#malweib

With the second week of September underway, Fall is almost here! Aside from ushering in some fabulous exhibitions, the season also marks the official starting point of my senior thesis project--which I'm doing on the German artist, Paula Modersohn-Becker.

This means while I'll still be going to shows and (hopefully) writing about them here, I'll probably also begin posting about my ongoing research. As part of the project, I've started a Twitter where I'll update on what scholars and writers have had to say about Modersohn-Becker's work and legacy--@MalweibBecker.

Why "Malweib Becker?" What in god's name is a "Malweib?" In his discussion of Modersohn-Becker's  tumultuous friendship with the legendary poet Rainer Maria Rilke, Eric Torgersen uses the pejorative German term which can be loosely translated as "painter broad." Torgersen states that although "[t]here is no good English translation for Malweib, the thoroughly pejorative term of the day for the stereotype of the female would-be artist; there were caricatures--unattractive, man-hungry, and ridiculous..." Perhaps the term evolved as a German response to the emerging "New Woman" during this time period.

In a letter to her parents, Clara Westhoff, Modersohn-Becker's closest female confidant (and Rilke's eventual wife), claims that she has become a "Malweib...a true-blue emancipated fin-de-siecle woman;" seemingly accepting the derogatory term and perhaps even embracing it as a mark of artistic and personal fulfillment.

Although Modersohn-Becker was not as politically interested as Westhoff, often making remarks against emerging feminist ideology, she often struggled as a female artist--a "painter broad" in a world largely dominated by men. In the years before her sudden death in 1907, she left her family, living independently for extended periods in Paris to pursue her artistic ambitions. She too became a "Malweib" in a sense--if we think of Westhoff's empowering interpretation of the word. Modersohn-Becker was able to be independent and emancipated in ways that would not have been possible for a female artist before the 19th and 20th centuries. The word, although derogatory, embodies a litany of concepts and ideas that are integral to framing the life of Paula Modersohn-Becker. Among other things, it reflects emerging social changes beginning with a new century, the subsequent animosity towards increasingly autonomous women, and efforts on the part of female artists such as Modersohn-Becker.

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