Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity

The schema which decorated the cover of Alfred H. Barr's catalogue for the exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1936 is paradigmatic of the way modern art has been mapped by modernist art history [2]. All those canonized as the initiators of modern art are men. Is this because there were no women involved in early modern movements? No.' Is it because those who were, were without significance in determining the shape and character of modern art? No. Or is it rather because what modernist art history celebrates is a selective tradition which normalizes, as the only modernism, a particular and gendered set of practices? I would argue for this explanation. As a result any attempt to deal with artists in the early history of modernism who are women necessitates a deconstruction of the masculimst myths of modernism.z These are, however, widespread and structure the discourse of many counter-modernists, for instance in the social history of art. The recent pub-