"Costume Design (Androcles and the Lion)," Florine Stettheimer, c. 1912.

Stettheimer (1871-1944) was a poet, designer, artist, feminist, and intellectual, with a highly individual style of Modern art.

In 1912, she began to create an opera, which she titled "Orphée des Quat'z Arts," inspired by an annual ball held by Paris art students that combined an excuse to party with a chance to show off their works. They were always masquerades built around some annual theme, and were known for scandalous behavior.

Stettheimer designed costumes, sets, and a libretto for the opera, but it was never produced. However, her costume designs were some of her earliest modernist works that prefigured today's mixed-media art.

Here we have Androcles, riding the lion, only the lion is on a wheeled cart, like a huge toy. The rider, though is interesting; the costume bits are made of cloth and cellophane, and the lion's collar is lace. Stettheimer was fascinated by cellophane, then a new material, and used it a few decades later when designing costumes for Gertrude Stein's opera "Four Saints in Three Acts."

From the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

#Art #FlorineStettheimer #Modernism #WomenAritsts #CostumeDesign #MixedMedia

"Picnic at Bedford Hills," Florine Stettheimer, 1918.

Stettheimer (1871-1944) was an American painter, who was also a theatrical designer, writer, and all-around intellectual of early 20th century New York.

Born into a wealthy family, she was able to travel around Europe and America, eventually returning to New York where she designed opera sets, painted, and ran one of the city's most respected salons. (Not a beauty salon, but a discussion salon!)

She developed a highly individual Modernist style, often very representational but still with many unusual elements, like the yellow grass in this painting, which otherwise would be a straightforward depiction of a picnic. We know who they are...the women are Florine and her two sisters, Carrie and Ettie, and the men are sculptor Elie Nadelman and notorious avant-garde artist Marcel Duchamp. I wish I knew which was which, but it seems there's some beguiling stories to be told here...

From the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia.

#Art #FlorineStettheimer #Modernism #Picnic #WomenArtists #WomenInArt

"The Cathedrals of Broadway," Florine Stettheimer, 1929.

I've featured Stettheimer (1871-1944) before, so no point in going over her biography, except to note that she was not only a painter, but a designer of theatrical sets and costumes.

This Modernist painting shows her theatrical roots. She's got neon signs, a proscenium arch, a ticket window, ushers, the whole works. It's a neon-lit fantasia of the real "cathedrals" of Broadway, giving escapist entertainment to people of the Depression.

It's very much its own thing, being partly representational but also bizarrely surreal, echoing the work of Chagall.

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

#Art #FlorineStettheimer #Modernism #WomenArtists #Broadway

"Sunday Afternoon in the Country," Florine Stettheimer, 1917.

Stettheimer (1871-1944) was a Modernist painter and theatrical designer, as well as a pioneering feminist, poet, and salonniere.

While at first glance this seems rather mundane, the colors are strange; check out the red tree. Some of the characters seem to be doing bizarre, random things, and some appear to be sitting in upholstered armchairs.

In reality, this is her memory of a picnic she held; in the upper right, hardly visible, she paints herself working at her easel. In the lower left, photographer Edward Steichen points his camera at Dada founder Marcel Duchamp. leaning on a table, while Ettie Stettheimer (the artist's sister) stands behind him in the red coat. Other real-life people are depicted, but in a strange style reminiscent of Chagall.

Stettheimer refused to identify with any group or school; her work is Modernist by default for the time she worked in and her style. Not taken seriously in her liftetime, her work was donated to museums and rediscovered in the 1990s, and now she is hailed as a great American artist.

From the Cleveland Museum of Art.

#Art #FlorineStettheimer #Modernism #WomenArtists #AmericanArt

"Family Portrait II," Florine Stettheimer, 1933.

Stettheimer (1871-1944) was a modernist painter, operatic set designer, poet, feminist, and salonnière. Her family was well-to-do, although abandoned by her father, so she and her sisters grew up in a matriarchal household. Stettheimer became noted for her regular salon where the top figures of the avant-garde in the art world would gather and exchange ideas. Her gatherings were also notable as one of the few places where queer artists could openly express themselves at the time.

Her work was often satirical and humorous, but also sensual, sexual, and openly feminist, exercising the female gaze at attractive men. In 1915 she did what is regarded as the first feminist nude self-portrait, in which she holds a bouquet near her pubic hair and gazes mockingly at the viewer.

This is her favorite canvas; that's her on the far left, next to her sister Ettie. Her mother sits in a golden chair, next to her other sister Carrie.

She never associated herself with a single gallery or school; her work has always been evaluated on its own terms.

From the Museum of Modern Art, New York

#Art #FlorineStettheimer #Feminism #Modernism #WomenArtists #WomenInArt #FamilyPortrait

A wintery painting for Boxing Day. Christmas, by Florine Stettheimer, 1930–1940.

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