Mary E. Hutchinson: The Absence of an Oeuvre Open Access

Turner, Jae (2012)

Permanent URL: https://etd.library.emory.edu/concern/etds/zp38wd53r?locale=en
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Abstract

Abstract
Mary E. Hutchinson: The Absence of an Oeuvre
This dissertation brings scholarly attention to the artist Mary E. Hutchinson (1906-1970),
who is unknown today even though she achieved critical recognition and produced a
significant body of work during the mid-twentieth century in the United States. Through
a genealogical approach informed by feminist and queer theories, this dissertation
excavates the gap between the material traces of Hutchinson's life and the invisibility of
her body of work today. That gap emerges, retrospectively, as the space that separates
Hutchinson's lived experience from the dominant narratives through which the histories
of modern art and feminism are written. This project's interdisciplinary exploration of
that space reveals it to be - not a void - but the site of a complex play between
intelligibility and unintelligibility. Thus this scholarship not only draws attention to an
unknown artist's work and life, but also reshapes our understanding of art and politics in
the twentieth century.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents




Introduction
Limits of Gender and Sexuality in Art History and Biography

1

Chapter 1
"Atlanta Girl" Winning Fame in New York



34

Chapter 2
An
Independent
Woman
Artist
72

Chapter 3
Queering
Kitsch
106

Chapter 4
Unintelligible
Recovery
152

Conclusion
An Artist's Anecdote and a Death
Without
Cause
187

Bibliography
200


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