Between Union and Liberation

Marion Arnold is an independent art historian who lived and worked in South Africa for two decades and is now resident in the United Kingdom. Brenda Schmahmann is Professor and Head of the Fine Art Department at Rhodes University, South Africa.

'This is a remarkable celebration of the creative endeavours of women artists in south Africa from 1910 to 1994' Women's History Magazine ’Between Union and Liberation is an admirable book and fulfils its task competently within its specified parameters... it makes a constructive contribution to the discourse.’ De Art April 2006 ’This is an important book and its essays make significant contributions to the field of art history in South Africa. They bring forth new material and offer fresh insights into old material. Gathered here, they confront gender biases and sexism within art historical discourse and social practice. We can only benefit from such a book.’ H-New Book Review, Feb 06 ’Between Union and Liberation: Women Artists in South Africa 1910-1994 is a valuable book for several reasons...The book underscores tensions among people with similar skin colors, thus it counters the popular notion (troublingly prevalent outside of South Africa) that identity in the twentieth century was reduced to black and white.’ African Arts

• Contents: Visual culture in context: the implications of Union and Liberation, Marion Arnold; Florence Phillips, patronage and the arts at the time of Union, Jillian Carman; European modernism and African domicile: women painters and the search for identity, Marion Arnold; Constance Stuart Larrabee's photographs of the Ndzundza Ndebele: performance and history beyond the modernist frame, Brenda Danilowitz; Art, gender ideology and Afrikaner nationalism - a case study, Liese van der Watt; Technologies and transformations: baskets, women and change in 20th-century KwaZulu-Natal, Nessa Leibhammer; Breaking the mould: women ceramists in KwaZulu-Natal, Wilma Cruise; On pins and needles: gender politics and embroidery projects before the first democratic election, Brenda Schmahmann; Narratives of migration in the works of Noria Mabasa and Mmakgabo Sebidi, Jacqueline Nolte; Representing regulation - rendering resistance: female bodies in the art of Penny Siopis, Brenda Schmahmann; Index.