Radicals and Rogues
The Women Who Made New York Modern
Lottie WhalenChronicles the women who trailblazed New York’s artistic scene in the early 1900s.
This is the story of a group of women whose experiments in art and life set the tone for the rise of New York as the twentieth century’s capital of modern culture. Across the 1910s and ’20s, through provocative creative acts, shocking fashion, political activism and dynamic social networks, these women reimagined modern life and fought for the chance to realize their visions. Taking the reader on a journey through the city’s salons and bohemian hangouts, Radicals and Rogues celebrates the tastemakers, collectors, curators, artists and poets at the forefront of the early avant-garde scene. Focusing on the women trailblazers at the centre of artistic innovation, Lottie Whalen offers a lively new history of remarkable women in early twentieth-century New York City.
Chronicles the women who trailblazed New York’s artistic scene in the early 1900s.
This is the story of a group of women whose experiments in art and life set the tone for the rise of New York as the twentieth century’s capital of modern culture. Across the 1910s and ’20s, through provocative creative acts, shocking fashion, political activism and dynamic social networks, these women reimagined modern life and fought for the chance to realize their visions. Taking the reader on a journey through the city’s salons and bohemian hangouts, Radicals and Rogues celebrates the tastemakers, collectors, curators, artists and poets at the forefront of the early avant-garde scene. Focusing on the women trailblazers at the centre of artistic innovation, Lottie Whalen offers a lively new history of remarkable women in early twentieth-century New York City.
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Lottie Whalen reveals that [New York’s] transformation in the early decades of the 20th Century was largely thanks to a bold, taboo-busting cohort of women who pushed boundaries both creatively and socially. As artists, writers, salon hosts and patrons they passionately embraced new forms of living, loving and creating.
'BBC Culture
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We should stand up and salute this astoundingly far-reaching and delightfully detailed history of the salons, exhibitions, groupings and individual histories of avant-garde artists. Lottie Whalen illuminates the distinct moments essential to this panorama. A radical exposition of radical women.
'Mary Ann Caws, author of Creative Gatherings: Meeting Places of Modernism and Mina Loy: Apology of Genius.
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A brilliantly entertaining and enlightening study of New York in the early 20th century, a time when a diverse group of female artists, poets and patrons joyfully dismantled the limits society had set them – and created something new and wondrous in the process.
'Jennifer Higgie, writer, art critic and author of The Other Side: A Journey into Women, Art and the Spirit World
Introduction
Chapter 1 The Armory Show: Riot and Rebellion in New York
Chapter 2 Greenwich Village: Restless Women of the Smock Colony
Chapter 3 Clara Tice: Belle of the Ball, Bohemian Queen
Chapter 4 The Arensberg Salon, Home of American Dada
Chapter 5 Beatrice Wood: Mama of Dada
Chapter 6 Mina Loy: The Art of Modern Living
Chapter 7 Stettheimer Salon: Chateau Stettheimer and the Cellophane Sisters
Coda: Make the World Your Salon
REFERENCES
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PHOTO ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INDEX
Lottie Whalen is a writer, researcher and curator working in the fields of feminist history, avant-garde art and textiles. She is the co-founder of Decorating Dissidence, an interdisciplinary arts project that considers radical histories of craft and its potential as a force for change in the modern day. She lives in Glasgow.