Dorothy Day with the dress she wore during her last time in jail (by jimforest)
Dorothy Day with her prison dress. On November 1917 Day went to prison for being one of forty women in front of the White House protesting women’s exclusion from the electorate.
Lady Florence Norman, a suffragette, on her motor-scooter in 1916, travelling to work at offices in London where she was a supervisor. The scooter was a birthday present from her husband, the journalist and Liberal politician Sir Henry Norman.
eFF YES SUFFRAGETTES
The Armory Show wasn’t the only big event in 1913 - it was also the year that suffragists marched on Washington to demand women’s right to vote. In light of that centennial anniversary, which is being celebrated this weekend, and the kickoff of Women’s History Month, it seemed like a good time to present you with this declaration from Nancy Spero.
Nancy Spero letter to Lucy R. Lippard, 1971 Oct. 29. Lucy R. Lippard papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Reminded me of the startling overlaps between early and late 20th century white feminism. A stark image, too, which I like.
“I got five lovely shots in,” the suffragette Mary Richardson, also known as “Slasher Mary”, proudly recalled in an interview with the BBC in 1961. She was referring to the fateful day in March 1914 when, after milling around London’s National Gallery for hours, she removed a meat cleaver pinned inside her sleeve and set upon Velázquez’s The Toilet of Venus (Rokeby Venus), 1647-51. She remembers feeling lucky to get in a few more blows as the warder mistakenly attributed the sound of breaking glass to a broken skylight. He eventually seized Richardson as she was still “hammering away” at the picture. But the damage was done: the long slashes that dotted the reclining nude’s back resembled gaping wounds in her flesh. Richardson’s assault was not without purpose, however: it was a protest against the imprisonment of fellow suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst. “I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the government for destroying Mrs Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful character in modern history,” Richardson told police after the attack.
The suffragettes’ campaign is examined in Tate Britain’s exhibition “Art under Attack: Histories of British Iconoclasm”, which explores various strategies behind the deliberate destruction of art in Britain from the 16th century to the present day.
Read more here.
This insanely beautiful evening gown was part of Lucile’s debut American collection in 1910. The gown is made of voided velvet and was heavily influenced by the Orientalist craze of the early 1910s.
Doyle New York sold this gown at auction for $35,850 in 2004.
