Reviewed by:

• The Female Secession: Art and the Decorative at the Viennese Women's Academy by Megan Brandow-Faller
• Jennifer L. Good

Megan Brandow-Faller's The Female Secession: Art and the Decorative at the Viennese Women's Academy situates the secessionist women's art movement in Vienna within larger questions of female artists, their educational opportunities, and the context of their contested spaces and experiences as artists. Building on the work of Sabine Plakohm-Forsthuber, Julie Johnson, and Rebecca Houze, the author draws particularly on Houze's assertion that modernism's focus on "fine art" does not sufficiently accommodate the craft-oriented female artists. Within these pages, Brandow-Faller offers the readers two different lenses through which to consider this discussion: Part 1 profiles the educational and philosophical drivers of the movement while Part 2 focuses on three critical moments of growth and disruption. In addition, the book provides a rich portrayal of both the diversity and the fusion of art, craft, and decoration through the inclusion of twenty-seven color plates of artworks and extensive archival material, such as photographs of exhibits and of women artists in their workspaces.

Part 1 of The Female Secession focuses on the creativity and the hierarchy of educational options open to women artists beginning in 1897. The three chapters address the pedagogies and innovations of the Viennese Women's Academy in the early years, the role of decoration and handcrafts in the [End Page 119] Böhm School, and academic accreditation and the developing discussion of a female aesthetic at the Academy. The education that women found at the Academy included a radical shift away from traditional prescriptive technical instruction to the privileging of an individualized instructional model that "cultivated an all-around versatility […] and the inclusion of decorative art and handcraft under the rubric of academic studies" (25). While Academy faculty represented competing aesthetic values, the pedagogical design gave students permission to follow their own paths rather than imitate their teachers. Chapter 2 chronicles the act of "unlearning" informed by progressive early education research that focused on an "awakened awareness of material and technique through experimental self-activity" (47). The secessionist's interest in "primitive" forms was, however, contradicted by the act of studying them and combining them with modernist principles. In Chapter 3, the author delivers a systematic and integrated analysis of institutional history from the Viennese Women's Academy recognition in 1908 through the perils of the political winds of the 1930s. Detailed and well documented are the Academy's rise to state-accreditation status, supervised and financed by the Ministry of Education, and its newfound stature as it was given equal status to other state art academies and allowed to offer both the decorative arts and handcraft and traditional academic painting and sculpture, enhancing Vienna's reputation through "its public educational mission in women's art education, especially in the fields suited to women" (73). Brandow-Faller's clear explanations bring the challenges of the Academy into sharp relief, navigating changes in leadership while balancing its prestige with the contested ideal that handcraft was art and not mere decoration.

Part 2 of The Female Secession presents three critical moments of growth and disruption, where secessionist philosophies are in dialogue with the decorative arts and seeking expression. In these chapters, the author's two central narrative threads are strongly evident: first, the relationship of female artist-designers to child art primitivism, and second, the ways in which the "decorative women of the female Secession played on naturalized assumptions of Women's connection to (self) decoration, ornament, and handcraft" (9). Brandow-Faller's extensive study of this period, and particularly her work on artistic toys (Chapter 4) and "feminine vessels" (Chapter 5) bring these periods of female artists' work to life. In "Kinderkunst and Frauenkunst at the 1908 Kunstschau," the author shows how a "serious interest in art for and by children" (101) opened up a unique space for women artists. In vivid [End Page 120] descriptions of multiple rooms of the 1908 Kunstschau, the author...

审核人：

• 女性分离派：梅根·布兰多-法勒 (Megan Brandow-Faller)的维也纳女子学院的艺术与装饰
• 珍妮弗·L·古德

梅根·布兰多-法勒的《女性分离派：维也纳女子学院的艺术与装饰》将维也纳的分离主义女性艺术运动置于女性艺术家、她们的教育机会以及她们作为艺术家有争议的空间和经历的背景下的更大问题中。以 Sabine Plakohm-Forsthuber、Julie Johnson 和 Rebecca Houze 的作品为基础，作者特别借鉴了 Houze 的断言，即现代主义对“美术”的关注不足以适应以工艺为导向的女性艺术家。在这些页面中，Brandow-Faller 为读者提供了两种不同的视角来考虑这一讨论：第 1 部分概述了这场运动的教育和哲学驱动因素，而第 2 部分则侧重于增长和破坏的三个关键时刻。此外，本书还对艺术、工艺、

《女性分离派》的第 1 部分侧重于从 1897 年开始向女性艺术家开放的创造力和教育选择的等级。这三章讨论了早期维也纳女子学院的教学法和创新、装饰和手工艺在艺术中的作用[第119页结束]Böhm 学校、学术认证以及学院对女性审美的发展讨论。女性在学院找到的教育包括从传统的规范性技术指导彻底转变为个性化教学模式的特权，这种模式“培养了全面的多功能性 [...]研究”（25）。虽然学院教师代表了相互竞争的审美价值观，但教学设计允许学生走自己的路，而不是模仿他们的老师。第 2 章记载了由渐进式早期教育研究提供的“忘却”行为，该研究侧重于“通过实验性自我活动唤醒对材料和技术的认识”（47）。然而，分离主义者对“原始”形式的兴趣与研究它们并将它们与现代主义原则相结合的行为相矛盾。在第 3 章中，作者从 1908 年维也纳女子学院的认可到 1930 年代政治风的危险，对制度历史进行了系统和综合的分析。详细而有据可查的是，学院在教育部的监督和资助下获得了国家认证，并获得了新的地位，因为它被赋予与其他国家艺术学院同等的地位，并被允许提供装饰艺术和手工艺以及传统艺术。学术绘画和雕塑，通过“其在女性艺术教育方面的公共教育使命，提高维也纳的声誉，

《女性分离派》的第 2 部分呈现了三个成长和分裂的关键时刻，其中分离主义哲学与装饰艺术对话并寻求表达。在这些章节中，作者的两个中心叙事线索非常明显：第一，女性艺术家-设计师与儿童艺术原始主义的关系，第二，“女性分离派的装饰女性在女性联系的自然化假设上发挥作用的方式”。到（自我）装饰、装饰和手工艺”（9）。Brandow-Faller 对这一时期的广泛研究，尤其是她在艺术玩具（第 4 章）和“女性器皿”（第 5 章）方面的工作，使这些时期的女性艺术家的作品栩栩如生。在 ”Kunstschau ”的作者展示了一件多么‘艺术浓厚的兴趣的，并通过孩子们’（101），开辟了女性艺术家独特的空间，在生动[尾页120]的1908多个房间描述Kunstschau，笔者.. .