous; in a description of the embroidery for Needlecraft, the rider is only described as having a “girlish figure.”15 The image was apparently popular with readers because it appeared again on the cover of Needlework in October 1934. Through this gender ambiguity, Harbeson hints

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Figure 7.6  Georgiana Brown Harbeson, Winter (1932)—Front cover of Needlecraft, February 1932.

at freedom from rigid gender constructions made possible when one is out in nature and thus away from societal prescriptions. When considering Harbeson’s embroideries as a cycle, the focus on relationships—between couples and among community members—is a common thread. But in all of these embroideries the primary relationship is with nature, whether it be a community of people enjoying the outdoors together or a lone individual reading on an island. Nature is a place of possibility for a wide variety of activities that enhance the lives of the individuals inhabiting it.



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Zorach and Harbeson: Two perspectives on the sea In her embroidery, The Sea (1917 or 1918) (plate 13), Zorach continues her examination of the human-nature connection, but here nature is depicted as a more powerful force. Indeed, the large swirling waves of the ocean dominate the right side and the background of the embroidery. Two figures rooted to the earth like the trees on which they lean create an organic merging of humans with nature; their feet are planted firmly upon the exposed tree roots and their bodies repeat the forms of the trees. Almost a mirror image of the tree that supports her, the female figure on the left is depicted with limbs like tree branches, her cascading hair resembling the tree’s leaves, and the lines of her body from her feet through her uplifted arms follow the tree’s contours. Color reinforces this affinity between nature and humankind, as pink stitches can be found in both the trunk of the tree and the figure’s hair. Two additional female figures further emphasize the human-nature connection; one sits quietly in a pool of water, while the other, immersed in the sea, leads a school of fish, organized in rows behind her. In the background, a large sailing vessel makes its way across the water, guided by several figures working its sails. While the ocean is the dominating element of the embroidery, individuals are still able to find their place in relation to it. While Zorach’s embroidery explores the relationship between humans and the sea, Harbeson imagined marine life on a smaller scale in her embroidery Sea Fantasy (1932) (Figure 7.7). A seahorse framed by seaweed defines the composition.16 Swirling lines of stitchery indicate ocean currents; the seaweed bends in response. The difference between Harbeson’s work and Zorach’s The Sea can be explained by location: Harbeson has chosen the relatively calm waters of the tropics, the habitat of seahorses, while Zorach’s focus is on the waters of the more powerful North Atlantic. Later in her career, Harbeson created two embroideries of an aquarium. In one of these (before 1971/location unknown), a variety of fish swim in different directions through different types of seaweed.17 The embroidery is a relatively large one of approximately three by two feet, which gives the impression of an open space for the fish to swim. The other is in the collection of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (before 1969). It takes a more playful approach in that it depicts a very curious cat sitting outside of an aquarium watching a snail make its way across the sand at the bottom of a tank. Here again, Harbeson approaches nature on a much smaller scale than Zorach who consistently focused on nature as a powerful force.

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Figure 7.7 Georgiana Brown Harbeson, Sea Fantasy (1934)—Front cover of Needlecraft, July 1934.

Mary Ellen Crisp and the American landscape tradition Unlike the embroideries of Zorach and Harbeson, Mary Ellen Crisp’s Untitled Landscape (before 1938) (Figure 7.8) recalls nineteenth-century landscape painting. It compares easily to paintings by artists like Albert Bierstadt in its depiction of magisterial nature with its monumental size, measuring at seven by ten feet, and its compositional arrangement of a clearly defined foreground,



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Figure 7.8  Mary Ellen Crisp, Untitled Landscape (before 1938)—Embroidery, 7 × 10 ft.—Whereabouts unknown. Reproduced in Harbeson, American Embroidery, 186a.

middleground, and background that culminates with large mountains.18 Harbeson described the subject of the embroidery as “reminiscent in theme of scenery in the Far West.”19 The cacti that dominate the foreground point to a Southwest location, or perhaps Mexico. Crisp and her husband traveled to this area, so the embroidery may have been inspired from their trip. Although Harbeson connects Crisp’s embroidery to nineteenth-century landscape painting, she is quick to draw a stylistic distinction between them. She describes Crisp’s “use of contrasts in line direction” as “important in the newer embroidery, so much being suggested through such rhythms.”20 These contrasts include “small horizontal stitches” for the trees in the foreground, “rows of running stitches” that define the hills in the middleground, “short, wavy stitches” for the river, and “wool stitched lines” for the cactus plants in the foreground.21 As Harbeson explains, the contrasting lines created by the various stitches “provide a continuation of rhythmical composition.”22 Harbeson concludes, “This [contrast in use of line] is in direct contrast to nineteenth century emphasis upon realistic reproduction. Today an attempt is made to catch the atmosphere in the spirit or mood of the landscape in preference to an exact copy of the scene.”23 Even in this largely representational rendering of the landscape, Harbeson detected a modern spirit in the work.

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Marian Stoll and the Surrealist landscape The nature embroideries of Marian Stoll are dramatically different in mood from the embroideries previously discussed. In Jungle (1927) (plate 14), a lone figure of unspecified gender makes their way up a hill into dense vegetation. The palm tree on the left along with similar foliage locates us in the tropics. However, rather than quietly communing with nature, this figure is burdened by the heavy load of their backpack, a marker of a person about to go on an arduous hike. A walking stick helps to propel the hunched figure forward along a narrowing path. Most striking

Figure 7.9  Marian Stoll, Untitled (Landscape with Building) (1928)—Esther Fitzgerald Rare Textiles, London.



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is a looming shadow cast by the figure; it takes on exaggerated proportions as the figure moves into the dense vegetation and adds an eerie quality to the embroidery as a whole. Stoll was influenced by the Surrealists, which is evident in embroideries like Jungle, in the mysterious and the uncanny qualities that define some of her works. In Jungle, something foreboding defines the human experience in nature. Stoll created at least three embroideries composed of a single, monumental architectural structure isolated in nature. In an Untitled embroidery (1928–29) (plate 15), in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the structure is reminiscent of adobe architecture from the American Southwest. However, Stoll had not visited the Southwest and was living in Paris at the time that she created the embroidery. In addition, around the same time, she created an Untitled embroidery (1928) (Figure 7.9) with a similar structure and in a lush setting of rolling hills that is uncharacteristic of the Southwest. A year prior to making the MFA embroidery, Stoll created Greek Temple (1927) (Figure 7.10), composed of a

Figure 7.10  Marian Stoll, Greek Temple (1927)—Esther Fitzgerald Rare Textiles, London.

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Greek temple nestled among trees at the top of a hill. Although the compositions are similar, the landscapes in which they are located are dramatically different. In Greek Temple, the structure is surrounded by trees on a lush, verdant hillside. In contrast, in the MFA embroidery, three trees in the foreground bending by the force of the wind cling to an otherwise barren landscape. Since Greek Temple indicates Stoll’s interest in ancient architecture, perhaps the MFA embroidery represents an ancient Egyptian mastaba, a more  likely subject for a European-based artist than the American Southwest that she had never visited. Regardless, Stoll’s embroideries are perhaps best understood as imagined locations. While the barren landscape of the MFA embroidery creates a mood of desolation, the abundant greenery of Greek Temple suggests a more welcoming journey to the top of the hill.24 Stoll created three embroideries related to village life that also explore the human relationship to nature. An Untitled embroidery (Figure 7.11) (ca. late 1920s) depicts a small village characterized by animated buildings that take on an anthropomorphic quality. The embroidery is reminiscent of early works by Kandinsky and Münter while they were spending time in Murneau, such

Figure 7.11  Marian Stoll, Untitled (Village) (date illegible)—Esther Fitzgerald Rare Textiles, London.



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as Kandinsky’s Murnau with a Church (1910/Lenbachhaus, Munich), with its shared focus on a small village, and stylistically through the use of bright vibrant colors and the dynamic energy created by fluid lines. Dense, green stitches that run behind the village suggest an impenetrable forest and add to the mysterious mood created by the pulsating buildings. The lines of color, possibly representing shadows cast by the buildings, can be equated with expressive drips of paint on a canvas, a reminder of Stoll’s belief in the connection between painting and embroidery. Stoll is at her most expressionist in an embroidery titled The Storm (ca. 1933) (Figure 7.12). As seen in her embroideries from the 1920s, she again creates a composition in which a single building, in this case either a church or barn, is isolated in nature. Violent, swirling, clouds that take up half of the embroidery dominate the sky to create an expressive energy not seen in Stoll’s earlier works. Five years later, Stoll created New England Village (Figure 7.13)

Figure 7.12  Marian Stoll, The Storm (ca. 1933)—Dimensions and location unknown— Reproduced in Margaret Hogarth, Modern Embroidery, 23.

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Figure 7.13 Marian Stoll, New England Village (before 1938)—Reproduced in Harbeson, American Needlework, 184b.

(before 1938), in which village life is represented in a more traditional way. A steepled church is placed in the center of the embroidery, surrounded by small homes that suggest a quiet town tucked away in the rolling hills of New England. Only hints of the violent sky seen in The Storm remain in this later embroidery. Created when Stoll had returned from Europe to her home in Connecticut, the embroidery demonstrates a shift in style and attitude in Stoll’s work.

Conclusion Although the interest in nature shared by many modern artists was grounded in some of the same philosophies, art historians must go beyond generalizations and consider instead the specific ways in which nature operated for individual artists. This point becomes apparently clear when considering the scholarship of art historian Donna Cassidy on Marsden Hartley’s paintings in which she argues that Hartley’s use of nature imagery is related to Nazi ideology.25 Like many American modernists, including Hartley, Zorach was inspired by



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Kandinsky’s writing on the power of art to create transcendent experiences, but her nature imagery ties more specifically to a search for freedom from gender constraints. Art historian Bruce Robertson argues for a similar interpretation of the Lake George paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe. He describes these paintings as “based on the gesture instinctive for so many women artists—of carving out a space for art by forcibly excluding the domestic demand of time and space— and instead looking to flowers and leaves and fruit.”26 Robertson recognizes an important “gesture” used by women artists, although I would argue there was nothing “instinctive” about it. For the women embroiderers discussed in this chapter, these gestures were a consciously constructed reimagining of the lives of women. The subject of nature most certainly freed women artists, at least to some extent, from the constraints imposed when house, home, and family were the subjects of their work. Nature held meaning for women embroiderers, and for many women artists in general, as a space that was free from the gendered trappings of domesticity. Zorach was most radical in her exploration of nature as a space of freedom, but evidence of this perspective can be found in the works of other women embroiderers as well.

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Embroidered Portraits

During the first half of the twentieth century, modern artists strived to redefine portraiture in ways that aligned it with new ideas about art. A key concern in this redefinition was the reconciliation of the modernist move toward abstraction with the expectation that the person represented in a portrait be identifiable in at least some way. Among the modern embroiderers, Marguerite Zorach stands out for the number of embroidered portraits that she created during her life. Because Zorach was the most prolific in this category, this chapter is dedicated almost entirely to her work. Harbeson’s embroidered portrait of the opera singer Amelita Galli-Curci, her most experimental work, is also discussed, as well as her portraits of American Indian women created for Needlecraft magazine. Along with other modern painters, Harbeson and Zorach contributed to the modernist redefinition of portraiture but, uniquely, through the medium embroidery.

Reconsidering portraiture through a modernist lens In Picasso and Portraiture: Representation and Transformation, MoMA curator William Rubin examines the changes to portraiture that resulted from the modernist devaluation of verisimilitude.1 Noting that the “communication of psychological and poetic values” had always been part of the portraiture tradition, Rubin explains that “modern painters were destined to make more explicit those subjective aspects of representation that had formerly been implied.”2 He credits Picasso with “redefining the portrait as a record of the artist’s personal responses to the subject,” in which portraits no longer function as objective documents, but instead stress subjective interpretations.3 Describing Picasso’s portraits as “transformed” and “conceptual” works, Rubin observes, “Painted mostly from memory, Picasso’s portrait subjects were largely imaged not as seen, but as conceptualized, in a variety of figural modes.”4 Picasso was not alone

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in his exploration of the possibilities of “conceptual” portraiture. Through the introduction of cubism, he provided many artists with the formal language for their own experimentation in this genre. Rubin’s exhibition sheds light on Picasso’s contribution to modernist portraiture, but the issues Rubin raised concerning the redefinition of portraiture had been addressed by modern artists and critics before his MoMA show. During the 1920s, Katherine Dreier played a central role in proselytizing for the abstract portrait. In her book Western Art and the New Era, published in 1923, she described the approach of the modern portraitist: “Instead of painting the sitter as seen ordinarily in life, the modern artist tries to express the character as represented through abstract form and color.”5 Using her painting Abstract Portrait of Marcel Duchamp (1918) (Figure 8.1) as an example, Dreier highlights her own role in the development of an “entirely new attitude towards portraiture.”6 Believing her portrait represented Duchamp’s elite status as one of the enlightened, she depicts him as a series of interlocking geometric forms. Her inclusion of several pyramids is noteworthy, as the pyramid symbolized for Dreier and other theosophists the narrowing of the road to enlightenment as one got closer to the highest levels of consciousness.7 For Dreier, an abstract portrait served the elevated purpose of capturing the “spiritual” essence of a subject rather than simply recording physical likeness. In 1942, the Museum of Modern Art organized 20th Century Portraits, an exhibition that evaluated the changes in modern portraiture examined by Dreier twenty years earlier. In his introduction to the exhibition catalogue, curator Monroe Wheeler described the general climate of distaste for portraiture among

Figure 8.1  Katherine Dreier, Abstract Portrait of Marcel Duchamp (1918)—Oil on canvas, 18 × 32 in.—Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund. The Museum of Modern Art, New York—Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY.



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modern artists and argued for “a certain broadening of the meaning of the word ‘portrait’ to include works of a freer imagination, so that the painter and sculptor need no longer shrink from it or neglect it and so that the potential sitter will cease to expect what there is no likelihood of his getting from a good artist.”8 As explained by Wheeler, modern artists limited by the expectations of their sitters were unable to create fully imaginative portraits and thus rejected portraiture as a legitimate genre for the avant-garde. One of the goals of Wheeler’s exhibition was to demonstrate the ways in which modern artists had risen above the limitations of traditional portraiture to create innovative works. Just as Rubin was to do fifty years later, Wheeler applauded Picasso for successfully formulating the criteria that would ultimately define modern portraiture. He described Picasso’s Gertrude Stein (1905-6/Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY) as “one of the great modern likenesses” in part because Picasso had painted her face mostly from memory, supposedly allowing him to capture her psyche.9 Wheeler also praised Matisse for his painting Woman with a Hat (Mme. Henri-Matisse) (1905/San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) because “he takes the multiplicity of details of physiognomy which we unconsciously bear in our minds as likeness, and powerfully molds them together into a kind of mask or icon which we never forget.”10 Among American artists, Wheeler considered Walt Kuhn “chief of those who prefer the generalized portrayal of types of humanity to the specific characterization of the model before him.”11 Wheeler included Zorach’s embroidery The Rockefeller Family at Seal Harbor (1929–32) (Figure 2.3) in the exhibition.12 He was attracted to the embroidery because it fit his definition of modern portraiture.13 It had been commissioned by Abby Rockefeller, who at the time of the commission had already established herself as a collector of modern American art. In a letter Wheeler wrote to Rockefeller requesting that she loan the embroidery for the show, he explained, “We would like to include your extraordinary family portrait in needlework by Mrs. Zorach. I realize that this is portraiture only by a somewhat free and modern definition, but that in general, is our approach to the problem. The ordinary commissioned self-conscious and formal likeness is disappointing as a rule.”14 Wheeler was also attracted to The Rockefeller Family because he wanted to include media other than painting.15 As he explained to Rockefeller, “We are also eager to diversify the types of likenesses and to include as many media as possible, so that the show will not have the usual aspect of identical composition, face after face, and rows of fulllength figures standing at attention.”16 When she commissioned Zorach for her family’s portrait, Rockefeller herself recognized that Zorach’s embroideries were unconventional based on both the medium and their abstract style. Thus, she too

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would have shared Wheeler’s perspective that it was appropriate for the Museum of Modern Art show, and indeed she agreed to lend it to their exhibition.17

The Rockefeller Family at Seal Harbor commission Throughout her career, Zorach painted portraits of her colleagues, friends, and family. Portrait of Bea Ault (1920) (Figure 8.2) is one example. A seated portrait of the first wife of painter George Ault and an artist in her own right, Ault is portrayed by Zorach as a strong independent woman. Her bobbed haircut

Figure 8.2  Marguerite Zorach, Bea Ault, 1925—oil on canvas, 44 × 30 in. (111.8 × 76.2 cm)—Courtesy of Kraushaar Galleries, New York.



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and cigarette are markers of her independent status, and Ault’s confidence is portrayed through her upright posture and thoughtful expression. However, The Rockefeller Family embroidered portrait is the most significant example of Zorach’s work in portraiture. In preparing to create the embroidery, Zorach, along with William and their two children, visited the Rockefellers at their summer estate in Seal Harbor, Maine. As William noted, the trip was planned so that “Zorach could familiarize herself with the character of the country and the Rockefeller life.”18 Rockefeller provided Zorach with specific information on her children’s hobbies and interests. She wrote to her sons Laurance and Nelson: Dearest boys. I am sitting at my desk and I have just been making out a list of the chief interests and characteristics of each of you children. Mrs. Zorach is going to make an embroidered picture of our life here at Seal Harbor and I am going to hang it in the playhouse at Tarrytown. Mrs. Z is coming up here next week to make sketches of the place and the boats etc. If either of you have any special hobby of yours that you want in it, just write it to me. The picture will be about 6 by 10 feet and will be correct with small figures, flowers, water, boats, horses, buildings etc., something like a 13th century tapestry, only very modern. . . .19

Zorach integrated the information provided to her by Rockefeller into the embroidery by representing family members engaged in activities that they were known to enjoy. David, who was an avid butterfly collector, sits cross-legged directly below his parents, examining a butterfly with a magnifying glass. In the lower left, John is depicted playing tennis, Winthrop playing golf, and Nelson and Laurance roughhousing together.20 In the lower right-hand corner, Zorach placed daughter Abby with her husband David Milton and their two children. Zorach concerned herself with likeness only to the extent that characteristics such as hair length are accurately portrayed. However, facial features and other traits are more generalized, and, owing to the difficulty of depicting exacting detail for each individual in such a complex composition, these traits are not sufficient to determine the identities of family members. Anticipating this identification problem, Zorach stitched individual names in the border at the base of the embroidery. Abby and John, Jr. stand in the center, positioned above their children and grandchildren; the tree that frames husband and wife reminds us that family lineage is the subject of this work. Significantly, Abby takes center stage, with John positioned behind his wife. Since Abby commissioned the work, it is not surprising that Zorach would give her this central position. The Rockefeller Family shares similarities with Zorach’s embroidered portraits of her own family in that the Rockefellers are not inside, but outside of, their

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summer home, and the home has been significantly reduced in size. References to the Rockefeller’s material wealth are present, including the family mansion in the background, motor cars, tennis courts, and other symbols of the leisure activities of the wealthy, but nature imagery still plays a central role. Plants, trees, and wildlife surround each family member, with a large tree in the center operating as a unifying element to the composition. A painting that Zorach was working on around the same time as the embroidery, titled The Picnic (1928/ Zorach Family Collection, LLC), demonstrates a similar effort on the artist’s part to integrate a group of individuals into a natural landscape while at the same time giving a nod to modern living. The tree under which the picnickers sit serves to unite the composition; an automobile is parked at the bottom of the precipice where the group has gathered. In the embroidery, however, Zorach takes a surprising turn by including replicas of her mythical figures from Maine Islands in the background. The imagery from Maine Islands serves as a reminder of pristine, primordial nature and contrasts with the material wealth of the Rockefellers. With the bulk of the embroidery dedicated to nature transformed by human habitation, the pristine islands operate symbolically as distant and unreachable. This juxtaposition between pristine nature and the Rockefeller’s materialism can be understood as a social commentary on the effects of the human encroachment on nature. Nonetheless, Zorach emphasizes links between the Rockefellers and nature, even if those links were weakened. In addition to the subject of a modern family’s life, Zorach’s style also aligns The Rockefeller Family with modern portraiture. Both cubist interlocking planes and bright, vibrant colors21 are employed in the embroidery. That being said, the embroidery is also characterized by extensive amounts of detail. As a result of this detail, individuals lose their centrality and take on no greater significance than the trees and plants around them, all of which blend into a panoply of colors and almost indistinguishable forms. Indeed, Zorach’s heavily applied detail makes it difficult to differentiate specific individuals. In American Needlework, Harbeson recognized The Rockefeller Family as an example of “modern” embroidery based on Zorach’s stitchery. She took note of the wide variety of stitches—chevron, satin, chain, dot, and running—that Zorach employed for the embroidery, which Harbeson believed defined its “ultramodern manner” (although at other times she had argued that too many different stitch types could detract from the successful creation of a modern embroidery).22 Harbeson especially valued crewel work for the freedom it allowed the embroiderer, so it is not surprising that she pointed out Zorach’s use of crewel work here. She wrote, “Contemporary crewel embroidery is ably represented in the fine work



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of Marguerite Zorach, who has been devoting her talents to the modernization of embroidery for many years.”23 Finally, Harbeson applauded Zorach for the “kaleidoscopic quality” of The Rockefeller Family created “through the shading and the use of strong colors.”24 She concluded, “Mrs. Zorach is a painter who also sees great possibilities in needlework as a fine art and approaches it from that angle.”25 As a family portrait, The Rockefeller Family moves between the individuality of each sitter—expressed by his or her unique attributes—and universality—as individuals blend into the landscape and lose their particularity. In this way, the specific historical position of the Rockefellers as one of the most influential and powerful families of the twentieth century loses its centrality in Zorach’s exploration of more general themes about humans in nature. The slippage of time—from the distant past to the present— is explored by contrasts between the primordial figures on Maine Islands and the living Rockefeller family members. Other juxtapositions—the Rockefeller family mansion with a farmhouse, automobiles with a horse-drawn cart—also raise questions about the impact of modern life on nature. Overall, Zorach’s embroidery holds symbolism that transcends the specifics of the Rockefeller family.

The Jonas Family commission Two years before the Rockefeller commission, Zorach had received a commission for an embroidered family portrait from Zelda and Ralph Jonas. According to William, Ralph Jonas was “very important in the financial world” and invested money in the stock market for the Zorachs during the 1920s.26 The Jonases were introduced to the Zorachs through their fifteen-year-old daughter, Ruth, who took art lessons from William. In his autobiography, William has documented that although the embroidery was commissioned, Marguerite determined the composition; he writes that Mrs. Jonas “left Zorach absolutely free to do anything she wanted.” 27 Marguerite later confirmed that the embroidery was of her own design, explaining that when Mrs. Jonas asked her to make it, she placed no restrictions on the composition or style, specifying only that the size be four by five feet.28 The inscription at the bottom of the embroidery announces: “Made for Zelda and Ralph Jonas in the Year Nineteen Hundred and Twenty Seven by Marguerite Zorach.” In The Jonas Family (1927) (Figure 8.3), Zelda and Ralph Jonas are depicted with their children in an outdoor setting filled with small animals, flowers, and other natural scenery. A blossoming tree dominates a large portion of

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Figure 8.3 Marguerite Zorach, The Jonas Family (1927)—Linen embroidery with wool using stem, chain, buttonhole, herringbone, satin and Romanian stitches on plain weave, 515/8 × 50⅜ in.—Gift of Richard H. Frost, 1996-112-1. Photo: Matt Flynn– Cooper Hewitt. Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, NY, USA—Photo Credit: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum/Art Resource, NY.

the embroidery, while a river flows behind the family in the middleground. Indications of society’s encroachment on nature are evident by the architecture that spans the right background; the administrative buildings index Ralph Jonas’s professional position in business. However, the river creates a clear boundary between the buildings and the family group, firmly positioning the Jonas family within the natural landscape and separate from the human-made world behind them. The nudity that defines The Jonas Family portrait is characteristic of Zorach’s embroideries of her own family. (Zorach did not make this choice for The Rockefeller Family embroidery, perhaps at the request of Abby.) Similarly, as previously seen in The Family, White Mountains (Figure 7.2), the maternal figure is portrayed with modesty. Seated and surrounded by her husband and children, Zelda Jonas is fully clothed, in contrast to the nude figures around her. In a bold move, Zorach



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explicitly depicts the figure of the adult Ralph in full frontal nudity, although her heavy stitchery serves to obscure this nudity. Husband, wife, and two children are all linked together by touch to form a cohesive family unit. A standing nude female to the left is juxtaposed with this family group, perhaps their teenage daughter Ruth. This striking juxtaposition between the nude female standing by herself and the cohesive family unit suggests two fundamentally different roles for women. In contrast to the seated figure of Zelda, defined by a traditional maternal role, this standing figure, separated from the family by the large tree, symbolizes freedom and independence from the family bonds of her seated, clothed counterpart. If the figure is Ruth, her nudity could be interpreted as the expression of a teenage desire for independence from family, an independence that also runs counter to Zorach’s representation of motherhood. Once again, Zorach forces a consideration of gender roles for women in this embroidery.

Zorach’s autobiographical embroideries In four of her final embroideries, Zorach returned to the subject of her own family. Created later in Zorach’s life, they span a period of about ten years, from the late 1930s to the late 1940s. In considering these embroideries, it is noteworthy that Zorach underwent somewhat of a stylistic shift during the 1930s, in which her established abstract style was influenced by Regionalism. In 1965, she described this change: “I was over there [France and Germany] when Cubism and Fauvism started you see. . . . I have probably become more realistic than I was then. . . . I think it’s something that just happened. And also things began to look artificial and you get tired of them. I mean a new form is exciting when it appears, or when some artist uses a figure in a way that hasn’t been used before, or colors in a way they haven’t been used before—that’s very exciting, and everybody who is young and enthusiastic rushes in and sees what he can do with that sort of thing. But you can’t keep on with that. I mean it becomes sort of superficial and you want to see things for yourself and do them your own way.”29

Zorach’s move toward realism reflects Regionalist trends in 1930s American art. Along with many other artists, Zorach was hired by the federal government to undertake public mural projects, including one for the post office and courthouse in Fresno, California and another for the post office in Peterborough, New Hampshire.30 Expectations from the Works Progress Administration were generally for a more representational style than the abstraction that characterized

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Image not available in this edition

Figure 8.4  Marguerite Zorach, Maine Sheriff (1930)—Oil on linen, 201/8 × 301/8 in.— Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase 31.386—Digital image © Whitney Museum, NY.

1920s art.31 This expectation may also have affected Zorach’s shift in style. The shift is evident in paintings, such as Maine Sheriff (1930) (Figure 8.4), in which there is a clear sense of depth and the sheriff, horse and dogs are represented naturalistically. The slow pace of country living is humorously made clear: the sheriff, apparently in no hurry and with little to do, relaxes in his horse-drawn carriage while his horse grazes and his two dogs stretch out underneath the carriage. Zorach’s stylistic shift to realism is less apparent in her embroideries and had only limited effect on her paintings as a whole. By the 1940s, she would return to her more abstract style. Zorach created Robinhood Farm, Georgetown Island Maine in the Year 1937 (1937) (Figure 8.5) during the Regionalist period of her paintings. However, the embroidery emphasizes flatness rather than three-dimensionality and dramatically distorts relationships of scale. The subject is Zorach’s family at their summer home, which was located in an area known as Seguinland and about an hour’s drive north of Portland. Beginning in the early twentieth century, artists migrated to this area from Boston and New York to spend their summers. The Zorachs bought their house on the island in 1923 after being introduced to the area by their friends Gaston and Isabel Lachaise. Other artists who visited



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Figure 8.5  Marguerite Zorach, Robinhood Farm: Georgetown Island Maine in the Year 1937 (1937)—Wool on linen embroidery, 40 × 32 in.—Reproduced in Tarbell, William and Marguerite Zorach: The Maine Years (1979), 19—Location unknown.

the area at the time that the Zorachs also began to do so include John Marin, Marsden Hartley, and Paul and Rebecca Strand.32 In spite of the presence of these artists, this part of Maine never developed into a popular artist colony in that the number of artists living there was small, the Seguinland artists never exhibited together, and art patrons were not attracted to the area.33 By the mid-1930s, many of the artists who had frequented Seguinland in the 1920s were no longer visiting,34 but the Zorachs continued to summer there, spending more and more time at Robinhood Farm as the decades progressed. Describing her embroidery as “a record and a memory” of her family’s life in Maine,35 Zorach invites an

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interpretation of Robinhood Farm that extends beyond a factual recording of the activities of the Zorach family. In Robinhood Farm, Zorach once again places her family outdoors in nature rather than inside the home. Family activities depicted include William in the foreground at work on a sculpture, and their two children, Dahlov and Tessim, riding horseback through the woods. In contrast, Marguerite, larger than life, represents herself in a contemplative pose, perhaps in the creative act of imagining her composition. Located between the house and the garage, she wears a dress with a checkerboard design that helps to single her out. An automobile that juts out of the garage provides a sign of modern life, but it is a minor feature when compared with the predominance of nature. Trees, water, and wildlife define the embroidery, and the small-sized automobile and buildings seem toy-like in relation to the large figures of Zorach and her family. Robinhood Farm shares similarities with The Rockefeller Family in that the land is more developed than the natural environment found in Zorach’s earlier embroideries. Located in the top center of the embroidery, a nude male, who stands with an ax between his legs and looks up toward the heavens in contemplation, serves as a visual metaphor for the precarious balance between the preservation of nature and its destruction. By depicting the figure in reflection rather than in action—he is readied with his ax to cut down a cluster of trees positioned in front of him— Zorach invites consideration of the impact of land development. Robinhood Farm depicts nature in several stages of development: in its pristine state, exemplified by the islands in the background and the forest on the right into which the Zorach children ride their horses; as grazing and farmland, depicted in the top right, where cleared land is worked by a single figure with a grazing animal nearby; and as land developed for human habitation, represented by the Zorach’s house and garage. To the left of the male nude holding the additional ax, a reclining nude female, a marker of the fine arts tradition and the only additional nude in the embroidery, looks out toward the viewer with commanding authority. Strategically positioned at the top of the embroidery, she oversees this narrative presented around her. The female nude and nature are suggested to be two source of artistic inspiration. Zorach herself, posed in the act of contemplation, bears witness to it all. After Robinhood Farm, Zorach created three autobiographical embroideries that are more intimate in nature than her earlier ones of her family. In 1944, she made two embroideries as gifts to her children, the Ipcar Family at Robinhood Farm (1944) (Figure 8.6) and Peggy and Tessim Zorach Family (ca. 1944) (Figure 8.7). By the time that she created them, both of her children were



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Figure 8.6  Marguerite Zorach, The Ipcar Family at Robinhood Farm (1944)—Wool on linen embroidery, 17½ × 23½ in.—Zorach Collection, LLC—Digital image courtesy of Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME.

married and in their late twenties. Since all of her other embroideries had been sold, she made these embroideries to ensure that a few of them would remain in the family.36 They are dramatic departures from her others in that they are the only ones set in domestic interiors with little connection to the outdoors. Intimate portrayals of her children’s families, they function as pendants in which the country life of her daughter Dahlov’s family is juxtaposed with the city life of her son Tessim’s family in Brooklyn. When the embroideries were made, both of Zorach’s children lived in proximity to William and Marguerite. Dahlov’s family was living only a short walk from the Zorach’s summer home in Maine, while Tessim’s family home was easily accessible to the Zorach’s studio in Brooklyn, where William and Marguerite had moved after leaving their Washington Square studio and home. Indeed, the large window on the left in Tessim’s embroidery includes a view of their Brooklyn studio.37 Both embroideries depict harmonious, secure homes, in which parents and children engage in a variety of activities with enthusiasm and pleasure. Keepsakes for her children, Zorach’s embroideries pay tribute to the loving homes her children created for their own families.

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Figure 8.7  Marguerite Zorach, Peggy and Tessim Zorach Family (1944)—Wool on linen embroidery, 17½ × 24½ in.—Zorach Collection, LLC—Image courtesy of Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME.

In both embroideries, family activity is centered around the kitchen, which for Zorach was the heart of the home. As she explained, “I made each of my children an embroidery to have as his and her own—each of the family kitchen, full of the life and activity of the children and the kitchen—that is where life is most vibrant and intense when people are young and have small children and no servants. They were fasinating [sic] kitchens, full of color and activity. . . .”38 Zorach depicts her children’s homes teeming with activities that are happily carried out by members of a cohesive family unit.39 It is significant that Zorach takes note in her explanation of the works that neither Dahov nor Tessim had servants when raising their own children. This contrasts to the circumstances of Zorach’s own life in which she had depended on domestic help for childcare. Although domestic help allowed Zorach more time to create her art, she seems to lament the presence of “servants” as a factor that limited her own ability to create warm familial relations. Zorach’s words—and her embroideries—are a reminder of the difficulty of reconciling family life with art-making for women artists. Absent from the Ipcar Family is any reference to Dahlov’s career as an artist, which is a significant erasure because Dahlov, like her mother, was already an active artist and used her home as her art studio.40 In the case of Zorach, one could argue that her home in Maine was a work of art itself, since it was decorated with examples



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of Zorach’s work, from her hooked rugs to wall paintings. But the notion of home as a space of creativity is lost in her earlier embroideries, in which Zorach eliminated evidence of her work as an artist just as she eliminates reference to Dahlov as an artist in the Ipcar embroidery. 41 In both cases, this absence indexes uncertainty about how the roles of mother, wife and professional artist might be successfully integrated. This is not to suggest that Marguerite—or William— rejected family life. As art historian Linda Aleci has argued, “home and family constitutes a substantial and important part of their art” and “stimulated them to produce a stylistically rich and engaging range of works depicting their son and daughter, beloved pets, and the routines of household life transformed into symbols of timeless human bonds.”42 But these embroideries of family life reveal a tension between the conflicting roles of professional artist and mother that Zorach is unable to fully reconcile. Collaboration between husband and wife is highlighted in the Zorach children embroideries. In Peggy and Tessim Zorach Family, both mother and father share in the domestic responsibilities of raising a family.43 Zorach described the embroidery as “my son helping his son with a ship model, a baby escaping feeding, stoves and sinks and wash in the back yard—the circular staircase and the cars and houses opposite on a Brooklyn street.”44 As Tessim assists Peter with his model, Peggy attempts to reign in an excited baby about to take a dive from his high chair. Similarly, in the embroidery of Dahlov’s family, Dahlov and her husband Adolph share in the household responsibilities of preparing dinner and carrying out chores. This model of collaboration between partners in carrying out domestic responsibilities was new to Zorach’s embroideries. In previous ones, Zorach explored alternative roles for women but they were grounded in independent action rather than collaboration.

Zorach’s embroidered self-portrait In 1949, at the age of sixty-two, Zorach completed her autobiographical embroidery, Remembrance of Life in Fresno California and of My Childhood There Around the Year 1900 (1949) (plate 2). The embroidery is a reflection on the artist’s life as a young girl growing up in Fresno, California until her departure from home to begin her art career in New York. The artist had attempted this subject twenty-eight years earlier with a painting titled Memories of My California Childhood (1921) (Figure 8.8). In this cubist-inspired painting, Zorach, her mother Winifred and her younger sister Edith can be seen in the

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Figure 8.8  Marguerite Zorach, Memories of My California Childhood (1921)—Oil on canvas, 30 × 25 in.—Brooklyn Museum—Gift of Dr. Robert Leslie in memory of Dr. Sarah K. Greenberg, 72.99—Photograph by Sarah DeSantis, Brooklyn Museum—© Zorach Collection, LLC.

fragmented space of the front yard, each figure engaged in an independent activity. Winifred sits in a contemplative pose with her chin in her hand as she reads a book or newspaper. Zorach, the older of the two children, stands directly in front of her mother, straining her neck as she looks up toward the sky, while her younger sister watches from her playpen. The independent action that defines this painting is more fully expressed in Zorach’s embroidery. One of her most significant works, Remembrance of Life in Fresno provides a visual narrative of Zorach’s early years through the eyes of the middle-aged artist. In this family portrait, Zorach returns to the approach seen in her earlier embroideries in that she places her family outside of the home and absorbed in their individual activities. Memory plays an important role in the embroidery, highlighted not simply by the title, but by the figure of the mature Zorach lying in repose on a



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hammock. A sleeping cat below her replicates her dream-like state. For his 1942 portraiture exhibition, Monroe Wheeler created a sub-category for portraits made exclusively from memory, which he called “poetical,” and noted their distinctiveness for their emphasis on “a dream world.”45 Zorach’s embroidery would have fit easily into this category of modern portraiture if it had been completed earlier in her career. In one of the most common types of self-portrait, artists present themselves seated in front of their work or surrounded by the tools of their trade. Such self-portraits provide a venue for artists to assert their cultural authority as participants in the tradition of art-making. However, in her book The Art of Reflection: Women Artists’ Self-Portraiture in the Twentieth Century, art historian Marsha Meskimmon has observed that, in contrast to men, women artists more often use other devices for self-representation, particularly narrative. As explained by Meskimmon, this narrative approach functions to disrupt the notion of a stable identity put forth in self-portraiture that depicts the artist at work.46 Remembrance of Life in Fresno is an example of narrative self-portraiture. Abandoning the standard tropes of the self-portrait, Zorach, nonetheless, reflects on her social position as an artist by constructing the story of her transition from young child to professional artist. In “Embroidery as Art,” Zorach described the subject of Remembrance of Life in Fresno: “I made myself a tapestry of my home in California, something I had planned for years. A large white gingerbread house, light and airy and delightful in stitches; the magnolia trees and palms, fences and flowers; children at night playing hide and seek under a street lamp; the Chinese vegetable man; my mother.”47 At the top of the embroidery, Zorach stitched the title, “Remembrance of Life in Fresno California and of My Childhood There Around the Year 1900.” She represents herself in separate sections to mark different periods of her life: as a prepubescent youth outside of her gingerbread house with her mother and sister; as a young woman standing by an open gate and about to be spirited away by a young man, presumably William, who extends his hand in a gesture of invitation to leave her family home behind; and as a mature woman of sixty-two years reclining in a hammock and reflecting on her life.48 Other figures scattered throughout the embroidery might also signify Zorach with family and friends. Unlike the figures in most of her other embroideries, all of the individuals are clothed.49 By excluding the nudes seen in her other embroidered works, Zorach grounds this embroidery in a reality that lends itself to an autobiographical interpretation.

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In addition to dividing the embroidery into different stages of her life, Zorach also denotes different times of day. The right section, where the adult Zorach can be found in repose, is clearly set in daylight, indicated by the bright blue sky and the shadow cast by the magnolia tree on the lawn in the front yard. The central section, dominated by the white gingerbread house, is also set in daylight, but a time change from day to evening occurs between this section and the sections to the left. A palm tree serves as a visual marker of the divide between day and evening, made evident by a shift in the color of its leaves from pale blue to a brownish green. Other indications of the evening hour include the dark sky and the presence of a lit streetlamp. The shift from day to night corresponds with the transition in Zorach’s own life from childhood to young artist. Zorach strategically places herself in daylight and in the center of the embroidery as a child while the young adult about to leave her family to embark on her new life as an artist is placed in evening light. In the bottom right, another time shift occurs as the mature Zorach, again in the light of day, dreams of her life experiences while stretched out in the hammock. Through the shift from day to night and back to day, Zorach explores the passage of time as cyclical rather than a linear progression. (In a linear progression, the older Zorach would be in evening light.) In this exploration of passing time and the memories associated with it, her embroidery is related to the ideas of philosopher Henri Bergson. He argued that the cumulative effects of our lived experiences result in a constantly evolving memory; as a new moment of experience is added onto older ones, an individual’s past—and memory of that past—is altered.50 Bergson had a significant impact on many American modern artists, so it is likely that Zorach was aware of his writing. As Charles Eldredge explains, he “was widely acclaimed by modernists, and the Stieglitz circle discussed and praised his work.”51 Marcel Proust was also popular among modern artists and he too helped to reformulate how American artists thought about time and memory. Beginning in the 1920s, his novel Remembrance of Times Past was extremely popular in American avant-garde circles. Indeed, a 1930 still life of wilted flowers and yellowing leaves, titled Still Life (Remembrance of Things  Past) (1930) (Figure 8.9), indicates Zorach’s knowledge of Proust’s writing. In 1949, the year she completed Remembrance of Life in Fresno, Proust’s Letters to a Friend was published in English.52 Influenced by Bergson’s understanding of time, Proust believed that the meaning of time could be grasped only by intuitive memory. Memory is central to Zorach’s embroidery. Decades separated her from the experiences that she attempted to recall as did the physical distance between her parents’ home in California and her adult life



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Figure 8.9  Marguerite Zorach, Still Life (Remembrance of Things Past) (1930)—Oil on canvas, 34 × 28½ in.—Zorach Collection, LLC—Image courtesy of Gerald Peters Gallery, New York.

as an artist in New York. After traveling abroad, she left her family permanently at the age of twenty-five, returning only once, eight years later, in 1920.53 By the time that Zorach created Remembrance of Life in Fresno, her mother had died, she had not been back to California in decades, and the days of her youth were far behind her. That Zorach represents herself in the act of daydreaming about her early life experiences recalls Bergson’s observation that “the present contains nothing more than the past.” Zorach was not the only artist among her contemporaries to evoke a Bergsonian inspired passage of time in her work. Again, a comparison with Zorach’s friend Stettheimer reveals similarities between the two artists. In her

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essay “Florine Stettheimer and Temporal Modernism,” Barbara Bloemink observes that Stettheimer symbolized the temporal nature of existence through the repetition of single characters.54 For example, in La Fête à Duchamp (1917/ private collection), Duchamp’s figure is repeated several times as he participates in a celebration in his honor that lasts from day into evening: driving to the party in a red car with his friend Francis Picabia, waving to guests at the garden entrance upon his arrival, sitting under a canopy with an unidentified woman, and accepting a toast under the veranda located in the background. To indicate the change from day to evening, the bright sun of daylight in the front and center of the painting is juxtaposed with the veranda in the background that is lighted by Japanese lanterns. Bloemink links Stettheimer’s interest in time specifically to Bergson.55 Like Stettheimer’s painting, Zorach’s embroidery exemplifies the general concern among modernists with the temporal nature of existence. Meskimmon has observed that owing to the relationship between domesticity and the social position of woman, many women artists “have looked toward notions of genealogy or ‘domestic’ time and history as a model and local spaces as the place of self-portraiture” when attempting to represent broader ideas about time and history.56 Scholars have recognized this trend in the works of Frida Kahlo, who also explored temporality through autobiographical narrative. In her painting My Grandparents, My Parents and I (1936/Museum of Modern Art, NY), she traces family lineage over three generations, including pre-birth manifestations of the self in the form of an embryo and as a sperm and egg coming together at conception. This use of personal history to invoke universal principles of time, space, and progress contrasts with the tradition of selfportraiture by men in which the superior social position of men as cultural authorities makes it appear to be a far more “natural” act for male artists to invoke national or global history in their work. This is clearly illustrated in the case of Kahlo and Diego Rivera.57 Rivera created murals for the newly established national government that constructed the history of Mexico from its Pre-Columbian beginnings to a utopian future in which class domination was eliminated through Marxist revolution. He made direct references to historical figures and events and included self-portraits to demonstrate his firm commitment to Mexico’s revolutionary movement. In the case of Zorach, Stettheimer, and Kahlo, autobiography replaces historical references as a vehicle for the exploration of universal ideas. Remembrance of Life in Fresno presents an idyllic portrait of Zorach’s family in which happy and carefree children play in manicured lawns filled



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with flowering trees and lush gardens. To the right of the house, a pre-teen, most likely Zorach, is engrossed in a book, stretched out under the shade of a magnolia tree and undisturbed by her younger sister who is close to running over her on her tricycle, or the dog nearby about to pounce, or even the water from the sprinkler system so close to spraying her legs. Behind her, two women buy produce from a Chinese man selling vegetables, a scene described by Zorach in her published article for Art in America. In the left section of the embroidery, a group of three children play a game of hide-andseek around the lighted lamppost, again described by Zorach in her article. Perhaps as a nod to her later romance with William, to the left of the hideand-seek game, two young adults can be seen either dancing or playfully roughhousing together. All of these scenes suggest that Zorach’s childhood was ideal. However, this does not appear to have been the reality of her life. Based on evidence from her personal letters and her poetry, Zorach had a difficult, if not unbearable, relationship with her mother Winifred. In her poem To My Mother, she described her mother’s unrelenting attacks on her psyche: The insistence of your talk Beating about me Wearing me down The incessant rain Bit by bit Wearing the granite My brain resounds with the iriteration [sic] [undecipherable] of your words. Forcing apart the rock Eating around hard surfaces Finding invisible frailities [sic] Fingering them into glaring crevices Until the image of myself is worn and coroded [sic] into wild fantasies And the echoes of my soul’s laughter rolls and mocks in gaping caverns. I would burst each particle asunder and rejoice in the destruction that would end your torture I would become a river and laugh as your beating drops swelled my strength But I am granite and helpless as the hills before your never-wearing voice.58

This poem, probably written when Zorach was still in her twenties, describes a fraught relationship between mother and daughter. Zorach’s anger toward her mother softened as the years went by, so that by the time of her mother’s death

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in 1930 she was able to reflect sympathetically on her life. In a letter to William written from her family home just after her mother had died, she wrote: I saw her dead, she looked very wierd [sic] and very strange and very beautiful. I never saw such a strange and beautiful head. I feel as if life was so hard and so terrible for her—no one could help that but it is very pathetic.59

Zorach’s description of her mother’s life as “pathetic” suggests that she was too damaged emotionally to care for her children in a loving and supportive way. In Remembrance of Life in Fresno, the separateness between Zorach and her mother is the only marker of their troubled relationship. Zorach, Edith, and Winifred are centrally located in the front yard of the Thompson gingerbread house. But in spite of their close proximity, both Zorach and her mother are preoccupied with their private worlds and appear almost unaware of each other. Even baby Edith does not warrant their attention and amuses herself independently as well. In Remembrance of Life in Fresno, independent individuals are absorbed in their own worlds. Although this lack of engagement among family members could symbolize the limited emotional bonds between Winifred and her children, from an alternate perspective, it also suggests an independent spirit in Zorach and her sister, even at this young age, that would later come to define Zorach as an adult. The representation of Winifred reading the newspaper similarly provides an alternative to traditional mother/child renditions rooted in Madonna and Child imagery in which the mother is singularly and exclusively devoted to her child. The subject recalls Mary Cassatt’s painting of her own mother reading the newspaper, Le Figaro (1878/private collection). Zorach again leaves us with a tension between two competing interpretations—this time regarding the mother and daughter relationship— that are not easily resolved. More striking than the independence between mother and daughter is the physical absence of Zorach’s father, who is included only symbolically in  the  embroidery. At the bottom of the embroidery, Zorach stitched the words, “The Home of W P Thompson at 274 Glenn Avenue.” This text directly connects the gingerbread house to her father; the initials “W P” are his—his first name was William. A successful lawyer in the Napa area while Zorach was a child, William probably did not participate in the daily routines of family life as a result of his job. His physical absence is noteworthy, however, because Zorach is believed to have had a close relationship with him.60 Although the family home looks quite inviting with its curtained windows and decorative architectural elements, the Thompson women remain outside its doors. This is not surprising based on Zorach’s other embroideries, since she often placed her



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subjects outside rather than indoors. However, Remembrance of Life in Fresno is distinct from these other works in that she genders the home as a masculine domain through her embroidered text that labels it the property of her father. The Thompson gingerbread house, represented romantically as a picture-perfect dwelling, takes on symbolic meaning as a result. Standing in for her father, the house intimates William Thompson’s absence and perhaps his daughter’s longing for him. In another interesting juxtaposition, tucked away in the left background of the embroidery stands a tiny house that is easily overlooked due to its location, small in size in comparison to the Zorach house, and the foliage that grows around it. In this diminutively sized house, traditional gender roles prevail: a male figure, presumably the father, dominates the center, sitting sternly with crossed legs and folded hands; to the right, a mother holds a baby in the traditional mother/child embrace that has defined these representations; and to the left is a baby in a crib. Here Zorach emphasizes the separateness of the figures by the individual architectural spaces that each occupy, created by the frame of the house and emphasized by the black stitching behind each section. By comparison, the Zorach family appears much more free outside of the home, enjoying the unrestricted outdoors filled with flowers and trees. While Remembrance of Life in Fresno lends itself to a psychobiographical reading because of the intimate subject of Zorach’s childhood experiences, it is equally compelling as an exploration of the way that Zorach constructed her social identity as an artist. In a traditional rendition of gender, Zorach depicts herself in the left section of the embroidery as a young adult about to be escorted away from her home by her future husband. This departure ultimately led to her flourishing career as an artist in New York, but her depiction nonetheless suggests a dependence on William as her guide and does not accurately represent her real-life experience, in which Zorach traveled to New York by herself. In contrast, she portrays herself at the bottom right as a mature artist unaided by her husband. Age and experience have transformed the young Zorach about to embark upon a new career into an independent woman who authoritatively reconstructs her life experiences for public view in a comfortably reclining pose. Zorach’s reclining pose in Remembrance of Life in Fresno connects her selfrepresentation to another standard trope of art history, the reclining female nude, although in the embroidery, she is fully clothed. Since Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1538/Uffizi Gallery, Florence), artists have appropriated this pose in their representations of the female body to demonstrate the significance of their work in relation to the tradition of art. Modern artists were no exception and examples of this abound.61 Zorach’s undertaking of a modernist reinterpretation

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of the reclining female nude is demonstrated in her painting Nude Reclining (1922) (Figure 6.7), in which perspective is distorted, the curves of the figure are exaggerated, and expressionist brushstrokes are used. In Remembrance of Life in Fresno, however, Zorach conflates the roles of artist and model, presenting herself in the pose but resisting its sexual connotations by being fully clothed— and in the surprisingly formal attire of a long dress and black high-heeled shoes. Although the figure of the elder Zorach is reclining, the embroidery in no way suggests passivity because the narrative that unfolds behind her is the clear result of her active imagination. We are viewing the artist at work, but in this case the usual tools of the trade—canvas and brush, needle and thread—have been relinquished for a concrete manifestation of the imagination: a representation of artistic creation in the form of memories and dreams created in the mind of the reclining Zorach and presented to the viewer in the completed embroidery. Life experiences—scenes from her past presented by the daydreaming artist— and artistic creation—symbolized by the artist in the imaginative act of daydreaming—merge in this symbolic representation of the artist’s creative act. In Remembrance of Life in Fresno, Zorach transcends autobiography by exploring temporality and through her investigation of her social identity as an artist. Her self-portrait as an artist rejects the image of the authoritative artist seated at an easel. The narrative structure of Remembrance of Life in Fresno quietly disrupts the notion of fixed identity, as the figure of Zorach changes over time, particularly in that her depiction of herself as a young artist guided by her future husband is transformed to that of the mature artist, alone in a hammock, reflecting on her life. Remembrance of Life in Fresno gives voice to Zorach’s life circumstances, the philosophical underpinnings of her art, and her social position as a woman artist.

Harbeson’s portrait of Madame Amelita Galli-Curci Although not included in Wheeler’s 1942 MoMA show on 20th Century Portraits, Harbeson’s Madame Amelita Galli-Curci (1921) (plate 16) would have met the criteria that Wheeler set out for the show. The portrait was exhibited in 1928 at the Milch Gallery in New York along with several of Harbeson’s other works. Like Zorach, Harbeson depends on symbolism rather than verisimilitude to define her subject, a portrait of the popular Italian-born American opera singer. Galli-Curci first gained popularity in the United States in 1916 when she sang with the Chicago Opera Association, and she continued to receive widespread acclaim throughout the 1920s for her performances with the



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Metropolitan Opera in New York. After attending one of Galli-Curci’s concerts, Harbeson created her portrait of the soprano. Based in part on observation, the embroidery shows the singer dressed in a gown inspired by the actual one she wore at the performance Harbeson attended. But the embroidery moves well beyond verisimilitude. A large bust of the singer dominates the work; it is juxtaposed with the orchestra, shown in significantly reduced scale at the bottom to symbolize Galli-Curci’s dominating presence in the opera world. A natural landscape fills the middleground, including flowers, trees, and grass, embroidered to create a highly decorative design. Two large sections of the embroidery are left unstitched: the sky in the background and Galli-Curci’s neck and face; facial features are represented only by simple lines. Framed by her thick, black hair, Galli-Curci’s image rises from the heavily embroidered ground below her into the weightless sky represented by thinly stitched pale blue lines. Applying an approach to embroidery she considered modern, Harbeson uses simplified lines and leaves large sections of her foundation unstitched. She explained that her use of line and color yielded a highly symbolic rendering of the opera singer’s musical talents. She believed that the feeling of music was expressed through line, while contrasting colors suggested the musical beat.62 According to Harbeson, “The portrait depends primarily upon line for its interpretation. It is the author’s belief that lyrical qualities may be found in a single line. . . . Black and deep blue wools used in the men’s figures are placed against the Venetian pink background of the gown to provide vibration and thus introduce the music theme.”63 In Madame Amelita GalliCurci, Harbeson hoped to reproduce the “essence” of music through the formal elements of her composition so that the viewer, while looking at Galli-Curci’s image, might experience firsthand the same feelings evoked when hearing GalliCurci sing. Additional features of this embroidery add to its symbolic content. To emphasize Galli-Curci’s status as a preeminent performer and “in recognition of her supreme artistry,”64 Harbeson placed a laurel wreath topped by a gold crown directly over Galli-Curci’s head, held in place by two fluttering birds. Most importantly, Harbeson situates her subject outdoors, and this setting plays a key role in the interpretation of the embroidery. Rather than locating GalliCurci on stage inside an opera house, where she would actually have performed, she places her in nature, as if the singer’s talent was far too expansive to be contained within the walls of a music hall. Indeed, nature, with all of its beauty and power, serves as a metaphor for the ability of the singer herself. As with Zorach’s images of women in nature, one might be tempted to connect this work to the longstanding gender divide in which women are associated with nature

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and men with culture. But in both cases, nature is not meant to limit the subjects but to provide them with a space to express themselves freely. Art historian Mary Garrard makes the point that portraits of women connected to nature can be progressive when the artist perceives nature respectfully. For example, Garrard argues that Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci (ca. 1478-80) is “an honorific image of a young woman who had achieved recognition as a poet, and whose physical beauty is here presented as coextensive with her intellectual beauty” based on Leonardo’s perception of “female-identified nature as the greatest force in the universe, at a time when other men discredited nature’s power and sought to control it.”65 Due to limited information on Harbeson, it is difficult to draw conclusions on how she perceived nature. But the large presence of Galli-Cursi in the image suggests that the singer is dominating nature rather than being controlled by it. In an interesting convergence between the needlepoint interests of Harbeson and her subject, Galli-Curci was also a committed needleworker. An interview with the opera singer in the March 1931 issue of Needlecraft magazine is dedicated to a discussion of Galli-Curci’s perspective on needlework as a practitioner of the craft. When reminded by the person conducting the interview that the focus of the interview would be on the opera star’s needlework, not her singing, GalliCurci replied, “I am proud to be interviewed on such a subject. I am a most enthusiastic needlewoman. I work at something [in the form of needlework] in much of my spare time.”66 Galli-Curci valued needlework so highly because she believed that the practice of needlework could “contribute to real happiness and spiritual growth.” She observed, “Can anything that inculcates patience, concentration, and steadiness of nerve, be disposed of arbitrarily? As long as there is one woman who admires and longs for these virtues, needlework will last.”67 Galli-Curci thus draws a connection between needlework and her professional career as a singer in that the “virtues” she associated with needlework sustained her in her singing career. More broadly, Galli-Curci saw needlework as a corrective to the superficiality that defined modern living in the way that it fostered concentration. She explained, “Modern life makes little demand in the way of concentrating the eyes. We glance generally at large canvases. It is beneficial to come down to particulars, to concentrate the muscles and make them work.”68 For Galli-Curci, needlework was a perfect exercise for developing this kind of concentration. Finally, Galli-Curci commented on the significance of needlework as an art form, observing, “It is an art which will persist as long as there are women to do it.” Holding needlework in such high regard, Galli-Curci would surely have been honored to have had her portrait done in embroidery.



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Two months later, when a profile of Harbeson was published in Needlecraft, her portrait of Galli-Curci was reproduced with the profile as evidence of Harbeson’s innovative and modern spirit as an embroiderer.69 Harbeson’s portrait of Galli-Curci is one of the few known embroideries for which the artist did not create a pattern. One of her earliest works, it was created before Harbeson had established a relationship with Needlecraft. However, it is unlikely that the magazine would have solicited a pattern for an opera singer based on opera’s limited popular appeal. The embroidery was purchased by the New York art collector Irwin Untermyer and is illustrated in a book on his collection of needlework, tapestries, and textiles.70

Harbeson’s representation of American Indian women In 1933, Harbeson created portraits of two American Indian women for Needlecraft: Pocahontas and Sacajawea. She also created a portrait of the fictional character Minnehaha from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem the Song of Hiawatha.71 In an article dedicated to the life of Pocahontas that announced this series of embroideries, all three women are recognized as “Indian girl heroines.”72 Harbeson, perhaps at the direction of Needlecraft magazine, made an interesting choice to focus on Indian women since by this time images of Native peoples by Anglos largely focused on Indian men.73 (Images created at this time by Native artists themselves for the art market were often generalized scenes of Native life rather than representations of specific individuals.)74 In all three of Harbeson’s embroideries, the woman subject dominates the center while the background provides specific incidents from her life. The portrait of Sacajawea (Figure 8.10) is most powerful in its recognition of Sacajawea’s role as a leader of the Lewis and Clark expedition. She stands on top of a mountain range confidently pointing out the direction to the expedition party; two diminutively sized figures, probably Lewis and Clark themselves, are located far behind her. An outline of North America defines the background as if Sacajawea is in full command of this entire territory. Pocahontas (Figure 8.11), a problematic figure in the way her identity has been constructed in the telling of American history, is also depicted by Harbeson as a single central figure in the artist’s embroidered portrait of her, although she has less of commanding presence. Events of her life are stitched behind her in much lighter thread but remind the viewer of her real-life experiences rather than the fictional narrative of her as an Indian princess. Not surprisingly, the story of her saving the life of John

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Smith is represented at the bottom right of the embroidery. But the Needlecraft article published on Pocahontas to complement to her embroidered portrait informs the reader that “some historians doubt the story of the saving of the life of Captain John Smith.”75 Indeed, Florence Yoder Wilson, the author, makes a concerted effort throughout her synopsis of Pocahontas’s life to distinguish fact from fiction at the same time that she celebrates this “tomboy” as a “maker of American history,” pointing out to readers that Pocahontas’s name was actually Matoaka. In her embroidery, Harbeson also provides additional information

Figure 8.10 Georgia Brown Harbeson, Sacajawea—Front cover of Needlecraft, July 1933.



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Figure 8.11 Georgian Brown Harbeson, Pocahontas—Front cover of Needlecraft, April 1933.

on Pocahontas beyond her relationship to John Smith. She stitches “Virginia” in the top right, a reference to Pocahontas’s homeland as a member of the tribal nation at Tsenacommacah in Virginia; the date of 1612 is a possible reference to her kidnapping by the British, which actually occurred in 1613; and a ship refers to her leaving the colonies for her trip to London that ultimately resulted in her death. This effort both in the embroidery and Yoder’s article to document the facts of Pocahontas’s life was progressive in its challenge to colonialist constructions of her life.

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By the 1930s, many of the images of Native peoples by Anglo modern artists were being created in the Southwest. In 1931, Maynard Dixon arrived in Taos with Dorothea Lange and began to paint portraits of Indian types (Earth Knower, 1931/Oakland Museum of California) as well as specific individuals (Antonio Mirabal 1931/Brigham Young University Museum of Art, Provo, UT). Dixon explained that his images of Indians were meant to represent “something ominous and unavoidably impending . . . of complete helplessness in the face of fate.”76 For Dixon, the helplessness of Indians was akin to the helplessness of Americans as a whole during the Depression. Edward Weston traveled throughout New Mexico for eight years around this time. His photograph of Tony Lujan (1930/Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT), husband of Mabel Dodge, was Weston’s effort, as he described it, to “give heroic strength” to a “rather flabby Indian, settled down into a life of ease.”77 All of these images are problematic to the extent that they engage primitivist interests in Native cultures. As an alternative, by the 1930s, Native artists were producing their own representations of their lives and cultures for the art market. The Art Studio at the Santa Fe Indian School, established in 1932 under the direction of Dorothy Dunn, encouraged Native artistic production, although the work produced at this school was often influenced by Dunn and thus not always an expression of the artists themselves. Harbeson’s embroideries of Indian women must be understood within this historical context. Her choice to turn to historical figures (and a fictional woman) as her subject indexes a preoccupation with the American Indian past that avoided addressing contemporary American Indian life. Furthermore, her choice to celebrate lone individuals disconnected from their tribes downplays each woman’s cultural heritage. But Harbeson does represent Pocahontas and Sacajawea as actors in history and for this the embroideries transcend pervasive stereotypes of Indian women in particular and American women as a whole as passive victims of history.

Conclusion Portrait artists working during the first half of the twentieth century took on the challenge of creating subjective interpretations of their sitters. These portraits challenged expectations that a portrait provide a recognizable image of the subject, which could only be achieved using a representational style. Instead, mimesis was sacrificed at times for symbolic imagery that served as a springboard to explore ideas related to broader artistic concerns. Through their experiments in this



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genre, Zorach and Harbeson contributed to a redefinition of portraiture during the first half of the twentieth century. That they chose embroidery as a medium to explore this redefinition makes their contribution all the more significant. They challenged the portraiture tradition by applying modernist principles to their subject in a medium previously unrecognized as appropriate for art.

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Conclusion

In the first half of the twentieth century, embroidery was valued as a relevant medium for artistic experimentation among modern artists. Artists experimenting in embroidery believed that their choice of medium should not limit the seriousness with which their work was evaluated. Recognizing the biases against embroidery, they often invoked their training as professional artists in their attempts to equate embroidery with art. Embroiderers who contributed to the modern embroidery movement were steadfast in their efforts to “modernize” needlework by incorporating modern subjects and styles into their work. A significant limitation to the arguments put forth by proponents of modern embroidery was that by arguing for embroidery’s alignment with painting and sculpture, they failed to challenge the hierarchies that marginalized craft in the first place. It would remain for the 1970s feminist movement to more fully articulate this challenge. In emphasizing the connections between embroidery and fine art, modern embroiderers also failed to recognize significant differences between art and craft as forms of artistic production. These differences have begun to be examined by craft historians today.1 It is quite understandable that modern women embroiderers chose not to argue for embroidery’s difference from the fine arts. Indeed, they would have run the risk of marginalizing themselves even further in both arenas—art and craft—in which they strived to participate. In spite of the discrimination that modern embroiderers experienced as a result of working in craft, there were also benefits. Due to its marginal status in the art world, embroidery was less regulated than painting and sculpture and thus allowed artists more opportunities to be recognized for their work and more freedom to be experimental with their subject matter. Thus, it is not surprising that Zorach’s embroideries reveal resistance to traditional gender expectations in spite of the fact that she was working in a gendered medium. Zorach’s

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progressive perspective on gender is evident in the way that she constructed spaces for her female figures to operate outside of prescribed gender roles. Her subjects vary from imagery inspired by popular culture, like the circus, to family portraits imbued with rich, symbolic content characteristic of much modernist portraiture at that time. Her group portraits successfully integrate modernist concerns with domestic subjects. Harbeson, too, imagines a space for women that was free from prescribed gender roles in her most compelling embroidery, Summer (The Enchanted Isle) (plate 9). Finally, embroidery, more than painting, provided women some financial independence because their embroideries often sold more readily than their paintings. While embroidery allowed for a freer exploration of subject matter, the medium also facilitated stylistic experimentation. The embroideries examined in this book exhibit great stylistic diversity both between women embroideries and within each woman’s body of work. In the interest of engaging modernist aesthetics, embroideries were sometimes designed with large sections of the foundation left unstitched to create an abstract effect. Other embroideries were highly decorative, characterized by swirling arabesques and other decorative elements created through the mastery of a variety of stitches. That embroiderers often chose to stitch the entire foundation of their work resulted in dense, decorative designs. As I hope to have demonstrated throughout this book, these stylistic variations that range from the decorative to abstraction reflect modern art practices of the first half of the twentieth century. Representing an exploration of embroidery’s potential as a medium, these embroideries pose important questions about the relationship between modernist art practices and women’s artistic production. By the end of the 1930s, the modern embroidery movement established by Zorach, Harbeson, and their collaborators was in transition. Handmade embroidery was overshadowed by an interest in weaving, which flourished with the arrival of Bauhaus textile artists Anni Albers at Black Mountain College and Marli Erhman at the Institute of Design in Chicago.2 Loja Saarinen also contributed to this new interest in weaving when she arrived from Finland to teach at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. These textile artists were responsible for the rebirth of handweaving in the United States, as they instructed their students on hand looms and encouraged mastery of weaving techniques.3 Their weaving designs exhibited the geometric abstraction that was so highly valued by advocates of the machine aesthetic, and the rhetoric by Albers and others supported industrial production. Unlike those American modernists who believed that objects made by hand had a unique intrinsic value, Albers and



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other European modernists argued that only speed of execution differentiated hand  made and machine-made objects.4 By midcentury, embroidery lost some of the status it had enjoyed during the earlier part of the century. The modern embroidery movement as it had been defined before midcentury was absorbed to some extent within organizations that supported traditional craft production.5 Hobbyist/amateur embroiderers played an essential role in sustaining a continued interest in modern embroidery at a time when artists found less value in the medium, just as they have always played a pivotal role in ensuring the continuation of the embroidery tradition throughout history. Indeed, art critic Walter Rendell Storey took note of the importance of amateur needleworkers when he described “fine needlework” as “an art which has always owed much to the originality and enthusiasm of amateurs as well as to the serious application of professionals.”6 Embroideries created by these amateurs warrant further research. Their names consistently appear in literature from this time period—for example, Edith Roosevelt, who exhibited her embroideries in the same shows as Harbeson; or Marion Fuller, who also designed embroideries for Needlecraft (Figure 9.1) at the same time that Harbeson did. They should be recognized for their contribution to the modern embroidery movement and ensuring the continuation of embroidery as a practice at times when the art establishment showed little interest in it. The relationship between amateur and professional embroiderers is of great significance in considering the history of embroidery and another embroidery topic needing further scholarship. Stephen Knott’s book Amateur Craft: History and Theory is an important contribution in this regard.7 And while Harbeson focused on women embroiderers in defining the modern embroidery movement, it is important to note that men also contributed to the history of embroidery. Joseph McBrinn’s essay on the embroideries of Russell Lynes, published in the Journal of Modern Craft, provides one example of the role played by men in advancing embroidery as art.8 Men’s contributions to amateur/hobbyist embroidery also need further investigation. By midcentury, the embroidery movement was reformulated in ways more germane to mid-century modernism. The work of Mariska Karasz provides one example of this, but certainly additional examples will emerge with more dedicated research on this topic. When Zorach, Harbeson, and their allies picked up their needles, the classification system that separated embroidery from the fine arts—a classification grounded in embroidery’s association with women’s artistic production, the craft tradition, and the decorative arts—was called into question by their actions. Unable to liberate embroidery from these biases against it, nonetheless, the

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Figure 9.1  Marion Fuller, Cottage Garden (ca. 1935)—Fuller, “A Gay Garden with Tulips,” Needlecraft, May 1935.

modern embroidery movement has historical significance as a sustained and articulate challenge to them. Most certainly, it reveals the instability of these categories in the first place. Furthermore, it stands as a notable precursor to the celebration and reclamation of women’s artistic production that arose in the 1970s by feminist artists using textiles, such as Miriam Schapiro and Judy Chicago, and it anticipates the commitment of the 1960s and 1970s fiber arts movement to textiles as legitimate materials for art practice demonstrated by fiber artists such as Sheila Hicks and Claire Zeisler. Art historian Elissa Auther has argued that “the use of fiber by artists across the art world in the 1960s and 1970s was a significant locus” for the “sorting out” of the “artistically legitimate



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from the illegitimate.”9 As described by Auther, this act of sorting out ultimately provides “an illuminating example of power and authority at work in the art world.”10 Auther’s observations on fiber art of this later period holds true for the reception of embroideries in the first half of the century. Fiercely dedicated to the mission of elevating embroidery to the level of fine art, American modern embroiderers challenged the hierarchy that relegated women’s artistic production to its inferior status at the same time that it revealed how deeply embedded and powerful that hierarchy was. This book is meant to recognize modern women embroiderers and their work for their contribution to this medium and to the development of modern art as a whole.

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Notes

Chapter 1 1 Georgiana Brown Harbeson, “The Four Moderns in America, Exponents of the Newer Embroidery,” Bulletin of the Needle and Bobbin Club 19 (1935): 18–25. 2 Georgiana Brown Harbeson, American Needlework: The History of Decorative Stitchery and Embroidery from the Late 16th to the 20th Century (New York: CowardMcCann, Inc., 1938). 3 Frances Morris, “Georgiana Brown Harbeson, A Painter in Needlework,” Bulletin of the Needle and Bobbin Club 19 (1935): 3. 4 Harbeson, quoted in Helen Johnson Keyes, “Stories in Stitchery,” Christian Science Monitor, July 26, 1933. 5 Harbeson, “The Four Moderns,” 19. 6 Harbeson, American Needlework, 184. Harbeson was not the only person to use the term needlepainting. 7 Harbeson, “The Four Moderns,” 20. 8 Harbeson takes note of this in “The Four Moderns.” Ibid. 9 Marguerite Zorach, “Embroidery as Art,” Art in America (Fall 1956): 51. 10 Hildreth York, “New Deal Craft Programs and Their Social Implications,” in Revivals! Diverse Traditions, The History of Twentieth-Century American Craft, 1920-1945, ed. Janet Kardon (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994), 56. 11 Ibid., 61. 12 Francis O’Connor, “The Usable Future: The Role of Fantasy in the Promotion of Consumer Society for Art,” in Dawn of a New Day, The New York World’s Fair, 1939/40, ed. Helen Harrison (New York: New York University Press, 1980), 63. 13 Holgar Cahill, quoted in WPA Art Program planning document dated 1940, reprinted in O’Connor, “The Usable Future,” 63. For more on Cahill’s perspective, see Holgar Cahill, American Folk Art: The Art of the Common Man in America, 1750-1900 (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1932). 14 Patt Likos, “Georgiana Brown Harbeson, Needlework Advocate,” Women Artists News 6, no. 6–7 (1981): 12. 15 Harvey Green, “Cultural and Crisis: Americans and the Craft Revival,” in Revivals! Diverse Traditions, 31.

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16 Janet Kardon, ed., Revivals! Diverse Traditions, The History of Twentieth-Century American Craft, 1920-1945. 17 Wendy Kaplan, “The Art that is Life:” The Arts & Crafts Movement in America, 1875-1920 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1987), 60. More recently, Kaplan reasserts the impact of the Arts and Crafts movement on American modernism. In her consideration of California modernism, she writes, “The characteristics associated with the mid-century home had first developed with the Arts and Crafts movement at the turn of the last century, particularly in the work of Frank Lloyd Wright.” Wendy Kaplan, “Introduction: ‘Living in a Modern Way’,” in Living in a Modern Way: California Design 1930-1965, ed. Wendy Kaplan (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 28. 18 Christa Mayer Thompson, “Textiles as Documented by The Craftsman,” in The Ideal Home: The History of Twentieth-Century American Craft, 1900-1920, ed. Janet Kardon (New York: Harry Abrams, 1994), 103. Credit goes to one of the peer reviewers of this book for pointing out the precedent of The Craftsman in publishing needlework patterns. For more on Stickley’s design aesthetic, see Arlette Klaric, “Gustav Stickley’s Designs for the Home: An Activist Aesthetic for the Upwardly Mobile,” in Seeing High and Low: Representing Social Conflict in American Visual Culture, ed. Patricia Johnston (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). 19 Janet Koplos and Bruce Metcalf, Makers: A History of American Studio Craft (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), ix. 20 Cynthia Fowler, Hooked Rugs: Encounters in American Modern Art, Craft and Design (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013), 149–50; 153–7. 21 Rozsika Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine (1984; reprint, London: Women’s Press, 1996). 22 Rachel Maines, “American Needlework in Transition, 1880-1930,” University of Michigan Papers in Women’s Studies (May 1978): 64. 23 Ibid. 24 Florence Yoder Wilson, “Watch the Needles of the Younger Generation: They Are Full of New Tricks,” Needlecraft (May 1931): 16. 25 Maines, “American Needlecraft in Transition, 1880-1930,” Sew Business (February 1978): 124. 26 Glenn Adamson makes this point in The Invention of Craft (London: Bloomsbury, 2013). 27 Ibid., xxii. 28 Christopher Reed, Bloomsbury Rooms: Modernism, Subculture, and Domesticity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 2. 29 Katherine Kuenzli, The Nabis and Intimate Modernism: Painting and the Decorative at the Fin-de-Sìecle (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 1.

Notes 199 30 Ibid. 31 Bibiana Obler, Intimate Collaborations: Kandinsky and Münter, Arp and Taeuber (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 6. Obler first to explores this material in “Taeuber, Arp and the Politic of Cross-Stitch,” The Art Bulletin 91, no. 2 (June 2009): 207–29. 32 Ibid., 7. 33 Reed, Bloomsbury Rooms, 5. 34 Christopher Reed, “Introduction,” in Not at Home: The Suppression of Domesticity in Modern Art and Architecture, ed. Christopher Reed (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996), 15. 35 Alastair Wright, Matisse and the Subject of Modernism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 12. 36 Glenn Adamson, thinking through craft (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 11–12. 37 Ibid., 14. 38 Ibid., 39. 39 Caroline Jones, Eyesight Alone: Clement Greenberg’s Modernism and the Bureaucratization of the Senses (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). 40 Virginia Gardner Troy, The Modernist Textile: Europe and America, 1890-1940 (London: Lund Humphries, 2006). 41 Nicola Shilliam, “Emerging Identity: American Textile Artists in Early Twentieth-Century America,” in Early Modern Textiles: From Arts and Crafts to Art Deco, ed. Marianne Carlano and Nicola Shilliam (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1994). 42 Hazel Clark, “The Textile Art of Marguerite Zorach,” Woman’s Art Journal 16 (Spring/Summer 1995): 18–25. 43 Cynthia Fowler, “Early American Modernism and Craft Production: The Embroideries of Marguerite Zorach” (PhD diss., University of Delaware, 2002). 44 Regarding craft theory, Adamson has already been mentioned. Other recent publications include Clare Wilkinson-Weber and Alicia Ory DeNicola, eds., Critical Craft: Technology, Globalization, and Capitalism (London: Bloomsbury, 2016); Nicholas Bell, ed., Nation Building: Craft and Contemporary American Culture (London: Bloomsbury, 2015); and Maria Elena Buszek, ed., Extra/Ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art (Durham, NC: Duke University, 2011). Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting at the New York Museum of Arts and Design (2007) represents one of many recent exhibitions on contemporary craft. 45 Julia Bryan-Wilson, “Sewing Notions,” Artforum 49, no. 6 (February 2011): 73. Bryan-Wilson’s recently published book, Fray: Art and Textile Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), will surely contribute further to this discussion. 46 Ibid., 74.

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Chapter 2 1 Adamson, The Invention of Craft, xv. 2 Ibid., xvii. 3 Ibid., 184. 4 For a history of the Arts and Crafts movement in America, see Kaplan, “This Art That Is Life.” For the position of women within the Arts and Crafts movement, see Anthea Callen, Women Artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement, 1870-1914 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979). 5 See Linda Parry, Textiles of the Arts and Crafts Movement (London: Thames and Hudson, 1988). 6 Fiona MacCarthy, Anarchy & Beauty: William Morris and His Legacy, 18601960 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 73. All of the embroiderers were women. 7 Dilys Blum, The Fine Art of Textiles: The Collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1997), 47. 8 Mission of the Society of Decorative Art, reproduced in Candace Wheeler, The Development of Embroidery in America (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1921), 112. 9 See, for example, Candace Wheeler, “Decorative Art,” Architectural Record 4 (April to June 1895): 409. 10 Amelia Peck, “Candace Wheeler: A Life in Art and Business,” in Candace Wheeler: The Art and Enterprise of American Design, 1875-1900, eds. Amelia Peck and Carol Irish (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 25. 11 Ibid., 70–80. 12 Candace Wheeler, The Development of Embroidery in America, 152. 13 Ibid., 117. 14 Ibid., 116. 15 Harbeson, American Needlework, 162–63. 16 Gertrude Whiting, A Lace Guide for Makers and Collectors (New York: E. P. Dutton, ca. 1920). 17 For the history of the organization, see “Fifty Years of the Needle and Bobbin Club,” Bulletin of the Needle and Bobbin Club 49 (1965–66): 3–16. 18 Morris, “Georgiana Brown Harbeson.” 19 Unfortunately, I was unable to locate any significant archival material on the organization. 20 Harbeson, American Needlework, 162. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid.

Notes 201 23 In contrast, canvas work is a form of counted-thread embroidery used for symmetrical images in which threads are counted and mapped out before beginning the embroidery. 24 Harbeson, “The Four Moderns,” 19. 25 Ibid. 26 Harbeson, quoted in Keyes, “Stories in Stitchery.” 27 Jeffrey Meikle, Twentieth Century Limited: Industrial Design in America, 1925-1939 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1979). See also Arthur Pulos, American Design Ethic: A History of Industrial Design (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983); Richard Guy Wilson, The Machine Age in America, 1918-1941 (New York: Harry Abrams, 1986); and J. Stewart Johnson, American Modern, 1925-1940: Design for a New Age (New York: Harry Abrams, 2000). 28 Harbeson, “The Four Moderns,” 19–20. 29 Mary Hogarth, Modern Embroidery (London: The Studio LTD, 1933). 30 Ibid., 9. 31 Ibid., 11. 32 Peg Weiss, Kandinsky in Munich: The Jungendstil Years (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 23. 33 There were limitations to this experimentation, however. Feminist art historian Norma Broude, for example, explains that Kandinsky “was always careful to maintain a clear distinction between these two poles of his activity, relegating the decorative arts, through a series of sophistic theoretical manipulations, to a clearly lower place.” Norma Broude, “Miriam Schapiro and ‘Femmage:’ Reflections on the Conflict Between Decoration and Abstraction in Twentieth-Century Art,” in Feminism and Art History: Questioning the Litany, eds. Norma Broude and Mary Garrard (New York: Harper and Row, 1982), 316–17. 34 For an overview on Delaunay, see Stanley Baron and Jacques Damase, Sonia Delaunay: The Life of an Artist (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1995). 35 In his autobiography, Biddle places high value upon experimenting in a variety of media citing several of his contemporaries who shared his perspective. George Biddle, An American Artist’s Story (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1939), 203. In addition to working in embroidery, Hunt Diederich developed an interest in ceramics after a trip to Morocco around 1923. As Karen Davies notes, Diederich borrowed subjects for his ceramic compositions from his works in other media. Davies quotes Diederich as stating in 1920, “Art should be useful, should fulfill some specific end and purpose in our lives and homes. There can be as much joy in making a candlestick or designing the leg of a table as the treatment of the nude.” Karen Davies, At Home in Manhattan: Modern Decorative Arts, 1925 to the Depression (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1983), 38–39.

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36 For a scholarly analysis about the relationship between art, design and industry, see Terry Smith, Making the Modern: Industry, Art, and Design in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). 37 “A Tapestry Supplement,” Modern Art Collector 1 (December 1915), n.p. 38 “Modern Embroidery,” in “Tapestry Supplement,” Modern Art Collector 1 (December 1915): n.p. 39 Fowler, Hooked Rugs, 50–51. 40 Parker, The Subversive Stitch, 191. Arp’s embroidery was reproduced in Dada 1 (July 1917). 41 Broude, “Miriam Schapiro and ‘Femmage’,” 315. 42 Weiss, Kandinsky in Munich, 1985. 43 Parker, The Subversive Stitch, 192. 44 Sherry Buckberrough, Sonia Delaunay: A Retrospective (Buffalo: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 1980), 22. 45 Ibid., 21. 46 Robert Delaunay, quoted in Buckberrough, Sonia Delaunay, 22. 47 Ibid., 21. 48 Ibid. 49 Lisa Vinebaum, “The ‘New’ Subversive Stitch” (paper presented at the biannual conference of the Textile Society of America, Savannah, GA, 2016). Vinebaum’s paper will be published in the forthcoming book, The Subversive Stitch Revisited: Contemporary Sewing and Resistance, ed. Jennifer Harris (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2018). 50 Morris, “Georgiana Brown Harbeson,” 8. 51 Henry McBride, “Zorachs Exhibit Their Cubist Art, Examples by Husband and Wife Are Shown at Daniel Galleries,” New York Sun, March 24, 1916. 52 Henry McBride, “Mrs. Zorach Steps Forward,” New York Sun, October 26, 1935. 53 Ibid. 54 Edward Alden Jewell, “Needlework Art Seen in 2 Exhibits,” New York Times, October 25, 1935. 55 Ibid. 56 “Tapestry and Embroidery Fragments from Ancient Peru,” American Magazine of Art 28 (October 1935), 744. 57 Walter Rendell Storey, “Decorative Art: Time Contrasts,” New York Times, March 30, 1941. 58 Edith Roosevelt was a prolific embroiderer. A sampler by Roosevelt was included in a 1935 embroidery exhibition at the Vernay Galleries; it received first prize. It was a collaboration of sorts with her husband in that the president provided Edith with “constructive and anatomical criticism” on the animals she depicted. By the time of the exhibition she had already produced twenty-five significant embroideries,

Notes 203 and Harbeson described her work as “interestingly modern in thought as well as in form.” See Georgiana Brown Harbeson, “The Embroideries of Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.” Bulletin of the Needle and Bobbin Club 19 (1935): 17, 13. 59 Storey, “Decorative Art: Time Contrasts.” 60 Lurçat stated, “Tapestry is an essentially mural object, going hand in hand with architecture.” Quoted in Adolf Hoffmeister, “Contemporary Tapestries,” The Book of Tapestry: History and Technique (New York: Vendome Press, 1977), 116. 61 Courtney Ann Shaw, American Tapestry Weaving Since the 1930s and Its European Roots (College Park, MD: Art Gallery of the University of Maryland, 1989), 7. 62 Le Corbusier, quoted by Hoffmeister in “Contemporary Tapestries.” 63 Ibid. 64 Art historian K. L. H. Wells evaluates the interest in modernist embroideries after the Second World War in her dissertation, “Tapestry and Tableau: Revival, Reproducibility, and Marketing Modernism” (PhD diss., University of Southern California, 2014). 65 Alice Zrebiec, “American Tapestry Manufactures: Origins and Development, 18931933” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1980). 66 Janice Lovoos, “American Tapestries,” American Artist 25 (September 1961): 47. 67 Shaw, American Tapestry Weaving, 6. 68 In a review of the exhibition, M. D. C. Crawford commented, “We have heard a great deal about art in industry; perhaps this exposition will establish the fact that art and industry are terms used with too restricted of a meaning.” M .D. C. Crawford, “The First International Silk Exposition at the Grand Central Palace,” Arts and Decoration 14 (February 1921), 278. 69 William Zorach, Art Is My Life: The Autobiography of William Zorach (Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1967), 78–81. 70 Bush-Brown is deserving of much more research. 71 Elizabeth Russell, “Silk Murals as Wall Decorations: Showing the Work of Lydia Bush-Brown,” House Beautiful (August 1924): 109. 72 Ibid., 111. 73 Zorach, “Embroidery as Art,” 51. 74 “Embroidery Paintings by Marguerite Zorach at the Brummer Gallery,” American Magazine of Art 28, no. 10 (1935): 742. 75 Ibid., 743. 76 Parker, The Subversive Stitch, 11. 77 Obler, Intimate Collaborations. 78 Yve-Alain Bois, “Sophie Taeuber-Arp against Greatness,” in Inside the Visible: An Elliptical Traverse of 20th-Century Art in, of, and from the Feminine, ed. M. Catherine de Zegher (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 414. 79 Hans Arp, quoted in ibid.

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Chapter 3 1 Marya Mannes, “The Embroideries of Marguerite Zorach,” International Studio 95 (March 1930): 29. 2 For a discussion of the New York avant-garde, see William Innes Homer, ed., Avant-Garde Painting and Sculpture in America 1910-25 (Wilmington: Delaware Art Museum, 1975); William Innes Homer, Alfred Stieglitz and the American Avant-Garde (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1977); and Roberta Tarbell, Hugo Robus (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1980). For more recent scholarship, see Lisa Mintz Messinger, ed., Stieglitz and His Artists (Yale University Press, 2011). On the significance of 1915 for the New York avant-garde, see Adele Heller and Lois Rudnick, eds., 1915, The Cultural Moment (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991). On the Arensberg circle, see Francis Naumann, New York Dada, 1915-23 (New York: Abrams, 1994). On Dodge Luhan, see Flannery Burke, From Greenwich Village to Taos: Primitivism and Place at Mabel Dodge Luhan’s (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2008), and Katja Fauth, Modernist Visions in Taos: Mabel Dodge Luhan and the Artists of the Stieglitz Circle (Marburg, Germany: Tectum-Verlag, 2009). 3 William Zorach, Art Is My Life, 71. Although friends with Hartley, Zorach may well have felt slighted by him when he failed to mention her work in a chapter devoted to modern women artists in his book Adventures in the Arts (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1921). 4 See Roberta Tarbell, Marguerite Zorach: The Early Years. Other significant scholarship on Zorach treats the artist in relation to her husband William. See Roberta Tarbell, William and Marguerite Zorach: The Maine Years (Rockland, ME: William A. Farnsworth Library and Art Museum, 1980); Marilyn Friedman Hoffman, Marguerite and William Zorach: The Cubist Years (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1987); and Jessica Nicoll and Roberta Tarbell, Marguerite and William Zorach: Harmonies and Contrasts (Portland, ME: Portland Museum of Art, 2001). 5 Tarbell’s earliest publication on Zorach was “Early Paintings by Marguerite Thompson Zorach,” American Art Review 1 (March to April 1974): 43–57. Tarbell has also contributed significantly to scholarship on William Zorach. See her dissertation, ““Catalogue Raissoné of William Zorach’s Carved Sculpture,” (PhD diss., University of Delaware, 1976). Most recently, Rachel Walls has begun to draw comparisons between the work of Marguerite and William and that of their daughter Dahlov. See Rachel Walls, Marguerite Zorach, Dahlov Ipcar & William Zorach (Boston: Samsøn Gallery, 2015). 6 See Tarbell, Marguerite Zorach: The Early Years. 7 Shilliam, “Emerging Identity,” 42.

Notes 205 8 Clark, “The Textile Art of Marguerite Zorach,” 18. 9 Fowler, “Early American Modernism and Craft Production.” Some of the interpretations of Zorach’s embroideries offered in this book are based in part on research completed for my dissertation. 10 For important documentation of the contributions of Zorach and other women designers to the American design industry, see Pat Kirkham, ed., Women Designers in the USA 1900-2000: Diversity and Difference (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). 11 Zorach’s rugs are discussed in depth in Fowler, Hooked Rugs. Her work as a printmaker should also not be overlooked, although it is beyond the scope of this book. See Efram Burk, “Testament to American Modernism: The Prints of William and Marguerite Zorach” (PhD diss., Pennsylvania State University, 1998). 12 Marguerite Thompson (Zorach), quoted in “Marguerite Thompson, Futurist,” Fresno Morning Republican, October 27, 1912. The label “futurist” was often applied to artists working in a variety of experimental styles. See Margaret Burke, “Futurism in America, 1910-1917” (PhD diss, University of Delaware, 1986). 13 Tarbell has documented that Zorach was “raised in the genteel tradition.” Tarbell, Marguerite Zorach: The Early Years, 14. 14 For a more complete discussion of Zorach’s early influences, see Tarbell, Marguerite Zorach: The Early Years, 15–19. 15 For a discussion of Fauvism in America, see William Gerdts et al., The Color of Modernism: The American Fauves (New York: Hollis Taggart Galleries, 1997). See also, Susan Noyes Platt, Modernism in the 1920s: Interpretations of Modern Art in New York from Expressionism to Constructivism (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985); and Judith Zilczer, “The Aesthetic Struggle in America, 1913-1918: Abstract Art and Theory in the Stieglitz Circle” (Ann Arbor, UMI Research Press, 1992; PhD diss., University of Delaware, 1975). 16 Her work was included in their February 1910 exhibition of the American Women’s Art Association in Paris. 17 William Zorach, Art Is My Life, 23. 18 Arthur Wertheim, The New York Little Renaissance: Iconoclasm, Modernism, and Nationalism in American Culture, 1908-1917 (New York: New York University Press, 1976), 63–64. In his autobiography, William also describes the activity in their Tenth Street studio, where the Zorachs first established their residence in 1913 and remained for almost twenty-five years. 19 Zorach, Art Is My Life, 55. 20 Of the seventeen artists participating, Marguerite was the only one without a published personal statement in the exhibition catalogue. In addition, the title page of the catalogue lists Marguerite and William as “Wm. and Marguerite Zorach,”

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as if they together were a single artist, and on page 5 of the catalogue, they are counted as such, since reference is made to the “sixteen” artists in the show, when in fact, if William and Marguerite are counted separately, there were seventeen. See The Forum Exhibition of Modern American Painters (New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1916). Although it is credited to William, Tarbell believes that in all likelihood Zorach authored the artist’s statement written for the Forum Exhibition catalogue, which also indicates knowledge of Kandinsky’s philosophy. It reads, “It is the inner spirit of things that I seek to express, the essential relation of forms and colors to universal things. Each form and color has a spiritual significance to me, and I try to combine those forms and colors within my space to express that inner feeling which something in nature or life has given me.” Art critic Willard Huntington Wright, Stanton MacDonald-Wright’s older brother, contributed to the exhibition catalogue. He also wrote “The Forum Exhibition,” The Forum 55 (April 1916): 457–71. 21 She taught embroidery at the Modern Art School. See Tarbell, Hugo Robus, 42. She taught watercolor in 1938-39 at the New School for Social Research. At the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, she was a visiting artist every summer from 1946 to 1966 and a member of their board of governors from 1960 to 1968. 22 For a discussion of the important role that the Daniel Gallery played in supporting modern artists, see Elizabeth McCausland, “The Daniel Gallery and Modern American Art,” Magazine of Art 44 (November 1951): 280–85. See also Charles Daniel and the Daniel Gallery, 1913-1932 (New York: Zabriskie Gallery 1993). 23 Exhibition of Paintings and Watercolors by William and Marguerite Zorach (New York: Daniel Gallery, 1915). Evidence of the specific embroideries on display at the Daniel Gallery comes from reviews of the exhibition, since the exhibition catalogue itself does not list the individual works. For example, a review from American Art News states, “As to the embroideries they are highly attractive, especially the East Indian wedding designed by Mrs. Zorach and the dancers of Mr. Zorach.” Clearly, this passage refers to the embroideries cited above, but suggests that additional embroideries were also on display. Regretfully, I have been unable to locate any further evidence on other embroideries on display. Again, confusion around which Zorach created the embroideries is documented in this review. See “The Zorachs at Daniels [sic],” American Art News 15 (December 4, 1915): 5. 24 Exhibition of Embroidered Tapestries by Marguerite Zorach (New York: Monstross Gallery, 1923). 25 Zorach was among the few women artists that Dreier supported. See Cynthia Fowler, “The Intersecting of Theosophy and Feminism: Katherine Dreier and the Modern Woman Artist,” Oculus 111, no. 1 (2000): 2–13. For a discussion of the Brooklyn exhibition, see Kristina Wilson, “‘One Big Painting’: A New View of

Notes 207 Modern Art at the Brooklyn Museum,” in The Société Anonyme: Modernism for America, ed. Jennifer Gross (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). 26 Interview with Marguerite and William Zorach by Arlene Jacobwitz, unpublished typescript, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, May 18, 1965. Hereafter referred to as Zorach Interview, Brooklyn Museum. 27 For an excellent overview of Zorach’s career as a painter, see Valerie Ann Leeds, Marguerite Zorach: A Life in Art (New York: Gerald Peters Gallery, 2007). 28 Laura Prieto, At Home in the Studio: The Professionalization of Women Artists in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 186. 29 Ibid., 185. 30 See Gail Levin and Marianne Lorenz, Theme and Improvisation: Kandinsky and the American Avant-Garde, 1912-1950 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1992). 31 Tarbell, Marguerite Zorach: The Early Years, 19. 32 For information on Kandinsky’s published writings from this period, see Wassily Kandinsky, Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art, eds. Kenneth Lindsay and Peter Vergo (New York: Da Capo Press, 1994). 33 Book 2, travel diary, William and Marguerite Zorach Correspondence and Other Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Hereafter referred to as Zorach Correspondence LC. 34 For further discussion of the widespread interest in the spiritual, see Maurice Tuchman et al., The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985 (New York: Abbeville Press, 1986). 35 See, for example, Marguerite Thompson (Zorach), “Marguerite Thompson, Futurist,” Fresno Morning Republican, October 27, 1912. 36 Marguerite Zorach to Katherine Dreier, March 16, 1926, Katherine S. Dreier Papers/Société Anonyme Archive, American Literature Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. 37 Dreier’s selection process is more thoroughly examined in Fowler, “The Intersecting of Theosophy and Feminism: Katherine Dreier and the Modern Woman Artist.” 38 Thompson, “Marguerite Thompson, Futurist.” 39 Marguerite Zorach, quoted in Marguerite Zorach, exhibition catalogue for the Knoedler Gallery (New York: Knoedler Gallery, 1944). 40 Art historian William Agee emphasizes that “even at their most abstract, his [Dove’s] paintings were still apparently often drawn from nature, the visible world of the land, the water, the sky, the sun and moon, the themes that had sustained him throughout his life.” William Agee, “New Directions: The Late Works, 19381946,” in Arthur Dove: A Retrospective by Debra Bricker Balken, William Agee, and Elizabeth Hutton Turner (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 134. The same was

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true for O’Keeffe. See Richard Marshall, Georgia O’Keeffe: Nature and Abstraction (New York: Skira, 2007). 41 Tarbell, Marguerite Zorach: The Early Years, 15. 42 Marguerite Thompson, “The Modern Artists of France,” Fresno Morning Republican, March 21, 1909. Zorach wrote a series of articles for the newspaper from October 4, 1908 to March 28, 1915. 43 Zorach, “Embroidery as Art,” 51. 44 Marguerite Zorach, quoted in interviews with Marguerite and William Zorach by Louis Starr, unpublished typescript, 1957, Oral History Collection, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York, NY, 257. Hereafter cited as Oral History CU. 45 Book 2, journal, Zorach Correspondence LC. 46 Unidentified newspaper clipping, Scrapbook from Zorach Correspondence LC. 47 Zorach, “Embroidery as Art,” 48. 48 Marguerite Zorach, Oral History CU, 260. 49 Marguerite Zorach, “A Painter Turns Craftsman,” Craft Horizons 4 (February 1945): 2. 50 Zorach, “Embroidery as Art,” 48. 51 “Mrs. Zorach’s New Art Form Put on Display,” New York Herald Tribune, October 23, 1935. 52 Zorach, “A Painter Turns Craftsman,” 2. 53 Ibid., 3. 54 Anni Albers, quoted in Defining Craft 1: Collecting for the New Millennium (New York: American Craft Museum, 2000), 100. 55 Marguerite Zorach, Oral History CU, 260. 56 Adamson, thinking through craft, 2. 57 Ibid. 58 Ella Madison provided the Zorachs with childcare and general household services. Madison’s mother had been a slave, so she or her daughter would have been one of the several million African Americans who migrated to Northern cities after the Civil War. See Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present (New York: Vintage Books, 1986). 59 Dahlov Ipcar, unpublished typescript (January 1980), 3, archival material held by Roberta Tarbell. Hereafter cited as Tarbell Archives. 60 For analysis of Dismorr’s work, see Francesca Brooks, “Jessie Dismorr: Walking and Rewriting London,” Flashpoint 17 (Spring 2015), web issue. http://www. flashpointmag.com/Francesca_Brooks_Jessie_Dismorr_Walking_and_Rewriting_ London.htm. 61 Marguerite Zorach to Jessie Dismorr, William Zorach Papers (microfilm), Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 6 April 1922. Hereafter cited as Zorach Papers AAA.

Notes 209 62 Ipcar, unpublished typescript, 4. 63 Quoted in Leona Rust Egan, Provincetown as a Stage: Provincetown, The Provincetown Players, and the Discovery of Eugene O’Neill (Orleans, MA: Parnassus Imprints, 1994), 132–33. 64 For a discussion of the importance of the Sunwise Turn for American modernists, see Tarbell, Hugo Robus. See also Madge Jenison, Sunwise Turn: A Human Comedy of Bookselling (New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1923). 65 Oral History CU, 148. 66 See Doreen Bolger, “Hamilton Easter Field and His Contribution to American Modernism,” American Art Journal 20 (1988): 79–107. 67 For more on American folk art and craft in relation to modernism, see Virginia Tuttle Clayton et al, Drawing on America’s Past: Folk Art, Modernism and the Index of American Design (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2002). 68 Kirsten Swinth, Women Artists and the Development of Modern American Art, 1870-1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2001), 169. For more on Greenwich Village, see Jan Seidler Ramirez, Within Bohemia’s Borders: Greenwich Village, 1830-1930 (New York: Museum of the City of New York, 1991). 69 “Fresno Girl Writes of Beautiful Paris,” Fresno Morning Republican, November 15, 1908. 70 Leslie Fishbein, “The Culture of Contradiction,” in Greenwich Village: Culture and Counterculture, eds. Rich Beard and Leslie Cohen Berlowitz (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993), 219. 71 Lisa Rado, “Primitivism, Modernism, and Matriarchy,” in Modernism, Gender, and Culture: A Cultural Studies Approach, ed. Lisa Rado (New York: Garland Publishing, 1997), 283. 72 Ibid., 290. 73 Ibid. It should be noted that Rado is more than aware of the “limitations and problems with this version of modernist primitivism” (290) and in no way glosses over the serious problems with primitivism that have been previously addresses by scholars. 74 See William Rubin, ed., “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art, 2 vols (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1984). Although Rubin’s exhibition has been discredited for its formalist approach, the exhibition catalogue nonetheless provides documentation of the extensive role that so-called “primitive” art has played in the development of modernism. For one of the many attacks on the “Primitivism” exhibition, see James Clifford, “Histories of the Tribal and the Modern,” Art in America (April 1985): 164–77, 215. 75 Documented in Marius de Zayas, How, When, and Why Modern Art Came to New York, ed. Francis Naumann (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), Appendix A. 76 Although Sheeler and de Zayas planned to make twenty-two copies of the book, approximately eight were actually assembled and distributed. Sheeler gave Stieglitz

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a complimentary copy. See Theodore Stebbins, Jr., and Norman Keyes, Jr., Charles Sheeler: The Photographs (Boston: Little Brown, 1987), 5–6. In addition to the Zorachs and Stieglitz, John Quinn, Max Weber, Marius de Zayas, Charles Sheeler, and Albert C. Barnes are believed to have had copies. 77 Augusta Owen Patterson, “Arts and Decoration,” Town and Country (February 15, 1923), 30. A month later, another critic used almost identical words to describe the subject, stating, its “circular design was suggested by one of the first artist’s [sic] balls given by the Penguins in the Village.” Marion Holden, “Needlework as Fine Art,” Detroit Free Press, March 25, 1923. Since other wording in this later article is also identical, the information was probably copied from Patterson’s original article. 78 The Penguin Club was founded in 1916 by Walt Kuhn in response to a disagreement he had with the Kit Kat Club. The Club also included a “young women’s auxiliary” called “Penguinettes.” Philip Rhys Adams, Walt Kuhn, Painter (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1978), 17. While in existence, the Penguin Club sponsored art exhibitions, dance recitals, and concerts, and like other Village artists groups held an annual fundraising ball. While a Kit Kat Club member, Kuhn made a poster to advertise their annual ball, which, based on written descriptions, shares remarkable similarities with Zorach’s embroidery, as it comprises five nude female dancers, six drummers, and a “medicine man.” The poster is described by Bennard Perlman in Walt Kuhn (New York: Midtown Galleries, 1989), 262. Unfortunately, I have been unable to locate the poster or a reproduction of it. For a discussion of Kuhn and his relationship to the Kit Kat Club, see Adams, Walt Kuhn, Painter, 16–17. The Penguin Club’s tenure was short-lived, lasting only about three years, at which time American involvement in the First World War transformed Greenwich Village, and the close-knit artistic community of the early 1910s began to dissolve. William Scott and Peter Rutkoff, New York Modern: The Arts and the City (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 100. 79 Steven Watson, Strange Bedfellows: The First American Avant-Garde (New York: Abbeville Press, 1991), 229. 80 Zorach, Art Is My Life, 54. 81 Although Kuhn and his fellow organizers emphasized “anonymity as their cornerstone” and lists of members were never compiled, known members included painters Edward Hopper, Guy Pène du Bois, and Louis Bouché. See George Spelvin, “The Penguins,” Louis Bouché Papers, Archives of American Art. Although there is no documented evidence of their membership in the Penguin Club, the Zorachs participated in Penguin Club activities. Both William and Marguerite showed their work in Penguin Club exhibitions, including its 1918 Exhibition of Contemporary Art. The Club also sponsored an exhibition of Vorticist painters organized by the art patron John Quinn; the exhibition included works by Vorticist Jessica Dismorr, who was a friend of Zorach’s from her days in Paris.

Notes 211 Unfortunately, these circumstantial associations do not provide sufficient evidence to identify the subject of The Dance as a specific Penguin Club event, which would be useful in accurately dating the embroidery. If The Dance is a representation of one of the Penguin Club balls, as the Town and Country critic indicated, then its generally accepted date of 1913 would be incorrect, since the Penguin Club was not formed until 1916. As a friend and patron of Walt Kuhn, Quinn was a frequent financial backer of the Penguin Club and helped to underwrite their expenses. See B.L. Reid, The Man from New York: John Quinn and His Friends (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 264. The attributed date of 1913 comes from a 1976 exhibition organized by the Detroit Institute of Arts that showcased works exhibited by the Society of Arts and Crafts from 1906 to 1976. As noted in the exhibition catalogue, Zorach’s embroideries were shown at the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts in 1923, and it is believed that The Dance was one of the works included. See Arts and Crafts in Detroit, 1906-1976 (Detroit: The Detroit Institute of Arts, 1976), 108. 82 See Richard Powell, The Blues Aesthetic: Black Culture and Modernism (Washington, DC: Washington Project for the Arts, 1989). 83 See Donna Cassidy, Painting the Musical City: Jazz and Cultural Identity in American Art, 1910-1940 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997). 84 Scott and Rutkoff, New York Modern, 36. 85 Rado, “Primitivism, Modernism, and Matriarchy,” 298. 86 Book 2, travel diary, Zorach Correspondence LC. 87 Ibid. 88 For an examination of the limitations to Coomaraswamy’s nationalistic argument, see Catherine King, “Parity with the West: The Flowering of Medieval Indian Art,” in Views of Difference: Different Views of Art, ed. Catherine King (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). See also Devika Singh, “Indian Nationalist Art History and the Writing and Exhibiting of Mughal Art, 1910-48,” Art History 36, no. 5 (November 2013): 1042–69. 89 Roberta Tarbell, email to author, Hockessin, DE, August 2, 1999. 90 Marguerite Zorach, “Bombay,” Fresno Morning Republican, October 6, 1912. 91 Ibid. 92 Book 2, travel diary, Zorach Correspondence LC. 93 Ibid. For the types of embroideries that Zorach may have seen in India, see Rosemary Crill, Indian Embroidery (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1999). 94 Marguerite to William, December 22, 1911, Zorach Correspondence LC. 95 The portrait is a pencil drawing, 11 ¼ × 8 ¾ in.; accession number 1970.65.46. 96 Rebecca Hourwich, “Art Has No Sex,” Equal Rights, December 12, 1925. 97 Linda Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” in Women, Art, and Power and Other Essays (New York: Harper and Row, 1988).

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98 Hourwich, “Art Has No Sex.” 99 Dahlov Ipcar, unpublished notes, Tarbell Archives. 100 For an examination of other artist couples, see Whitney Chadwick and Isabelle de Courtivron, eds., Significant Others: Creativity and Intimate Partnership (London: Thames and Hudson, 1993). 101 Hourwich, “Art Has No Sex.” 102 Ibid. 103 Erika Doss, “Complicating Modernism: Issues of Liberation and Constraint Among the Women Art Students of Robert Henri,” in American Women Modernists: The Legacy of Robert Henri, 1910-1945, ed. Marian Wardle (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 128–29. 104 “Marguerite Zorach on Women in Art,” Christian Science Monitor, April 12, 1926. 105 An invaluable source of information on NYSWA is Amy Wolf, New York Society of Women Artists, 1925 (New York: ACA Galleries, 1987). 106 In her interview for Equal Rights, Zorach compared the NYSWA to the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors (NAWPS): The latter organization was dedicated to exhibiting works by artists such as Cecilia Beaux and Mary Cassatt well into the twentieth century, whom by this time were viewed as traditional and even retardataire. Although Zorach does not name NAWPS specifically in the interview, she clearly had them in mind when she explained, “There already is an association of women painters and sculptors mostly academic in character. Our association is not in opposition to it, but ours has a tendency to include the more modern artists, though we have members of the older society with us.” Hourwich, “Art Has No Sex.” 107 “Spring Days in the Art Galleries,” New York Times, April 25, 1926. 108 Due to the efforts of Zorach and other members of NYSWA, as the art historian Julie Graham has noted, NAWPS’s “position as an artistic leader was usurped by [them].” Julie Graham, “American Women Artists’ Groups: 1867-1930,” Woman’s Art Journal 1 (Spring/Summer 1980): 10. 109 Zorach, Art Is My Life, 45–46. 110 “Mrs. Davidge, Wife of Artist Taylor,” New York Times, March 29, 1913. 111 Unpublished notes on embroidery for Zorach’s “Embroidery as Art” article published in Art in America, Zorach Papers AAA. 112 In her dissertation devoted in part to Marguerite Zorach, Marcia LagerweyCommeret asserts that this central figure is Zorach. See “Radiant Text(ures): The Creative and Intellectual Spaces in the Lives and Art of Three Women” (PhD diss., Clark University, 1998). However, the evidence suggests otherwise. First, the long hair of the central figure, which cascades down her back, is the antithesis of the bob haircut that Zorach was sporting at this time. Second, the symbolic reading

Notes 213 of this embroidery included here suggests this is not Zorach but her friend Nettie May or a figure of equal importance in Zorach’s life. 113 According to Jonathan Zorach, Zorach‘s grandson, the notation was probably made by his father, Tessim. 114 See Norma Broude and Mary Garrard, eds., The Power of Feminist Art: The American Movement of the 1970s, History and Impact (New York: Harry Abrams, 1994). 115 Unpublished notes on embroidery for Zorach’s article, “Embroidery as Art.” 116 See Griselda Pollock, “Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity,” in Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism, and the Histories of Art (London: Routledge, 1988). 117 Kuenzli, The Nabis and Intimate Modernism, 12–13. 118 In the exhibition O’Keeffe, Stettheimer, Torr, Zorach: Women Modernists in New York, curator Ellen Roberts draws parallels between Zorach and other women modernists, including Stettheimer. She explores this in her book of the same title, although focusing on Zorach’s paintings. (West Palm Beach, FL: Norton Museum of Art, 2016). 119 Parker Tyler, Florine Stettheimer: A Life in Art (New York: Farrar, Straus, 1963), 26–27. 120 Linda Aleci, “Introducing Paint & Spirit: The Worlds of Marguerite and William Zorach,” in Zorach: Paint & Spirit (Lancaster, PA: The Phillips Museum of Art, Franklin and Marshall College, 2011), 13. 121 Martin Hammer, The Naked Portrait (Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2007), 12. 122 Frances Borzello, The Naked Nude (London: Thames and Hudson, 2012), 113. Like Hammer, Borzello recognizes the way that public and private converge in the nude portrait. She explains, “These naked portraits follow no tradition. They are new. They make the private public.” Ibid., 119. 123 Ibid., 114, 119. 124 David Tatham, “Florine Stettheimer at Lake Placid, 1919: Modernism in the Adirondacks,” American Art Journal 31, no. 1/2 (2000): 14. 125 Ibid., 16. 126 Hammer, The Naked Portrait, 75. 127 Kathleen Pyne, Modernism and the Feminine Voice: O’Keeffe and the Women of the Stieglitz Circle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), xxix. 128 Ibid. 129 Anne Wagner, Three Artists (Three Women): Modernism and the Art of Hesse, Krasner, and O’Keeffe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 6.

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Chapter 4 1 “Embroidery as a Fine Art (Georgiana Brown Harbeson),” American Artist (June 1944): 19. 2 Morris, “Georgiana Brown Harbeson, A Painter in Needlework,” 3. 3 Likos, “Georgiana Brown Harbeson,” 11. 4 Ibid. 5 Helen Johnson Keyes, “Embroidery, an Archaic Art, Swings into the American Scene,” Christian Science Monitor, April 6, 1939. 6 Burr Van Atta, “Georgiana Harbeson, Celebrated Needleworker,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 29, 1980. 7 Likos, “Georgiana Brown Harbeson,” 12. Harbeson recalled these two productions in her interview with Likos. 8 Keyes, “Embroidery.” 9 Likos, “Georgiana Brown Harbeson,” 11. 10 Her son Paul survived her, and had three children. 11 Keyes, “Embroidery.” 12 Ibid. 13 Likos, “Georgiana Brown Harbeson,” 11. 14 Ibid. 15 Two embroideries by Zorach were inspired by Christian imagery although they were never meant for church decoration. Her family portrait, The Family: Memories of a Summer in the White Mountains (1917) is reminiscent of Michelangelo’s Doni Madonna (ca. 1503). Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men (ca. 1930s) invokes Isaiah and the peaceable kingdom. See Fowler, “Early American Modernism and Craft Production.” 16 “Embroidery as a Fine Art (Georgiana Brown Harbeson).” 17 Harbeson, American Needlework, 165a. 18 Ibid., 168. 19 Ibid., 166. 20 Ibid., 168. 21 Keyes, “Stories in Stitchery.” 22 In 1914, Dorothy Hyde married Darragh Park, the vice president of Manufacturers Trust. In 1939, the couple divorced, and she married Oliver Iselin, a textile merchant and banker. She died in 1949. 23 “Georgiana Brown Harbeson,” Needlecraft (January 1933), 3. 24 “Embroidery Exhibit Planned,” New York Times, November 13, 1941. 25 Harbeson, quoted in Florence Yoder Wilson, “Two New York Needlework Exhibits,” Needlecraft (July 1934), 4. 26 Ibid. 27 Harbeson, American Needlework, 196.

Notes 215 28 This color description is based on an extant copy of the embroidery that I was unable to gain permission to publish. 29 “To Darn Soldiers’ Socks,” Brooklyn Eagle, November 1, 1942. 30 See http://www.egausa.org/index.php/component/content/article/82-about-ega/ history-of-ega/558-landmark-decisions-and-events. Accessed December 9, 2014. Harbeson designed the logo; it was executed by Mrs. Edith Park Martin. 31 “Font Hill Questers Hear Miss Harbeson,” Daily Intelligencer, January 30, 1970. 32 “Needlepainting Dean Featuring Works,” Daily Intelligencer, March 23, 1970. This exhibition was probably an offshoot on a 1969 exhibition of the same title held at the Hallmark Gallery in New York. 33 “Mrs. Harbeson’s Embroidery on Display in Hotel Gallery,” New Hope News, April 1, 1971. 34 Ibid. 35 Likos, “Georgiana Brown Harbeson,” 12. 36 “Early Women Artists of Bucks County,” unpublished catalog (1979), Archives, James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, PA. 37 Arthur Crisp, unpublished autobiography, 314–15, Arthur Crisp Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries, Syracuse, NY. 38 The painting is mentioned in the Arthur Crisp Papers. Ibid. 39 “400 Enroll in Six Weeks: Grand Central School of Art Announces List of Instructors,” New York Times, November 23, 1924. 40 Arthur Crisp, unpublished autobiography, 200–01. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid., 245, 249. 43 Ibid., 207, 234. 44 Ibid., 249. 45 For an overview of Arthur Crisp that mentions Mary Ellen, see http://www.thecanadi anencyclopedia.com/articles/arthur-watkins-crisp. Accessed December 14, 2014. 46 Bennard Perlman documents the connection between Arthur Crisp and Davies in The Lives, Loves, and Art of Arthur B. Davies (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 200. 47 Arthur Crisp, unpublished autobiography, 282. 48 The precise subject is identified by the text sewn into the embroidery. The sale price is written in pen on the embroidery’s cardboard mount. The embroidery is currently owned by a private collector in Connecticut whose grandfather was J. Morton Curran. Curran, or perhaps his wife, purchased the embroidery. In 1903, Curran established Curran & Barry of New York, a cotton manufacturing firm; he left the firm in 1951 to establish his own company, Morton Curran & Co., which also manufactured cotton. His wife (first name not known) was the daughter of William J. Tingue, founder of the textile firm Tingue, Brown & Co. These textile interests may have connected Crisp to the Currans. Curran was a member of the male-only Union Club, and in this regard may have shared Arthur Crisp’s

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conservative perspective on women. The Currans lived in Manhattan on East 72nd Street, not far from the Crisps. Another ship embroidery by Crisp was reproduced in Walter Rendell Storey, “Home Decoration,” New York Times, April 12, 1942. 49 The kit was purchased by the author in 2016. Crisp also designed a similar pattern for North America. 50 Ibid. 51 “Art Needlework,” Wanamaker’s advertisement, New York Times, July 22, 1946. Perhaps they were falling out of fashion by this point, particularly because one offering was of European and Pacific war maps. The advertisement indicated they were part of a “clearance” at 20 to 50% off. 52 Information on this embroidery comes from the recollections of Ruth Lloyd Chalfant through her niece Cathie Zusy, formerly chief curator of the New Hampshire Historical Society with an expertise in American decorative arts. Zusy came across my research on Crisp and reached out to me. Cathie Zusy to author, January 19, 2017 and February 17, 2017. 53 Notes by Cathie Zusy from an interview with Mary Jane Lloyd Zusy about the Cox Family, July 31, 1988. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid. 56 Their living quarters are recalled by Mary Jane Lloyd Zusy, letter to Alex Ortiz, October 17, 1999. Other information can be found in “Tells How Hampton Village Was Named,” The York Republican (York, Nebraska), October 27, 1938. 57 Ruth’s sister was Mary Jane Lloyd Zusy. Mary Jane’s mother, Emily Lloyd, was responsible for having the second embroidery made for her daughter. However, the family does not recall who was responsible for making the embroidery. 58 Thanks to Kathryn Tarleton, conservationist at Context, Inc., in Rochester, MA, for information on crayon tinting. See also Beverly Dunivent, “Tinted & Colored: The Use of Pre-Tinted and Crayon-Colored Images in Early Twentieth-Century Quilts,” American Quilter XVI, no. 4 (Winter 2000): 36–39. 59 Arthur Crisp, unpublished autobiography, 314. 60 “The Rambusch Decorating Company’s One-Hundred Year Celebration,” Stained Glass: Quarterly of the Stained Glass Association of America 94, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 273–79. 61 “Exhibit to Cover Roster of Hobbies,” New York Times, February 18, 1934. 62 “Four Art Divisions on Display Today,” New York Times, October 21, 1938. 63 “Current Exhibitions,” New York Times, December 8, 1940. 64 “Current Exhibitions,” New York Times, April 5, 1942. 65 Walter Rendell Storey, “Home Decoration.” The article provides other information on Crisp. For example, Storey observes that Crisp worked in satin, velvet or unbleached muslin rather than linen. 66 Arthur Crisp, unpublished autobiography, 315.

Notes 217 67 He was an active member of the Hancock County Trustees of Public Reservation, established in 1901 to preserve the forests on Mt. Desert Island. Charles Eliot, president of Harvard University, was the president of the Trustees group. Stebbins was treasurer. See George L. Stebbins, “Random Notes on the Early History and Development as a Summer Resort of Mount Desert Island and Particularly Seal Harbor,” unpublished manuscript (1938), Jesup Memorial Library Archives, Bar Harbor, ME. For more information on the development of this area, see Ann Rockefeller Roberts, Mr. Rockefeller’s Road: An Untold Story of Acadia’s Carriage Roads and Their Creators (Camden, ME: Down East Books, 1990). 68 See for example, “100 Society Girls Join Junior League,” New York Times, October 18, 1926; and “Social Activities in New York and Elsewhere,” New York Times, December 3, 1932. 69 Anne Stebbins Funderburk, telephone interview with author, November 25, 2014. 70 Information on Stebbins’s life and career is included in a newspaper review of an exhibition of her work at the Jesup Memorial Library, “Display of Unusual Art at the BH Library Beginning Monday,” Bar Harbor Times, August 5, 1954. 71 Anne Stebbins Funderburk, telephone interview with author, November 25, 2014. 72 Advertisement, Bar Harbor Times, July 31, 1947. 73 David Woodside, The Story of Jordan Pond (Bar Harbor: The Acadia Corporation, 1989), 2-3. See also Ann Rockefeller Roberts, Mr. Rockefeller’s Road: An Untold Story of Acadia’s Carriage Roads and Their Creators (Camden, ME: Down East Books, 1990). 74 “Brief Mention,” New York Times, May 4, 1935. 75 Ibid. 76 Harbeson, American Needlework, 192b. Harbeson also credits Mrs. Roosevelt with making these screens in Harbeson, “The Embroideries of Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.” 77 “At the Ferargil, Marcia Stebbins is Represented by Clever Little Embroideries,” New York Times, May 8, 1938; and “Current Exhibitions: Little Tapestries,” New York Times, May 8, 1938. 78 The sales included $45 for an embroidery to Mrs. Oliver Jennings; $50 for two embroideries to Mrs. J. Klingenstein; $60 for a work titled Sailboats to Miss Margaret Levey; five embroideries for $266.66 and Zebra for $35 to Mrs. ? Langrim? (name is almost illegible); and $30 for an embroidery to Mrs. John D. Rockefeller. Frederick Newlin Price Papers, Ferargil Galleries, Inc., reel D322, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. 79 The year of Stebbins’s show, the library also exhibited marine paintings by Mary and Andrew Winter and drawings and paintings by Reta Laura. 80 “Plan Exhibit,” Bar Harbor Times, September 8, 1954. 81 “To Demonstrate Hobbies,” New York Times, March 28, 1938. 82 “Display of Unusual Art at the BH Library Beginning Monday.” 83 Report of the Treasurer, July 14 to September 8, 1954, Jesup Memorial Library Archives. 84 Harbeson, “The Four Moderns.”

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85 Thanks to Maine artist David Little for suggesting this possibility. Little has written significantly on Maine artists and is currently working on a book that surveys art representing Mt. Desert Island. His previous book related to Maine is Art of Katahdin, Carl Little, ed. (Rockport, ME: Down East, 2013). 86 The embroidery, currently in the collection of Marilyn Fineman, was purchased by her parents and has been in the family’s possession at their home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania for the last seventy years. According to Fineman, the embroidery hung in their home for as long as she can remember, another indication of how much these embroideries were appreciated by those who bought them. Fineman believes the embroidery was purchased from the Ferargil Galleries through Carroll Price, from Solesbury, Pennsylvania and the brother of Fred Price, who owned the Ferargil. The price for the embroidery, written on the back, was $50. Marilyn Fineman, email to author, February 21, 2019. 87 Harbeson, American Needlework, 186. 88 Ibid. 89 Ibid. 90 The friend she was traveling with died instantly, while Marcia lived for forty-eight hours before dying. 91 This information is garnered from letters between Stoll and her friends. Letters between Stoll and Ottoline are in the Harry Ransom, Humanities Research Centre University of Texas. Letters between Stoll and Woollcott are in the Houghton Library at Harvard University. Thanks to Esther Fitzgerald for posting some of these letters at her website. 92 Stoll to Lady Ottoline, May 19, 1923. See http://www.estherfitzgerald.com/14_ research/14_07_letter_03.html. Accessed November 4, 2016. 93 Stoll, quoted in Harbeson, American Needlework, 185. 94 Stoll to Lady Ottoline, April 30, 1928. See http://www.estherfitzgerald.com/14_ research/14_07_letter_04.html. Accessed November 4, 2016. 95 Walter Rendell Storey, “New Techniques and Designs in Needlework,” New York Times, January 9, 1938. 96 Hogarth, Modern Embroidery. 97 Stoll to Lady Ottoline, May 19, 1923. 98 Hogarth, Modern Embroidery, 23. 99 Ibid. 100 Ellis Waterhouse, “Recent Embroidery by Marian Stoll,” The Studio 94, no. 414 (September 1927), 170. 101 Wilson, “‘One Big Picture,’” in Gross, ed., The Société Anonyme, 75. 102 Ibid. 103 Robert Storr, Modern Art Despite Modernism (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000), 25. 104 See Anne Umland and Cathérine Hug, eds., Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round So Our Thoughts Can Change Directions (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2016).

Notes 219 105 “Dalmau, Littérature, and Salon Pipolins, 192-1924,” wall text from exhibition Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round So Our Thoughts Can Change Directions, 2016, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. 106 Mrs. Rivers Turnbull, “Colour in Embroidery: Mrs. Stoll’s Needlework Pictures,” unidentified journal clipping, collection of Gillian Creelman, Vinalhaven, ME. 107 Ibid.

Chapter 5 1 Obler, Intimate Collaborations, 17. 2 Bibiana Obler, “Taeuber, Arp, and the Politics of Cross-Stitch,” The Art Bulletin 91, no. 2 (June 2009): 210. 3 Ibid., 215. 4 Ibid. 5 Obler, Intimate Collaborations, 9. 6 Jessica Nicoll, “To Be Modern: The Origins of Marguerite and William Zorach’s Creative Partnership, 1911-1922,” in Marguerite and William Zorach: Harmonies and Contrasts (Portland, ME: Portland Museum of Art, 2001), 8; 24. Tarbell made the same observation as early as 1980 in The Maine Years, 21. 7 Ibid., 39. 8 Nicoll, “To Be Modern,” 37. 9 Jean Paul Slusser, “Modernist Pictures Done in Wool,” Arts and Decoration 18 (January 1923), 30. A practicing artist himself, Slusser taught art at the University of Michigan. His biography is summarized at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/bhlead/ umich-bhl-85402?rgn=main;view=text. Accessed November 4, 2014. 10 William Zorach, Oral History CU, 258–59. 11 Marguerite Zorach, ibid., 259. 12 The embroidery appears to be inspired by a painting Marguerite created a few years earlier, titled Bathers (1913–14) (private collection). 13 Nicoll acknowledges that William shared with Marguerite a view of nature as free from societal restraints. Nicoll, “To Be Modern,” 28. 14 Roberta Tarbell, “Life and Work,” in Nicoll and Tarbell, Marguerite and William Zorach, 71. 15 Ipcar, quoted in Tarbell, “Life and Work,” 71. 16 Erika Doss, “Complicating Modernism,” 129–30. 17 Ibid. 18 A comparison of the embroidery Waterfall with a bas-relief by William titled Waterfall (1917) (private collections) that was created around the same time shares striking similarities between the central figures. However, there are significant stylistic differences in that William’s carving is characterized by sharp angularity

220

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20

21 22

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rather than curved lines in the embroidery. Art historian Marilyn Hoffman has noted that the carving is derived from African sculpture. See Hoffman, Marguerite and William Zorach, The Cubist Years, 30–31. The embroidery does not share this same source of inspiration. Zorach’s embroideries have received little scholarly analysis, but in one exception, art historian Bruce Robertson comments upon Maine Islands as an expression of the way that American modernists generally explored the relationship between women and nature in their works. Robertson dismisses works by American modernists who painted the New England landscape for what he described as their “easy equation of woman and nature,” in which “the sensuality of the figure is emphasized and not its transcendent relationship to nature.” Using works by Robert Laurent and the Zorachs to illustrate his point, he explains: “William Zorach’s slightly saucy Floating Figure is at one end of the spectrum; Robert Laurent’s more ponderous Wave is at the other. The Zorachs’ Maine Islands sums up these ideas, as it places two nude couples on rocks at either side of the composition, framing a pine-clad island and sailboat. Slightly allegorical, slightly hopeful (who wouldn’t want to imagine Maine so free, especially so mosquito-free, that one could strip down to nature), the tone is idealistic and fanciful even as it renders a Maine radically at odds with reality”. Bruce Robertson, “Yankee Modernism,” in Picturing Old New England: Image and Memory, eds. William Truettner and Roger Stein (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1999), 186. Failing to distinguish the “two nude couples” as father-child and two women, Robertson misreads the symbolic content of the embroidery. Maine Islands—and other works by Zorach—is indeed “at odds with reality,” not because it reinforces gender stereotypes, but, to the contrary, because it is based on a feminist vision of less constricting gender roles for women and men. Tarbell describes the figure as a male youth, which is understandable considering the undeveloped anatomy. See Tarbell, The Maine Years, 21. However, the long hair, small shoulders and thin waist of this figure are highly characteristic of Zorach’s females. This drawing is reproduced in Tarbell, “Catalogue Raisonné of William Zorach’s Carved Sculpture” (PhD diss., University of Delaware, 1976), 264. See, for example, Mother and Child (1927–31) in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In his autobiography, William described the subject of the mother and child theme in his work as having universal significance: “Every artist throughout history has expressed himself through a life [sic] motif. I have chosen the mother and child—not consciously, but because this is basically a part of me and my life. It is the embodiment and expression of the love of man for his family, which is an overpowering tie in his life and in his background.” William Zorach, Art Is My Life, 85. When William employed the father-child motif in his work it was generally done for different purposes than that in Maine Islands. For example, in Faith of the Nation (1939–42), almost a duplicate of the father-child image seen

Notes 221 in Zorach’s sketch for the Maine Islands embroidery, the father and son are used to define nationhood in relation to masculinity. It is highly significant that William emphasizes the male sex of the child in his sculpture, while in the sketch, the child is clearly female, and in the embroidery, the child’s sex is indefinable, because his or her back is presented to the viewer. The message in the Maine Islands embroidery is strikingly different when compared to William’s sculpture. The Zorachs may have shared motifs in their work, but they employed them for very different purposes. 23 Tarbell, “Life and Work,” in Nicoll and Tarbell, Marguerite and William Zorach, 67. 24 In contrast, William later executed a linocut, Pegasus (1921), and a sculpture, Pegasus (1925), in which the winged horse is mounted by a young boy. 25 For an examination of the art and life of Greenwich Village residents in the early twentieth century, see Chapter 3. See also Arthur Frank Wertheim, The New York Little Renaissance: Iconoclasm, Modernism, and Nationalism in American Culture, 1908-1917 (New York: New York University Press, 1976). 26 William Zorach, Oral History CU, 259. 27 Ibid., 191. 28 Arthur Crisp, unpublished autobiography, 180. 29 Ibid., 12. 30 Ibid., 2–3. 31 Ibid., 200. 32 Ibid., 245. 33 Ibid., 184. 34 Harbeson, “The Four Moderns,” 23. 35 Harbeson, American Needlework, 186. 36 Van Gogh’s flower paintings have been reevaluated for their symbolic content in Van Gogh Up Close, ed. Cornelia Homburg (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012). 37 Arthur Crisp, unpublished autobiography, 184. 38 Ibid., 224–25. The League ultimately voted to allow women members in 1934. 39 Nancy Johnson, archivist of the Lotos Club, email to author, October 14, 2014. 40 Arthur Crisp, unpublished autobiography, 245. 41 Walter Rendell Storey, “Decorative Art: Time Contrasts,” New York Times, March 30, 1941. 42 Florence Yoder Wilson, “Watch the Needles of the Younger Generation: They Are Full of New Tricks,” Needlecraft (May 1931), 19. 43 “This Month’s Cover,” Needlecraft (July 1931), 3. 44 See Janet Kardon, ed., Craft in the Machine Age, 1920-1945: The History of Twentieth-Century American Craft (New York: H. N. Abrams, 1995). 45 “Introduction,” Minerva Needlepoint Book 48 (Bridgeport, PA: James Lees and Sons, 1937), 1. 46 Ibid.

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47 “Georgiana Brown Harbeson Dies,” New Hope Gazette, August 7, 1980. 48 See, for example, “Needlework Goes Modern, Too,” The Daily Tribune (Wisconsin Rapids, WI), August 21, 1937. 49 Minerva Needlepoint Book, 13. 50 “It’s New . . . fresh. . . contemporary . . . and you do it all yourself. American Needlepoint,” advertisement for Bowman’s department store, Harrisburg Telegraph, May 12, 1938. 51 “Embroidery as a Fine Art (Georgiana Brown Harbeson),” American Artist (June 1944): 19. 52 Harbeson, American Needlework, 194b. 53 Ibid., 197. 54 Kathleen, McLaughlin, “New Art Rises from Needlepoint as Modernized by Mrs. Harbeson,” New York Times, February 6, 1938. 55 Lawrence Hall, “Her Needlework Hangs in Museums.” 56 C. Adolph Glassgold, “The Modern Note in Decorative Arts, Part Two,” The Arts 13 (April 1928): 221–35. 57 Her father was a silversmith, which would have provided her early exposure to the crafts at a young age. 58 Ashley Callahan, Enchanting Modern: Ilonka Karasz (Athens: Georgia Museum of Art, 2003), 67. 59 Mariska’s career is discussed in detail in Ashley Callahan, Modern Threads: Fashion and Art by Mariska Karasz (Athens: Georgia Museum of Art, 2007). 60 Ibid., 17. 61 Karen Davies, At Home in Manhattan: Modern Decorative Arts, 1925 to the Depression (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1983), 53. 62 Callahan, Modern Threads, 18. 63 Ibid., 77. 64 For online examples of her work, go to: http://www.mariskakarasz.com/ gallerypages/gagehill.htm. Accessed December 1, 2014. 65 Barbara Scott Fisher, “Rummaging Round New York,” Christian Science Monitor, December 15, 1948. 66 Virginia Gardner Troy, “Weaving Diplomacy: Textiles and Hand-Weaving at Home and Abroad at Midcentury,” Archives of American Art Journal 53, nos. 1 & 2 (2014): 52–77. 67 Ellis Waterhouse, “Recent Embroidery by Marian Stoll,” The Studio 94, no. 414 (September 1927), 168. 68 In “Three Women Artists Married to Early Modernists,” Joan Marter documents the greater commitment that Zorach, Sonia Delaunay-Terk, and Sophie Tauber-Arp made to “the practice of fusing the decorative arts and commercial design with the fine arts” than did their husbands. See Joan Marter, “Three Women Artists Married

Notes 223 to Early Modernists: Sonia Delaunay-Terk, Sophie Tauber-Arp, and Marguerite Thompson Zorach,” Arts Magazine 54 (September 1979): 89. 69 Obler, “Taeuber, Arp, and the Politics of Cross-Stitch,” 226. 70 Buckberrough, Sonia Delaunay, 21.

Chapter 6 1 William Scott and Peter Rutkoff, New York Modern: The Arts and the City (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 107. 2 For contemporary accounts of their views, see, for example, “French Artists Spur on an American Art,” New York Tribune, October 24, 1915; and “The Iconoclastic Opinions of M. Duchamps [sic] Concerning Art in America,” Current Opinion (November 1915): 346. 3 See Elisabeth Sussman and John Hanhardt, City of Ambition: Artists and New York, 1900-1960 (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1996). 4 Wanda Corn, The Great American Thing: Modern Art and National Identity, 19151935 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 175. 5 Anna Chave, “‘Who Will Paint New York?’ The World’s New Art Center and the New York Paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe,” American Art 5 (Winter/Spring 1991): 97. For additional discussion of O’Keeffe’s skyscrapers, see Anna Chave, “O’Keeffe and the Masculine Gaze,” in Reading American Art, eds. Marianne Doezema and Elizabeth Milroy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); and Peter Kalb, High Drama: The New York Cityscapes of Georgia O’Keeffe and Margaret Bourke-White (New York: Midmarch Arts Press, 2003). 6 William Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996), 3rd ed., 223. 7 Corn, The Great American Thing, 143. 8 Scott and Rutkoff, New York Modern, 108. 9 By 1922, she had stopped creating work for the theater because of time constraints, explaining to her friend Jessie Dismorr, “One can’t do too many things in one life time and the theater is too fascinating unless one wants to do that above everything else.” Zorach to Jessie Dismorr, April 6, 1922, Zorach Correspondence LC. 10 See Scott and Rutkoff, New York Modern for a full discussion of the transformation of New York City during this period. 11 Yankee Stadium was not opened until 1923, after the embroidery was completed. The Polo Grounds, located approximately one mile from Yankee Stadium, was the playing field used by the Yankees from 1913 to 1922 and is probably the field

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17

18

19 20 21 22

23 24

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depicted in the embroidery. Thanks to Alan Brickman for providing me with information on the team’s history. Marguerite Zorach, “The City,” undated poem, Zorach Papers AAA. Stefan Hirsch, as quoted in Abraham Davidson, Early American Modernist Painting, 1910-1935 (1981; reprint New York: Da Capo Press, 1994), 220. Chave, “Who Will Paint New York?” 107. Ibid., 96. See Sarah Bradford Landau and Carl Condit, Rise of the New York Skyscraper, 1865-1913 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996); and Carter Wiseman, Twentieth-Century American Architecture: The Buildings and Their Makers (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998). “Zorach Tapestries Depict New York,” New York Times, February 11, 1923. In contrast, another critic, taking note of the details included in the embroidery, spoke of its value as an historical document, believing it would “be considered a rare treasure in several hundred years. . . .” Marion Holden, “Needlework as Fine Art,” Detroit Free Press, March 25, 1923. See Denis Woodside, Rethinking the Power of Maps (New York: The Guilford Press, 2010); Katherine Harmon, The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2009); and, again, Katherine Harmon, You are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of Imagination (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004). See also Robert Storr, Mapping (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1994. Ruth Watson, “Mapping and Contemporary Art,” The Cartographic Journal 46, no. 4 (November 2009): 293–307. Ibid., 303. Matthew Wittman, Circus and the City: New York, 1793-2010 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 69. They paid a total of $1200 for all four works. See William Zorach, Art is My Life, 57. In 1923, Lucy gave the Zorachs a gift of enough money to purchase their property in Maine. Ibid., 83. The embroidery was made only a year later, in 1924. Lucy’s brother Lathrop Brown and his wife Helen were also patrons of the Zorachs. They purchased a bedspread by Zorach, now in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and The City of New York embroidery. Clark identifies the couple as Bill and Lucy. Clark, “The Textile Art of Marguerite Zorach,” 22. The L’Engle family at the time of this embroidery consisted of Lucy, Bill, and their two pre-adolescent daughters. If Zorach was attempting to create a portrait depicting the actual characteristics of one of the L’Engles, the long hair disqualifies Lucy, since she and Zorach were known for their stylish bobbed haircuts. Two paintings by William L’Engle confirm the hair length of Lucy: a family portrait

Notes 225 done one year after the embroidery titled Family Group (1925) shows Lucy with a bobbed haircut; and a painting titled Provincetown Theatre Group from 1920 includes both Zorach and Lucy wearing bobs. Born in 1889, Lucy would have been thirty-five at the time that the embroidery was completed, and this is a youthful, although mature figure. The figure is too old to be one of their children—their daughter Madeleine was born in 1915, and Camille in 1917. The life and art of Lucy and Bill L’Engle are explored in an exhibition by the Provincetown Art Association. See the exhibition catalogue by Tony Vevers, Lucy and William L’Engle (Provincetown: Provincetown Art Association, 1999). 25 Zorach chose to utilize an image of the same seated nude figure with a flowering plant for a linocut that was apparently used as a New Year’s card for Edith Halpert and Berthe Goldsmith. Thanks to Roberta Tarbell for providing a copy of the linocut to me. 26 Zorach’s daughter Dahlov remembers attending the circus every year with Ella Madison. She was less clear on the frequency with which Zorach joined them, but Dahlov was positive that Zorach did attend the circus, although on a more sporadic basis. Dahlov Ipcar, telephone interview with author, April 5, 2002. 27 Wittman, Circus and the City, 14. 28 Edward Alden Jewell, “Sawdust and Peanuts: ‘Circus in Paint’ Arrives,” New York Times, April 7, 1929. 29 William McCormick, as quoted in Patricia Junker, “John Steuart Curry and the Pathos of Modern Life: Paintings of the Outcast and the Dispossessed,” in John Steuart Curry: Inventing the Middle West, ed. Patricia Junker (New York: Hudson Hill Press, 1998), 156. 30 Henry McBride, quoted in ibid. 31 Marsden Hartley, “The Greatest Show on Earth,” Vanity Fair, August 1924, 33. 32 For more on gender in relation to circus imagery, see Cynthia Fowler, “Art and Advertising: Gendered Images of Circus Performers in Post World War I America,” Mid-Atlantic Almanack 10 (2002): 7–28. 33 For the role of women in the American circus, see Katherine Adams, Women and the American Circus (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2012). 34 Because tigers were considered the most ferocious of all animals, Stark intentionally chose to work with them. As she explained in her autobiography, Hold That Tiger, prior to her own act no other woman had ever attempted to train tigers because they were “considered too dangerous for a woman to handle.” Mabel Stark, Hold That Tiger (Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1938), 161. Stark’s courage and strength are revealed in her autobiography, in which she offhandedly recounts her repeated physical injuries from attacks by hostile animals and her choice on several occasions to perform her act in spite of having injuries that warranted immediate medical attention or were not given sufficient time to heal.

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35 John Culhane, The American Circus: An Illustrated History (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1990), 181. 36 Stark’s career in the circus did not end, however, as she continued to perform with other circuses until 1967. 37 George Chindahl, A History of the Circus in America (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1959), 209. Wild animal acts were reinstated in 1929. 38 Joining RB in 1915, Leitzel remained a central act for RBBB until she died tragically in 1931, when a swivel ring snapped during one of her performances and she fell to her death. Leitzel came from a long line of aerialists in her native Germany; her mother and her mother’s two sisters comprised the trapeze act known as the Leamy Ladies, and her maternal grandmother, also a trapeze artist, performed until she was eighty-four years old. Her celebrity status is demonstrated by her distinction as the first circus performer given a private railroad car on a circus train. When she married aerialist Alfredo Codona, the couple was dubbed “The King and Queen of the Aerial Act.” Tom Ogden, Two Hundred Years of the American Circus (New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1993), 230. After Leitzel died, Codona married Vera Bruce, who replaced Leitzel in the Flying Codonas act. 39 Ibid., 375. 40 Ibid. 41 Harbeson, “The Four Moderns,” 23. 42 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 226–27. 43 Arthur Crisp, unpublished autobiography, 282–83. 44 “Gracie Square House Put on Auction Block,” New York Times, May 24, 1935. 45 Arthur Crisp, unpublished autobiography, 286. 46 Harbeson, American Needlework, 186. 47 “Contestants Picked for Handiwork Test,” New York Times, August 2, 1940. 48 Elizabeth McGoey, “America At Home: Crafts and Craftsmanship in the Shelter Exhibits of the New York World’s Fair, 1939 and 1940,” in Bell, Nation Building, 100. 49 Ibid. 50 There are many books on this subject. See, as one example, A. Joan Saab, For the Millions: American Art and Culture Between the Wars (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). 51 See Robert Rydell, World of Fairs: Century-of-Progress Expositions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). 52 In this regard, it is useful to consider historian Lawrence Levine’s observation that Depression era images that focus only on the downtrodden “deprive people without power of any determination over their destiny, of any pleasure in their lives, of any dignity in their existence of suffering.” Lawrence Levine, “The Historian and the Icon: Photography and the History of the American People in the 1930s and 1940s,”

Notes 227 in Modern Art and Society: An Anthology of Social and Multicultural Readings, ed. Maurice Berger (New York: IconEditions, 1994), 181. 53 Corn, The Great American Thing, xvii.

Chapter 7 1 Charles Eldredge, “Nature Symbolized: American Painters from Ryder to Hartley,” in The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985, ed. Maurice Tuchman (New York: Abbeville Press, 1986), 118. 2 Ibid., 124. 3 For an analysis of the anti-modern sentiments prevalent in American culture at the turn of the century, see T. J. Jackson, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880-1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). 4 For the meaning that rural New England held for American modernists, see William Truettner and Roger Stein, eds., Picturing Old New England: Image and Memory (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1999); Woodard Openo, “Artistic Circles and Summer Colonies,” in “A Noble and Dignified Stream:” The Piscataqua Region in the Colonial Revival, 1860-1930, eds. Sarah Giffen and Kevin Murphy (York, ME: Old York Historical Society, 1992); Robert McGrath and Barbara MacAdams, “A Sweet Foretaste of Heaven:” Artists in the White Mountains, 1830-1930 (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1988); John Baur, “The Beginnings of Modernism, 1914-1940,” in Maine and Its Role in American Art, 1740-1963, ed. Elizabeth F. Wilder (New York: Viking Press, 1963); and Elizabeth Wilder, ed., Maine and its Role in American Art 1740-1963 (New York: Viking Press, 1963). 5 For connections between Dove and O’Keeffe, see Elizabeth Hutton Turner, In the American Grain: Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Alfred Stieglitz (Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 1995). 6 Roberta Tarbell speculates that Zorach may have known Muir personally. See Tarbell, Marguerite Zorach, 60, n. 41. 7 John Muir, quoted in ibid., 11. 8 See John Muir, John Muir: The Eight Wilderness Discovery Books (London: Diadem Books, 1992). 9 Marguerite Zorach, The City, Zorach Papers AAA. 10 Rosemary Betterton, “Maternal Figures: The Maternal Nude in the Works of Käthe Kollwitz and Paula Modersohn-Becker,” in generations and geographies in the visual arts: Feminist Readings, ed. Griselda Pollock (London: Routledge, 1996), 160.

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11 Art historian Diane Radycki argues that in spite of its gendered subject of pregnancy, this painting should be understood as a representation of ModersohnBecker’s artistic creativity. See Diane Radycki, “‘Pictures of Flesh’: ModersohnBecker and the Nude,” Woman’s Art Journal 30, no. 2 (Fall/Winter): 3–14. 12 The Smithsonian American Art Museum has catalogued this work as White Mountains Pastoral. This same embroidery served as the frontispiece for the 1923 Montross Gallery exhibition catalogue. However, the Montross Gallery catalogue lists fourteen works by Zorach, none with the title of White Mountains Pastoral, and all of which I have been able to identify except for one titled The Home. In all likelihood, this title refers to the embroidery under consideration here. If The Home is the title Zorach gave to this embroidery, it is significant in both the absence of a central father figure and in the independence between mother and child in Zorach’s interpretation of domestic life. Clearly, nature was home for Zorach. See Exhibition of Embroidered Tapestries by Marguerite Zorach (New York: Montross Gallery, 1923). 13 Harbeson titled the work Summer, but a member of the Needlecraft staff “christened” it The Enchanted Isle. “This Month’s Cover,” Needlecraft (July 1931), 3. 14 Harbeson, quoted in “Our June Cover,” Needlecraft (June 1932), n.p. 15 “Autumn,” Needlecraft (October 1931), 25. 16 One is left to wonder if when choosing her imagery Harbeson considered the uniqueness of the seahorse as one of the few fish that are monogamous and mate for life, but even more, the male seahorse bears the unborn young. 17 The embroidery is documented in a photograph of Harbeson standing in front of the work published in a local newspaper. New Hope News, April 1, 1971. 18 In her description of the embroidery, Harbeson identifies two figures on horseback. But they are impossible to identify from the reproduction in her book. Harbeson, American Needlework, 187. 19 Ibid., 186. 20 Ibid., 187. 21 Ibid., 186. 22 Ibid., 187. 23 Ibid. 24 The color difference between the two embroideries is in part the result of fading. 25 Donna Cassidy, “The Invisibility of Race in Modernist Representation: Marsden Hartley’s North Atlantic Folk,” in Seeing High & Low: Representing Social Conflict in American Visual Culture, ed. Patricia Johnston (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). Cassidy’s book on this subject is Marsden Hartley: Race, Religion, and Nation (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2005). 26 Bruce Robertson, “‘The Force that Through the Green Fuse’: Georgia O’Keeffe and Nature,” in Modern Nature: Georgia O’Keeffe and Lake George (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2013), 87.

Notes 229

Chapter 8 1 Additional exhibitions devoted to portraiture include Degas: Portraits, Felix Baumann and Mariannne Karabelnik, eds. (London: Merrell Holberton, 1994); Colin Bailey et al., Renoir’s Portraits: Impressions of an Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997); and Roland Dorn et al., Van Gogh: Face to Face (Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts, 2000). 2 William Rubin, ed., Picasso and Portraiture: Representation and Transformation (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1996), 11. 3 Ibid., 13. 4 Ibid., 14. 5 Katherine Dreier, Western Art and the New Era: An Introduction to Modern Art (New York: Brentano’s, 1923), 112. 6 Ibid. 7 For a discussion of Duchamp’s relationship to mysticism, see John Moffett, “Marcel Duchamp: Alchemist of the Avant-Garde,” in Tuchman, ed., The Spiritual in Art. 8 Monroe Wheeler, 20th Century Portraits (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1942), 10. 9 Ibid., 13. 10 Ibid., 15. 11 Ibid., 27. 12 Her presence was also felt in the exhibition by the inclusion of two images of her: George Biddle’s Woman with a Letter (Marguerite Zorach) (1933) and a 1924 marble portrait bust of her by husband William. Zorach was one of a dozen women artists whose works were represented in the show. The exhibition included photographs by Berenice Abbott, sculptures by Jo Davidson and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, and paintings by Leonora Carrington, Frida Kahlo, and Marie Laurencin. In comparison, close to 140 men were represented. 13 Unfortunately, Wheeler does not discuss The Rockefeller Family specifically in the exhibition catalogue. 14 Monroe Wheeler to Abby Rockefeller, September 24, 1942, Rockefeller Family Archives, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Hereafter referred to as Rockefeller Family Archives. 15 Wheeler achieved limited success in attaining his goal of including a variety of media. In addition to Zorach’s needlework, photographs, sculpture, prints, woodcuts, and drawings were exhibited along with oil paintings. 16 Monroe Wheeler to Abby Rockefeller, September 24, 1942, Rockefeller Family Archives. 17 When Abby first commissioned Zorach for the embroidery, she kept it a secret from her husband, John, Jr., fearing that his antipathy toward modern art would prevent

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him from approving its purchase. As she wrote to her sons, “I haven’t told Papa about it. I am paying for it myself until he sees it, then he may love it and want to have it where he can see it.” Abby Rockefeller to Laurance and Nelson Rockefeller, July 28, 1929, as quoted in Bernice Kert, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller: The Woman in the Family (New York: Random House, 1993), 279–80. Years later, John, Jr., changed his position on modern art; he became a supporter of the Museum of Modern Art in the late 1930s, ten years after Abby had played a pivotal role in its creation. But at the time of the commission he did not appreciate this style. Although John, Jr., loved medieval tapestries and had purchased The Months of Lucas and The Hunt of the Unicorn, Abby did not believe that he would have any appreciation for Zorach’s modern needlework. For a discussion of the collecting habits of John, Jr., see John Ensor Harr and Peter Johnson, The Rockefeller Century (New York: Scribner, 1988), 217–22. 18 William Zorach, Oral History CU, 184. 19 Abby Rockefeller to Laurance and Nelson Rockefeller, July 28, 1929, as quoted in Kert, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, 279–80. 20 Their identities are confirmed in a letter by Carol Uht, a curator at MoMA in the 1960s. See Carol Uht to Mr. Auchincloss, April 14, 1965, Rockefeller Family Archives. 21 Based on the observations of both William and Marguerite, the work as it exists today has faded significantly. In 1966, William wrote to the Rockefellers advising them on the proper care of the embroidery since he and Zorach noticed its colors had faded when they viewed it at the Wildenstein Galleries that year. William Zorach to Nelson Rockefeller, July 15, 1966, Rockefeller Family Archives. 22 Harbeson, American Needlework, 184. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 26 William Zorach, Art Is My Life, 76–77. 27 Ibid., 77. This contrasts with a fact sheet on the embroidery completed in 1975 by Richard Frost, who owned the embroidery at that time. The fact sheet states that it is based on a painting of the Jonas family by William. 28 Marguerite Zorach, “Embroidery as Art,” 66–67. Based on this open-ended commission as well as Zorach’s technique of designing her embroideries as she stitched them, it is highly unlikely that she would have copied a painting by William for this work. 29 Interview with Marguerite and William Zorach by Arlene Jacobwitz, unpublished typescript, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, 18 May 1965. 30 Art historian Betsy Fahlman has completed research on Zorach’s public murals. See “Marguerite Zorach: The Thirties and Beyond,” in Marguerite Zorach: An Art-Filled Life, ed. Jane Bianco (Rockland, ME: Farnsworth Art Museum, 2017).

Notes 231 31 Jody Patterson has successfully argued that not all murals from the 1930s returned to realism. See “Modernism and Murals at the 1939 New York World’s Fair,” American Art 24, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 50–73. That being said, many of the murals created in the 1930s do in fact exhibit the influence of Midwestern Regionalism, Zorach’s among them. 32 Libby Bischof, “‘A Charming Haven of Peace and Rest,’ Modernism and Friendship in Georgetown, Maine, 1900-1940,” in Maine Moderns: Art in Seguinland, 19001940, eds. Libby Bischof and Susan Danly (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 26. 33 Susan Danly, “Finding Seguinland,” in ibid., 2. 34 Bischof, “‘A Charming Haven of Peace and Rest,’” 65. 35 Zorach, “Embroidery as Art,” 67. 36 Zorach had embroidered Robinhood Farm for the family’s private collection, but sold it to Mrs. David Levy in spite of her original intention. 37 Peggy Zorach, interview with author, Robinhood Cove, Maine, January 11, 1999. Marguerite and William resided at 123 W. 10th Avenue in New York City for almost twenty-five years; in the late 1930s, they moved to 276 Hicks Street in Brooklyn, where they lived for the remainder of their lives, although they spent large amounts of time at their home in Robinhood Cove, Maine. 38 Unpublished typescript on embroidery, Zorach Papers AAA, 5. This passage was edited out of the published article. 39 For more detailed information on these two embroideries, see Fowler, “Early American Modernism and Craft Production.” 40 Dahlov expressed an interest in art from an early age and exhibited sufficient talent to be honored with a one-woman show at the Museum of Modern Art when she was eighteen years old. She worked as a painter throughout her life, and during difficult financial years in the late 1930s, her mural commissions provided much needed income for the family. In addition, while Marguerite was working on the Ipcar Family, Dahlov received her first commission to illustrate a book for publication, and her illustrations soon became another important financial resource for the Ipcars. She continues her career as a visual artist today, and, along with painting, her artistic production includes writing and illustrating children’s books. See Dahlov Ipcar, “My Family, My Life, My Art,” in Ipcar (Portland, ME: Portland Museum of Art, 2001). Educated in history at Johns Hopkins, American University, and Harvard, Tessim chose a career as a businessman to ensure financial stability, and although he and his family visited his parents in Maine every summer, he did not move permanently to Maine until after his parents had died. 41 When asked in an interview is she had ever considered embroidery as a medium for her own art, Dahlov said “No.” However, she acknowledged that her mother had made the materials for both embroidery and painting available to her when she

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was a child, and she did not remember her mother encouraging or discouraging her to select embroidery or painting any more than the other. Dahlov started an embroidery when she was six years old, but got bored with completing the background once she had stitched the animals as the central elements. It took her six years to complete it. She completed one other embroidery, in 1982, a needlepoint of animals and floral decorations based on one of her paintings. Dahlov Ipcar, interview with author. Robinhood Cove, Maine, January 11, 1999. 42 Linda Aleci, “Introducing Paint and Spirit: The Worlds of Marguerite and William Zorach,” 13. 43 No reference is made to Tessim’s wife Peggy’s professional career as librarian at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, but there would have been no specific cause to do so since she worked outside of the home. 44 Unpublished typescript on embroidery, Zorach Papers AAA. 45 Wheeler, 20th Century Portraits, 21. 46 Marsha Meskimmon, The Art of Reflection: Women Artists’ Self-Portraiture in the Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996). 47 Zorach, “Embroidery as Art,” 67. 48 Zorach may also have portrayed herself engaged in other activities, for example as the young girl sprawled on the lawn reading a book or as one of the children playing hide-and-seek. However, the images are too small to ascertain whether or not any of the figures are actually Zorach. 49 Although this figure was described as nude in a dissertation dealing with Zorach by Marcia Lagerwey-Commeret, in fact she is fully clothed. See Lagerwey-Commeret, “Radiant Text(ures).” Abrupt changes in yarn color at both the base of her neck and again at her right elbow, respectively indicating a collar and sleeves, affirm this fact. The dress is full-length, confirmed by the clustering of material from the garment seen around the ankles. 50 See Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, Arthur Mitchell, trans. (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1911). 51 Eldredge, “Nature Symbolized,” 118. 52 Most noteworthy among American modernists for his interest in Proust is Charles Demuth. He planned a trip to Paris in 1935 to begin illustrations for Remembrance of Things Past, but, regretfully, neither the trip nor the illustrations were realized. 53 This was a lengthy visit of almost a year. Zorach also returned home when her mother died. 54 Barbara Bloemink, “Florine Stettheimer and Temporal Modernism,” in Florine Stettheimer: Manhattan Fantastica (New York: Harry Abrams, Inc., 1995). Bloemink has written extensively on Stettheimer. See her additional books The Life and Art of Florine Stettheimer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995); and Friends and Family: Portraiture in the World of Florine Stettheimer (Katonah, NY: Katonah Museum of Art, 1993). Marsden Hartley also wrote about Stettheimer. See “The

Notes 233 Paintings of Florine Stettheimer,” Creative Arts 9, no. 2 (July 1931): 18–23. Art critic Henry McBride wrote about her as well. See Florine Stettheimer (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1946). 55 Ibid., 70. 56 Meskimmon, The Art of Reflection, 74. 57 For a discussion of the ways that Kahlo’s autobiographical works can be interpreted in relation to politics, see Janice Helland, “Culture, Politics, and Identity in the Paintings of Frida Kahlo,” in The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History, eds. Norma Broude and Mary Garrard (New York: HarperCollins, 1992). 58 Zorach, To My Mother, undated poem, Zorach Correspondence LC. 59 Marguerite to William, March 24, 1930, Zorach Papers AAA. 60 Dahlov Ipcar recalled that Zorach’s father played a prominent role in her life, often taking his daughter on fishing and hunting trips during her childhood years in Fresno. Telephone interview with author, April 5, 2002. An extant photograph of Zorach standing with her father outside of their home in Fresno also suggests familial warmth between father and daughter. 61 See Henri Matisse’s Blue Nude (1907), in which the reclining female figure has been relocated to North Africa; and Joan Miró’s Nude (1926), in which she has been transformed into the biomorphic shapes that characterize his work. 62 Harbeson, American Needlework, 185. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid. 65 Mary Garrard, “Leonardo da Vinci: Female Portraits, Female Nature,” in The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History, eds. Norma Broude and Mary Garrard (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 63; 79. 66 Amelita Galli-Curci, quoted in Florence Yoder Wilson, “Fashions Come and Go— Needlework Remains To Last as Long as There Are Women: An Interview with Amelita Galli-Curci,” Needlecraft (March 1931): 16. 67 Ibid., 17. 68 Ibid. 69 Florence Yoder Wilson, “Watch the Needles of the Younger Generation,” 16; 19. 70 Yvonne Hackenbroch, English and Other Needlework Tapestries and Textiles in the Irwin Untermyer Collection (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1960). The present location of the embroidery is unknown. 71 The issues of Needlecraft are as follows: Pocahontas (April 1933); Sacajawea (July 1933); and Minnehaha (October 1933). 72 Florence Yoder Wilson, “The Story of a Tomboy,” Needlecraft (April 1933): 4. 73 For a discussion of the role of Native women artists and their subjects, see Cynthia Fowler, “Gender, Modern Art, and Native Women Painters,” in American Women

234

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75 76

77

Notes

Artists, 1935-1970, eds. Helen Langa and Paula Wisotzki (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2016). For a discussion of Native painting during this time period, see Bruce Bernstein and W. Jackson Rushing, Modern by Tradition: American Indian Painting in the Studio Style (Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1995); J. J. Brody, Pueblo Indian Painting: Tradition and Modernism in New Mexico, 1900-1930 (Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1997); and J. J. Brody, Indian Painters and White Patrons (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1971). Wilson, “The Story of a Tomboy,” 4. Dixon, quoted in Lois Palken Rudnik, Utopian Vistas: The Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the American Counterculture (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 148. Weston, quoted in ibid., 166.

Chapter 9 1 Glenn Adamson’s thinking through craft stands out in this regard. 2 For a discussion on the impact of Bauhaus textile artists on American weaving, see Sigrid Weltge, The Bauhaus Weaving Workshop: Source and Influence for American Textiles (Philadelphia: Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science, 1988). 3 See Christa Mayer Thurman, “Textiles,” in Design in America: The Cranbrook Vision, 1925-1950, eds. Robert Clark and Andrea Belloli (New York: Harry Abrams, 1983); and Nicholas Fox Weber and Pandora Tabatabai Asbaghi, Anni Albers (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 1999). 4 Mary Schoeser, “Textiles: Surface, Structure, and Serial Production,” in Craft in the Machine Age, 1920-1945: The History of Twentieth-Century American Craft, ed. Janet Kardon (New York: H. N. Abrams, 1995), 115. 5 The Needle and Bobbin Club serves as an example. 6 Storey, “New Techniques and Designs in Needlework.” 7 Stephen Knott, Amateur Craft: History and Theory (London: Bloomsbury, 2015). 8 Joseph McBrinn, “Needlepoint for Men: Craft and Masculinity in Postwar America,” Journal of Modern Craft 8, no. 3 (2015): 301–31. 9 Elissa Auther, String, Felt, Thread: The Hierarchy of Art and Craft in America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), xx. 10 Ibid.

Selected Bibliography

Archival material Arthur Crisp Papers. Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries, Syracuse, NY. Frederick Newlin Price Papers, Ferargil Galleries, Inc. Archives of American Art. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. George L. Stebbins Papers. Jesup Memorial Library Archives. Bar Harbor, ME. Georgiana Brown Harbeson Papers. James A. Michener Art Museum Archives. Doylestown, PA. Interview with Marguerite and William Zorach in unpublished typescript of interviews by Arlene Jacobwitz, 18 May 1965. Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY. Interviews with Marguerite and William Zorach by Louis Starr in unpublished typescript, 1957. Oral History Collection. Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. Katherine S. Dreier Papers/Société Anonyme Archive. American Literature Collection, Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts. Yale University, New Haven, CT. Louis Bouché Papers. Archives of American Art. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Marian Stoll Papers. Collection of Gillian Creelman, Vinalhaven, ME. Rockefeller Family Archives. Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, NY. William and Marguerite Zorach Correspondence and Other Papers. Library of Congress, Washington, DC. William Zorach Papers (microfilm). Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Zorach Papers. Collection of Roberta Tarbell, PhD, Philadelphia, PA.

Selected Newspapers and Magazines “A Tapestry Supplement.” Modern Art Collector 1, no. 4 (December 1915): n.p. “Art Needlework.” (Wanamaker’s advertisement). New York Times. July 22, 1946. “At the Ferargil, Marcia Stebbins is Represented by Clever Little Embroideries.” New York Times. May 8, 1938.

236

Selected Bibliography

Bonte, C. H. “Varied Display by Zorachs at Alliance.” Philadelphia Inquirer, 19 November 1939. Bourgeault, Cynthia. “Very Much Her Own Person.” Down East, The Magazine of Maine (August 1987): 70. “Current Exhibitions: Little Tapestries.” New York Times. May 8, 1938. “Display of Unusual Art at the BH Library Beginning Monday.” Bar Harbor Times. August 5, 1954. “Embroidery as a Fine Art (Georgiana Brown Harbeson).” American Artist (June 1944): 19. “Embroidery Exhibit Planned.” New York Times. November 13, 1941. “Embroidery Paintings by Marguerite Zorach at the Brummer Gallery.” American Magazine of Art 28 (October 1935): 742–44. “The Female of the Species Achieves a New Deadliness: Women Painters of America Whose Work Exhibits Distinctiveness of Style and Marked Individuality.” Vanity Fair (July 1922): 50. “Fifty Years of the Needle and Bobbin Club.” Bulletin of the Needle and Bobbin Club 49 (1965-66), 3–16. “First Showing by New York Society of Women Artists.” New York Times. April 25, 1926. “Font Hill Questers Hear Miss Harbeson.” Daily Intelligencer. January 30, 1970 “French Artists Spur on an American Art.” New York Tribune. October 24, 1915. “Fresno Girl Writes of Beautiful Paris.” Fresno Morning Republican. November 15, 1908. Fuller, Marion. “A Garden Gay with Tulips, A Colorful Needle-Painting Developed in Wools.” Needlecraft (May 1935): 16. Gallagher, Peggy. “Modern Art Declared Passé: Artist, in Elmira for Exhibit, Says Era is Near Dead.” Elmira Star-Gazette. February 7, 1962. “Georgiana Brown Harbeson.” Needlecraft (January 1933), 3. Glassgold, C. Adolph. “The Modern Note in Decorative Arts, Part Two.” The Arts 13 (April 1928): 221–35. Holden, Marion. “Needlwork as Fine Art: Arts and Crafts Show Exhibits Zorach Embroidered Tapestries.” Detroit Free Press. March 25, 1923. Hourwich, Rebecca. “Art Has No Sex.” Equal Rights. December 12, 1925. “Iconoclastic Opinions of M. Duchamps [sic] Concerning Art in America.” Current Opinion, November 1915, 346. Kramer, Hilton. “Women of Different Artistic Generations.” New York Times. March 24, 1974. Jewell, Edward Alden. “Needlework Art Seen in 2 Exhibits: Ancient and Modern Handicraft Contrasted in work of Old Peru and Mrs. Zorach.” New York Times. October 25, 1935. Jewell, Edward Alden. “Mrs. Zorach’s Art Placed on Exhibit.” New York Times. October 27, 1934. Jewell, Edward Alden. “Sawdust and Peanuts: ‘Circus in Paint’ Arrives.” New York Times, April 7, 1929.



Selected Bibliography

237

Keyes, Helen Johnson. “Embroidery, an Archaic Art, Swings Into the American Scene.” Christian Science Monitor. April 6, 1939. Keyes, Helen Johnson. “Stories in Stitchery.” Christian Science Monitor. July 26, 1933. Mannes, Marya. “The Embroideries of Marguerite Zorach.” International Studio 95 (March 1930): 29. “Marguerite Zorach on Women in Art.” Christian Science Monitor. April 12, 1926. “Marguerite Zorach Responds to Life.” Art Digest. November 15, 1944. McBride, Henry. “Mrs. Zorach Steps Forward.” New York Sun. October 26, 1935. McBride, Henry. “Zorach’s Exhibit Their Cubist Art, Examples by Husband and Wife are Shown at the Daniel Galleries.” New York Sun. March 24, 1916. McLaughlin, Kathleen. “New Art Rises from Needlepoint as Modernized by Mrs. Harbeson.” New York Times, February 6, 1938. “Modern Tapestry in Coloured Wools: A Bedspread by Marguerite Zorach Which Achieves Something of the Importance of a Work of Art.” Vanity Fair (October 1922): 66. “Mother’s Medium.” Time. November 4, 1935. “Mrs. Davidge, Wife of Artist Taylor.” New York Times, March 29, 1913. “Mrs. Harbeson’s Embroidery on Display in Hotel Gallery.” New Hope News. April 1, 1971. “Mrs. Zorach’s New Art Form Put On Display.” New York Herald Tribune. October 23, 1935. “Needlepainting Dean Featuring Works”. Daily Intelligencer. March 23, 1970. “Needlework as Fine Art,” Detroit Free Press. March 25, 1923. Playboy: A Portfolio of Art and Satire. March-April 1919 to May 1921. R.F. “Decorations by Marguerite Zorach.” Christian Science Monitor. February 17, 1923. Russell, Elizabeth. “Silk Murals as Wall Decorations: Showing the Work of Lydia BushBrown.” House Beautiful, August 1924, 109-111. Rhythm. Summer 1911 to February 1913. Slusser, Jean Paul. “Modernist Pictures Done in Wool: A Note on the Quaint Embroideries of the Zorachs.” Arts & Decoration 18 (January 1923): 30. “Spring Days in the Art Galleries.” New York Times. April 25, 1926. Storey, Walter Rendell. “Home Decoration.” New York Times. April 12, 1942. Storey, Walter Rendell. “Decorative Art: Time Contrasts.” New York Times. March 30, 1941. Storey, Walter Rendell. “New Techniques and Designs in Needlework.” New York Times. January 9, 1938. “Tapestry and Embroidery Fragments from Ancient Peru.” American Magazine of Art (October 1935): 744. “Tapestries of Marguerite Zorach.” Design 38, no. 2 (1937): 3–7. “‘Tapestry Paintings’ Shown by Mrs. Zorach.” Art Digest (November 1, 1935): 14. Thompson (Zorach), Marguerite. “Marguerite Thompson, Futurist.” Fresno Morning Republican. October 27, 1912.

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Thompson (Zorach), Marguerite. “The Modern Artists of France.” Fresno Morning Republican. March 21, 1909. “To Darn Soldiers’ Socks.” Brooklyn Eagle. November 1, 1942. Van Atta, Burr. “Georgiana Harbeson, Celebrated Needleworker.” Philadelphia Inquirer. July 29, 1980. “Vanishing Americans.” Art Digest (November 1, 1934): 32. V., C. A. “The Zorachs at Daniels.” American Art News. December 4, 1915. Waterhouse, Ellis. “Recent Embroidery by Marian Stoll.” The Studio 94, no. 414 (September 1927): 168–71. W[atson], F[orbes]. “The Downtown Galleries.” The Arts 16 (March 1930): 494. Wilson, Florence Yoder. “Two New York Needlework Exhibits.” Needlecraft (July 1934), 4. Wilson, Florence Yoder “The Story of a Tomboy.” Needlecraft 4 (April 1933): 17. Wilson, Florence Yoder. “Watch the Needles of the Younger Generation: They Are Full of New Tricks.” Needlecraft 16 (May 1931): 19. Wilson, Florence Yoder. “Fashions Come and Go -- Needlework Remains To Last as Long as There Are Women: An Interview with Amelita Galli-Curci.” Needlecraft (March 1931): 16–18. Zimmer, William. “Re-examining Marguerite Zorach, An Early Modernist.” New York Times. May 23, 1993. Zorach, Marguerite. “Bombay.” Fresno Morning Republican. October 6, 1912. “Zorach Tapestries Depict New York.” New York Times. February 11, 1923. “Zorachs at Daniels [sic].” American Art News 15 (December 4, 1915): 5.

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Borzello, Frances. Seeing Ourselves: Women’s Self-Portraits. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998. Brody, J. J. Pueblo Indian Painting: Tradition and Modernism in New Mexico, 1900- 1930. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1997. Brody, J. J. Indian Painters and White Patrons. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1971. Brooks, Francesca. “Jessie Dismorr: Walking and Rewriting London.” Flashpoint 17 (Spring 2015), web issue. http://www.flashpointmag.com/Francesca_Brooks_Jessie_ Dismorr_Walking_and _Rewriting_London.htm (accessed July 6, 2015). Broude, Norma. “Miriam Shapiro and ‘Femmage’: Reflections on the Conflict Between Decoration and Abstraction in Twentieth-Century Art.” In Feminism and Art History: Questioning the Litany. Norma Broude and Mary Garrard, ed. New York: Harper and Row, 1982. Broude, Norma, and Mary Garrard, eds. The Power of Feminist Art: The American Movement of the 1970s, History and Impact. New York: Harry Abrams, 1994. Bryan-Wilson, Julia. “Sewing Notions.” Artforum 49, no. 6 (February 2011): 73–74. Buckberrough, Sherry. Sonia Delaunay: A Retrospective. Buffalo: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 1980. Burk, Efram. “Testament to American Modernism: The Prints of William and Marguerite Zorach.” PhD diss., Pennsylvania State University, 1998. Burke, Flannery. From Greenwich Village to Taos: Primitivism and Place at Mabel Dodge Luhan’s. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2008. Burke, Margaret. “Futurism in America, 1910-1917.” PhD diss., University of Delaware, 1986. Buszek, Maria Elena, ed. Extra/Ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art. Durham, NC: Duke University, 2011. Cahill, Holger. American Folk Art: The Art of the Common Man in America 1750-1900. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1932. Callahan, Ashley. Modern Threads: Fashion and Art by Mariska Karasz. Athens, GA: Georgia Museum of Art, 2007. Callahan, Ashley. Enchanting Modern: Ilonka Karasz. Athens, GA: Georgia Museum of Art, 2003. Callen, Anthea. Women Artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement, 1870-1914. New York: Pantheon Books, 1979. Cassidy, Donna. “The Invisibility of Race in Modernist Representation: Marsden Hartley’s North Atlantic Folk.” In Seeing High & Low: Representing Social Conflict in American Visual Culture. Patricia Johnston, ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Cassidy, Donna. Marsden Hartley: Race, Religion, and Nation. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2005. Cassidy, Donna. Painting the Musical City: Jazz and Cultural Identity in American Art, 1910-1940. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997.



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Cavallo, Adolfo Salvatore. The Unicorn Tapestries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Harry Abrams, 1998. Chadwick, Whitney, and Isabelle de Courtivron, eds. Significant Others: Creativity and Intimate Partnership. London: Thames and Hudson, 1993. Champa, Kermit, et al. Over Here: Modernism, The First Exile, 1914-1919. Providence, RI: Brown University David Winton Bell Gallery, 1989. Charles Daniel and the Daniel Gallery, 1913-1932. New York: Zabriskie Gallery, 1993. Chave, Anna. “O’Keeffe and the Masculine Gaze.” In Reading American Art. Marianne Doezema and Elizabeth Milroy, eds. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. Chave, Anna. “Who Will Paint New York? The World’s New Art Center and the New York Paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe.” American Art 5 (Winter/Spring 1991): 87–107. Chindahl, George. A History of the Circus in America. Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1959. Clark, Hazel. “The Textile Art of Marguerite Zorach.” Woman’s Art Journal 16 (Spring/ Summer 1995): 18–25. Clayton, Virginia Tuttle, et al. Drawing on America’s Past: Folk Art, Modernism and the Index of American Design. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2002. Clifford, James. “Histories of the Tribal and the Modern.” Art in America (April 1985): 164–77, 215. Corn, Wanda. The Great American Thing: Modern Art and National Identity, 1915-1935. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Crill, Rosemary. Indian Embroidery. London: Victoria and Albert Publications, 1999. Culhane, John. The American Circus: An Illustrated History. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1990. Curtis, William. Modern Architecture Since 1900. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999. Davidson, Abraham. Early American Modernist Painting, 1910-1935. 1981. Reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1994. Davies, Karen. At Home in Manhattan, Modern Decorative Arts, 1925 to the Depression. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. Defining Craft 1, Collecting for the New Millennium. New York: American Craft Museum, 2000. De Zayas, Marius. How, When, and Why Modern Art Came to America. Francis Naumann, ed. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996. Dorn, Roland, et al. Van Gogh: Face to Face. Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts, 2000. Doss, Erika. “Complicating Modernism: Issues of Liberation and Constraint Among the Women Art Students of Robert Henri.” In American Women Modernists: The Legacy of Robert Henri, 1910-1945. Marian Wardle, ed. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2005.

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Dreier, Katherine. Western Art and the New Era: An Introduction to Modern Art. New York: Brentano’s, 1923. Dunivent, Beverly. “Tinted & Colored: The Use of Pre-Tinted and Crayon-Colored Images in Early Twentieth-Century Quilts.” American Quilter XVI, no. 4 (Winter 2000): 36–39. Egan, Leona Rust. Provincetown as a Stage: Provincetown, The Provincetown Players, and the Discovery of Eugene O’Neill. Orleans, MA: Parnassus Imprints, 1994. Eldredge, Charles. “Nature Symbolized: American Painters from Ryder to Hartley.” In The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985. Maurice Tuchman, ed. New York: Abbeville Press, 1986. Elliott, Bridget, and Jo-Ann Wallace. Women Artists and Writers: Modernist (Im) positioning. London: Routledge, 1994. Exhibition of Embroidered Tapestries by Marguerite Zorach. New York: Montross Gallery, 1923. Exhibition of Paintings and Watercolors by William and Marguerite Zorach. New York: Daniel Gallery, 1915. Fauth, Katja. Modernist Visions in Taos: Mabel Dodge Luhan and the Artists of the Stieglitz Circle. Marburg, Germany: Tectum-Verlag, 2009. Fine, Elsa Honig. “Women Artists and the Twentieth Century Art Movements: From Cubism to Abstract Expressionism.” In Feminist Collage: Educating Women in the Visual Arts. Judy Loeb, ed. New York: Teacher’s College Press, 1979. Forum Exhibition of Modern American Painters. New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1916. Fowler, Cynthia. “Gender, Modern Art, and Native Women Painters.” In American Women Artists, 1935-1970. Helen Langa and Paula Wisotzki, eds. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2016. Fowler, Cynthia. Hooked Rugs and American Modernism. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2013. Fowler, Cynthia. “Early American Modernism and Craft Production: The Embroideries of Marguerite Zorach.” PhD diss. University of Delaware, 2002. Fowler, Cynthia. “Art and Advertising: Gendered Images of Circus Performers in Post World War I America.” Mid-Atlantic Almanack 10 (2001): 7–28. Fowler, Cynthia. “The Intersecting of Theosophy and Feminism: Katherine Dreier and the Modern Woman Artist.” Oculus 3 (2000): 2–15. Gardner Troy, Virginia. “Weaving Diplomacy: Textiles and Hand-Weaving at Home and Abroad at Midcentury.” Archives of American Art Journal 53, nos. 1 & 2 (2014): 52–77. Gardner Troy, Virginia. The Modernist Textile: Europe and America, 1890-1940. London: Lund Humphries, 2006. Garrard, Mary. “Leonardo da Vinci: Female Portraits, Female Nature.” In The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History. Norma Broude and Mary Garrard, eds. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. Gerdts, William, et al. The Color of Modernism: The American Fauves. New York: Hollis Taggart Galleries, 1997.



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Graham, Julie. “American Women Artists’ Groups: 1867-1930.” Woman’s Art Journal 1 (Spring/Summer 1980): 7–12. Gross, Jennifer, ed. The Société Anonyme: Modernism for America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Hammer, Martin. The Naked Portrait. Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2007. Harbeson, Georgiana Brown. American Needlework: The History of Decorative Stitchery and Embroidery from the Late 16th to the 20th Century. New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1938. Harbeson, Georgiana Brown. “The Four Moderns in America, Exponents of the Newer Embroidery.” Bulletin of the Needle and Bobbin Club 19 (1935): 18–25. Harbeson, Georgiana Brown. “Notes on the Exhibition ‘Needlework of Today’ at the Vernay Galleries.” Bulletin of the Needle and Bobbin Club 19 (1935): 26–32. Harbeson, Georgiana Brown. “The Embroideries of Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.” Bulletin of the Needle and Bobbin Club 19 (1935): 13–17. Harmon, Katharine. The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2009. Harmon, Katharine. You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004. Harr, John Ensor, and Peter Johnson. The Rockefeller Century. New York: Scribner, 1988. Hartley, Marsden. “The Paintings of Florine Stettheimer.” Creative Arts 9, no. 2 (July 1931): 18–23. Hartley, Marsden. “The Greatest Show on Earth: An Appreciation of the Circus from One of its Grown-up Admirers.” Vanity Fair 22, (August 1924), 33, 88. Hartley, Marsden. Adventures in the Arts. New York: Boni and Liverright, 1921. Helland, Janice. “Culture, Politics, and Identity in the Paintings of Frida Kahlo.” In The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History. Norma Broude and Mary Garrard, ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. Heller, Adele, and Lois Rudnick, eds. 1915, The Cultural Moment. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991. Hoffman, Marilyn Friedman. Marguerite and William Zorach, The Cubist Years: 1915-1918. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1987. Hoffmeister, Adolf, et al. The Book of Tapestry: History and Technique. New York: Vendome Press, 1977. Hogarth, Mary. Modern Embroidery. London: The Studio LTD, 1933. Homburg, Cornelia, ed. Van Gogh Up Close. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. Homer, William Innes. Alfred Stieglitz and the American Avant-Garde. Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1977. Homer, William Innes, et al. Avant Garde Painting and Sculpture in America, 1910-1925. Wilmington, DE: Delaware Art Museum, 1975. Ipcar, Dahlov. “My Family, My Life, My Art.” In Ipcar. Portland, ME: Portland Museum of Art, 2001.

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Jackson, T. J. No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880-1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. Jenison, Madge. Sunwise Turn: A Human Comedy of Bookselling. New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, 1923. Johnson, J. Stewart. American Modern, 1925-1940: Design for a New Age. New York: Harry Abrams, 2000. Jones, Caroline. Eyesight Alone: Clement Greenberg’s Modernism and the Bureaucratization of the Senses. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Jones, Jacqueline. Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present. New York: Vintage Books, 1986. Junker, Patricia. John Steuart Curry: Inventing the Middle West. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1998. Kalb, Peter. High Drama: The New York Cityscapes of Georgia O’Keeffe and Margaret Bourke-White. New York: Midmarch Arts Press, 2003. Kandinsky, Wassily. Concerning the Spiritual in Art. 1914. Reprint, New York: Dover Publications, 1977. Kandinsky, Wassily. Kandinsky, Complete Writings on Art. Kenneth Lindsay and Peter Vergo, ed. New York: Da Capo Press, 1994. Kaplan, Wendy. “This Art That is Life:” The Arts and Crafts Movement in America, 1875-1920. Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1987. Kaplan, Wendy, ed. Living in a Modern Way: California Design 1930-1965. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012. Kardon, Janet, ed. Revivals! Diverse Traditions, 1920-1945: The History of TwentiethCentury American Craft. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1994. Kert, Bernice Kert. Abby Aldrich Rockefeller: The Woman in the Family. New York: Random House, 1993. King, Catherine, ed. Views of Difference: Different Views of Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. Kirkham, Pat, ed. Women Designers in the USA 1900-2000: Diversity and Difference. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Knott, Stephen. Amateur Craft: History and Theory. London: Bloomsbury, 2015. Koplos, Janet, and Bruce Metcalf. Makers: A History of American Studio Craft. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010. Kuenzli, Katherine. The Nabis and Intimate Modernism: Painting and the Decorative at the Fi- de- Sìecle. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010. Lagerwey-Commeret, Marcia. “Radiant Text(ures): The Creative and Intellectual Spaces in the Lives and Art of Three Women.” PhD diss. Clark University, 1998. Landau, Sarah, and Carl Condit. Rise of the New York Skyscraper, 1865-1913. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. Lears, T. J. Jackson. No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880-1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.



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Leeds, Valerie Ann. Marguerite Zorach: A Life in Art. New York: Gerald Peters Gallery, 2007. Levin, Gail, and Marianne Lorenz. Theme and Improvisation: Kandinsky and the American Avant-Garde. Boston: Bulfinch Press, 1992. Levine, Lawrence. The Unpredictable Past: Explorations in American Cultural History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Levine, Lawrence. “The Historian and the Icon: Photography and the History of the American People in the 1930s and 1940s.” In Modern Art and Society: An Anthology of Social and Multicultural Readings. Maurice Berger, ed. New York: IconEditions, 1994. Likos, Patt. “Georgiana Brown Harbeson: Needlework Advocate.” Women Artist News 6, no. 6–7 (1981): 11–12. Lovoos, Janice. “American Tapestries.” American Artist 25 (September 1961): 44–48, 77. MacCarthy, Fiona. Anarchy & Beauty: William Morris and His Legacy, 1860-1960. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014. Maines, Rachel. “American Needlework in Transition, 1880-1930.” University of Michigan Papers in Women’s Studies (May 1978): 35–56. Maines, Rachel. “American Needlework in Transition, 1880-1930.” Sew Business 97 (February 1978): 122–27. Mannes, Marya, “The Embroideries of Marguerite Zorach.” International Studio 95 (March 1930): 29–33. Marguerite Zorach. New York: Kraushaar Galleries, 1962. Marguerite Zorach. New York: Knoedler Gallery, 1944. Marshall, Richard. Georgia O’Keeffe: Nature and Abstraction. New York: Skira, 2007. McBride, Henry. Florine Stettheimer. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1946. McBrinn, Joseph. “Needlepoint for Men: Craft and Masculinity in Postwar America.” Journal of Modern Craft 8, no. 3 (2015): 301–31. McCausland, Elisabeth. “The Daniel Gallery and Modern American Art.” Magazine of Art 44 (November 1951): 280–85. McGoey, Elizabeth. “America At Home: Crafts and Craftsmanship in the Shelter Exhibits of the New York World’s Fair, 1939 and 1940.” In Nation Building: Craft and Contemporary American Culture. Nicholas Bell, ed. London: Bloomsbury Press, 2015. McGrath, Robert, and Barbara MacAdams. “A Sweet Foretaste of Heaven:” Artists in the White Mountains, 1830-1930. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1988. Meikle, Jeffrey. Twentieth Century Limited: Industrial Design in American, 1925-1939. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1979. Meskimmon, Marsha. The Art of Reflection: Women Artists’ Self-Portraiture in the Twentieth Century. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Messinger, Lisa Mintz, ed. Stieglitz and His Artists. New York: Yale University Press, 2011. Minerva Needlepoint Book. 48. Bridgeport, PA: James Lees and Sons, 1937. Morris, Frances. “Georgiana Brown Harbeson, A Painter in Needlework.” Bulletin of the Needle and Bobbin Club 19 (1935): 3–11.

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Muir, John. John Muir: The Eight Wilderness Discovery Books. London: Diadem Books, 1992. Naumann, Francis. New York Dada, 1915-23. New York: Harry Abrams, 1994. Nicoll, Jessica, and Roberta Tarbell. Marguerite and William Zorach: Harmonies and Contrasts. Portland, ME: Portland Museum of Art, 2001. Nochlin, Linda. Women, Art, and Power: and Other Essays. New York: Harper and Row, 1988. Obler, Bibiana. Intimate Collaborations: Kandinsky and Münter, Arp and Taeuber. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014. Obler, Bibiana. “Taeuber, Arp, and the Politics of Cross-Stitch.” The Art Bulletin 91, no. 2 (June 2009): 207–29. O’Connor, Francis. “The Usable Future: The Role of Fantasy in the Promotion of Consumer Society for Art.” In Dawn of a New Day, The New York World’s Fair, 1939/40. New York: New York University Press, 1980. Ogden, Tom. Two Hundred Years of the American Circus. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1993. Openo, Woodard. “Artistic Circles and Summer Colonies.” In “A Noble and Dignified Stream:” The Piscataqua Region in the Colonial Revival, 1860-1930. Sarah Giffen and Kevin Murphy, eds. York, ME: Old York Historical Society, 1992. Parker, Rozsika. The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine. 1984. Reprint, London: Women’s Press, Ltd., 1996. Parry, Linda. Textiles of the Arts and Crafts Movement. London: Thames and Hudson, 1988. Patterson, Jody. “Modernism and Murals at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.” American Art 24, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 50–73. Peck, Amelia, and Carol Irish. Candace Wheeler: The Art and Enterprise of American Design, 1875-1900. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. Perlman, Bennard. The Lives, Loves, and Art of Arthur B. Davies. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. Perlman, Bennard. Walt Kuhn. New York: Midtown Galleries, 1989. Platt, Susan Noyes. Modernism in the 1920s: Interpretations of Modern Art in New York from Expressionism to Constructivism. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985. Pollock, Griselda. Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism, and the Histories of Art. London: Routledge, 1988. Powell, Richard. The Blues Aesthetic: Black Culture and Modernism. Washington, DC: Washington Project for the Arts, 1989. Prieto, Laura. At Home in the Studio: The Professionalization of Women Artists of America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. Pulos, Arthur. American Design Ethic: A History of Industrial Design. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983. Pyne, Kathleen. Modernism and the Feminine Voice: O’Keeffe and the Women of the Stieglitz Circle. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.



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Radycki, Diane. “‘Pictures of Flesh:’ Modersohn-Becker and the Nude.” Woman’s Art Journal 30, no. 2 (Fall/Winter): 3–14. Rado, Lisa. “Primitivism, Modernism, and Matriarchy.” In Modernism, Gender, and Culture: A Cultural Studies Approach. Lisa Rado, ed. New York: Garland Publishing, 1997. “Rambusch Decorating Company’s One-Hundred Year Celebration.” Stained Glass: Quarterly of the Stained Glass Association of America 94, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 273–79. Ramirez, Jan Seidler. Within Bohemia’s Borders: Greenwich Village, 1830-1930. New York: Museum of the City of New York, 1991. Reed, Christopher. Bloomsbury Rooms: Modernism, Subculture, and Domesticity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Reed, Christopher, ed. Not at Home: The Suppression of Domesticity in Modern Art and Architecture. London: Thames and Hudson, 1996. Reid, B. L. The Man from New York: John Quinn and His Friends. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. Roberts, Ellen. O’Keeffe, Stettheimer, Torr, Zorach: Women Modernists in New York. West Palm Beach, FL: Norton Museum of Art, 2016. Robertson, Bruce. “‘The Force that Through the Green Fuse’: Georgia O’Keeffe and Nature.” In Modern Nature: Georgia O’Keeffe and Lake George. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2013. Rockefeller Roberts, Ann. Mr. Rockefeller’s Road: An Untold Story of Acadia’s Carriage Roads and Their Creators. Camden, ME: Down East Books, 1990. Rubin, William, ed. Picasso and Portraiture: Representation and Transformation. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1996. Rubin, William, ed. “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art, 2 vols. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1984. Rudnik, Lois Palken. Utopian Vistas: The Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the American Counterculture. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996. Saab, A. Joan. For the Millions: American Art and Culture Between the Wars. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Schoeser, Mary. “Textiles: Surface, Structure, and Serial Production.” Craft in the Machine Age, 1920-1945: The History of Twentieth-Century American Craft. Janet Kardon, ed. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1995. Scott, William, and Peter Rutkoff. New York Modern: The Arts and the City. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Shaw, Courtney. American Tapestry Weaving Since the 1930s and Its European Roots. College Park: Art Gallery, University of Maryland, 1989. Shilliam, Nicola. “Emerging Identity: American Textile Artists in Early TwentiethCentury America.” In Early Modern Textiles: From Arts and Crafts to Art Deco. Marianne Carlano and Nicola Shilliam, ed. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1994.

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Singh, Devika. “Indian Nationalist Art History and the Writing and Exhibiting of Mughal Art, 1910-48.” Art History 36, no. 5 (November 2013): 1042–69. Smith, Terry. Making the Modern: Industry, Art, and Design in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Stark, Mabel. Hold that Tiger. Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1938. Stebbins, Jr., Theodore, and Norman Keyes, Jr. Charles Sheeler: The Photographs. Boston: Little Brown, 1987. Storr, Robert. Modern Art Despite Modernism. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000. Storr, Robert. Mapping. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1994. Sussman, Elisabeth, and John Hanhardt. City of Ambition: Artists and New York, 19001960. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1996. Swinth, Kirsten. Women Artists and the Development of Modern American Art, 18701930. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2001. Tarbell, Roberta. William and Marguerite Zorach: The Maine Years. Rockland, ME: William A. Farnsworth Library and Art Museum, 1980. Tarbell, Roberta Hugo Robus. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1980. Tarbell, Roberta. “Catalogue Raissoné of William Zorach’s Carved Sculpture.” PhD diss., University of Delaware, 1976. Tarbell, Roberta. “Early Paintings by Marguerite Thompson Zorach.” American Art Review I (March-April 1974): 43–57. Tarbell, Roberta. Marguerite Zorach: The Early Years, 1908-1920. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1973. Tatham, David. “Florine Stettheimer at Lake Place, 1919: Modernism in the Adirondacks.” American Art Journal 31, nos. 1 &2 (2000): 4–31. Thurman, Christa Mayer. “Textiles as Documented by The Craftsman.” In The Ideal Home: The History of Twentieth-Century American Craft, 1900-1920. Janet Kardon, ed. New York: Harry Abrams, 1994. Tarbell, Roberta. “Textiles.” In Design in America: The Cranbrook Vision, 1925-1950. Robert Clark and Andrea Belloli, eds. New York: Harry Abrams, 1983. Truettner, William, and Roger Stein, eds. Picturing Old New England: Image and Memory. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1999. Turner, Elizabeth Hutton. In the American Grain: Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Alfred Stieglitz. Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 1995. Tyler, Parker. Florine Stettheimer: A Life in Art. New York: Farrar, Straus and Company, 1963. Umland, Anne, and Cathérine Hug, eds. Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round So Our Thoughts Can Change Directions. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2016. Vevers, Tony. Lucy and William L’Engle. Provincetown, MA: Provincetown Art Association, 1999. Vinebaum, Lisa. “The ‘New’ Subversive Stitch.” Paper presented at the biannual conference of the Textile Society of America, Savannah, GA, 2016.



Selected Bibliography

249

Wagner, Anne Middleton. Three Artists (Three Women): Modernism and the Art of Hesse, Krasner, and O’Keeffe. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Walls, Rachel. Marguerite Zorach, Dahlov Ipcar & William Zorach. Boston: Samsøn Gallery, 2015. Wardle, Marian, ed. American Women Modernists: The Legacy of Robert Henri, 19101945. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2005. Watson, Ruth. “Mapping and Contemporary Art.” The Cartographic Journal 46, no. 4 (November 2009): 293–307. Watson, Steven. Strange Bedfellows: The First American Avant-Garde. New York: Abbeville Press, 1991. Weber, Nicholas Fox, and Pandora Tabatabai Asbaghi. Anni Albers. New York: Guggenheim Museum, 1999. Weiss, Peg. Kandinsky in Munich: The Formative Jugendstil Years. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. Wells, K. L. H. “Tapestry and Tableau: Revival, Reproducibility, and Marketing Modernism.” PhD diss., University of Southern California, 2014. Weltge, Sigrid. The Bauhaus Weaving Workshop: Source and Influence for American Textiles. Philadelphia: Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science, 1988. Wertheim, Arthur Frank. The New York Little Renaissance: Iconoclasm, Modernism, and Nationalism in American Culture, 1908-1917. New York: New York University Press, 1976. Wheeler, Candace. The Development of Embroidery in America. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1921. Wheeler, Monroe. Twentieth-Century Portraits. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1942. Whiting, Gertrude. A Lace Guide for Makers and Collectors. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1920. Wilder, Elizabeth, ed. Maine and its Role in American Art 1740-1963. New York: Viking Press, 1963. Wilkinson-Weber, Clare, and Alicia Ory DeNicola, eds. Critical Craft: Technology, Globalization, and Capitalism. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. Wilson, Richard Guy. The Machine Age in America, 1918-1941. New York: Harry Abrams, 1986. Wiseman, Carter. Twentieth-Century American Architecture: The Buildings and Their Makers. New York: W. W. Norton, 1998. Wittman, Matthew. Circus and the City: New York, 1793-2010. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. Wolf, Amy. New York Society of Women Artists 1925. New York: A.C.A. Galleries, 1987. Wood, Denis. Rethinking the Power of Maps. New York: The Guilford Press, 2010. Woodside, David. The Story of Jordan Pond. Bar Harbor: The Acadia Corporation, 1989. Wright, Alastair. Matisse and the Subject of Modernism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.

250

Selected Bibliography

Wright, Willard Huntington. “The Forum Exhibition.” The Forum 55 (April 1916): 457–71. Zilczer, Judith. “The Aesthetic Struggle in America, 1913-1918: Abstract Art and Theory in the Stieglitz Circle.” Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1992. PhD diss., University of Delaware, 1975. Zorach, Marguerite. “Embroidery as Art.” Art in America 44 (Fall 1956): 48–51, 66–67. Zorach, Marguerite. “A Painter Turns Craftsman.” Craft Horizons 4 (February 1945): 2–3. Zorach, William. Art is My Life: The Autobiography of William Zorach. Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1967. Zrebiec, Alice. “American Tapestry Manufacturers: Origins and Development, 1893-1933.” PhD diss., New York University, 1980.

Index

NOTE: Page references in italics refer to figures. 291 (art gallery: New York)  53 abstraction and Crisp  4, 82–3, 105 and Harbeson  108 and Karasz  113 and portraiture  159–62 Adamson, Glenn  9–10, 15, 47 African American music  54 African art  52–3 Albers, Anni  192–3 Aleci, Linda  173 American Indian women imagery  185–8 American Magazine of Art  25 American Needle Arts Society  18 American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen  113 Architectural League of New York  101, 105 architecture and silk murals  28–9 Stoll’s embroideries  152, 153–4 Arden Galleries (New York)  89 Arp, Hans  9, 20, 21, 31, 93 art/craft divide  13–14, 24–5, 31, 47, 191 art galleries gender discrimination  57–8 Art Gallery of Hamilton (Hamilton, Ontario)  107 The Arts and Crafts movement  5, 16, 198 n.17 The Associated Artists (firm)  17 Ault, Bea  162–3 Auther, Elissa  194–5 autobiographical embroideries Kahlo’s  178 Zorach’s  60–2, 64–5, 141–3, 167–77, 178–82

Bar Harbor Jesup Memorial Library  84, 85 Barney, Marginel Wright  26 Baumgarten, William  27 Bergson, Henri  176, 177, 178 Biddle, George  20, 201 n.35 Bloemink, Barbara  178 Bois, Yve-Alain  31 Borzello, Frances  64 British Institute of Industrial Art  19, 89 Brooklyn Museum  37, 42, 53, 91, 113 Brummer Gallery (New York)  23, 24–5, 29–30, 36–7, 50 Buckberrough, Sherry  22, 115 Bucks County Council on the Arts  76 Bulletin of the Needle and Bobbin Club  17–18 bull imagery  96, 99 Bush-Brown, Lydia Earth  27–8 Cahill, Holgar  5 Callahan, Ashley  113 canvas work  201 n.23 Cassatt, Mary Le Figaro  180 Cassidy, Donna  156 Chave, Anna  117–18, 125 Chicago, Judy  195 Christian imagery  71–2, 110–12, 214 n.15 church commissions  71–2, 81, 110–11 circus imagery  128–9, 130–5 city life imagery. See New York: imagery Clark, Hazel  12, 34 collaboration  9, 13, 93, 114–15 Crisps  101, 105–7 Harbeson and industry  6, 107–12 Autumn  108, 111, 147 Bounding Deer  108, 110

252

Index

Pocahontas  185–7, 188 Sacajawea  185, 186, 188 Spring  145–6, 147 Summer  108, 111 Summer (The Enchanted Isle)  143, 145, 192 Summer (The Garden of Love)  145, 146 Surrealist Falcon  108, 109 Winter  146–7, 148 Karaszs  112–14 Gage Hill  113 Ropes on Red  113 Zorachs  57, 94–101, 205 n.20 first embroidered object  94 Maine Islands  96–7, 99, 164, 165, 220 n.19–20, 220 n.22 Waterfall  94–5, 97, 219 n.18 color, Zorach’s interest in  43 Coomaraswamy, Ananda K.  55 Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum  4, 103, 149 Corn, Wanda  117, 119 country life/village imagery  154–6, 168, 171 craft  13 and modernism  15 revival  4–7 as supplemental  9–10 Craft Horizons (periodical)  46, 47 The Craftsman (periodical)  5, 198 n.18 Crawford Shops  6 crewel work  18–19, 45, 164–5 Crisp, Arthur  76–7, 135–6. See also collaboration: Crisps Diana of the White Horse  101–2, 103 Crisp, Mary Ellen  1, 3. See also collaboration: Crisps abstract embroideries  4, 82–3 Arthur’s influences on  101–2 commercial designs and embroidery kits  6, 77–81, 216 n.49 commissions  76–7, 81 contemporary criticism  82 dress designer  76 Diana  102–3, 104 exhibitions  81–2 sale of embroideries  77, 215 n.48 Untitled (flowers)  103–4 Untitled (Landscape)  150–1

Untitled (Manhattan from Roosevelt Island)  136, 138 works in museums  4, 103 Cubism  and Stoll  90 and Zorach  8, 23, 34, 35, 38, 60–5, 164 Curtis, William  118 Daniel Gallery (New York)  36, 129, 206 n.23 Davies, Arthur B.  27 decorative art and craft  9–11 and modern art  8–9, 105 Delaunay, Robert  22, 115 Delaunay, Sonia  20, 22, 115 designs/designers European émigrés  20, 113 Crisp’s embroidery kits  77–81 Harbeson’s  6 “Minerva Line”  107–9 periodicals  5, 198 n.18 separation of fabrication and  6, 27, 57 streamlined designs  19 Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts  36, 211 n.81 De Zayas Gallery (New York)  53 De Zayas, Marius  53, 209 n.76 Diederich, Hunt  20, 201 n.35 Dixon, Maynard Antonio Mirabal  188 Earth Knower  188 domesticity imagery  171, 172, 173 Doss, Erika  96 Dove, Arthur  43, 139, 207 n.40 Dreier, Katherine  37, 42–3 Abstract Portrait of Marcel Duchamp  160 Duchamp, Marcel  37, 117, 160, 178 Dunn, Dorothy  188 Eldredge, Charles  139 Embroiderers Guild of America  74–5 embroidery commercial collaboration  6, 7, 93, 107–12, 146–8, 185–7, 188 economic freedom and livelihood  7–8, 50–1 European influences  18, 20 and feminism  7–8

Index 253 history gendered history  20–1 Harbeson on  17–19 late 19th century  16–17 midcentury  193 men’s contributions  193. (See also collaboration; Zorach, William) professionals and amateurs relationship  193 embroidery as art  2–3, 5, 6, 15, 16–17, 30–1, 88–9, 191 contemporary criticism  23–6 “free style” embroidery  18–19 embroidery kits  77–81 Erhman, Marli  192 Esther Fitzgerald Rare Textiles (London)  4 Europe  18 modern artistic experimentation  19–20, 21–2, 31 Zorach’s travels  35 exhibitions 20th Century Portraits (1942)  37, 160–1, 175, 229 n.12 African art  53 American Art Today  89 American At Home (1940)  136 American Painters in Paris  76 Bucks County Illustrators (1980)  76 Centennial Exhibition (1876: Philadelphia)  16 The Circus in Paint (1929)  132 Crisp’s  81–2, 106–7 Exhibition of Modern British Embroidery (1932: London)  89 Forum Exhibition of Modern American Painters (1916)  36, 205 n.20 Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round So Our Thoughts Can Change Direction (2016) Harbeson’s  73, 76 International Exhibition of Modern Art (1926)  37, 42, 91 International Silk Exposition (1st: 1921)  27 Needlework of Today (1935)  111–12 and NYSWA  60 Peruvian textiles exhibition (1935)  24–5 Picasso and Portraiture: Representation and Transformation (1996)  159, 160

Stebbins’  84–5 Stettheimer’s  63 Stitched in Time: American Needlework, Past and Present  75 Stoll’s  73, 89 Zorach’s  35, 36–7, 94, 205 n.20, 206 n.23 1923 Exhibition of Embroidered Tapestries by Marguerite Zorach  36, 50, 127, 144 1935 Brummer exhibition  23, 24–5, 29–30, 36–7, 50 2001 Marguerite and William Zorach: Harmonies and Contrasts  94 family imagery Kahlo’s  178 Stettheimer’s  62, 63 Zorach’s autobiographical  60–2, 64–5, 141–3, 167–73, 178–82 Jonas family  165–7 Rockefellers  161–2, 163–5  Fauvism  43–4 femininity  142–3 , 166–7 feminism/feminist critiques  7–8, 22–3 and Zorach  57–60 Ferargil Galleries (New York)  84, 217 n.78 fiber arts movement  194–5 Field, Hamilton Easter  51 Fowler, Cynthia “Early American Modernism and Craft Production: The Embroideries of Marguerite Zorach”  12 Fuller, Marion  193 Cottage Garden  194 Galli-Curci, Amelita  75, 159, 182–5 Garrard, Mary  184 gender and circus performers  132–4 and embroidery  20–1, 24, 46, 47–8 male artist/husband influence on female artist/wife  102–3, 115 and nature  143, 145, 157 gender discrimination  57–8 gender role  62, 181, 191–2 reversal  97–9

254

Index

Gobelins workshops  27, 43 Grand Central Galleries  106 Greek mythology bull imagery  99 Diana  101–2 Pegasus  99 Greenberg effect  11 Halpert, Edith  51, 193 Hammer, Martin  64, 65 Harbeson, Georgina Brown  1. See also collaboration: Harbeson and industry American Needlework: The History of Decorative Stitchery from the Late 16th to the 20th Century  2, 17–19, 72, 75, 87, 88, 89, 103 art-related activities  74–5 authorship  75 biographical sketch  69–70 collaboration with industry  5, 6, 107–12 commissions  71–2, 110–11 contemporary criticism  23, 26, 71 on Crisps  101–2 on Crisp’s Landscape embroidery  151 The Crucifixion  72 Deep South  73–4, 75, 109, 112 Ecology  76 on embroidery as art  2–3, 25, 71 exhibitions  73, 76 “The Four Moderns: Exponents of the Newer Embroidery”  2, 88–9, 101–2, 134 on history of embroidery  17–19 human imagery  143, 145–8 interviews  71 lectures and demonstrations  73, 74, 75 livelihood  8, 71 Madame Amelita Galli-Curci  182–5 Nativity  72, 111–12 on needlepainting  2–3 on needlework development  5 Pocahontas  185–7, 188 portrait  70 portraiture  159, 185–7, 188 Sacajawea  185, 186, 188 sale of embroideries  8, 71 Sea Fantasy  149, 150, 228 n.16 stage productions  70–1 on Stebbins  84, 87

Still Life  105, 106 on stitchery  11 Surrealist influences  108 techniques  23 Untitled (Monkeys in Trees)  84, 85 works in museums  149 works on  18 on Zorach’s style  134–5, 164–5 Harris, Adelaide  35 Hartley, Marsden  156, 204 n.3 Hayden Galleries (New York)  73, 74 Herter, Albert  27 Hicks, Sheila  194 Hirsch, Stefan New York, Lower Manhattan  125 Hogarth, Mary  19 Modern Embroidery  89 home imagery  163–4 home as creative space  172–3 home in nature  62, 141–3, 163–4, 180–1 House Beautiful (periodical)  28–9 human imagery Harbeson’s  143, 145–8 Stoll’s  152–3 Zorach’s  94–5, 96–7, 99, 122, 123, 129–30, 132, 137, 141–3, 144, 149, 163–4 human relationships  145–8 hybrid space  62, 63 Impressionism  86–7 India/Indian culture  44, 55–7 bull imagery  99 Jaipur  44, 56 James Lees & Sons “Minerva Line” of embroidery patterns  107–9 Japan  55 Jewell, Edward Alden  24–5 Jonas, Ralph  165–7 Jonas, Zelda  165–7 Jones, Caroline  11 Jordan Pond House  84 Kahlo, Frida My Grandparents, My Parents and I  178

Index 255 Kandinsky, Wassily  9, 20, 21–2, 35, 41–3, 93, 114, 156–7, 201 n.33 Murnau with a Church  154–5 Kaplan, Wendy  5 Karasz, Ilonka  112–14 Karasz, Mariska  112–14, 193 Kardon, Janet Revivals! Diverse Traditions, 1920-1945  5 Knott, Stephen Amateur Craft: History and Theory  193 Koplos, Janet  5–6 Kuenzli, Katherine  8–9 Kuhn, Walt  161, 210 n.78, 210 n.81 Labouré, G. G.  27 landscape painting and Crisp’s embroidery  150–1 Last Supper feminist reinterpretation  60–1 Laurent, Robert  220 n.19 Le Corbusier  26–7, 29 L’Engle, Bill  129, 224 n.24 L’Engle, Lucy  129, 224 n.24 Lotos Club (New York)  26, 82, 105, 107 Lurçat, Jean  26–7, 29 McBride, Henry  23, 132 McCormick, William  132 McGoey, Elizabeth  136 Macy’s  81–2 Madison, Ella  48–9, 208 n.58, 225 n.26 Maines, Rachel  7 Marin, John Lower Manhattan  117, 118 marital imagery  145–6 masculinity, and skyscraper associations  117–18, 125 materiality  10–11 Matisse, Henri  9, 53, 105 Woman with a Hat  161 May, Netty  61, 213 n.112 Meskimmon, Marsha  175, 178 Metcalf, Bruce  5–6 Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)  75, 82, 220 n.22 Milch Gallery (New York)  182 Minerva Yarn Industries  71, 73, 75, 109–10

modern art. See also paintings artistic experimentation  19–23, 31 and decorative  8–9 influences  8 stylistic diversity  91–2 Modern Art Collector (periodical)  20 “Tapestry Supplement”  20, 21 Modern Art Gallery (New York)  53 modern embroidery movement  13, 69, 191–3 contributors  1, 3–4, 13 historical significance  193–5 inclusiveness  6–7 lack of diversity  22–3 origin  1, 15 scholarship  11–13 stylistic experimentation  8, 192 Modersohn-Becker, Paula Self-Portrait  142, 228 n.11 MoMA. See Museum of Modern Art Montross Gallery (New York)  36, 50, 127, 228 n.12 Morrell, Ottoline  87, 88, 89 Morris & Co.  16 Morris, Frances  1, 18, 23 Muir, John  140 Munich  19–20, 22, 41, 64 Münter, Gabriele  9, 20, 41, 154 murals  26–7 silk  28–9 The Museum of Fine Arts (Boston)  4, 16, 34, 153, 154 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) (New York)  6, 230 n.17, 231 n.40 20th Century Portraits  37, 160–1, 175 exhibition choices  91–2 imagery of  124 Picasso and Portraiture: Representation and Transformation  159, 160 National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors (NAWPS)  212 n.106, 212 n.108 nature imagery  139 Crisp’s  103–5, 138, 150–1 Harbeson’s  73–4, 75, 149, 150 gendered associations  143, 145, 157 human/nature connection  145–8 women in nature  183–4

256

Index

O’Keefe’s  139, 157 Roth’s  136, 137, 138 Stoll’s architectural structure and nature  152, 153–4 human/nature connection  152–3, 154–6, 165–6 Zorach’s  156–7, 170 home in nature  62, 141–3, 180–1 human/nature connection  94–5, 96–7, 99, 140–1, 149, 163–4, 220 n.19 NAWPS. See National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors Needle and Bobbin Guild (New York)  17–18 Needlecraft (periodical) Galli-Curci’s interview  184 Harbeson’s embroidered portraits  159, 185–7, 188 Harbeson’s embroidery patterns  4, 71, 106, 107, 108, 143, 145–8 on women’s issues  7 needlepainting  2–3, 25 Needlework and Textile Guild of the Art Institute of Chicago  17 needlework societies/organizations  17 New York Greenwich Village avant-garde community  33, 34, 36, 51–2, 53–4, 65–6, 99 imagery  118–19, 138 Central Park  124, 136, 137 circus  128–9, 130–5 Fifth Avenue  122–3 Greenwich Village  122 Manhattan in 1920s  117, 119–25 Manhattan in 1930s  135–8 Washington Square Park  136–8 Seven Gracie Square  135, 136 tapestry industry  27 New York Herald Tribune  46 New York Public Library  123 New York Society of American Women Artists (NYSWA)  42, 59–60, 212 n.106, 212 n.108 New York Times  25, 77, 81–2, 84, 88, 127 New York World’s Fair  89, 136 Nicoll, Jessica  94

nudity  54, 64–5, 129–30, 142–3, 166–7, 181–2 NYSWA. See New York Society of American Women Artists Obler, Bibiana  9, 31, 114–15 Obrist, Herdmann  19 O’Keeffe, Georgia  43, 139, 157 The Shelton with Sunspots  125, 126 paintings. See also Zorach, Marguerite: paintings and embroidery connectedness  2–3, 5, 6, 15, 16–17, 18–19, 24–5 Last Supper  60–1 nature imagery  140, 141, 142 portraiture  159–61 still life  104–5, 106, 176, 177 training  2–3, 5, 6 parent-child imagery  97–100, 141, 142, 143, 180–1, 220 n.22 Parker, Rozsika  30–1 The Subversive Stitch  20–1, 22 Pen and Brush Club  113 Penguin Club  53, 54, 210 n.77–8, 210 n.81 Pennsylvania Museum of Art (Philadelphia). Art Needlework Department  16 Picabia, Francis  91, 117, 178 Picasso, Pablo  159–60 Gertrude Stein  161 Pierre Matisse Gallery (New York)  24–5 Pocahontas  185–7, 188 Portland Museum of Art (Maine)  94 portraits Harbeson’s  182–5 American Indian women  185–7, 188 Kahlo’s  178 Modersohn-Becker’s  142 Stettheimer’s  178 through modernist lens  159–62, 188–9 Zorach’s  159 autobiographical  141–3, 167–73 family  161–2, 163–7 self  173–7, 178–82 primitive matriarchy  52

Index 257 primitivism  209 n.74 in Native cultures  188 and Zorach  52–7, 66 Proust, Marcel  176 Provincetown Art Association  36, 50 Provincetown Museum  77 Rado, Lisa  52 Rambusch Company  81 realism  38, 40, 167–8 Reed, Christopher  8, 9 Reiss, Fritz Winold  20 Reiss, Henrietta  20 Reyher, Rebecca Hourwich  58 Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus  130–4, 226 n.38 Rivera, Diego  178 Robertson, Bruce  157, 220 n.19 Rockefeller, Abby  50, 51, 84, 161–2, 163, 229 n.17 Roosevelt, Edith  26, 73, 84, 202 n.58 Roth, Elizabeth New York from Central Park  136, 137, 138 Royal School of Art Needlework (London)  16 Rubin, William  159, 160 Russell, Elizabeth  28–9 Ryan, Mary  77 Saarinen, Loja  192 Sacajawea  185, 186, 188 Santa Fe Indian School. Art Studio  188 Schapiro, Miriam  194 Schwarzenback, Robert  27 sea imagery  149, 228 n.16 self-portraits Modersohn-Becker  142 Stettheimer  64, 65 Zorach  173, 174–7, 178–82 sewing machine  18 Sheeler, Charles  53, 209 n.76 Shilliam, Nicola  34 “Emerging Identity: American Textile Artists in Early Twentieth Century America”  11–12 silk wall hangings  27–8 skyscraper imagery  117–18, 119–22, 124–7, 129

Smithsonian American Art Museum  4, 82 Smithsonian Institution  44–5 Société Anonyme  37, 42, 91 Society of Decorative Art (New York)  16, 17 Society of Independent Artists  36 Statue of Liberty  123 Stebbins, Marcia  1, 3, 4, 83–4, 217 n.78 embroidery as modern art  87 exhibitions  84–5 Impressionist influences  86–7 sale of embroideries  85 Untitled (Seascape)  86–7 Untitled (Washington Square Park)  136–8 Stein, Gertrude  52 Stella, Joseph The Voice of the City of New York Interpreted  119 Stettheimer, Florine  63, 177–8 Family Portrait #2  62, 63 La Fête à Duchamp  178 Model (Nude Self-Portrait)  64, 65 Stickley, Gustav  5 Stieglitz, Alfred  41, 53, 65–6 still life  104–5, 106, 176, 177 stitches/stitchery  10, 11 brush-like quality  23 Cretan stitch  134–5 Stoll, Marian  1, 3, 114 commissions  87, 89 contemporary criticism  89 Cubist influences  89 East of the Sun and West of the Moon  89–90 on embroidery as art  88–9 embroidery making process  90–1 exhibitions  73, 89 Greek Temple  153–4 Jungle  152–3 New England Village  155–6 portrait  88 The Storm  155, 156 studio craft ideal  6 Surrealist influences  90, 152–6 Untitled (Landscape with Building)  152, 153 Untitled (Village)  154–5 works in museums  4

258 Storey, Walter Rendell  25–6, 82, 89, 193 Storr, Robert  91 studio craft  5–6 Sunwise Turn (bookshop: New York)  55 Surrealism and Harbeson  108 and Stoll  90, 152–6 Taeuber, Sophie  9, 20, 31, 114–15 artistic experimentation  21 collaborative work  93 tapestry  203 n.60 embroidery vs  26–30 Tarbell, Roberta  33–4, 95, 204 n.5, 205 n.20, 220 n.20 Tatham, David  64 Taylor, Clara Potter Davidge  60 temporality Bergson’s  176 and Stettheimer  177–8 and Zorach  176–8, 182 textile(s) Peruvian  24–5 textile artists  192–3 theatre and needlework  70–1 transportation imagery  123 Troy, Virginia The Modernist Textile: Europe and America, 1890-1940  11 Untermyer, Irwin  74–5, 185 Van Gogh, Vincent  104–5 Vernay Galleries  111 Victoria and Albert Museum (London)  19, 89 Vinebaum, Lisa  22 V’Soske, Inc.  6 wall hangings  113 Watson, Ruth  127 Watson, Steven  53–4 weaving  192–3 Weiss, Peg  21–2 Weston, Edward Tony Lujan  188 Wheeler, Candance  16 The Development of Embroidery in America  16–17

Index Wheeler, Monroe  37, 160–2, 175, 182 Whiting, Gertrude  17 Whitney Studio Galleries  132 Wilson, Florence Yoder  7, 186, 187 Wilson, Kristina  91 Wittmann, Matthew  128–9 women of color  22, 23 Wright, Alastair  9 Wright, Frank Lloyd  113, 198 n.17 Zeisler, Claire  194 Zorach, Dahlov  48–50, 59, 95–6, 170–1, 172–3, 225 n.26, 231 n.40–1 Zorach, Marguerite  1, 3–4, 12–13, 20, 66, 191–2. See also collaboration: Zorachs art patrons  129, 224 n.22 art-related activities and friendships  33, 51–2, 53–4, 210 n.81 Asian travels  35, 44, 55–6, 99 autobiographical embroideries  60–2, 64–5, 141–3, 167–77, 231 n.37 biographical sketch  35–6 Blaue Reiter influences  41–3 career and marriage  59 The Circus: New York  44–5, 128–9, 130, 132–5 The City of New York in the Year Nineteen Hundred and Twenty  37, 119–24, 125, 127–8, 223 n.11, 224 n.17 commissions  27, 37, 161–2, 163–5 contemporary criticism  23–5, 29–30, 134–5, 164–5 on critics  46–7 Cubist influences  8, 23, 34, 35, 38, 60–6, 164 The Dance  36, 38, 52, 53–4, 211 n.81 domestic life and creative work  47– 51, 172–3 Eden  36 “embroidered tapestries”  29–30, 100–1 embroidery as preferred medium  43–5, 50 embroidery making process  44–5, 90–1 European travels  35, 41, 64 exhibitions  23, 24–5, 29–30, 35, 36–7, 50

Index 259 The Family Supper  37, 60–2, 64–5, 212 n.112 The Family, White Mountains  141–3 Fauvist influences  40, 43–4 feminist perspective  57–60 Figures in a Landscape  38, 39 For Bill and Lucy L’Engle  127, 128, 129–30, 224 n.24 and home  63–4 The Home  143, 144, 228 n.12 An Indian Wedding  36, 37, 56–7 interviews  46, 58, 59, 60, 212 n.106 Ipcar Family at Robinhood Farm  170–3 The Jonas Family  44–5, 165–7 as modern artist  6, 33–5, 43, 66 and nature  139–41, 145 paintings  47 Blue Cinerarias  130, 131 Camp in the Woods, Yosemite  140 The Circus  132, 133 Death of a Miner  38, 40 Ella Madison and Dahlov  48–9 The Evening Star  40, 41 The Family, White Mountains  141, 142 Father and Daughter  97 Indian Elephant  57 Maine Sheriff  168 Man Among the Redwoods  140 Memories of My California Childhood  173–4 A New England Family  97–9 Nude Reclining  129–30, 182 The Picnic  164 Provincetown, Sunset and Moonrise  38, 39 public commissions  167–8 Sixth Avenue L  119, 121 Still Life (Remembrance of Things Past)  176, 177 Village in India  41–2

Pegasus  99, 100 Peggy and Tessim Zorach Family  170–2, 173 portrait  34 Portrait of Bea Ault  162–3 portraiture  159, 161–77 primitivist interests  52–7, 66 realist influences  38, 40, 167–8 relationship with mother  179–80 Remembrance of Life in Fresno California and of My Childhood There Around the Year 1900  4, 173, 174–7, 232 n.48 Robinhood Farm, Georgetown Island Maine in the Year 1937  168–70, 231 n.36 The Rockefeller Family at Seal Harbor  29, 30, 37, 100–1, 161–2, 163–5, 170, 229 n.17, 230 n.21 sale of embroideries  50–1, 231 n.36 scholarship on  11–12 The Sea  149 self-portrait  173, 174–7, 178–82 on skyscrapers  124–5 social identity  66–7, 181, 182 studio craft ideal  6 stylistic shift  167–8 textile designer  6 Zorach, Tessim  141, 142, 170–1, 173, 231 n.40 Zorach, William  20, 49, 50, 54, 57, 59, 100, 114, 128, 163, 165, 205 n.18, 210 n.81. See also collaboration: Zorachs Art Is My Life  33, 220 n.22 commissions  27 contemporary criticism  23 Marguerite’s role in art of  95–6 portrait  175, 179 Sunrise at Provincetown  97 Waterfall  219 n.18

260