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ABSTRACT
This article interrogates the gendered nature of modernism via analysis of the art work of two modern women painters, the American Edna Reindel and the Australian Sybil Craig. Each portrayed women working in shipbuilding, aircraft and munitions factories during the Second World War. While their paintings of women at work could be seen as complicit in the hegemonic masculinist political regimes which considered women a reserve army of labour, a feminist inter/modern reading runs counter to the conventional view that the masculinity of modern times was barely disturbed by women stepping into unusual roles under exceptional circumstances.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Catherine Speck FAHA is Professor of Art History at the University of Adelaide. Her publications include Heysen to Heysen: Selected Letters of Hans Heysen and Nora Heysen (2019, 2011); Australian Art Exhibitions: Opening our Eyes (with Joanna Mendelssohn, Catherine De Lorenzo and AIison Inglis (2018); Beyond the Battlefield: Women Artists of the Two World Wars (2014); and Painting Ghosts (2004). She is a member of the Fay Gale Centre for Research into Gender.